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Eldan
2012-09-24, 03:26 PM
Welcome to Gaols and Giants. Before we start getting to the actual rules, we have to agree on organisation. For now, I'll take over organizing this first post. However, there are a few points we need to address.

Communication:
An instant messaging medium with an archive would be very helpful. I propose Skype, but others might work too, if someone dislikes Skype for some reason.

Leadership:
Projects die without it. We need an organizer, and sub-organizers for various subjects.

Contributors:
Everyone who wants to be in this should probably drop a line here, and maybe mention some of the homebrew they've worked on, or what their qualifications are.

Hi, I'm Eldan, I've been working on various projects, the largest of which to date is the rewrite of the Arcane Magic system in my signature. My Skype is eldan985.

Other:
To be suggested by members.

Morph Bark
2012-09-24, 03:31 PM
Skype: Morpholomewy.

Also am in possession of MSN, but use that more rarely. Don't have other IM programs any longer. Too much clutter.

I suggest things are discussed broadly, but ultimately let people work primarily on a single field (or possibly two, if they can). Working in pairs is a good idea too, because two minds are better than one and can come up with more ideas and better mechanics.

Fields:
- Classes
- Creatures
- Magic system (tied to classes)
- Items
- Skills (minor, unless largely overhauled)
- Feats


First though, adress the large parts. What are the design goals? That's a prime thing that needs discussing.

Welknair
2012-09-24, 03:35 PM
Communication: I second the use of Skype. As I said on the other thread, we can set up a single skype group for the project for easy communication with the whole group, while also being able to message individuals that we are working directly alongside.

Leadership: I believe that Morph suggested a 2-per system for the major tasks, and I like that, possibly adding more people for larger things (I foresee the magic system being a bit time-consuming). I don't see a need for a single person to act as THE leader, but rather a group of 2 to 4 particularly active individuals to oversee things such that the entire project isn't crippled when one person has real life stuff come up, as it inevitably does.

So I think it'd look something like this:

Small teams 2-3 on each task (Magic, feats, skill rewrite, balancing classes, writing overarching fluff, etc.) and then there's the Overseers that get status reports from the sub-groups. The Overseers are in charge of immediate balance and cohesion, and noticing developing problems, or amazing ideas to be integrated elsewhere. However, these individuals shouldn't have super executive power or something like that. Perhaps they could act as judges, but reasonable and equal discussions ought to be at the heart of this project. If there's questions or ideas, they should be handled in the Skype group or whatever we decide to use, such that everyone can contribute their ideas.

Edit: I seem to have been swordsage'd!
My Skype is, predictably, Welknair. I'm very active on it.

Do we plan to include any other subsystems into G&G? There was a mention of integrating a ToB-style system for martial characters.

As for goals, the first things I think of:
1. Staying true to the feel of 3.5. Heavy emphasis on character building (I approve of using Feats and Skills to a greater degree, since they allow for more diversity between characters) as well as the ability for more content to be easily brewed for it. Add onto this whatever you feel makes 3.5 so enjoyable.
2. Make it reasonably balanced, of course. Perhaps we could agree upon a target tier for characters?
3. I'd like the system to be on the flexible side, to be able to accomodate a greater range of adventures and settings than vanilla 3.5. For example... Technological advancement options. I've learned a lot since the original Magitech. I could come up with some interesting options.

Eldan
2012-09-24, 03:36 PM
You forgot races.

TheWombatOfDoom
2012-09-24, 03:48 PM
Skype: BattleOfJerico

One thing we'll need to do is match up time availabilities. If two people are assigned the same task and have opposite availabilities, it might not work so well.

As Morph said, I'm great at fluff. I can take facts about something and churn it into a good explanation. Take my Magic Thread. I took a bunch of facts that welk and I came up with, and turned them into an explanation. I'll attempt to refrain from becoming tl;dr. I'm also good at races, I'm an artist by trade, and i've experience with 3.5 above the rest.

for G's - Gazebos and Grumpkins

However, we could make it E & E, since it's right after D & D - Enchanters and Elements (or something)

Welknair
2012-09-24, 03:50 PM
I can vouch for Wombat's drawing skill. Impressive stuff.

Edit: We're going to need a definitive list of participants sooner or later. My idea for a registration form:

GitP Username:
Skype Username, if applicable:
How much time can I contribute?:
Skills and credentials:
Preferred project:
Do you wish to be one of the organizers?:

GitP Username: Welknair
Skype Username, if applicable: Welknair (Who would have known?
How much time can I contribute?: An hour a day, perhaps?
Skills and credentials: I'm best known for my Magitech and Bloodlines. I excel at seeing how pieces work together and predicting their impacts on both characters and a setting at large (IMO). Making my Bloodlines caused me to read many amazing brews on these boards, and learn them well enough to make derivitive work. I am decently versed in different tabletop games.
Preferred project: I'd be interested in working on certain mechanics important to the way the world works (How does enchanting function? How is XP gained? How does character advancement work?) as well as perhaps rules for technological advancement. I have no clue if either of the positions are really needed, if we intend to stay close to the original 3.5 as opposed to expanding upon it. If nothing else, I can help with the classes.
Do you wish to be one of the organizers?: If there's a slot open, sure. I'm not dead-set on it, though.

Eldan
2012-09-24, 03:58 PM
Right so. I think we should go about this by SRD chapters.

Before we go into details, the basics.

Do we have to change anything about the basic framework of the d20 system?

This includes for me:
Task resolution mechanic: d20+bonus-penalties vs. target value.
Six ability scores, 10-11 being the basic value, negative and positive modifiers, bell curve distribution between 3 and 18 for humans, etc.
Hit Dice.
Base Attack Bonus.
Saves.
Feats and Skills (not what they do, just how they are gained).
Action types: Free, Immediate, Swift, Move, Standard and Full round.

Anything we need to change about that?

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-24, 04:00 PM
Grod here. I've worked mostly on base classes and system tweaks, with probably more success on the base class side of things.

Communications: My Skype is, confusingly enough, grod_the_giant. Should work fine.

Leadership: Working in groups is good. Probably teams of 2-3 people; anything more will probably descend into an argument.

------

VERY LATE UPDATE: NEW THREAD (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=268022)

Welknair
2012-09-24, 04:03 PM
Reposting my edit:

We're going to need a proper list of participants sooner or later. Perhaps a signup of some sort?

GitP Username:
Skype Username, if applicable:
How much time can I contribute?:
Skills and credentials:
Preferred project:
Do you wish to be one of the organizers?:

GitP Username: Welknair
Skype Username, if applicable: Welknair (Who would have known?)
How much time can I contribute?: An hour a day, perhaps?
Skills and credentials: I'm best known for my Magitech and Bloodlines. I excel at seeing how pieces work together and predicting their impacts on both characters and a setting at large (IMO). Making my Bloodlines caused me to read many amazing brews on these boards, and learn them well enough to make derivitive work. I am decently versed in different tabletop games.
Preferred project: I'd be interested in working on certain mechanics important to the way the world works (How does enchanting function? How is XP gained? How does character advancement work?) as well as perhaps rules for technological advancement. I have no clue if either of the positions are really needed, if we intend to stay close to the original 3.5 as opposed to expanding upon it. If nothing else, I can help with the classes.
Do you wish to be one of the organizers?: If there's a slot open, sure. I'm not dead-set on it, though.



I think we should assume standard d20 framework unless we come across something that would necessitate changing it. We should use it as a starting point, but not have adhering to it be a requirement of the project.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-24, 04:03 PM
Task resolution mechanic: d20+bonus-penalties vs. target value.
Nope. Change that, and it ain't D&D.


Six ability scores, 10-11 being the basic value, negative and positive modifiers, bell curve distribution between 3 and 18 for humans, etc.
Personally, I'm in favor of dropping the ability score/ability modifier distinction altogether; let's merge them together and just use the "modifier." 2d4-4 gives a nice bell curve centered around 1.


Hit Dice.
Base Attack Bonus.
Saves.
Nope.


Feats and Skills (not what they do, just how they are gained).
I'd like for both skills and feats to do more, personally. Merge skill tricks and skills; and make feats add options rather than enhance them.


Action types: Free, Immediate, Swift, Move, Standard and Full round.
Nope.

GitP Username: Grod_the_giant
Skype Username, if applicable: grod_the_giant
How much time can I contribute?: 1-3 hours a day, depending on course-load. More on breaks.
Skills and credentials: I'm probably best known around here for my base classes. I think I've remixed every SRD base class but the bard and monk at one point or another, not to mention a number of originals-- the Beastman, Savage, and Legend probably got the most attention.
Preferred project: I'd like to work on basic mechanics and base classes.
Do you wish to be one of the organizers?: Sure.

Also, I submit an alternate name, before we get too attached to Gaols: Giants and Graveyards.

Eldan
2012-09-24, 04:07 PM
Nope. Change that, and it ain't D&D.


Personally, I'm in favor of dropping the ability score/ability modifier distinction altogether; let's merge them together and just use the "modifier."


Nope.


I'd like for both skills and feats to do more, personally. Merge skill tricks and skills; and make feats add options rather than enhance them.


Nope.

Right. Personally, I see the 3-18 attributes as a convenient way of attribute bell curve. 3d6->1-18 is just a simple visualization. But I can see just using modifier. (I.e. statblock looks like this: Grog the Mighty: STR +4, Dex +2, Con +3, Int -2, Wis +1, Cha -1).

Skills and feats should certainly do more. Especially feats, I agree that they should add options, not numbers. Skills, I think, are basically fine, what they need is a line along the lines of "skills can do more than this, here's how to adjudicate things like that as a DM"

TheWombatOfDoom
2012-09-24, 04:08 PM
GitP Username: TheWombatOfDoom
Skype Username, if applicable: BattleOfJerico
How much time can I contribute?: 5 to 10 hours a week, one to two a day.
Skills and credentials: I've been writing fantasy and world building materials for twelve years, I have 16 years of D and D experience, I am a professional artist, I'm quite literate, and I play nice with others. The only things I have to show on the forums are my magic thread and an RP which deals with very immersive game mechanics. I'm good at filling in where needed.
Preferred project: Some of the mechanics are a bit unbalanced, but I'm interested in bringing in a tier 3 with more immersive characteristics. Also - I'd like poisons to actually matter. That's a long way down the line, but they got pooped on, and I think that could be improved.
Do you wish to be one of the organizers?: I think organizers should be in pairs too. I'm willing to follow for now, and perhaps be more involved later.

Eldan
2012-09-24, 04:38 PM
Okay...


GitP Username: Eldan
Skype Username, if applicable: eldan985
How much time can I contribute?: Quite a lot, actually. At least for the next few weeks.
Skills and credentials: I homebrew a bit. I made a new arcane magic system, a homebrew setting and assorted small bits and pieces.
Preferred project: I like anything supernatural. The more out there the better.
Do you wish to be one of the organizers?: I can. But I'm not the most reliable person.

Eldan
2012-09-24, 04:51 PM
Design Manifesto, by SRD chapter, as envisioned by Eldan:

The basics: Keep them as close as possible to 3.5. The basics work.

Races: I think races are too similar. They should provide more features, more features that are relevant over a longer timespan, more interesting, and more balanced.

Base Classes: Every class should have: unique features that others can not easily reproduce. Interesting features. A choice between different, but thematically related features. The closest I can think of in core is the Ranger. Out of core, ACFs. These should be incorporated from the start. Classes should be as balanced as possible while maintaining their mechanical diversity. Balance isn't the strength of third edition, and not what I actually want from it. I want diversity and creative unbalance.

Prestige classes: Go back to these being optional, specialized builds. Give base classes enough features to make them attractive on all levels. Make prestige classes give up something for what they gain (i.e. no full casting prestige classes. Look at the DMG: the archmage gives up spells per day.)

Skills: Mostly leave them as they are, but incorporate skill tricks and other new abilities right into them. One big thing that annoys me is knowledge skills, though: they shouldn't depend on monster HD, but every monster should have an "exoticness" value.

Feats: Feats should never just add numbers. They should add abilities. The difference between feats and class abilities is that feats are beneficial to several different builds, while class abilities are specialized.

Magic Items: I'm not sure what to do with these, and I'll leave that to someone else. I would prefer less pure +number items.

Combat: combat maneuvers could probably stand to be a bit simpler, but if we are honest, most are attack roll, then opposed ability check, which is to be expected. Anything else? Mobility should perhaps be easier and more emphasized.

Magic: A few things. First, I dislike outright immunities, especially gained by spells. Second, no spells that are better than entire classes or replicate class features (invisibility, super-buffs, knock, find traps, etc. Especially a problem for skill monkeys). Third, what I did: make all spells that have large effects or permanently change something into rituals which are performed out of combat and take time and resources. 4E was on to something here, even if they did it wrong. Fifth, make spells easier to interrupt and resist at higher levels.

Monsters: Not sure what needs to be done here, not my thing. Not that much, really?

Types and Subtypes: Do any of these have to change? I remember someone showing how (Undead) could be a subtype, with humanoid (undead) vampires and construct (undead) skeletons, though that's going into details. Maybe have some of the types lose the straight immunities as well. Stabbing a construct in the weakpoint is perhaps harder, but not impossible.

Monsters as races: Ah, the big one. So many people want it. So many people have tried it. I've never seen anything quite satisfying.

Environments, et al: A few small things that are silly oversights like drowning, but overall okay, I think?

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-24, 05:51 PM
The basics: Keep them as close as possible to 3.5. The basics work.

Races: I think races are too similar. They should provide more features, more features that are relevant over a longer timespan, more interesting, and more balanced.

Base Classes: Every class should have: unique features that others can not easily reproduce. Interesting features. A choice between different, but thematically related features. The closest I can think of in core is the Ranger. Out of core, ACFs. These should be incorporated from the start. Classes should be as balanced as possible while maintaining their mechanical diversity. Balance isn't the strength of third edition, and not what I actually want from it. I want diversity and creative unbalance.

Prestige classes: Go back to these being optional, specialized builds. Give base classes enough features to make them attractive on all levels. Make prestige classes give up something for what they gain (i.e. no full casting prestige classes. Look at the DMG: the archmage gives up spells per day.)

Skills: Mostly leave them as they are, but incorporate skill tricks and other new abilities right into them. One big thing that annoys me is knowledge skills, though: they shouldn't depend on monster HD, but every monster should have an "exoticness" value.

Feats: Feats should never just add numbers. They should add abilities. The difference between feats and class abilities is that feats are beneficial to several different builds, while class abilities are specialized.
Yup, yup, yup... I would like to combine certain skills, though-- Spot and Listen, Disable Device and Open Lock, Jump...


Magic Items: I'm not sure what to do with these, and I'll leave that to someone else. I would prefer less pure +number items.
Cut out every +X magic item, cut expected WBL to a quarter or so what it was, and replace them with more stat boosts gained through level-up?


Combat: combat maneuvers could probably stand to be a bit simpler, but if we are honest, most are attack roll, then opposed ability check, which is to be expected. Anything else? Mobility should perhaps be easier and more emphasized.
I was actually just working on this for the 3.5+ I was planning. My method involved stealing the CMB check from Pathfinder, removing all maneuver-provoked AoOs, and then simplifying when I could.


Magic: A few things. First, I dislike outright immunities, especially gained by spells. Second, no spells that are better than entire classes or replicate class features (invisibility, super-buffs, knock, find traps, etc. Especially a problem for skill monkeys). Third, what I did: make all spells that have large effects or permanently change something into rituals which are performed out of combat and take time and resources. 4E was on to something here, even if they did it wrong. Fifth, make spells easier to interrupt and resist at higher levels.
My thoughts:

I'd be down to phase out immunities.
Spells not replacing entire classes/features is an unqualified yes, although certain spells (such as invisibility) are too iconic-- and to fantasy as a whole, not just D&D-- to scrap entirely.
I'm not sure how to handle rituals. I like the idea, but I'm not sure how universal it should be. Personally, I like using them to replace prepared casting classes. My wizard fix, for example, gives spontaneous casting from a limited list, and rituals that take something like 10 minutes/spell level from a potentially unlimited list.


I'll add my own questions, too.

Should we keep prepared casting? My thinking is no-- not only is it difficult to balance, my observation is that players tend not to like it-- but it may be too popular/iconic to eliminate completely.
Should we keep Vanician casting, or try to replace with, say, a spell point system? My vote goes for keeping it, but opinions may vary.



Monsters: Not sure what needs to be done here, not my thing. Not that much, really?

Types and Subtypes: Do any of these have to change? I remember someone showing how (Undead) could be a subtype, with humanoid (undead) vampires and construct (undead) skeletons, though that's going into details. Maybe have some of the types lose the straight immunities as well. Stabbing a construct in the weakpoint is perhaps harder, but not impossible.

Monsters as races: Ah, the big one. So many people want it. So many people have tried it. I've never seen anything quite satisfying.

Environments, et al: A few small things that are silly oversights like drowning, but overall okay, I think?
Yeah, this all seems fine.

Eldan
2012-09-24, 05:57 PM
Just make them not outright replacements.

I mean, would Invisibility utterly ruined for all time if instead of giving total invisibility, it gave a 10+1/2 caster level (or something) bonus on hide checks?

For me, a giant yes for prepared casting. My favourite archetype by far. I love the mechanic, too. or the idea behind it. The wizard is the scholar of the game. The most intelligent guy around. He studies magic scientifically and prepares what he needs for the situation. I love it. It provides so many fluff opportunities too. Because I mean, really. Have you ever seen another mechanic that emphasises "this guy is smart" that much?
Spellpoint systems make me go uuuurgh. They are so... boring.

Skills: yes on open lock/disable device, but Seeing and Hearing are different things and should be different skills. But I don't think I've ever seen anyone use Appraise. That should just be a knowledge or craft skill or something.

PairO'Dice Lost
2012-09-24, 06:21 PM
While I don't have the time to contribute to this project, I do like following the progress of 3e revisions and I might comment from time to time. First comment: Finally, a revision that plans things out ahead of time! :smallwink:

Second comment:


Do we have to change anything about the basic framework of the d20 system?

This includes for me:
Task resolution mechanic: d20+bonus-penalties vs. target value.

I notice you didn't mention bonus types. Bonus/damage types and stacking rules were two great innovations of 3e that made resolving even complex interactions fairly simple; problem is, the proliferation of types both in the SRD and in splatbooks (exalted bonuses and dessication damage, anyone?) made typing less meaningful. On top of that, being able to stack many different types of bonuses contributes to skill and AC breakability in 3e, and the fact that many bonuses are untyped both contributes to that and makes certain options more powerful than they should be due to being untyped.

So I'd suggest laying down a short list of bonus types to stick with and not deviate from them, same with damage types. Off the top of my head, I'd merge sacred and profane (they're thematically the same "from an aligned power" bonus and can cause edge cases for people who can get both), drop alchemical as a type (enhancement should cover alchemical items just fine), and fold dodge bonuses into circumstance bonuses (they're fiddly and stack with themselves, two things that aren't necessarily good design) to start with. I've found that breaking all bonuses into five types (competence from equipment, enhancement from magic, inherent from race, insight from class, and circumstance for other stuff) works pretty well, but cutting things down that far could be too much depending on your other design goals. As for damage types, the five element types plus two energy types plus force work for me, but that's up to you folks.

Eldan
2012-09-24, 06:33 PM
Bonuses. Okay.

Alchemical: can stay for all I care, but I can see the argument for kicking it.
Armour: in.
Circumstance: this is the generic +2/-2 the DM should hand out. I don't think spells and abilities should give it.
Competence: important.
Deflection: do we need deflection and shield? They are essentially similar.
Dodge: Sure.
Enhancement: yeah.
Insight: Is this different from Competence in fluff?
Luck: yes.
Morale: yes, for bards.
Profane/sacred: call it divine. Roll in anarchic and axiomatic (that was it, yeah?) too.
Resistance: can this just be enhancement? It only goes to saves anyway.
Shield: bit weak and specialized. My suggestion is making shields give a deflection bonus.
Size: certainly.

I'd like to keep a few more than Pair suggested. My list would drop shield, insight and resistance and merge the divines.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-24, 07:14 PM
I'd like to keep a few more than Pair suggested. My list would drop shield, insight and resistance and merge the divines.

Sounds about right. Making shields provide a deflection bonus is a nice little buff to sword-and-board, too, since it lets 'em apply against touch attacks (and rightly so!)

Welknair
2012-09-24, 08:16 PM
Magic-wise, I have a few ideas. Assuming that we're making substantial changes to that system (As opposed to individual spell fixes, which IMO is not sufficient) to bring it down to closer to 3rd-tier, I'd very much like to be a part of that brainstorming process.

I'm in favor of check-based magic, along the lines found in GURPS. As was brought up in another recent thread, per-day features have some problems, especially when DMs don't make an effort to have 4 appropriately leveled encounters per day. Magic ought to convey the sense of mystery, uncertainty and risk that are trademarks of the genre in fiction. I am also in favor of having many spells have longer casting times and be more interruptable.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-24, 08:29 PM
Magic-wise, I have a few ideas. Assuming that we're making substantial changes to that system (As opposed to individual spell fixes, which IMO is not sufficient) to bring it down to closer to 3rd-tier, I'd very much like to be a part of that brainstorming process.

I'm in favor of check-based magic, along the lines found in GURPS. As was brought up in another recent thread, per-day features have some problems, especially when DMs don't make an effort to have 4 appropriately leveled encounters per day. Magic ought to convey the sense of mystery, uncertainty and risk that are trademarks of the genre in fiction. I am also in favor of having many spells have longer casting times and be more interruptable.

I'm like the idea of checks, and mystery and such, but... I recently played a sorcerer in Exalted, and it was... suboptimal. Sorceries in that game are have long casting times-- equivalent to two entire turns for lower-level spells, and more for higher levels. And let me tell you, I don't care how much fun I had describing magic, I don't care how powerful the spells are (they weren't), nothing is worth making a character spend an entire turn sitting idly, then get hit by some goblin a tick before the spell goes off and lose the entire thing. Seriously, I cannot describe how much it sucked. For such a system to be workable, magic would have to be three times as powerful as alternatives on an action-per-action basis: once for the normal turn, once for the casting turn, and at least once more to compensate the player for only getting half as many useful actions as his comrades.

Eldan
2012-09-24, 08:40 PM
Long casting times work for some spells. That's where my rituals come in. Go have a look at them, there are some of them in the Arcane thread in my signature, about four posts down.
They involve checks, and a casting time of 10 minutes per level.

However, this does not work for all spells. We always have to balance playability against fluff. And power balance isn't everything. Wizards need to have something to do every turn of combat, that's important. It can just be analysing monsters and giving helpful tactical tips, of course, but long casting times should stay far, far away from combat spells.
That's where preparation comes in. Preparing, after all, is pre-casting the spells you need to fire off quickly, later.

If we do checks, there should be an option to cast spells safely, though. Perhaps just at much lesser power, or only certain weak spells.

The division in my system is simple, four categories:

Cantrips: your basic nut and bolt spell. You can cast them as long as you have another spell prepared. Standard action to cast. These are the spells that you cast every turn.
Invocations: your stronger, limited combat spell. You prepare them ahead of time and lose them when you cast them. Can be interrupted easily while casting, as they take a full round. These are the spells that turn combat around when cast.
Mantras: your buff spells. You cast them ahead of time, and they stay up until you dismiss them or they get interrupted. A minute to cast.
Rituals: the spells you don't cast in combat. Everything from magical storms to teleports to calling extraplanar creatures to lichdom. These also have skill requirements, skill checks and the potential for (sometimes catastrophic) failure.

I do think it basically works. Though I do not use checks. What I did, instead, was limit the concentration skill to cantrips only. Other spells are interrupted automatically when the wizard takes damage.

toapat
2012-09-24, 08:52 PM
while im not particularly good at balance, i will just throw out a Magic Item solution i made (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=250436), as well as leave this link to my feats thread where i did a small bit of rebalancing to feats and came up with a few others. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=242100)

anyway, Undead should be a Construct subtype, and Construct (the entire type) should not grant critical immunity against bludgeon weapons unless incorporal.


Bonuses. Okay.

Alchemical: can stay for all I care, but I can see the argument for kicking it.
Armour: in.
Circumstance: this is the generic +2/-2 the DM should hand out. I don't think spells and abilities should give it.
Competence: important.
Deflection: do we need deflection and shield? They are essentially similar.
Dodge: Sure.
Enhancement: yeah.
Insight: Is this different from Competence in fluff?
Luck: yes.
Morale: yes, for bards.
Profane/sacred: call it divine. Roll in anarchic and axiomatic (that was it, yeah?) too.
Resistance: can this just be enhancement? It only goes to saves anyway.
Shield: bit weak and specialized. My suggestion is making shields give a deflection bonus.
Size: certainly.

I'd like to keep a few more than Pair suggested. My list would drop shield, insight and resistance and merge the divines.

Alchemical: We dont have access to Artificer, this shouldnt be kept.
Armor and Shield: Keep, even though you want to kick shield, it is different from deflection. Rebalance armor and shields
Size: Keep it, but axe Size attack bonuses
Competence, Circumstance, and Dodge: Roll together. These are litterally the same thing for AC purposes
Deflection: Eliminate as an Armor bonus, instead make a % chance for blows/projectiles to go wild.
Resistance: Roll into Protection (which incedentally, you missed)
Sacred/Profane: No, keep em separate, and also make it so they cancel eachother out, and also corrispond to alignment specific bonuses or penalties. Figuring out a name for a L/C axis would be nice too

Eldan
2012-09-24, 08:54 PM
Circumstance boni are the DM's most important tool. "It's raining, +2 circumstance modifier to X" is essential.

And I suggest making shield give a deflection bonus. Simply because, well, shields deflect things. And keep things from touching you. So they should apply to touch attacks.

And why do you need specific profane/holy bonuses? You can only have one of them at a time anyway. You can just word it as "this spell gives a +2 divine bonus to AC to all good creatures" or some such.

toapat
2012-09-24, 09:01 PM
Circumstance boni are the DM's most important tool. "It's raining, +2 circumstance modifier to X" is essential.

And I suggest making shield give a deflection bonus. Simply because, well, shields deflect things. And keep things from touching you. So they should apply to touch attacks.

