2nd Edition Vs. 3rd Edition

[RandomCasualty]

Yeah, one of Gygax's worst paradigms was the idea that you could roll some crazy long shot chance at character creation and be more powerful than everyone else from there on out. It seemed to be the only real reason to have ability scores. So you could have a fighter that sucked ass a strong fighter who kicked ass, and you could have them both be the same level. Why you'd want that, I don't know.

[PhoneLobster]

Psionic wild talents in 2nd ed were based off of attributes, class type and possibly level (though I am unsure of the last), you were most likely to get a talent or several with a high mental stat non spell caster, but with the aide of an actual psionic you could double your chance, or with their assistance at a level later than 1 you could further improve it (I think).

Anyway basically it wasn't too hard to get a 5% or 1 in 20 chance of getting a psionic talent, so who wouldn't give it a try?

But in second eddition it was the psionic core class that was really nuts. I've probably harped on about this before, but a 2nd ed psion could get Disintegrate a couple of times a day way way early in level, (either 3 or 5, can't recall). Which meant he was going around irrevocably save or dieing all sorts of things back in the levels when they actually had a damn good chance of failing their saves (under the dumb second ed saving throw system). Of course EVERY time he used it he had a 1 in 20 chance of disintegrating himself, and that stayed the same, whether he was using it way early in his career or as a 9th or 15th or whatever character.

2nd ed psionics were for the most part incredibly complex, exceptionally weak, and infinitely abusable. If you wanted to find some way to do something you shouldn't (like disintegrate at low levels), some new crazy mechanic undreamt of by the already diverse mechanics cluttering the system, or some way to otherwise crank up some totally insane rules combo cracking open the psionic handbook was a good start.

Mind you the tome of magic and the fighters handbook weren't too bad either when it came to that kind of thing (yay for my entirely legal Fire Wizard with weapon specialization in Punching!).

Having spent some time a few years ago playing with a hard core "we don't need no stinkin' new edition" group I have actually had some fairly recent experiences using it in regular play. I'm telling you "Eeeeeeek!" only begins to explain it.

[RandomCasualty]

Psionics has always sucked, regardless of edition. I dont' really conisder 3.0 psi much better. And while 3.5 psi is clear of some of the infinite power combos, it's still crazy overpowered.

The only difference is that 1E and 2E psionics allowed low level psions to have power, while 3.X forces you to wait till you get high up there before you can take over the world.

[Oberoni]

1110587680[/unixtime]]Psionics has always sucked, regardless of edition. I dont' really conisder 3.0 psi much better. And while 3.5 psi is clear of some of the infinite power combos, it's still crazy overpowered.

No more so than magic.

[Murtak]

DnD magic has a power level that works out to the spells of each level being on a kind of bell curve. That is, you have fewer totally ass and game breaking spells then average spells. Psionics looks like white noise in comparison, it is like the powers were assigned levels with a randomizer.

It is getting better though, little by little. In 6th edition maybe you will be able to actually use them without changing two thirds of the powers.

[RandomCasualty]

1110588411[/unixtime]]

1110587680[/unixtime]]Psionics has always sucked, regardless of edition. I dont' really conisder 3.0 psi much better. And while 3.5 psi is clear of some of the infinite power combos, it's still crazy overpowered.

No more so than magic.

Well, 3.5 psi has a few problems that go beyond magic, namely it shows us why buffs should't scale. Because bonuses from augmented buffs can just get totally insane. At level 20 you're talking about +7 insight bonuses to AC, all saves and attack rolls.

Further, with temporal acceleration you can buff yourself in combat without missing a step.

Eventually clerics run out of high level slots, but a psion seems to be able to crank out high level buffs as much as he wants. Basically 3.5 psi is the example of everything that's wrong with buff spells. Only it's remarkably worse at high levels because they continue to scale to infinity.

[grey_muse]

1110536242[/unixtime]]

So I guess my thesis, ultimately, is: "The simpler rules of 3.x allow for better rules comprehension, thus greater tendency toward rules lawyering, among players -- and so remove flexibility from the dungeon master's control."

So in other words 2nd edition is better if your players are dumb assholes? Why would you even want to play with people who like to abuse rules but at the same time are too dumb to figure out at least some of the broken parts of 2nd edition?

For the same reasons I used to post on the Char Opt. boards on Wizards' site.

The 3.x rules are more rigid, because they're better known and more easily understood. This is a good thing for a player playing with a Gygaxian DM who's pulling out all the rules he can to kill the characters, but not so good if you're playing with a DM who wants to fudge some of the rules to make a better story.

It's not that you couldn't break 2nd edition stuff, but DM's would generally dismiss broken things out of hand (at least, those I knew.) Since the broken things are more or less explicitly allowed in 3.x, it's harder to do without players bitching up a storm.

To put it differently, 2nd edition is better for telling a story, and 3rd edition is better for playing a game. The extra power in the hands of the DM is useful for making the storyline what he wants it to be, but if you want to play specifically by the rules, then 3rd edition is much better balanced.

