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Thread: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
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2012-11-29, 07:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-29, 07:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-29, 10:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
I'm of the opinion that casters need to be significantly less powerful than they were in 3rd edition, or they need to have more of a drawback to using their most powerful spells than, "oh, no, I just used up one of my highest spells slots, which I'll get back tomorrow and used up several gold worth of spell components which I won't miss because I'm rolling in moolah." Magic should be either safe or powerful, but not both, at least not for the same spell.
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2012-11-29, 10:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Agreed; bringing casters back to their 2e incarnations and the drawbacks surrounding them (less reliable casting, more resistible spells, smaller spell selections, slower power growth, etc.) while boosting noncasters to superheroic/mythic heights at high levels would be the best approach. If on a relative scale of 1 to 10 the AD&D power scale is noncasters 4, casters 8 and the 3e power scale is noncasters 2, casters 10, I'd like to see all the classes brought to the 7-8 range.
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2012-11-29, 11:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Conan takes down wizards, a lot. Batman regularly keeps pace with Superman (admittedly not the same as fighter/wizard but the dynamic of normal to superpowers is there). Logan Ninefingers keeps pace with Bayaz rather well in The First Law.
Batman I would say falls under the man relying on "magical" gadgets, where in this case the magic is of the "sufficiently advanced technology" kind. Take away Batman's bat belt (and kryptonite plunger ) and all you have is a rich guy who can punch.
I can't speak for The First Law as I have not read.
The whole reason the game mechanics include "Levels" is so that Level -- NOT Level AND Class -- can be a reference for a character's overall level of power. (2e workaround -- where XP, rather than Level, was actually the number that characterized power -- notwithstanding. That system kind of worked, but it was far from elegant.)
Mythological heroes like Beowulf, Odysseus, and the like were just stronger, faster, smarter, and better than normal people; they didn't go up against the equivalent of high-level D&D casters, but they (A) broke the laws of physics to a greater or lesser extent and (B) went up against mid-level threats like Circe, the dragon, and so on. There's no reason that those kinds of fighters can't be extended to high levels with the same theme and justifications.
The fighter isn't either of those. Take a fighter and remove all of his items once he hits mid levels, and he can't compete against things that a normal (if very skilled) human can't deal with. Take all of those items and give them to a commoner, and he can use them just as well as the fighter can.
It's possible to give the fighter Nice Things without bringing the casters down to his level and/or making everything feel same-y. Witness 3e's Tier 3 class variety and 4e's Essentials: both allowed for mechanical variety (the Tier 3's much more than Essentials, obviously) while still feeling different and both being interesting.
The spellbook is the iconic item, akin to the signature sword, which none of the other casters need, and indeed the wizard can master any old spellbook to cast from, it just might not have the same spells.
The fighter doesn't need a very fancy concept, necessarily, it just has to be something broader and more evocative than "guy who uses a sword." Fighters have "guy with sword" and "fighting style guy" and they get things like the very blah Weapon Supremacy; barbarians have "stronger than mere mortals" and "too stubborn to die" and they get things like the superhuman Frenzied Berserker. The warblade has a bit of the barbarian's schtick (Tiger Claw) and a bit of "impossibly fast and precise" (Diamond Mind and Iron Heart) as far as combat skill goes, with a bit of the Sublime Way "special fancy training" stuff that all the martial adepts have thanks to his maneuver and class features; his concept encompasses "weapons guy" but isn't limited by it.
Of course, special abilities and context define the class as much as the other way around; the warblade and the fighter have the same basic flavor, but the fighter is held back by the inertia of his only special abilities having been weapon-focused while the warblade was free to try new things. The 4e fighter is only epically skilled because 4e drops the ceiling of what "epic" means fairly low: the 29th level fighter powers in the PHB are all basically the stuff you've been doing for the past ten levels, but with more damage and a few minor perks, while the casters have been brought down so that they're within the fighter's reach. 7[W] or +100 damage from the 4e fighter or the warblade let you kill things better, but they aren't anything new and different and they aren't what the fighter needs.
