A Whole New World Project

[Captain_Bleach]

As some of you can probably tell, I just can't stop thinking of all these crazy game rules in D&D and D20, so I decided to undertake a project about the world of D&D, and how I will change more than a couple of things by addressing several problems in the world of D&D.

Problem Number 1: The Wish Economy: I play D&D to have fun and to get "Medieval" on the bad guys, not to apply theories of the socio-economical ramifications of altering reality. Plus, the item prices in the PHB are so vastly illogical that iron smiths lose money by making iron pots, and I don't need magic to throw another crazy travesty to the game.
How To Do It: Make Magic Dangerous. If magic is not dangerous, but a lost art, then what is to prevent those that discover magic from rebuilding a magical empire anew? There has got to be a reason why all those ancient magical empires in those campaign settings don't exist anymore! Magic will be described in more detail below.

In my house rules, for one reason or another, magic cannot affect the economy in a major way, for one reason or another. In the real world, green paper is worth nothing if not for the vast deposits of gold and precious materials from Fort Knox. If you want to keep the world medieval, then the economy is medieval, too. It took decades, even centuries, for a lot of societies to advance from tribal hunter-gatherers to bustling cities full of guilds and merchants. Some of them just remain the same way. Sometimes the people are just unlucky. Sometimes other societies have everything that they need, so their is no need for trade.

So how does magic figure in?

Method 1: Make magic come at a price. A price that few would be willing to pay. Perhaps the slow but subtle deterioration of one's life and soul. Since most people have only one life, it is all the more precious.
Every spell that is cast adds its spell level to a "Spell Number Total." When that total reaches 100, your character goes up by one virtual age category. When your character would die of old age, he simply withers away. Nothing can bring him back, and effects that would attempt to contact the soul (ex. Speak With Dead) automatically fail.
The result is that it makes only the most insane and desperate of people take the path of magic. More suitable to horror campaigns.

If all it takes to alter reality is genetics, study, or faith, then magic would be incredibly common, barring rare magic genes that make Sorcerers. And don't give me that Low-Magic superstition crap. If spell casters as they are in D&D exist in the real world, then they would not be burning at the stake; they would be ruling the world.
If we go with the life deterioration route, then what is to prevent players from training brain-washed spell casters from birth to give their lives for the betterment of the privileged few? That is something that the bad guys do; Luke Skywalker could have taken over the Empire; Harry Potter could have used his magic to get rid of the Durseley's who tormented him every summer once and for all; but this is not something that heroes do. But D&D adventurers, once they realize how the Wish Economy works, what is to prevent them from shaping society to their liking by building a vast magic-selling empire and eliminating all competition? There is nothing, but we are drawn to stories where the protagonists stave off this temptation and give up power, prestige, and occasionally their welfare, simply because it is the right thing to do. Thus, many D&D players represent Tony Montana from Scarface than Frodo of Lord of the Rings.
And let's face it; crime kingpins and merchant lords are rarely happy; competitors are always trying to kill them, plus people love them for their money and not for their personality. Plus, power gamers care mostly about game benefits, not their character's supposed welfare.
Anybody can abuse their power, but it takes real guts to put your morality first, and that is what makes a hero, heroic.

[Captain_Bleach]

Number 2: Over-reliance on Gear.

All that Conan needed was something to hit with and he was kick-ass enough. All that Harry Potter needed was a magic wand. Luke Skywalker used a blaster and lightsaber. D&D as it is does not represent "classic fantasy" well. A lot of people suggested "virtual" gold, and it may not work for everybody, as it still has that power-up routine.
If you want a different approach, I suggest that major characters and PCs gain some special ability that makes them less reliant on equipment. For equipment-independent games, characters get all of these.

Luck
"I can't describe it. Things just seem to go my way."
Benefit: You gain a luck bonus to your armor class and your reflex saves equal to 1/2 your character level. In addition, you can re-roll an attack roll, skill check, or saving throw once per day/adventure. You must keep the result of the second roll, even if it is worse than the previous roll.

Great Mentor
"No! No! You're doing it all wrong!"
Benefit: You can Aid Another any ally within 30 feet. Your bonus to aid another increases by 2 for every 2 levels.

Signature Item
"All I need is my ancestral heirloom, and I am ready to fight."
Benefit: One item of your choice gains an enhancement bonus equal to your character level divided by two. It is merely a masterwork item in anybody else's hands.

Tough It Out
"Just... A little... Urgh... More...!"
Benefit: You gain a bonus to Fortitude and Will Saves equal to your level divided by 2. In addition, you gain 1 hit point per character level.

