New Edition of Rules

[virgil]

When you speak of attributes not being tied to defenses, that reminded me of many a charge build in standard D&D. Strength wasn't tied to any defense stat and it was only tangentially expected that such a build was expected to have a decent Fortitude save.

What if you had a more proactive defense? Have a set of spells/abilities tied to an ability that's expected for that defense (no attack spells, obviously). That way you would still be able to tell what your opponent's defenses are without having to use a scanner, and it would be a bigger deal to the player; because they can walk on arrows mid-flight if they focus on dodging, or they could focus on stamina and turn into a living statue.

[Username17]

There are lots of possible ways of doing attributes. Here's a sample:

[*] Attack Stats and Defense Stats
Imagine if you will that Strength made you hit things, Charisma made you smite and shoot hellfire, and Intelligence made you project illusions and dominate minds. And then you had defenses of Fort, Reflex, and Will. Pitfalls:

• Attacks reward specialization, defenses don't. Quite simply there is not a lot of incentive for a character to specialize in Willpower because enemies have at least a limited ability to choose your defense type. On the flip side there is flat no incentive to divide points between differnt attack stats because you have almost total control over what attack you use on a round by round basis.
  This might be addressed somewhat by requiring people to have the same stat modifiers distributed across their defenses and their offenses. Of course, then you're essentially running a 3 stat system (even though you allow someone to put their 17 in Strength and Wisdom).

I don't like it much because the only differene it has over just going 3 stat is that defenses and attacks aren't super connected.

[*] Attack Stats
Imagine if you had Strength actions and Dexterity actions and Wisdom actions. DCs to accomplish tasks is based on target level / equipment/ or abilities. But the targets essentially don't even have stat lines as far as you care. This has a number of problems such as:

• Attacks reward specialization, defenses don't. However high you can get your Strength, that's how high you want it to go and all other stats can go hang because you essentially always choose which stat you use.

I don't think this salvageable or worth much thought, it seems inherently wrong.

[*] Defense Stats
Imagine if you will that Strength made you resist certain kinds of attacks and essentially did nothing else. You know the drill:

• Attacks reward specialization, defenses don't. Because you never choose when you use your defenses, having strengths and weaknesses is a disadvantage. You want to avoid it.
  Character articulation is problematic. If I told you ahead of time that a Wizard, a Barbarian, an Ooze, and a Giant Snake all had resistance to one of the arbitrary energy types (Acid, Cold, Electricity, Fire) could you assign those resistances correctly? Would you have any idea at all which resistances go with with target? That's kind of where pure-defense stats go as well. There's no advantage to having any particular set of defenses. Indeed it's to your advantage to have surprising defenses.

Definitely has substantial advantages. When a min/maxed character is simply a list of six twelves in a row you've got something you can work with. The question then comes in how to encourage people to actually put some variation in their characters. Mandatory variation is the obvious route, bt some people are considering other challenges as well. You could also have your resistances used to to resist drain from using your own abilities - but that's just like tying stats to attacks.

[*] Attack and Defense Stats
Imagine if you will that Strength made you hit things and also made you resist getting hurled across the room by forcewaves. It has some of the weaknesses of both the previous writeups but it does encourage both the reduction of weaknesses and the increase of strengths - which means that characters of many different types are encouraged from within the system.
And this is where I'm doing most of my concepting.

Attacking the Sky
It's not really important if your stats are adding to something which is literally an attack. Active abilities of any kind are from the standpoint of these writeups are an "attack" just as passive abilities of any kind are "defenses". Whether you are attacking the chasm by jumping over it or defending yourself from the avalanche by keeping your feet - attacks and defenses are dependent only on who is choosing that your attribute is being used.

The Problems of Constitution
Constitution is really bothering me. If Hit Points are the primary ticker that keeps track of how long you stay in the combat, I'm not super clear on how to make Con not be the uber stat. It seems much better than anything any other attribute could do. Really regardless of which version of basic attribute usage you're modelling things on.