You know, the paragraph THAT YOU CUT OUT, immediately after what you quoted said:
But what you need to really get into the game is a strong desire of exploring the unknown and figuring out how it works and you can make use of it for yourself. And to really enjoy that challenge rather than getting frustrated from getting stuck, you have to bring some amount of smart to the table.
But you can still totally suck at math.
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2012-11-30, 12:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
The only drawback to spellcasting I don't want to see is punishing spellcasters for doing what they're supposed to be doing, casting spells. No to having to lose hit points. No to risk of insanity. No to be unable to cast spells for a number rounds thus doing nothing but watch everyone else play, usually "fatigue". Their spells have to actually work, meaning opponents are not making their saving throws 95% of the time or some such or everyone and their grandmother has spell resistance.
Alright then, so what drawbacks could I like?
1) Bring back spellcasting times. A 3rd level spell has a casting time of 3. You start casting on initiative count 17. Spell goes off on initiative count 15. If damaged before then, concentration check to maintain casting. Next round you still start on initiative count 17.
2) Focused learning. Spellcasters cannot learn every spell everywhere. Specialization is standard. Have interesting and useful class features related to the specialization. Bring back 2E cleric spell spheres concept but keep 3E's spontaneous curing.
3) Alter particular spells that cause people to hyperventilate with rage. No attack spell can ever be no save. Change the level of spell. Slightly change how the spell works to a more reasonable effect.
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2012-11-30, 01:29 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Those two examples relate to the second-string complaint: fighters usually fall behind when fighting high-level monsters because they lack special movement methods, the right weapons to get through DR, the BAB and Str to outgrapple the big high-HD monsters, and so forth, and they usually fall behind against enemy casters because they don't have varied enough offense to get through the casters' defenses and strong enough defenses to resist the casters' offense.
The role of the gods in the Odyssey is a bit overstated since it's an epic; Athena supposedly made the soldiers listen to him in the meeting at Troy as well, but in D&D terms that could just as easily be fluff for a good Knowledge (Nature) check and a good Diplomacy check, respectively. If you feel Odysseus isn't a good example of a fighter, there are plenty more to choose from--several other Greek heroes, Gilgamesh, Sigurd, Arngrim, Roland, Maugris, the Knights of the Round Table, and on and on.
Of course with only 6 HP max and a lousy BAB, your commoner isn't likely to get past the first round. That fighter on the other hand...
Such isn't the case for any of the fighter's stuff. There used to be fighter-only weapons and armor in 2e, but not in 3e or 4e, and even the fighter-only gear wasn't so amazingly powerful that it made up for their general lack of features. Give a commoner the wizard's spellbook and staff and it's useless to him; give a commoner the fighter's gear and he can use it just as well, and though there will obviously be a discrepancy in base numbers that's a quantitative difference (that could also occur between a fighter with good stats and high HP rolls and one with bad stats and low HP rolls, by the way), not a quantitative one.
Actually, by the book, a wizard can only prepare spells from their own spell book. They can read and copy spells from other books, but each book is unique to the spell caster. 3.x (of course) lightened this restriction, but even then, it's not an assured thing.
There are of course other considerations, such as the propensity of paranoid wizards to protect their spellbooks better, the ability of wizards to make duplicates of their spellbooks, and so forth, but the bottom line is that if you strip a wizard and a fighter naked of all their gear and throw them in a cell, the wizard can get back to normal much faster and easier than the fighter.
Again, I have to wonder if perhaps we're better off just getting rid of the plain old fighter in the first place. Is there any particular archetype that other martial classes wouldn't do better?
