4uccsess!

[Judging__Eagle]

K and I were talking while he was considering how he was gong to get out of Bakersfield and he threw down a very interesting assessment:

If you just made the opposite design decision from absolutely every single thing 4e did, you could have a pretty great game on your hands.

Instead of a greater reliance on squares to the point where it takes over everything, drop squares entirely.
Instead of making a skill challenge system where one person makes a gajillion rolls to determine binary success or failure, make a system where every player makes one roll and creates a variable degree of success.

And so on for the whole game. 4e made all the wrong decisions. In such a manner that 180 degree turns from them may well be right decisions.

-Username17

So, this sounds like a hell of a plan.

Squares:
I do like squares though. Mostly b/c I own a roll up squares map, and have about 100-ish minis, but w/e.


Group Dice Rolling:
Every person rolling a dice sounds cool.

It makes Diplomacy, and Trapfinding more interesting for the group.


Traps
Trapfinding shouldn't be a special ability. Everyone should be able to "notice" traps.


Stats:
Stats should determine appearance, not how well you can use your special abilities.

Special abilities should be tied directly to class/character level. Gaining power, or effectiveness as you level up.


Special Abilities:
Abilities should be used to set-up other abilities.

At-wills are needed before you can use an Encounter Power; Encounter Powers need to be used before a Daily can be used.

There's no cap on how often you can use Special, and Super, powers. Merely how many Common (or Special) powers have been applied to a creature.

Additionally.... all powers should have 3 modes. Common, Special, and Super.

You've got Melee Attack; Cleave; Whirlwind. Then Ranged Attack; Eye-shot; Arrowshower. Close Wounds; Cure Wounds; Heal. Magic Missile; Magic blast; Magic eye-lasers.

Classes:

No Classes. Just powers. Your powers determine what 'class' you are. Just like in Dungeonsiege. If you're a nature mage with melee powers; you're a Paladin; if you're a Arcane Mage with Nature Powers, you're a Theurge. If you're all 4, you're a Dungeoneer.

Mixing Character types should be awesome:

Melee types have special abilities that fuck up a creature's ability to move, or notice stuff.

Ranged types have special abilities that keep monsters from attacking into melee as well, or something.

[RandomCasualty2]

Group Dice Rolling:
Every person rolling a dice sounds cool.

It makes Diplomacy, and Trapfinding more interesting for the group.

I don't know. It's going to take a lot more than just having everyone toss a dice to make that kind of stuff interesting. What you need is actual meaningful decision making. Just tossing a random die and consulting a random skill is boring.

I almost think the anti-trap game should be more of a kind of intellectual puzzle the players have to solve. Use a different puzzle everytime, whether it's Sudoku or Mastermind, or whatever, and have the players solve that as your "disarm a trap" minigame.

That at least presents the table with something they can work together to solve.

[Judging__Eagle]

Hmm, "puzzles" and not just Traps, and going the System Shock 1 route is also a good idea.



Group dice rolling..... yeah, it can still suck.

I'm not sure how to resolve this though.

Perhaps Skills are "grouped".

Stealth skills (move silently and hide are two related, but divisible skills; you can be silent, and not hide; as well as hide, but not be silent)

Education skills (what used to be "knowledge" become Education)

Awareness skills (as well as lie detection)

Experience Skills (profession, heal; basically the skills that are Wis-based, but not Awareness related; Use Rope gets folded into a "craft" skill, since you're either creating a knot based on ones that you know work, or recreating a knot that you know works.)

Toughness Skills (Concentration and Survival)

Athletics (jump, climb, swim, etc.)

Charisma Based (tricking items, scaring others, being friendly, lying)

So, if you're "grouping up" to solve a challenge, people get to do one of two things:

1. Use Skills that are in the same group
2. Use Skills that are in an other group

With the following restrictions:

-If using the -same- skill as the main character, you have a -X (-5?) to your rolls
-If using a skill from the same group as the main character, you have a +1 to your rolls
-If you use the same skill as anyone else previously has for this group check; you apply a -3 to your dice roll

This encourages groups to mix their skills; and highly aware characters can help sneaky characters be more sneaky (and vice versa); while tough characters can simply endure uncomfortable stuff while the rest of the group uses their specialty.

