Some history for you fvckers

[Username17]

Well, eventually he will hit the magic number, however it is so far down the road that it doesn't matter much.

Wrong. Some people will start their games that far down the road. It might not happen in your game, but it will happen in other games. If the system can go there, it has already gone there from the perspective of a large number of players.

When diminishing returns happens - people get more XP. That's it. In AD&D, when people started taking hundreds of thousands of XP instead of regular thousands of XP to gain levels - they got more XP. The DM simply gave out more XP per adventure, and people maintained the same rate of growth (more or less). If you institute new rules in which people get XP statically, but it takes more levels to gain any actual bonus, then gues what? People will start getting levels faster.

People want a certain amount of tangible bonuses, and if something totally arbitrary like "an experience point" or "a level" has to be accumulated in large piles before it starts giving a real tangible benefit - then people will just start accumulating them in large piles.

---

The real "benefit" of diminishing returns, is that it allows people who start new characters or miss sessions to catch up quickly. But that's all it does. People need more XP, and they get more XP. People need more gold, and they get more gold. The only difference is that people who missed the early sessions miss out on a lower percentage of the total XP and gold, so they are closer in power to the people who've been here the whole time.

That's it though. It doesn't actually "put off" any numeric problems your system may have. If your system hits a wall after forty sessions, putting it on diminishing returns still makes that event forty sessions off. The "costs" and "rewards" will have gone up a lot, but the same amount of playing time will have elapsed when you hit the problem.

And since players have, can, and will start campaigns where their characters have forty sessions worth of bonuses under their belt at the beginning - that means that you are still handing people a game system that manifests in many hands as an immediate firery explosion and total game balance fiasco.

As long as everyone keeps the same characters and every person shows up for every game - there is absolutely no difference whatsoever between diminishing returns and not. If people need "five karma points", "thousands of experience points", or "a dozen levels" to see the next tangible benfit, that's how much people are going to get. And the time it takes them to get it is based on te number of sessions the playgroup feels they can go through before getting the next tangible benefit. In some groups that's like eight, but in a lot of play groups, that's only one. The fact that experience in some systems gives you benefits when you have "like six", and in some systems gives you benefits when you have "about six hundred thousand" does not make advancement happen one hundred thousand times slower in one game than in the other.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1096992606[/unixtime]]
Wrong. Some people will start their games that far down the road. It might not happen in your game, but it will happen in other games. If the system can go there, it has already gone there from the perspective of a large number of players.

Well if people are playing level 100 gods, then they're just going to have to be careful about character design and know what they're doing. I don't know what to say. Level 100 isn't the norm, few people actually do it, and those that do, well let them figure out a way to run it. I personally could care less about level 100.

When diminishing returns happens - people get more XP. That's it. In AD&D, when people started taking hundreds of thousands of XP instead of regular thousands of XP to gain levels - they got more XP. The DM simply gave out more XP per adventure, and people maintained the same rate of growth (more or less). If you institute new rules in which people get XP statically, but it takes more levels to gain any actual bonus, then gues what? People will start getting levels faster.

Well, I was actually thinking of handing out a set number of points based on the new character level you gained, and you could spent those points how you wanted, that way everytime you gained a level, you could gain a +1 bonus if you wanted to by spending all your points on one thing. Though you'd gain much more than a +1 if you spent all your points on a skill you didn't have.

People want a certain amount of tangible bonuses, and if something totally arbitrary like "an experience point" or "a level" has to be accumulated in large piles before it starts giving a real tangible benefit - then people will just start accumulating them in large piles.

A large pile is completely arbitrary. In white wolf 100 XP is a large pile. In D&D its a small pile. Your XP assigning system is what determines how fast XP goes out. So I fail to see the problem. Essentially your argument boils down to "well if they play a lot, then they'll gain a lot of XP"

That's it though. It doesn't actually "put off" any numeric problems your system may have. If your system hits a wall after forty sessions, putting it on diminishing returns still makes that event forty sessions off. The "costs" and "rewards" will have gone up a lot, but the same amount of playing time will have elapsed when you hit the problem.

No, not quite. Simply because it takes longer to raise something and other people are catching up. Consider the 50/50 split that I described earlier and compare it to a 50/50 split in the old system. When you have linear advancement 50/50 splits just can't occur, at all. Going fighter/cleric will hose you badly.

And since players have, can, and will start campaigns where their characters have forty sessions worth of bonuses under their belt at the beginning - that means that you are still handing people a game system that manifests in many hands as an immediate firery explosion and total game balance fiasco.

wow getting to level 100 in 40 sessions? What kinds of games are you playing?

You're still not really getting it... the part where the system breaks down is so far down the road that we aren't constantly worrying about it. Games will have long retired their characters before then. The only time they might not is if someone wants to intentionally create the "god game" and in that case they're using the rules at a levle they weren't intended.

