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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    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?
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    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?
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    D&D next's Advantage and Disadvantage is a cool, simple and fun mechanic.

    Just throwing that out there.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    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.)
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    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 .

    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.
    Last edited by tarkisflux; 2012-10-06 at 11:56 AM.
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    I prefer higher powered games, do not consider magic to be "special", and want non-casters to have similar levels of utility. If you haven't clearly said what your balance goals are, my suggestions generally reflect that. I'm pretty good with other balance points too though, so if I'm offering OP advice, let me know and I'll fix that.

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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    Class features. They should have class features.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    That one, however, was already suggested: AC scaling with BAB. And damage would probably also be a bit more regulated.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by Tvtyrant View Post
    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by tarkisflux View Post
    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by Seerow View Post
    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    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
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    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?
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    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.

    ----

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    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.
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    Default Re: Gaols and Giants - The Playground rewrites third Edition

    Quote Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost View Post
    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.
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