Getting a WoF system for D&D down to a manageable size.

[Username17]

That does not sound like a WoF mechanic at all. It sounds like a somewhat randomized power cool down or charge up. That is NOT a WoF system.

WoF is a somewhat randomized power cool down and charge up. Seriously, that's all it is. You freaking out about it or claiming it has to be magically different from a randomized cool down/charge up system is just you being petulant.

Games where your options are determined by drawing cards (like Magic or Shadowfist) or rolling dice (like Talisman or Runebound) are actually incredibly common. And very popular. And they work fine.

WoF isn't a new idea, it's just a relatively new label for the idea for use in Role Playing Games. And with the new terminology comes new ways of thinking about things. We actually do know what makes a list of options paralyzing or not, because people have been playing card games for a long time. There is a reason that people play 5 card stud and 7 card stud and no one plays 9 card stud. Texas Hold Em is a popular game and it has 5 community cards and 2 individual cards. And so on. This is because it is difficult for humans to quickly organize sets with more than 7 distinct things in them.

So in a Role Playing Game, you would expect players to get option paralysis when they had more than 7 abilities they could invoke. And yes, by 6th level, 4th edition characters seriously do bog down with their 2 At-Wills, 2 Encounters, 2 Dailies, and 2 Utilities. That isn't enough to not be boring, since it really is the same block of abilities over and over again in every single fight and those two at-wills get spammed like 5 times or more in every encounter - but it still hits the threshold of slowing the fucking game down. We know that Wizards slow the fucking game down, because we actually watch people actually playing Wizards and they are slowing the game to a crawl by level 5 at the outside. Sorcerers are more popular than Wizards even though they are objectively inferior. They are more popular precisely because they take up less table time by having fewer options.

So the goal of any system should be to keep a player's options within a round to between 4 and 7 for everyone but extremely advanced players. And at the same time to expand the actual actions players take over the course of the game to several times that. Decks of cards and charts of options are a great way to do that. Charges, tracking warm-up times, mana points, and all those other resource management systems people have tried are objectively not up to the task.

4e's "everything is on charges" system manages to be boring in the long run and slow the game down anyway because there are too many different choices at the beginning for players to quickly make tactical decisions. WoF is literally the opposite of that: more interesting in the long run and faster decision making on a turn-by-turn basis.

Lago is not really pondering how many options is too many, that's actually well established by tracking successful games and even neurological research about peoples' abilities to remember short lists. The question is how merely to set up chargen to fill up peoples' charts or decks quickly.

-Username17

[MGuy]

MAGIC has a lot of rules outside of the WoF mechanic it uses. Because of how complicated the rules can be option paralysis happens quite often. The game is additionally slowed by deck searching abilities and rule confusion.

Generally other, simpler, card games aren't complicated enough to be compared to what would be required to have a deep combat engine in an RPG, unless combat is intentionally simple ad dumbed down.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Use keywords and standardize powers as much as possible. The power schemes for 3E and 4E are such big wastes of space that it's unreal.

So, would something that can be summarized like this be what you are thinking of? http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/A ... aily/mm/78

Allow people to double up on some powers in the WoF matrix. You can call them 'signature' powers or whatnot. Obviously you want to limit the amount of times and powers people can double up on, otherwise you may as well just shrink the matrix.

Perhaps some classes could have one or two 'signature move' slots that you could put certain powers in? e.g., a Paladin might have the options of 'smite evil', 'lay on hands', and 'summon mount' for his signature move slot, but could still put the ones he didn't pick into his normal WoF. This would allow for more character customization with limited complexity increase in actual play, especially if 'signature move' classes had narrower WoF matrices.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The question is how merely to set up chargen to fill up peoples' charts or decks quickly.

Well, not only that, but you also don't want your PHB or sourcebooks to explode in size too much. You still need room for other rules.

The beauty of WoF is that we can actually have characters that have 10-40 distinct powers and have them be manageable. The downside is... that's a fuckton of writing that needs to be done.

So, would something that can be summarized like this be what you are thinking of?

