Who is left to rebuild the D&D franchise?

[MGuy]

Wouldn't you have to constantly be doing math for how much your attack result beat the defender;s defense anyway?

No. It actually saves time. It cuts out the damage roll entirely without doing that boring ass 'I deal 6 damage to the orc! Same as the last turn. And the turn before that.' You only have to do addition (or subtraction) rather than roll dice AND do addition. It's a big time saver, especially with multiple attacks.

Damn. You raise a very good point about HP. I'd still like a bit more convincing though. Do you already have a model for how exactly you're going to handle Damage, soak, variant damage types, miss chance, blah blah blah?

[Lago PARANOIA]

It'll be handled pretty much like Shadowrun, with some allowances for D&D.

From on now weapons have a fixed damage tract. The number is kept low (like 5 damage for a greatsword, which is about right since in 4E and 3E they do about 2.5x the damage of a human fist, which will deal 2 damage) and then you add modifiers as necessary. A damage point here or there for a magic sword, another damage point for having exception strength, another damage point for a class feature, etc.. But really, you want to keep damage fairly low. Doing 10 points of unmodified damage on average should be like that of a hill-giant berserker coming to kill your ass.

The AC/Reflex/Will/Fortitude triangle works pretty much the same way it always did, though more of an effort will be made to keep it on the RNG.

Now here's the big deviation from other D&D games. Your attack bonus is fixed and it's your DEFENSE score that you roll. This is to increase player involvement in combat and also not to make people feel like things are out of the hands of their characters.

You roll your defense score and subtract it from the attack score. If it's 0, you suffer the damage. If it's positive, you run it through a formula (something like a conversion of one damage point per two points it succeeds) that much damage gets added to the attack. If it's negative, you reduce that much damage.

Example 1: Orc Captain vs. Fighter, both level 1. Both are about roughly matched in power at this level, slight edge going to Fighter.

For example. Orcy McOrc Captain and Fighter McFightington are both 1st level fighters. Orc Captain has an attack bonus of +8, does 4 damage on a hit, has an AC of 4 and has 20 health boxes. Fighter has an attack bonus of +10, does 6 damage on a hit, 20 health boxes, and an unmodified AC of 5.

Orc wins initiative and declares an attack. Fighter rolls his defense score gets an 18 on the d20, for a result of 24. The result is -16, which gives a damage conversion of -8 and completely negates the damage.

Fighter attacks back. Orc rolls an 8 on his defense score for a result of 12, which means that damage conversion takes away one hit point of damage, making the orc takes 5 damage. The orc is in the 'lightly wounded' zone, which means that he takes a -2 penalty to defense and attack scores until he's healed.

Orc attacks again. Fighter gets a 3 on his defense score for a result of 8. Damage conversion reduces the damage by 1, meaning that the fighter suffers 4 hit points of damage. He's barely out of the 'lightly wounded' zone.

Now Fighter attacks. Orc rolls a 13 for AC, giving an AC of 15 (with the -2 penalty), so damage conversions reduces it by 1. Fighter inflicts another 5 points of damage, putting Orc in the 'heavily wounded' zone, reducing their defenses and attack by four.

Orc attacks again. Fighter gets a measly 7 on his defense score, giving him an AC of 12. However the attack bonus is only a 4, so damage conversion takes away 4 damage, meaning that Fighter isn't even harmed.

Now Fighter attacks one more time. Orc rolls a 15, giving him... 15. No damage conversion, the Orc captain is now down to four hit points and is in the 'grievously wounded' zone, taking a -6 penalty. He needs to pull some trick out of his ass or get out of here, since the fighter needs to roll 1s to hurt the Orc Captain.

Rematch, Orc Captain level 1 and Fighter level 4.

Later, the Orc Captain and Fighter have a rematch. The Fighter is at level 4 now, making his unmodified AC 11, his attack bonus +17, and his damage bonus is 8. Most of it is from levels, but the Fighter found a +2 sword and some +1 armor. Orc found a magic sword, making his AC 4, his attack bonus +9 now, and his damage bonus 5. That means that he's slightly better than the fighter was at level 1.

The Fighter attacks first, with the orc rolling a 15 for 19 AC. Damage conversion doesn't reduce the damage at all, making the orc suffer 8 points of damage. and puts the orc into the lightly wounded zone.

