FrankTrollman wrote:
No it isn't. We already had that edition. It was called "2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons". Everything was modular and interchangeable. Even before we got to the crazy shit like Combat & Tactics, the entire way characters interacted with space and time was modular and interchangeable. The rules reminded you every couple of pages that everything was optional and could be changed by the DM, and everything from character skills to the tactical grid was given as a series of options of varying complexity.
And that's actually good, because D&D games tend to play out vastly different from table to table. Some people run hack'n'slash, other people want complex deep roleplay sessions, some want low magic, and others want fantasy-themed superheroes. You're going to find hundreds of different permutations as to how people actually play D&D.
And when you tell people they can't have what they want, they get upset and either house rule the game or drop it entirely. Unfortunately many DMs are not good game designers, and so the game suffers because they try to adapt the game into something they want to play. And they're going to do that shit whether you create modules or not.
People want variants. They have since the inception of D&D. And that doesn't change whether you're playing AD&D or 3E. What do you really think Pathfinder is but a series of house rules for 3E? What are the Tomes that you yourself helped create? Variants, house rules, modules... whatever you choose to call them, they amount to the same thing. People want to run D&D their way. The very fact that you've created pages and pages of house rules proves just that.
We already know people love altering the game to fit their style, it's part of the heart and soul of D&D. The designers should embrace that philosophy and provide variants that have actually been playtested and balanced. AD&D may have had a lot of problematic issues, but the desire to create variants was not one of them.
No. It isn't. If you carry through on such a concept, then titans can't kick open doors. The reality is that powerful things are supposed to succeed at simple tasks. And if you enforce bounded accuracy at all, that isn't going to happen.
Strength checks have never worked right. AD&D strength checks have been the best out of the editions, and that's pretty sad. Even then, it was possible that an 8 strength character succeeds where an 18 strength character fails. In 3E, that was just a 5 point difference, and in 4E, a 20th level archmage was automatically stronger than a 1st level barbarian for whatever reason.
With kicking down doors and other pure strength tasks, we just need a non-d20 resolution mechanic. I always tended to use a strength threshold given to each door and anyone above that threshold can kick it down in one try, anything within 4 points of it has a 50% chance and everyone lower just auto-fails.
Skill checks in general probably need an overhaul. Right now there's far too big a gap between the lock that you can pick easily and the lock that is beyond your abilities to pick. And that issue has less to do with bounded accuracy as it does with the d20 being the wrong dice to use for such tests.
Worse, you're still going to want powerful creatures to be able to take out large numbers of bullshit opponents. And if you freeze attack and defense scaling, then you're just going to have to scale damage and hit points that much faster. Which would you rather have? High level monsters that can't threaten villages because a bunch of peasants with slings will murderate the dragon? Or high level monsters with ten thousand hit points? If you embrace bounded accuracy you must have one or the other. And both options suck.
I don't want to go to the crazy extreme of no scaling. That's pretty dumb. I'd just like to see reduced scaling, so that lower level stuff remains somewhat relevant and doesn't just devolve into tossing a bunch of dice hoping a 20 comes up. I'd be happy if AC scaled a lot slower than attack bonus, so that you'd always hit the orcs, but you wouldn't necessary be unhittable to them. It would work fairly well with 3E style iterative attacks or a power attack mechanic, since you'd now have scaling damage too.
Granted I don't like the solution the designers came up, because Mearls can't find his ass using both hands, but I felt that the spirit of BA is in the right place. I'm not certain what the best method for achieving that goal actually is. I hated the minion system in 4E. I do like the idea that I can toss down 40 orcs against a group of level 7-10 characters and have them be more than a waste of the DM's time. That's not to say that low level monsters never get phased out, simply that the level range is wider.
I realize this may not be the flavor you want in your games, so it's probably something you wanted to make modular. Everyone has their own particular tastes and if a company want to be successful as an RPG giant, they need to cater to many different styles.