As long as everyone keeps the same characters and every person shows up for every game - there is absolutely no difference whatsoever between diminishing returns and not. If people need "five karma points", "thousands of experience points", or "a dozen levels" to see the next tangible benfit, that's how much people are going to get.

RIght, now the question is what are the others doing in the meantime. The mage is saving up for a 20 point ability while the rogue loads up on a bunch of 2-4 point abilities. So the mage is waiting a comparatively long time for the same bonus.

And the time it takes them to get it is based on te number of sessions the playgroup feels they can go through before getting the next tangible benefit. In some groups that's like eight, but in a lot of play groups, that's only one. The fact that experience in some systems gives you benefits when you have "like six", and in some systems gives you benefits when you have "about six hundred thousand" does not make advancement happen one hundred thousand times slower in one game than in the other.

All you care about is relative advancement. HOw is the fighter/mage advancing compared toward the straight fighter. That's what diminishing returns handles. You are right that numbers don't matter, they don't. 100 XP could be 100000 or 10. However, what does matter is that the mage pays 3x what the fighter is paying to increase the same skill. That actually means something.

[Username17]

Well, I was actually thinking of handing out a set number of points based on the new character level you gained, and you could spent those points how you wanted, that way everytime you gained a level, you could gain a +1 bonus if you wanted to by spending all your points on one thing. Though you'd gain much more than a +1 if you spent all your points on a skill you didn't have.

Then you aren't talking baout level 100 to get the kickover, you are talking baout level 20.

Remember "Level 100" is a totally arbitrary number, and will be either big or small depending upon the scale. If your scale is attenuating such that each level means relatively less than the ones before it - then people will get levels faster and faster. That's how these things work. If the level is on a quadratic scale, then level 100 is actually analogous to level ten, and between level 81 and level 100 people will be picking up 6+ levels a session.

A large pile is completely arbitrary. In white wolf 100 XP is a large pile. In D&D its a small pile. Your XP assigning system is what determines how fast XP goes out. So I fail to see the problem. Essentially your argument boils down to "well if they play a lot, then they'll gain a lot of XP"

It's more than that. If you charge people more XP to get the stuff they want, more XP will be given to them to allow them to get the stuff they want. So making things cost "more XP" or "more karma" or "more levels" just makes them get more of those things.

No, not quite. Simply because it takes longer to raise something and other people are catching up.

No. That's what you aren't getting. It doesn't take any longer to raise things, because the XP hand-outs are proportional to the XP costs, not proportional to the XP costs in different systems. If it costs more XP to get a bonus, people get more XP to buy bonuses.

And if people are given the option of having more relative options or more relative bonuses - then the people with more relative options are never ever catching up. They are falling behind. Definitionally, because the bonus people are getting more relative bonuses.

In any system where people have the choice of gaining more relative bonuses, they getting more bonuses. Relatively. And that means that they are pulling farther ahead, and noone is ever, or can ever "catch up" to them. That's what getting relative bonuses means. It means that your bonus, minus their bonus, is a bigger bonus than it was before. And if you aren't doing that - the Fighter is being ass-raped and you already promised that the Fighter wasn't getting ass-raped because you are doing that.

---

What you need to do is think of the advancement system in the context of the system itself - not in terms of other systems. If it takes 100 XP to get a "level" and 100 levels to get a tangible bonus, then every couple of sessions people are still going to get tangible bonuses - which means that people will be going up dozens of "levels" per play session.

"Level" doesn't mean "a couple of sessions worth of advancement" - it doesn't mean anything. It so happens that it is the unit of tangible advancement in D&D, so you see it every few sessions. But if it wasn't, you wouldn't. If a level was a representation of having accumulated several tangible benefits consecutively, you might see levels only infrequently. If several levels must be accumulated to get anything good, then you'll see them come fast and furious.

If, however, the relative benefit of a level changes over the course of the campaign - then the rate at which levels accumulate will also change accordingly. You can't just have low levels be big and late levels be small and expect that character growth will slow in the late game - people are just going to accelerate level gain.

We already tried this with XP gain in the early seventies. The "Experience Point" was a big deal early, and a tiny thing late in life. Rather than causing PCs to stagnate at higher levels, this caused late campaign adventures to be worth crap tonnes of experience points. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that doing exactly the same thing with "levels" will have anything other than exactly the same result in actual play.

All you care about is relative advancement. HOw is the fighter/mage advancing compared toward the straight fighter. That's what diminishing returns handles.

Well, no. No. And No. The Guy who has "firebolts and swords" can be handled quite adequately by a diminishing returns system, so long as the returns diminish exponentially. That is, if the next power level costs twice as much as this one did, the guy wih two schticks is always one power-level down, which depending upon utility may be a balanced set-up. Unfortunately, that doesn't handle the guy who is a D&D Wizard, and who keeps getting schticks. There's no provision for that. At all.

And there can't be. If you want to pick up Ice Bolts, you are falling relatively behind. And every time you pick up new schticks, you fall even more relatively behind. And it's not extensible, and it doesn't work in that instance.