And why do you need specific profane/holy bonuses? You can only have one of them at a time anyway. You can just word it as "this spell gives a +2 divine bonus to AC to all good creatures" or some such.

because it gives the DM ways to make the PCs rage, for instance when you get the profane Gauntlets of Ogre Power and they already have a Sacred Belt of Giant's Strength

Just because it is part of the Circumstance bonus doesnt mean you have to completely limit it to Flanking's effects

also, Deflecting things is NOT parrying. Change the name on Shields to blocking AC and use that.

Eldan
2012-09-24, 09:05 PM
because it gives the DM ways to make the PCs rage, for instance when you get the profane Gauntlets of Ogre Power and they already have a Sacred Belt of Giant's Strength

That's the entire point though. They wouldn't stack if they were both Divine. It would be much easier than having a special rule only for Sacred and Profane.

toapat
2012-09-24, 09:08 PM
That's the entire point though. They wouldn't stack if they were both Divine. It would be much easier than having a special rule only for Sacred and Profane.

AS IMPLEMENTED in 3/3.5: Yes, there is no justification that they exist in PnP.
AS I WOULD LIKE TO SEE: Ok, better example: The Paladin puts on the previously mentioned Profane Gauntlets, and promptly falls on their face because profane causes penalties instead of bonuses to good characters, same with the blackgaurd when they try on the sacred belt.

Eldan
2012-09-24, 09:11 PM
Well, it's an interesting idea. But I still think that's better handled just writing it down for the specific ability.

toapat
2012-09-24, 09:13 PM
Well, it's an interesting idea. But I still think that's better handled just writing it down for the specific ability.

well, you could dump the naming and instead just have it as Divine (Alignment). but removing them completely as separate? no.

Vorr
2012-09-24, 09:17 PM
Long casting times work for some spells. That's where my rituals come in. Go have a look at them, there are some of them in the Arcane thread in my signature, about four posts down.
They involve checks, and a casting time of 10 minutes per level.

However, this does not work for all spells. We always have to balance playability against fluff. And power balance isn't everything. Wizards need to have something to do every turn of combat, that's important. It can just be analysing monsters and giving helpful tactical tips, of course, but long casting times should stay far, far away from combat spells.



Actually, long casting times should stay away from just about all spells. This is one of the really bad things in 4E, the rituals. Spellcasters need the ability to do things swiftly to be playable. And not just for combat spells, but for most spells. It just does not work when the player needs to say 'um, guys we need to hang around and do nothing while I cast my spell for 30 minutes.'

Rituals work fine for big divination's, big abjurations and some other spells. But in most cases, there should be a ''quick version''. Casting detect lies should need not take 10 minutes.

Eldan
2012-09-24, 09:21 PM
It works for quite a few spells, really. Teleportation, Calling, Interplanar Travel, Divination, large-scale destructive magic (all that is beyond the scale of your typical combat).

And that's the good thing about RPGs:

"Okay, we wait for thirty minutes" takes all of five seconds to say, but makes all the difference in the game.

Tvtyrant
2012-09-24, 09:51 PM
I'm not really in a position to join any projects at the moment, but I would bring up that the saves mechanic never made a lot of sense. With everything else the active agent gets to roll, and the passive has 10+modifiers. So I suggest swapping them; things that target a save roll a d20 and everyone has 10+modifiers for their save. Saves become more like AC, while savable effects become more like attacks.

Put another way, a DC 14 blinding effect would become a 1d20+4 blinding effect.

toapat
2012-09-24, 10:03 PM
I'm not really in a position to join any projects at the moment, but I would bring up that the saves mechanic never made a lot of sense. With everything else the active agent gets to roll, and the passive has 10+modifiers. So I suggest swapping them; things that target a save roll a d20 and everyone has 10+modifiers for their save. Saves become more like AC, while savable effects become more like attacks.

Put another way, a DC 14 blinding effect would become a 1d20+4 blinding effect.

definitely better, keeps everything on one side, and makes the universe of DnD make more sense.

Also makes SR irrelevant

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-24, 10:22 PM
I'm not really in a position to join any projects at the moment, but I would bring up that the saves mechanic never made a lot of sense. With everything else the active agent gets to roll, and the passive has 10+modifiers. So I suggest swapping them; things that target a save roll a d20 and everyone has 10+modifiers for their save. Saves become more like AC, while savable effects become more like attacks.

Put another way, a DC 14 blinding effect would become a 1d20+4 blinding effect.

4e did this. It sometimes made sense, and sometimes didn't. If a wizard throws a fireball at you? I can see making him roll for that. If a pile of rocks fall on your head, who's rolling the attack? Personally, I'd rather stick to saves; if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

toapat, how does replacing saves make SR irrelevant?

Welknair
2012-09-24, 10:35 PM
When I mentioned longer casting times, I didn't mean for ALL spells. Obviously combat spells still need to be Standard Actions for casters to not be awful in battle. But if casters can bring to bare the majority of their spells in a standard action, we quickly get into the problem of them having more combat-utility than any other class. IMO, casters that are not specifically "Warmages" should not be at home on the battlefield. That isn't to say they should be useless, just not capable of exerting their full might as a standard action.

And if we're going with a check-based system, we can give modifiers based on casting time. So the higher the level you are, the faster you can cast lower level spells. Or something like that.

Man, now I need to read back through Ars Magica and Mage: The Awakening. I remember both of those having neat casting systems. Not to replicate, but for inspiration.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-24, 10:43 PM
It sounds like you've got some good ideas... want to work on that for a bit?

Eldan
2012-09-24, 10:43 PM
I would argue for full-round casting times for most battle spells. It makes wizards more static and spells easier to disrupt, both of which are good things.

Eldan
2012-09-24, 10:56 PM
He'res a document gathering most of the discussion so far: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fu4M2nuGHRgCSfrlPu51QUfsda1SZbUthCt_BCuGjHQ/edit

toapat
2012-09-24, 11:07 PM
toapat, how does replacing saves make SR irrelevant?

Spell Resistance is the To Hit roll for casting in 3.5

GunbladeKnight
2012-09-24, 11:15 PM
GitP Username: GunbladeKnight
Skype Username, if applicable: GunbladeKnight77
How much time can I contribute?: A few hours per day, more on Sunday
Skills and credentials: Tested my hand here and there, have a good grasp for more technical than fluff.
Preferred project: Advice and brainstorming with anyone.
Do you wish to be one of the organizers?: Not a very good leader myself, though I wouldn't mind helping the overall organizers.



Do we have to change anything about the basic framework of the d20 system?

This includes for me:
Task resolution mechanic: d20+bonus-penalties vs. target value.
That is the system we are working within (though I do like Shadowrun's system).


Six ability scores, 10-11 being the basic value, negative and positive modifiers, bell curve distribution between 3 and 18 for humans, etc.
I say keep, though I see merit in using just the modifiers.


Hit Dice.
I am more in favor of 4E's system here, possibly using current HD as level (and removing the LA system altogether. If you want an iconic race, try to reduce its power to everyone else.


Base Attack Bonus.
Saves.
I'm leaning towards Next's Bounded Accuracy here, though that would mean armor and AC rewrites, quite possibly.


Feats and Skills (not what they do, just how they are gained).
Feats at odd levels like PF, maybe use PF system for skills (or even with Bounded Accuracy: add +5 to this skill).


Action types: Free, Immediate, Swift, Move, Standard and Full round.
Keep and add more swift/immediate for non-casters (possibly through maneuvers). Also, get rid of the confusing 1 swift OR immediate per round, and grant one of each.


The basics: Keep them as close as possible to 3.5. The basics work.
d20 system, but let's not constrain ourselves fully. PF, 4E, and even Next have some good points, too.


Races: I think races are too similar. They should provide more features, more features that are relevant over a longer timespan, more interesting, and more balanced.
Like make them bloodlines? I would prefer PF's races over others, though they need tweaks as well. Alternatively, races only grant specific things (attribute bonuses, resistances, etc.) while backgrounds grant different bonuses (proficiencies, skill bonuses, languages, etc). I would also like to see more subraces. Instead of dwarf, you have Goldhammer, Runecrafter, and Ironwind, each with different cultures/racial traits (mountain dwellers, arcane casters, and gryphon riders, respectively).


Base Classes: Every class should have: unique features that others can not easily reproduce. Interesting features. A choice between different, but thematically related features. The closest I can think of in core is the Ranger. Out of core, ACFs. These should be incorporated from the start. Classes should be as balanced as possible while maintaining their mechanical diversity. Balance isn't the strength of third edition, and not what I actually want from it. I want diversity and creative unbalance.
Unique mechanics is fine, though we should also have themes. All skill monkeys (and not just rogues/scouts) have trapfinding, Ranger, Barbarian, Druid, and possibly Shaman have wild empathy, etc. Also: No alignment restrictions on classes. Instead of a Paladin, make it a Champion (or rework the Crusader).


Prestige classes: Go back to these being optional, specialized builds. Give base classes enough features to make them attractive on all levels. Make prestige classes give up something for what they gain (i.e. no full casting prestige classes. Look at the DMG: the archmage gives up spells per day.)
Agreed. Also make the Paladin a prestige class.


Skills: Mostly leave them as they are, but incorporate skill tricks and other new abilities right into them. One big thing that annoys me is knowledge skills, though: they shouldn't depend on monster HD, but every monster should have an "exoticness" value.
Agreed. Also keep them from becoming obselete due to spells/magic items while granting more of them to most classes. Possibly doing base + int mod so a negative int doesn't hurt as much.


Feats: Feats should never just add numbers. They should add abilities. The difference between feats and class abilities is that feats are beneficial to several different builds, while class abilities are specialized.
Agreed. Also, consider feats that scale with level.


Magic Items: I'm not sure what to do with these, and I'll leave that to someone else. I would prefer less pure +number items.
Or items in general. Fighters/Paladins are almost too dependent on armor that takes too long to equip for overnight surprises.


Combat: combat maneuvers could probably stand to be a bit simpler, but if we are honest, most are attack roll, then opposed ability check, which is to be expected. Anything else? Mobility should perhaps be easier and more emphasized.
Prevent grappling from becoming "I win" buttons for larger monsters.


Magic: A few things. First, I dislike outright immunities, especially gained by spells. Second, no spells that are better than entire classes or replicate class features (invisibility, super-buffs, knock, find traps, etc. Especially a problem for skill monkeys). Third, what I did: make all spells that have large effects or permanently change something into rituals which are performed out of combat and take time and resources. 4E was on to something here, even if they did it wrong. Fifth, make spells easier to interrupt and resist at higher levels.
Change spells that grant immunities/replace classes and skills into bonuses to them, either static or scaling. Change many of the major spells (planar binding, teleportation, gate, resurrection, hallow, change weather) into rituals that allow anyone that takes the time to learn them the ability to try them. Though I would keep Revivify as a spell (you cast it before their soul leaves the body) while downgrading delay death. Something like this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=209408). I'd also like to see less save-or-lose type spells


Monsters: Not sure what needs to be done here, not my thing. Not that much, really?

Types and Subtypes: Do any of these have to change? I remember someone showing how (Undead) could be a subtype, with humanoid (undead) vampires and construct (undead) skeletons, though that's going into details. Maybe have some of the types lose the straight immunities as well. Stabbing a construct in the weakpoint is perhaps harder, but not impossible.
Get rid of outright immunities and save-or-die abilities. Be careful about changing a type into a subtype.


Monsters as races: Ah, the big one. So many people want it. So many people have tried it. I've never seen anything quite satisfying.
Keep playable races down to humanoids. Aasimar, Tieflings, and Elan become Humanoid(Extraplanar) and suffer some of the effects that target outsiders. Maybe Kobolds and Dragonborn become Humanoid(Dragon) and are treated as dragons for bane weapons and such.


Environments, et al: A few small things that are silly oversights like drowning, but overall okay, I think?
Define what conditions are, so we don't get another IHS.


Another idea: Classes grant X amount of simple weapon proficiencies, and you can trade in 2 simple for 1 martial or 3-4 simple for 1 exotic proficiency, while some classes have suggested lists or set lists that allow for the same rules (such as the monk weapons).

toapat
2012-09-24, 11:24 PM
He'res a document gathering most of the discussion so far: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fu4M2nuGHRgCSfrlPu51QUfsda1SZbUthCt_BCuGjHQ/edit

your idea of what Circumstance is seems to me to just be glorified DM Fiat Flanking. that is not good.

also, should be merged with dodge and Competence, keeping the dodge type's ability to stack.

Resistance/Protection are enhancements that give enhancement bonuses. my suggestion was to simplify them in terms of gear and combine them.

Swift* and Immediate actions should not be included if it can not be decided that they can be justified.

* if it can not be justified as being separate from an immediate action.

Welknair
2012-09-24, 11:25 PM
It sounds like you've got some good ideas... want to work on that for a bit?

I'll see if I can flesh out the ideas a bit more tomorrow.

Seerow
2012-09-25, 12:30 AM
4e did this. It sometimes made sense, and sometimes didn't. If a wizard throws a fireball at you? I can see making him roll for that. If a pile of rocks fall on your head, who's rolling the attack? Personally, I'd rather stick to saves; if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Just a suggestion for this that I've been fond of for a while: As the core mechanic, whoever's turn it is gets to roll the dice, always. So if the rogue trips a trap and it goes off on him, he gets to make a defense roll. If the Fighter provokes an AoO, he gets to roll his defense. But if it's the other guy's turn and he attacks the PC, he gets to roll it.

I find it keeps things on track better in play, and makes a logical sense, providing a clear distinction for who rolls when.




Anyway, I'm not sure I want to get too involved with this, as I'm personally looking into making something that goes a bit farther away from 3.5 than most of these projects seem to. I'll probably post something about it in the general chat thread tomorrow.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 12:35 AM
It does, however, need a few additional mechanics, at least one for converting a bonus to a roll into a static defence (not that that is all that hard it's just 10+value).

I think that works, though.

Vorr
2012-09-25, 12:35 AM
It works for quite a few spells, really. Teleportation, Calling, Interplanar Travel, Divination, large-scale destructive magic (all that is beyond the scale of your typical combat).

And that's the good thing about RPGs:

"Okay, we wait for thirty minutes" takes all of five seconds to say, but makes all the difference in the game.

The trick is to not get stuck in the ''fast casting is only for combat spells''. Lots of spells should be able to be cast without taking minutes and hours. Like most divination detection type spells. A spellcaster walks into a room and can detect undead in one round, but it becomes more useless if they must wait 30 minutes. The same way a spellcaster should be able to make an illusion of a door in one round, and not take an hour.

The quicker casting times for high level is a good idea, but don't just make casting times level based. They should be like ''the normal spell takes an hour, but you can cast the fast version with a check'', then higher levels could do it more often/easier...but any spellcaster of any level could at least try.

Circumstance Bonus: I have always liked the idea of randomness. It's something that 3x can really use. How about instead of a static DC, the DM rolls a 1d10 with 1-5 a bonus and 6-10 a penalty.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 12:46 AM
Oh, absolutely, no discussion on that. In fact, if I go searching around a bit, I once made a list of all the core spells that would work better as rituals, I should be able to find it again.

erikun
2012-09-25, 02:03 AM
This is an interesting idea. How much are you planning on modifying the base system, though? Because there are a few parts of the core system that produce all kinds of wonkiness throughout the system.

Ability scores are one. The fact that you can achieve 40 in some stats is what creates wizards with hundreds of HP and meatshieldy monsters that take too long to clear out dealing damage. Capping the bonuses, or at least stopping them from stacking, would prevent the problem... but run into issues with monsters that require those 40-ability scores to function against PCs.

Iterative attacks are another. One real easy fix for iteratives is to make them all at full BAB. This means all would generally hit, and your average fighter would be chopping off 20% of a monsters HP with each full attack, even with a one-handed longsword. The problem, though, is that it has undesired impacts on anything from the to-hit-vs-AC ratio to sneak attacks.


Re: Bonuses, some can likely be eliminated. Circumstance is probably unnecessary, because multiple will end up stacking and they're basically Untyped bonuses under a different name. Dodge bonuses have the similar "stack with one another" clause as Untyped, and so I'm not sure why they're a seperate type.

I would recommend eliminating miss chance and just adding such effects into AC. This simplifies things, and prevents system abuse along the lines of Shock Trooper.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 02:10 AM
Dodge are separate because you can lose them under certain circumstances, which don't apply to untyped bonuses.

Just to Browse
2012-09-25, 02:24 AM
You have approximately a kajillion homebrew classes and races here, and more than enough material to whip up races, classes, whatever.

Pick one topic, fix it, move on. The multifaceted "FIXANG EVERYTHING" is how I fail my classes nowadays and it'll kill this project just as hard.

Dsurion
2012-09-25, 05:50 AM
I don't think I can really contribute much, but I'll offer ideas for discussion.

Is Con bonus granting stupidly large sacks of HP okay with everyone? If it changes, what is an acceptable alternative?

I see everyone is mostly okay with skills as-is. What about the idea of skills trained equal to Class Number + INT?

Merge Ref save and AC, make all saves 10 + number similar to SWSE?

Modify conditions? Going straight from fully capable to Petrified in one shot is pretty awful. Maybe you could use progressive conditions similar to Fear, like Daze -> Paralyze -> Stun -> Petrify, for example.

Merge Craft, Profession, and Appraise into a single Trade skill?

A few more sane skill DCs (especially Open Lock).

More combat maneuvers available to everyone, aside from just Trip, Disarm, etc.

Remove dependency on magic items, but keep them prominent?

How can BAB be made to matter more than to-hit bonuses?

Unrelated to mechanics though, it might be a good idea for people serious about the project to link it in their signatures to gather continued interest

Eldan
2012-09-25, 06:29 AM
Just as browse: however, fixing piece per piece never gets anywhere. Many of the larger problems are with the basic framework. Plus, one big fix has the advantage that we can balance things against each other.

Dsurion:
HP are okay, I think. I don't think I ever had a problem with it.

AC and reflex are very different, I don't think merging them works.

I am all for making more condition tracks, like fear, fatigue and nausea. I want one for Death, personally, which would solve a lot of problems with Save or Dies.

Anyway.

People, we are getting logged down with details. So far, I think I'm the only one who talked about broad design goals instead of small fixes they'd like to see. And we still don't have a system for actually agreeing on what we put in or not.
Therefore, we need to elect leaders now. People said two, I think that's not the worst ideas.
Three steps:
1. Out of those people who said they would do it (first page) someone is nominated.
2. People vote for or against. I'm thinking 24 or 48 hours should be enough time to vote.

The Volunteers are:
Welknair
Grod the Giant
Eldan

And... those seem to be all. If anyone else wants to volunteer, tell me.

The leaders duties should be:
Nominating project leaders for different parts of the series.
Deciding when new projects should be started.
Updating a Design document, similar to mine, and picking out of the discussion what goes in there, by deciding when a consensus seems to be reached.
The two leaders should likely meet on Skype to discuss these things with each other.

WaylanderX
2012-09-25, 06:45 AM
GitP Username: WaylanderX
Skype Username, if applicable: Waylanderm
How much time can I contribute?: An hour per day, maybe 2 if needed.
Skills and credentials: New magic systems are my speciality. Furthermore I can come up with a variaty of other things. I'll improvise ;P.
Preferred project: Magic Systems, Base classes & Races, General Brainstorming.
Do you wish to be one of the organizers?: I don't have that much experience yet with homebrewing, also I'm not quite adept at leading people. If you really need somebody to take charge though, I'm willing to organize in a pinch.

Yoyo peeps,

This seemed like a very fun project to me and I hope you'll let me, somebody who is not as experienced as some of you, join. If so, I'm looking forward working with you all ^^.

Greetz,
Way

Eldan
2012-09-25, 06:56 AM
M Eve does not seem to be a valid username. Spaces aren't allowed, and M_Eve didn't yield any results.

WaylanderX
2012-09-25, 07:05 AM
Changed, should work now.
Waylanderm

TheWombatOfDoom
2012-09-25, 08:07 AM
Knowing how busy Welk is with other projects as well, I'll vote for the other two, though if Eldan's more unreliable, we might want to see if there's someone else? What do you think Eldan?

Eldan
2012-09-25, 08:09 AM
Perhaps unreliable is the wrong word? I don't know.
I tend to be impatient. If something loses steam, I know that I become likely to get frustrated and drop projects after shouting at people a few times.

Though so far, I seem to be organizing anyway, so I would continue doing that. But I'd rather like a second co-leader to shout at me when I begin to lose motivation.

TheWombatOfDoom
2012-09-25, 08:26 AM
Sorry, didn't mean to sound...critical. I was more just repeating what you said in your post: "Do you wish to be one of the organizers?: I can. But I'm not the most reliable person."

That being said, you seem to be handling a lot of it, organizing this, you own the thread, and have a good vision/sense of where we should be going, so I'm more to say that you are naturally one of the leaders. I was just concerned by your words, so as long as whoever you work with works well in partnership with you, I'd say we'd be fine.

erikun
2012-09-25, 09:58 AM
The Volunteers are:
Welknair
Grod the Giant
Eldan

And... those seem to be all. If anyone else wants to volunteer, tell me.
Sorry, but after thinking it over a bit, I think I'd be best off skipping this project. My ideas for a "fixed D&D 3rd edition" would really be more like a fixed universal D&D, pulling material from several different editions for the best options. And the biggest problem with doing that is that it may make base 3.5e incompatable with the end result - running against one of the design goals.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-25, 10:13 AM
On the subject of casting times:

I think my wizard (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12623421&postcount=2)fix makes my opinion on the matter fairly clear. I like rituals as a way of expanding spells known lists, but I also like having so many spells available for clever players to use in combat.

On the subject of bonus types:

I support the merging of various divine bonus types, various magic types, and on circumstance modifiers. DM fiat is a vital element to making a system like this work without adding in page after page of rarely-reference circumstantial rules... exactly what we're trying to cut down on.


Is Con bonus granting stupidly large sacks of HP okay with everyone? If it changes, what is an acceptable alternative?
I'd like to see very low-level play be a bit more survivable, but that's probably just me. Hit points seem fine, though I wouldn't be entirely unopposed to changing from hit die to flat numbers.


I see everyone is mostly okay with skills as-is. What about the idea of skills trained equal to Class Number + INT?
I like skill points, honestly. It adds a touch of complexity, and allows for more customized characters.


Merge Ref save and AC, make all saves 10 + number similar to SWSE?
Nah.


Modify conditions? Going straight from fully capable to Petrified in one shot is pretty awful. Maybe you could use progressive conditions similar to Fear, like Daze -> Paralyze -> Stun -> Petrify, for example.
I kind of like this idea. Mutants and Masterminds, a system which I've been running lately, does a similar thing with the Affliction power-- progressively worse conditions based on how badly you fair your save.


More combat maneuvers available to everyone, aside from just Trip, Disarm, etc.
I do support making combat maneuvers better and simpler, but do you have suggestions for new ones?


Remove dependency on magic items, but keep them prominent?
Yes.


How can BAB be made to matter more than to-hit bonuses?
Hmm...


Unrelated to mechanics though, it might be a good idea for people serious about the project to link it in their signatures to gather continued interest
Yes.




Gaols and Giants (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=256816)
The Playground verses 3.5
This time it's personal.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 10:16 AM
That being said, you seem to be handling a lot of it, organizing this, you own the thread, and have a good vision/sense of where we should be going, so I'm more to say that you are naturally one of the leaders. I was just concerned by your words, so as long as whoever you work with works well in partnership with you, I'd say we'd be fine.

Yeah. At the current stage, I just relish having something to do with my free time. So, I can invest a lot into this for the foreseeable future.

LIke your wizard fix, Grod. Some of the same ideas as mine, but overall simpler. I think I like it.

A few other points:
I love third edition D&D. It is my favourite system, and I have tried many (Shadowrun, Vampire, Mutants and Masterminds, FATE, Gamma World, Dark Heresy and perhaps half a dozen less well known ones). I think fundamentally, it works and we honestly don't need that many changes. The framework is sound, there are just some things on top of it that are broken. I say we fix what needs fixing, simplify a thing or two that we don't really need to, but think is helpful and make the one or other improvement. That's all.

Skill points should stay in, as far as I'm concerned. I like having a character with fewer points in more skills, especially at high level. And starting a character with one rank in profession: undertaker, or craft: weaponsmith is a nice way of adding some background.

I honestly don't care much either way on rolled saves and static DCs vs. static defences and rolled attack spells. The result is mostly the same.

Condition tracks are a good thing, and I think they would solve many problems, mostly with save or dies. We have a fear track, an exhaustion track and a nausea track. My suggestion is adding another stun track and make them all have four steps, from "mildly annoying penalty (sickened, fatigued)" to "out of the fight" (paralyzed, panicked). Do we need any more tracks?

Combat maneuvers: Spontaneously, I'm thinking of adding a limited power attack and some kind of standstill maneuver that stops enemies from moving past you.

Magic items: start by dropping the "+4 to [stat]" items. Or at least, reduce them to a handful. Include a few other ways of increasing stats. Which reminds me of another point, see below.

Base attack: iteratives should matter more. Having all attacks at full BAB is perhaps a bit good, but how about changing 15/10/5 into 15/10/10, i.e. having all iteratives at the second best value?

Races: I've been thinking of this. Someone suggested bloodlines. My idea was this: in normal 3.5 you gain a stat point every four levels. How about dropping that and replacing it with a racial bonus, or a selection of several racial boni? Steal from the racial paragons a bit. "At level 4, an elf gains +2 to wisdom or dexterity, their low-light vision doubles in range and their bonus to listen checks increases to +4". Just a bit less boring than that.

TheWombatOfDoom
2012-09-25, 10:22 AM
Grod, could you get the "This time its personal" thing out of quotes so I can put that in my signature? I really like it. :smallsmile:

Eldan
2012-09-25, 10:30 AM
Figures someone would post while I make a gigantic edit. There's a lot of opinion at the bottom of the last page now.

Yakk
2012-09-25, 10:43 AM
I would argue for full-round casting times for most battle spells. It makes wizards more static and spells easier to disrupt, both of which are good things.
How about inter-round casting times.

