The Gaming Den

Posted: **Thu Aug 28, 2014 12:43 pm**

Remember SKR's feat point system? The one where you can take Quicken Spell and Natural Spell for the same cost as Toughness? Well, apparently he got upset that people on the Internet rudely critiqued him and decided to replace it with a whiny message:

SKR wrote:Hi, I guess you're here for the feat point system I wrote in 2003.

Well, I've deleted the page for it and replaced it with this.

Some people have taken it upon themselves to tear this thing apart, as if it were my magnum opus and I think it is the Best Thing Ever.

Actually, it was a variant rule I thought up (for the D&D 3.0 ruleset) in a couple of hours while commuting to work on a train, with the intent of messing with the idea that all feats cost exactly the same amount ("1 feat unit"). It wasn't trying to solve any big problems with the game. It was just an speculative experiment.

Yes, the feat point numbers in that speculative experiment are off, and we've all had an additional 11 years (and two revisions of the game) to think about how much value the various feats should have relative to each other, plus hundreds of new feats and spells in various sources that skew the value of those Player's Handbook feats in the context of the entire game.

Some people go out of their way to be insulting and rude about this speculative experiment. If you want to do so, I'm sure you can find someone who has it or a link on the Wayback Machine to the original post. But I'm not going to leave pumpkins out on the porch (as old and quickly-carved as they may be) just so you can smash them.

Thanks, and have a good day!

I'm not sure which is worse: his system or the message he left in its place.

Posted: **Thu Aug 28, 2014 3:58 pm**

Taking him at his word, his communication skills are terrible and in eleven years he couldn't be bothered to improve his system one iota.

You could read more into it but why bother? That's plenty to dismiss him with.

Posted: **Thu Aug 28, 2014 5:41 pm**

Yeah, it's obvious butthurt. His whole position is it's speculative, so it can't be criticized, even if it's terrible.

Posted: **Fri Aug 29, 2014 1:49 am**

RobbyPants wrote:Yeah, it's obvious butthurt. His whole position is it's speculative, so it can't be criticized, even if it's terrible.

The defensive tone is a bit unnecessary, but I wouldn't necessarily want to be attacked over something I said off the cuff eleven years ago.

Posted: **Fri Aug 29, 2014 2:20 am**

hogarth wrote:
RobbyPants wrote:Yeah, it's obvious butthurt. His whole position is it's speculative, so it can't be criticized, even if it's terrible.
The defensive tone is a bit unnecessary, but I wouldn't necessarily want to be attacked over something I said off the cuff eleven years ago.

I had plenty of stupid ideas 11 years ago about 3e D&D that I would mock today. I remember arguing about the Bladesinger being totally unbalanced since it was superior to a fighter. Ha ha ha haaaa *wipes tear*. Oh man. Anyway, I can understand where he's coming from here. Still, were it I, I probably would have left it up in all its glory and then added a sidebar with commentary returning to it to put it in proper perspective. Pointing out that feat points were a lost cause since feats were not remotely equivalent and most of them aren't worth a turd.

Posted: **Fri Aug 29, 2014 4:03 am**

SKR is making his own RPG. Do you think it will be totally awesome?

Posted: **Fri Aug 29, 2014 4:53 am**

infected slut princess wrote:SKR is making his own RPG. Do you think it will be totally awesome?

Link?

Posted: **Fri Aug 29, 2014 8:18 am**

SKR is a very competent internet troll. So if it's a game about internet trolls, it can be very good.

Posted: **Fri Aug 29, 2014 9:57 am**

Yeah without paizo holding him down, I'm certain it'll be amazing.

Posted: **Fri Aug 29, 2014 6:13 pm**

2003 was 3 years into 3.0, so anyone paying attention had at least some idea of what worked and what didn't. The 3.5 PHB on my shelf is dated July 2003.

Also, I'm pretty upset that he gets to ride trains to work when my city is struggling to keep running any sort of bus service.

Posted: **Fri Aug 29, 2014 7:06 pm**

Josh_Kablack wrote:2003 was 3 years into 3.0, so anyone paying attention had at least some idea of what worked and what didn't. The 3.5 PHB on my shelf is dated July 2003.

You'd think so, but here's a quote from the 3.5 previews

Q: Is anything being done to half-orcs and half-elves?

A: Many of the races in the Player's Handbook received minor changes, but both half-orcs and half-elves are extremely popular as PCs. If we changed them significantly (particularly the half-orc, which is a very powerful and popular PC race) we would do a disservice to fans of those races and the revision.

Posted: **Fri Aug 29, 2014 10:33 pm**

I don't buy it. If that's what it was, he'd have presented it as such then. This reeks of "come on guys, I totally wasn't serious" after finding out everyone is mocking him.