Not really. I was actually thinking of what 4E wanted to do but taken further--mixing in some 3E stuff as well. For example, a power with the fire keyword does fire damage. A power with the Shadow keyword works like the Shadow Conjuration/Evocations. Instead of writing a sentence that goes 'blah blah blah this power is 20% of a normal power if someone makes their will save' you could just make a definition for Shadow in the power glossary and tag it [Shadow 20%].

[MGuy]

The question is how merely to set up chargen to fill up peoples' charts or decks quickly.

Well, not only that, but you also don't want your PHB or sourcebooks to explode in size too much. You still need room for other rules.

The beauty of WoF is that we can actually have characters that have 10-40 distinct powers and have them be manageable. The downside is... that's a fuckton of writing that needs to be done.

So, would something that can be summarized like this be what you are thinking of?

Not really. I was actually thinking of what 4E wanted to do but taken further--mixing in some 3E stuff as well. For example, a power with the fire keyword does fire damage. A power with the Shadow keyword works like the Shadow Conjuration/Evocations. Instead of writing a sentence that goes 'blah blah blah this power is 20% of a normal power if someone makes their will save' you could just make a definition for Shadow in the power glossary and tag it [Shadow 20%].

Agree with the first part and the second part should have definitely been done in 4E. I've actually started struggling to figure out a way to implement this in my own system.

[Lago PARANOIA]

That said, while multiclassing and power incest can reduce the amount of writing that you need to do, the problem remains that some people will want to be a single-classed warlock. Emerald's idea that people should have some powers by source or role has merit. I don't think role is a good idea because it leads to powers being very generic to match all of the phlebtonium, but by source is definitely an option. I think it adds flavor to the game for Wizards, Warlocks, and Artificers to be able to all bust out an Eldritch Blast even though wizards have the good zappy abilities.

But anyway, before this thread can really get anywhere, these questions need to be answered.

• What is the maximum amount of powers a player can expect to have?
• How many power repeats do you expect players to have?
• What percentage of players do you see playing at the various levels of play?
• How much difference do you want between the most constrained of builds except for powers? I.E. What's the maximum amount of difference between 8th level Human Warlords (Kit: Kensai) / Prestige Class: Blademaster do you want there to be? Should they be very similar with perhaps a handful of powers different? Should you have two separate builds with totally different powers? More than that? Something in between?
• How often and how many times should a character replace their powers? 3E and 4E D&D give us explicit answers to this.
• How much power incest do you want between and within classes? Between a Warlord and a Rogue, how many powers do both get access to? Is it even possible to be a single-classed Wizard or do all wizards need to be multiclassed?

[Lago PARANOIA]

I did some preliminary calculations of the amount of writing that needs to be done... and you guys aren't going to like te results.

So. The longer power in the 4E PHB2 is 200 words, including flavor text. Cal Lightning in the 3E PHB is 230 words about.

Here's the system I proposed:

The matrix starts out 2x2, grows by a row or a column every prime number level until it reaches 4x6. No duplicate powers. I used my FFXI-ish Major/Sub/Minor Class system, but I'm running the system under the assumption that someone is single-classed. There are twenty levels in the system and people upgrade their powers every other level until level 17, when they get 9th-level powers. About a fourth of a character's powers are by source and there are three sources. There are twelve classes, with four classes per source.

Sooooo... I left a couple of details out, but seriously that's over a thousand powers that need writing. Or well over 200,000 words, using Call Lightning as the average. Some trimming really needs to be done, but I have no clue where.

[Swordslinger]

WoF is a somewhat randomized power cool down and charge up. Seriously, that's all it is. You freaking out about it or claiming it has to be magically different from a randomized cool down/charge up system is just you being petulant.

This just isn't true, the main difference is that a charged up power stays charged. In WoF, it doesn't do that. I don't draw counterspell and can save it for another turn, I have to use it right then and there, or it's gone until I draw it again.

That's not a charge up or a cooldown, that's simply a random availability. Sometimes my gun has bullets in it and sometimes it doesn't and those bullets go away even if I don't use them.

[MGuy]

That said, while multiclassing and power incest can reduce the amount of writing that you need to do, the problem remains that some people will want to be a single-classed warlock. Emerald's idea that people should have some powers by source or role has merit. I don't think role is a good idea because it leads to powers being very generic to match all of the phlebtonium, but by source is definitely an option. I think it adds flavor to the game for Wizards, Warlocks, and Artificers to be able to all bust out an Eldritch Blast even though wizards have the good zappy abilities.