Round 1: Unless you had prepped a spell before, you can only get off a cantrip. And then you can prep a spell for next round.

Round 2: If your prepped spell was disrupted, you can only get off a cantrip. Otherwise, you can cast your prepped spell.

In effect, non-cantrips require that you start casting on the previous round. But that doesn't eat your previous round's action.

This gives time for the other side to make knowledge checks or disrupt your spellcasting.

You could imagine a similar system for aiming ranged weapons, where taking a "snap shot" has significant penalties (barring specialization to compensate), without requiring you to burn 2 round's actions to fire one arrow (which sucks, fun-wise).

...

A page you might want to steal from 4e/5e (I know, I know) is the idea of keeping d20 modifiers (on both attack and defence sides) under tighter control than 3e did. Checks that "always hit" and "always miss" should be the exception, not the rule.

Getting rid of boring flat bonus feats and magic items is a step along this way, as is paring down the types of bonuses.

The same is less true of bonuses to damage -- HP grows linearly (or, with con bonus, almost quadratically) with level. Static bonuses can grow pretty fast without being bad. On the other hand, it does apply somewhat.

When you roll 1d6+3, something happens that is different than when you roll 10d6+30. The middle 50% likelyhood for 1d6+3 is roughly 4-8. The middle 50% likelihood for 10d6+30 is not 40-80, but rather 59-71, a much much tighter range.

10d6+30 is more like (1d2+5)*10 than (1d6+3)*10.

In effect, as you add more dice, the middle of the bell curve dominates more and more (the relative size of the middle bulge grows with the square root of the number of dice).

So if you want the same swinginess to damage at higher totals, you need to have less static bonus and more dice, or you need to multiply dice by constants rather than adding them up (1d6*10 + 30 is just as swingy as 1d6+3).

...

The idea of rolling multiple weapon dice is a great one (while using static modifiers once). If done aggressively enough, you can express increased competence at using weapons without having to throw on a static damage bonus or accuracy bonus, or requiring upteen attacks per round.

As an example, a Standard (Power) Attack might be:
(Melee Level/2 + 2) weapon dice on one target.
a Cleave Attack might be:
(Melee Level/4 + 1) weapon dice on (2 + Melee Level/2) targets.

...

Instead of increasing BaB, you could grant a more modest Proficiency bonus (like +2 plus 1 every 2 levels) and stack on top Melee Level damage increases and attack rerolls.

Fighters might get parry/block/dodge checks they can expend to avoid attacks, and things that trigger off them (a riposte feature, that gives a significant bonus for a successful parry against an attacker, or a shield bash that lets you stun someone whose attack you blocked, etc). That kind of thing would go a long way towards giving Melee types more "crunch" to hook abilities onto. Class bonuses that aren't just "static increase" ,but rather new abilities and options...

TheWombatOfDoom
2012-09-25, 10:50 AM
I love third edition D&D. It is my favourite system, and I have tried many (Shadowrun, Vampire, Mutants and Masterminds, FATE, Gamma World, Dark Heresy and perhaps half a dozen less well known ones). I think fundamentally, it works and we honestly don't need that many changes. The framework is sound, there are just some things on top of it that are broken. I say we fix what needs fixing, simplify a thing or two that we don't really need to, but think is helpful and make the one or other improvement. That's all.

I agree. Don't be hasty, little hobbits. There's work to be done, but perhaps not every single thing.


Skill points should stay in, as far as I'm concerned. I like having a character with fewer points in more skills, especially at high level. And starting a character with one rank in profession: undertaker, or craft: weaponsmith is a nice way of adding some background.

I don't see why craft and profession and appraise need to be combined either. There's such a thing as too general. Knoweledge might be able to be slightly reworked, perhaps. Some people might like the whole perception instead of spot and search. I'm not sure where I stand on that one.


I honestly don't care much either way on rolled saves and static DCs vs. static defences and rolled attack spells. The result is mostly the same.

Reflex, Fort and Will are things I think might serve best as is. AC and Saves are for two entirely different things, though I see what they might have been thinking with reflexes verses some non magical entities to AC. Mainly the saves are for magical things, though they do touch on other things. If we rework magic, it's likely to affect saves in some way, and when that happens, we'll figure out how.


Condition tracks are a good thing, and I think they would solve many problems, mostly with save or dies. We have a fear track, an exhaustion track and a nausea track. My suggestion is adding another stun track and make them all have four steps, from "mildly annoying penalty (sickened, fatigued)" to "out of the fight" (paralyzed, panicked). Do we need any more tracks?

What about drowning and suffocation?

Eldan
2012-09-25, 11:14 AM
Those aren't really tracks, are they? I think fortitude saves or nonlethal damage work quite well on those.

Welknair
2012-09-25, 11:28 AM
I've done a bit of brainstorming, and run into a few immediate questions. For spells, do we wish to maintain the use of Saves as the main resistance to spells? If we're going with a check-based casting, it could make sense that the defender offer their defense as a bonus to that DC. I'm still working through some numerical possibilities there.

Basics that I currently have down:

Check: 1d20+Ability Mod+Casting Bonus (1/2, 3/4, or Full. 1/2 for Paladin-type, 3/4 for Bard-type, and Full for fullcasters) vs. a DC of 10+Spell Level*C+Factors. I'm toying around for different values of C for balance's sake. Running with 2 or 3 for now.

If you fail a check by 5-9, something minorly bad happens (1 nonlethal per spell level?). Failing by 10+ something more detrimental (Stunned? Minus on spell-checks for the next few rounds?).

For casting time, I was thinking about dividing spells up into Short, Medium and Long casting time groups, like we do with spell ranges. Each would have a default casting time, and then this casting time can be changed by the caster, resulting in a modifier in the check. You can shorten a casting up to four steps, but only increase it by two. +5 for every step shortened, +2 for each lengthened. 3 Hours (Long default) -> 1 Hour -> 10 Minutes (Medium default) -> 1 Minute -> Full Round (Short default) -> Standard -> Move -> Swift -> Immediate (A few spells like feather fall should be able to be casted as an Immediate action without a massive penalty to the check). So for your higher-level combat spells, you'll likely be in Full Round territory whenever you can. The limit on two-steps-up is to prevent players from spending 3 hours on the stupidest spells just to ensure success. And of course there'd be a rule where no matter what you can't cast more than one spell per round.

I plan to include other modifiers that could increase or decrease the check, within reason. I don't want us to repeat the Epic Spells mistake of allowing the DC to be reduced to 0.

I would like to include a preparation system where casters can ready spells ahead of time. I'm contemplating this right now.

Lastly, we need a way to limit the amount of magic a caster can use. It shouldn't be infinite. First thing I think of is a point-based system (X levels/day) but I'd like to stay away from that if possible. Perhaps what Truenaming tried to do, with increasing DCs when repeating spells? That, or failed spells could impose a penalty on later spells, so after casting enough you start getting "Tired". Open to suggestions.

Lord_Gareth
2012-09-25, 11:36 AM
Lastly, we need a way to limit the amount of magic a caster can use. It shouldn't be infinite. First thing I think of is a point-based system (X levels/day) but I'd like to stay away from that if possible. Perhaps what Truenaming tried to do, with increasing DCs when repeating spells? That, or failed spells could impose a penalty on later spells, so after casting enough you start getting "Tired". Open to suggestions.

The power points system that Psionics uses is generally considered a very good one, hindered only by the powers themselves being too strong. Consider something similar? It has two main benefits - it reduces annoying times/day limits (which many players hate) and it also provides a way to reduce spell redundancy; a low-level psionic power is just a higher-level one waiting to happen.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 11:40 AM
I've done a bit of brainstorming, and run into a few immediate questions. For spells, do we wish to maintain the use of Saves as the main resistance to spells? If we're going with a check-based casting, it could make sense that the defender offer their defense as a bonus to that DC. I'm still working through some numerical possibilities there.

Basics that I currently have down:

Check: 1d20+Ability Mod+Casting Bonus (1/2, 3/4, or Full. 1/2 for Paladin-type, 3/4 for Bard-type, and Full for fullcasters) vs. a DC of 10+Spell Level*C+Factors. I'm toying around for different values of C for balance's sake. Running with 2 or 3 for now.

If you fail a check by 5-9, something minorly bad happens (1 nonlethal per spell level?). Failing by 10+ something more detrimental (Stunned? Minus on spell-checks for the next few rounds?).

For casting time, I was thinking about dividing spells up into Short, Medium and Long casting time groups, like we do with spell ranges. Each would have a default casting time, and then this casting time can be changed by the caster, resulting in a modifier in the check. You can shorten a casting up to four steps, but only increase it by two. +5 for every step shortened, +2 for each lengthened. 3 Hours (Long default) -> 1 Hour -> 10 Minutes (Medium default) -> 1 Minute -> Full Round (Short default) -> Standard -> Move -> Swift -> Immediate (A few spells like feather fall should be able to be casted as an Immediate action without a massive penalty to the check). So for your higher-level combat spells, you'll likely be in Full Round territory whenever you can. The limit on two-steps-up is to prevent players from spending 3 hours on the stupidest spells just to ensure success. And of course there'd be a rule where no matter what you can't cast more than one spell per round.

I plan to include other modifiers that could increase or decrease the check, within reason. I don't want us to repeat the Epic Spells mistake of allowing the DC to be reduced to 0.

I would like to include a preparation system where casters can ready spells ahead of time. I'm contemplating this right now.

Lastly, we need a way to limit the amount of magic a caster can use. It shouldn't be infinite. First thing I think of is a point-based system (X levels/day) but I'd like to stay away from that if possible. Perhaps what Truenaming tried to do, with increasing DCs when repeating spells? That, or failed spells could impose a penalty on later spells, so after casting enough you start getting "Tired". Open to suggestions.

Right. Let's see. (And I still think this should wait until we have organization down and sub-threads).

First of all, spell failure dangers. Should there even be any? And if yes, should there be negative effects? Fighters don't suffer negative effects from missing on attack rolls.

I also hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate and mildly dislike point-based casting systems. They are incredibly boring and fluffless. What's wrong with slots? I went with level-less generic slots myself (just spells prepared, similar to maneuvers prepared), and they refresh with a ten-minute break for the caster.
Of course ,this is for prepared casters. Spontaneous casters, if we make any, work fine with points. But prepared casters are more interesting to me.

Lord_Gareth
2012-09-25, 11:46 AM
First of all, spell failure dangers. Should there even be any? And if yes, should there be negative effects? Fighters don't suffer negative effects from missing on attack rolls.

Fumble and fizzle rules add needless complexity and don't really make the game any more fun.


I also hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate and mildly dislike point-based casting systems. They are incredibly boring and fluffless. What's wrong with slots? I went with level-less generic slots myself (just spells prepared, similar to maneuvers prepared), and they refresh with a ten-minute break for the caster.
Of course ,this is for prepared casters. Spontaneous casters, if we make any, work fine with points. But prepared casters are more interesting to me.

Counter point: all of the T3 casters in the current paradigm are spontaneous casters, and in any event it doesn't have to be boring and fluff-less. In fact, most non-Vancian spellcasters cast from a reserve of either physical or mystical energy that would easily translate to some kind of point system.

Personally, I feel that Vancian casting (prepared casting) is a travesty, myself. We should really decide if we have to keep it as a legacy or if we can come up with a replacement that's better.

Tanuki Tales
2012-09-25, 12:06 PM
Just came upon this project this morning and I admit that I've mostly skimmed thus far because I'm just on break from doing a college assignment do later today, but I like where this is going so far and am glad to see a project like this being attempted and so far done in such an amiable manner. I definitely plan to give the whole thread a good sit down and read when I get a chance.

So knowing all that:

GitP Username: Troll Brau
Skype Username, if applicable: Jaegermonster
How much time can I contribute?: I can easily contribute 1 hour a day, bare minimum. This might flucutate depending on real life barging in such as college and other things, but I feel I can easily give one hour.
Skills and credentials:Well, I started homebrewing back in 2010, but didn't really get into the swing of it until I entered the GiTP Monster competitions that Mullet used to run (I did place first every time I did enter though). Since then I've made a handful of 3.PF homebrew that was met with some small, small bases of popularity for certain items. I'm also the holder, judge, and usually sole critic of the GiTP Pathfinder Grab Bag Competition, which has been running for over half a year now. I don't think I'm as amazingly qualified as some on here, but I don't think I'm terrible either.
Preferred project: Monsters (including Monsters as PCs) and General Brainstorming
Do you wish to be one of the organizers?: No.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 12:18 PM
Back to Leaders: we don't have any votes so far. Could we please get that done first, and discuss the specifics later?

As for Vancian casting: I love it. It's unique to D&D, while everything out there has the generic point system. Why drop an interesting, unique system?
And again: it promotes wizards. D&D has wizards as intelligent, systematic scholars, which I think is an archetype we should not drop. For me, the prepared slot system, with it's focus on careful forethought, need for preparation time, distinct spell formulae and mechanical importance of spellbooks and implements complements the scholarly wizard well. Leave spell points and mystical energies to sorcerers and psions, wizards need preparedness.

And, well. Show me one piece of magic fluff for points that is as interesting as "I use a magical formula to rip a piece of magic out of its natural flow, break it down and reshape it to suit my needs and imprison it in my head until I want to release it".

Morph Bark
2012-09-25, 12:19 PM
I don't see why craft and profession and appraise need to be combined either. There's such a thing as too general. Knoweledge might be able to be slightly reworked, perhaps. Some people might like the whole perception instead of spot and search. I'm not sure where I stand on that one.

On that note, I'll link my Knowledge skills below and see what y'all think of that?

The Six Knowledges (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13670382).

I had other stuff planned for Craft as well (though that would incorporate stuff from d20 Modern as well), plus some skill combinations a la Pathfinder/4E and a little something for Iaijutsu Focus and other less-known/non-Core skills, but those last things are probably not as relevant to this.


EDIT: Suppose I'll fill this out too and be slightly more of an active supporter.

GitP Username: Morph Bark
Skype Username, if* applicable: Morpholomewy
How much time can I contribute?:
Skills and credentials: Not much to speak of. I got an Extended Homebrewer Signature with some stuff. I'm mostly good with fluff, naming things, and have become somewhat apt at reviewing balance and finding out what people are good at due to the Tiering thread.
Preferred project: I prefer small bits. Tweak details. Maybe check up on others' work afterwards and help out. I like big stuff occassionally, but it's not my forte, as I work primarily off inspiration, which gets harder with bigger things, so a position of working on details or keeping an overview or such would suit me best, I figure.
Do you wish to be one of the organizers?: Could do. Way it's looking I may end up with a lot of time on my hands anyway, despite my best intentions.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 12:23 PM
Morph: as a planescape fanboy, I dislike the name "Forbidden Knowledge" for other planes, but that's about it. And I'm not sure Geography should even be there: most of what goes into Geography sounds like it would be either History and Culture or Planes. Also, why would elementals be separate from Planes? Psychology seems to fit more under culture than nature, unless you want Sociobiology to exist in D&D.

And again: Focus people. These are details .We can discuss them later. If we cant focus enough to start at the big things instead of the little details, we can bury this project right away.

Welknair
2012-09-25, 12:31 PM
Aye, aye. We need to figure out organization, and then continue the other discussions in appropriate sub-conversations.


People that have posted my little signup thingy:
Welknair: Magic, general mechanics, and classes
TheWombatOfDoom: Fluff and general brainstorming
Eldan: Magic shtuff
GunBladeKnight: General brainstorming
WaylanderX: Classes, Magic, Races, General brainstorming
Grod The Giant: I don't think he's posted a signup thingy, but is obviously active on this. General brainstorming?
Troll Brau: Monsters and General brainstorming
Morph Bark: Tweaking, small things, and balance

Any I'm missing?

Eldan
2012-09-25, 12:34 PM
Races too. I've done tons of races.

We still don't have a main organizer, though.

After that, we were discussing on Skype. The main four areas for now:

Skills, Feats, Magic and Combat. These need to be done first. Why? Because you can't make wizard class features until you know how magic works, or build a fighter until you know the combat basics.

toapat
2012-09-25, 12:37 PM
And again: Focus people. These are details .We can discuss them later. If we cant focus enough to start at the big things instead of the little details, we can bury this project right away.

the problem is, saying we are basing it off of D20, people already have the broad strokes down outside of alignment and class/race design philosophies.

Basically, these rules should be followed:

Alignment: Keep it simple, keep it subjective, define it objectively to be loose

Races: give each race a reason for existing besides "the gods made us" Warforged dont count in this. Make the elves all-female, make the dwarves living rock. justify gnomes with halflings in the same system.

Classes: Design each class first and foremost with a central role. Wizards cant exist though as a class, having to step down for the Mage specialist, who still gets vancian.

Morph Bark
2012-09-25, 12:38 PM
Morph: as a planescape fanboy, I dislike the name "Forbidden Knowledge" for other planes, but that's about it. And I'm not sure Geography should even be there: most of what goes into Geography sounds like it would be either History and Culture or Planes. Also, why would elementals be separate from Planes? Psychology seems to fit more under culture than nature, unless you want Sociobiology to exist in D&D.

Since you adressed it: I used the name "forbidden lore" primarily because that's its function in my main current setting, and for possible ties to the Knowledge (forbidden lore) skill of Unearthed Arcana, which drives the Insanity mechanic. That use is entirely optional (and not even worked out as of yet anyway) and the skill can be easily renamed to something better. ("Hidden lore" could fit just as well and not carry the same connotations.) In this manner, I hoped to reserve the Planes and knowledge of them for higher level characters or specialized ones (or both) and thus make planar adventures that much more epic and full of mystery.

I kept Elementals seperate from the planes as people in the Material Plane could encounter them relatively easily (or at least as easily as other creatures governed by knowledge (arcane)). Likewise, I believe Geography is plenty different from History, plus I had already stuffed History & Culture with so much (though generally things that won't come up much, so in the end it's about as relevant as the other skills) that I didn't want to add that in too.


At any rate, on a greater scale, I believe our plan of attack should be thus:

First: the system itself. Combat and Magic.
Second: things derived from this. This most likely comes down to Feats and Spells, though Skills should come before the Feats. A talk on combining skills seems important at that point.
.
.
Middle: creatures. By this I mean both monsters and races, and of course trying to see if we should make monsters available as playable. We could turn the intelligent monsters into classes, of course, which would make them need to be put much further down the line, while also giving us quite an extra workload at the end.
.
.
Last: the classes. They depend on everything else, so they should come last. PrCs, or whatever they'll be replaced with, should of course be a part of this. Also, make base classes as broad as possible. Leave the better stuff up to PrCs or their replacement, or a path within a class.
Afterwards: setting stuff things? Core has, for instance, some info on the Planes, as well as gods. This is the parts that I love doing. Heck, I'd even throw in forms of religion that aren't polytheistic for good measure, all justified and well.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 12:39 PM
Classes: Design each class first and foremost with a central role. Wizards cant exist though as a class, having to step down for the Mage specialist, who still gets vancian.

Woah, woah, woah, woah. What? Why? I mean, you can state your opinion, but I never heard anyone saying something like that. Wizards are a classic. We can't just entirely kick them out for some new class.

Seerow
2012-09-25, 12:45 PM
Woah, woah, woah, woah. What? Why? I mean, you can state your opinion, but I never heard anyone saying something like that. Wizards are a classic. We can't just entirely kick them out for some new class.


He's saying you can't have Wizards exist as the guys who can do anything. You instead have specialized magical classes that are more specialized into a role. The question then becomes "Will people accept a more limited caster as a 'Wizard' or does this class need a different name to be accepted?"

toapat
2012-09-25, 12:49 PM
Woah, woah, woah, woah. What? Why? I mean, you can state your opinion, but I never heard anyone saying something like that. Wizards are a classic. We can't just entirely kick them out for some new class.

Wizards are not classic, they are a Plot device.

They also completely annihilate any flavor magic might have. ive pointed out at least 4 times on the boards that no mechanics within DnD present magic as difficult, complex, strange, or mysterious. The mechanics entirely support the idea that the fighters are morons for NOT becoming wizards, clerics, or other casters.

Morph Bark
2012-09-25, 12:52 PM
ive pointed out at least 4 times on the boards that no mechanics within DnD present magic as difficult, complex, strange, or mysterious.

This has been a core principle of DnD since before 3.5 though, since before Wizards became the masters of everything.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 12:57 PM
It never says Wizards have to be able to do anything. "Wizard" is like "Scientist". No scientist is a quantum physicist, a geneticist, a chemist, an astronomer and an ecologist.

Yes, they should be forced to specialize, I'm not debating that. But I don't see the need for one new class for every kind of magic. That would leave us with about as many spellcasting classes as other classes.

I hate to name my own wizard fix again, but my suggestion is this: have spells build on each other, like maneuvers. Give the wizard a limited number of spells he can reliably cast, and give him a requirement to know X lower level spells of the same school/group/lore/whatever before he can learn the next higher. Just as you need three other Tiger Claw maneuvers to learn a higher level one, you need three other compulsions to learn Dominate Person.

That way, you can have a specialists who get more powerful spells, but less versatility, and generalists, who learn a few spells form everything, but never et to the really good stuff in any category.

As for magical difficulty and mystery: I think you can make magic difficult with rules, no problem. But I also think that magic loses most of it's mystery as soon as you hand it to the players and they can read the rules on it. I don't think you can represent "Mystery" in rules. You can in the fluff, but in the rules, it will be difficult.

And again: We still don't have any votes on project leaders. Priorities, people.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-25, 01:00 PM
Grod The Giant: I don't think he's posted a signup thingy, but is obviously active on this. General brainstorming?

I did; I just went back and edited it into a post, so you may not have seen it. Skype grod_the_giant; interested in classes and general mechanics; willing to lead.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-25, 01:03 PM
First: the system itself. Combat and Magic.
Second: things derived from this. This most likely comes down to Feats and Spells, though Skills should come before the Feats. A talk on combining skills seems important at that point.
.
.
Middle: creatures. By this I mean both monsters and races, and of course trying to see if we should make monsters available as playable. We could turn the intelligent monsters into classes, of course, which would make them need to be put much further down the line, while also giving us quite an extra workload at the end.
.
.
Last: the classes. They depend on everything else, so they should come last. PrCs, or whatever they'll be replaced with, should of course be a part of this. Also, make base classes as broad as possible. Leave the better stuff up to PrCs or their replacement, or a path within a class.
Afterwards: setting stuff things? Core has, for instance, some info on the Planes, as well as gods. This is the parts that I love doing. Heck, I'd even throw in forms of religion that aren't polytheistic for good measure, all justified and well.

Yeah, I think you've got the right approach here.

TheWombatOfDoom
2012-09-25, 01:13 PM
And again: We still don't have any votes on project leaders. Priorities, people.

I technically voted earlier for you and grod, earlier, but I don't know if you're counting it.

Perhaps we should get a refresher on who wants to lead and what not, I know morph just volenteered to be a leader, I'm considering changing my no to a yes, so on. In otherwords....let's propose the organization system and also speak about leadership for it.

I propose we do something like this-

(project leader) - (project leader) - These two work with each other to organize things, encourage subject matter, call errors, whip people into gear, so on.

Then we have the groups within the project. Each group has a group head, that is basically in small leadership of their area, to keep things flowing and help the project leaders. Examples of these groups would be things like -
(Fluff Masters) (Class Creators) (Creature Teachers) (Magic Conjurors) (Generalists) (Grammar Monkeys)

Eldan
2012-09-25, 01:17 PM
Right, then. We had a vote on the Skype thread.

I'm the Great Poker. My obligation is to organize things. I will make sub-threads as necessary, collect the information and ensure it's accessible, poke people when nothing is happening and shout at them when they get delayed.

Waylander is Subpoker, his job is to poke me when I get lazy.


The first two sub-threads will be up later tonight. As per Morph's priority list, we will start with Combat and Magic. You may now begin start squabbling amongst yourselves as to who becomes responsible for those subjects.

Knaight
2012-09-25, 01:31 PM
Personally, I'm in favor of dropping the ability score/ability modifier distinction altogether; let's merge them together and just use the "modifier." 2d4-4 gives a nice bell curve centered around 1.


4d3-8 gives a nice bell curve centered around 0, which preserves the +4 and -4 extremes before races are taken into account, and as such is nicely symmetrical.

As for condition tracks - you probably don't need all that many, and a proliferation of them is unhelpful anyways.

GunbladeKnight
2012-09-25, 01:33 PM
Condition tracks are a good thing, and I think they would solve many problems, mostly with save or dies. We have a fear track, an exhaustion track and a nausea track. My suggestion is adding another stun track and make them all have four steps, from "mildly annoying penalty (sickened, fatigued)" to "out of the fight" (paralyzed, panicked). Do we need any more tracks?

Perhaps it can be Slowed (half speed) > Immobilized > Stunned > Petrified?
Then possibly Shaken (-2) > Frightened (-6) > Panicked > Heart Attack?
Fatigued (-2) > Exhausted (-6) > Drained (unable to act) > Unconcious?

Eldan
2012-09-25, 02:24 PM
Don't think all those condition tracks should end in death, no.

And I'd rather put dazed in there with stunned. Petrified is kind of its own thing.
Fear is already a working track, it doesn't need change, really.
Exhaustion looks good.

I'd say Fear, Fatigue and Nausea already exist as tracks. Add in one more for stunning, and we should be good.

Morph Bark
2012-09-25, 02:35 PM
For condition tracks, you can take inspiration from Heroes of Horror. They grouped some of them together more, though a few of them are shakily tied together.

toapat
2012-09-25, 02:56 PM
*snip*

I think you are taking my point in a different way then intended:

The Wizard comes with her an expectation that you will have access to a significant portion of magic, as well as a significant portion of magic

The Mage is expected to have to specialize in order to get decent arcane power.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2012-09-25, 03:17 PM
Hm. I'm torn.

On the one hand, this looks like a potentially interesting project. On the other, it seems lacking in organization and leadership, and seems to be clinging a bit to close to 3.5 (and what I perceive as the problems thereof) for me to be willing to commit time and energy to it.

I guess I haven't seen the following yet: what differentiates this system from 3.5? What is the selling point that might make me, as a homebrewer with some system design chops, consider working on this project instead of something else?