We don't just care about "Fighter vs. Fighter who can throw Lightning Bolts", we care about "Sword Guy vs. Guy who Keeps Learning Spells" - and diminishing returns doesn't help with that. At all.

However, what does matter is that the mage pays 3x what the fighter is paying to increase the same skill. That actually means something.

No. That doesn't mean anything, because the Fighter and the Wizard aren't getting the same skills. All that means is that people are getting triple rewards and new players can catch up quickly.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1097006616[/unixtime]]
It's more than that. If you charge people more XP to get the stuff they want, more XP will be given to them to allow them to get the stuff they want. So making things cost "more XP" or "more karma" or "more levels" just makes them get more of those things.

And everyone else is getting comparitvely more out of the deal. So the guy who splits his sword and magic skills is fine. So long as it's more expensive to raise sword from 11 to 12 than it is to raise it from 5 to 6, then the guy who wants to specialize is paying more than the other guys. Meaning it's a lot easier to catch up. And so long as you can catch up you wont' have many balance problems.

No. That's what you aren't getting. It doesn't take any longer to raise things, because the XP hand-outs are proportional to the XP costs, not proportional to the XP costs in different systems. If it costs more XP to get a bonus, people get more XP to buy bonuses.

Frank, this is totally illogical. You're trying to say that somehow if 100 XP moves you from skill level 11 to 12 that it's somehow equal to 10 XP which moves you from 1 to 2.

I don't even see what point you're trying to make. Other than "they'll eventualyl raise it" The point of interest is how other people have raised their stuff in the meantime.

The game works on the same XP principle whatever that is, and you have a finite XP to spend on stuff. If you decide to spend it all on sword, you're getting diminished returns from a guy who splits it.

And if people are given the option of having more relative options or more relative bonuses - then the people with more relative options are never ever catching up. They are falling behind. Definitionally, because the bonus people are getting more relative bonuses.

Huh? How do you figure. If I spend 20 points on sword skill and only raise it by a +1, and another guy spends 20 points and raises it by a +3, how is the second guy falling behind.

In any system where people have the choice of gaining more relative bonuses, they getting more bonuses. Relatively. And that means that they are pulling farther ahead, and noone is ever, or can ever "catch up" to them. That's what getting relative bonuses means. It means that your bonus, minus their bonus, is a bigger bonus than it was before. And if you aren't doing that - the Fighter is being ass-raped and you already promised that the Fighter wasn't getting ass-raped because you are doing that.

The more expensive it becomes to raise your bonus, the more everyone else catches up./

What you need to do is think of the advancement system in the context of the system itself - not in terms of other systems. If it takes 100 XP to get a "level" and 100 levels to get a tangible bonus, then every couple of sessions people are still going to get tangible bonuses - which means that people will be going up dozens of "levels" per play session.

No, see that's where you're wrong. The XP to collect a tangible bonus is NOT the same for everyone. IF you're specialized it takes more to gain tangible bonuses in your specialty than it does if you are picking up something you haven't learned before.

So people can and will catch up.

We already tried this with XP gain in the early seventies. The "Experience Point" was a big deal early, and a tiny thing late in life. Rather than causing PCs to stagnate at higher levels, this caused late campaign adventures to be worth crap tonnes of experience points. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that doing exactly the same thing with "levels" will have anything other than exactly the same result in actual play.

Right, you give away more XP, but so what? that just means that you can blow through the early levels of easy skills. SO I can jump from a +0 to a +8 in pickpocketing instead of gaining a single +1 to my intimidate skill. Regardless of how much XP you give away, diminihsing returns remains the same.

Well, no. No. And No. The Guy who has "firebolts and swords" can be handled quite adequately by a diminishing returns system, so long as the returns diminish exponentially. That is, if the next power level costs twice as much as this one did, the guy wih two schticks is always one power-level down, which depending upon utility may be a balanced set-up. Unfortunately, that doesn't handle the guy who is a D&D Wizard, and who keeps getting schticks. There's no provision for that. At all.

It depends on how you handle wizards. I mean you could just call "arcane magic" a thing like your attack bonus and use a spell level like progression based on what you've got. So if you're a fighter/mage then you've got a slightly lower bonus and slightly lower casting ability, and end up looking like an eldritch knight.

We can still use the basic D&D casting level progression if we wanted to. It's just that that's diminished too. 1 caster level might take 1-5 levels to actually obtain.

Alternately if you didn't want the D&D magic system you could just charge static XP amounts for spells. So if you've brought up your magic skill its relatively cheap at higher levels when you're getting assloads of XP anyway much like buying wands of CLW when you've got 100,000 gp per session.

No. That doesn't mean anything, because the Fighter and the Wizard aren't getting the same skills. All that means is that people are getting triple rewards and new players can catch up quickly.

If you think "getting different skills" makes any advancement system meaningless then you can't have an advancement system at all. I mean no system is oging to make you happy. Even your own system, your fighters and wizards aren't gaining the same skills, so apparently that's invalid.

