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Thread: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
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2018-06-07, 12:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
It makes sense when you are fighting man to man in a medieval wargame like Chainmail was at first or a game that focuses on naval combat where Armor Class is taken from. When you get to the extremes it falls apart. When you are facing a 20' frost giant swinging a two handed maul your plate armour isn't going to do much. Just like a bus running you over at 50 mph, then your plate armour doesn't help you, just like when the Tarrasque stomps on you.
It's just my preference and lot of other people because majority of systems other than D&D are structured in such a manner that armor doesn't make you harder to hit but to hurt and is represented either in Damage Resistance, toughness rolls or armour rolls to oppose damage. To protect the character D&D instead doles out HP in abundance.
I prefer Attack roll vs Defense roll
if hit
Damage roll vs Soak roll or Damage roll with Damage Reduction subtracted from Damage.
This is a better way to avoid HP bloat.Last edited by RazorChain; 2018-06-07 at 12:07 PM.
Optimizing vs Roleplay
If the worlds greatest optimizer makes a character and hands it to the worlds greatest roleplayer who roleplays the character. What will happen? Will the Universe implode?
Roleplaying vs Fun
If roleplaying is no fun then stop doing it. Unless of course you are roleplaying at gunpoint then you should roleplay like your life depended on it.
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2018-06-07, 12:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
Agreed
Well, if you get hit by a giant's hammer, you're toast. Period. There's really nothing short of magic that would prevent or mitigate enough such blow and look medieval-ish. I really can't see how some sort of damage reduction adds realism here.
My personal preference is attack roll vs. attack roll, as it shows that both combatants are engaged in the fight and it is not a mere succession of I try to hit you then you try to hit me but a complicated art in which we both are trying to evade each other's attacks as well as hit at the same time.Last edited by MrSandman; 2018-06-07 at 12:41 PM.
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2018-06-07, 12:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
I'm going to admit right now that I personally prefer hit locations and armour as DR. But that complicates things, and I find everything runs smoother with little practical difference under the D&D model.
Well, if you get hit by a giant's hammer, you're toast. Period. There's really nothing short of magic that would prevent or mitigate enough such blow and look medieval-ish. I really can't see how some sort of damage reduction adds realism here.
This is obviously not taking into account that in pre-5e D&D that giant might have a Strength modifier in the low teens or more, suddenly your +8AC full plate isn't stopping it's swing as much as you thought it was...
My personal preference is attack roll vs. attack roll, as it shows that both combatants are engaged in the fight and it is not a mere succession of I try to hit you then you try to hit me but a complicated art in which we both are trying to evade each other's attacks as well as hit at the same time.
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2018-06-07, 01:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
D&D is not fixed by any rules change. Fortunately, it is not particularly hurt by any rules change, either.
No rule will fix the problems caused by unreasonable players trying to get unreasonable results out of the rules. Any rules set large enough to encompass the game is also complicated enough to be stretched, misapplied, and used to justify nonsense. And if you successfully prevent one such attempt, you haven't fixed the game; you have merely moved on to the next rule-twisted nonsense.
No rule will fix the problems caused by untrustworthy DMs trying to create an unfair situation for their own amusement. Too much is hidden from the players for you to ever stop somebody who wants to put you in an unfair situation.
D&D is only fixed by playing with trustworthy, reasonable players, in a game run by a competent, trustworthy, and reasonable DM.
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2018-06-07, 01:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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2018-06-07, 02:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
True, but that's not what this thread is about.
I'm fairly certain people can work out why this thread was posted, but the point was a psuedo-celebration of the fact that we don't all want the same things from the same game. The fact that you can't actually 'fix' a social activity isn't the point, the fact that when given the same starting rules we veer off in many different directions is.
Probably not, I've got a sneaking suspicion it might be Spirit of the Century, which is a full edition before CORE. Essentially Fate goes as follows:
-FATE1e (noncommercial)
-FATE2e (noncommercial)
-FATE3e, no core rulebook
--Spirit of the Century, pulp action
--Dresden Files, epic urban fantasy, is more a 3.5 or a precursor to 4e.
-Fate 4e (note different capitalisation, it changed)
--Fate CORE, essentially the corebook
--Fate Acclerated, essentially a much lighter version of CORE, focused on being able to jump into the game with no messy 'game creation'
--Atomic Robo
--War of Ashes: Fate of Ablahdablah (what, I just can't be bothered to look up the setting name)
--Transhumanity's Fate, an Eclipse Phase hack
--Dresden Files Accelerated
--A bunch of 50 page minisettings
Note that Spirit of the Century, the Dresden Files games, and Atomic Robo include all the rules required for play. Although as you're supposed to make up your own stunts (and that is a good example of what I might allow) instead of picking from a list unless you desperately want a certain setting Accelerated should be your first purchase, followed by CORE. Ideally in PWYW pdf format, so you can go back and spend money on them if you like them after grabbing them for free (I nab all the pdfs for free and then buy physical copies of the ones I like).