The orc attacks the fighter, who rolls a measly 2 for AC. However, damage conversion makes it so that none of the orc's attack gets through.

The Fighter attacks again, with the orc rolling a 8 for 10 AC. The fighter does an additional 3 damage on his regular attack after damage conversion, knocking out the orc captain's lights without breaking a sweat.

Note that this was with basic attacks. The fighter, with something like a Whirlwind Attack power, could have very easily been able to take on four orc captains at once at level 4 in two or three rounds while at level 1 he would've most certainly been defeated by fighting just two of them unless he had some backup or a pinch maneuver.

Also note that the bonuses didn't have to inflate that much to turn an orc captain from 'near-equal' to 'cannon fodder'.

Now I'm not a mathematician so I can't tell you off of the top of my head whether the numbers would end up diverging too much. Personally, I support a SLIGHT trend towards padded sumo as far as strict number comparison goes to account for powers.

[MGuy]

Damn I like this set up. I'm going to have to take a look at Shadowrun now (no one I know has any of the books so I've never actually played) and see about changing my entire system around to accommodate for the easier math.

[TheFlatline]

Wouldn't you have to constantly be doing math for how much your attack result beat the defender;s defense anyway?
.

Okay... experiment time. Say with less hitpoints you have, just for example, 10 health levels. Your weapon does a D4 damage and you roll max.

Quick, what's 10 minus 4?

Now, D&D as it is:

Okay, now what's 8 plus 4 plus 3 plus 6 plus 5?

Now quick, what's 147 minus that total?

Repeat 15 times for *one* combat.

I rest my case.

[TheFlatline]

My only complaint with the system Lago suggests is that the bonuses get real big in his samples *really* quickly. And that's a bad thing.

The system in it's concept is admirable. The math needs to be fiddled with to see if it can be made more player friendly. Otherwise you'll have AC up near 100 and attacks just as high.

Which gives another problem. At higher levels, you have the issue of that D20 range not being very flexible. You're talking about only a handful of damage swinging using the math in your examples (which seemed to be 5 point success threshold per point of damage reduced). If you set it to 2 points like you mention, you'd run into the problem of quickly having baddies that are either literally no threat or literally can't be touched. At that point, swarms of lower-level creatures would need mob rules in order to have any chance of ever doing any damage at all to the PCs. In D&D as it stands, a natural 20 hits, so even if you're a level 20 fighter, that kobold has a chance of doing *some* damage to you.

[Lago PARANOIA]

My only complaint with the system Lago suggests is that the bonuses get real big in his samples *really* quickly. And that's a bad thing.

I don't think they get that big. I tried to start the attack and defense bonuses at a baseline of 4-8 and give about 1.2 points of both per level (meaning at level 20 people should have around bonuses of 28-32). Defense should increase a bit faster than attack because of damage inflation. I'd rather not have any damage inflation but I think that people will whine too much if a +6 flaming greatsword only gives bonuses to attack.

The RNG is supposed to be very strict but is also supposed to completely shut you out if you deviate too far from it. That's intentional. When you fight creatures of about your level with no special attack/defensive tricks, it should take around three-to-five rounds of wailing on the same enemy before it reaches a point where one of you have to give up. A 1000-man army of kobolds simply isn't a threat for a level 10 swordsman and similarly a level 10 swordsman is only a threat for a level 15 archlich if he has four other party members with him and they pull out all of the stops. If you want them to still come out scathed you could implement some kind of iterative critical system.

I.e. you can get criticals on top of criticals. Of course at that point you might just want to save time by having a 'kobold army' mobile.

[MfA]

Okay. Then we have the 4E power system or put everyone on Vancian casting.

I'd rather they be called manoeuvres. In my opinion ToB got one thing right which 4e got wrong, martial archetypes should never run out of steam ... fuck encounter/dailies.

Also I think there should be a path/kit for the badass normal mentioned in the other thread, which only gets at wills which basically come down to "I hit stuff really hard and effectively" which relies on party casters and the few magic items he has for mobility etc (personally I don't have a problem with being reliant on magic items ... Batman is a Christmas tree too). Since there are people who want to play this.