In short, this is reading (so far) as just a bunch of new classes and some optional rules thrown on the 3.5 framework. Is that, effectively, what you envision this project as? Or are you trying to make a new, 3.5-inspired system? If so, what sort of system?

The former isn't interesting to me...the latter, if it is organized, IS, and I'd potentially have a number of ideas to throw against it (and hell...even some pre-existing system thoughts along 3.5/E6/4e "steal-the-best-from-all-the-systems-and-add-more" lines).

Eldan
2012-09-25, 03:17 PM
Where do you take those definitions from? Mage is just an Anglicized version of Magus. Someone who does magic (or a Persian priest). Wizard is just a "wise person".

So, for me, Mage just sounds like someone who has magic in general. Everything from Warlocks to Sorcerers. Wizard is more specific as the learned spellcaster.

Morph Bark
2012-09-25, 03:24 PM
The former isn't interesting to me...the latter, if it is organized, IS, and I'd potentially have a number of ideas to throw against it (and hell...even some pre-existing system thoughts along 3.5/E6/4e "steal-the-best-from-all-the-systems-and-add-more" lines).

So far, to me, it seems to be somewhere in the middle, though I'd much like it to go in the direction of the latter, but some here might think that that wouldn't be much of a 3.5 Fix anymore, but a new thing altogether.

"Steal-the-best-from-all-the-systems-and-add-more" is a pretty great design philosophy IMO, after all. (Heck, I implement stunting from Exalted at times because awesomefun.)

Djinn_in_Tonic
2012-09-25, 03:46 PM
So far, to me, it seems to be somewhere in the middle, though I'd much like it to go in the direction of the latter, but some here might think that that wouldn't be much of a 3.5 Fix anymore, but a new thing altogether.

I guess that's sort of my point. There are a lot of 3.5 fixes floating around, and each has its ups and downs...but none of them really manage to fix 3.5. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not sure it's possible without re-writing the core of the game...and making a new system. Maybe it's just you and I, Morph, but I think that's definitely the strongest approach. Salvage what's good, and rebuild it from the ground up.


"Steal-the-best-from-all-the-systems-and-add-more" is a pretty great design philosophy IMO, after all. (Heck, I implement stunting from Exalted at times because awesomefun.)

It's how a good system is made, IMO. Hell, my latest thoughts have been directed towards melding 3.5, 4e, and 5e with some rules-light ideas taken from the FATE system and directed at allowing player interaction with the plot and character aspects. It's really fun theory-crafting, and might turn out to be really fun in actual play as well.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 03:50 PM
I think my fix is "Don't fix what ain't broke". I like 3.5 and I think it is not fundamentally a bad system. There isn't much that needs to be fixed, just some of the worst excesses.

That said: what do you think needs to be done, then? What are the problems?

Seerow
2012-09-25, 03:50 PM
I guess that's sort of my point. There are a lot of 3.5 fixes floating around, and each has its ups and downs...but none of them really manage to fix 3.5. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not sure it's possible without re-writing the core of the game...and making a new system. Maybe it's just you and I, Morph, but I think that's definitely the strongest approach. Salvage what's good, and rebuild it from the ground up.

I agree with you, as I mentioned earlier in the thread a 3.5 fix is something I'm not really interested in, but a new system being built from the ground up, maybe drawing from 3.5 for some things, would be preferable.

toapat
2012-09-25, 04:00 PM
So, for me, Mage just sounds like someone who has magic in general. Everything from Warlocks to Sorcerers. Wizard is more specific as the learned spellcaster.

You simultaneously see my idea and are blind to it.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2012-09-25, 04:05 PM
What are the problems?

In no particular order, and just off the top of my head...


Core system scales incredibly oddly, meaning that characters have false "choices" that they just can't utilize. No Wizard will *ever* draw a dagger, even in a moment where drawing a dagger and attacking would be a great in-character choice. AC is incredibly strong at low levels, and becomes useless. Some saves are basically assured, others are 1-in-20 chances.
Weapon system is another example of this "false choice." Some weapons are just flat-out useless.
Over dependence on magic items and numeric bonuses, rather than on giving players fun options.
Over reliance on micro-bonuses and penalties that stack. Who remembers their +1 to attack rolls against Giants, and who really feels rewarded by that ability? When you've got 4-5 minor bonuses kicking in, it's a LOT of book-keeping, and the feeling of reward isn't that strong.
The multiple-attack-per-round system is clunky: standard combat in D&D just doesn't flow nicely.
The design of the system is (intentionally, in fact (http://montecook.mulehill.com/line-of-sight/ivory-tower-game-design)) to some extent reward system knowledge and making good choices...which means that, within the game, there are bad choices. This is there in feats and classes and spells, but can also be found in combat, stat distribution, and all sorts of other things. I can't call intentionally leaving sub-par options to be good design.
Finally (again, off the top of my head), D&D is overly mechanical. I'd love to see a system interact more with the actual Role-playing portion of being an RPG. D&D is based on a wargame and, although it has evolved, that is still apparent in how it carries itself. I think you could hybridize that easily for a system with mechanical depth and options that flows nicely at the game table. 3.5 fails to really accomplish that, in my mind. I think we can do better.

TheWombatOfDoom
2012-09-25, 04:14 PM
I like djinn's post about listing what isn't good about 3rd edition that could stand to be changed. Perhaps we should go about listing some of our personal beefs to figure out what things might be changed?

Also, Djinn, know that we did only get off the ground yesterday. Organization wise, we're getting it together. Should be more apparent in short order.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 04:20 PM
You simultaneously see my idea and are blind to it.

I simply don't get what you mean, yes. You seem to say that casters should specialize, and I agree to that. But in addition, you seem to add some definition of the words "wizard" and "mage" on top of it, a definition I have never heard before and doesn't seem to be connected to the meaning of those words.
And if I'm blind to your idea, how about explaining it?


In no particular order, and just off the top of my head...


Core system scales incredibly oddly, meaning that characters have false "choices" that they just can't utilize. No Wizard will *ever* draw a dagger, even in a moment where drawing a dagger and attacking would be a great in-character choice. AC is incredibly strong at low levels, and becomes useless. Some saves are basically assured, others are 1-in-20 chances.


Ah. I'm bad at that, I must admit. Scaling is complicated, and I'm not sure I have the time, skill or patience to simulate all the maths necessary for this.


Weapon system is another example of this "false choice." Some weapons are just flat-out useless.

Agreed, and needs to be changed. Especially exotic weapons.


Over dependence on magic items and numeric bonuses, rather than on giving players fun options.
Over reliance on micro-bonuses and penalties that stack. Who remembers their +1 to attack rolls against Giants, and who really feels rewarded by that ability? When you've got 4-5 minor bonuses kicking in, it's a LOT of book-keeping, and the feeling of reward isn't that strong.

I think we addressed this. We all want most of the numerical bonuses gone: those from items and feats, at least.


The design of the system is (intentionally, in fact (http://montecook.mulehill.com/line-of-sight/ivory-tower-game-design)) to some extent reward system knowledge and making good choices...which means that, within the game, there are bad choices. This is there in feats and classes and spells, but can also be found in combat, stat distribution, and all sorts of other things. I can't call intentionally leaving sub-par options to be good design.

Agreed, and that article was always incredibly stupid. Our task would be finding the worst choices and eliminating them. As well as the best.



The multiple-attack-per-round system is clunky: standard combat in D&D just doesn't flow nicely.

Finally (again, off the top of my head), D&D is overly mechanical. I'd love to see a system interact more with the actual Role-playing portion of being an RPG. D&D is based on a wargame and, although it has evolved, that is still apparent in how it carries itself. I think you could hybridize that easily for a system with mechanical depth and options that flows nicely at the game table. 3.5 fails to really accomplish that, in my mind. I think we can do better.


Mechanical, I think, is just how D&D is, and I think I like it that way. Strange: really. I run games that are hours of talking with no dice rolls involved, but when the dice come out, I want a detailed system to know how everything works.
Can't say I ever had much of a flow problem, though. Except that combat takes too long. I'd rather have combat that is over in two or three rounds.

Seerow
2012-09-25, 04:37 PM
My issues with 3.X are a little more fundamental. I want to change up how defenses are handled. What the attributes are. How skills and non-combat situations in general are handled. How abilities and feats are distributed. What it means to be an Arcane caster vs a Divine Caster vs a Psionic character. I want to see clearly defined tiers with mini E6 style systems built in (ie you hit level 6, you stay there until you do something that actually pushes you over the edge from heroic into Paragon territory in game. You still progress, gaining feats/abilities, but as soon as you hit paragon, it's a noticeable jump in power, options, and how the game feels).

That's in addition to the standard "Bring Fighters up, force Casters down, and fix the scaling" issues that pretty much everyone generally agrees on in principle if not in implementation.

I also agree with Djinn on action economy. The full round action in general I find problematic. Personally, I've personally been toying with the idea of getting rid of full attacks, but instead gaining extra swift actions as you go up in level (likely coinciding with tier breaks). So you sort of get the same effect, but with a more flexible action type, making the effect of it much more noticeable.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 04:37 PM
Good idea by Wombat there. Here's a list of things I think need to change in D&D:

Classes with incredibly narrow focus, or no unique abilities just need to go. I'm looking at the fighter mainly here. As I've mentioned in the chat, I could see fighter being dropped entirely as a class, replaced by the Paladin, Ranger, Barbarian, Rogue and a Knight or Marshal class as necessary. Because Fighter is just not an archetype that seems to work well. Or occur much in fiction, either. Everyone should have something to contribute not only in combat (and then not only at the lowest levels) but also out of it. Everyone should be able to solve some problems and make choices.

Overpowered magic. I don't have any problem with magic being very powerful. It should have the potential for that. However, it should not be more powerful than other options at the same level. I've talked about this more in other threads: plane-shifting, demon-summoning, weather-controlling, illusion-creating quasi-immortals don't belong in the same group as guys who are pretty good with swords. Specifically, magic should stop stepping on the toes of other classes, and it should not have effects that are versatile enough to apply to almost every situation. Spells should be specialized, so that preparing the right or wrong spell actually matters. Also, fewer binary effects that result in either total immunity or instant loss in an encounter.

More abilities, fewer numbers. Toughness and Weapon Focus are boring, boring feats. They shouldn't exist.

More interesting races. (LA 0) Races aren't different enough, vary too much in power level and often give bonuses that are so situational that they never do anything. Plus, they weirdly mingle cultural and biological abilities. And there's too many pseudo-humans with 1 weird additional feature.

toapat
2012-09-25, 04:39 PM
And if I'm blind to your idea, how about explaining it?

Mage means a Caster who is specialized

Wizard means a caster who can do everything, as a result of incredible tallent, knowledge, or Vance

Djinn_in_Tonic
2012-09-25, 04:41 PM
My issues with 3.X are a little more fundamental. I want to change up how defenses are handled. What the attributes are. How skills and non-combat situations in general are handled. How abilities and feats are distributed. What it means to be an Arcane caster vs a Divine Caster vs a Psionic character. I want to see clearly defined tiers with mini E6 style systems built in (ie you hit level 6, you stay there until you do something that actually pushes you over the edge from heroic into Paragon territory in game. You still progress, gaining feats/abilities, but as soon as you hit paragon, it's a noticeable jump in power, options, and how the game feels)

Oh, I'd agree with this completely. I re-wrote hit points, attack bonuses, defenses, how damage is dealt, and a number of other things. They're places I could improve...just not areas in 3.5 that I think don't work. They might not work as well as I'd LIKE, but they're functional. I think my old G7 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=115720) (G6 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80811), and G6+1 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=109833)) project shows a bit more how I was thinking about that sort of thing, if anyone here is familiar with those old threads.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 04:44 PM
Mage means a Caster who is specialized

Wizard means a caster who can do everything, as a result of incredible tallent, knowledge, or Vance

Again with the definition.
My question still stands. Where did you get this definition?
Because it sure as hell isn't anywhere in D&D. In fact, I don't know anything in D&D that uses just the word "mage". It's also not in the dictionary, nor in any other roleplaying game I ever played.
Perhaps it means these things to you, but it doesn't to me.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-25, 04:56 PM
I think the goal is to have a reasonably well-balanced system that still 'feels' like 3.5 D&D.


In no particular order, and just off the top of my head...

[LIST]
Core system scales incredibly oddly, meaning that characters have false "choices" that they just can't utilize. No Wizard will *ever* draw a dagger, even in a moment where drawing a dagger and attacking would be a great in-character choice. AC is incredibly strong at low levels, and becomes useless. Some saves are basically assured, others are 1-in-20 chances.
Correcting math should certainly be a "thing" in this fix, I agree. I have no idea how to accomplish such, though.


Weapon system is another example of this "false choice." Some weapons are just flat-out useless.
Really? I feel like apart from "extra" qualities like reach or tripping, most two-handed weapons become indistinguishable after a few levels.


Over dependence on magic items and numeric bonuses, rather than on giving players fun options.
I think that's been a stated goal. I know I've said it a few times.


Over reliance on micro-bonuses and penalties that stack. Who remembers their +1 to attack rolls against Giants, and who really feels rewarded by that ability? When you've got 4-5 minor bonuses kicking in, it's a LOT of book-keeping, and the feeling of reward isn't that strong.
I support this one fully.


The multiple-attack-per-round system is clunky: standard combat in D&D just doesn't flow nicely.
Agreed. Perhaps we could seal a page from Mutants and Mastermind's Multiattack option, where you deal extra damage when your attack roll beats the target's defense by a certain amounts, representing extra attacks landing. Certain options, like two-weapon fighting, could lower the threshold, while others, like two-handed weapons, could raise it.


The design of the system is (intentionally, in fact (http://montecook.mulehill.com/line-of-sight/ivory-tower-game-design)) to some extent reward system knowledge and making good choices...which means that, within the game, there are bad choices. This is there in feats and classes and spells, but can also be found in combat, stat distribution, and all sorts of other things. I can't call intentionally leaving sub-par options to be good design.
We'd like to include plenty of meaningful choices, while cutting out as many subpar options as possible. A lot of that should come in the class and feat revisions.


Finally (again, off the top of my head), D&D is overly mechanical. I'd love to see a system interact more with the actual Role-playing portion of being an RPG. D&D is based on a wargame and, although it has evolved, that is still apparent in how it carries itself. I think you could hybridize that easily for a system with mechanical depth and options that flows nicely at the game table. 3.5 fails to really accomplish that, in my mind. I think we can do better.

Mmm. I feel like the tactical wargame nature is part of the appeal of the game, myself. Ways to address roleplaying...

More out-of-combat abilities for all classes.
As a subcategory of that, making skills more useful, and giving classes a few more skill points.
Some kind of story point system? M&M (which I mention a lot because I've been playing it a lot lately) has Hero Points, which can be used for rerolls, but also for "edit scene" options, giving players a bit more control of the world and story.
A revised alignment system, to try and encourage roleplay and character growth more.
Perhaps some sort of reward for character growth and accomplishing of in-character goals? More story points, perhaps, or else some kind of limited bloodline-esque thing?

toapat
2012-09-25, 05:10 PM
Again with the definition.
My question still stands. Where did you get this definition?
Because it sure as hell isn't anywhere in D&D. In fact, I don't know anything in D&D that uses just the word "mage". It's also not in the dictionary, nor in any other roleplaying game I ever played.
Perhaps it means these things to you, but it doesn't to me.

it is standard to Fantasy RPGs whose heritage is closer to Diablo then DnD. Diablo even acknowledges this in the third installment with the Wizard's lore. the Wizard is a godlike being who mastered in the course of 6 months what takes other magi decades to learn. Most casters in Diabloverse refer to themselves as sorcerers though.

and no, just because there is a pair of official supplements of D2 for 3rd, does not make it any closer then 14 times removed.

Morph Bark
2012-09-25, 05:15 PM
it is standard to Fantasy RPGs whose heritage is closer to Diablo then DnD.

what

No. Just, no. Diablo was only released in 1997 (effectively; in actuality on December 31st 1996). I never even heard of it until 2007 or so, even hanging out with the video gamer crowd a lot. Every source on RPG history I've ever read or watched has mentioned DnD as one of the prime original sources for it. Every single one.

toapat
2012-09-25, 05:29 PM
what

No. Just, no. Diablo was only released in 1997 (effectively; in actuality on December 31st 1996). I never even heard of it until 2007 or so, even hanging out with the video gamer crowd a lot. Every source on RPG history I've ever read or watched has mentioned DnD as one of the prime original sources for it. Every single one.

DnD is still a significant distance back in the family tree. Inspiration, and where the actual mechanics come from, are completely different.

and 14 times removed is about how far D1 is from DnD, and that is because Ultima, as well as a series which i am currently completely missing what the name was, both had taken DnD pretty far from a basic system for a rolled dice turn by turn game into something people could play actively and dynamically.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 06:03 PM
Well, that's a nice little aside and all, but we are doing pen and paper here. Diablo is a computer game, and not one that ever had any large influence on pen and paper. D&D, specifically. So, I see no reason to use Diablo lore over D&D lore for names. Especially when the name "Mage" is rather bland.

toapat
2012-09-25, 06:12 PM
Well, that's a nice little aside and all, but we are doing pen and paper here. Diablo is a computer game, and not one that ever had any large influence on pen and paper. D&D, specifically. So, I see no reason to use Diablo lore over D&D lore for names. Especially when the name "Mage" is rather bland.

its not the point, Diablo lampshaded and defied a common trope.

and Diablo has had a huge impact on RPGs, even moreso then DnD in recent times, because of how blizzard balanced weapons and the fact that they came out with Talent Trees, a system that has seen more legitimate use then Feats/Perks has.

asto non-flavorful: The only generic and flavorful caster name type is Warlock, and that is because it immediately says what the caster does, as well as where and how they get their power.

Lord_Gareth
2012-09-25, 06:17 PM
its not the point, Diablo lampshaded and defied a common trope.

and Diablo has had a huge impact on RPGs, even moreso then DnD in recent times, because of how blizzard balanced weapons and the fact that they came out with Talent Trees, a system that has seen more legitimate use then Feats/Perks has.

asto non-flavorful: The only generic and flavorful caster name type is Warlock, and that is because it immediately says what the caster does, as well as where and how they get their power.

By breaking oaths and getting exiled from their clan in Scotland?

toapat
2012-09-25, 06:19 PM
By breaking oaths and getting exiled from their clan in Scotland?

lol, i realized and edited that last part to actually make sense.

i mean in context of an RPG setting. yes, every single caster name except for Cleric/Priest is taken from something completely different, doesnt change the fact that there are typical things that each one has.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-25, 06:21 PM
asto non-flavorful: The only generic and flavorful caster name type is Warlock, and that is because it immediately says what the caster does, as well as where and how they get their power.

Not really.

In any case, it's (no offense) a pretty silly thing to be arguing about, especially this early in the preceding. Of course we're not going to make do-everything-the-best tier 1 classes, wizard or not.

In any case, I feel somewhat inspired by my earlier response to Djinn. If no-one minds, I think I'll actually write up a set of alignment/story point rules aimed at promoting role playing, and post them here later tonight.

toapat
2012-09-25, 06:26 PM
a pretty silly thing

in some ways, yes, in others no.

it definitively cant be said to not be a silly argument

on the other hand, there are expectations. If Apple decided that the Iphone 5 should not be able to play MP3s, they would face massive backlash from consumers, because a glorified Ipod with wireless booster is expected to be able to do the same things the original Ipod was able to, but also make phonecalls.

Eldan
2012-09-25, 06:26 PM
lol, i realized and edited that last part to actually make sense.

i mean in context of an RPG setting. yes, every single caster name except for Cleric/Priest is taken from something completely different, doesnt change the fact that there are typical things that each one has.

Not really. Definitions can vary all over. Like in the Dresden files, where a sorcerer is someone talented but untrained, a wizard is a sorcerer that has gone through a full apprenticeship and a warlock is someone who has broken one of the magical laws.

Really, there's no single definition that applies to all fantasy. Warlock has an idea of dark power behind it, even if the word means just "liar" or "oathbreaker", if you go down to the root. A wizard is a wise person, so for me I'd say someone who has studied magic carefully. A mage is just... someone who used magic. It doesn't tell you anything.

Edit: I dislike story points and similar rules rewards for roleplaying. That makes it just feel to me as if good roleplaying isn't its own reward, you just try to push the GM's buttons to get points out of him. The reward for good roleplaying should be ingame benefits, if any.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-25, 06:52 PM
Edit: I dislike story points and similar rules rewards for roleplaying. That makes it just feel to me as if good roleplaying isn't its own reward, you just try to push the GM's buttons to get points out of him. The reward for good roleplaying should be ingame benefits, if any.

The thing about story points as a reward is that they go back into roleplaying. They give the players a mechanical way to gain input into the world. I'm thinking of uses along the lines of the contacts (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/contacts.htm)system, or the edit scene (http://www.d20herosrd.com/#TOC-EDIT-SCENE)option in M&M-- ways for the players to add their own adventure hooks and suchlike. Story point uses would be along the lines of "So I know this scribe who lives in the next village who might be able to help us translate the ancient runes," or "it turns out that these were the same bandits who attacked my village two years ago." (Vetted by the DM, of course).

toapat
2012-09-25, 06:53 PM
there's no single definition that applies to all fantasy.

and here is the problem, you are trying to counterpoint High Fantasy with Dark Fantasy. If i see the term warlock without the associated witch, i expect a spellcaster who gains their magic through bargains, while a sorcerer is going to be someone who naturally can perform magic. a Mage is a blanket term for arcane casters in high fantasy, as well as specifying those who learned magic which follows certain paths of logic or carry themes. Wizard is just the inverse, an arcane caster who learns multiple unrelatable types of magic, such as Divination and Force magic.

Steamflogger
2012-09-25, 08:17 PM
A quick interjection because I do not want to see this dissolve into pointless arguments:

The wizard, and indeed the entire idea of vancian casting, has nothing to do with specialization or lack thereof (or, for that matter, a high or low level of power). All that is being stated is that vancian casting is an efficient method of simulating a scholarly caster, as opposed to an individual with inherent power.

(and on a personal note the word wizard, removed from an "optimal 3.5 build" context, implies specialization and study in a singular field in my mind. Arguing over your own feelings of a word doesn't do much when others have differing internal and external definitions).

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-25, 08:22 PM
in some ways, yes, in others no.

it definitively cant be said to not be a silly argument

on the other hand, there are expectations. If Apple decided that the Iphone 5 should not be able to play MP3s, they would face massive backlash from consumers, because a glorified Ipod with wireless booster is expected to be able to do the same things the original Ipod was able to, but also make phonecalls.

I'm not commenting on the virtue of the argument itself. I'm saying it's silly to be talking about something as specific as a class name when we haven't even decided how we'll be changing the magic system, much less discussed class mechanics. Can't we table the debate for now, and focus on more fundamental questions?

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-25, 09:26 PM
Ok, here's my proposed new alignment rules, along the lines I mentioned in the Skype thread. Basically, borrowing a bit from Exalted and making scores depend on in-character actions. May require more clarification, I suppose, but here's what I've got so far:

Note: "Order" replaces "Law" in an attempt to linguistically mitigate the "Lawful Stupid" problem.

Alignment

Most actions in D&D can be viewed as support one of four grand cosmic principles: Good, Evil, Order, or Chaos. Characters have scores representing their affinity towards each principle, starting at zero (no affinity). As they grow in age and experience, their actions add to their scores.

Upon character creation, player characters begin with six alignment points to distribute between the four principles however they choose. In addition, for every age category above adult, they have an additional two alignment points. Characters created above first level gain an additional one alignment point for every four character levels they possess.

The main means of gaining alignment points, however, is through a character's actions. Whenever a character makes a choice which strongly aligns with one of the four principles, the DM assigns that character an alignment point to place in the appropriate principle.

Alignment points should only be awarded for major choices-- helping an old woman across the street is a good act, but not necessarily a Good one. What exactly constitutes a major choice depends at least partly on the player's level. A level two fighter unseating a particularly strict town council is a Chaotic act worthy of an alignment point, but a level ten fighter doing the same thing is not. As a general rule, alignment points only should be awarded for acts which require a non-trivial amount of game-play to achieve.

When the principle of an act is in question, award alignment points based on intentions. A bard might gain a Chaos alignment point for overthrowing the tyrannical baron because he wants to set his subjects free, while a paladin might gain a Good alignment point for the same action because he wanted to save the oppressed subjects from being sent to their deaths in a war. Thus, characters can receive Good points for actions that have negative consequences down the line. The DM is the ultimate arbitrator of an act's alignment.

Alignment Scores and Game Effects

When calculating spells and effects that depend on alignment, a character's alignment is considered to be whichever score is highest. This is referred to as his primary alignment. If none of his alignment scores are over 5 points, his primary alignment is Neutral.

If a character has at least 10 points in his primary alignment score, and no other alignment is within 5 points of his primary alignment, he gains the appropriate subtype (Good, Evil, Order, or Chaos).

Neutralizing

If a character has a roughly equal number of alignment points in either his Order and Chaos scores or his Good and Evil scores, he may chose to "neutralize" his principles, subtracting an equal number of points from each. He may do so at any time.

Lord_Gareth
2012-09-25, 09:57 PM
I'd be in favor of ditching mechanical alignment entirely, or perhaps using a modified version of the Allegiance system from D20 Modern - which, by the way, is not incompatible with a Good/Evil paradigm if a DM wants things to work that way (just write Major Allegiance - Evil and call it good).

Knaight
2012-09-25, 10:02 PM
I'm with Lord Gareth here - alignment could really use being dropped entirely, with Holy and Unholy tags remaining for major outsiders, undead, etc. Class features could also operate off of these tags, particularly if paladins and clerics are still in.

Lord_Gareth
2012-09-25, 10:28 PM
I'm with Lord Gareth here - alignment could really use being dropped entirely, with Holy and Unholy tags remaining for major outsiders, undead, etc. Class features could also operate off of these tags, particularly if paladins and clerics are still in.