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2018-06-07, 02:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
Quite honestly, my fix would just be to add a lot more options to 5E and call it a day.
I don't think 5E is perfect, but I think it largely accomplishes everything I want D&D to do. My only real complaints are that I want more material - I truly miss the variety that late 3.5/PF brought to the table, but not enough to go back to the headache they could represent - and that I think the monsters in 5E could stand to be a little more interesting.
Just to discuss some of my issues with 5E, in particular I feel the skill system is too flat. The difference in skill level from 1st to 20th feels much more minor than the same characters growth in killing abilities, which is odd. But I don't think you can really do too much about that without introducing complications to a system that thrives on its simplicities. Similarly, I miss the weapon variety of 3.5, but the system would be poorer for the complications more variety would introduce. The only real problem I've found with 5E that I feel should actually be fixed are that higher CR monsters are typically pushovers for high leveled players. While the lack of variety in the rest of the system is more about preference, I truly feel 5E needs more high powered enemies for players to face. Tome of Foes seems like it's at least taking steps in that direction.
Other than that, 5E feels like a logical end goal of design. It's not perfect, but even those imperfections fall within an acceptable range. Options aren't perfectly balanced, but the range is now close enough that no one will ever actually feel useless. And I don't think you can achieve true balance without sacrificing uniqueness.
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2018-06-07, 02:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
Dang it Jay R, you brought good sense into our arguments!
How are we supposed to make the thread last now!
$5 got me the 48 pages of FATE Accelerated (an intro version, sorta like the equivalent of the 48 pages of the bluebook).
Good deal.
There's probably some free PDF's as well.
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2018-06-07, 02:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
Alright, let's have some fun with this. Pretending that I have full license to mess with things, but we still want it to feel like D&D at the end of the day. I would be tilting towards something that takes the best of the original 1974 dungeon crawl, with a sprinkling of modern tabletop design.
* There are only four classes - Fighter, Mage, Priest, and Rogue. Each class has a number of subclasses which provide a bonus at certain levels (so a Fighter would have the subclasses Barbarian, Champion, Ranger and Monk. A Mage might have Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard. A Priest could be a Cleric, Druid, or Paladin. A Rogue might be an Assassin, Bard, or Thief.) Probably you expand a bit to have four or have subclasses.
* There are only four Abilities - Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Charisma. Wisdom gets broken between Intelligence and Charisma, and Constitution is a subset of Strength. You start with a spread of +2, +1, +0, -1 and then add a bonus +1 to any Ability. Most of the races have minimum ratings instead of bonuses (dwarves must have Strength +1 after all bonuses, elves must have Dexterity +1, etc.)
* Each Heritage gives you two bonuses that apply new permissions - situations in which you can just declare success. Elves don't sleep, and can use their exceptional senses. Dwarves are immune to nonmagical poison, and can see in pitch blackness. Halflings are Small and can eat almost anything. Etc. Humans don't get any bonuses, but do get an extra Skill instead.
* Skills let you bypass rolls. Your skill level is Standard, Expert, Legend, or Myth. Tasks are Routine, Standard, Expert, Legendary, or Mythic. If a task's difficulty is lower than your skill level, you do it. If a task's difficulty is equal to your skill level, you have to roll against DC 10 (using the related Ability.) If a task's difficulty is higher than your skill level, you fail. There are not very many skills - maybe fifteen? Enough that having one is a Big Deal. Social skills let you reduce what you need to offer to get people on your side, essentially acting as tactical modifiers to social situations.
* Spells go from First Circle to Seventh Circle, instead of from 1 to 9. The Mage and Priest get their spells at Levels 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18. Warriors get cool combat stuff at those levels, and rogues get extra skills or upgraded skills (rogues get way more skills than anyone else.)
* You always get something when you level up, either from your class, your subclass, or from what everyone gets. These happen at about the same time for each class. So your class bonus is Levels 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18. Your subclass bonuses are Level 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, and 19. And the general bonuses kick in at Level 1, 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 20. This also means that you can start everyone off at Level 2 without them having to learn a lot of new rules for their character type - they just get the general Level 2 bonus (which is probably HP and a small general bonus.)
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2018-06-07, 03:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
I would take 3.5, and limit all core classes to five levels, maybe ten, tops. You're supposed to prestige out after, and that is now explicit. All PrCs provide or advance casting; break points for each class are generally (but not always) at level 2, 3, and 5. For example, the paladin would be a five-level base class, with break points at level 2 (Divine Grace), level 4 (Turn Undead), and level 5 (Special Mount). Level 1 abilities are supposed to be character-defining, but also scaling with level, like Smite (which should probably be the PF version, as well), so that you have something to work with as first-level character, but you're not pressured into first-level dips too much (looking at you, barbarian/cleric/monk/UA druid).
The idea is that you can enter PrCs with ECL 6 requirements as straight X 5, a multiclass X 2/Y 3, or slightly delay and enter as X3/Y3 or similar.Spoiler: Collectible nice thingsMy incarnate/crusader. A self-healing crowd-control melee build (ECL 8).