As long as you have fighters and mages advancing side by side, you have to accept they're going to have different skills. and you have to try to balance those the best you can. That has nothing to do with your advancement system.

I'm just inclined to say "so what?"

So lets recap your arguments here:
-The system breaks at some super high level. ANd because some one group in 20,000 may choose to start a game at level 200 that somehow that makes the system bad.
-People get more experience at higher level.
-Wizards and fighters use different skills.

Besides the first one, I fail to see how any of that actually relates to diminishing returns. While the last two arguments may in fact be true, they aren't actually proving anything about diminishing returns.

[Username17]

Frank, this is totally illogical. You're trying to say that somehow if 100 XP moves you from skill level 11 to 12 that it's somehow equal to 10 XP which moves you from 1 to 2.

Of course it's equal, in time. When people are needing 100 XP to raise from 11 to 12, they'll get it in the same number of sessions in which they got 10 XP back when they only needed 10 XP to raise their skill level from 1 to 2.

If you don't believe me, go back and look at D&D, where it takes you 1000 XP to get from 1 to 2, but 11,000 XP to get from 11 to 12. That's actually 10% more of an increase than you talk about dismissively, but it still takes 13 encounters of your CR to raise yourself.

And that's what you are bumping into. Diminishing Returns addresses (although incompletely) the problem of people "catching up", but it does absolutely nothing at all for people moving in different directions on their own accord.

---

You seem to think that somehow the fact that people are spending more arbitrary points to get more sword skill means that it will take them longer to acquire it, and or that they will jump ship and get medium piles of other skills instead of jacking up their bonuses.

That's possible. Certainly, some DMs will hand out 500 XP every session, resulting in a defacto level cap of 5 or so in D&D 3.X. And some PCs will be so enticed by the cheapness of new powers that they'll just pick up a new gimic every session.

But some people won't. Some people will just hand out proportional XP, just like they've always done in every game ever produced, and some people will just take all these gains and put them in a big pile.

And then your proposed system explodes. Deal with it.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1097019450[/unixtime]]
And that's what you are bumping into. Diminishing Returns addresses (although incompletely) the problem of people "catching up", but it does absolutely nothing at all for people moving in different directions on their own accord.

Moving in a different direction means you're "catching up" somewhere else. If you were a wizard 4 and suddenly wanted to become a fighter, your'e now catching up as a fighter and as stated you're going to be able to buy BaB and other fighter stuff cheaply compared to the guy who already has fighter levels, so eventually you catch up. And naturally you still have your wizard stuff so, you've got both fronts covered.

That's possible. Certainly, some DMs will hand out 500 XP every session, resulting in a defacto level cap of 5 or so in D&D 3.X. And some PCs will be so enticed by the cheapness of new powers that they'll just pick up a new gimic every session.

But some people won't. Some people will just hand out proportional XP, just like they've always done in every game ever produced, and some people will just take all these gains and put them in a big pile.

Well, that's their choice. And that's waht I want to do, is give people choices. Basically whenever you make a character you should have the ability to choose.

Do I want to be an awesome fighter, a medium fighter who does rogue stuff, a pure wizard, a fighter/mage, a wizard who specializes purely in evocation or whatever... you have to give people that choice.

So if people are going to focus on one thing, then you just have to see fit their actual bonuses aren't that big. So they're better, but not dramatically better, and diminishing returns handles this nicely. A guy puts all his points into one catagory, and yeah, he's good, but as stated before, what are we talking about, a +5, +6 bonus, and he has no other options? So you end up looking like the juggernaut then... and so if someone wants to play the juggernaut let him. We all know there are ways of beating the juggernaut with options anyway.

You could even potentially outfight the juggernaut if you focused mostly on combat, he'd only have about a +2 edge on you or sometihng if you spent say 75% on combat. And a +2 edge really isn't that big at all.

The system doesn't explode at all when people totally specialize, in fact it's designed to handle that specifically and discourage it numerically.

BIg deal you've put all your points into swording people, so you've got a +4 bonus over the guy who has a bunch of other skills, like rogue skills. So what?

[Username17]

Moving in a different direction means you're "catching up" somewhere else.

No. It doesn't. One person is learning to do more differet things. The other person is just adding to his pile of bonuses in one thing. No catching up is ever taking place, and the guy with the big bonus goes off the scale in exactly the same time as he would have if no diminishment were taking place.

After all, from his perspective - it isn't. He's just getting and spending more and more points and his sword skill continues to rise. The Wizard is getting more different spells and such, and individually they are getting bigger, but the Fighter's relative advantage is continuing to rise.

---

Random Casualty: have you taken any calculus? You seem pretty fuzzy on limits and series notation.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1097023336[/unixtime]]
No. It doesn't. One person is learning to do more differet things. The other person is just adding to his pile of bonuses in one thing. No catching up is ever taking place, and the guy with the big bonus goes off the scale in exactly the same time as he would have if no diminishment were taking place.