Honestly, I'd drop even Holy and Unholy and find another way to deal with that. After all, if someone opposes, oh, Gruumsh, are they Holy, or Unholy? If you become a Necropolitian (with a ring of gentle repose to keep yourself fresh) as part of a rite dedicated to Eternal Glory, which are you? If your necromancer raises a ghoul army fed with rotting livestock (purchased lawfully and slaughtered humanely) in order to defend the kingdom he swears loyalty to, does it even ping?

Eliminating alignment mechanically eliminates all the problems.

toapat
2012-09-25, 10:37 PM
Honestly, I'd drop even Holy and Unholy and find another way to deal with that. After all, if someone opposes, oh, Gruumsh, are they Holy, or Unholy? If you become a Necropolitian (with a ring of gentle repose to keep yourself fresh) as part of a rite dedicated to Eternal Glory, which are you? If your necromancer raises a ghoul army fed with rotting livestock (purchased lawfully and slaughtered humanely) in order to defend the kingdom he swears loyalty to, does it even ping?

Eliminating alignment mechanically eliminates all the problems.

in order:

Neutral, Gruumsh was screwed over, but he was pissy about it.

this depends on the Eternal Glory sought

LGish Dread Necromancer. does he animate only willing applicants?

Lord_Gareth
2012-09-25, 10:48 PM
this depends on the Eternal Glory sought

You misunderstand. Eternal Glory is the goddess of love-in-undeath; the love that transcends life itself. She's in Libris Mortis, and is TN.


LGish Dread Necromancer. does he animate only willing applicants?

Oh, let's say he takes donations and re-uses slain soldiers ("Shoulda read the fine print, private!").

The important bit is that all of these situations are ones that cause arguments and trouble at game tables because of alignment. Ooooor we can dump alignment and the arguments too.

Amechra
2012-09-25, 11:55 PM
I honestly would like to help with this project (or did, before looking in here and seeing things that made me headdesk. Several time.)

Because you know the one part of the system that you have to fix before you start quibbling about names and alignment and things?

The fact that everything scales on a different metric.

In a sane system, you should be getting modifiers at about the same numerical levels for all subsystems.

3.5 is not a sane system. One key point to notice is that, to give an example, the basic concept of using just a d20 is flawed if you are running a 20 level game, where those 20 levels are supposed to distinguish between "he's a farmer" and "A GOD AM I!!!!1!".

Why? Let's take the skill system as it stands: you get +1 to skills you drop skill points into per level. Assuming that a roll of 10 gives you a level appropriate result, you could end up with somewhere between a result that was appropriate for 9 levels ago, and one that will be appropriate for 11 levels from now.

The original design team looked at this, went "oops", and then started bumping up DCs and making skill bonuses readily available, which led to DC inflation, and the fact that everyone forgot that you could get big bonuses from clever stacking of... stuff.

Now, compare this with SR, which does not work as written. Or the fact that spellcasters usually don't have to roll a d20 to do their thing.

That is what you are up against.

You need to start with a firm mathematical basis before you can go on to anything else. Decide on one set of DCs to aim for, and apply them across the board. (So a level 6 fighter could be swinging against an AC of 20, while a rogue of the same level would be making a dc 20 hide check, and they would both have about the same chance of making the check. This is opposed to now, where the difference in DCs is already at least 5 by the time you hit 6th level, and is about +/-30 by 20th level.)

WaylanderX
2012-09-26, 04:17 AM
Just for the record, I'm starting with the magic system based on the comments presented here. I'll post it here if I have anything concrete and (I hope) balanced.

Eldan
2012-09-26, 06:10 AM
I'd be in favor of ditching mechanical alignment entirely, or perhaps using a modified version of the Allegiance system from D20 Modern - which, by the way, is not incompatible with a Good/Evil paradigm if a DM wants things to work that way (just write Major Allegiance - Evil and call it good).

I don't like that much. Alignment isn't necessarily something you choose. You don't wake up one morning and say "I think I should really dedicate my life to shooting kittens and torturing puppies." (Only with less cartoonish evil). Alignment is something your actions make you, not something you choose.

Amechra: this I disagree with a lot. Yes, the mathematical basis needs some overhaul. But making all DCs the same? Heck no.

Three points against it, from the simulation and the game theory standpoint.

First of all: some tasks are simply more difficult to learn than others. Some things are hard, some are easy. That's the simulation.

The second: some tasks carry more reward, from a game theory standpoint. Attack rolls have one use, and their effect is relatively limited. Hide checks, to compare, have many, many uses. They can set up an advantage in combat, they can take you out of combat, they can prevent combat altogether, they can gather information. Over the course of an encounter, you will roll one, maybe two hide checks, but many, many attack rolls.

Third: Things should never get harder just because you are higher level now. If you always roll against the same target numbers, there is no point in levelling up, as you never actually get better at anything. If I have to roll a 15 on level one to pick the rusty bronze lock and a 15 at level 20 to pick the god-crafted eternium lock, what's the point?

Eldan
2012-09-26, 06:36 AM
Subthreads for relevant discussion:
Combat (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13959251#post13959251) and Magic (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=256978).

A a reminder, these are for a discussion on the basic systems. Not for classes, not for specific spells or feats.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2012-09-26, 07:21 AM
Third: Things should never get harder just because you are higher level now. If you always roll against the same target numbers, there is no point in levelling up, as you never actually get better at anything. If I have to roll a 15 on level one to pick the rusty bronze lock and a 15 at level 20 to pick the god-crafted eternium lock, what's the point?

The point is that the god-crafted eternium lock is no harder for you now than the rusty bronze lock was at the start of your career. i.e. you have to roll a 15 for both...you have a 30% chance to pick the rusty bronze lock at level 1, and a 30% change to pick a god-crafted eternium lock at level 20. Why is this a problem?

You do get better at things, just by a different metric: the number I have to roll against a level-appropriate challenge doesn't necessarily change, but the level-appropriate challenge *does* change, so my skill *does* show. An untrained thief could *never* pick a god-crafted lock...but I'm skilled enough that it's as easy to me as a good iron lock is to the average thief. That speaks volumes about my skill (IMO). Would you disagree?

Eldan
2012-09-26, 07:26 AM
I'm not sure, really. I just think that from time to time, you should encounter things that are now trivially easy at high level. I guess the qualifier "level appropriate" is what makes this better. Yes, I guess having to hit appropriately the same number every level is okay, as long as not every lock automatically gains +3 DC when you level. Which was one of hte things that annoyed me most in fourth edition.

Djinn_in_Tonic
2012-09-26, 07:28 AM
I'm not sure, really. I just think that from time to time, you should encounter things that are now trivially easy at high level. I guess the qualifier "level appropriate" is what makes this better. Yes, I guess having to hit appropriately the same number every level is okay, as long as not every lock automatically gains +3 DC when you level. Which was one of hte things that annoyed me most in fourth edition.

You still might encounter trivially easy things: if I have to pick a rusty bronze lock when I'm skilled enough to pick the god-crafted eternium lock? I'd be surprised if the DM even has me roll, honestly. :smallbiggrin:

Eldan
2012-09-26, 07:36 AM
Fair enough.

My suggestion: we should start with laying out a basic framework for check difficulty. An difficulty scale, and what the average character of that level should have to roll.
Then we cut down on small, fiddly numerical bonuses, so there's less variety between specialized characters of the same level. Then, what bonus you have makes more of an impact.

I propose:

Trivial: no roll required.
Easy: 5+
Moderate: 10+
Difficult: 15+
Almost impossible: 20
Impossible: no roll sufficient.

(Side idea: there's a way to get impossible luck effects which make impossible rolls possible on a 20).

Lord_Gareth
2012-09-26, 08:35 AM
I don't like that much. Alignment isn't necessarily something you choose. You don't wake up one morning and say "I think I should really dedicate my life to shooting kittens and torturing puppies." (Only with less cartoonish evil). Alignment is something your actions make you, not something you choose.

Not necessarily true. Firstly, in heroic fantasy there are some people who just wake up and decided that torturing puppies and demanding tributes of fresh virgin blood is the career choice for them. Secondly, you have to keep in mind that with the proposed system I'm looking at removing mechanical consequences for alignment except perhaps insofar as it might intersect with religion (such as, oh, I dunno, a Cleric of Pelor being able to use some manner of Smite ability on worshipers of Nerull).

So say I've got an "evil" character. Hell, let's say I've got Doctor Doom, right? He's a bad guy, but that's not the only thing about him. Looking at how the good Doctor operates, I'd probably say that his Major Allegiance would be "The Glory of Doom", followed up by "Latvaria," and then "The Safety of the World" trailing way off at the end. Contrasting this to, say, Asmodeus, who I could write rather easily as Major Allegiance: Himself, Moderate Allegiance: Baator, Minor Allegiance: Order in the Multiverse.

Both are characters you could call evil, but the Allegiance system gets their players thinking about their motivations instead of arguing whether or not some black-magic ritual used to save the world is 'evil'. And if a group LIKES arguing about good vs. evil, then by all means, just write the words 'good' or 'evil' in one of those slots and call it a day! After all, "Team Evil," is a recognized and honored fantasy trope.

toapat
2012-09-26, 08:54 AM
*snip*

I like the idea of having actual motivations be your alignment then "Good, Evil, Lawful, and Chaotic"

Good and Evil though could be a general where you are going in the afterlife score

TheWombatOfDoom
2012-09-26, 09:50 AM
Perhaps in some way we can create some sort of personality matrix, or ruling, in which to encourage "staying in character". I think people should stay in character with their actions, but be able to justify out of character ones with good explanation. Perhaps it would be a more fluid sort of advice for a DM rather than alignment.

I see personality more like myers-briggs however. Extraverted/Introverted, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perception, Sensing/Intuition. These don't really work with D & D.

Ok, fine. Not personality, morality! Oh that's even worse....basically speaking, morality is quite relative to the party involved. An "evil campaign" I once had, everyone was considered "good" but were really "evil". The morality of the world depends vastly on the setting, not the game.

However, with the harder defined alignments it was much more beginner friendly on examples of characters, and definitions. Perhaps a bit more leeway?

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-26, 10:13 AM
Amechra and Djinn do make very good points. Being able to fix the underlying math is, in many ways, the entire point of doing a rewrite like this one. And as for the scaling argument... the world doesn't scale as you level, but the challenges do. At first level, you fight goblins. At fifth level, there are still goblins around, but you're fighting ogres, because they're a more appropriate challenge. Same with locks.

Eldan, the categories you came up with seem about right. Especially if we can limit fiddly bits enough that a DM can say "well, my players are 10th level,, and I want this to be a difficult task, so the DC is 30." Or whatever.

One idea lifted from M&M (I know, I know...): level caps. M&M controls numbers by putting hard caps on just about everything, based on your level. We could do something similar. Like, you can have class level + 3 ranks in a skill, plus abilities, plus other bonuses, but your total modifier is arbitrarily limited at level times two, barring circumstance bonuses. It would certainly cut off a lot of optimization at the knees, but it may be too much for D&D.

On the subject of alignment, I'd say we should table it for now, but people seem to enjoy arguing about it, maybe we should make a new thread?

Eldan
2012-09-26, 10:57 AM
There should never, never, never be any rules about "staying in character" or penalties for changing your alignment, or whatever else we choose to call it here. It is severely limiting, and only leads to discussion when one person in the group has a different idea of what "in character" means than another.

And I don't think the classical alignments are that hard to define at all. Good vs. Evil is "Ready to sacrifice himself for others" vs. "Ready to sacrifice others for himself."
Chaos vs. Law is "Personal freedom" vs. "structured Society", "Personal respect" vs. "Defined Hierarchy" and "External values" vs. "Personal values".

What's the problem with that?

And, well. Smiting evil is a huge fantasy trope. Somehow, I can't see that working with Archons that have "Archons can smite people of the following Allegiances" on their sheets. And if there are no mechanical effects from it, why would we need it at all?

Eldan
2012-09-26, 11:09 AM
Level times two definitely wouldn't work, given that a +10 in a skill at level 1 isn't that hard. But it might be worth some debate. (I don't think M&M is a bad system per se).

Alignment: Alignment debates never go anywhere. How about we make it an optional sub-system? "Chapter 11: Alignment. Introducing character alignment, alignment based alternate class features, and new, alignment based spells"?

toapat
2012-09-26, 11:54 AM
And, well. Smiting evil is a huge fantasy trope. Somehow, I can't see that working with Archons that have "Archons can smite people of the following Allegiances" on their sheets. And if there are no mechanical effects from it, why would we need it at all?

as i said, keep the Good-Evil axis as a scorecard, if the universe decides you are an unrepentant bastard, then archons get to drop the divine hammer.

also, while Law-Chaos is more along a Society-Personal axis, it is not defined that way at all.

Amechra
2012-09-26, 12:25 PM
I should clarify:

By "set of DCs", I'm not talking that you should be rolling against a DC 20 all the time.

I'm saying that your skill DCs, the AC that you roll against, and the Save DCs that you are trying to beat should all fall in the same ballpark.

This basically means making everything scale at (approximately) the same rate.

Why? Because that gives you design space to do stuff like those save-replacers from the Diamond Mind discipline without that being an automatic success.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-26, 12:32 PM
I should clarify:

By "set of DCs", I'm not talking that you should be rolling against a DC 20 all the time.

I'm saying that your skill DCs, the AC that you roll against, and the Save DCs that you are trying to beat should all fall in the same ballpark.

This basically means making everything scale at (approximately) the same rate.

Why? Because that gives you design space to do stuff like those save-replacers from the Diamond Mind discipline without that being an automatic success.
Yeah... this really does sound about right. It probably means that most things should scale fairly tightly with level.

Eldan
2012-09-26, 12:46 PM
as i said, keep the Good-Evil axis as a scorecard, if the universe decides you are an unrepentant bastard, then archons get to drop the divine hammer.

also, while Law-Chaos is more along a Society-Personal axis, it is not defined that way at all.

Eeeeh. Good-Evil is the boring alignment axis. The one that has no interesting conflict, either. If we just keep that one, I'd rather drop it entirely, instead of losing the Blood War and it's companions.

Eldan
2012-09-26, 12:48 PM
How do you combine that with the problem of some rolls being much more meaningful than others? If the fighter has to roll 10 attack rolls per encounter, should those DCs be really be in the same ballpark as the Rogue's one hide check to bypass the entire encounter?

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-26, 01:21 PM
Ok. So. Rolls scaling by level.

Attack is d20+ BAB (~level) + ability + modifiers (magic, feats, class, and conditional)

AC is 5* + BAB (~level) + ability + modifiers (armor, magic, feats, class, and conditional).

Saves are d20 + Save (~1/2 level) + ability + modifiers.

Alternately, d20 + Save (~level) + ability + modifiers

Save DCs are 10 + spell level (~1/2 level) + ability + modifiers.

Alternately, d20 + twice spell level (~level) + ability + modifiers

Skills are d20 + Skill ranks (=level) + ability + modifiers (tools, magic, feats, class, conditional)

*Lower because armor and shield bonuses are easy to obtain.

Modifiers are assumed to average out around 5, after we cut back on bonus sources. Abilities likewise.

A trivial DC is not rolled for.
An easy DC is 15 + level (requiring a roll of ~5).
A moderate DC is 20 + level (requiring a roll of ~10)
A difficult DC is 25 + level (requiring a roll of ~15)
A very difficult DC is 30 + level (requiring a roll of ~20)

This math makes the following assumptions:

+X magic items (weapons, armor, resistance and stats) do not exist.
Synergy bonuses do not stack or do not exist.
No classes or prestige classes are giving enormous numerical bonuses.
A limited list of bonus types makes stacking bonuses difficult.


And, of course, if we do impose artificial level-based caps, balance becomes that much easier. Specific feats or classes might allow certain caps to be overcome-- the Expert class might allow you to pick a limited number of skills and raise the cap. The Rogue might grant a +5 bonus to stealth and thievery checks. The fighter might grant a +5 bonus to attack roll caps. Etc.

Amechra
2012-09-26, 01:39 PM
You do have to remember, though, that saying "we have to balance out Hide checks to negate encounters with the 10+ attack rolls that a fighter needs to roll" is a false statement.

Why? Because you have control over the results of both.

You could make it so that Fighters only need to roll a single attack each round, with higher results meaning that they hit more often, for example.

Hell, check out the Tome of Prowess (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Tome_of_Prowess_%283.5e_Sourcebook%29); it has some pretty nice ideas for how to handle checks (basically, for those with not enough time to check the full "book", every DC both scales with level and has effects based on how much you succeed/fail it by.)

toapat
2012-09-26, 01:48 PM
Eeeeh. Good-Evil is the boring alignment axis. The one that has no interesting conflict, either. If we just keep that one, I'd rather drop it entirely, instead of losing the Blood War and it's companions.

actually, axing the Law-Chaos axis makes the blood war more interesting, because it makes the blood war seem more innane then it is

Eldan
2012-09-26, 01:51 PM
I don't like it. I'd rather kill the evil-good axis and keep the law-chaos axis.

However, there's one overwhelming opinion in the Skype right now, and one I agree with.

People, stop the Alignment discussions. They never get anywhere, they are too much a matter of opinion, and we should focus on things we can actually work on right now.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-26, 02:14 PM
People, stop the Alignment discussions. They never get anywhere, they are too much a matter of opinion, and we should focus on things we can actually work on right now.

Indeed. No offense to those who feel strongly on the issue, but... it's a topic that almost consistently spawns large, circular arguments. If we can't muscle past such things, no fix will ever be produced. Rest assured that at some point in the future, we will have to decide on an alignment system, and we will open the floor for discussion at that point.

toapat
2012-09-26, 02:51 PM
*snip*

i was saying that the blood war is more interesting without the Law-Chaos axis because then you can give it context, like it entirely started over say, a sweetroll

i was not saying that alignment is a good thing

TheWombatOfDoom
2012-09-27, 07:05 AM
So, what should be the exact focus of conversation at present?

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-27, 10:00 AM
Hmm. I'm just putting the finishing touches on a bunch of combat stuff to post. Waylander is working on the magic system.

We could try to work on the details of the math? Specifically, ways to limit modifier stacking...

UPDATE: Posted my combat rules (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13965815). (I was appointed to do this in the skype thread. Take it as an official draft)

Knaight
2012-09-27, 01:51 PM
The important bit is that all of these situations are ones that cause arguments and trouble at game tables because of alignment. Ooooor we can dump alignment and the arguments too.

Allow me to clarify - Holy and Unholy would be properties that are less alignment and more connected to positive and negative energy. So, Holy Damage would be useful against, say, undead and demons regardless of the moral outlook of said undead and demons, simply because they are negative energy creatures. It's a way to handle damage types more than anything else, and given the presence of outsiders is probably necessary.

Eldan
2012-09-27, 01:54 PM
This thread is for, well, discussion of everything you think needs discussing. So far, it's mostly design goals and basic system framework we want to achieve.

One thing I thought about. Someone brought up the idea of limiting total bonuses to a level-dependent total. I was thinking that, perhaps, we should limit kinds of bonuses and limit them each independently.

We have our perhaps 10 bonus types we mentioned earlier in a list. Out of these, not everything can apply to every stat (there's no armour bonus to saves (someone should make a table (that will probably be me(I like parentheses)))).

If we cap each individual modifier at, say, 2+1/5 levels, and more or less drop unnamed modifiers, that should give us a hold on the mathematics.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-27, 03:29 PM
Capping individual modifiers helps a bit, I suppose, but (in most cases) the system already prevents them you from stacking similar modifiers. It helps prevent people from acquiring enormous, say, competence bonuses from something-or-other, but don't most optimized builds work by stacking different modifiers?

How 'bout this: divide modifiers into primary and secondary. Primary modifiers include things like BAB, base saves, armor, shields, ability scores, and maybe magic. Secondary modifiers include everything else-- luck, morale, competence, divine, and so on. Normal modifier stacking rules apply throughout, but the total boost from all secondary modifiers is capped at level.

(As a side note: flipping through a dozen+ pre-made characters in a folder I had lying around, I found maybe 4 numbers above level times 2*: a few knowledge skills, thanks to class features; a thri-keen dervish's Jump skill, and a truespeaker's Truespeak. These were not incredibly optimized characters, but I didn't slack off while making them either, and like to think I have a pretty good grasp of system mastery).

*Subtracting the base 10 from AC scores to get the original modifier.

Tanuki Tales
2012-09-28, 10:41 AM
Hey all, me again. I just wanted to give a heads up that I don't know when I'll get a real chance to look into all the discussion for this project in-depth. Real life and other things have been hectic and demanding my attention lately. I am still interested in this project, I just don't know when I'll get real time to devote to it.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-28, 05:51 PM
Anyone else have more thoughts on capping modifiers? It's harsh and artificial, but it would improve balance significantly...

Eldan
2012-09-28, 06:09 PM
I'm not sure about artificial.

I mean, it doesn't even have to show up anywhere in the written edition. We would just write up all the spells and abilities so that higher modifiers never occur.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-28, 10:32 PM
I'm not sure about artificial.

I mean, it doesn't even have to show up anywhere in the written edition. We would just write up all the spells and abilities so that higher modifiers never occur.

Well. That'd be idea, certainly. I was referring to the sum of certain modifiers never exceeding certain limits, though.

Eldan
2012-10-01, 01:46 PM
So.
Does anyone have anything to add to the Magic and Combat threads, or should we start collecting the pieces together?

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-01, 02:27 PM
Did we even finish magic? I don't feel like there was ever a coherent system worked out there.

WaylanderX
2012-10-01, 02:30 PM
Not alot of ppl respond to the magic thread with ideas unfortunatly.
I have put up a Spellresistance idea up there btw, for the ones interested.
As for the rest of the stuff, we can work with it I guess, but without suffient input is gonna be a rough ride.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-01, 02:41 PM
I mean, I feel pretty OK about the combat stuff I worked on. Less so about the magic system. It's not... terrible, but I don't think it's great, either. (Sorry, Eldan), and it's definitely not finished.

Anyone mind if I post a counter-idea?

Amechra
2012-10-01, 03:09 PM
I would like you all to vet the math first.

But I get the feeling that you guys don't care about my opinion on the matter.

(I suggest scaling everything at about the same rate as saves in the current system; I did a little envelope math earlier, and it seemed to work out better than "OMFG, WE GET A +30 FROM THIS ITEM, ADD IT TO MY +47 FROM OTHER STUFF!")

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-01, 03:42 PM
I would like you all to vet the math first.

But I get the feeling that you guys don't care about my opinion on the matter.

(I suggest scaling everything at about the same rate as saves in the current system; I did a little envelope math earlier, and it seemed to work out better than "OMFG, WE GET A +30 FROM THIS ITEM, ADD IT TO MY +47 FROM OTHER STUFF!")

For what it's worth, I agree, and I tried to keep your points involved when working on the combat system. I'm not very good at core system math, though.

I made attack and AC both scale with BAB.

Spells and saves already both scale at about 1/2 level for a good progression, but it would be easy enough to upgrade them to scaling fully with level.

If we cap skill ranks at level, they scale in about the same way.

And we've agreed to try to limit modifier stacking and miscellaneous bonuses, though we're not quite sure of the best path to take on that account. (I like hard caps, maybe level+10, but others disagree)

Eldan
2012-10-01, 04:02 PM
I don't think it's finished, no.
Just that we should perhaps gather up all the ideas in the threads again and collect them together.

If anyone has a great alternative magic system: great. Feel free. I ca'nt say much about the maths, really.

Knaight
2012-10-01, 04:11 PM
I think the math needs to be vetted, and the combat and magic systems need heavy polishing. The combat subsystem is getting towards workable, but is far from done, the magic subsystem seems like it has more work to be done.

Amechra
2012-10-01, 06:48 PM
Really, from the perspective of a programmer (or, at least, someone studying for a CompSci/Mathematics double major), it's best if you look at the core system like so:

Sit down, and figure out what chance you want someone of a given level achieving what someone with that level+x is able to achieve 50% of the time.

You have a d20, which gives you 100% to work with, in nice, regular 5% increments.

You want that chance to be 40%? Then you want to scale everything to be around roughly an increase in bonus of 2 per level.

You want that chance to be between 45% and 50%? Then you mess with the scaling until that works.

You might also want to look at "dice tricks", like the effects of rolling 2d20 and then taking lowest/highest, or having effects that make you treat rolls below Y as if they were Y; that kind of thing.

You might also want to, in your head, before you start the combat system, decide on how many rounds you want the thing to run, and how long you want your average round to take. That will greatly affect how many dice have to be rolled and tallied, overall chances of failure, and so on and so forth. It will also be a good start of you taking a nice, hard look at how HP scales.

Let me see... alright, here (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1533.0) is a nice thread on the differences between ablative and binary defenses (i.e., the difference between HP and Save-or-Dies.)

Also, while you are designing systems, go ahead and ask people not involved in the project to take a look; having someone who isn't personally invested in the thing will help you iron out wrinkles with the more complicated systems.

Eldan
2012-10-02, 03:25 PM
Amechra brings up a good point we should clear first: the basic mathematics of the game.

I suggest that the basic probability of achieving a level-appropriate standard task should be 55%. That's 10+ on a d20. From there, I'd like an about 10% change per level up or down, that seems good to me.

Now, let's look at how fast modifiers grow. I'll start with the modifier table I said I'd make.
I suggest the following modifiers: Arcane, Armour, competence, dodge, divine, luck, morale, Shield, Size
Notes: Alchemical is gone. Arcane is what used to be called Enhancement, and also includes Resistance, which, as far as I can tell, was just enhancement for saves. Competence includes Insight. Divine is what used to be called Sacred or profane (differentiated now by wording like "This ability gives good creatures a +2 divine bonus to AC against attacks made by evil creatures"). Shield includes the former deflection and applies to touch AC. Dodge is very specialized, I'm thinking about folding that into competence as well.
That's a nice 9 types.
I find the following things these can apply to: Abilities, AC, Initiative, Saves, Attack, Damage, Skill checks. Tell me if I forgot any.

So, what applies to what?