Alternately, do it the 1e way: paladin, ranger, and other fighter subclasses are purely superior to the base fighter mechanically, and if a paladin or ranger breaks his code he gets punished by becoming a fighter. So you create a fighter class and just say "a barbarian is the fighter plus X, Y, and Z, a paladin is the fighter plus A, B, and C," and so forth, and the fighter would just be the name you gave to the basic skeleton several classes share. That would work pretty well for NPC classes, actually: do the same with a rogue chassis (take away SA, Evasion, and rogue talents), a wizard chassis (limited spells known and he has to cast from the spellbook instead of preparing spells), and a cleric chassis (one domain plus healing spells only) and you have your town guards, artisans, sages, and temple healers, and upgrading nameless NPCs to "real" character means overlaying a "real" class instead of rebuilding them.
*scribbles a memo to himself*
Fully agreed. I particularly dislike the casting check to channel magic approach--Vancian casters do all the ritual ahead of time to prepackage the energy, you're not trying to channel anything in the middle of combat!
1) Bring back spellcasting times. A 3rd level spell has a casting time of 3. You start casting on initiative count 17. Spell goes off on initiative count 15. If damaged before then, concentration check to maintain casting. Next round you still start on initiative count 17.
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2012-11-30, 03:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Caveat: Char Op also doesn't really require much math, strictly speaking. Unless you're playing FATAL or something (which expects the players to work out quadratic equations mid-combat) all it needs is a basic understanding of how probability works.
In a way I agree with you but only because the magic system of D&D operates under a flawed fundamental assumption: The idea that to have decent magic, you need to give up the ability to do absolutely anything else aside from casting spells. Except knowledge checks. If you're lucky.
Make spellcasters well-rounded human beings who are perfectly capable of contributing to the party without using any magic, and encouraging/forcing them to not use spells for everything is suddenly much less of a problem.
If we have to keep the "magic-only or no magic at all" thing though, I perfectly agree, wizards should be able to successfully cast every round (multi-round casting times notwithstanding) without penalty.Last edited by Craft (Cheese); 2012-11-30 at 03:24 AM.
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2012-11-30, 03:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Thats not true. Since Weapon Specialization was only available to single class Fighters, in addition to somewhat lower XP requirements, Fighters were the absolute best class at fighting. Also, good luck finding a Paladin with really good stats relevant for combat. With that big hunky 17 sitting at Charisma, typically there wasn't much left to fill out Str, Dex and Con.
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2012-11-30, 03:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Sorry, I should have been more clear: I was talking core 1e, before the fighter got any perks of his own, and making a strict comparison of class benefits (i.e. for a given stat line and level, paladin > fighter and ranger > fighter). Obviously if fighter were just a build skeleton rather than a class it wouldn't have its own progression, stat requirements, etc. and things that were "fighter only" would actually be "any Fighter class only."
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2012-11-30, 06:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
My FFRP characters. Avatar by Ashen Lilies. Sigatars by Ashen Lilies, Gullara and Purple Eagle.
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2012-11-30, 07:50 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
D&D doesn't attempt to be GURPS.
We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying
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2012-11-30, 07:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
As I have explained before, more than once, covering concepts that are perfectly within the themes of a heroic fantasy game does not mean that a system attempts to be GURPS. Your arguments would be valid if I were arguing that I should be able to play a mad scientist, gunslinger or, say, a sentient animal straight out of the box. It does not apply when I talk about dexterous fighters, crossbow snipers or throwing specialists.
Last edited by Morty; 2012-11-30 at 08:27 AM.
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2012-11-30, 08:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Yet the questions remain what archetypes are so archetypical that D&D just has to include them and how much crunch you need to make such characters good enough to please most players.
People may say its wrongbadfun, but in the games I played, people who want to play an archer played a PHB fighter with a bow and PHB archery feats and everyone was happy.We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
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2012-11-30, 08:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Well, I can't blame for not understand it since you're not familiat with the series, but the chakra gates are something every human has and all spiritual beings have spiritual pressure. Bruce Lees and Grey Mousers don't matter in the series, because there is no such thing as Bruce Lees and Grey Mousers in the plot.