The fighter wearing a traditional court outfit who decides to use their "survival" skill, and just sits there, looking as if the clothes don't bother him should add as much to the group's chances of influencing the court, as the rogue's silver tongue, or the cleric's ability to notice when someone is lying. The wizard uses their edjumacation to prove the Rogue's point.

How does that work?

[Mask_De_H]

Well, a form of Aid Another based off of relevant skills could work: combining the party's abilities like Voltron. Say, you're trying to glean information at a swanky party, fit in to get closer to the corrupt king.

-The Fighter blends in and watches the crowd (Spot/Search/Survival)
-The Rogue mingles with the target (Diplomacy/Bluff)
-The Mage has given everyone background info on the who's who, and is impressing people with party tricks (Knowledge/Perform)
-The Cleric is flitting about, sensing the intents of the partygoers and trying to find any unnatural influences (Sense Motive/Concentrate)

If the Rogue is the "star," everyone else focusing on their roles gives the Rogue a bonus, if it's more communistic, everyone not fucking up helps everyone else.

[RandomCasualty2]

The skill problem is just deeper than preventing spamming. You actually want to provide decision making of some kind.

Picking a skill is easy. You just pick the one with the best modifier. Even if you throw in extra modifiers, there will always end up being a skill with a best modifier. So there's really no meaningful decision making there.

The heart of any game are its decisions. The dice are secondary.

So basically you want to create difficult decisions for the PCs, and the answer to those decisions should change each time they encounter a new challenge.

In 4E currently, the only real decision making process is trying to find a way for your DM to let you use an obscure skill not directly used in the challenge, like thinking up a reason how your arcana skill will help you navigate the wilderness. But just "pick the biggest number" isn't a minigame. That's just boring.

[RobbyPants]

Group Dice Rolling:
Every person rolling a dice sounds cool.

It makes Diplomacy, and Trapfinding more interesting for the group.

I agree that this could make things more interesting for everyone involved. It reminds me of Dungeonscape's encounter traps.

Traps
Trapfinding shouldn't be a special ability. Everyone should be able to "notice" traps.

Good idea.

Special Abilities:
Abilities should be used to set-up other abilities.

At-wills are needed before you can use an Encounter Power; Encounter Powers need to be used before a Daily can be used.

This gets rid of the top-down use of abilities. I suppose if each super ability requires a setup in X rounds, that itself limits how often you can use it.

Classes:

No Classes. Just powers. Your powers determine what 'class' you are. Just like in Dungeonsiege. If you're a nature mage with melee powers; you're a Paladin; if you're a Arcane Mage with Nature Powers, you're a Theurge. If you're all 4, you're a Dungeoneer.

I'm all for a classless system. If designed well, it handles "multiclassing" in about the most elegant way possible.

[Crissa]

That's why in my version of d20 I did away with individual ranks of skill, to four levels of can't-don't-can-master; with the difference between can and master being very little and everyone can at least try as long as they don't can't.

-Crissa

[Username17]

The idea really is to take the individual design ideas of 4e and invert them.

So or example in 4e the design idea is that your starting race defines you in a major way your whole life. First by setting you on a permanently scaling numeric track and secondly by giving you access to racial feats that let people function in a level appropriate manner. So um... don't do that. Instead have races be a set of abilities that explicitly only count at level 1. If you decide that Orc Wizard is a counter productive choice, then it's still something you get over as you rise in level and you trade in your abilities. When I'm up against the Necrolord, I genuinely don't give a fuck whether he was a human or an orc or a halfling in life - he's the god damn Necrolord now and he's 12 feet tall and made of iron and wailing souls.