{table=head]Name|Ability|AC|Initiative|Save|Attack|Damage|Skil ls|Description
Arcane|Yes|Yes|?|Yes|Yes|Yes|?|Spells and magic items
Armour|No|Yes|No|No|No|No|No|Mundane armour
Competence|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Class features
Dodge|No|Yes|No|Reflex|No|No|No|Evading
Divine|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Divine power
Luck|No|Yes|No|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Just that lucky
Morale|Yes|No|No|Will|Yes|Yes|?|Just that motivated
Shield|No|Yes|No|No|No|No|No|Deflecting attacks
Size|No|Yes|No|No|?|No|No|It makes a difference
Total:|4|8|2-3|4-5|5-6|5|3-5
[/table]

And here we run into problems. Namely, that we have many more modifiers on some kinds of checks than others. Which makes scaling difficult. Furthermore, modifiers on abilities have wide-ranging effects on many others. How do we solve this?

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-02, 04:09 PM
Let me see... alright, here (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1533.0) is a nice thread on the differences between ablative and binary defenses (i.e., the difference between HP and Save-or-Dies.)

Interesting. And, it would seem to me, dead accurate. How to address... we were earlier talking about the idea of "condition tracks." They already sort of exist for things like fear (shaken/frightened/panicked/cowering). If we expanded so that most conditions fell on tracks like these... Specifically, I'm looking at M&M's Affliction (http://www.d20herosrd.com/6-powers/effects/effect-descriptions/affliction-attack) power, the one-stop shop for messing with other people.

The rule: spells and abilities start you sliding down the appropriate track. If you fail the save, you start at the first step. If you're already affected, you go farther down the track. If you fail the save by enough (2 points? 3 points? 5?), you start at a lower step.

I can take a poke at making the condition tracks, unless anyone else wants to try. (Fair warning: I may just back-adapt Affliction and the related conditions, rather than try to make sense of D&D's mess)

PairO'Dice Lost
2012-10-02, 04:11 PM
And here we run into problems. Namely, that we have many more modifiers on some kinds of checks than others. Which makes scaling difficult. Furthermore, modifiers on abilities have wide-ranging effects on many others. How do we solve this?

First thing that comes to mind: it looks like most stats have around 5 modifiers, so might as well go with that. Fold dodge into competence, since that affects only AC (which already has a ton of modifiers) and Ref saves (which keys off the "god stat" of Dex and really doesn't need any specific boosts. Allow Arcane and Morale to apply to skills, and that gives 5 modifiers each for Saves, Damage, and Skills. Size bonuses should apply to attacks if they do to AC, for symmetry's sake: two creatures of the same size have their attack and AC bonuses cancel out, making it as easy for a halfling to hit a halfling or a giant to hit a giant as it is for a human to hit a human, which makes sense. That makes Attack have 6 modifiers, fairly close.

That leaves 4 mods for Abilities, 2-3 for initiative, and 7 for AC. I think fewer mods for abilities is fine, since you don't want ability-stacking to get out of hand. I would say leave Arcane off initiative, it doesn't need any more mods, and I'd also suggest leaving Arcane off AC. Very few things in 3e add an enhancement bonus to AC, and where they do it's generally an enhancement bonus to your armor/natural armor/shield bonus rather than a direct enhancement bonus to AC. Making Arcane unable to affect AC while still allowing for magic to increase or grant armor and shield bonuses still allows for mage armor, shield, and magic arms and armor, but prevents a generic AC boosting spell from slipping through later.

So that leaves you with 4, 7, 2, 5, 6, 5, 5. Close enough for government work, I think.


Of course, each of those stats also adds an ability bonus, which raises the questions of (A) what should ability scores apply to by default (do you want to keep Dex as the god stat, leave Cha dumpable, etc.), and (B) how easy should it be to sub in stats or stack them (should light weapons use Dex by default or should there be a Weapon Finesse feat or neither, should Divine Grace add Cha to saves or replace other stats with Cha for saves, etc.).

Eldan
2012-10-02, 04:17 PM
Updated table:

{table=head]Name|Ability|AC|Initiative|Save|Attack|Damage|Skil ls|Description
Arcane|Yes|Yes|No|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Spells and magic items
Armour|No|Yes|No|No|No|No|No|Mundane armour
Competence|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Class features
Divine|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Divine power
Luck|No|Yes|No|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Just that lucky
Morale|Yes|No|No|Will|Yes|Yes|Yes|Just that motivated
Shield|No|Yes|No|No|No|No|No|Deflecting attacks
Size|No|Yes|No|No|Yes|No|No|It makes a difference
Total:|4|7|2-3|4|6|5|5
[/table]

Ability bonus. The first thing that comes to mind, for me is this: do we still want them, and if yes, how often? We said we wanted to drop most generic +X to Y items, which would include the Enhancement bonus to ability items. That leaves, in core, shapeshift magic, buff magic and a barbarian's rage I can think of right now. It's not exactly much.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-02, 04:26 PM
Ability bonus. The first thing that comes to mind, for me is this: do we still want them, and if yes, how often? We said we wanted to drop most generic +X to Y items, which would include the Enhancement bonus to ability items. That leaves, in core, shapeshift magic, buff magic and a barbarian's rage I can think of right now. It's not exactly much.
Also, level-up bonuses. Those should probably still be a thing.

toapat
2012-10-02, 04:54 PM
{table=head]Shield|No|Yes|No|No|No|No|No|Deflecting attacks[/table]

Shields dont deflect, they ablate

Eldan
2012-10-02, 04:57 PM
Not necessarily. And in D&D, shields don't take damage from blocking. Certainly not magical shields.

And a good point on level-up bonuses. (Though I suggested changing them to be race-specific).

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-02, 05:23 PM
Shields dont deflect, they ablate

Making shields do more than just add a few points to AC is vital to making sword-and-board a viable choice of combat style. Even with adding BAB to AC makes the +2 worth significantly more.

Eldan
2012-10-02, 05:27 PM
Well, what else could shields do? Some kind of parry mechanic? I must admit, I don't like that much. Uuh... double dex bonus to AC if you have a shield? Sounds too good for some, and horrible for others.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-02, 05:31 PM
Well, what else could shields do? Some kind of parry mechanic? I must admit, I don't like that much. Uuh... double dex bonus to AC if you have a shield? Sounds too good for some, and horrible for others.

I was thinking in terms of the [style] feats we touched on in the combat threads. Add to AC, yeah, but also things like making parry attempts, shield-bash-his-sword-aside, maybe spend Advantage to boost your own AC...

Eldan
2012-10-02, 06:01 PM
Defensive features with shields... Spend Advantage to gain miss chance, immune to being flanked...

Yes, probably a style feat. Is +2 AC enough for the basic benefit?

PairO'Dice Lost
2012-10-02, 06:08 PM
Another benefit of a shield could be allowing you to add Str to AC instead of Dex, since you're batting things away instead of just dodging them. It makes martial types a bit less MAD--or much less MAD if shield bonuses also add to some Ref saves, again because they're interposing the shield instead of or in addition to dodging--and it would allow them to dump Dex if they want to go the heavy-armor-and-shield tank route.

Eldan
2012-10-02, 06:47 PM
Hm. That could be an option. Allow various wargear to use one or the other stat.

Heavy armour: add constitution or dexterity to armour. Shield: add strength or dexterity to armour. Light weapon, add dexterity or strength to hit.

And so on.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-02, 07:24 PM
Hm. That could be an option. Allow various wargear to use one or the other stat.

Heavy armour: add constitution or dexterity to armour. Shield: add strength or dexterity to armour. Light weapon, add dexterity or strength to hit.

And so on.

My combat system allows light weapons to use dex for attack and damage. I like the idea of shields letting you substitute strength for dex to AC, but I don't think I'd allow heavy armor to let you add constitution. Makes less sense, and... with BAB adding to AC, suddenly that +8 from full plate gets very good.

Eldan
2012-10-02, 07:39 PM
True. Anyway dex for light weapons needs to be in.

Now. I'd still like to drop at least one modifier from armour, especially if we also add BAB to it.


Now, for the mathematics.
Base chance: 55%
Per level difference: 10%, or +2
Over 20 levels: 200 %, or +40
Five modifiers to everything.

Therefore, modifiers should go from +1 to +8, over 20 levels. Correct?

Kane0
2012-10-02, 10:18 PM
D&D next's Advantage and Disadvantage is a cool, simple and fun mechanic.

Just throwing that out there.

Amechra
2012-10-02, 10:46 PM
True. Anyway dex for light weapons needs to be in.

Now. I'd still like to drop at least one modifier from armour, especially if we also add BAB to it.


Now, for the mathematics.
Base chance: 55%
Per level difference: 10%, or +2
Over 20 levels: 200 %, or +40
Five modifiers to everything.

Therefore, modifiers should go from +1 to +8, over 20 levels. Correct?

Looks about right.

You can muddle with the numbers themselves later. Think about whether or not you want to have rerolls and other dice tricks as basic mechanics, you know, before you start with the next phase of development.

(Muddle means toying with the numbers to make it less obvious that everything is scaling at the same exact rate, pretty much.)

tarkisflux
2012-10-03, 02:28 AM
Now, for the mathematics.
Base chance: 55%
Per level difference: 10%, or +2
Over 20 levels: 200 %, or +40
Five modifiers to everything.

Therefore, modifiers should go from +1 to +8, over 20 levels. Correct?

It sort of looks like level based advancement is one of those five +1 to +8 things. And like you need to carry around 4 other bonus sources for every number that is supposed to follow that growth patter. Which looks weird, but I might just not understand what you're getting at with the "five modifiers to everything" bit.

I think you might be getting a bit ahead of yourself. It is probably better to talk about what you want the math to do first, and then sort the numbers later. General statements are probably best for this, things like "A character has a 55% chance of succeeding with their primary shtick against a good defense of an equal level foe, when the foe has not invested resources in improving that defense" and "A character has a 65% chance of succeeding with their primary shtick against a good defense of a foe 1 level lower, when the foe has not invested resources in improving that defense". You will probably need a lot of statements like that, including maximum allowed success and failure chances, odds when using a non-shtick, general odds when attacking a moderate or bad defense, etc. These statements inform your growth charts, how you want bonuses to stack (or how many of them you want at all), etc. And once you know what you want the numbers to look like you can worry about where they're coming from.

Eldan
2012-10-06, 08:42 AM
Right, I can see that.

Incidentally, we have one problem if we want to keep chances the same over levels: some of the basics don't scale linearly.

What I mean with this: a fighter's base attack grows twice as fast as a wizards. If the fighter has a 50% chance at level 1, the wizard, assuming he has the same strength and so on (rather unrealistic) would have a modifier that is only lower by 1. At level 20, the fighter would have ten points more from base attack alone.

Let me propose one thing, therefore, for now:
We assume three basic categories of characters. The specialist, the generalist, and the non-proficient. For any given category. The specialist use a large amount of his resources (class features, feats, items, skill points, spells, buffs from others) to be as good at this as he possibly can. The generalist likes being good at this, but he tries to be as good or better in other things and won't expend as many permanently invested resources on this. The generalist largely ignores this. He won't try to be good at it and, likely, won't even get much better at it as he levels.

Hitting an opponent in melee:
The fighter is a specialist. He buys magic weapons, increases his strength, he wants buffs, and he uses feats and abilities for being better at hitting. The bard is the generalist. He has a rapier, he buffs himself with his songs, he might even have a feat or a spell buff or two for this, but he primarily puts resources in his music and social skills. The wizard is non-proficient. His base attack bonus barely grows over level, he has a low strength, he won't buy magic weapons unless he likes some of the enchantments.

Magic:
The wizard is a specialist. It's what he does. He buys spells, spell books, rings of wizardry, he increases his caster level and learns metamagic fetas. The ranger is a generalist. His caster level is lower and he'll rarely get metamagic feats or similar things. The fighter is non-proficient. He doesn't get any spells.

So, that allows us to do one thing: ignore the non-proficient characters in scaling. Why? Because sometimes a player just doesn't care about some thing. If the wizard never learns to open locks, he should not get better at it as he levels. He has a rogue for that. It makes scaling a lot easier.

This extends to other areas. Some things everyone wants to have: saves. AC. So, here, everyone is at least a generalist. It gives us something to aim for with the scaling.

tarkisflux
2012-10-06, 11:54 AM
The decision whether to have multiple divergent progressions (3.x BAB / saves) like you suggested or to have a single progression (4e) is a pretty big one. It's why I used "succeeding with their primary shtick" in my examples rather than something more absolute, because you can really go either way. I happen to agree that the 3.x math is more interesting than the 4e math, though I imagine that's not particularly relevant to your game :smallsmile:.

Anyway, here's another set of questions that may be helpful:

"What is the maximum acceptable success chance for a specialist? What is the minimum? Is there an unacceptable difference in success values between two specialists of the same level? Do these values change with level?"

"What is the maximum acceptable success chance for a generalist character against a specialist? What is the minimum? Do these values change with level?"

"What is the maximum acceptable success chance for a non-proficient character against a specialist? What is the minimum? Do these values change with level?"

"Do specialists require gear to keep up with their expected success chances? If 'yes', is it ok if lack of gear/feats/attributes pushes a specialist below minimum success levels? If 'no', is it ok if gear/feats/attributes pushes a specialist above maximum success levels?"

These questions along with the ones above should help you determine how you want the numbers to scale and what role gear/feats/attributes should play in them. There are answers to these questions that mean you will want gear to play a rather different role than it does in 3.x, which I toyed with in my skills work, and there are answers here that mean you want items to be really similar to 3.x. Neither is really better or worse than the other, they just mean different emergent behaviors for players and characters in the game.

Eldan
2012-10-06, 12:52 PM
Yes, the problem is that between specialists and dabbling generalists, the numbers grow wider apart as the levels grow. I.e. saves growing at 1/2 level and 1/3 level, BAB.

I'm absolutely fine with having no minimum/maximum numbers for non-proficients. If you never put a point into Open Lock, you will never open a high level lock, no matter how high your own level.

To go further with the questions:

"What is the maximum acceptable success chance for a specialist? What is the minimum? Is there an unacceptable difference in success values between two specialists of the same level? Do these values change with level?"

I'd say the overall chances should stay the same, for level-appropriate challenges, for an expected level of resource-sinking. Now, there should be no maximum success chance in case you encounter something below your level: the level 20 acrobat shouldn't normally fail when trying to climb a tree, and in such a case I'm fine with a 100% chance.

"What is the maximum acceptable success chance for a generalist character against a specialist? What is the minimum? Do these values change with level?"

Enough that the difference between the two is noticeable at least. What that means I'll leave to people who can do mathematics.

"What is the maximum acceptable success chance for a non-proficient character against a specialist? What is the minimum? Do these values change with level?"

I think that's an important one. Things like 4E's automatic scaling of all values annoyed me. Fighter don't get automatically better at deciphering ancient writing just because they are higher level. Non-proficients should have very low success chances against specialists at high levels. Even against generalists. Not quite 0, probably, but now.

"Do specialists require gear to keep up with their expected success chances? If 'yes', is it ok if lack of gear/feats/attributes pushes a specialist below minimum success levels? If 'no', is it ok if gear/feats/attributes pushes a specialist above maximum success levels?"

I'd like to keep numerical boni from gear low. Maybe a +1/+2 from masterwork or magical gear, but not too much, and it should not be required. In fact, I'd like to keep purely numerical gear mostly out of the game. Feats too: they should give new abilities, not higher numbers.

Eldan
2012-10-08, 08:39 PM
So, no one's posting anymore? Not good, people.

If I can make a suggestion: Charlie and I talked about it on Skype.

Should we have different progressions?
Imagine the bard and the fighter. One has a 3/4 level BAB progression, the other a 1/1 level BAB progression.

At level 1, they are similar in combat. The fighter has one point of base attack more. A 5% chance to hit.

At level 20, the fighter is five points ahead. 25%. T

That means the medium progression is falling behind as levels go up. Characters start more or less the same, but the differences increase with level.

My counter-suggestion is that we only do two progressions: a totally non-proficient one and a good one. Then, the now High BAB classes start with a good-sized bonus to their number that doesn't grow with level. If we eliminate a lot of the small bonuses, that should more or less work.

So, at level one, the fighter would already start with +5 to attack, while hte bard would have +1. At level 20, the fighter would have +24, while the bard would have +20. Same difference, their chances to hit stay the same.

Tvtyrant
2012-10-08, 08:54 PM
So, no one's posting anymore? Not good, people.

If I can make a suggestion: Charlie and I talked about it on Skype.

Should we have different progressions?
Imagine the bard and the fighter. One has a 3/4 level BAB progression, the other a 1/1 level BAB progression.

At level 1, they are similar in combat. The fighter has one point of base attack more. A 5% chance to hit.

At level 20, the fighter is five points ahead. 25%. T

That means the medium progression is falling behind as levels go up. Characters start more or less the same, but the differences increase with level.

My counter-suggestion is that we only do two progressions: a totally non-proficient one and a good one. Then, the now High BAB classes start with a good-sized bonus to their number that doesn't grow with level. If we eliminate a lot of the small bonuses, that should more or less work.

So, at level one, the fighter would already start with +5 to attack, while hte bard would have +1. At level 20, the fighter would have +24, while the bard would have +20. Same difference, their chances to hit stay the same.
Wouldn't this remove any reason to stay in a high BaB class? Unless we huck out multiclassing it just makes the fighter types wonderful 1st level dips.

Eldan
2012-10-08, 09:08 PM
Class features. They should have class features. :smallwink:

Eldan
2012-10-09, 02:32 PM
I talked with Grod a bit on Skype. The question is this:

Do the numbers in D&D basically work? If we reign them in a bit, clean up a few details, are they okay? Do we need to change save progressions and BAB? Charlie thinks no, I'm not quite sure. But if we also sorted out spells, would it be fine?

If yes, we could probably go start on classes.

Tvtyrant
2012-10-09, 03:13 PM
I talked with Grod a bit on Skype. The question is this:

Do the numbers in D&D basically work? If we reign them in a bit, clean up a few details, are they okay? Do we need to change save progressions and BAB? Charlie thinks no, I'm not quite sure. But if we also sorted out spells, would it be fine?

If yes, we could probably go start on classes.

I don't know honestly. 3.5 doesn't really map well over time, since offense progresses so much faster than defense. Take an Ubercharger and compare it to the highest HP or AC builds: The ubercharger gets thousands of damage while AC caps at about 75 and HP caps in the mid hundreds.

Eldan
2012-10-09, 03:17 PM
That one, however, was already suggested: AC scaling with BAB. And damage would probably also be a bit more regulated.

PairO'Dice Lost
2012-10-09, 03:20 PM
I don't know honestly. 3.5 doesn't really map well over time, since offense progresses so much faster than defense. Take an Ubercharger and compare it to the highest HP or AC builds: The ubercharger gets thousands of damage while AC caps at about 75 and HP caps in the mid hundreds.

The extreme-damage problem is really due to damage multipliers; the ubercharger uses PA multipliers, crit fishers use crit-multiplier increases, shadowpouncers use tons of attacks, the mailman uses Twin and Empower Spell, etc. Rein those in and damage becomes more manageable.

As for the d20 rolls, I'd say those do "basically work." Until you start adding three stats to saves or cast a spell for +30 to a skill or turning attack rolls into touch attacks, the progression as-is actually works fairly well. AC is too low, but that's mostly because the original idea was to have it protect against iterative attacks rather than primary ones, and adding BAB to AC as was suggested and making shields better should help with that too.

Eldan
2012-10-09, 03:29 PM
Okay. In that case, I'll go 'round and gather what we talked about, then we can start building on the basics we laid down.

tarkisflux
2012-10-09, 04:46 PM
I talked with Grod a bit on Skype. The question is this:

Do the numbers in D&D basically work? If we reign them in a bit, clean up a few details, are they okay? Do we need to change save progressions and BAB? Charlie thinks no, I'm not quite sure. But if we also sorted out spells, would it be fine?

If yes, we could probably go start on classes.

Do they basically work? Sort of. Saves either outpace spell DC growth or underpace it (depending on progression), before spellcasters start with attribute boosts and DC boosters. At that point you need gear / feats / weird multiclassing to keep up, which is fine if you want a mandatory gear game. BAB is similar, since it grows faster than AC and requires people to pick up lots of tiny boosters to have a relevant AC (and is entirely secondary to miss chance). Again, that sort of thing is fine if you want a mandatory gear game. Skills are probably similar, but it barely matters outside of opposed checks or a few edge cases.

If you didn't want a mandatory gear, then they certainly could work better. BAB to AC (or in place of armor bonuses) is a step in the right direction if you want AC to keep up and not worry as much about gear. Save gear's need is tied to the ease with which casters can boost their save DCs. I'd suggest dealing with uncapped attribute growth rather than feats on that end, since feats are a sufficiently limited resource that spending them on minor non-stacking boosts might be ok. Skills can just lose skill spells and skill gear (or skill gear can not grant a bonus higher than your level and not stack with ranks) if you wanted to get away from people with gear being unbeatable by people without.

As for more substantial changes to the numbers, I would suggest that it is a good thing in this case. While multiple different tracks for different parts can work, it's more things to remember and makes any interaction with other systems more difficult. If you wanted to make an ability that let you use a skill check in place of an attack roll or save, then having those on the same basic 1-20 scale is helpful and eliminates the need for weird additional numbers to bring the scales into line. It means changing the way spell DCs scale as well, but given the other magic changes that seems like an opportunity anyway.

toapat
2012-10-09, 06:44 PM
Do the numbers in D&D basically work?

i would say we have to decide which numbers worked. Half of 3.5 didnt work, the other half worked too well. Take a side and build the other up.

personally, i say throw out all the original math, and start from scratch. Save Progression+AC would i say be the baseline from where we should start.

Eldan
2012-10-09, 07:48 PM
Well, in that case, I'd appreciate it if someone other than me actually, you know, contributed to the math discussion. I have put up a few tables and numbers, now it would be nice if someone told me if that's actually total bull****, and brings in their own ideas. Because I have no idea what I'm doing here, with the numbers.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-09, 08:11 PM
Do they basically work? Sort of. Saves either outpace spell DC growth or underpace it (depending on progression), before spellcasters start with attribute boosts and DC boosters. At that point you need gear / feats / weird multiclassing to keep up, which is fine if you want a mandatory gear game.
Mmm. Let's add in a medium progression that tracks with save DCs exactly before gear?


BAB is similar, since it grows faster than AC and requires people to pick up lots of tiny boosters to have a relevant AC (and is entirely secondary to miss chance). Again, that sort of thing is fine if you want a mandatory gear game. Skills are probably similar, but it barely matters outside of opposed checks or a few edge cases.

If you didn't want a mandatory gear, then they certainly could work better. BAB to AC (or in place of armor bonuses) is a step in the right direction if you want AC to keep up and not worry as much about gear.
That's why we added it. (See the combat thread)


As for more substantial changes to the numbers, I would suggest that it is a good thing in this case. While multiple different tracks for different parts can work, it's more things to remember and makes any interaction with other systems more difficult. If you wanted to make an ability that let you use a skill check in place of an attack roll or save, then having those on the same basic 1-20 scale is helpful and eliminates the need for weird additional numbers to bring the scales into line. It means changing the way spell DCs scale as well, but given the other magic changes that seems like an opportunity anyway.

As it stands, 3.5 has two real progressions: approximately with level (BAB, skills), and approximately with 1/2 level (saves, DCs). I wouldn't mind kicking the latter two up to the full level-based scaling, to be honest. It seems simplest.

toapat
2012-10-09, 08:30 PM
Well, in that case, I'd appreciate it if someone other than me actually, you know, contributed to the math discussion. I have put up a few tables and numbers, now it would be nice if someone told me if that's actually total bull****, and brings in their own ideas. Because I have no idea what I'm doing here, with the numbers.

my only real contribution to the math discussion is probably in the 3.U threads that Kane0 made:

Basically, materials and quality of weapon can change the number of dice rolled by a weapon before multiplier.

On a critical roll for a longsword, your damage dice are maximized, then multiplied by 2, for a damage of 16. If we take a Greensteel (DDO Greensteel, not Arms and Equipment's Baatorian Green Steel), it gets an inherent 1.5x multiplier to base weapon die, making a Greensteel Longsword deal 24 damage on hit.

Seerow
2012-10-09, 09:13 PM
On reworking the core math:

Right from the start you need to consider what kind of attributes characters are going to have across all levels. They apply to the base math too much to ignore it. It also helps a lot if you separate the stat boosts from items.

The attribute spread is important because it is probably the single biggest thing that causes the deviation in saving throws vs save DCs, which is going to be a big hurdle to overcome. With saves as they are in 3.5, all save DCs scale at +1/2 level + highest attribute. Almost nobody uses abilities that key off of a non-primary attribute. On the other hand, to have a saving throw scale at the same rate, you need the luck to have both a good save and a primary stat keying to that save. Otherwise, you rely on the random +2 bonuses from multiclassing a lot, and/or items/spells to bring your saves up to compete with DCs. In general however, the result is getting higher level makes an average save harder to pass.

There's two ways you can handle this. Either boost up save progressions dramatically. At minimum take the bonus from cloaks, and make it a part of the core math. Making bad saves +11 or 12, and good saves +17 or 18. Possibly also consider narrowing the gap between good and bad, maybe only a 3 point difference at 20 instead of 6. The plus side is it takes the least tweaking. The downside is, it leaves a huge variance based on attributes, and if you have a good save + good attribute, you'll be practically untouchable.

The other way is keeping the progression as is, but making sure a good stat is always applied to the save. For example my preferred method is using Physical/Mental saves, where you apply your highest physical attribute to one save, and your highest mental to the other. Then you simply design classes such that their secondary is of the type their primary is not (for example a Fighter with an Int secondary, or a Wizard with a Dex secondary), and you can be reasonably sure that saves are always going to hover around good, and keep up much better with DCs.



AC/Attack bonus is broken, but there's been more discussion on how to fix that already. Applying BAB to AC is a good starting point. The nice thing about armor is that it acts as an equalizer, allowing characters without the primary attribute applying to it (usually dex) to maintain parity in AC (As an aside, that's a third way to fix saves: An extremely cheap and common magic item that provides bonuses to all saves dependent on what the attribute is, to bring them up to an expected equilibrium point. I'd imagine it being something like the guilders from the Kingkiller Chronicals). Honestly once you get a nice starting point, balancing AC isn't too difficult. The important part here is figuring out how often you want primary and secondary attacks to hit for both Specialist characters and Generalist characters, and pick AC values that work with that range. Personally I prefer balance around primaries hitting around 6-8 and secondaries hitting around 11-13.