-Username17

[NoDot]

1197739907[/unixtime]]The Problems of Constitution
Constitution is really bothering me. If Hit Points are the primary ticker that keeps track of how long you stay in the combat, I'm not super clear on how to make Con not be the uber stat. It seems much better than anything any other attribute could do. Really regardless of which version of basic attribute usage you're modelling things on.

I don't think I've ever seen CON being the "uber stat." The most it's ever been is number two, or is that just as bad?

[virgil]

If you go off of the idea that attacks are active and defenses are passive in terms of resolution and where/when you get to use them, then that's just an inherent disadvantage with playing the defense game in general. Is there a game where imbalanced defenses aren't much worse than imbalanced attacks?

What if you had the system such that it tends towards a balance in defenses, and a slight reduction in one defense results in a large increase in another (something like -1 Fort for +3 Reflex, or whatever)?

Aren't alternative methods to Constitution all basically damage mitigation anyway? Dexterity is considered a very important ability because the hit points saved from a miss is generally greater than what an equivalent amount of Constitution would've just plain given you. Same goes for damage reduction.

[NineInchNall]

Bear with me here.

You have an attribute generation system that creates total bonuses equal to X, regardless of distribution. So all characters end up starting with a total bonus of X.

Why would I do that? Because the only thing that ends up mattering is the total bonus. Use only the total bonus of all stats when calculating to-hit, damage bonus, DCs, etc.

Intractable? I don't know. It essentially boils down to a one-stat system with the illusion of multiple stats.

[Bigode]

Yeah, that it, taken; thanks!

Lastly, in monster categorization, 'glass' is more of an additional descriptor than a specific type. You have glass artillery, glass tanks, and glass skirmishers as well as good old fashioned hammers.

Glass tanks??? Also, what's the difference between a hammer and a skirmisher (I suppose both are single-target specialists)?

Basically, you use the size bonus as a modifer or multiplier for physical stats. It wasn't terribly consistent, (and wouldn't work with entirely positive modifiers) but basically large creatures would multiply their physical bonuses (or penalties) by whatever that size modifier is. So, a large creature would double their strength and con modifers to damage and hit points, but would deal with some sort of meaningful dex penalty.

I find that bad, because it makes "large size" have a value that's unnecessarily variable (thus harder to balance); the real issue's that D&D has all three of off-the-charts ability score values, HD amounts out of line with CR, and (static) size modifiers, which actually are the harmless part. IMO, the right solution's to chain CR and HD and have uniform HD types, and then produce the differences via abilities; thus monsters "large like an Xbox" would have off-the-charts Str and Con and that's it - and, depending on other mechanics, "off-the-charts" (as in, "very large") could even be 18, perhaps handling space and reach in an unrelated fashion.

Notes on the Random Number Generator:

Dunno about you, but I did like the part of d20 where modifiers had a name and a magnitude, so I'd talk about stuff like "-4 range penalty" instead of some of the terms you used; and what's "poor positioning" other than range and cover? Do you mean the attacker is kneeling/lying or something of the like?

Ability damage: I don't get it - aren't you supposed to decide on ability damage? Also, stat array selection (as opposed to rolling) FTW!

How many times have you had to contend with a DM handing out a concealment miss chnce because you couldn't see every part of the target?

Sorry, but what's wrong? You try to fence, and miss sometimes because there's less exposed, or you throw a bomb and don't care - isn't that the displacer beast's situation?

In that respect the idea is that ability damage wouldn't scale up, it would just happen instead of a wound level with certain attacks. So the fact that it will only take 4 or 5 applications of 3 points of Wisdom Damage to completely drop pretty much anyone isn't a huge problem - it's a feature even because people are supposed to take a finite number of wounds before they drop.

At this point, why'd not "a wound" be Con damage?

Especially if attributes don't go up during play.

WHAT? At the very least, this would require a way for a character to flip points around, to allow changes of course.

It's unfair, but for a Fantasy Game it actually seems to be better than having a fair system where everyone just min/maxes all their stuff.

Give people stats for out-of-combat skills, but otherwise keep class features based off level. That way you don't have to really worry about stat arrays or good rolls or anything. You can have a well muscled mage and a smart fighter then.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of stereotyped characters for the sake of "balance".

