So I've been doing stress wrong for years; how does anyone survive?

[MiniMagus]

So some how all of my players and I had missed the rule that you can only tick off one stress box at a time.

Our combats have tended to involve a lot of maneuvers to set up aspects with free invocations but I'm struggling to see how you get the space to do that when you can't tick of multiple stress boxes at once to mitigate early instances of damage.

It isn't hard for a wizard to have access to a rote with a targeting of 5/6 and a weapon value of 3. How does anyone survive long against that?

Should I be putting more emphasis on the players doing research or set up before combat to get access to temporary aspects from the off?

I'm concerned that if we start dealing with stress and consequences as written, the player builds will start to become focused on spike damage, weapon values and anything else that bumps those attack rolls at the expense of declarations and create an advantage actions.

[blackstaff67]

1) Somewhat nerf wizard builds for Foci bonuses and such,
2) Make sure both players and NPCs have their fingers on the "Concede" button,
3) Tell your wizards that they are squishy and an investment in Rote shield spells and defensive enchanted item will be a must (if they haven't done so already).

[Taran]

building up aspects and going for the big hit is the way to take out opposition.  So your players are doing it right.

- Concession rules are there for a reason.  If I see that my character has 3 or 4 aspects/maneuvers racked up against him and the GM says, "ok, Vampire is going to attack",  You can immediately concede before the dice are rolled.

- Tougher opposition should be able to take multiple consequences before gettting taken Out.  Mooks should probably go down quicker

- Toughness Powers go a long way to make opposition...tougher.  Not that everyone has toughness powers but you should keep it in mind.

- High endurance gives extra mild consequences allowing you to soak more damage.  Combined with recovery powers, this is useful.

-We made a house-rule where inhuman recovery can recover 2 stress consequence as a supplemental; Supernatural recover can recover 4 stress (so, 2 milds or one moderate consequence); and mythic can soak 6 stress (3 milds, a moderate and a mild or a severe) as a supplemental.

- If you have a whole party against one BIg Bad, then they'll take it out quickly.  Make sure you throw in lots of mooks with your Main Opposition in order to get the PC's to spread their attacks more, create maneuvers for your Main Bad to tag to dodge or do blocks to weaken attacks.

Let's say you have one really baddass guy that can hurt the PCs.  Then you have 4 wimpy dudes with a skill of +4.  3 of them maneuver and the 4th block, tagging the other 3 maneuvers.  that's a +10 block against the Main dude.  Now the main dude, with a weapons skill of +5 and a weapon value of 6 can attack without worrying about getting hit.  The PCs can concentrate on the mooks but in the mean-time, your main guy is wreaking havoc.

just my 2cents

edit:  also, in my personal experience, Taking people out isn't that easy (depending on the situation).  Have you been playing it with one stress for one hit?  Or is it that you've just learned about the rule and are worried about using it (but have yet to try it)?

Your wizard hitting at +6 with weapon 3 against someone defending at +4 only takes 5 stress - assuming they aren't wearing armour -   that's a minor consequence and a 3-box.  If they have inhuman toughness, they can take a 7-stress hit without taking a consequence.

[Mr. Death]

So some how all of my players and I had missed the rule that you can only tick off one stress box at a time.

Our combats have tended to involve a lot of maneuvers to set up aspects with free invocations but I'm struggling to see how you get the space to do that when you can't tick of multiple stress boxes at once to mitigate early instances of damage.

It isn't hard for a wizard to have access to a rote with a targeting of 5/6 and a weapon value of 3. How does anyone survive long against that?

It's also not hard for a mortal to have an assault rifle with Weapon:3, fired from 5.

Seriously, an out of the box wizard can easily be throwing out a Weapon: 7 attack with targeting at 7.

The short answer for surviving against that is to create a situation where they can't attack like that (lots of mortals around if it's a good guy wizard, take away foci, and encourage compels and invokes).

One thing to remember about Dresden combat is once people start getting hit, it does not last long. Don't think 'whittle down hitpoints,' think 'I need one good shot to bring this guy down.' It's designed that way, and it hits both ways.

Should I be putting more emphasis on the players doing research or set up before combat to get access to temporary aspects from the off?

This is a good idea, yes. Looking into their opponents' weakpoints and strategies can make for a good session in itself, and adds a dynamic to the combat that really helps.

I had players once, a team of wizards, who found their enemies' workshop. They did well enough on their Lore and Investigation rolls to really learn how she operated, so they could later make a spell that totally shut off her magic (this is after said enemy beat up one of the PC wizards one-on-one, of course).

Think of the books and how Dresden wins his bigger conflicts. Yes, sometimes it's by being able to belch flame and fart lightning while he withstands the other guy's attacks, but the big, important fights he wins by exploiting something he'd investigated beforehand.

Your players should be encouraged to do the same.

I'm concerned that if we start dealing with stress and consequences as written, the player builds will start to become focused on spike damage, weapon values and anything else that bumps those attack rolls at the expense of declarations and create an advantage actions.

Then make sure to give them other things to do besides combat. Remember that DFRPG is as much about investigation as it is smacking people around.

In combat, though, a lot of Taran's points are good ones. I would also emphasize to them that declarations and maneuvers are how you create spike damage -- sure, you could win by just hammering the villain over and over to get past their toughness, but it's more interesting if they're maneuvering for one big blast to take them down.

[Haru]

I'm concerned that if we start dealing with stress and consequences as written, the player builds will start to become focused on spike damage, weapon values and anything else that bumps those attack rolls at the expense of declarations and create an advantage actions.

What's good for the goose and all that.

I've got a player in my game that can dish out weapon:7 with a skill of 6, and that's not a spellcaster (he can do spells, too, but those are usually even weaker). I've had him pitched against a similar character, and they fought for 10-12 exchanges, without anyone really taking damage (even though we had a few good hits on both sides). We eventually decided to end the fight on a draw.