Or in 4e when they make multiclassing impossible by defining you by your class choice at first level forever. How about, not doing that? Instead you don't even choose a class in any permanent manner at all. You just pick abilities, and you get to select some package abilities dynamically if a certain percentage of your powers have the right keyword. So you aren't a "Fighter" or an "Ice Mage" or whatever. You're a collection of powers, and then if more than a quarter of your powers have the "Warrior" tag you can take the "Warrior Hero" package and if more than a quarter have the [Cold] tag you can take the "Frozen Lands Hero." And those sets give you your bullshit powers that you don't want to spend actual levels on like cold resistance and the ability to judge horses.

Instead of doing the FFXI equipment system, remove money -> power.

Instead of making monsters use unique systems, have them draw their attacks off the same list as PCs.

And so on. Every where that 4e goes generic, go specific. Everywhere 4e goes specific, go generic. 4e is seriously that bad.

-Username17

[Caedrus]

Hmm, "puzzles" and not just Traps, and going the System Shock 1 route is also a good idea.

What's the System Shock 1 route?

[Judging__Eagle]

The skill problem is just deeper than preventing spamming. You actually want to provide decision making of some kind.

Picking a skill is easy. You just pick the one with the best modifier. Even if you throw in extra modifiers, there will always end up being a skill with a best modifier. So there's really no meaningful decision making there.

The heart of any game are its decisions. The dice are secondary.

So basically you want to create difficult decisions for the PCs, and the answer to those decisions should change each time they encounter a new challenge.

In 4E currently, the only real decision making process is trying to find a way for your DM to let you use an obscure skill not directly used in the challenge, like thinking up a reason how your arcana skill will help you navigate the wilderness. But just "pick the biggest number" isn't a minigame. That's just boring.

Hmmm... that's an interesting idea.

Tie skills to any stat.

Every character gets 6 "Character" Stats. They assign skills to each stat. Those are always in-class, and get you use a stat mod.

So, 6 skill groups:


Stealth skills (move silently and hide are two related, but divisible skills; you can be silent, and not hide; as well as hide, but not be silent)

Education skills (what used to be "knowledge" become Education;
Experience Skills (profession, heal; basically the skills that are Wis-based, but not Awareness related; Use Rope gets folded into a "craft" skill, since you're either creating a knot based on ones that you know work, or recreating a knot that you know works.)

Awareness skills (as well as lie detection)

Toughness Skills (Concentration and Survival)

Athletics (jump, climb, swim, etc.)

Social (tricking items, scaring others, being friendly, lying)

The thing is.... any skill can be tied to any skill group.

No, I don't care if it sounds ridiculous. Yes, it means that Strong, but charming Ocean Mages are possible characters.

They simply have Str as their highest stat, and applied it to their Social skill group.

Their powers are tied to their character level..... let's get rid of levels?

Let's instead..... have characters have a number of 'levels' equal to the number of major adventures that they've been on?

Each time, they get a set bonus; a single "combat" ability; every odd level, they get an additional "utility" ability. Or the inverse, or one utility and one combat ability every level.

Each ability is 3 in one. A Common Power, a Special Power, and a Super Power.

In order to activate any Special powers, you must have activated at least one Common power on an enemy, then in any later rounds in this fight, you can activate a Special Power.

Once you've activated a Special Power, you can use a Super Power.

It should be noted, that you can mix and match which powers you use.

So, you can use a whole slew of Common Powers. Activate a Special, then continue using Commons, until you want to use a Super.

Which makes going Nova take a 3 round set-up, which would prevent the "pre-buff and ambush" problem. As well as tone down rocket-tagging. As well as allow for "Voltroning" if the whole team "powers up!".


What's the System Shock 1 route?

You have barriers, or bridges that are missing. You have to solve a puzzle to get access to a place, they're all designed to be....like wiring puzzles.

I wonder if it's still playable. It was really a great game, really ahead of its time. I'd say that it's content and features would hold up even today, even if the graphics wouldn't.