IMO, a solution better than either's already been conceived: "MAD and madder" - if we have abilities that favor every possible pair of attributes, we already have the strong mage and the charismatic fighter; the task seems to be more about making up enough stuff that each stat array gets multiple good options.

[Draco_Argentum]

1197739907[/unixtime]]
[*] Attack and Defense Stats
Imagine if you will that Strength made you hit things and also made you resist getting hurled across the room by forcewaves. It has some of the weaknesses of both the previous writeups but it does encourage both the reduction of weaknesses and the increase of strengths - which means that characters of many different types are encouraged from within the system.
And this is where I'm doing most of my concepting.

As long as you can't use str to target every defense you'll need at least two attack stats. Thats probably a good thing.

[Username17]

Sorry, but what's wrong? You try to fence, and miss sometimes because there's less exposed, or you throw a bomb and don't care - isn't that the displacer beast's situation?

Game mechanically, knowing where the target is but having part of the target concealed is actually cover, not concealment. That's why I would like to get different nomenclature in which the fact that a target was partially concealed by a wall and the fact that you didn't know exactly where your target was would be clearly different.

Cover and Ambiguity? I'm not sure. But the word "concealment" is right fucking out because people are seriously concealed by cover in Natural English and the fact that they are different effects which are negated by different things is really important.

At the very least, this would require a way for a character to flip points around, to allow changes of course.

I'm not really convinced that's true. If character creation is (at least potentially) fast, then you don't really need to have special rules to swap your character around retroactively. The goal really is to make it so you don't end up getting abilities which expire so that the organic characters don't suffer.

At this point, why'd not "a wound" be Con damage?

It might well be. I see an attack having the following information available:

• 
  
• Action Type: Generally it will be a Strike, and thus the information could be left off entirely as assumed. But hey, some could take Strike + Press or Strike + Maneuver. If using the X-Com system, an attack would have a number followed by an "A" indicating that it counted as your ability activation.
  
  
• Target/Area: You can combine the bonus to your attack roll with the range and area and whatever all into one line. Or you could put the targetting stat in another line. I don't much care. Area and range need to be combined into one category though.
  
  
• Damage: How much damage the attack does. It should generally be improved by a stat other than the stat which is used for the attack roll.
  
  
• Special/Wound: If you do enough damage to exceed some dude's effect threshold you inflict the special effect (this way Stunning Fists don't need an extra save mechanic). If you do enough damage to exceed someone's wound threshold (or drop them to 0 hit points) you inflict an appropriate wound. Most attacks will just inflict a standard wound, but some effects could have special wound effects (such as a poison which kills in X amount of time if you get wounded by it).

---

In a totally unrelated issue: I think that the combat rounds should be way longer than 6 seconds. Maybe not a full minute like they were in AD&D days - but it actually pisses me off that battles take less time to resolve than commercial advisories.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1197813102[/unixtime]]
In a totally unrelated issue: I think that the combat rounds should be way longer than 6 seconds. Maybe not a full minute like they were in AD&D days - but it actually pisses me off that battles take less time to resolve than commercial advisories.

The main downside wtih long rounds is that you've got to jack everyone's movement capabilities up, which pretty much hoses ranged characters. Also conventional AD&D style combat described things as a series of blows where lke your one successful attack was the attack that actually landed. And that works fine for melee, but sometimes you're using ammunition with each attack and really want to know how many shots you fired.

[the_taken]

1197813102[/unixtime]]
In a totally unrelated issue: I think that the combat rounds should be way longer than 6 seconds. Maybe not a full minute like they were in AD&D days - but it actually pisses me off that battles take less time to resolve than commercial advisories.

~12 seconds?

Alternatively, don't tell people how much time goes by in a round. If they ask, say it moves at the speed of plot.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I know how much we hate getting realism in our D&D, but in real life, fights are over fast. The only reason fights draw out is engagement delays; whether it's UFC goons circling for advantage for fifteen minutes, or feeding the Red Army to the Wehrmacht one rank of men at a time, it may take a while to actually come to grips with the enemy, but once you do, it doesn't last that long.