Toughness and good defensive skills can really do a lot. If you don't hit, the weapon rating never even comes into play.

Other than that, stacking aspects to get a good hit in is most often the way to go. It's different to other games, where you usually zerg down an opponent. Here, if the attack is big enough, you can take out the opponent with one good hit. Usually, you don't have that kind of firepower with one shot, so you set up the circumstances to make it so. That's what maneuvers and free invokes are for.

[Lawgiver]

All the above is good but I have to say the way the OP title is written leads me to think there's a bit of a misunderstanding of part of the game premise.

"Survival" presupposes the possibility of death.  That's not really supposed to happen unless it's stated up front before conflict begins that actual character death is on the table.  Otherwise it's merely a matter of which side get to the Concession stage first.  And "death on the table" should be a mutually agreed condition.  As DM one shouldn't just start a combat sequence with "This guy is out for blood, someone could die today!"  Make sure the players are aware of the possibility and give them an option to avoid that action if they wish.  Consider it a group concession of a sort and give the Big Bad a fate point or two for scaring them off if you have to.  Just don't force the party into it.  If they're on board from the get go then find and dandy. Otherwise there can be some hard feelings and that's never good.

Also make sure the players understand that that condition is a 2-way street.  If you have one or more antagonists that are going to be recurring you don't want them getting bumped off by over-zealous players looking to count some coup on you. They too should be looking to push the antagonist(s) towards concession not the grave.

As the system sits (as said) when the balloon goes up things normally don't last long.  JB's even had Harry tell us that in the stories - how subjective time seems to pass so slowly but objective time is actually very short.  In my experience (with a # of RPGs over nearly 40 years of playing) the longer a fight scene lasts the more likely it is the player's characters will lose.  So getting a fight over with quickly (as the system is designed) actually tends to work in their favor.

Try it as it's supposed to be done.  Dont' take just one session either.  Take several to get used to it and see if you don't prefer it.  If you don't... well you guys played it your way for (how long?) a while and it was working for you.  You can always 'homebrew' it back to that method and just keep on playing.

Either way, good luck and enjoy.

[Escher]

Yeah, setting the combat goal somewhere other than "out to kill you" is a good idea -- there should very rarely be a fight where the death of one side is literally the only possible outcome.

That said, I tend to run games that are less gritty and more epic, so I tend to have a somewhat more-liberal-than-RAW stance on concession vs take-outs.  I will often let somebody semi-concede by being intentionally taken out -- that is to say, if they could have absorbed the hit, but the consequences aren't worth staying in the fight, and assuming they have taken at least one consequence (even if it was from that very attack), they can be 'taken out' but retain the minor narrative control of a concession.  They don't get any fate points for it, but it makes a good middle road for getting out of the fight without ceding total narrative control.

For example, if you have three stress boxes and the baddie manages to throw an eight-shift hit, I'd be inclined to let you take a minor or moderate consequence and get removed from the fight, but it's in that "left for dead"/"fleeing ignominiously" sort of way rather than getting taken prisoner or murdered or whatever.

It may not be quite legit, but it does give me more leeway to have "trying to actually kill you" enemies while still not threatening actual character death with every little fight.

[Taran]

that's a much more forgiving way of doing it.

That's actually lighter than the actual concession rules which use a guideline of a moderate consequence as a penalty for conceding.

[Escher]

That's not how I read that bullet point.  To me, "the character has at least one moderate or worse consequence as a result of the conflict" means if you took a moderate or worse consequence prior to concession, you already have taken enough of a penalty and don't need to be further penalized for bowing out (e.g., you've got cracked ribs or the enemy has guessed your plans, you don't need to also have lost your favorite weapon or end up in deep debt or whatever).  I guess you could demand that the character take a consequence as their fee for leaving the fight if they hadn't previously taken a hard hit, but that seems contrary to part of the basic description of Concession ("your character doesn’t have to take any consequences you’re not willing to take").

I tend to use the Fate Core book as a resource for a lot of my 'How to run the game' type stuff (especially for the specific rules on assessment/declaration/guess, which I found really clunky in DFRPG).  While concession there is largely the same, Core doesn't mention any of that "clear and decisive disadvantage" stuff.  It just says "you get to avoid the worst parts of your fate" and warns against undermining the opponent's victory, but it doesn't go into any details or requirements about what makes an appropriate concession penalty.  In that book, it reads more that the main penalty for concession is that, y'know, the bad guy got what they wanted, and that's enough of a setback.

In any case, the intent was that my house rule doesn't change the mechanics of concession any, it just says you can forgo the "cashing out" fate point(s) in exchange for conceding after you know what kind of damage you're looking at.

For the record, most of the time the player is more willing to take a consequence and cash out later than to give up the potential fate points.  My house rule mostly comes into things when some baddie randomly rolls a +4 and is about to do something really unexpectedly nasty, or hits with a particularly powerful spell, or something of that nature.

[Taran]

Regarding your last paragraph:

If there's a particularly powerful attack or spell that I think might take a character out, I ask them before rolling the dice:

"This guy is about to hit you with a power 10 accuracy 12 spell...do you want to concede?"

Then they can concede before he dice are rolled and rp being hit or whatever.  If they choose to take it, the. I let the dice decide.  They can still take consequences to avoid a Take Out.  If they don't think the fight was worth being taken out for or taking consequences for, then they should have conceded earlier. 

But that's my play style.  I don't like adventures that have no risk.

Edit: when I say 'no risk', I understand that there are different perceptions of risk.  What I'm saying is I, personally, feel it takes away much of the risk. I'm not trying to be confrontational.   I like gritty games where I end up throwing my dice across the room when things go poorly.