You "catch up" in the sense that if you put all your bonuses where he's putting his, you will eventually be approximately as good as he is. You'll never be exactly as good, but numerically it'll be a +1 or +2 deviation and that we can easily live with.

Basically it'll be designed wtih the intention that a guy who puts 50% of his points into something will maintain a relatively constant bonus from behind.

I don't see how you say he goes off the scale at the exact same place as if no diminishment was taking place. That makes no sense. If you need the equivalent of a +100 bonus to gain a real +20, then clearly the diminishing is going to keep you much more competetive and longer. Now, perhaps it's true that he will go off the scale against someone who is totally untrained in the skill, but we really don't care about that. I don't care that the cleric who hasn't put a single point into hide can't hide for shit. That's the way the game is supposed to be. I just care that the ranger and rogue who both spent stuff on hide can do so competetively.

Random Casualty: have you taken any calculus? You seem pretty fuzzy on limits and series notation.

I don't recall actually using any limits or series notation so I'm not sure how you would reach that conclusion. As for calculus, I've taken it.

But right now I'm not even worrying about the exact math. I don't even have a formula yet for how I want the returns to diminish exactly but I know I can come up with one, after I decide exactly what it should look like.

[Username17]

You "catch up" in the sense that if you put all your bonuses where he's putting his, you will eventually be approximately as good as he is.

Only at the cost of not doing the things you had been doing - and then having those options eventually fall by the wayside in uselessness, and pocketting a (possibly small) disparity against you forever.

Or you just keep picking up options and falling further and further behind.

--

Either way, one character eventually has no reason to exist in this format.

But right now I'm not even worrying about the exact math. I don't even have a formula yet for how I want the returns to diminish exactly but I know I can come up with one, after I decide exactly what it should look like.

Come back to me after you have a system. Right now you keep switching between the glories of a geometric progression, an exponential progression, and even a quasi-linear progression.

So far the claims you have made for mathematical progressions have been impossible. The best claim, so far, is that somehow you can continue to gain relative advantage in bonuses without pulling increasingly ahead in bonuses - that's a direct contradiction.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1097041296[/unixtime]]
Come back to me after you have a system. Right now you keep switching between the glories of a geometric progression, an exponential progression, and even a quasi-linear progression.

I'm not sure exactly what progression is best just yet and it's one of the factors I'm working out. And it really doesn't entirely matter just yet, because the concept of diminishing returns can work off of a bunch of different formulas. If we don't like one, we can just use another.

I've used some examples, like the magic item bonus squared equation to give a rough idea of what the system might look like in completion.

Obviously, the exact formula is the most difficult part of diminishing returns.

So far the claims you have made for mathematical progressions have been impossible. The best claim, so far, is that somehow you can continue to gain relative advantage in bonuses without pulling increasingly ahead in bonuses - that's a direct contradiction.

The point is that sometimes those bonuses may not be significant. For instance in the example using a geometric progression, you had as much as a +2 to a +7 lead. Now, the thing you have to consider is the guy with the -7 is actually getting an equal amount of diversity from that. So yes, he can't fight as well in melee, but who knows what exactly he's getting in return... probably something that he can use to his advantage.

Being a pile of singleminded bonuses is not all that great, as has been stated in many threads before this one, as stated by you yourself when talking about non-intelligent monsters like the collossal scorpion and such. When your just pure attack bonus and can't beat flying, invisibility or other tactical concerns, then so what? I mean yeah, you've got a +7 better than the guy who decided to diversify, but the moment you get hit with something that doesn't blindly charge you, you're screwed. It's not like the other guy is off the random number generator either.

I mean I hear so much crap about how weapon focus and weapon spec suck ass as feats because they just grant bonuses, and now you're talking about a +7 bonus gap as though it's the most important thing in the world, when you're trading all your options away to get it. Would you take weapon focus 7 times if you could and not take any other feats? I really doubt it.

[Username17]

If we don't like one, we can just use another.

But none of them can give people a relative advantage of bonuses in exchange for not getting new options without letting them get farther ahead in bonuses.

That's the claim you've made for diminshing returns, and that's impossible with any mathematical progression.

There is nothing you can do that will allow person A to consistently and repeatedly choose to gain relatively more options while person B consistently and repeatedly chooses to gain relatively more bonuses without screwing over one or both people within 20 tangible upgrades. It's just not possible. Not with a geometric cost set-up, not even with an exponential cost set-up. No cost/benefit curve can accomodate for that because that's a problem which is conceptual and independent of what your cost/benefit curve actually is.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1097045392[/unixtime]]
But none of them can give people a relative advantage of bonuses in exchange for not getting new options without letting them get farther ahead in bonuses.

I've said it once, and I'll say it again... eventually people run out of options to take. You can seriously only learn so many tricks. And if somebody insists on being the true jack of all trades, then you can let him... but splitting his attention between running the abilities of 20 different class concepts should make him numerically weaker at any one class concept, and in a set up where this guy is in a party, isn't all that great a choice.