[cthulhu]

It is still playable with some emulation work that other people have just done for you.

http://www.strangebedfellows.de/index.p ... 211.0.html

[Kobajagrande]

Traps, as they exist in D&D, should just die, and would have died if the designers had a minimum amount of vision.

What do the traps look like in D&D? They are arbitrarily placed, and unless a character stops, searches for them, finds them and disables them, they activate and something happens to the character.

That's total bullshit. Does anyone even care about them? Does any player feel any amount of tension with D&D-traps-as-written? Did anyone actually witness people holding their breath when the Rogue said "OMG, guys, wait... I found a trap on these doors"?

Compare that with traps in just about any adventure movie. In every single action movie, a trap is activated, and then the heroes use their skills to evade it.

D&D just fails utterly at emulating that.

[Koumei]

Yeah, I seriously wouldn't mind if traps just didn't exist. I never play the minesweeper, it is Someone Else's Job. And if no-one else wants to? The DM should just say "Fine, we won't have traps to deal with. You can just have more (other challenge, monsters are a favourite) instead."

And everyone wins.

[Psychic Robot]

This was probably suggested already, but I think that traps should be handled similarly to skill challenges, except you let everyone contribute to solving the problem. And there's real danger, not 2d6+3 damage.

[JonSetanta]

A trap shouldn't be handled on a binary search concept, but on a "A trap awaits you in this hallway. What do you do?" anticipation.
The only circumstance in which I'd make players stumble upon a well-hidden trap is if the trap itself were a 'boss trap', a singular and dangerous event in a secluded region, with ample warning or intuitive advice (when players ask).

I've come to learn that the standard approach to traps in D&D is to kill or at least piss off the players; this is a trope from Gygaxian D&D.
It's shit.

Over the years, I've relaxed on the use of traps to the point where it's become valid combat tactics for PCs; distract enemy, set trap in a round or two, make a lure for enemy.. and bam, the enemy just became injured or SoS'd without much risk to the players beyond the initial "Nyah nyah!" maneuver. Likewise, NPCs then do the same to PCs when possible.
They're tools, weapons, speedbumps, NOT encounters.

[Maxus]

So are we back looking at FFT/FFTA-style powers and multiclassing here? Where you can freely pick up some abilities and mix and match them to go along? I'm game for that.

I could see it being used with some sort of Ability Slot system ("Oh, yeah, I get 3 abilities in 2 levels. My character is a TWFing fencer. Let's see what looks good..."). It'd also encourage people to pick up things by roleplaying and interacting with the world ("Oh Grandmaster of Flowers of the Wel Hung Monastery...Will you teach me to throw a decent punch?" "Of course, my child." And, after a few days of downtime, your character picks up the Slam attack.)

And it works out okay in the game, too.

For those who don't know, FFTA has classes which can pick up some abilities by learning them from items. That's not the interesting bit.

The interesting part for our purposes is that you get several types of abilities--active abilities (stuff you can select and use, like a Black Mage casting Fira), Reaction abilities (block, counter, counter like a motherfucker, turn on some benefit when you're hit, etc), and Support (immunities, flat bonuses, little bendings of the rules for you, etc). Also, you can have another class's skills as a backup. So you can have a Paladin/Thief walking around. Or a White/Black Mage. Or a Ninja/Fighter. Whatever.

We'd need some way to determine how people gained abilities; preferably something with little bookkeeping. Keeping the idea of 'Character Level' and tying a solid progression of abilities to that could be fleshed out with the extra abilities gained from roleplaying. And, of course, people level up when the DM says so. As for HP or other variations to show someone who's taken a lot of Magic as opposed to taking a lot of Raging, I dunno. Maybe a suggested list of growth rates for the numbers on your character sheet. Not as formal as classes, but, still, you should be able to say what your character is, in-game, and therefore have an expectation about what they're focusing on.