The exception is where both sides choose to prioritize defensive maneuvers, like a gunfight where both sides are using suppressive fire from behind cover, or a swordfight where both people alternate full defense with defensive strikes. Even then, fatigue and nerves start to motivate for either an engagement or a retreat before very long.

Six seconds is actually a somewhat leisurely interval to get in both a move and an attack exchange.

[K]

Ok, here are the arguments for stats as pure defenses:

1. No bad characters. Ok, you what if you want to make an "sea wizard" who is a swashbucker that carries a cutlass and swings from ropes and can bail water with the best of them. You choose a high Str. Then some guy comes up to you and says "Oh, the only high Str magic attacks are Necromancy...so I guess you are a necromancer, eh?"

Hell no. You want people to actually not able to make mistakes in character creation AS WELL AS be able to make the character they want.

Some people might say, "but hey, you can just make abilities that favor some stat for every kind of thing that people want." In an ideal world, that might work. Since we don't live in an ideal world and are not going to write a thousand abilities and we want the "sea wizard" from the above example to be able to cast Wind Blast and Lightning Bolt and Mists of Deception, we can't limit people's active attacks by their stats.

2. Pure defense must only be saves, and not AC, to hit, or HPs.

Here is the example of things that your stats should help you resist:
Str: grapples, entangling webs, bull rushes and overruns,
Dex: Blade traps on chests, slipping on ice or grease, falling off rope and ledges when hit,
Con: poison, death magic, exposure, exhaustion, blood loss from drains,
Int: illusions, mental exhaustion from prolonged research or game playing, divinations(spotting the signs and using known non-magical counters), bargains with summoned demons, default magic resistance.
Cha: mind-controlling magic like charms and fear, diplomatic abilities, resisting attempts to usurp magical control over conjured beasts

(You'll note that Wis is gone. For the life of me I don't know why it exists. We could even fold Int into Cha).

By making the important stats(AC, HPs, and To-hit) based on level, we can avoid a lot of unbalanced things in DnD, and we don't have to do anything elaborate to let people be able to fight in combat.

3. No unfair specialization. Making stats add to attacks just means that organic or multiclass characters can't fight next to specialized characters.

Seriously. In every game that uses stats to add to attacks, you get a system where some guys get a big irresistible attack and others get so-so attacks and can't take down things the focused guys can and the focussed guys are the stars of the show. Ever seen a poorly made DnD fighter next to a focussed one like a good charge build?

4.

[Username17]

1197826675[/unixtime]]I know how much we hate getting realism in our D&D, but in real life, fights are over fast.

Theoretically a fight could be over quickly. One person could make an attack on the other by giving them a quick punch in the jaw, the other could fall down and the whole thing would be over in seconds. In reality though fights aren't over that quickly.

While we could throw anecdotes around of various short (Oswald vs. JFK) or long (Parasurama vs. Bishma) combats; there actually is ontrolled scientific research on this subject:
Pig Fights take a mean of 98 seconds

Furthermore, I don't think it'shelpful or interesting to keep track of individual shots or indiidual pieces of ammunition.
Trained Gunmen hit their mark with less than one bullet in Six.

So yeah. No more than half of all battles should be over in less than 48 seconds. Because statistically, they aren't. An individual turn of attacking should involve shooting a bunch of arrows or crossbow bolts or whatever because noone accomplishes shit with individual attacks.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1197843246[/unixtime]]Pig Fights take a mean of 98 seconds

Pig fights are a bad basis of comparison. Pigs don't really have a heck of a lot of offensive capability.

Furthermore, I don't think it'shelpful or interesting to keep track of individual shots or indiidual pieces of ammunition.

So what would you do, just give people "rounds" worth of ammunition?

[Crissa]

RC, Pigs are hella scary. They are the one animal that lives in nearly every environment and you want to approach them in none of them. Wolves, Bears - they can be dealt with. Some big cats don't even care about people. Pigs... Pigs are scary things.

Frank: Cover and Displacement.