[Essence]

But people seriously want to be able to be 2nd-Ed-style Half-Elven Ranger/Cleric/Rogues. And if you lose 2 points of relative bonus for each new shtick you try to learn, you're then 4 points behind on Rangerness, Clericness, and Rogueness. And that's assuming that each shtick you learn immediately jumps to X-(2*Y)th levels of power, where X is the max bonus allowable at your level, and Y is the number of classes you've diversificated into. Most likely, you're 4 points behind on Rangerness and only have 1-2 points each of Clericness and Rogueness.

Just guessing from what we know about 'points' bv watching D&D, if you're 4 points behind the party on your main shtick, you're dead weight. Especially on a 20-point scale. No amount of weak-ass shtickyness in other classes can make up for the difference unless the power of each shtick is not determined by the shtick level, but by the level of the overall character.

Which is what Frank's been saying all along.

[RandomCasualty]

1097074410[/unixtime]]
No amount of weak-ass shtickyness in other classes can make up for the difference unless the power of each shtick is not determined by the shtick level, but by the level of the overall character.

A 3 level multiclass is possible, though admittedly not optimal. You could certainly make a 2 way MC with a litle dipping, but trying to keep three classes up to par probably won't work well.

Now, the problem with class level = character level for all abilities is that for one, everyone is the same. Your game model can't simulate someone who is a professional golfer, a mediocre basketball player and a novice computer programmer. And that's a big disadvantage, since under that system you're either awesome or you suck at something, and that isnt' the way the world works. Under Franks system a guy who just learned to open locks yesterday is right up there with a master thief who has been doing it his whole life.

In addition, you've got another big problem in that rogue characters get utterly hosed early. First, because you are only getting a few rogue skills for every rogue level, and second because your skills suck. It's like picking up hide and open lock for one level and both are at a +3 bonus. Now granted, this is a great setup for the already high level character who wants to pick up a couple of rogue skills since he gets them at the level of a master thief, but for the beginning rogue, this blows. You can only do two things, and you can't even do them well. And being a wizard isn't any better. Basically your toolbox is so small at early levels that you wonder why in the hell you're only getting d4 hit dice.

Then you've got ability balance, perhaps the most difficult thing to balance in the game. It's easy to balance a bonus versus a bonus, and you can come with all sorts of math to do that. Because it's just a number, and you can pick what number you like and numerically steer people toward it.

Abilities however don't work that way. There's no way to inherently balance abilities and while bonuses remain constant, so what you end up with is crap. And fighters, I'm still convinced you cannot do fighters as ability based characters. Because your abilities end up either having to be bonuses, or they totally suck. Sure, you can create all these circumstantial combat actions and call it "deadly charge" instead of "attack action" but really what your'e saying is whenever you charge, you get bonus X. And if you're not getting bonus X then people won't bother with the ability. So it creates a contradiction.

And this is stupid, because basically you're granting bonuses for more fighter levels, you're just putting them in pretty wrappers and calling them abilities. Either the guy with more fighter levels has better bonuses or he doesn't. Whatever wrapper you put them in, you just look at the final product. If the fighter doesn't, then fighter is basicalyl a disposable class. If he does, then you haven't fixed anything, you've just carefully tried to hide it in plain sight. As long as new combat actions are giving you bonuses in some way better than what your old attack action did, then eventually the fighter type is going to blow everyone away in bonuses. And if they don't become better then there's really no point in picking up further fighter levels. No point in having 20 different conditional special attacks that all do the same thing numerically.

So basically you're looking at a nonfix or a disposable 1-2 level class. Either fighters get nothing or they get something, and ultimately the something people are looking for is combat bonuses.

And the fact is that sooner or later you run out of abilities you want. And so you're stuck taking garbage. The problem with Frank's system is that ultimately everyone is strong armed mechanically into being a fighter mage. I mean you can't avoid it. You're forced to abandon your character concept at some point. Because sooner or later, your Robin hood character must become as good with lance and shield as he is with the longbow.

[Username17]

Dude. This is dungeons and dragons, if you are "mediocre" at something, it shouldn't cost you anything at all. It just doesn't matter. Like whether you drink grog or quaff it, it's just backstory and it means precisely dick. If it's really important to you, you can also hand out "backgrounds" - special abilties that people can also do but which are not numerically hard core enough to actually make any difference at their level.

---

What you are asking the game system to do is impossible. Like asking ll schools to perform average or above on standardized tests - it's a nice sounding idea, but it's statistically unachievable (since if all the schools are average or above, there is a new average which half the schools are still under by definition).

To go over the insanity:

1. You want players to be able to retain "free and open multiclassing".
2. You want players to be able to choose as their open multiclassing between gaining relative options and gaining relative bonuses.
3. You want someone who chooses relative bonuses to not get very far ahead of the rest of the party.

Well tough shit! That's impossible. If you can freely multiclass, then that means that you can take relative bonuses or not at any time. That's what freely open multiclassing means.