I'd much rather switch to Winds of Fate however. 3E and 4E already set us up for that and it's not like the mechanic is unprecedented.

It's not an either/or situation ... leave the classical casters (wizard and cleric) full on Vancian. Put the manoeuvres on partial WoF (WoF is fine for offence, but not for reactives and mobility) and do whatever you like with the less iconic casters.

1A) It'd get rid of padded sumo/rocket launcher tag.

CAN does too.

8 levels ago an ogre was a boss-level threat but now you chew through them like bubblegum. That's a laudable goal. Unfortunately, numbered hit points lead to three potential problems with this system.

You CAN go straight to finishers on the Ogre.

Regardless, you didn't really give me an argument for keeping those sacred cows, MfA.

It would sell better.

[Username17]

4e demonstrated that most sacred cows are not that sacred. They went from Save Bonuses to Defenses as Target Numbers with barely a grumble. And they went from rolled hit points to fixed hit points with no complaint at all.

A lot can be learned from what people grumble about and didn't grumble about:

Change	Fan Reaction
Fixed Hit Points	Small Relief
Default to Stat Array	No comment
Gnome Removal	Screams of Bloody Murder
Fighters get powers	Polarizing: Joy/Anger
Announcement of Removed Christmas Tree	Excitement
Return to 3e Items	Anger and Disappointment
Removal of High End Magic	Anger
Rituals	Excitement
Skill Challenges	Excitement
Combat Roles	Dubious Grumbling
Mandatory Paragon Paths	Shrugs
New Critical Paradigm	No one cares
No Skill Ranks	Blinks and Shrugs
Level Bonuses	Waiting and Seeing

4e is a bad game. But not because they kicked over the sacred cows that they kicked over. Sure, kicking Gnomes to the curb in order to make room for a new flavor of Elf, a different and less interesting Tiefling, and a brand new scaly was a bad choice - but ultimately that's not why 4e failed. People wanted to like Skill Challenges. People wanted to like hem a whole lot, because it sounded like they were going to be able to finally have characters whose non-combat contributions were meaningful to quest completion in some rules-enforced fashion. And they were wrong, because Bill Slavicsek cannot or will not do math. For months after the release of 4e, people came to the defense of Skill Challenges with fast fingers and fire breath, because they wanted the damn things to work. They wanted it really hard.

So obviously if you were making a new edition, you'd include all the basic races. Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes, and Orcs. And then you'd build upon that. If you wanted to do a Warcraft tie-in, this is where you'd do a set of horde races to go with (maybe Orcs, Hobs, Tieflings, Goblins, and Kobolds). Or throw in some Eberron-esque "It Breeds True!" shit. I don't even care. The point is that you fucking include all five of the Tolkien races and Gnomes. Because D&D Grognards like it, and it takes up one page in a 320 page book.

But everything that has to do with game math appears to be basically free. That is, no one really cares if the Wizard gains a d4 hit points per level or a fixed number of hit points per level, or even if his hit points change at all. People don't really care if defenses are rolled or rolled against. If the math doesn't work out, people will eventually get angry. But people seriously are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, most of the fanbase doesn't really want to run the numbers themselves, and will assume that numeric changes are made with open eyes by skilled designers who know better.

-Username17

[MfA]

This isn't the same situation any more though. 4e had people to lose ... 5e has to win people back who think WotC has stopped publishing D&D altogether. I don't think recognizable races and good rules alone will accomplish that. I think the rules at some level have to be recognizable as well.

If 4e had been good and successful then maybe 5e would have been a good point to get rid of scaling hitpoints/damage (although I remain completely unconvinced). It wasn't though, and it isn't.

[souran]

So obviously if you were making a new edition, you'd include all the basic races. Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes, and Orcs. And then you'd build upon that.
-Username17

Yep, apperently in D&D its mandatory to have gnomes, even though most people cannot explain how the race is any different than (D&D) halflings. Additionally, half your fanbase is CERTAIN the D&D gnomes are wow/dragonlance tinker gnomes and the other half HATES that concept with a passion but removal of the gnome results in the combined hatred of both groups... even though nobody in their fucking parties was playing one.