I know Caedrus' Successor system is toying with something much like this, with broad classes which are differentiated by the abilities you select.

[TavishArtair]

Or in 4e when they make multiclassing impossible by defining you by your class choice at first level forever. How about, not doing that? Instead you don't even choose a class in any permanent manner at all. You just pick abilities, and you get to select some package abilities dynamically if a certain percentage of your powers have the right keyword. So you aren't a "Fighter" or an "Ice Mage" or whatever. You're a collection of powers, and then if more than a quarter of your powers have the "Warrior" tag you can take the "Warrior Hero" package and if more than a quarter have the [Cold] tag you can take the "Frozen Lands Hero." And those sets give you your bullshit powers that you don't want to spend actual levels on like cold resistance and the ability to judge horses.

I might impose some kind of upper limit on the number of these templates that an individual character has, but I would make it reasonably high or possibly something that increases with level or something, I dunno. The reason I would do that is so that players can't qualify for too many at once if lots of templates are introduced, that is, so that you don't get infinitely expanding power this way. Because I can definitely see, as it were, games writing more of these, and if it grows to be so many you can't reasonably fit most of them into a single sentence, you have a problem.

[Mask_De_H]

You could have a number of slots available for the player to hold their abilities as well as a "Rule of Threes" for maximum amount of bullshit templates. Or, the package system actually works as the superstructure for the abilities.

For example:
Warrior Archetype Form: Get good at using weapons and armor. Requires 2 [Warrior] abilities
Swording [Warrior][Sword]
Axing [Warrior][Axe]
Flipping out and Killing People [Warrior][Ninja][Sweet]

Woodsman Archetype: You get good with axes and animals. Requires 2 of [Axe][Wood][Animal] abilities
Tree Choppan [Axe][Wood]
Attack Dog [Animal][Smooth]
Woodcrafting [Wood][Creation]

Ninja Archetype: You look cool in black, and have a verbal tic of "Dattebayo" Requires 2 of [Ninja][Stealth][Sweet]
Highly Conspicuous [Sweet][Ninja]
Blend with Shadows [Ninja][Stealth]
Firebreathing [Fire][Sweet]

Off topic, does anybody else read the thread title as "Fuccess"?

EDIT: I just got a crazy idea: why not use the SAME system for this? If we take some of the discussions on DnD to their logical conclusion (no HP, no Con/Cha, free select powers only, Final Destination) what we'd end up with would be a four stat system that looked a hell of a lot like it.

[Judging__Eagle]

Hmmm....

Special Abilities
I ride the short bus!



I can't hear you.
I'm sorry. I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.

[Awesome, Verbal, Balanced: +1 Offense/+1 Defense; +10 HP]

Common- Spend a [Minor] Action. One creature within [Close] range cannot be heard by anyone for [1 to Character level?] rounds.

Special- Spend a [Moderate] Action. Any creatures you wish within [Close] range cannot be heard for one round.

Super- Spend a [Major] Action. Any creature you wish within [Medium] range cannot make noise. This lasts until you apply this ability to a new creature, or the current battle ends.


Hand Strike
Be careful! I could haff chopped you with my hand!

[Physical, Offesne: +2 Offense/+0 Defense; +10 HP]

Common- Spend a [Minor] Action. One creature within [Melee] range recieves damage.

Special- Spend a [Moderate] Action. All creatures within [Melee] range recieve damage.

Super- Spend a [Major] Action. You may move your speed, and all creatures within [Melee] range of you recieve damage.

Wounds Away!
See... you take a pixie, and you shake it over the wound, then it closes the wound. Wounds Away!

[Magical, Defense: +0 Offense/+2 Defense; +10 HP]

Common- Spend a [Minor] Action. One creature within [Close] range is healed of [amount] damage.

Special- Spend a [Moderate] Action. Any creatures within [close] range may be healed for [amount] damage.

Super- Spend a [Major] Action. All allies withing [medium] range are healed for 1/2 their maximum damage.