Void
"Magic?! Oh, come on! What did magic ever do for me?"
Benefit: You gain Spell Resistance equal to your character level +10, up to 10th level, in which it becomes Spell Resistance +15. It cannot be voluntarily lowered.

[PhoneLobster]

Alright then.

Luck: Even if remove magical item bonuses from the game you barely even notice this bonus. No one cares about it.

Great Mentor: Making other people better action for action is not so great, doing so as your one special "I don't need no stinking items" ability is a bit confusing. I wouldn't take this ability, but I suppose you might give it to cohorts or something.

Signature Item: You better not be giving any magic weapons to anyone else. Ever. Other wise this ability is basically the ability to have the weapon everyone else has anyway. Now it COULD make a kind of sense if intended to be used with a signature item that just happens to be say a +1 weapon with a +X amount of special abilities to give it a +1/2 CL enhancment bonus AND a million special abilities, but, I suspect you would frown on that and in no way intend that to be the case.

Tough it out: When your corpse is lieing on the floor the minotaur and the troll will ask each other "Did he have Luck or Tough it out?" and they'll shrug their shoulders and realise they can't tell whether you had one, the other, niether OR BOTH.

Barren: OK, needs a new name. Meanwhile, why not +10 then +15, or even more, especially if magic is really rare anyway. If luck worked half the way it is supposed and magic is suddenly on the special bus then the girl who gets shafted with Barren will feel bad for more reasons than having to describe herself as 'Barren' all the time. Meanwhile as it really works its probably better than Luck and Tough it out, (pretty much a +5 save bonus) but still small enough that the majority of the time the Evil Necromancer will be joining the after fight party with the troll and minotaur to try and puzzle out which 'special' ability you had.

Special Attack: Sold, every character ever takes this ability when faced with this list. Because its way better than the rest. Its still evocation level on the big magic scale but if you intend to kick magic in the nuts repeatedly like you seem to suggest then 'special' attack for the win. Oh but you don't describe it in sufficient detail for someone to understand precisely how this ability functions.


As for the rest, a lot of its not making much sense. like...

Maybe one or two signature abilities; gaining too much special abilities just makes characters over-reliant on something else.

Over reliant on what? Not sucking in their own right?

If every ability on this list did what you want it to do and operated to create equipment independence (which they don't) and you gave EVERY ability to EVERYONE, in order to achieve your stated goal of equipment independence.

Then what have they become over reliant on anyway?


I see similar problems with many of your other sweeping statements in regards to means and ends.

[Captain_Bleach]

1187049973[/unixtime]]Alright then.

1.)Luck: Even if remove magical item bonuses from the game you barely even notice this bonus. No one cares about it.

2.) Great Mentor: Making other people better action for action is not so great, doing so as your one special "I don't need no stinking items" ability is a bit confusing. I wouldn't take this ability, but I suppose you might give it to cohorts or something.

3.) Signature Item: You better not be giving any magic weapons to anyone else. Ever. Other wise this ability is basically the ability to have the weapon everyone else has anyway. Now it COULD make a kind of sense if intended to be used with a signature item that just happens to be say a +1 weapon with a +X amount of special abilities to give it a +1/2 CL enhancment bonus AND a million special abilities, but, I suspect you would frown on that and in no way intend that to be the case.

4.) Tough it out: When your corpse is lieing on the floor the minotaur and the troll will ask each other "Did he have Luck or Tough it out?" and they'll shrug their shoulders and realise they can't tell whether you had one, the other, niether OR BOTH.

5.) Barren: OK, needs a new name. Meanwhile, why not +10 then +15, or even more, especially if magic is really rare anyway. If luck worked half the way it is supposed and magic is suddenly on the special bus then the girl who gets shafted with Barren will feel bad for more reasons than having to describe herself as 'Barren' all the time. Meanwhile as it really works its probably better than Luck and Tough it out, (pretty much a +5 save bonus) but still small enough that the majority of the time the Evil Necromancer will be joining the after fight party with the troll and minotaur to try and puzzle out which 'special' ability you had.

Special Attack: Sold, every character ever takes this ability when faced with this list. Because its way better than the rest. Its still evocation level on the big magic scale but if you intend to kick magic in the nuts repeatedly like you seem to suggest then 'special' attack for the win. Oh but you don't describe it in sufficient detail for someone to understand precisely how this ability functions.


As for the rest, a lot of its not making much sense. like...

Maybe one or two signature abilities; gaining too much special abilities just makes characters over-reliant on something else.

Over reliant on what? Not sucking in their own right?