My Ruby Knight Vindicator barsader. A party-buffing melee build (ECL 14).
Doctor Despair's and my all-natural approach to necromancy.
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2018-06-07, 04:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
As I am lazy, and happy to steal others works, I would just slap Giants and graveyards (link in sig) on to 3.5, replace tome of battle with path of war, and 3.5 Psionics with Dsp Psionics, soul knifes being gifted blades or the PoW archetype. Maybe add Grods Christmas tree removal rules, for a more 5e feel.
That or just play 5e, with home brew,3rd party and UAGame I am in:
Giants and Graveyards Red Hand of Doom as Enn (3.5 Changeling Rogue//Dark template/Beguiler) using Grod's awesome Giants and Graveyards fixes
Folklore and the Evil Eye - A Guide to The Dreamscarred Press Malefex Class
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2018-06-07, 05:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
Not a "fix" for anything but martial/caster disparity, but...
Skill Masteries that are (ex) abilities that give new abilities or expand existing ones, with different Mastery Ratings; characters can have Skill Masteries for particular skills as long as their Mastery Ratings sum to the number of ranks the character has in the skill. (If this is PF instead of 3.5, they may have up to three more points of Mastery if they have it as a class skill.)
Weapon Techniques that range from (ex) to (su) abilities, usable as long as the character is wielding the weapon for which he has the technique. Techniques are ranked by prerequisite: Proficiency with the weapon, Weapon Focus for the weapon, Weapon Specialization for the weapon, Greater Weapon Focus, Greater Weapon Specialization, Weapon Supremacy. Having these gets you one free technique for the weapon for each "tier" you're at. Additional ones can be purchased through expensive training (in supplies, trainers, or however the DM wishes to model it).
These should allow a master of multiple weapons to swap out weapons for different techniques.
Between Skill Masteries and Weapon Techniques, it should be possible for any challenge Magic can overcome, there should be martials/rogues who can overcome them, with roughly the same odds that a randomly chosen martial/rogue could do it as a randomly chosen magic-user could do it.
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2018-06-07, 05:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2014
Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
That's helpful, thanks.
You might want to check out Beyond Damage Dice from Kobold Press. It's got a few new weapons but it's mainly about cool maneuvers using existing weapons. It keeps the complication down to a minimum by making them useable by anybody who has proficiency in that weapon.
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2018-06-07, 07:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
As opposed to many people on this thread I don't think D&D should become grittier. When I play D&D I play a game that's about being a hero of increasingly larger scale. Like if you play a 1-20 campaign you should go from a fairly realistic action/folk hero while at level 20 you can become something along the lines of Rama.
This is going to be mostly based on pathfinder for things I don't talk about like HP per level
on to the specifics:
races: I think races should have a more minor effect since I think the stat differences bias towards certain classes too much. I'd prefer a couple qualitative abilities only
Classes:
I think classes should still exist and I like the idea of using archetypes that you get every couple levels automatically like in 4e or 5e. I also like the idea of power sources that 4e had although I don't like the execution and I think it should be treated like the difference between incarnum and psychic powers. I also think that limited uses of abilities or other types of resource management are required for a good class, at least in what I want D&D to be. I also think that day based limits are strange and only make sense in dungeon crawl heavy campaigns
example of a class:
barbarian:
would be a nature type class which would mean this class (as well as other nature classes like the ranger and druid)would have a system where you gain animal aspects and can affect nature like making entangling vines. It would have the same concept of emotion based fighter with nature knowledge and at level 6 it would get an archetype like wanderer which gets more nature based abilities or berserker which focuses on direct combat and would get "spells" and some abilities from the archetype
Skills:
I think skills should have far more scaling than they do now with middle level and high "epic level" uses. This should probably be done with skill unlocks based on rank so you can't have a lucky roll allow you to jump 20ft at level one but make that simple by level 10.
some skills should be based off of have rules for minigames such as diplomacy or complicated trap disabling so social and trap passing isn't just rolling a die several times until you get through
Also I think that the idea of a skill monkey is a bit ridiculous and there should be enough skill points for each character that you don't need a dedicated one
feats:
I think feats should be interesting additional things that allow you to try out mechanics from other classes, have their own mini mechanics (like the luck and tactics feats from 3.5) and generally do qualitative things rather than give you +10% boosts to whatever.
equipment:
weapons and armor are fine to a certain extent. I'm not aiming for realistic combat so I don't really care that a greatsword can't pierce or whatever but it would be cool to have some cheap non adventurer items that don't exist in the real world to help show that the setting evolved with magic
combat:
I want combat to be more dynamic with every class having their own choices to make that can have their pros and cons to them rather than having classes like fighter just charge and then full attack. So each class should have something to do besides direct attack even though the classes should each have niches to fit into to a certain extent.
magic:
magic (and by that I mean all the powers from the power sources) shouldn't be as strong as it was in 3.5/pathfinder although spells like teleporting should still exist. I'd rather have more OP spells debuffed by making them take longer to cast or give a warning to enemies than remove them completely. There should also be spells that would be used by non adventurers for setting reasons.