Also: At Lago: The attacker needs to roll something damit. You want grognards to sign on to your game then longswords need to do d8 points of damage. Your system already removes the d20 roll from the attacker. Rolling a 20 will now be something that most players associate with a BAD combat result rather than a good one.

You should adjust your system so that the attackers weapon does random damage. They roll their damage at the same time as the defender rolls the d20. One thing about this is that you could also get rid of the +5 sword or make the +5 sword have less of an impact by making each +1 be a die increaser.

So a +1 longsword instead of doing d8+1 does d10, a +2 does d12, a +3 does 2d6, +4 2d8, +5 3d6

[MGuy]

So obviously if you were making a new edition, you'd include all the basic races. Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes, and Orcs. And then you'd build upon that.
-Username17

Yep, apperently in D&D its mandatory to have gnomes, even though most people cannot explain how the race is any different than (D&D) halflings. Additionally, half your fanbase is CERTAIN the D&D gnomes are wow/dragonlance tinker gnomes and the other half HATES that concept with a passion but removal of the gnome results in the combined hatred of both groups... even though nobody in their fucking parties was playing one.

Also: At Lago: The attacker needs to roll something damit. You want grognards to sign on to your game then longswords need to do d8 points of damage. Your system already removes the d20 roll from the attacker. Rolling a 20 will now be something that most players associate with a BAD combat result rather than a good one.

You should adjust your system so that the attackers weapon does random damage. They roll their damage at the same time as the defender rolls the d20. One thing about this is that you could also get rid of the +5 sword or make the +5 sword have less of an impact by making each +1 be a die increaser.

So a +1 longsword instead of doing d8+1 does d10, a +2 does d12, a +3 does 2d6, +4 2d8, +5 3d6

I think its generally better for the attacker to roll for the purposes of area attacks and the like. One roll, compare it to all defenses (one at a time) is easier than rolling for each and collecting results. I also think that damage die shouldn't be taken away (you gotta move product and dice are product). So I think weapons should at least have the weapon die roll involved.

[TheFlatline]

I don't think they get that big. I tried to start the attack and defense bonuses at a baseline of 4-8 and give about 1.2 points of both per level (meaning at level 20 people should have around bonuses of 28-32). Defense should increase a bit faster than attack because of damage inflation. I'd rather not have any damage inflation but I think that people will whine too much if a +6 flaming greatsword only gives bonuses to attack.

You typo'd the hell out of your example then. You gave a level 4 fighter a +17 base attack. That scales pretty quickly. I see your intent, and I guess at 1.2 a level or so you're looking at something in the 50's by level 20 after magic items. It just *seems* like it's starting to get pretty far up there.

The RNG is supposed to be very strict but is also supposed to completely shut you out if you deviate too far from it. That's intentional. When you fight creatures of about your level with no special attack/defensive tricks, it should take around three-to-five rounds of wailing on the same enemy before it reaches a point where one of you have to give up. A 1000-man army of kobolds simply isn't a threat for a level 10 swordsman and similarly a level 10 swordsman is only a threat for a level 15 archlich if he has four other party members with him and they pull out all of the stops. If you want them to still come out scathed you could implement some kind of iterative critical system.

I.e. you can get criticals on top of criticals. Of course at that point you might just want to save time by having a 'kobold army' mobile.

Okay, I'm fine with your system intentionally shut out combat if the level disparity is too great. I just need to know as a player that's, you know, the intent. It's like World of Warcraft. If there's too great a disparity between you and the monster, you simply don't do any damage and the monster slaughters you.

Instead of iterative critical hits I might just create either endurance rules for combat (your effectiveness goes down if the fight drags out abnormally long, sort of like your healing system, so that the swarm of kobolds can just keep attacking until you can't lift your sword and *then* they start damaging you), or a mob/swarm system that makes packs/gangs/armies of canon fodder still a risk. It'd seem to be a lot less balancing than introducing a special crit system.

It also doesn't subject PCs to a particularly harsh crit system. Generally speaking, anything that makes combat more lethal is going to screw the PCs in the long run.

[Red_Rob]

10 hit boxes means that that you don't have much to play with on the damage front. I would say you can't have classes or strength increase damage done at all without running a severe risk of hitting rocket launcher tag again.