If every ability on this list did what you want it to do and operated to create equipment independence (which they don't) and you gave EVERY ability to EVERYONE, in order to achieve your stated goal of equipment independence.

Then what have they become over reliant on anyway?


I see similar problems with many of your other sweeping statements in regards to means and ends.

1.) Bonuses to Armor Class is something that is easily noticeable.

2.) Then how about adding something else to it, like competence bonus on attack rolls?

3.) Changed it.

4.) So, is there a problem?

5.) Upped the bonus. Changed the name.

In short, if my fixes are so problematic, then what would you suggest to fix D&D?

[RandomCasualty]

1187043839[/unixtime]]
Method 1: Make magic come at a price. A price that few would be willing to pay. Perhaps the slow but subtle deterioration of one's life and soul. Since most people have only one life, it is all the more precious.
Every spell that is cast adds its spell level to a "Spell Number Total." When that total reaches 100, your character goes up by one virtual age category. When your character would die of old age, he simply withers away. Nothing can bring him back, and effects that would attempt to contact the soul (ex. Speak With Dead) automatically fail.

This pretty much sucks. It's totally contrary to the concept of a level system, which makes you get better with time. It also gives disadvantages to organic characters and advantages to just making up a character from scratch. Basically from a PC point of view, it means that you cast a bunch of spells and then make a new character to reset your spell pool, and that's a terrible mechanic.

Long-term costs generally don't work well as balancing mechanics.

I think a better mechanic is to have certain spells require action points to cast (or some other thing you get a finite number of per level). If you slap a 1 AP cost on most of the economy breakers, you'll be more or less set. That way, wizards can still fabricate cool stuff, but they can't break the economy, because they're only casting like 6-10 fabricates per level or whatever, and while that's some extra money, it's not putting the local armorer out of business.

[Captain_Bleach]

So what would you suggest?

[Manxome]

If the goal of the "slowly losing your soul" thing is just to explain why magic doesn't affect the economy at large, why not just make it a pure flavor thing with no mechanical effect?

Though I was under the impression that the wish economy works mostly by getting monsters and items to cast wish for you, in which case I'm not sure how this helps with or without a mechanical effect.

[RandomCasualty]

Yeah, then you've got to worry about summoning monsters to cast spells for you.

Probably you want to make planar binding cost an action point or whatever, that way they only get a few binds per level. And set some strict limitations on what you can get via a binding.

Also you may consider making some change to wish granting creatures.

One thing I like to do is just get rid of wish granting creatures entirely, or at least don't make them planar bindable.

the other thing you can try is giving wish granters an ability that prevents them from being dominated, charmed or even diplomacied to modify their ability to twist a wish. So an efreet can screw you over regardless of what spells you cast, and will actively try to do so if you bind him.

[Captain_Bleach]

I'll just make Wish-granting creatures immune to Planar Binding. I think that I'll just use Frank and K's Tomes.

[PhoneLobster]

In short, if my fixes are so problematic, then what would you suggest to fix D&D?

I wouldn't.

But if I did, I'd do pretty much what Frank and K are doing.

If I wanted to do what say right here you want to do, and specifically with item independence, which to some extent I would like to because I'd like to see no armour dodge fighters play nice with high armour 'it bounces off me' fighters while I was at it.

Well then I would do it differently. For a start bigger numbers and more interesting abilities.

Take luck for example. It is NOT a viable alternative to wearing armour, hell you've even made it stack with armour. Its not even a viable alternative to wearing MAGIC armour.

There are several problems behind this.
1) There is no mechanic to prevent it just stacking with being a magic armour wearing bastard.
2) The numbers are just too small
3) Magic armour also grants nifty special effects, this doesn't.
4) Wearing magic armour just requires that you get some magic armour and put it on, later you can swap it for something else, Luck requires you to spend a permanent character resource better spent on something else.

To fix this your luck skill needs to do several things.
1) Doesn't work in combination with the thing it is trying to replace.
2) Has bigger numbers so you get just as big a number as if you were using the thing you were trying to replace.
3) It should grant you additional special abilities, probably scattered over level advancement, like the thing you were trying to replace.
4) If it costs more in character resources than the thing you are trying to replace then it should be BETTER than the thing you are trying to replace. Not, as it is, significantly worse.

Its the old Monk problem. If you are supposed to be able to fight without using items then you actually need to have fighting abilities at least as good as those who fight using items.

[Voss]

You could take the 'instant creation' aspect out of granted wishes.

You could still summon an efreet, for example, but instead of granting that 9th level spell, he'd simply undertake the task to the best of his ability. (And probably get mauled by whatever is guarding it) So if you wish for a staff of wishes, he'd wander off and spend the next couple centuries trying to locate and obtain one. If you wished for a castle, he'd try to enslave the local dwarven population and force them to build you a castle.