But anyway, before this thread can really get anywhere, these questions need to be answered.

• What is the maximum amount of powers a player can expect to have?
• How many power repeats do you expect players to have?
• What percentage of players do you see playing at the various levels of play?
• How much difference do you want between the most constrained of builds except for powers? I.E. What's the maximum amount of difference between 8th level Human Warlords (Kit: Kensai) / Prestige Class: Blademaster do you want there to be? Should they be very similar with perhaps a handful of powers different? Should you have two separate builds with totally different powers? More than that? Something in between?
• How often and how many times should a character replace their powers? 3E and 4E D&D give us explicit answers to this.
• How much power incest do you want between and within classes? Between a Warlord and a Rogue, how many powers do both get access to? Is it even possible to be a single-classed Wizard or do all wizards need to be multiclassed?

Wouldn't all these questions depend on how you want your game to work? These are some of the questions I've asked myself when making my own system (except the multi/prestige class thing cause I haven't worked out multiclassing and I dislike prestige classes). I think you'd have to come up with the answer to these questions.

[Username17]

Sooooo... I left a couple of details out, but seriously that's over a thousand powers that need writing.

Yeah, that's too many.

People think they want dependent choices, but they really don't. If you make 10 binary choices, there are 1024 ways you can end up. If each choice is dependent on the choices that came before, you have to write up 2046 choices and there are 1024 end results. If each choice is independent of what came before, you have to write up 20 options, and there are still 1024 ways you can end up.

The longer power in the 4E PHB2 is 200 words, including flavor text. Cal Lightning in the 3E PHB is 230 words about.

That's too many as well. Shadowrun Combat Spells average 42 words a piece. The much longer Detection spells average 87. AWoD averages 132 words per power and that's not even counting the passive effects of disciplines as powers (but still counting their word count against the total).

Now don't get me wrong: I think that in order to make a credibly maneuver-centric combat system you're going to need hundreds and hundreds of maneuvers. But if you're making a maneuver based system and you're spending more than 50 words a maneuver, you're doing something wrong.

You got a bunch of different classes and you want to hand out a bunch of credibly different options for each class, and that adds up fast. I get to 800 or so as a back of the envelope calculation. But that's still like 40,000 words. It should take a writer a couple months or a small team a month or so.

The matrix starts out 2x2, grows by a row or a column every prime number level until it reaches 4x6.

I don't know why you think this is a good idea. Growing rows is generally bad. The only way that could work is if you started life with a bunch of rows that were identical, and then you upgraded the rows one at a time (which would add different rows by making numbers that were previously the same no longer the same).

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

I don't know why you think this is a good idea. Growing rows is generally bad. The only way that could work is if you started life with a bunch of rows that were identical, and then you upgraded the rows one at a time (which would add different rows by making numbers that were previously the same no longer the same).

-Username17

I don't think it is. But it's pretty much the only way I can think of that will keep power inflation under control without neeming down power variety or reducing the number of classes. I would love to start people out at 4x3 and just add columns, but that is a fuckton of 1st-level powers to write. I mean that's 12 slots to fill. And for a single-classed character I'd feel insulted if I didn't have at least 16 distinct powers to look through. Multiply that by 12 classes and that's seriously like 192 1st-level powers you have to write, which is more than exist in the 4E Phb.

I still have some ideas about how to reduce power inflation tho'. One idea I had was to make it so that, like in 4E D&D, people got powers from their kits. The powers are fixed however rather than having a selection suite. So if characters get a kit, a prestige class, and an epic destiny and you give players a choice of three to pick from each tier that's less writing you have to do--assuming that you were going to use those things anyway. And I think that you should because those things are pretty popular despite their massively flawed implementations.

I also don't think that there should be nine discrete levels of spells or 20 character levels. There should be like 6 spell levels and the game goes up to level 15, with levels 1-5 heroic tier, 6-10 paragon tier, 11-15 epic and anything past that is legendary levels and goes in an expansion book no one thinks is balanced anyway.