You also did not mention Bunshichi Tawara, who uses no powers in a world full of superpowered people and is consistently deemed the most powerful character in the series.
I never said they were. I said their shtick is hitting things very hard.
And why is that a bad thing?
You seem to have misunderstood what I meant, specially because I never said I was talking about skilled humans who hit things with swords. I was talking about characters whose shtick was hitting really hard without using special powers.
I don't see why not.
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2012-11-30, 08:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
What archetypes? I've explained before - if a given concept is something you could see in a heroic fantasy story, it should be doable. By the way, want to know what sort of character can't work in core 3rd edition? Drizzt. Also his arch-rival Artemis Entreri. Their combat stats in the FRCS book are rather telling.
As to how much crunch - not very much. D&D Next has already made dexterity-focused fighters more viable by something as painfully simple as extending the list of weapons you can use with finesse, and letting them be used this way without a feat. Suddenly, Drizzt with his twin scimitars, high Dexterity and average Strength is no longer going to scratch ineffectually at anything roughly equal to him in level. Other options that are lousy in 3rd edition can be brought to at least the baseline level of usefulness with similar changes, if only the designers want it. The best way to make various combat styles cool and useful would be to make unique manuevers that are used with particular weapons and methods of fighting, though.Last edited by Morty; 2012-11-30 at 08:38 AM.
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2012-11-30, 08:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Super-muscles is most definetely a super power. The other guys have fancy martial arts. Bunshichi is simply physically strong enough to punch cars into the air while increasing his body mass out of nowhere, so poor normal human beings don't stand much of a chance, even if they know kung-fu.
Kenapchi kinda falls on the same category. He never bothered to develop a Bankai simply because he's so overwhelming strong/fast/tough he can just mindlessly slash away while parrying the enemy blades with his face and still come out ahead.
Poor Rock Lee on the other hand kinda the humor relief of Naruto and he basically losts all of his major fights despite his hellish training in unlocking the chakra gates.
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2012-11-30, 09:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
That sorta viewpoint that the "weird" races shouldn't be core bugs me SO MUCH, as I think the Dragonborn helped get a lot of new people into D&D. If it were up to me, not only would Tieflings and Dragonborn be core in 5e, but so would Warforged, Thri-Keen, Giff (As in the hippo people), Aasimar and Hengeyokai, just to give a good representation of other settings iconic races.
And I think I'd not so much want a subrace for every color of Dragon (Red, white, black, ect.) as one for each type (Chromatic, metallic, Lung, Linnorm, ect), with the different sub-types being differentiated by various resistance/damage-type choices baked within each. I mainly want that LInnorm-dragonborn race, as I love the idea of a freakish, deformed Dragonborn sub-race for player use.
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2012-11-30, 10:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
I think the core rules races should be all of a generic standard sub-race. For playtest it's okay to have their ideas for sub-races tested in the same place, but for the PHB, there should just be elf, and dwarf, and gnome and not some 20 subraces with the racial stats being broken up into shared and race-specific traits.
Though I actually doubt that would happen.
Best go back to how it was in 2nd and 3rd Edition (and I think even 1st as well).We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
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2012-11-30, 10:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
I don't think the gnome or half-orc are needed in core, if the goal is for a really basic edition. Elves, dwarves, humans, and halflings should be sufficient for a basic book, much like the red box. (Heck, make non-humans classes again! )
I honestly would rather see dragonborn than gnomes, but I don't think either one is needed if a "BECMI" version is the first thing they come out with.
-O
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2012-11-30, 10:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
To be honest, if Gnomes are core, I really want them to be Tinker gnomes. Love those little guys, though I will admit they fit waaaaaay better in Spelljammer than in Dragonlance.