[Doom]

A sad consequence to the "opposite of 4.0" design philosophy is that you're actually sketching a game where "under no circumstances can Strength be used to solve crossword puzzles" is one of the fundamental paradigms.

[Judging__Eagle]

No stat can be used to solve a puzzle.

The players have to solve puzzles on their own.

[Mask_De_H]

Couldn't we have people just use their abilities in clever ways to solve puzzles/overcome obstacles? Granted, there are going to be cases when a logic puzzle is a great idea, but would we or should we do that for every sort of challenge?

Also, I'll try and hack this into SAME. Basic outline forthcoming.

[Maxus]

This system's going to need a list of tags.

Here's the starting pack! Acquire the Tags Expansion by...writing it yourself.

Offense
Defense
Fire
Water
Air
Earth
Cold
Electric
Sword
Axe
Bow
Spear*
Verbal
Nonverbal
Good
Evil
Dark
Light
Stealth
Area
Poison
Creation
Magic
Warrior
Magic-User
Thief
Ninja

*Do we actually want each broad category of weapons to have its own tag? That really seems like a lot of work when you could lump them into "Fighting Man" or "Warrior".

[Judging__Eagle]

Well...

I want something like this:

["Adjective", "Secondary (not needed all the time) Adjective"; "Offense/Defense/Balanced" (+2/+0; +0+2; +1/+1)]

I really don't want "Warrior" or "Magic-User" to be ability Adjectives.

The "Weapon" needing abilities, should say so.

Perhaps abilities that say "item" require an item to make the power work. While things that are verbal, don't.

I'm not keen on a "magical" or "non-magical" tag though. I want there to be a single healing ability, and it heals in a fashion that you want it to. Either by singing a song, or using divine power; or summoning dozens of tineh demon tailors to stitch the wounded person back together. Even plain old bandages should be fine for use with this. Or you can for the TF route and have "healing guns" like the medic has.

One thing that might be important would be to seperate item and non-item abilities.

Item abilities require a specific item to be used, or held; but I want them to be more powerful.

Non-item abilities don't take up an item.

Of course, switching your items can't be done in combat.

Items that I could see being wielded (and only 2 ever by a character) include:

Magic Wand/Staff
Weapon
Sheild
"Special Tool" (grapple hook, a horse; yes, mounted combat will be taken into account, and you need a horse equipped before you can use mounted combat abilities; armour?)


Ok.... so....


Ability types:
All Abilities are meant to do one of a few things.

Attack
Protection
Repair
Creation/Summoning
Control
Travel

Note: I don't know how to think about Summoning. Maybe have it related to Creation, where you get helpers? Like either create undead, or constructs, or vermin, or summon elementals, or demons? They should all be relatively similar, just look different, and have different abilities chosen.

Ability Requirements:
These are things that you need to be able to use an ability. You can't cleave without a weapon. Unless you have the ability to always count as having a weapon.

Weapon/Sheild
Item*
Tool**
Verbal
Movement


*: Wand, weapon something that you use, and isn't used to mundane purposes. Like say, a hammer, or a chisel.
**: Stuff like a grapple hook, or a rope, or a horse; things that aren't obviously weapons.

Ability Stance:
Since we'll probably still have dice rolls; your offense rolls and defense rolls are modified by the abilities that your character has.

Offense +2 / +0
Balanced +1 / +1
Defense +0 / +2

So...

[Abiltiy Type; Ability Requirement; Stance]

[Mask_De_H]

J_E and Maxus bring up an important point: how granular do we want our tags to be? Do we want to have tags for every weapon, just weapon style (Simple, 1hand, 2hand, Exotic), former class, etc? Going with the "inverse of 4e" idea, would they be as broad as possible (to remove the incredibly narrow focus) or very granular (to fix the "everything is piddly shit damage + effect" paradigm)?

The way I see it, element tags are a must, as well as the function of the ability and/or the necessary tool. I like the way J_E set things up though.