Posted: **Fri Aug 29, 2014 11:03 pm**

Krusk wrote:I don't buy it. If that's what it was, he'd have presented it as such then. This reeks of "come on guys, I totally wasn't serious" after finding out everyone is mocking him.

Yeah this.

Absolutely no part of what he said, even throwing it together in a couple hours, excuses toughness and quicken spell. But instead of admitting that he made mistakes, he just took it down and blamed people who pointed out his failures.

Posted: **Fri Aug 29, 2014 11:37 pm**

Isn't the point of a speculative experiment to find out how/where it stops working, take that feedback, and iterate? If people weren't supposed to run it through the shredder and find everything wrong with it, then it's not an experiment.

Posted: **Mon Sep 01, 2014 9:58 am**

My question is, was this terrible idea really discussed anywhere recently, or does SKR simply have more time on his hands now to delve into the archives of D&D discussions on the web? Because the most recent rant - if saying that the idea sucks before you move the fuck on with your posting qualifies as a rant - I could find is from 2011.

Maybe we get a Ghostwalk rebuttal next? That would be awesome.

Posted: **Mon Sep 01, 2014 7:35 pm**

Obviously Sean K Renyolds is going to make the best RPG ever.

http://www.seankreynolds.com/skrg/products/125Pentagon/

He knows what needs to be done:

Make characters less dependent on equipment...
MOAR LEVELS...
Reward roleplaying, adventuring, and social interaction instead of just doing damage to dudes...
Make the game easier to play...

Make fighters more like wizards:
http://seankreynolds.wordpress.com/2014 ... ng-styles/

Make the 'sweet spot' last longer!:
http://seankreynolds.wordpress.com/2014 ... weet-spot/

But these are just teh goals of, I dunno, EVERY FANTASY RPG EVER SINCE 3.5 PISSED EVERYONE OFF. And to date, no one has succeeded. We got 4e and Pathfucker and D&D Next Mearls Failure.

Posted: **Mon Sep 01, 2014 7:45 pm**

So, he plans to improve the level 6-12 sweet spot by making it take longer to reach. Clever.

Posted: **Mon Sep 01, 2014 7:57 pm**

So he doesn't like 'the sweet spot' ending at level 12 because people expect to be able to level 'till 20 or 30 and ending it at 12 doesn't feel appropriate.
So his easy solution is to double the amount of levels. After which he notes that his solution doesn't work.

Da fuck.

I also like his solution to high level not working is to cut high level play out of the game. And his solution to people not liking early levels (because people are too weak) is to make people even weaker at level 1.

Posted: **Mon Sep 01, 2014 8:10 pm**

I think people call this a comedy of errors.

Posted: **Mon Sep 01, 2014 8:24 pm**

This sounds exactly like the leadup to 4e.

I suspect it will end similarly.

Posted: **Mon Sep 01, 2014 10:01 pm**

CapnTthePirateG wrote:This sounds exactly like the leadup to 4e.

I suspect it will end similarly.

^

So... reptile boobs, sumo padding, and some errata every other week?
I'd watch that, if it involves SKR ranting about his critics.

Posted: **Tue Sep 02, 2014 5:04 pm**

That preliminary cover sketch looks nifty, at least.

Too bad it's being wasted on something that sounds like it will be terrible.

Posted: **Tue Sep 02, 2014 5:25 pm**

So. If you had a gun to your head and had to build a feat-points system around the core feats, which was extensible to all WOTC feats, what things would you think about to make it least bad?

Posted: **Tue Sep 02, 2014 5:56 pm**

fectin wrote:So. If you had a gun to your head and had to build a feat-points system around the core feats, which was extensible to all WOTC feats, what things would you think about to make it least bad?

Probably something like giving a feat point every level, with 3 extra points at level 1 (much like skill points). Average feat cost set at 3, and any feat too useless to justify taking even at 1 point just need to be rewritten.

Everything else boils down pretty much to feat pricing. Like the actual concept isn't awful. All feats are not created equal, and the Feat Point system attempts to address that. Probably the reason it is hated so much is because it is an interesting concept whose execution makes you want to stab the person for fucking up something so horribly.

Also go ahead and give Fighters a feat point progression that looks something like a Psiwar's PP progression. That way he no longer has any dead levels, and at higher levels he can pick up a whole new feat chain at once. He'll still suck, but I mean that's the price you pay for putting "Fighter" on your character sheet.

This probably means a core-only Fighter ends up with more points than he can reasonably spend, but whatever.

Posted: **Tue Sep 02, 2014 6:20 pm**

I'd go with something like giving everyone 3 feat points per level (and allowing banking). Most feats would be 1-3 points, so there would be more feats overall. They're fun, and especially with the number available with splats, too few of them get to be used. I'd probably adjust pre-reqs as well.

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