Shadowrun has "wound levels", so a moderate wound is 3 boxes and a severe wound is 6 boxes and your strength or powers just increase the chance of you actually causing that damage rather than having it reduced. Increasing to the next damage level is pretty hard against anyone moderately good defensively.

Shadowrun however has the related problem of the "two hit kill", whereby it is almost impossible to kill in a single hit, but you can almost always do more than half the health of your enemy. This effectively gives everyone 2 hit points.

Wound boxes work well for the kind of gritty combat Shadowrun emphasises but I'm not convinvced it can work so well for Big Damn Heroes ala D&D.

[MfA]

You can try to keep damage in single digits and hitpoints in double digits (which I guess is close to Earthdawn). Although at that point I don't see the huge advantage over hitpoints in tripple digits and damage in doubles.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You typo'd the hell out of your example then. You gave a level 4 fighter a +17 base attack. That scales pretty quickly. I see your intent, and I guess at 1.2 a level or so you're looking at something in the 50's by level 20 after magic items. It just *seems* like it's starting to get pretty far up there.

The 1.2 a level is with magical items. It should be in the high 30s for a combat-monster by level 20, not 50s.

I would say you can't have classes or strength increase damage done at all without running a severe risk of hitting rocket launcher tag again.

No, you don't. Direct damage increases are rare. Strength doesn't directly add to damage, it just determines what weapons you can use and adds to attack (which also means that you'll have to strictly control attribute bonuses, 2E-style, but I already recommended that). I'd rather have completely fixed damage for level 1 to level 20 people but people get all crybaby if they don't see their damage go up.

Most of your damage bulge will be from your increasing attack bonus. A level 8 person will pretty much one-shot a level 1 person, while a level 8 person will take about 3-5 attacks to take out a level 8 person (with basic attacks).

As long as the only damage bonuses you give are only tiny, wanked-to bonuses to sooth the grognard fanbase who can't wrap their head around the fact that it's okay for a level 20 fighter to have the same base damage as a level 1 fighter it'l work out. As long as you throw some defense bonuses further up the chain to compensate for the butthurt grognard effect Remember, if you get an attack bonus but your opposition gets an equal defense bonus it doesn't change the ratio of how fast you can kill someone.

If people are that attached to the idea of the attacker rolling something then it doesn't really change things if they do. I prefer the defender to roll because it convinces people to pay attention when it's not their turn.

Damage boxes (and thus damage bonuses) are intentionally kept small because we want to keep the number of tick-boxes small. If you do something stupid like having longswords do 1d8 damage then you'll need to have like 40 boxes, which is way too many to be manageable. 20 should be the limit for most people. I'd rather go even smaller but grognards would REALLY start whining if hill giants were only supposed to do 5 boxes of unmodified damage.

[souran]

No, you don't. Direct damage increases are rare. Strength doesn't directly add to damage, it just determines what weapons you can use and adds to attack (which also means that you'll have to strictly control attribute bonuses, 2E-style, but I already recommended that). I'd rather have completely fixed damage for level 1 to level 20 people but people get all crybaby if they don't see their damage go up.

Most of your damage bulge will be from your increasing attack bonus. A level 8 person will pretty much one-shot a level 1 person, while a level 8 person will take about 3-5 attacks to take out a level 8 person (with basic attacks).

As you Note that ANYTHING that adds to attack in your system defacto adds to damage. So the big thing is Strength CANNOT add to your static damage otherwise you get a double dip from a single stat. Strength is still the damage stat. However, dexterity is the damage stat for ranged attacks.

Your attack bonus IS a damage bonus if you get to use the "extra" as bonus damage. Powergamers in your system will always be looking for + to hit modifiers from everywhere they can get one specifically because they are also damage increases.

Also note that in these systems there is a tendancy to think that there are two kinds of ways to play a characer, 1st the guy with high damage but low accuracy. Second a guy with low raw damage but a huge accuracy.

The problem is that misses do nothing and hits can inflict wound penalities making huge damage low accuracy guy actually stupidly shitty compared to huge accuracy low damage guy.

If people are that attached to the idea of the attacker rolling something then it doesn't really change things if they do. I prefer the defender to roll because it convinces people to pay attention when it's not their turn.