[Grek]

Lets look at some sample WoF matrices:

This guy rolls 2d4 each round to decide what two elements he has access to, and then picks which element and if he wants to use a terrain power, a ball or a beam.

WoF	Terrain	Ball	Beam
1. Fire	Inferno	Fireball	Heat Ray
2. Air	Twister	Orb Lightning	Lightning Bolt
3. Earth	Stone Spikes	Conjure Boulder	Stone Spear
4. Water	Ice Ground	Freeze	Ice Spear

Whereas this guy rolls a number and then uses the number to see what power each of his six disciplines offer him based off of the number.

WoF	1	2	3	4
Murdermancy	Fireball	Death Touch	Horror Mark	Inflict Wounds
Wallmacy	Windwall	Stonewall	Firewall	Magic Circle
Healmancy	Heal	Regeneration	Cure	Fortify
Summonmancy	Wolf	Bear	Dretch	Parrot
Stabbermancy	Stabbinate	In The Face	Assstab	Sssssuperstab
Porkmancy	Pork Ray	Swine Curse	Summon Pig	Boar Blast

Person #1 has less powers total, but the same number of options per round as person #2. This is good if you want to be able to make your chart small and easy to reproduce, but bad if you want everyone to have lots and lots of powers.

E:
This guy chooses if he wants to roll for a specific God, and then pick one of that God's powers, or roll for a power to use and then pick which God grants it. He also gets 6 options per turn, but has a much, much bigger WoF matrix than either of the other two.

WoF	Blessing of...	Curse of...	Smite of...	Protection of...	Messenger of...	Balls of...
...Pelor	-	-	-	-	-	-
...Wea Jas	-	-	-	-	-	-
...Hextor	-	-	-	-	-	-
...Orcus	-	-	-	-	-	-
...Venca	-	-	-	-	-	-
...Jesus	-	-	-	-	-	-

[Lago PARANOIA]

Grek, even that first chart has a ton of powers that need to be written.

Basically, to get the WoF power list down to a reasonable level you need to do one or more of the following:

[*] Limit the number of distinct classes in the game. However, 4E D&D showed us that EIGHT classes is too low of a number and the numbers I ran used 12.
[*] Power incest. Either a lot of powers repeat between some classes like they do in 3E D&D or multiclassing is mandatory. This may be the only real option that we have and we might have to get used to the idea of only a 1/4th of a Wizard's powers being unique to the class or the idea of a single-classed Druid being history.
[*] Shrink the size of the WoF Matrix. Personally I'm very dismayed by the thought of starting players off with a 2x2 Matrix, but seriously, a 3x4 or 4x4 matrix that you guys are talking about is insane. That's 3 or 4 times as much writing right out of the gate!
[*] Reduce the number of distinct levels of power. This will either force people to go a long while between power upgrades or will force you to shrink the number of levels you have. Out of all of the options I feel that this is the best one. The idea of D&D going on past level 15 or having more than 6 spell levels is baffling to me. I don't know how politically feasible this suggestion is though.
[*] Cut down on the amount of text you have per power. I think Frank is being overly optimistic on this front. Trid Entertainment in the SR4E book is over 150 words. So is Invisibility. 70-word powers doesn't give you a lot of room to differentiate them. Seriously, that's the length of a vanilla 4E damage power after you strip out that stupid flavor-text blurb.
[*] Let people hold onto lower-level powers for longer. The problem with this is that if you let people hold onto the powers for too long then they become 'non-choices' and defeat the point of the system. The problem if you auto-upgrade them is that you'll either have the 4E D&D problem where 3rd level powers aren't conceptually or mechanically much weaker than 23rd-level powers or you'll have to write a bunch of extra text explaining how the power evolves.

[Orion]

I favor the "let people keep their powers longer" thing. The game should have 3 tiers, and you should ONLY lose powers when you change tiers. Within each tier you could have... 3 levels of powers, giving us 9 levels of slots like in 3E.

Your damage would scale automatically with level, so higher-level powers would bring more options-- AoEs, mobility riders, terrain manipulation, niche counters--but wouldn't replace the basic attacks from lower level.

[Grek]

Its honestly not that bad. Here's all 12.