And if you get one relative bonus, and another relative bonus, that adds together to a bigger relative bonus. That's what relative bonuses means.

And if you just got a relative bonus that got bigger 19 times - you're off the fvcking scale, which is what it means to be generated on a d20 at all.

Your dream is unobtainable. You have to dump the idea of freely open multiclassing or of "trade-offs" involving relative bonuses, or both. You can't have your cake and eat it too in this instance, it just doesn't add up.

And no amount of incremental funny math can make it add up either.

-Username17

[Essence]

. Your game model can't simulate someone who is a professional golfer, a mediocre basketball player and a novice computer programmer

Sure it can. Someone who has the abilities Putting, Driving, Measuring the Green, Slice and Hook, and Compensate for Wind is a professional golfer. Someone who only has Master Dribbler, Lay-Ups, and Fast Breaks is only a mediocre basketball player (they lack Fake and Pass, Three-Point Shot, Free Throw, etc.). If that same person took HTML Skillz and Java Mastery, they're still only a crappy programmer (They missed out on everything from C++ to Linux Variants to IPX/SPX Protocol Simulation, and dozens of other necessities for professional status).

Even if the abilities they have for each of those shticks is set by character level.

[RandomCasualty]

1097102091[/unixtime]]
Sure it can. Someone who has the abilities Putting, Driving, Measuring the Green, Slice and Hook, and Compensate for Wind is a professional golfer. Someone who only has Master Dribbler, Lay-Ups, and Fast Breaks is only a mediocre basketball player (they lack Fake and Pass, Three-Point Shot, Free Throw, etc.). If that same person took HTML Skillz and Java Mastery, they're still only a crappy programmer (They missed out on everything from C++ to Linux Variants to IPX/SPX Protocol Simulation, and dozens of other necessities for professional status).

But that isn't how the world actually works.

You don't suddenly become a master of one thing without picking up the others, and you aren't equal in everything you know how to do.

In Frank's system, the world is entirely binary. Either you can do something or you can't. There's no "might be able to do it", "reasonably good" or anything else that might fall inbetween awesome and total shit.

And that's now how characters (fantasy or otherwise) tend to work. And since we are building a system to actually work out and stat characters we already know, then we want it to actually produce characters that look right.

In a D20 modern campaign for instance, you can't make a guy who is an expert at diffusing bombs and electronics but only a mediocre marksman. In fact, you don't get any deviance or focuses on your disciplines at all. Everything you know must fit cleanly between the lines, if you're good at one thing, you're equally good at everything else you know how to do.

And that sucks... it's too egalitarian and boring, and makes every character seem the same. And it ranges from the low level guy who can't do much shit AND sucks at the shit he can do, to the high level guy who can do tons of shit and is absolutely phenominal with some schtick he just picked up yesterday and has been doing for a total of 20 minutes.

The paradigm is so limited in what it can produce that pretty much every major fantasy character can't be created using it, and you end up wtih wierd shit like a guy who can't open a padlock going to someone who can crack fort Knox in the space of a single level.

[Catharz_Godsfoot]

RandomCasualty, it seems like you're trying to make a non level based system (like Alternity, GURPS, etc) while retaining the levels. Am I wrong?

Edit- GURPS, not GRUPS. BAH!

[RandomCasualty]

1097109529[/unixtime]]RandomCasualty, it seems like you're trying to make a non level based system (like Alternity, GURPS, etc) while retaining the levels. Am I wrong?

You're right.

Essentially what I'd like to do is take the best elements from a non -level based system (more character diversity, character design freedom), and apply the best things a level based system has to offer as well (autoscaling universal stuff like defenses and saves).

[Username17]

Essentially what I'd like to do is take the best elements from a non -level based system (more character diversity, character design freedom), and apply the best things a level based system has to offer as well (autoscaling universal stuff like defenses and saves).

If defenses autoscale and attacks don't you have an automatic and imediate problem - your plan is doomed to failure before it even gets fully articulated.

If defenses auto-scale, attacks have to autoscale. Otherwise there's no point in autoscaling the defenses. The Defenses only matter to the extent that they are relative to the Attacks they oppose. If the Attacks are allowed to drift, the Defenses, such as they matter at all, are essentially also being allowed to drift. The relative difference is variable, which means that the aggregate game effect isn't really scaling.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1097134400[/unixtime]]
If defenses auto-scale, attacks have to autoscale. Otherwise there's no point in autoscaling the defenses. The Defenses only matter to the extent that they are relative to the Attacks they oppose. If the Attacks are allowed to drift, the Defenses, such as they matter at all, are essentially also being allowed to drift. The relative difference is variable, which means that the aggregate game effect isn't really scaling.

Well not necessarily. People like to improve attacks, but they tend not to like to improve defenses. It's a big problem D&D has really. When you get your bonus feat, you're way more likely to spend it on power attack than iron will. And at the very least, something like hit points is a scaling defense.