Hopefully that isn't too wordy for you guys
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2018-06-07, 07:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
I would go back to the idea that a class was, well, a class. It's a measure of where you have been living and what you've been doing.
To become a wizard, you have been training for years to understand how magic works. A fighter has spent the last few years training in combat. A cleric has been learning divine casting in a church.
Learning two classes at once should be extremely difficult. Picking up a new one while devoting all your time to a quest or adventure using other skills should be impossible.
I'd probably design martial classes like a tree with many branches. It certainly makes sense for a Fighter to grow into a Warlord or other warrior class. But going from a wizard class to a Fighter, separate from spending years learning to fight, makes no sense at all.
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2018-06-07, 09:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
I'm one of those who plays D&D to play D&D, not to play a generic fantasy game that happens to use the D&D rules as a baseline, so keeping Vancian casting, classes, alignments, and all that jazz is non-negotiable for me and making things classless, point-based, gritty, etc. don't interest me at all. My "perfect" D&D starts with 3e for the things it does well, brings in a bunch of stuff from BECMI and 2e that they did better than 3e, and then layer on top things like a better skill system that none of those editions did well.
I've been working on a fix off and on for a while, and there are two major parts of the system that have remained largely unchanged the whole time:
Classes and Subclasses
Like Friv's proposal, there are a fixed number of base classes with all existing classes being subclasses, but there are 10, not 4. You have the standard Warrior, Magic-User, Priest, and Expert, and then conceptual hybrids of those: Gish (martial/arcane), Champion (martial/divine), Adept (martial/skills), Theurge (arcane/divine), Trickster (arcane/skills), and Mystic (divine/skills). (Names are working titles; "gish" and "theurge" are a bit on-the-nose and finding a good name for martial/skills is hard.)
Every base class has its own resource mechanic(s), and existing classes from the various editions fit under them. For instance, the Theurge covers those who combine the two styles of magic (drawing on the power of a higher being [divine] via pacts and knowledge [arcane], venerating [divine] an impersonal force [arcane], etc.), so it would cover classes like the warlock and binder who make deals with powerful beings and a "shaman" class (like the binder mechanically but the spirit shaman flavor-wise) that makes deals with spirits, and its resource mechanic is getting multiple packages of similarly-themed abilities each day (vestiges, "pacts" of multiple invocations, etc.).
On top of that, there are four tiers with mandatory sort-of-PrCs, called basic, prestige, mythic, and epic paths. Each is 3 levels long and fits "alongside" rather than instead of your normal class progression; most would be conversions of existing classes and PrCs that only get 2-3 interesting and useful abilities, but there would be new ones as well. The class progression looks like this:
SpoilerLevel Base Class Subclass Path 0th Class Feature 0 Subclass Feature 0 1st Class Feature 1 Basic Feature 1 2nd Class Feature 2 Subclass Feature 1 3rd Class Feature 3 Basic Feature 2 4th Class Feature 4 Subclass Feature 2 5th Class Feature 5 Basic Feature 3 6th Class Feature 6 Prestige Feature 1 7th Class Feature 7 Subclass Feature 3 8th Class Feature 8 Prestige Feature 2 9th Class Feature 9 Subclass Feature 4 10th Class Feature 10 Prestige Feature 3 11th Class Feature 11 Mythic Feature 1 12th Class Feature 12 Subclass Feature 5 13th Class Feature 13 Mythic Feature 2 14th Class Feature 14 Subclass Feature 6 15th Class Feature 15 Mythic Feature 3 16th Class Feature 16 Epic Feature 1 17th Class Feature 17 Subclass Feature 7 18th Class Feature 18 Epic Feature 2 19th Class Feature 19 Subclass Feature 8 20th Class Feature 20 Epic Feature 3
The base class feature is usually a level of spellcasting or similar selectable-ability progression, but there are other fixed class features sprinkled in there; the 0th-level stuff in there is things like proficiencies, cantrips (2e-/3e-style, not 5e-style) and is separated out to enable 0th/0th multiclassing at 1st level. Subclasses may build on base class features, but aren't necessarily tied to single base classes; you might be able to have a less magical Warrior (Ranger) or Adept (Ranger) or a more magical Champion (Ranger), for instance. Paths are generally either class-agnostic with very simple prerequisites (like just "must have Stealth trained" for a sneaky path) that anyone can take, or class-/subclass-specific for further customization like 3e barbarian totems, 5e warlock pacts, and so forth.
For an old 3e take on how the class/subclass/path setup might look in practice, see here.
Skills and Proficiencies
There's four parts of this: the skill list, skill point progressions, proficiencies, and skill synergies/specializations. For skill list and proficiences, I'll quote myself from an earlier thread:
(One of these days I'll get around to just writing the whole thing up and posting it here instead of quoting summaries.)