Cloak of Displacement, remember? ^-^

-Crissa

[Username17]

Yeah, beating a pig in melee is such a big deal that it's one of the labors of Heracles (The Fourth Labor, as it happens). Some of the other labors include besting a Lion (1st Labor), The Hydra (2nd Labor), and Cerberus himself (12th labor).

So what would you do, just give people "rounds" worth of ammunition?

If that even. When was the last time you saw a D&D combat go on long enough that people ran out of arrows?

-Username17

[Koumei]

One of my DMs once threatened to slap someone for recording the arrows they fired.

"Seriously, they cost two thirds of nothing, and you're in a forest. For all I care, you can just sharpen some sticks to fire. Don't list that shit here."

[the_taken]

1197842041[/unixtime]](You'll note that Wis is gone. For the life of me I don't know why it exists. We could even fold Int into Cha).

Yay! =3

[Crissa]

Why do we have multiple physical attributes and not multiple non-physical attributes?

I think that is short-sighted.

-Crissa

[K]

1197871263[/unixtime]]Why do we have multiple physical attributes and not multiple non-physical attributes?

I think that is short-sighted.

-Crissa

When I was going through all the things that adventurers get hit with and need to make saves, things really started to blur into one or even two non-physical attributes.

Active attributes that add to things are potentially infinite in number. WoD has like 14 the last time I checked, and it would be easy to come up with more.

But when you make the decision that attributes help with saves, four or five is the most you need.

Heck, Str and Con could be folded into a Build stat, and then we'd have Build, Dex, Int, and Cha, which is two for each.

[Crissa]

I suppose that's fine, I'd prefer simpler, I rather liked the 'awareness' vs 'memory' dichotomy that we had with Wisdom and Intelligence. (Charisma seems to me mental dexterity rather than mental strength, but is used mechanically like strength, which I didn't mind physical and mental stats sorting out slightly differently)

Folding Con and Strength together I could buy if you're going to get rid of Wisdom or Charisma.

Although there's traditionally six stats in D&D.

-Crissa

[Username17]

The only purpose of Wisdom that I can see is to differentiate the kinds of attacks which work on tigers from those which don't without making tigers good at automotive repair.

While you could plausibly achieve the same effect by having leopards and owls have high Charisma scores, that's kind of weird.

----

Although I think once we start recognizing Wisdom as animalistic wits and perceptiveness that the word "Wisdom" isn't nearly as appropriate as Cunning or Perception - Wisdom has the advantage (and disadvantage) of being a term that has been in use for longer than I have been alive.

Tradition. Pip pip.

-Username17

[K]

1197878687[/unixtime]]The only purpose of Wisdom that I can see is to differentiate the kinds of attacks which work on tigers from those which don't without making tigers good at automotive repair.

While you could plausibly achieve the same effect by having leopards and owls have high Charisma scores, that's kind of weird.

----

Although I think once we start recognizing Wisdom as animalistic wits and perceptiveness that the word "Wisdom" isn't nearly as appropriate as Cunning or Perception - Wisdom has the advantage (and disadvantage) of being a term that has been in use for longer than I have been alive.

Tradition. Pip pip.

-Username17

I think I'm fine with all animals being bad against mind attacks and having great physical stats.

Heck, I don't think there's an animal in the world thats better than level 3 or 4. Familiars and the like need their own entries because there isn't a housecat in the world that I'm afraid of.

For the record, wild boar are like level 2.

[Crissa]

Yeah, but then you can't have animals that are good at scent tracking or camouflage or deception or port that ability to intelligent creatures because it gets crazy.

It's bad enough that Squirrels can't feint. Do we want wolves and tigers not able to find their prey?

-Crissa

[K]

1197881701[/unixtime]]Yeah, but then you can't have animals that are good at scent tracking or camouflage or deception or port that ability to intelligent creatures because it gets crazy.

It's bad enough that Squirrels can't feint. Do we want wolves and tigers not able to find their prey?

-Crissa

You just give them an ability called Scent and move on with your life. Its a level 1 ability, and it doesn't have checks.