None of this stupid snap-your-fingers instant gratification crap. You might get what you want, but not necessarily when and how you want it. Oh, and... ooo, consequences.

[RandomCasualty]

1187055822[/unixtime]] I think that I'll just use Frank and K's Tomes.

Yeah, that certainly a lot easier than nerfing a bunch of stuff, though it certainly won't give you any semblance of a normal economy, since the tomes are predicated on the assumption that you're using the wish economy.

The tomes are also based on the idea that you've got a group of expert powergamers who know the rules completely. So if you've got a bunch of wizard players who prefer direct damage to battlefield control, you probably do not want to use the tomes, because the RoW fighter and barbarian will completely make any casual play caster look like crap.

[Captain_Bleach]

The problem is that two are casual players, two are hardcore players.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Well, if the hardcore guys are already playing firebottle Rogues and Cleric Archers, let the casuals play Tome Barbarians and Fire Mages, which are designed for casual players anyway.

[Rob_Knotts]

Bleach, I'd suggest you take a look at the Manual of the Planes, specifically the material on how magic works differently on different planes, and how planes can contain different layers.

Basically what it means is that you can regulate magic geographically. For example, stable cities would develop in areas where magic is significantly impaired, while areas where the default assumptions of magic essentally lack any stable society and/or is populated by numerous highly-magical monsters and NPCs who prefer to keep any major civilizations out of the magically-rich areas. As far as that goes, you even assign alignment attributes to areas, making low-magic areas more lawful and high-magic areas more chaotic. And you can do all of this using material from the MotP, no unofficial house rules necessary.

[Aktariel]

OK. Here's what I don't understand.

To start with, I have no idea what a Cleric Archer is. Please don't shout at me, or tell me my google-fu is weak, or whatever. That's not my point. My point is, I really don't care.

Because I'm not an hardcore optimizer/player/beatstick builder/gamebreaker/etc. But I do believe that things are broken as they stand.

So here's the deal. If I don't like it, if I don't think it's balanced, if I've got a problem with somebody's power level, I ban it. Or, much more likely, I ignore it.

And so does everyone else.

Because here's the thing. At heart, D&D is a game. You play it for fun. To hang out with friends. To beat up some dragons. In your head. Whatever. And if something doesn't work, or has the potential to be "really broken," we all talk about it and take it out. Or ignore it. Like the Wish Economy.

Seriously, who the fvck cares? If I want to be nitty gritty and think about every ramification of every possible spell and effect and combination, I'd be here past Judgement Day.

So wizards do things "gimpily." Some of them even specialize in Evocation. Yes, I know. But again, I don't care.

But, maybe what works for us doesn't work for everyone. Some of you want to exploit or bitch about loopholes. And hey - if that's what works for you, more power to you.

As long as everybody's happy, everybody wins. Especially the nice people who took your money for all this stuff you had to buy to play.

It's a game.

[Manxome]

Not all games are created equal. And not everyone is looking for the same stuff in a game.

For a lot of people (particularly, I suspect, on this forum), half the fun is coming up with crazy builds and tactics that let you do things that look impossible at first blush. Because that's a challenging, goal-directed activity that generates a feeling of power, much like beating up a dragon. And it also lets you beat up a bigger dragon than you otherwise could. But that sort of thing is problematic in a system that's prone to breakage.

You choose to crop off the bits that seem problematic, and that's a perfectly fine approach. But it takes effort. And mutual agreement. And maintaining some line in the sand of what's acceptable and what's not. And it removes common ground between you and other players outside your particular house-ruled group.

Maybe you enjoy doing that, but that's not playing the game, it's redesigning it. Most people who want to play an RPG don't want to have to redesign one, and even most of the people who do want to redesign one don't want to do it on-the-fly. A good game should minimize the amount of that sort of stuff you have to do in order to avoid breaking the game.

Another consideration is that sometimes you'll have hardcore optimizers at the same table as more laidback players, and it would be nice if they could play in the same game. You have to expect that optimized characters will always be better than unoptimized ones in pretty much any possible system, but the disparity shouldn't be so great that the optimized ones can completely steal the show. They should all be contributing. And systematically banning particular builds or tactics as they are abused is not a fair or feasible way to accomplish balance.

This thread is really trying to do what you say you do in your games: changing the rules so that they don't include the broken stuff. It's just that you do it reactively and this thread is trying to do it proactively, which requires more up-front work (especially because it's usually held to a higher standard), but if followed through, is liable to produce rather better and more consistent results.