For skill points, it's somewhere between 1-point-per-level granularity and a trained/untrained setup. There are 5 ranks of skills (Trained, Apprentice, Journeyman, Master, Grandmaster), which can be bought starting at 0th, 2nd, 7th, 12th, and 17th level, respectively. Each rank grants a bonus to skill checks, of course, and also serves as a prerequisite for certain tasks; instead of being DC 60 to keep it (mostly) out of reach of low-level characters, a task might be DC 30 but require Master rank. Levels of realism decrease as ranks increase, so Trained-only tasks are things like identifying obscure monsters or crafting complex machinery, things that a normal human could do but would require training, and Grandmaster-only tasks are things like jumping through force walls, running on clouds, and other blatantly superheroic high-level effects.
Most classes get enough skill points to keep 5 skills maxed out (so enough skill points to increase 1 skill by 1 rank at each level, and the new ranks are available in 5-level chunks) and have some left over for skill synergies and specializations, which are somewhere between skills and proficiencies. Like proficiencies, they give generic perks at each rank and then each synergy or specialization gives extra perks, but they scale with skills rather than being purchased independently. Specializations focus you further on one skill, while synergies combine two skills and advance based on the lower of the two associated skills.
Originally Posted by Jay R
Plus, it lets you do monsters with class levels and transformative classes very easily. In the former case, an ogre mage can be a giant//wizard and a solar could be an outsider//cleric in the same way that a human could be a fighter//wizard or a wizard//cleric, so you don't have high-level monsters with drastically under-leveled class abilities or the like. In the latter case, you can handle lycanthropy as forcibly multiclassing you as a shapechanger or beast or whatever, Dragon Disciple as a feat or something that gives a humanoid the flavor permission to "multiclass into dragon," and so on.
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2018-06-07, 09:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
So far from what I've seen around the boards in the past year, around 40% of the people want tougher grittier combat and less magic, around 5% seem to prefer full-caster plans on plans on contingencies shenanigans, 25% like 5e enough to say "I'll basically take 5e and add some stuff that WotC didn't", usually the skill system, 20% want to go back to earlier times where there were four classes of Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User and Thief, and the rest have their own weird ideas of how D&D should be.
To be fair, that "weird" isn't anything bad. My own idea of D&D is basically rising over the course of 1-20 levels from a competent, but still mortal adventurer to someone who could smack Exalted Solars in their smug faces and get away with it.Elezen Dark Knight avatar by Linklele
Favourite classes: Beguiler, Scout, Warblade, 3.5 Warlock, Harbinger (PF:PoW).
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2018-06-08, 02:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
I not at all familiar with RuneQuest, but played old school Traveller (and filled graveyards with characters who never played a game). I'd think advancing skills is needed, and that didn't seem to be much of an option in Traveller (or done at least awkwardly). I also played Bushido, a game with 6 levels (not sure if any relation to e6), but most advancement was done with skills (and possibly social advancement if samurai).
I have to wonder if alignment neatly falls into two groups: "never remove" and "already gone". I tend to think that any game calling itself D&D is stuck with them, but they are the first things you should houserule out of the game (unfortunately this wrecks havok with settings). I'd like to keep "exalted/vile" and "axiomatic/anarchic" and leave the rest or at least make them disappear mechanically. Getting an alignment would presumably require swearing oaths or heroic deeds (Paladins would be required to achieve exalted, presumably before knighting or receive it during knighting).
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2018-06-08, 02:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
I haven't played or looked at the rules for Traveller since the 1980's, but that's the way I remember it as well, you pretty much only got and increased skills during character creation, making an older and more skilled character meant you risked another chance of PC death during character creation.
You could increase a characters skills during play in RuneQuest (basically the same system as Call of C'thullu) by a successful use of a skill (including weapin use skills) which led to the practice of "golfbagging" where players would have their PC's switch weapons during combat in order to increase their PC's skills in different weapons.
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2018-06-08, 03:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
I have several things in my campaign.
Some creatures are more resistant to certain weapon types so I simply bring back a resistance(#) to slashing/crushing/piercing and with the short list of weapons available its pretty easy to class them. In the few cases of weapons with multiple damage types, halberds or warhammers for example the player declares which part of the weapon they are using.
Further I really hate the PCs can do everything skill system with only a slight advantage for someone with the skill over someone not. I have experimented in both giving a disadvantage to an unskilled user to simply not allowing any bonuses for stats.
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2018-06-08, 04:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2015
Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
I learned that one of my friends, currently running a D&D 5e campaign, is trying to fix D&D. Besides some spell list adjustments and other smaller tweaks they making turns resolve simultaneously. I don't see that ending well. Especially how precise you are supposed to declare your moves ahead of time. Anyone seen that before?
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2018-06-08, 04:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2015
Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
Things to take away from previous editions:
AD&D:
There isn't a lot in AD&D that later editions haven't done better. Notably, THAC0, separate XP tables, and racial level limits are so bad as to be disqualifying in the modern day. The DMing advice is garbage. Even the things people mostly advocate for (notably: all the various ways casters are weaker) aren't good ideas. But there are some things worth having.
