Leress wrote:LoneFlame wrote:For the sake of balance, the current CR system would have to be thrown out & the system would have to be reworked as follows...
Umm...once you do that you might as well just play a different game, since that is the core of the D20 System.
When creating the classes, first establish all of the critical/needed niches. The main stereotype niches seem to be Front-line melee, Ranged, Blasting/Utility, Healing/Utility, & Scout/Spy/Thief(Rogue literally is the best word for it). They should all be equally strong, but for different reasons(ie, the Front-line melee guy & the Blaster mage person should have about the same chance of killing each other).
Okay, how can you make healing as powerful as killing someone. You are comparing apples to oranges.
Once you've got the main 5 down, you've got a good norm to compare any classes made afterwards to(due to the weak design of Fighter, things compared to it in design, such as Samurai & Swashbuckler, ended up sucking). The next things to be made would be hybrids of the existing classes(they're an inevitability). The should have about 60% of the each classes capabilities(about 5% more if they overlap in in some areas & 10% more if they overlap a lot), but set up in such a way that they don't/can't outshine either parent class, but don't completely suck on their own(part of that balance thing).
How did you know that they are sucky? How do you make comparison like that when you don't have a gauge to even balance it against.
Note that to test things, you do need some basic gear first, but not the more elaborate stuff, such as Wands & Boots of Flying. That comes later.
You don't calculate that in at all unless it is an item that give just a numerical bonus only since that is expected of the system.
If by this point, the main classes(5) and the hybrid classes(something like 10) are balanced, you can move on to monsters, which will be created based off of what a party of 3 or 4. Most of the initial monsters will have to be land-based & without gear during this phase of design.
How could you tell that the classes are balanced when you have nothing to balance them against? This makes no sense, that like saying a table is even before cut the wood.
After establishing how well parties do against what types of monsters, you take the average and dub it their temporary Challenge rating(guaranteed to change after the implementation of the following).
Umm, wouldn't take an extremely long time and pretty much make any discussion about class balance completely moot, since you are using a different balance point then the very game itself.
With balanced classes and a group of monsters to use as a control, now's good time to focus on magical gear(This is where we take the well-kept clay we've been preparing and start to mold it into a discernible shape). D&D does place a good deal of importance/dependence on gear and goes under the impression that parties are guaranteed to have X number of gear at X lv. Often, this is not the case, however, it really can't be helped(or can it).
What why talk about gear after the classes are "balanced" since the classes are suppose to have gear starting at level 1 how can just now think about gear after making the monsters
To handle gear, first, come up with vague classifications for gear, such as Universal(everyone can use it with about the same benefits), Slightly biased(everyone can use it, but it is a little better suited to one or 2 genres, though only by a little), or Genre-specific(only one group of character types can use it and it's really good for what they do). Universal should be the cheapest, followed by Slightly-biased, and then Genre-specific. The reason for this is that the more specialized an item is, the more potent it has to be to make people want to use it over something just anyone could use.
That makes no sense, that would mean that a magical lockpick should be more expensive than magical boots. Slight biased is a very vague, a scythe is "slightly biased" since it is for the two hander crowd, than a longsword.