Spells: You are a wizard and can cast elemental spells. Roll 1d4 twice on your WoF chart (rerolling repeats) to see what elements you have access to. All DCs are 10 + 1/2 character level + ability mod unless otherwise specified.

Inferno: This spell causes your character level in squares to burst into flames, setting on fire anyone that is in or enters those squares. The fires burn out after 3 rounds.
Fireball: This spell does 1d6 fire damage per character level (reflex save for half damage) in a 15 foot sphere centered at a location of your choice within your line of sight.
Heat Ray: One target within your line of sight is zapped with a heat ray for fire damage per character level and is fatigued if they fail a fortitude save.
Twister: This spell summons a twister that pushes all enemies within 10 feet of it away one square per character level. It lasts untill you no longer have access to Air and can be moved up to 10 ft per round as a move action.
Orb Lightning: This spell does 1d4 electrical damage per character level in a 10 foot sphere and does not allow a save.
Lightning Bolt: One target within your line of sight is zapped with a lightning bolt for 1d6 electrical damage per character level and is dazed if they fail a fortitude save.
Stone Spikes: This ability makes spikes sprout out of the floor in 1 square per character level, causing 1d6 damage per spikey square travelled.
Conjure Boulder: This spell conjures a boulder that flattens an enemy, Indiana Jones style. The boulder continues rolling in a straight line until it hits an obstacle or travels 10ft per character level, whichever comes first. Anyone hit by it must make a DC 15 reflex save to avoid it, or die.
Stone Spear: This spell does 1d8 piercing damage per character level to a single target within line of sight.
Ice Ground: This spell ices 1 square per character level, causing the squares to prone anyone that tries to cross them without suceeding a reflex save. One save per square is required.
Freeze: This spell freezes enemies in a 20 foot sphere centered at a location of your choice within your line of sight. These enemies cannot move for 3 rounds. A fortitude save negates the effect.
Ice Spear: This spell does 1d8 cold damage per character level to a single target within line of sight.

And there's no reason why you couldn't also use power incest for these, or make them all short. These abilities have a mean wordcount of 31 words.

[Almaz]

You can also reduce the number of actual options. I'm fickle and like choices as much as the next girl, but classes generally have some schtick that you should be able to expect of them... and so locking powers in to the class is not unreasonable. Have you heard of Fire Mages who can't set shit on fire? So give them Burn Things as a mandatory WoF selection.

Every power selection removed means you do not have to write the alternate power selections for it. While obviously you want to leave plenty of room for choice, this will help solve resolve these issues.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I favor the "let people keep their powers longer" thing. The game should have 3 tiers, and you should ONLY lose powers when you change tiers. Within each tier you could have... 3 levels of powers, giving us 9 levels of slots like in 3E.

That's what I originally ran the numbers with. Three tiers, 9 spell levels over 20 levels, go back three levels. So a 13th level character would have 7th, 6th, 5th, and 4th level powers.

Its honestly not that bad. Here's all 12.

Yeah, and those are all boring 4E-style vanilla flavored powers. It's just number shifting with sometimes a stock effect attached to them. Lame.

Have you heard of Fire Mages who can't set shit on fire? So give them Burn Things as a mandatory WoF selection.

This does save space, but not as much as you'd think. Now assuming people are okay with a kit or a prestige class or an epic destiny handing out fixed powers (and this is very debatable; even the paragon paths in 4E that don't have sucky powers don't hand out powers people actually like), the problem is that you are going to have to hand out several variants unless you want every wizard being a Fire Mage--shit, even 4E came with 4 PPs per class. And really, having a Fire Mage, a Devil Summoner, a Blood Mage, and an Arcane Knight means that you have to write up 4 extra powers per level anyway. That's not as much of a power savings as just eliminating these classes and writing in 3-5 extra powers that anyone can take.