- HP and damage numbers are much saner. There's no reason for people to have to add and subtract double or triple digit numbers every round. The game doesn't get any meaningful benefit for being able to distinguish between dealing 63 and 66 damage, so we should simplify the math by not doing that.
- Random magic items are better than WBL. Magic items should feel special, and for that to happen you need to not get the same magic items every game. That said, it does help worldbuilding if there's at least some possibility of getting consistent items.
3e:
People are quick to point out the flaws of 3e, but it made a bunch of genuine improvements to the game. AD&D had a bunch of stupid cruft on it, and 3e cleaned that up. But there are also things 3e does well on its own merits.
- Variety of resource management mechanics. There are classes in 3e that work in fundamentally different ways, and that is fantastic from a design perspective. The Warlock having at-will AoE and BFC means that the Warlock wants different kinds of fights from e.g. the Duskblade.
- Monster/PC transparency. Monsters in 3e aren't arbitrary blobs of stats the way they are in other editions. They have identifiable progressions, which can be combined with PC classes and interact with consistent mechanics.
- Players get abilities with narrative impact. teleport, plane shift, fabricate, planar binding, and more provide players with an outlet to directly influence the plot, which is one of the biggest reasons to play a TTRPG instead of a CRPG or something.
- Characters progress to a high level of power. This is related to the previous point, but distinct from it. 3e characters can do things like wade through armies or punch out gods. Those are cool things that characters should be able to do.
4e:
4e had a lot of genuinely good ideas. Those ideas were executed very badly, but they were good ideas.
- Tiers were a good idea. One of the larger problems in D&D is that Fighter is a concept that just doesn't scale. You fight. It's not clear what you do in a fight, and there's absolutely no hook for you to do anything outside a fight. It doesn't help that people insist on Fighters being mundane. The idea that at 11th level you stop being a Fighter and start being a Bone Knight or a Lightning Champion or a Verdant Lord or whatever, and that gives you level appropriate powers.
- Skill Challenges were also a good idea. The execution was stupendously bad, in that the mechanics created incentives that went the exact opposite direction of what was intended, but the idea was good. All you need to do to fix those incentives is have a fixed number of rounds instead of a fixed number of failures as the timer for the challenge. Also, you should probably have abilities that interact with Skill Challenges.
- Mostly I think the rules for rituals are dumb, but the idea of having some non-combat effects being class independent is a good one.
5e
Honestly, I don't think there's anything 5e does that other editions don't do as well or better.AS
Other Stuff:
- Constitution becomes part of Strength. Charisma becomes a part of Wisdom. Neither of those attributes does anything interesting on its own.
- The Fighter class gets removed for the reasons mentioned above. The concept simply isn't salvageable.
- Tiers use the names from 4e with either a 5/10/5 or 10/5/5 split for a total of 20 levels, depending on how exactly you define things.
- The game needs a default setting. Probably not one of the major established settings. Maybe you grab the name of an obscure setting from AD&D and basically remake it on whatever lines you want.
- Better (actually, existent) rules for mass combat and kingdom management.
- Ever class gets a resource management system and some resources to manage. Hopefully these are thematic and support the class concept (e.g. Barbarian gets a Rage Meter).
- As a result of the previous, you need a more space-efficient way of writing abilities. 3e's is bad, 4e's was worse.
- Every class (or Paragon Path, or Epic Destiny) needs a way to scale through the entire range of challenges.
- No more multiclassing. You get a class and a subclass. There's a subclass version of every base class, but some things that aren't base classes can also fit in that slot. For example, monster progressions (like Giants) and stuff like Dragonmarks from Eberron go here.
- The Cleric class no longer exists. Priests of different gods should have different ability suites. As such, Cleric is now a subclass that grants whatever universal priest-y abilities that servants of both Pelor and Nerull should have.
- Oh, also, the D&D gods are crap. This probably goes hand-in-hand with the "new setting" comment, but the gods need to be replaced because they don't have any traction. The replacements should probably draw from mythology, because people can tell you who Thor is in a way that they can't tell you who Kord is.
- Alignment is also crap. No more alignment. Replace it with the MTG color wheel, because you have a coherent set of well defined values, and as a result should stop trying to use the weird mishmash of Christian ethics and mind caulk that is D&D alignment.
- Start with the challenges and the expectations for PCs, then write PC abilities. Then test things. Iteratively test things until you end up at whatever equilibrium you're targeting.
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2018-06-08, 06:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
You brought up some points I like (even the testing in this quote), some I don't but I see where you are coming from, some I would fight you on (but this isn't the place for another round of caster/martial*) but the bit about challenges I will contest.
I think challenges is the wrong way of looking at this. What is interesting about a ranger being able to track a party of three hobgoblin soldiers through a forest? There is an answer there but I think the better question is: What is interesting about a ranger being able to track a group of escape POWs? What is interesting about a paladin being able to inspire the downtrodden?
In other words, take a step back, don't measure from what they are doing but more why they are doing it. In yet other words, not how they are supposed to overcome encounters, but how they are supposed to shape the campaign? Now solving encounters does shape the campaign, but that is sort of a reactive shaping. It misses this active: go out and do stuff. Rally allies, explore/discover new places, make friends, make money on the side. Whatever. How can the character push the story forward?