Skills are similarly all sorts of messed up, but mostly due to class/spell/magic item design which makes arbitrarily large skill bonuses very easy to accrue. Personally I have yet to find an edition of D&D with a skill system I really liked, and would like to see more radical change in this area particularly, but even if you stick close to 3.5, you need to reign in a lot of the random bonuses and figure out what you want skills to do, and when.

PairO'Dice Lost
2012-10-09, 09:34 PM
The attribute spread is important because it is probably the single biggest thing that causes the deviation in saving throws vs save DCs, which is going to be a big hurdle to overcome. With saves as they are in 3.5, all save DCs scale at +1/2 level + highest attribute. Almost nobody uses abilities that key off of a non-primary attribute. On the other hand, to have a saving throw scale at the same rate, you need the luck to have both a good save and a primary stat keying to that save.

There are two other approaches I can think of besides changing save bonuses or stats added. The first would be changing spell DCs instead of save bonuses, from 10 + spell level + stat to 5 + spell level + stat (probably too much at low levels), or to 10 + spell level/2 + stat, or whatever. That effectively gives everyone up to +5 to saves against spells, but without requiring people to know whether or not they're saving against a spell when making a save and without mucking around with save math relative to other effects.

The other would be making all casters MAD with respect to DC stats; I like Int for bonus spells and max spell castable for arcane and Wis for the same for divine with Cha being the save stat for both, since even sorcerers should need to have a head for magic and Cha governs the oomph someone can put into spells, but you could always go for something different or do it on a class-by-class basis.

toapat
2012-10-09, 09:35 PM
While this is mostly personal opinion, i think the 6-Attribute spread is a more harmful then beneficial thing. sure, it gives us a better idea of what our character is (such as the Field general who can come up with counters to every maneuver ever, but would be better off letting a lemming pick which of those is suited to the current battle).

but, a transparency between Int-Wis-Cha would help alot in terms of balancing, as it could allow us to keep that depthy basic creation, but to lower total Attributes any one character needs to 4.

as a result though, we should have the lowest number of skills/level be 4, and have the number be unaffected by attributes.

Also would require a consolidation of skills to be more along the lines of My post here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13343551&postcount=8)

PairO'Dice Lost
2012-10-09, 09:46 PM
I'd say that goes beyond just rewriting 3e into a pretty drastic revision. The six stats are just as iconic as the core mechanic, Vancian casting, and such; you can tweak all of those quite a bit (change the base DC formulation, change spell preparation, etc.) but flat-out removing two stats would be going a bit far.

And even if you did do that, why condense all the mental stats into one and leave the stats lopsided GURPS-style, instead of doing something like folding Str into Con and Wis into Cha?

tarkisflux
2012-10-09, 09:49 PM
Well, in that case, I'd appreciate it if someone other than me actually, you know, contributed to the math discussion. I have put up a few tables and numbers, now it would be nice if someone told me if that's actually total bull****, and brings in their own ideas. Because I have no idea what I'm doing here, with the numbers.

I'm actually trying to do that, despite the the fact that I probably won't play the system when it's made. I like the high level design side of things, a lot, so I'm happy to try to contribute to your stuff here (and hopefully I am contributing and not just distracting).

But I don't know what people want and no one is asking the high level design questions that form the goals for your numbers. There has been discussion about fixing things, but it's honestly not clear which parts of the system are considered problematic or for what reasons, so I don't know which solutions would be acceptable and which would be tossed without further thought. I don't even know if you want multiple divergent progressions, a single progression with different starting bonuses, or multiple convergent progressions, over the various levels and at least two of those have been floated. Any of those are ultimately workable (despite 4e's IMO poor showing with with the single progression), and without a guiding set of design decisions or a clearly communicated set of problems to fix you're just throwing different sets of potentially applicable numbers around. There are no wrong answers at this point because there's no defined goal to reach. It is extremely hard to talk about writing numbers under those circumstances.

But after that, the questions of bonus stacking and the role of gear and feats and attribute bonuses haven't even been touched. You are assuming that people know what is supposed to happen with the math, when it is probably non-obvious even to other people in the project.

In short, until someone comes in and says what the goals are and lays down some "these are the super basic aspects of the system, and everything needs to work with or support them", it's going to be hard to get much done on the math front.

In an attempt to get someone else to answer some questions so that goals can start to be met, here are yet more of them.

I will assume that attributes are in the same fashion, and they add on to your class based numeric abilities. So everything that follows should have a bit Ignoring difference in attributes appended to it. This doesn't preclude some discussion as to the role of attribute boosts in the game, as uncapped attribute boosts are part of the reason casters have such high save DCs (and AC keeps up less well, but that's a smaller concern I think). What Seerow said basically.

Do you start with significantly better numbers in your primary shtick than someone who has it as a tertiary thing, or do you all start in roughly the same place?

As you grow in level, do you get better at your primary shtick relative to people who have it as a secondary or tertiary shtick (ex. you start 5% etter and end 25% better)? Do you stay the same relative to them (ex. you start 15% better and end 15% better)? Or do they get better relative to you (ex. you start 25% better and end 5% better)?

Can you stack gear on yourself to function as if you had the numbers of a higher level character with your primary shtick? Can they make you stronger than your level would otherwise be basically.

Can you stack gear on yourself to function as if a tertiary shtick was a secondary or primary one? Can you use them to patch weaknesses and shortcomings basically.

Can you stack feats on yourself to function as if you had the numbers of a higher level character with your primary shtick?

Can you stack feats on yourself to function as if a tertiary shtick was a secondary or primary one?

I know what my answers to these would be, as well as the growth curve questions from before, but my answers may not be relevant to your game.

----

@Grod

I've seen the Combat thread, and even suggested using armor bonus OR bab, not their sum. You may remember it ;-)

As for saves, you probably need to determine what their role in the game is before you can determine whether an additional track is a good idea or not. With some of the gatekeeper spellcasting check options being floated around, it may make sense to reevaluate their workings entirely. Seerow's comments on them are also appropriate (though he assumes continued attribute boosts to the DCs in his suggestion), assuming you don't have a massive spell style departure and the initial activation check is passed more often than not.

----

@Seerow

In case you didn't notice it in my wall of text above, you got a +1 to your comments.

And if you're looking for a more radical departure from the 3.5 skill paradigm, I offer you the link in my sig if you haven't seen it yet. I don't know that it's what you're looking for, but it's certainly a fairly radical departure.

toapat
2012-10-09, 09:54 PM
I'd say that goes beyond just rewriting 3e into a pretty drastic revision. The six stats are just as iconic as the core mechanic, Vancian casting, and such; you can tweak all of those quite a bit (change the base DC formulation, change spell preparation, etc.) but flat-out removing two stats would be going a bit far.

And even if you did do that, why condense all the mental stats into one and leave the stats lopsided GURPS-style, instead of doing something like folding Str into Con and Wis into Cha?

ok, total transparency isnt what i ment, i meant more along the lines of all of them give a singular, nonstacking bonus to saves, as well as divorcing Skillpoints from Int. Int, Wis, and Cha would still be there, but as RP guidelines, not as "Take int for skills +Wizard power", or "Take Wisdom to get +1 cleric pownage and will saves", as well as "laugh at Charisma, for it sucks". All three attributes improve your social skills IRL.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-09, 10:39 PM
Well, to try to address some of the goals...

A generalist should have a roughly 50% chance of accomplishing a level-appropriate goal-- hitting a dude in melee, picking the lock, and so on. A specialist should have maybe a 60-65% chance, with a poor progression having maybe a 30-40% chance. (1/3, 1/2, 2/3, I guess, would be an easier way to think of it).

All progressions should start in the same range-- maybe a 5-10% difference-- and diverge over time. Not too much, but enough that the difference is marked. I think Eldan disagrees with me here, but the 20-15-10 BAB spread seems to be about the right range to me.

Gear should not be a major factor in any of the math. Feats should allow you to patch weaknesses and add new abilities, but not necessarily to add much linear power.

It would be nice to have everything scale at similar rates.

Does that answer the goal questions?

EDIT: On the subject of secondary attributes and saves, perhaps we could take a page from 4e and allow the best of two stats to each save?

toapat
2012-10-09, 10:44 PM
Does that answer the goal questions?

it sounds pretty good

im still of the opinion that for the purposes of combat, Int-Wis-Cha should be transparent when it comes to saves

Eldan
2012-10-10, 08:40 AM
wOkay, a few points:

On progressions:
I think we should have a more unified progression system, as Grod proposes. I think a low, medium, high progression for everything is a good start. I also still think that starting the high progression at a greater value is a good thing, so that there's more of a difference from level one. Look at saves: good saves start with a +2, and that makes quite a difference. I propose starting low at +0, medium at +1 and high at +2.
Having a general caster level progression, similar to base attack bonus and as proposed in the magic thread is also a good idea. It makes multiclassing between caster and non-caster classes a bit more viable.
Decreasing the variance, as Seerow suggested, between high and low also isn't a bad idea. However, I think leaving a really bad progression for some things (a fighter's caster level, a wizard's base attack bonus) is not a bad idea. I think the medium and high progressions should probably be closer together than 5 points, but having a half-progression for totally untrained people isn't that bad. For absolutely vital things like saves and AC, we simply only use medium and high progression (I could see the one or other exception, say, bad refles saves for oozes).

On attributes:
I think the six attribute spread works well, and it makes a good base for a system. It is also extremely iconic to D&D, even 4E kept it. I also think that making ability increase much shallower over level is a good idea. Drop the +2/+4/+6 items, especially. I think increases from level, race and the occasional buff spell are quite enough. That way, we can keep differences in attribute relatively tight.

Skills:
Drop generic bonuses to these. In fact, see point on bonuses below. Competence items and generic skill bonus spells can die in a fire. In special cases, I could see it, like knock giving an arcane bonus to open lock, or invisibility being an arcade hide bonus, but no generic ones.

Bonuses:
One thing I want here, and only just occured to me now? I don't want any generic bonuses. A monk's AC bonus is competence. A paladin's divine grace is charisma. No nameless bonuses at all, please. If we are worried about bonus stacking, I'd like to propose another thing as well: every class can give one kind of bonus, and only that. Wizards only hand out enhancement bonuses. Bards only morale. Clerics only divine. Fighters give themselves a competence bonus. Druids shapeshift for a racial bonus. That kind of thing. That means that, in a group with four classes, you also only have four kinds of bonus.

Equipment: lower the importance of it. Give the +2 masterwork bonus from good equipment, and beyond that, get rid of most numerical equipment. Make magic items give new abilities, not higher numbers.

MAD: everyone should be mildly MAD, at least. Two abilities minimum, in addition to those you need for saves, HP, etc. Casters? Charisma for Save DC, wisdom for amount of spells per day! Rogues? Dexterity for combat, intelligence for special abilities! Paladins? Strength and Charisma! It's a good thing, I think. We can still let them specialize with class features later.


In summary, let me answer tarkis' questions:
I think the basic aspects should be this:
I want to increase the numerical differences between characters at low levels, and decrease them at high levels. Overall growth should also be slowed. That should be the main goal for the numbers.

Do you start with significantly better numbers in your primary shtick than someone who has it as a tertiary thing, or do you all start in roughly the same place?

Yes, I think. Differences should be there from the start.

As you grow in level, do you get better at your primary shtick relative to people who have it as a secondary or tertiary shtick (ex. you start 5% etter and end 25% better)? Do you stay the same relative to them (ex. you start 15% better and end 15% better)? Or do they get better relative to you (ex. you start 25% better and end 5% better)?

Yes, I think. (I know I said different things earlier, but I changed my mind.) The medium progression should probably be the basic assumption. Other class features grow over level (i.e. a bard starts giving +1 with inspire courage, and ends up giving something like +5 or +6), why shouldn't the Fighter's "I'm better at hitting things" grow?

Can you stack gear on yourself to function as if you had the numbers of a higher level character with your primary shtick? Can they make you stronger than your level would otherwise be basically.

Gear should have less influence. I think a good point someone made was that equipment makes up for shortcomings in attributes and values, not replaces them. Armour is good for characters with low dexterity, to reach parity. It allows the fighter to dump dexterity and buy heavy armour, instead of having to invest in all physical attributes. I think more equipment should work that way. Kill magical numerical bonus items.

Can you stack gear on yourself to function as if a tertiary shtick was a secondary or primary one? Can you use them to patch weaknesses and shortcomings basically.

I think that's not gear's job. That's a thing for feats, buffs and class features. Changing your stick should be the result of character building, not a shopping trip.

Can you stack feats on yourself to function as if you had the numbers of a higher level character with your primary shtick?

Very much no. First of all, I find feats that give higher numbers simply plain boring. Second, if you want to have another class' shtick, take levels in that class, or a prestige class. If people really want it, we could have an "Improve value" feat that lifted you up one scale, from the low to the medium or medium to low in any stat.

Small things that came up:
Armour and BAB to AC: I think they should stack. AC already impacts your maximum dexterity. If it also limits your class bonus, it becomes entirely worthless pretty soon.

toapat
2012-10-10, 09:05 AM
MAD: everyone should be mildly MAD, at least. Two abilities minimum, in addition to those you need for saves, HP, etc. Casters? Charisma for Save DC, wisdom for amount of spells per day! Rogues? Dexterity for combat, intelligence for special abilities! Paladins? Strength and Charisma! It's a good thing, I think. We can still let them specialize with class features later.

doesnt work for pure casters. being specialized in one thing should work, but so long as you can prepare Summon Monster Q so many more times, it doesnt matter what your save DCs are, or if you are throwing around sleeps, it only matters that your first sleep spell puts everyone out.

the best way to limit Casters i would imagine would be to force a Fortitude save with a certain DC (such as your own casting DC + Modifier as result of time spent casting) or be stunned on your next round.

Eldan
2012-10-10, 10:37 AM
One stat for power points or slots, and one for maximum spell level and DCs? That might work.

toapat
2012-10-10, 11:00 AM
One stat for power points or slots, and one for maximum spell level and DCs? That might work.

they tried that sort of with FVS: it didnt work because it just means you are going to build the character to be all Save or Sucks/Save or Dies. Favored Soul was better built as one who throws alot of spells, not a small number of precision application spells.

Now, id be all for that, if it had been shown that it could work, but it doesnt.

its why i feel that for any one given character, you should be able to dump two of the three mental stats without penalizing your will saves because it simply means we narrow the total number of attributes a single classed character could need (IE, no outliers like how paladins have Wisdom casting, or Monks have an ability that non-sensically runs off of charisma (this one might be DDO though))

Having the 3 mental stats be there is good on the RP end, it's the Gameplay/combat end that they should act as 1.

Eldan
2012-10-10, 11:10 AM
Another one: most people in the magic thread seem to be arguing for some kind of spellcasting check. So, one stat to determine how many spells you get, another to determine how often you succeed at casting? Then you can put max spells on one of them and saves on the other.

toapat
2012-10-10, 11:32 AM
Another one: most people in the magic thread seem to be arguing for some kind of spellcasting check. So, one stat to determine how many spells you get, another to determine how often you succeed at casting? Then you can put max spells on one of them and saves on the other.

*Reiteration of why Artificial limitation is not a good thing*

I feel a good action penalty for spellcasting would go a LONG way to balancing out them


I think this got skipped over, but i suggest allowing weapons to get additional weapon dice, like how spells get additional dice.

i have no idea how that would change the math though.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-10, 12:10 PM
On the subject of casters: a little bit of MAD will help. Save-or-suck spells will get less powerful with condition tracks (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=257689), along with a potential boost in saves. Boosting non-casting classes will also help. Addressing the most abusive spells and cutting down on prepared casting (the T1 mechanic) will also help.

And in all honesty, I'd rather leave casters potentially more powerful than force them to use unfun mechanics, like save-or-stun or long casting times. I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but I played a caster in Exalted (which uses long casting times), and it was horrible. Limiting actions does go a long way towards limiting power, but it also limits fun, and, when you get right down to it, this is a game. Fun is always the most important consideration. Keeping classes relatively balanced does tie into fun, yes, and it's an important element of design, but not the key.

On progressions: I disagree with the only-medium-and-high progressions for most things: having weaknesses is not necessarily a bad thing. I dunno about making the good progression equal to medium+X, though. I feel like that'll cause problems somewhere down the line, though I may be wrong.

PairO'Dice Lost
2012-10-10, 12:48 PM
the best way to limit Casters i would imagine would be to force a Fortitude save with a certain DC (such as your own casting DC + Modifier as result of time spent casting) or be stunned on your next round.

As Grod noted, this isn't a fun way to balance casters because it punishes them from using their main class feature. I'm always surprised that people tend to disapprove of crit fumbles for fighter-types but people tend to suggest status effects and other penalties to balance casters. Neither one is a good idea, and for the same reason.

You can't balance casters by leaving them at their current power level and then inflict penalties for casting, steal wizards' spellbooks, micromanage divine casters' spell selection as their god, and so forth. If you do that, then casters who find a way to remove or mitigate the penalties (immunity to stunning, warded spellbooks, using powerful spells in line with their god's portfolio, etc.) are at full power while the ones who don't are at reduced or no power, which leads to the people who want to break a caster getting around the penalties while casual players are hit hardest.


its why i feel that for any one given character, you should be able to dump two of the three mental stats without penalizing your will saves because it simply means we narrow the total number of attributes a single classed character could need (IE, no outliers like how paladins have Wisdom casting, or Monks have an ability that non-sensically runs off of charisma (this one might be DDO though))

Having the 3 mental stats be there is good on the RP end, it's the Gameplay/combat end that they should act as 1.

Again, I think this is a bad idea for many reasons. First of all, Cha is already dumped a lot because classes don't have a use for it; extending that dump-ability to Int and Wis makes things worse, not better. Second, reducing the mental stats to being only RP guides limits the mechanical diversification you can use in creating classes and undermines the desire to make classes MAD. Third, it makes things worse for the martial types, because they'd need all 3 physicals and 1 mental while casters need 1-2 physicals and 1 mental. Fourth, it's inconsistent: you might as well just have one "Body" stat and one "Mind" stat at that point, and if you think that's oversimplifying, well, the same arguments apply to simplifying the mental stats.

tarkisflux
2012-10-10, 01:07 PM
@ Grod

That's pretty clear, except for the gear part. "Not being a significant part of the math" does not necessarily preclude people from getting gear to bring a shtick from tertiary to secondary, or secondary to primary. It does suggest an upper limit on the bonuses that gear can add to a thing (likely +2), and suggests that all gear provides bonuses of the same non-stacking type though. You may need an exception for armor and shields (as they are gear with substantial impact at present), but that can probably be discussed in the combat thread.

@ Eldan

Also clear, and largely compatible with Grod's comments. Since that's the case, I will be throwing numbers at the thread in a bit.

As to Dex bonus to AC and heavy armor parity, I suggest rethinking that part entirely. Dex to AC could be a bonus of the one hand free style, not a thing that everyone gets. And Con or Str to AC could be a bonus of carrying a shield. And so on. If you want people to have different physical builds, there's lot of ways to go about doing it.

And the eventual worthlessness of armor was discussed as a feature in the combat thread, not a bug, because it allowed higher level warriors to run around without armor if they wanted to (or had to due to capture or whatever) without significant drawback. It becomes something that low level characters and those without mid to high level specialist combat training wear to protect themselves from those with mid to high level specialist combat training. Combat specialists might still wear it for a special property or magic bit, but they wouldn't need to. It wasn't made clear in the thread, but such a setup should be paired with a decrease in armor penalty such that it didn't hurt you to put it on if you weren't going to receive a significant benefit. If you make it add to BAB instead of replace it (if lower), then you just have a mandatory armor game. Which is fine if that's what you're going for, it just needs to be clear that that's what you want because it impacts how you tune the numbers from the base math.

On attributes, reducing the available bonuses will tighten things up. You will still see people put all of their points into an attribute or two though, whatever ones they get the most mileage out of. Options for keeping things tighter still involve putting an upper cap on attribute scores, or giving out +1s to all of them when they are gained, not just some of them. The latter option makes higher level characters slightly more stronger than they would otherwise be against lower level characters because they get universally bigger attributes. The attribute cap means that people are forced to increase other things under some circumstances, and also may mean that some buffs are inapplicable to some characters.

On saves, well I really think the need to wait until the spell thread has been sorted. If your spell check has a reasonably high chance of failing, then a save with a reasonably high chance of blocking or reducing your spell on top of that is a really really big spellcaster nerf. So the role of them will probably need to be rethought after that gets sorted, and any work on them now is likely premature. And despite posting a spell check mechanic, I don't think they're necessary in the slightest personally.

@toapat

There's enough spells and spellcasting changes being thrown around that I suspect a MAD caster could be made to work, despite it's previous issues.

And the idea of boosting damage as you grow in level may have gotten lost, but it'll probably come back up sooner or later. It's not tied to the base numbers, but the damage numbers and the length of combat goals. It's step 2 basically.

----

Promised numbers:

Good progression: Starts at +4, grows by 1 per level, ends at +23. Is equivalent to current good bab progression +3.

Moderate progression: Starts at +3, grows by 3 points every 4 levels, ends at +18. Is equivalent to current moderate bab progression +3.

Poor progression: Starts at +2, grows by 1 point every even level, ends at +12. Is equivalent to current poor progression +2.

No progression: Starts at 0. Stays there. You don't use this stuff outside of low level if you can avoid it.

Rolls: d20 + progression value + relevant attribute + misc modifiers Vs. 10 + progression value (or replacement value) + relevant attribute + misc modifiers.

These are not very different from the core 3.5 numbers, but that's what you've said you want basically. They will keep people with the same progression within the variance of their attributes + misc modifiers however. And that has a lot of implications for misc bonus design. For example, if you can grab a +2 gear bonus and a +3 bonus from something else, and you suddenly have a character performing at or near the next highest progression. If characters with the good progression can do this, expect them to and to over specialize in stuff (like people do now). If characters with the good progression can't do this, then they are likely going to patch other holes and weaknesses.

The bigger the bonus totals due to stacking, the more likely people are to over specialize in my experience. If bonuses don't stack at all then you get people who spread things around a lot more, boosting their primary stuff and patching holes as their resources allow.

Eldan
2012-10-10, 01:14 PM
And the eventual worthlessness of armor was discussed as a feature in the combat thread, not a bug, because it allowed higher level warriors to run around without armor if they wanted to (or had to due to capture or whatever) without significant drawback. It becomes something that low level characters and those without mid to high level specialist combat training wear to protect themselves from those with mid to high level specialist combat training. Combat specialists might still wear it for a special property or magic bit, but they wouldn't need to. It wasn't made clear in the thread, but such a setup should be paired with a decrease in armor penalty such that it didn't hurt you to put it on if you weren't going to receive a significant benefit. If you make it add to BAB instead of replace it (if lower), then you just have a mandatory armor game. Which is fine if that's what you're going for, it just needs to be clear that that's what you want because it impacts how you tune the numbers from the base math.

Still. I think it's rather sad if at high levels, armour becomes a heavier second cloak to enchant with specials and gives little benefit on it's own. There's plenty of archetypes that still wear armour at high levels in many depictions. With that system, even full plate no longer offers a benefit after level 8, and I'd still want, say, a Paladin or Knight to wear full plate into the high levels, even while they fly around on angelic wings or ride golden dragons. That's a flavour choice, sure, but it shouldn't be mechanically useless. "Well, I can either use my BAB to gain +10 to armour, or I can wear heavy armour, get a small penalty, carry a lot of weight, and gain a +8 to armour, oh, the difficulty."


On attributes, reducing the available bonuses will tighten things up. You will still see people put all of their points into an attribute or two though, whatever ones they get the most mileage out of. Options for keeping things tighter still involve putting an upper cap on attribute scores, or giving out +1s to all of them when they are gained, not just some of them. The latter option makes higher level characters slightly more stronger than they would otherwise be against lower level characters because they get universally bigger attributes. The attribute cap means that people are forced to increase other things under some circumstances, and also may mean that some buffs are inapplicable to some characters.

A suggestion. Based on something I've read earlier, though I don't know where it comes from:
You can increase your attribute normally, to the maximum starting attribute for your race (or maybe that +2 or something). Above that, you get into something we could call "Heroic" or "Extraordinary" or "Epic" or whatever attributes. They are much harder to get (a feat, maybe, or only certain class abilities, templates, etc.).

Of course, from what I gather, up to second edition stats were capped at 25, so that might be a thing too.

Seerow
2012-10-10, 01:15 PM
Again, I think this is a bad idea for many reasons. First of all, Cha is already dumped a lot because classes don't have a use for it; extending that dump-ability to Int and Wis makes things worse, not better. Second, reducing the mental stats to being only RP guides limits the mechanical diversification you can use in creating classes and undermines the desire to make classes MAD. Third, it makes things worse for the martial types, because they'd need all 3 physicals and 1 mental while casters need 1-2 physicals and 1 mental. Fourth, it's inconsistent: you might as well just have one "Body" stat and one "Mind" stat at that point, and if you think that's oversimplifying, well, the same arguments apply to simplifying the mental stats.


My preference is for keeping 6 attributes, but having only Physical Save and Mental save, combined with a class design that has everyone want one physical and one mental stat for their class features/abilities. Still have individual stats tied to other things, but major RNG bonuses should be mostly based upon your highest attributes.

The reason is that it's flat out impossible to balance the RNG meaningfully if one guy can be adding +12 from his stat while another guy is adding only +2. (I mean it could theoretically be done, but it would mean removing every other possible bonus or penalty and only using attributes, kind of like what 5e is doing except without capping stats at 20(+5). I personally find this unsatisfying). For example, you can balance a dex based class if he doesn't get his dexterity to damage like a strength character does. It is much harder to deal with if he doesn't get his dexterity bonus to hit. This is why I liked the Legend solution of just having every class predesignate the attribute they use for their hit bonus/save DCs. It's basically what everyone did already, but it formalizes it and gets rid of the taxes needed to get basic functionality. You could possibly take this all the way, as you mention, having the best mental attribute apply as not just your mental save stat, but also your magical ability DC/Attack stat. Same for physical ability/physical attacks. The dex based character automatically uses Dexterity for hit and physical saves, the str based character automatically uses str for those things.