[tzor]

1187744110[/unixtime]]Another consideration is that sometimes you'll have hardcore optimizers at the same table as more laidback players, and it would be nice if they could play in the same game.

I always to take a step back on occasion so let's change the game. Let's take Chess. You have your great players and your average players. Can you mix great players with average players? Not easily, in fact not at all. Let's take Golf. Here you have a handicap system that is supposed to equalize great players with average players. So here the answer is "somewhat."

D&D is more like chess than golf, you can't come up with a player "handicap" system. On the other hand, D&D isn't about player vs player; it is expected that advanced players would help average players.

[Jacob_Orlove]

Chess is actually nearly impossible to handicap, unless you have two pretty close players and just have the better one go second all the time.

Go, on the other hand, has a handicap system that allows for fair and genuinely competitive games between people of all kinds of skill levels.

D&D is so much easier to handicap than Go, the comparison almost doesn't make sense. In D&D, everyone is playing with a completely different character, with different resources. You can change any aspect of any individual character while leaving everything else the same. That means it is actually super easy to handicap some players (up OR down) if you decide you actually need to.

[Manxome]

Tzor, you're arguing about what you can do in other games, and I'm philosophizing about what you should be able to do in an ideal game. I would argue that the fact that you can't create effective handicaps in chess is a disadvantage of the game, not something you should strive to emulate, and if that's true, then whether you can or cannot use handicaps in any particular existing game really doesn't matter (whether it's possible to design a game that supports handicaps might matter, but I think it's pretty clear that that is possible).

Regardless, being hardcore is not the same thing as being skilled (though it may lead you to practice more and become skilled), and D&D is a cooperative game, so I think the situation is sufficiently different from chess to warrant separate consideration. It's generally nice if all players are equal in terms of skill, experience, and level of interest, but that is very frequently not the case, and I can't see how having a game that can cope when it's not the case could possibly be a bad thing.

[tzor]

Let's take chess, go and golf and look at them in a high level manner. We can throw golf off the list immediately, because golf isn't a payer vs player game. It's a player vs cou rse game and the best winner of the game of player vs course is the winner of the game. Go is a game of simple rules. That's why I compared role playing with chess, because it is a complex game of design and tactics.

That's a problem in and of itself, trying to establish an means of "ranking" a player. Role playing isn't player vs player, or one on one like chess so I can't think how one could come up with a ranking skill. Handicapping just won't work. Cooperation is the only true key to the game, good players can and should make the characters of average players better. Good players should contribute good tactics to the average players because role playing is a copperative game.

[Fwib]

And no doubt that many people who got themselves handicapped would resent it terribly, and would manipulate the rules of the system or possibly quit.

[Manxome]

At this point, it might be a good idea to remind everyone that my original suggestion was not that skilled players should be handicapped, but that hardcore optimization should result in only marginally better characters than those produced by competent non-optimizers.

[RandomCasualty]

1187742658[/unixtime]]
To start with, I have no idea what a Cleric Archer is. Please don't shout at me, or tell me my google-fu is weak, or whatever. That's not my point. My point is, I really don't care.

You should care. You have to understand the problems before you can hope to fix them.

[erik]

1187054539[/unixtime]]So what would you suggest?

To handle the mandatory equipment requirement of I suggest some board literature.

The magic item compendium thread is full of gold.

(scaling bonuses for stats, weapons and shit)
http://bb.bbboy.net/thegamingden-viewth ... tnum=25[br] (get rid of the dozen stacking bonus types)
http://bb.bbboy.net/thegamingden-viewth ... tnum=56[br] (K's suggestion for stacking natural armor + worn armor)
http://bb.bbboy.net/thegamingden-viewth ... =71[br][br](magic swords... my suggestion would be scaling swords for most everyone, and an intelligent item sword for someone who needs an artifact type weapon to keep up)
http://bb.bbboy.net/thegamingden-viewth ... br][br]You will still have the "problem" of magic not being compatible with feudal economies. If you want to do away with that, then you probably need to do away with spells that actually have lasting effects towards that end (i.e. spells that easily lend themselves towards an industrialized economy). If you leave the spells in there then they are obviously going to be used, otherwise there is no point in leaving them in.

You could get rid of Permanency and tightly regulate item creation to do away with most problem spells. This would be bundled with slapping durations on stuff like Wall of Iron, Wall of Stone, Fabricate, Plant Growth, Create Water, Stone Shape and Wood Shape. If you further want people actually dying of diseases and people with real disabilities then getting rid of Cure Disease, Cure Blindness/Deafness and Regenerate are required.