Start with the stories and work from there.
* Also if things have become an actual fight, it is time to take a break.
Solider, Theologian, Mage-Knight?
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2018-06-08, 07:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
One additional thing: D&D needs a better web presence. They don't have any articles up on their website from this month. That's terrible. Their latest wallpaper is from last year. You should be putting out two new articles every day of the week, like MTG does. You could do:
- Designer Insights -- Someone on the design team rants about how you decide how much damage fireball deals, or what kinds of magic pants there are.
- Recurring Villains -- Based on one of the articles WotC put out during 3e, this gives you three stat blocks at three different levels and a couple of hooks for a villain. Honestly, you could do this with a couple of dart boards.
- Power Creep (General) -- Print some cool magic items or feats for people. If they get good reception, put them in a book.
- Feature Article -- Get someone to write something (non-crunchy) that's related to D&D.
- Setting Fluff -- Get someone to pump out a couple of pages of setting material or short story once a week.
- Save My Game -- I think this was the name of another 3e era column. DMing advice, sometimes in response to questions from fans.
- Community Roundup -- Find stuff people have done that is D&D related and tell people about it. Custom adventures, D&D cosplay, podcasts, webcomics, whatever. Encourage people to be active fans.
- Power Creep (Class Specific) -- Print upgrades for Warlocks or Shaman or whatever. Probably alongside some fluff material about Demon Lords or the elemental balance or whatever.
- Monster Ecology -- Pick something from the MM, spend a couple pages developing it. Try to make people care about Grells or Dragonkin.
- Webcomic -- Get someone to write a weekly webcomic based on your game. Like OotS, but more serious and closer tied to the mechanics.
- Sample Encounter -- Put out a tactically interesting encounter at a different level every week.
There's probably some additional stuff you could do, and you could do it in any order (though I would probably put the Feature Article on Monday and the Community Roundup on Friday), but that's enough to drop one and still have two articles going up every day. There's just no excuse for not giving people a reason to come to the D&D website every day, and the best way to do that is by putting content on that website.
I think Gish is exactly the right name for your Wizard/Fighter class. Because that's the name that Wizard/Fighters (at least, Githyank Wizard/Fighters) have in D&Dland. It's already a word the game supports for the concept. The replacement for Theurge is that you just hammer on a list of synonyms for "Magic User" until you find one you like, then put in a rant about how people who use both Arcane and Divine magic are Occultists or Mystics or Oracles or whatever the hell.
You have to start with either the challenges or the players. And if you start with the players, you end up with classes like the 3e Monk, which gets a lot of abilities that Bruce Lee might plausibly have but don't add up to being able to punch a cloud giant in the face at 11th level.
In yet other words, not how they are supposed to overcome encounters, but how they are supposed to shape the campaign?
Start with the stories and work from there.
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2018-06-08, 07:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
To Cosi: My emotional reaction to that post is disappointment. I'm not sure what that means but I am willing to guess that sorting it out will take longer than it should. So unless you want to create a thread on design principles I say we just shelve this one.
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2018-06-08, 10:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
Last edited by Ignimortis; 2018-06-08 at 10:10 PM.
Elezen Dark Knight avatar by Linklele
Favourite classes: Beguiler, Scout, Warblade, 3.5 Warlock, Harbinger (PF:PoW).
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2018-06-09, 03:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
Simultaneous resolution is a thing in several games. Some games do a straight-up "You declare, I declare, he declares, she declares, now everyone try to resolve everything all at once" for actual simultaneous resolution, which works only until you have any kind of conflicting actions and then it basically falls apart.
Other games make an attempt to make things feel more simultaneous than turn-based games do, either phased simultaneous resolution or ordered simultaneous resolution. BECMI/OD&D does the phased version, having four phases of Movement/Missile/Magic/Melee, so everyone moves first (probably no conflicts), then makes ranged attacks (probably no conflicts), and the same for spells and melee attacks, with initiative and declarations handled by side rather than by character; it works well enough to make things feel simultaneous at large scales where closing in to melee, volleys of arrows, etc. are a thing, but it's less effective in your typical dungeon scenario.
WHRP does the ordered version: after rolling initiative, actions are declared in order from lowest initiative to highest and resolved from highest to lowest, allowing higher-initiative characters to interrupt lower-initiative characters more organically. It's the most simultaneous-feeling of them all, but it's a bookkeeping nightmare to resolve when you have more than a handful of characters to deal with.
So it's one of those things that sounds great and everyone wants to try, but doesn't work out too well in practice.
I'd actually argue that there's a lot AD&D does best out of all the editions, at least at the conceptual level if not in the implementation. And if you're giving 4e credit for "great concept, terrible execution," AD&D definitely deserves at least that much.