But anyway, the argument for continuing to separate the 6 primary attributes despite the consolidation mentioned would be to differentiate skills and perks for each attribute. The trick is finding a set of perks that each attribute offers something unique, potentially interesting, and distinct. Often I find the biggest issue comes from Dexterity/Con. Dexterity covers too much space, while con covers both too much and too little at the same time. Constitution improves HP, which is vitally important. But outside of that, it does very little. No real skills, no general active use abilities it adds to. It's a very passive attribute. On the other hand, dexterity covers far too much ground, providing boosts to a large number of skills and also many key combat checks. Personally I favor rolling constitution and strength together into Body, while splitting Dex up, creating a new Reaction attribute, to help spread skills and perks around a bit. But I have no idea if people think that's too radical a departure to roll with or not.

Eldan
2012-10-10, 01:24 PM
Oh, and for bonuses, I point back to my earlier post, that idea seems to have gotten lost a bit:

Let every class only ever get one kind of bonus, and remove items that give bonuses entirely. Bards only ever give morale, wizards only ever arcane, clerics only ever divine. Cap these bonuses by level, say, +1, and another +1 every four levels or so. Not explicitly spelt out, just in how the spells and abilities work out. Assume a four character party where everyone has some ways of buffing something, and bang, you have more or less controlled stats.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-10, 01:34 PM
Oh, and for bonuses, I point back to my earlier post, that idea seems to have gotten lost a bit:

Let every class only ever get one kind of bonus, and remove items that give bonuses entirely. Bards only ever give morale, wizards only ever arcane, clerics only ever divine. Cap these bonuses by level, say, +1, and another +1 every four levels or so. Not explicitly spelt out, just in how the spells and abilities work out. Assume a four character party where everyone has some ways of buffing something, and bang, you have more or less controlled stats.

Sounds about right.

I can see splitting Dexterity into Dexterity (hand-eye coordination) and Agility (whole-body coordination). I can see merging Strength and Constitution. I'm just not sure we want to depart that much from 3.5. I much prefer adding different ways to substitute stats. Maybe take a page from 4e, and offer two stat choices per save?

Also, a minor dexterity nerf: with BAB adding to AC, could we maybe take off Dex to AC as a default feature?

tarkisflux
2012-10-10, 01:46 PM
Still. I think it's rather sad if at high levels, armour becomes a heavier second cloak to enchant with specials and gives little benefit on it's own. There's plenty of archetypes that still wear armour at high levels in many depictions. With that system, even full plate no longer offers a benefit after level 8, and I'd still want, say, a Paladin or Knight to wear full plate into the high levels, even while they fly around on angelic wings or ride golden dragons. That's a flavour choice, sure, but it shouldn't be mechanically useless. "Well, I can either use my BAB to gain +10 to armour, or I can wear heavy armour, get a small penalty, carry a lot of weight, and gain a +8 to armour, oh, the difficulty."

I think you missed the parts where I said "you get the greater of you bab or armor bonus" and that "it works best if you reduce the penalty of wearing it while it provides decreasing benefits" (which I also admitted to forgetting in the original suggestion on the combat thread). Under a "greater of two options" setup, wearing a suit of full plate with full penalties is notably worse than wearing nothing and having +4 Dex as soon as you have +4 BAB. That's not cool, so the penalties need to be proportional to the benefit. And that also means that when you're not getting a benefit from wearing it, like when your BAB is greater than the armor bonus, that it doesn't have any penalties at all. So by level 8 your full plate would not provide you with an armor bonus at all, but also not impose an ACP or an ASF or an movement reduction. It's a fluff choice at that point, not a mechanical one.

The alternatives are:

Reduce the base DC value from "10 + stuff" to "5 + stuff" to accommodate the extra expected additional bonuses from armor (which screws light armors slightly)
Reduce the bonus granted by armor sharply (light +1, medium +2, heavy +3; assorted misc benefits for piece differentiation)
Add in weapon attack bonuses between +2 and +5 to deal with the increased values on the other side of the hit equation (because you can't add a relatively large number to one side of the equation without balancing it and expect the odds to remain the same)
Accept somewhat smaller hit chances for fighters fighting each other in armor. Since armor adds around 4 points of defense on average after max dex is applied, this reduces odds to around 1 in 3 instead of 1 in 2. Shields exacerbate this problem.

Pick the flavor you like most (or dislike least), figure out something I missed (which happens), or start from scratch on the math basically.

As for your class bonus thing, those will need to add to attack and defense to not just provide a ridiculous offensive buff. And it has weird implications for groups of enemies as the number of classes present grows. For example, if you were fighting a group of 8 creatures 6 levels lower than you (an EL equal to your individual CR under current math) would have 8 different stacking bonuses that were between 1 and 2 points smaller than yours. At low levels this means that their bonuses will be about equal to yours (you get 4 x +2, they get 8 x +1), and at higher levels they have a bigger one (you get 4 x +5, they get 8 x +4). I don't think the stacking aspect of it will work out well as a result. It also causes a substantial mechanical penalty for groups who don't all pick different classes, and that's not something I agree with on playstyle reasons.

[Edit] Let's ignore the numbers in the armor discussion above. They were written with old BAB in mind, not proposed BAB, and the numbers would look a bit different with proposed BAB. Armor would probably provide a larger benefit under proposed BAB in a "greater of two" bonus setup.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-10, 01:55 PM
Note: the current number is 5 + armor + dex + etc etc. Most of the good armors wind up in the same general armor + dex range, so heavy and light even out there. (I think?)

PairO'Dice Lost
2012-10-10, 01:56 PM
And the eventual worthlessness of armor was discussed as a feature in the combat thread, not a bug, because it allowed higher level warriors to run around without armor if they wanted to (or had to due to capture or whatever) without significant drawback. It becomes something that low level characters and those without mid to high level specialist combat training wear to protect themselves from those with mid to high level specialist combat training. Combat specialists might still wear it for a special property or magic bit, but they wouldn't need to. It wasn't made clear in the thread, but such a setup should be paired with a decrease in armor penalty such that it didn't hurt you to put it on if you weren't going to receive a significant benefit. If you make it add to BAB instead of replace it (if lower), then you just have a mandatory armor game. Which is fine if that's what you're going for, it just needs to be clear that that's what you want because it impacts how you tune the numbers from the base math.

As Eldan said, there are plenty of people who'd want armor at higher levels thematically.

I don't know if you're familiar with Star Wars Saga, but that system does something similar to the best-of-BAB-or-armor approach: you add your heroic level to Reflex defense unless you're wearing armor, in which case you add your armor bonus. So by default armor is good for mooks and bad for mid-to-high level heroes. The Soldier class offers an Armored Defense talent that lets you add the higher of the two, so a high-level soldier can still use an armor's abilities without penalizing Ref, and the Improved Armored Defense talent lets you add half your armor bonus to your character level.

The problem is that, while the mechanic does a very nice job of encouraging the armored stormtroopers/unarmored heroes look, it means anyone who wants to wear armor has to spend two talents for the privilege, which is basically 3 levels of class features. As a consequence, most SWSE groups I know of give at least AD and sometimes IAD to soldiers for free at a certain level, which makes wearing armor not a stupid option at higher levels but puts soldiers right back on the "get the best armor possible" treadmill.

So I think the same would hold for that mechanic in this revision: either you can't get around that and no one wants armor because it tanks their AC, or you can get around that and everyone wants armor because of the special abilities. You'd probably need a more granular system (different AC calculations by armor type or armor-usage class features or something) to get it to work out right.


You can increase your attribute normally, to the maximum starting attribute for your race (or maybe that +2 or something). Above that, you get into something we could call "Heroic" or "Extraordinary" or "Epic" or whatever attributes. They are much harder to get (a feat, maybe, or only certain class abilities, templates, etc.).

Of course, from what I gather, up to second edition stats were capped at 25, so that might be a thing too.

In AD&D stats also cost more to raise. A wish would get you from 12 to 13, or 1/10 of the way from 17 to 18, with proportional costs in between. If you did the same here, then unless the PCs get a bunch of free wishes or something it'll be more beneficial to spread out the stat boosts than to sink it all into their prime requisite.

I also favor either the "+1 to all stats every X levels and no other way to raise them" approach to prevent PCs from having too-lopsided stats at higher levels or the "+1 to your X lowest stats every Y levels" so you automatically boost your weak stats and have to work to boost your strong stats, but some might not like those.


Dexterity covers too much space, while con covers both too much and too little at the same time. Constitution improves HP, which is vitally important. But outside of that, it does very little. No real skills, no general active use abilities it adds to. It's a very passive attribute. On the other hand, dexterity covers far too much ground, providing boosts to a large number of skills and also many key combat checks. Personally I favor rolling constitution and strength together into Body, while splitting Dex up, creating a new Reaction attribute, to help spread skills and perks around a bit. But I have no idea if people think that's too radical a departure to roll with or not.

I don't think Dex needs to be split or Con consolidated to spread the love around, necessarily. I could see moving some of the Dex skills to Int (having nimble fingers is great, but you can't Disable a Device if you don't know how it works), moving initiative to Wis (physical reaction time is good, but you need to have a good mental reaction time to take advantage of it), etc. and giving some of the endurance-type skills to Con (Athletics if you have it, Survival, maybe Swim) along with AC in medium and heavy armors as I suggested before.

Or you could do a best-of-two-stats system for skills and initiative like someone suggested for saves. Disable Device or Engineering is Dex/Int, Athletics is Str/Con, initiative is Dex/Wis, and so on, so smart rogues and nimble rogues can both do their thing well, archers (who usually are either Wis-based or Dex-based) will all have good initiative, etc.

tarkisflux
2012-10-10, 02:12 PM
@Grod - I was working with the math proposed above, not the math in the combat thread (except for the parts where I wasn't in the example to Eldan, because I'm silly). You can do the 5+ thing, but you'd either want to do it everywhere for consistency (workable if the unrolled defense side consistently has extra modifiers that the attack side doesn't) or accept a system where you don't have a unified DC setting mechanic.

@Dice - Possible mechanical reasons for wearing armor that doesn't provide a bonus to not being hit or penalties to assorted things: Magical properties only available on the armor (greater fortification, flight, etc.); Armor bonus is turned into DR as it is replaced by BAB bonus; etc. If you need a mechanical reason to wear heavy armors at level 20, there are lots of ways to get one that don't involve allowing substantial increases in being hit because you didn't have a chance to put it on in the morning and that also don't stretch the expected target DC space.

That said, if people want armor to be mandatory, there are options for that and I have listed them. I admit to it not being my preference and part of the reason I am still attempting to explain and justify the alternative, and I'll drop the matter as it seems to not be what people more invested in the game want. So, another option for math it is.

Eldan
2012-10-10, 02:14 PM
No one is saying that armour should be mandatory. Only that it should still protect you at high levels. Which is what armour does.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-10, 02:19 PM
Personally, I really like armor-as-DR, but I know that Eldan has argued against it as useless. Maybe combine a +1/+2/+3 AC thing with DR? That way, it doesn't throw off the AC math too much and doesn't require a silly base-5 check thing (though I can accept that, ultimately).

I would argue that it's actually more in line with what armor really does-- it doesn't make it harder to hit someone, it makes it harder to hurt them. Otherwise, it makes touch attacks less good.

And, you know... it's going to be effective on lower-level mooks, because you'll have to spread attacks more to be sure of putting them down. It'll be effective against big crowds of low-level mooks, or guys with lots and lots of attacks. (I remember in my last campaign, even DR 5 was enough to make the shapeshifted-into-an-octopus character very sad). You'll be sad if you lose it, but not doomed.

Eldan
2012-10-10, 02:22 PM
Oh, I like armour as DR. It would just have to be DR that scales in some way. Either a DR progression, whihc sounds complicated, or percentage DR; which is apparently to much mathematics for some people.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-10, 02:28 PM
Oh, I like armour as DR. It would just have to be DR that scales in some way. Either a DR progression, whihc sounds complicated, or percentage DR; which is apparently to much mathematics for some people.

It's not hard math, just "requires a calculator to do quickly for a lot of dudes" math. Percentage DR solves some problems, but loses the cool "I can just ignore these attacks" bit of classic DR.

Still, these could work. I'd like to see a more fleshed out example of how they'd work with armor, though, especially scaling.

toapat
2012-10-10, 02:38 PM
@toapat

There's enough spells and spellcasting changes being thrown around that I suspect a MAD caster could be made to work, despite it's previous issues.

And the idea of boosting damage as you grow in level may have gotten lost, but it'll probably come back up sooner or later. It's not tied to the base numbers, but the damage numbers and the length of combat goals. It's step 2 basically.

actually, it is simply how spellcasting works, the only real way to even force casters some semblance of limitation by attributes is by splitting Required Attribute, DCs, and Extra Spells up entirely. and that doesnt work at all because it means that the way you scale (your number of To Hit with spells and your Spell Attack bonus) dont even level with the attribute you need most.

in other words, MAD doesnt solve casters, it just makes them worth less and worthless.

the only real way to nerf them without ruining them is to have spellcasting carry penalties. Yes it is unfun to lose rounds, its still a pretty easy way to force a level of balance between the guy who can throw plasma spheres and the guy who can only stab people

PairO'Dice Lost
2012-10-10, 02:42 PM
the only real way to nerf them without ruining them is to have spellcasting carry penalties. Yes it is unfun to lose rounds, its still a pretty easy way to force a level of balance between the guy who can throw plasma spheres and the guy who can only stab people

The way to nerf them is to fix the spells. A wizard who can cast shapechange but is stunned for a round thereafter is still casting shapechange and making the fighter feel small in the pants. As can be seen with the tier 3 and 4 casters, it's possible to have SAD casters with useful class features and good spell lists that can still play nicely with the martial types.

tarkisflux
2012-10-10, 02:45 PM
No one is saying that armour should be mandatory. Only that it should still protect you at high levels. Which is what armour does.

Yeah, I probably exaggerated or shorthanded the position. What you are actually arguing for with the 'armor always adds to the DC of an attack to hit' you position on top of your other stated math preferences and a 10+ DC setup is more accurately that "armor is an approximately 20-25% reduction from the base 55% chance of you being hit by an enemy of similar progression and level that your enemy cannot easily counter due to the reduction in attack side bonuses". While not mandatory in the sense that you are free to ignore it and can function without it, I do not expect that many people will do so willingly. And that is problematic for keeping expected success chances in the ranges previously indicated. It doesn't work well and something needs to change if you want armor to add to you AC defense over all levels. Hence the suggested math and replaced armor benefit alternatives.

Dienekes
2012-10-10, 02:47 PM
Oh, I like armour as DR. It would just have to be DR that scales in some way. Either a DR progression, whihc sounds complicated, or percentage DR; which is apparently to much mathematics for some people.

I know I'm not really involved in this venture, so sorry if I'm stepping on toes here. But since this is an attempt to basically redo everything you could flatten out how much damage is dealt by attacks and magic so that DR actually is worth it.

Or if that is too against the more epic 3.5 feel, you can do a quick and easy DR progression: Light, Medium, and Heavy armor each having their own progression with each type of armor actually getting different abilities about them to make them useful in different ways.

The other suggestion would be go the SAGA route so that physical damage actually can have other negative consequences (much like the spells condition track that Grod posted) so every bit of damage that can be negated would be useful. Of course this would mean having to scale damage with (to continue the SAGA comparison) Fortitude Saves. Of course this also would mean rolling saves every time someone damages someone else.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-10, 03:42 PM
The other suggestion would be go the SAGA route so that physical damage actually can have other negative consequences (much like the spells condition track that Grod posted) so every bit of damage that can be negated would be useful. Of course this would mean having to scale damage with (to continue the SAGA comparison) Fortitude Saves. Of course this also would mean rolling saves every time someone damages someone else.

I was actually sort of considering a damage track of sorts. Something like:
100%-75% health: fine
74%-50% health: wounded
49%-25% health: badly wounded
24%-1% health: dying on your feet
0% health: enter dying track

Amechra
2012-10-10, 04:18 PM
You know, I designed a 4-step Vulnerability-Normal-Resistant-Immune spread that actually worked pretty well for D&D; Vulnerability adds 50% to the damage you take, Normal is, well, normal, Resistant halves the amount of damage you take, and Immunity outright blocks all damage that you take from that thing.

I also had it auto-scale so that you treated someone as if they were one grade lower for every 4 levels you have higher than them (so a level 17 Sorcerer could blast a Level 13 Fire Elemental and actually deal damage.)

If you want to steal it, go ahead.

Seerow
2012-10-10, 07:29 PM
I can see splitting Dexterity into Dexterity (hand-eye coordination) and Agility (whole-body coordination). I can see merging Strength and Constitution. I'm just not sure we want to depart that much from 3.5. I much prefer adding different ways to substitute stats.

Yeah, it's a relatively big departure, but I feel it's for the best because frankly constitution doesn't add enough to be worth an attribute. Its sole contribution to character concept is how likely you are to not die. While this is important, it is vastly and fundamentally different from all other attributes, which is a big red flag to say it shouldn't exist.


Maybe take a page from 4e, and offer two stat choices per save?


This solution still means on average you have one save that has no bonus at all. And all DCs are still going to be based on the highest stat. So you're looking at as much as a 10 point spread on your RNG before even factoring in divergent progressions or any other bonuses.




I don't think Dex needs to be split or Con consolidated to spread the love around, necessarily. I could see moving some of the Dex skills to Int (having nimble fingers is great, but you can't Disable a Device if you don't know how it works), moving initiative to Wis (physical reaction time is good, but you need to have a good mental reaction time to take advantage of it), etc. and giving some of the endurance-type skills to Con (Athletics if you have it, Survival, maybe Swim) along with AC in medium and heavy armors as I suggested before.

Int already has a large number of skills, and has the perk of granting extra skill points. Offloading dex stuff to int just turns int into the super stat instead.

Wisdom already has several skills, and perception (which I think should be separated from skills personally).

Moving Athletics away from Strength to con then makes it so that strength lacks any skills associated with it. If you add strength and con together, they still generally have fewer associated skills than most other attributes. That's part of the problem. Shifting stuff between them just makes the other one more useless.




Also, a minor dexterity nerf: with BAB adding to AC, could we maybe take off Dex to AC as a default feature?


This doesn't really do much without altering the system further. All it does is take characters with light armor off the RNG (unless you go with the currently standing suggestion of BAB overlaps with armor).

Similarly, all adding con to AC in medium/heavy armor does is skew the RNG such that medium/heavy armor wearers are far ahead of light armor wearers.

The reason Armor sort of works right now is because Armor/Max Dex is designed such that your Armor compensates for any protection your dexterity cannot provide. As it stands, a character with a dex of 10 can have the same AC as a character with a dex of 26, because of how armor works. If this is to be changed, it needs to be done with a reason, and in a way that leavs the RNG somewhat in tact. Right now someone with a dex primary can end up with a +2-3 AC advantage over someone with dex tertiary and mithril full plate. That is probably roughly what should be aimed for.

tarkisflux
2012-10-10, 09:49 PM
Recent comments in the combat thread suggest it's going to be armor + bab. If that's what you want, then this is what you need to do -

Balance these two sets of bonus sums to within whatever probabilistic tolerance you want to hit. If they match given equal levels, progressions, attribute modifiers, and misc modifiers then you have a 55% chance of hitting (assuming 10 + that as the DC setup). For each point that the defender is higher, then you have a 5% less chance on average. For each point that the attacker is higher, then you have a 5% greater chance of hitting.

Anyway, the bonus sums are:

Attacker: bab progression + relevant attribute mod + misc modifiers
Defender: same bab progression + (possibly capped attribute mod + armor bonus) + misc modifiers


I have left shields and masterwork weapon bonuses off, because I imagine you would want those to improve people from the default rather than be expected in it. You can add them back in if that's not the case.

Assuming the misc modifiers are 0 (which isn't unlikely given the feat and gear comments earlier and the explicit removal of masterwork weapons and shields from the math layout), then things reduce to the attacker's relevant attribute mod against the defender's combination of capped attribute mod and armor bonus. Which looks like the defender pulls ahead in general, and hitting targets with similar stat blocks doesn't happen very often.

It also means that iteratives miss pretty much all the time against people in your same progression, and aren't much better against people 1 beneath it.

You can stick a standard penalty on the defense side to mitigate that, it's basically the same as reducing from 10+ to 5+ or something similar. If you were going to have other gear items that added a (possibly capped) attribute value and another defensive one, like amulet 'armor' that added to will saves instead of AC or whatever, then just going with a reduced base would be easy. Given the comments on not letting gear patch holes though, I'm not sure that sort of thing would be workable though.

Otherwise you can play with the misc mods in a different way, revalue armor bonuses, accept the odds (and the implication that at high levels people with a worse BAB track basically hit you only on 20s), or figure out something that I missed.

toapat
2012-10-10, 10:03 PM
*Twitch*

Needz Moar Supercomputer

*Twitch*

Amechra
2012-10-10, 10:07 PM
I suggest that, if you are going the route of letting each class give only one type of bonus... that you give some options to change what type of bonus you give.

Why? For stuff like all-bard parties, or something.

PairO'Dice Lost
2012-10-10, 10:21 PM
I suggest that, if you are going the route of letting each class give only one type of bonus... that you give some options to change what type of bonus you give.

Why? For stuff like all-bard parties, or something.

I think it'd be better to have options for bonus diversification, like DFI to turn +X attack and damage to +Xd6 damage. You don't want a four-bard party stacking +4X attack with different bonus types, you want +X attack, +Y skills, +Z saves, etc.

Eldan
2012-10-11, 09:28 AM
Something like Alternate class features, maybe. Bard class feature called "Tactician", gives competence instead of morale. Preacher cleric, gives morale bonus.

tarkisflux
2012-10-11, 12:40 PM
*Twitch*

Needz Moar Supercomputer

*Twitch*

lol, yeah. Sad thing is that it's actually a rather large simplification. Here's the current 3.5 bonus sums for comparison:
Attacker: bab + strength modifier (+ inherent and enhancement bonuses) + enhancement bonus (or masterwork bonus) + feat bonuses + misc bonuses (including, but not limited to, competence, morale, size, luck, sacred, profane, insight, etc.)
Defender: capped dexterity modifier (maybe + inherent and enhancement bonuses if you have a special armor type or a low dex to start) + armor bonus + shield bonus + armor enhancement bonus + shield enhancement bonus + deflection bonus + natural armor bonus + feat bonuses + misc bonuses (including, but not limited to, competence, morale, size, luck, sacred, profane, insight, etc.)


The upside of that simplification is that it's harder to reach a point where enemies of your level can't hit you or can't miss you, and you can't do the same to them. The downside of that simplification is that you can't fix your numbers as easily if the basic math sucks, like it does in 3.x. Hence laying it out in an attempt to help get it right from the start.

toapat
2012-10-11, 01:49 PM
Something like Alternate class features, maybe. Bard class feature called "Tactician", gives competence instead of morale. Preacher cleric, gives morale bonus.

i think the problem here is you end up creating that problematic preset role thing, that 4E did wrong, by limiting each class to one bonus type.

too much inclass variety though also ends up limiting stuff too though.

obviously Bard is supposed to be entirely Moral bonuses and Circumstance penalties. (Also, Dovahbard would be sweet)

Amechra
2012-10-11, 03:57 PM
Of course, you could also have stuff like Bards enhancing the bonuses granted by other people (stuff like converting any existing +s to damage with an equal number of 1d6s of damage, letting you treat bonuses to AC as if they were armor for the purpose of Armor as DR, and so on and so forth.)

Grod_The_Giant
2012-10-11, 06:57 PM
Otherwise you can play with the misc mods in a different way, revalue armor bonuses, accept the odds (and the implication that at high levels people with a worse BAB track basically hit you only on 20s), or figure out something that I missed.

Reducing armor values isn't a bad idea-- I kind of like the idea of having only a single stat block for light, medium, and heavy armor, since as-is there's practically no reason not to wear a chain shirt/breastplate/full plate, depending on your level of proficiency. Maybe something like:

Light Armor: +1 AC, +4 max Dex
Medium Armor: +3 AC, +2 max Dex
Heavy Armor: +4 AC, +1 max Dex

Or, if we want to have a bit more variety,

Light Armor
Leather: +1 AC, +4 max Dex
Chain Shirt: +2 AC, +3 max Dex

Medium Armor
Chainmail/Hide: +3 AC, +2 max Dex
Breastplate: +4 AC, +1 max Dex

Heavy Armor
Platemail: +5 AC, +0 max Dex

That caps the armor-dex bonus at +5. With another +1 or +2 for a shield, that gives us a 7-point advantage over an attacker, if BAB and relevant attributes are even.

If we lower the AC base to 5, the armor bonus basically becomes moot, which shields suddenly being an important factor. If we leave it as-is, you'd need a 17 to hit an armor-and-shield foe, which is probably too high. A 12 to hit the same foe is more acceptable.

On the other hand, the -5 base AC/+5 armor bonus does make armor seem kind of... I dunno, useless, when you look at the math. Especially compared to just having a +5 Dex. If we go this way-- and it does seem like the best option-- I'd like to add DR of some sort, based on the heaviness of your armor. Maybe:

Light: 5% DR, or DR 1/-
Medium: 10% DR, or DR 2/-
Heavy: 25% DR, or DR 5/-

This way, heavier armor becomes a tradeoff of low-Dex-and-DR against ACP-and-weight. Shields remain useful, being a tiebreaker of sorts.

Thoughts?

tarkisflux
2012-10-11, 08:35 PM
All of your (capped dex mod + armor bonus) armor bits only go up to +5. If you can get a larger dex mod than that, that person is going to be harder to hit than anyone in armor. If that's intentional or acceptable, you're all set. If not intentional, consider capping attributes at +5 or scaling armor back up a bit.

The capped armor will also run into people with strength (or dex in relevant cases) of higher than +5 hitting since the defense side can't do anything to really counter that. Again, nothing to worry about if that's intentional or acceptable. It has the same solutions as the dex mod defense concern if you're worried about it.