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2012-11-30, 10:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-30, 10:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Except it's not. You're missing the forest for the trees (really, one tree). It's not like Buffy just stands there and punches stuff hard; she's inflicting the equivalent of status conditions all the time - knocking enemies back, grappling them, "dazing" them, and so on - instead of just gradually working through a mass of hit point tofu. She's a canny combatant and "punching stuff hard" is just a baseline for the sort of fight scenes we see in the series.
That's the sort of fiat system I'm talking about - one where the "Fighter" gets the ability to impose their own direction on combat rather than just being the "hit hard" guy and relying on the DM's permission to do anything beyond that. It's not about, "Buffy shoots fire from her eyes and burns things," it's "Buffy can stagger her opponent, releasing a grapple and preventing them from attacking next round" or something of that nature.
-O
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2012-11-30, 10:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
I would like to see a good called-shot system in place. "I want to hamstring that orc." "I want to try to cut that owlbear's eyes, blinding it." "I'm going to go for his arm so he can't wield his sword properly." (I never understood the point of Regenerate in 3.X when you have to be an octopus to lose limbs.) There's a bit more to combat than "I hit it" or "I grapple it" or "I trip it".
Jude P.
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2012-11-30, 10:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
That's another way to do it, so long as it's pretty codified and with low penalties, but I'd rather a system with more outright fiat on the martial end. You know - Wizards cash in fiat tokens to paralyze monsters and make fireballs appear, Fighters cash in fiat tokens to blind them, knock them down, etc.
There's a few reasons I think this works better than a codified "called shot" process.
One is potency. Blind is a heck of an effect, but one that's totally feasible for a weapon-user. If you're inflicting big attack penalties for trying to use it in a called shot scenario (and you'd almost have to to make sure it's not successful every single round), you're actively discouraging its use. If there's a token of sorts to cash in, you can avoid the penalty. More or less, if you make it too easy, you open up stun-locking. If you make it too hard, you might as well not have bothered.
Second is reliability - Buffy (to keep using this example) does crazy status effect stuff even to the big bads she fights. She puts them off-balance either physically or mentally, distracts them, knocks them back into obstacles, etc. In D&D, if you try to model this with attack penalties, you're losing out on this because that big bad is probably already pretty hard to hit. You're relegating "cool stuff" to attacks vs. mooks, and I don't think that's particularly satisfying.
One approach to "token fiat" is the 4e/Bo9S way or in that vein. Another is a more flexible Expertise Dice system. A third is kind of like Iron Heroes, where you build up tokens over combat and can cash them in for cool stuff. There's more possibilities, I'm sure - but I don't think a list of called shots is sufficient.
-OLast edited by obryn; 2012-11-30 at 11:38 AM.
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2012-11-30, 12:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
What if you gave fighters an "escalation die" mechanic. Fighters are dangerous and the longer they go in a fight, the more dangerous they should be to you. After all, if you can get the drop on Conan, you're fine, but go 10 rounds with him and you're likely to be hurting. So (caveat, all of this is off the top of my head and not balanced or playtested): The fighter gets an "escalation die" that increases one size every 3 levels or so. The when the fighter gets his first hit for the round in, the die comes into play at "1" which is a plus to hit and damage. Every time the fighter hits and enemy, increase the die by one. Every time the fighter gets hit, decrease the die by one. A fighter can exchange the damage / to-hit bonus for either more expertise dice that round (maybe at a 2:1 rate of exchange) or can use those "escalation points" to buy various status effects, like blind for x rounds (where x is the escalation die value) or for extra attacks, or even to be able to shove the enemy x distance (where x is some function of the die value). At higher values (like say 6 or 8) the fighter could spend it to impart more permanent effects like broken limbs, or permanent penalties, basically the fighter's version of Save or Suck effects.
Think of it as sort of like a reverse mark. Rather than as in 4e where the fighter marks a single enemy and that enemy has penalties for not attacking the fighter, instead the fighter has "marked" all enemies, and the fighter gets stronger the more he's not attacked.