1e gives better tools for encounter-building (monster rarity, more ecology/society information, and the like, though of course the XP rewards don't hold a candle to 3e's CR system), multiclassing vs. dual-classing to enable you to handle both "I'm an equally good fighter and wizard!" builds and "I'm an X who dabbles in Y!" builds (though the specifics where demihumans couldn't dual-class, humans couldn't multiclass, multiclass combinations were fixed, and dual-class leveling was wonky were pretty terrible), an emphasis on domain management at the mid levels to make the game's changing playstyles as you level more explicit, random magic item tables that explicitly favor noncasters, detailed wilderness/hex crawl adventuring rules, and the like.
2e gives specialty priests and priest spheres that make different divine casters feel distinct, kits allowing PrC-like customization of characters from 1st level instead of 5th or 6th, NWPs explicitly letting you do things without having to roll for them (unlike 3e skills where many basic tasks are DC 10 to 15 so characters can fail them more often than expected whenever they can't take 10), lots of default combat options from Player Options (Combat & Tactics), "epic" foes like gods and unique monsters having HD in the high teens to low 20s so you can actually face them before the game totally breaks down, and the like.
Even if the specific mechanics are thrown out (and they probably should be), there's a lot in AD&D to mine for useful ideas. In fact, many of the things you mention below under "other stuff" shows up in AD&D in that form or a similar form.
- Random magic items are better than WBL. Magic items should feel special, and for that to happen you need to not get the same magic items every game. That said, it does help worldbuilding if there's at least some possibility of getting consistent items.
Originally Posted by 3e DMG, Experience Points sidebar, p.41Originally Posted by 3e DMG, Making a New Character, p.42
But I agree that in general the game should incentivize getting (and keeping and using) random items rather than self-crafting everything, by making the random ones better for a given resource expenditure or just by making crafting inefficient for even-level items like 1e does.
The reason I'm not sold on Gish is precisely because it's exclusive to githyanki in a way that other classes aren't, so "I'm a gish specializing in spell channeling!" doesn't work in-character in the same way "I'm a wizard specializing in evocation!" or "I'm a priest/champion of Pelor!" does. But there's definitely no other term that comes close to replacing it, so I'm using it for now.
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2018-06-09, 05:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
How I would fix dnd, wide ranging changes - overall objective, make it gritty, low magic - see Low Fantasy Gaming in my sig.
How I would fix 5e with minimal changes: see 5e Hardmode in my sig.Low Fantasy Gaming RPG - Free PDF at the link: https://lowfantasygaming.com/
$1 Adventure Frameworks - RPG Mini Adventures: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=645444
Midlands Low Magic Sandbox Setting - https://lowfantasygaming.com/2017/12...x-setting-pdf/
GM Toolkits - Traps, Hirelings, Blackpowder, Mass Battle, 5e Hardmode, Olde World Loot http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/p...Fantasy-Gaming
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2018-06-09, 05:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
Actually, I've been ruminating on this for a long time and had asked friends and acquaintances on how they would fix D&D, and based on how much I see this on the forums and in people's answers...
Not sure if this merits a separate thread, and I want to ask - why so many people wish for D&D to be a gritty low magic fantasy game? It hasn't been that for ages, and there are literally dozens of those on the market, as far as I'm aware, and they have been designed as such from the start. I've heard lots of good things (bad things too, though) about LotFP, some good remarks on Shadow of the Demon Lord or something like that, etc. Most heartbreakers of older D&D versions also attempt to skew the board towards "gritty realism".
Meanwhile, my project of remaking D&D only exists because there is no game I know of in the genre of "superpowered fantasy heroes" aside from Exalted similar in tone to what I want to play and DM, and Exalted's mechanics are kinda bad and would require much more work to redo properly, while higher-level D&D would work quite well for that with a full progression in 20 levels from mortal to demigod.Last edited by Ignimortis; 2018-06-09 at 05:43 AM.
Elezen Dark Knight avatar by Linklele
Favourite classes: Beguiler, Scout, Warblade, 3.5 Warlock, Harbinger (PF:PoW).
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2018-06-09, 07:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY
Interesting, I find the opposite to be true: there are many high magic systems, but very few low magic ones; almost none, in fact. Fairly sure Shadow of the Demon Lord, and Lotfp, aren't low magic (havent looked into them too closely however).
The main reason I want low magic is, ironically (?), to make magic "magical". When magic is everywhere, and reliable, it just becomes a kind of science. And gritty, because I want to feel like I earned my victories. I am a gameplay > story guy. Dont get me wrong, I want a bit of story, but not at the cost of genuine risk and potential PC death/TPK.
You might also check out Godbound, I think that's a epic power dnd game.Last edited by Psikerlord; 2018-06-09 at 07:23 AM.
Low Fantasy Gaming RPG - Free PDF at the link: https://lowfantasygaming.com/
$1 Adventure Frameworks - RPG Mini Adventures: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=645444
Midlands Low Magic Sandbox Setting - https://lowfantasygaming.com/2017/12...x-setting-pdf/
GM Toolkits - Traps, Hirelings, Blackpowder, Mass Battle, 5e Hardmode, Olde World Loot http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/p...Fantasy-Gaming