[Grek]

Those powers sucked because interesting blaster mage powers are hard to make. Making less 4E-like powers on a similar(or smaller!) type budget is equally trival, however. Here's 12 paladin abilities based off of platonic virtues at a mean of 25 words each:

WoF	+	0	-
1. Prudence	Foresight	Insight	Clarity
2. Justice	Mercy	Morality	Righteousness
3. Temperance	Abstention	Moderation	Celebration
4. Courage	Fearlessness	Valor	Discretion

Paladins may embody an aspect of the Four Cardinal Virtues and, by doing so, empower themselves to perform great feats of heroism for so long as they embody that aspect. Each round, the paladin rolls rolls 2 1d4s (rerolling repeats) to see what virtues come to mind. The paladin can then, on their next turn, change their embodied aspect of one of the rolled virtues as a free action.

Foresight: You gain your Charisma Modifer as a bonus to all reflex saves.
Insight: You gain a bonus to Sense Motive equal to your character level and always know if you are being lied to.
Clarity: You gain your Charisma Modifer as a bonus to attack rolls.

Mercy: Your attacks are treated as if they had the "Merciful" magical property.
Morality: You can discern good from evil and law from chaos as if under the effects of all four detect alignment spells.
Righteousness: Your attacks smite evil beings, dealing an extra 3d6 damage.

Abstention: You gain your Charisma Modifer as a bonus to all will saves.
Moderation: You become immune to poison and disease.
Celebration: You become immune to fatigue and sleep effects.

Fearlessness: You become immune to fear effects.
Valor: You gain your Charisma Modifer as a bonus to all fortitude saves.
Discretion: You may channel your character level in positive energy at touch range, healing or harming as appropriate.

Incidentally, while making this, it occured to me that there's no real reason all the powers have to be on a single WoF matrix. You could have a "Buff" matrix and an "Attack" matrix and pick one at the end of your turn to roll on. Or, if they're small enough matrixes, roll on both. You have time to do this; it's all going on on other people's turns.

[Swordslinger]

[*] Let people hold onto lower-level powers for longer. The problem with this is that if you let people hold onto the powers for too long then they become 'non-choices' and defeat the point of the system. The problem if you auto-upgrade them is that you'll either have the 4E D&D problem where 3rd level powers aren't conceptually or mechanically much weaker than 23rd-level powers or you'll have to write a bunch of extra text explaining how the power evolves.

The way to do it would be to have each row on your matrix correspond to a certain levels worth of powers.

So a first level character would have a row for Basic (basic attack, grab, bull rush) and a row for 1st level powers (Twin strike, careful shot, Evasive shot). When he gets to 3rd level or whenever, he gets a new row for 3rd level powers.

That way you don't have to worry about having low level powers directly compete with higher level ones. Though as you might imagine, I still don't think the WoF is going to do much besides get people to pick their favorite power of each row and use it all the time. Though if all you want is for people to occasionally say basic attack, basic attack, twin strike, basic attack instead of just repeating twin strike, then it'll accomplish that.

Tactically though you'll probably just be hurting the PCs, since under this system if they want to push a foe, there's going to be times when WoF says they can't, which will actually reduce the amount of tactics used.

[the_taken]

Use keywords and standardize powers as much as possible. The power schemes for 3E and 4E are such big wastes of space that it's unreal.

So, would something that can be summarized like this be what you are thinking of? http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/A ... aily/mm/78

That's the kind of thing I was looking for!

[Lago PARANOIA]

Those powers sucked because interesting blaster mage powers are hard to make. Making less 4E-like powers on a similar(or smaller!) type budget is equally trival, however. Here's 12 paladin abilities based off of platonic virtues at a mean of 25 words each:

I hate to keep sounding like I'm moving the goalposts, but I still don't find those powers interesting. In my opinion, the average level of complexity a power should have in my mind is Levitate from 4E Shadowrun, Wall of Stone from 3E D&D, or Summon Succubus from 4E D&D.

I am very serious about the little details of powers adding flavor. Just things like 'this power covers you with corpse-scented sparkles that enhances your connection to the Negative Energy Plane' helps make or break a power, even if it could be reduced to vulnerable necrotic 10. The point in the game when powers start to repeat gets reached fairly fast and if they're all reduced to stock effects/buffs/immunities/etc. then it'll end up making the classes feel the same. A wizard's fireball and a druid's flame seeds, while reducing to the same effect of ranged AoE fire damage, needs those little details if you don't want to implement extreme power incest and want the game to support classplosion.