And that's good, because it prevents you from running into the "eggshell with hammer" problem that happens in a lot of non-level based systems like GURPS, because it's much easier to learn to hit something than it is to defend yourself.

Now it's possible to incorporate defenses and just make them cheap, but I don't like that because it still allows people to have crappy defenses, and I really don't think you ever want that for high level characters. In a heroic fantasy game you want characters capable of surviving. Even if their defensive strength isn't really skill or endurance but merely mostly luck (like the hobbits in LotR), you still want them to have it. Defenses scaling simply says "you're an important character, and you're tougher to kill." I prefer to think of defenses as an aura of destiny around high level characters.

Now offenses scaling are a different matter. The monarch who is a main story character isn't necessarily a good swordsman. In fact he may merely be a good leader and tactician and that's it. So you really don't want every character to be awesome offensively. Especially given that some characters offensive schtick may not even entail the attack action. In which case I could really care less if a wizard untrained with the staff can't hit (or effectively damage) an experienced character. First, he won't be using his staff anyway and second he really shouldn't be that good with it.

It also eliminates any absurdity about the 5th level commoner who fights better than your PCs and might as well be the one they send out to deal with the bandits. This way the 5th level commoner might be tough to kill, but he's still crap as far as warriors go.

[Username17]

It's a big problem D&D has really. When you get your bonus feat, you're way more likely to spend it on power attack than iron will.

That's because there are three savingthrow types, and a multitude of ways to inflict physical damage as well. With so many different defense forms, investing in any of them becomes a waste of time.

While 4 points to distribute among 2 attack/defense forms or 8 points to distribute amongst 2 attack forms and 2 defense forms has been shown to be in perfect balance, 6 points to distribute amongst 3 attack/defense forms is not. It's not even close.

The guy who puts 2 points into Magic and Physical is going to be +2 on Magic Guy (with 4 points in Magic), and +2 on Physical Guy (with 4 points in Physical), by attacking them where they are weak - but those guys can be +2 on the diverse guy by attack where they are strong.

But consider the specialized guy with 3 stats. He puts 6 points into one pile, and the diverse guy puts 2 points in 3 piles, and the specialized guy is walking off with a +4 bonus against Diverse Guy and the Diverse guy only has a +2 bonus back at specialization guy.

---

Diverse spending of points is a conservative defensive approach, which is a lossy format if you have to split up between more than two areas of defense. Even in the shitty 3.5 version, Spell Focus is better than Iron Will. It takes 2 feats in Spell Focs: Transmutation to get a +2 bonus to all three save DCs, and it takes 3 feats to get a +2 bonus to all three saves.

If there are a lot of numeric defenses to worry about, numeric defenses are a fvcking waste of time. No exceptions.

-Username17

[Essence]

Also, if defenses autoscale, and offenses do not, you are going to those few people who want to invest in defense -- and they're going to be untouchable, because they get their investment plus the autoscaling factor, whereas offensive investors just get their investment.

[RandomCasualty]

1097163246[/unixtime]]
That's because there are three savingthrow types, and a multitude of ways to inflict physical damage as well. With so many different defense forms, investing in any of them becomes a waste of time.

Right and ultimatley we want a lot of attack/defense forms for diversity. To have a white dragon be vulnerable to fire, fire has to be an attack form, and consequently you need defenses against it.

If we want something to resist death magic, but be vulnerable to mind magic, then those too have to be attack forms, and we need some way of defending against them.

While it is technically possible to divide the game into 2 attack/defense forms, that'd be a pretty boring game. I mean part of the game is actually changing up what you do, and to change it up you've got to have different options. Even if one of those options happens to be pulling out a flaming sword or dropping a big ton of bricks on your opponent.

Two attack/defense forms basically means you carry two things around with you and it's all you'll ever need. And that's very unsatisfying.

If there are a lot of numeric defenses to worry about, numeric defenses are a fvcking waste of time. No exceptions.

Which I think is why we have to grant defenses automatically. They aren't something you spend points on at all. Maybe a few things modify them in minor ways like dexterity but for the most part they come from level and to some degree equipment (though I prefer armor as DR actually). And you may have a few things to temporarily raise defense, like expertise or some spell effect, but otherwise defense should be entirely level dependent.

[Username17]

Which I think is why we have to grant defenses automatically. They aren't something you spend points on at all. Maybe a few things modify them in minor ways like dexterity but for the most part they come from level and to some degree equipment (though I prefer armor as DR actually)

1: Armor as DR is "a defense", in the same way as Armor as a reduction in hits is a defense.

2: If you are making Defense scale automatically without user input, there's no advantage of having multiple defenses - you only have one defense: "your level".

Point 1 is a nitpick, but point 2 is quite damning. Since point spending is balanced (so long as there are no diminishing returns involved) with just 2 defenses, there is no need to go all the way down to 1. Your claim of "it's too binary" applies even more so to your proposal. It's not even binary, it's monary, and it doesn't actually provide any tangible benefit for doing so.

-Username17