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2012-11-30, 01:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Yep, that sounds fairly similar to some of the "token" systems in Iron Heroes, and it's a good starting point. You're right - the details need balanced because you want it to become important before the fight is over. :) But if they straightened that out, I think it sounds like a flavorful, unique option.
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2012-11-30, 01:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
As I said, and as deuterio and obryn expanded on, the fact that they have chakra gates and spiritual pressure and super strength and all that jazz means they're breaking the laws of physics left and right and way beyond the fighter concept already. Just because they're Str 60 super-ninjas in a setting where everyone else is Str 40 lightning warriors doesn't make them fighters...and the fact that you said that mundane fighter types don't matter in the plot is telling, since that's exactly the problem with the mundane bound-by-physics fighter past low levels.
And why is that a bad thing?
Entirely aside from the fact that those three fall under the wizard or artificer archetype more than the fighter archetype, that's not the fighter's schtick at all. He's supposed to be the ultimate warrior and tactician, all-around competent with all weapons and armor. But the 3e/5e fighter isn't Batman (great in a fight, plus gadgets), he's Iron Man (without his suit he's just a guy), and that's not what the fighter is supposed to be.
You seem to have misunderstood what I meant, specially because I never said I was talking about skilled humans who hit things with swords. I was talking about characters whose shtick was hitting really hard without using special powers.
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About fighter token mechanics, another option is momentum or stamina, which is kind of like a hybrid of escalation and IH tokens: You start the fight with X momentum/stamina, you spend it to use things, you automatically gain Y per round (which can be increased or decreased by various actions/factors), and you can go up to -Z into the negatives to overexert yourself but will have to take a breather after that.
You can use it like expertise dice, if you use no more than (2+Y) per round and the fight lasts (2*X) rounds or something like that; you can use it like encounter powers, if you use up most of X in the beginning and have to ration it through the encounter; you can use it like daily powers, if you go from X to -Z in the first round or two and then can't use any more abilities for several rounds; you can use it like a "rage meter" if you don't use anything in the beginning and then pull out finishing moves once you've build up a lot of stamina; and you can vary how you use it, deciding to play it more expertise-like in encounters against lots of mooks to finish them off reliably and then use it more rage-like in boss encounters to allow you to hit him with the big guns.
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2012-11-30, 01:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
I have an aesthetic issue with the token system (Iron Heroes). I'm concerned that by the time you accumulate enough tokens to do your Cool Thing the combat is over. If the combat is not over, the situation that warranted the Cool Thing no longer applies - potential target is dead, moved out of range, no longer as much a threat because party member did something, etc.
I don't object to a resource management system to do Cool Thing effects; it's just the token system way I don't like. I like the Expertise Dice system because you can decide to do your Cool Thing right then and there and be able to do it. You spend enough Expertise Dice to do it. Big Cool Things require more dice which you get when you level for when those Big Cool Things are more appropriate. The token system encourages use it or lose it mentality; you risk never using it if you need to accumulate a lot of tokens over rounds of play to do a Big Cool Thing.
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2012-11-30, 01:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
FWIW, I agree - I think that's a major potential failing of the system especially when a caster is likely to short-circuit the combat much sooner than that. That would be why it'd have to be handled properly - more along the lines of "Start out with a token, get new tokens regularly for fulfilling certain conditions, everything only costs 1 token and it gets better with level." Any time you need to go 4-5 rounds of combat (or several episodes) to power up your Kamehameha it's too long.
I like the idea behind expertise dice, but the issue is their at-will nature. You can't boost the Cool Level too high, because you can bet the Fighter is doing that every round if he can. So the massive effects like Blinding and outright Stunning might be out of the question.
This is why I prefer things more like 4e or Bo9S for martial resource management. It's simple, direct, and puts the results first. I know that's not everyone's favorite, though, so I'm open to other options.
-O