Defending PCs need to roll for fucking sure. Attackers need to roll something, which is why I suggest a randomizer for damage as well as to hit. It doesn't change much honestly.

Damage boxes (and thus damage bonuses) are intentionally kept small because we want to keep the number of tick-boxes small. If you do something stupid like having longswords do 1d8 damage then you'll need to have like 40 boxes, which is way too many to be manageable. 20 should be the limit for most people. I'd rather go even smaller but grognards would REALLY start whining if hill giants were only supposed to do 5 boxes of unmodified damage.

which is why you don't use actual boxes. You used fixed numerical hit points. Your HP doesn't ever increase, its some set value determined at level 1.

Also your damage codes in your examples where about 5 if I remember right. That means that if instead of 5 fixed damage you did say d8+1 or d8+2 instead you would not be making your combat THAT much more swingy than the effect of your d20.

[MGuy]

f people are that attached to the idea of the attacker rolling something then it doesn't really change things if they do. I prefer the defender to roll because it convinces people to pay attention when it's not their turn.

I think its done better by having a good set of reactionary/counter abilities. In the system I'm making players can opt to make an "Active Defense" action where they can roll their defense or just attempt to soak the damage up by blocking (you block utilizing your weapons damage, more so if using a shield). Having options out of turn is enough to keep people paying attention, not to mention the low amount of HPs pcs are playing around with.

Also your damage codes in your examples where about 5 if I remember right. That means that if instead of 5 fixed damage you did say d8+1 or d8+2 instead you would not be making your combat THAT much more swingy than the effect of your d20.

I agree with this. Plus as I said, you want to sell dice, the more different kinds of dice your game needs the more you get to sell. The averages for fist to longsword is still about 2.5 and 4.5 so it wouldn't throw your numbers off that much. Maybe you let crits deal max damage fumbles deal minimum.

[Blicero]

What's wrong with having both a(n attacker) roll to hit and a (defender) roll to soak/reduce damage like in aWoD? It forces both sides to pay attention and makes both sides feel like they have a hand in the outcome of the attack. But, since it'll just be 1d20+a number, it's not like adding another roll will terribly slow things down.

[Blicero]

Gaah... Doublepost.

[TheFlatline]

What's wrong with having both a(n attacker) roll to hit and a (defender) roll to soak/reduce damage like in aWoD? It forces both sides to pay attention and makes both sides feel like they have a hand in the outcome of the attack. But, since it'll just be 1d20+a number, it's not like adding another roll will terribly slow things down.

But it does slow things down. Any time data has to cross from one player to another, and then math has to be done with that data, it slows the game down.

You also have to balance the swinginess of the attack *and* the swinginess of defense, so that it all kind of averages out.

[RobbyPants]

Wouldn't double rolls favor the underdogs as well? It seems to me that one roll against a static 10 + mods defense is more predictable (less random) than a roll against a d20 + mods defense. Also, if the margin of success determines damage, won't this potentially lead to really potent monster attacks against the players?

I think an attack and defense roll would be a bad idea for a system like this.

[Murtak]

Wouldn't double rolls favor the underdogs as well? It seems to me that one roll against a static 10 + mods defense is more predictable (less random) than a roll against a d20 + mods defense. Also, if the margin of success determines damage, won't this potentially lead to really potent monster attacks against the players?

I think an attack and defense roll would be a bad idea for a system like this.

Double rolls create a bell curve. Bell curves favor the superior.

[RobbyPants]

Good point about the bell curve. Still, wouldn't opposed rolls where your degree of success determines damage open up the possibility of super-extra-damage crits from mooks?

[malak]

FYI: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adven ... eRolls.htm

[Username17]

While bell curves favor the superior, so do smaller rngs. If you are rolling opposed d20s somehow, then your RNG is almost twice as large as if you were rolling a single straight 20.

2d10 favors the superior relative to 1d20. So does 3d6. Each literal bonus means more. But for 2d20, each literal bonus means less. The RNG is 39 numbers long, and a relative bonus (say "about 20% of the RNG) is much larger on it than a flat roll, each literal bonus is much smaller on the larger RNG than on the smaller one.

I'd rather get +3 on 2d10 than on 1d20. But I'd still rather get +3 on 1d6.


-Username17