[grey_muse]

The real problem with psionics is that it's always been an add-on, so it's never gotten the kind of decent workthrough that it needs to be compatible with magic.

They actually address some of that in the 3.5 XPH. When you have a setting with magic, you need creatures with resistance to that magic. When you add psionics, you need that same resistance to psionics, and since it doesn't really exist as written (and never has), psionics gets a bad rap.

3.5 is the best psionics ever, IMO. 3.0 psionics was basically too weak with a few overpowered loopholes, and earlier editions just didn't work at all. 3.5 psionics doesn't work well next to 3.5 magic, mostly because it scales better than the magic system does, but also because they put in some things that weren't well tested and are too powerful (e.g., Temporal Acceleration.)

(Frankly, i think the 1st level crystal shard power falls in here too -- a scalable, non-elemental attack that has no SR and no save. That's your dragon killer right there.)

In spite of that, I'd rather see the 3.5 magic system be more like the psionics, not less. That scalability is one of the better innovations they've had since 3.5 came out.

[RandomCasualty]

1110604267[/unixtime]]
In spite of that, I'd rather see the 3.5 magic system be more like the psionics, not less. That scalability is one of the better innovations they've had since 3.5 came out.

For direct damage and some of the other powers yes, but not for buffs. Half the problem with 3.5 psi is that it's all scalable buffs.

And the problems with scalable buffs is that you end up with a totally shit buff at low levels, like a +1 or +2 bonus, whcih is basically a useless power, and the high end, where it's +6 or +7 is totally crazy. Scaling buffs is the best proof of failure for the concept of "level appropriate bonuses".

Buff spells just shouldn't scale. If +3 to hit is good at 1st level, then it should be good at 20th as well.

[Murtak]

That depends completely on whether you want to compare them to weapon focus or do divine favor, divine power, shield of faith, barkskin, magic vestment and greater magic weapon.

If everything scales psionics scaling too is fine (and rather weak, considering spells scale for free). If nothing else scales psionics shouldn't scale either. And if you have a mix of scaling and non-scaling stuff already then it becomes a matter of preference.

[RandomCasualty]

1110640238[/unixtime]]
That depends completely on whether you want to compare them to weapon focus or do divine favor, divine power, shield of faith, barkskin, magic vestment and greater magic weapon.

If everything scales psionics scaling too is fine (and rather weak, considering spells scale for free). If nothing else scales psionics shouldn't scale either. And if you have a mix of scaling and non-scaling stuff already then it becomes a matter of preference.

Well in the case of powers that create magic weapons, under the current rules you can have them scale to some degree, though even this is dangerous, because the "value" you're creating with the spell is getting very large. Personally, I prefer to just have spells like greater magic weapon increase the enhancement bonus of the weapon by +1.

All other bonuses, the ones fighter types don't get are extremely dangerous. Here is where "level approrpiate bonuses" truly drive a stake through game balance. Any scaling buff power will utterly screw over the fighter. It doesn't matter who gets it, it just matters that the fighter isn't getting it.

And scaling buffs just don't make sense. Nobody wants to use a single action to get a +1 bonus. That's total ass. Basically buffs have to just be about finding a bonus size people are willing to pay an action for and sticking to it. There's no reason the gap of what you are unbuffed and what you are buffed should be any bigger the higher in level you are.

You really don't need better buffs or more buffs, you just need one universal buffing effect.

Now, the thing is that people are going to be getting fully buffed with low level spells, which you can either live with, or you can apply a downscaling system like the one I proposed for magic item bonuses, only on buff effects, where the level of the spell is used to generate the power level of the buff. So a divine favor might create a attack/damage buff (2), while divine power could do attack/damage buff (8) and so on.

But that's a minor point really, even if people do get away wtih only using low level slots throughout their whole career, by eliminating buff spells, you'll be doing the game a great service balance wise. It's not as though charge casting ever really balanced things very well in the first place, so I wouldn't be too worried about people getting away with using low level slots. If you standardized buffs into giving only one type of bonus of a fixed amount, then you've won half the battle with buff spells.

[Murtak]

All other bonuses, the ones fighter types don't get are extremely dangerous. Here is where "level approrpiate bonuses" truly drive a stake through game balance. Any scaling buff power will utterly screw over the fighter. It doesn't matter who gets it, it just matters that the fighter isn't getting it.

Uh, which part of "everything needs to scale" means that fighters would not get the same thing? Scaling weapon focus, specialisation, rage, point blank shot and so on. Weapon Focus could just as well be a +1 to hit per 3 levels, rage a +2 str/con per 4 levels and so on.

And scaling buffs just don't make sense. Nobody wants to use a single action to get a +1 bonus. That's total ass. Basically buffs have to just be about finding a bonus size people are willing to pay an action for and sticking to it.

Worth paying an action? No. But there is no reason clerics could not just get "bless, +1 morale to hit for all party members while cleric is not flatfooted" at level 2.

There's no reason the gap of what you are unbuffed and what you are buffed should be any bigger the higher in level you are.

Sort of - let's say you want to have character power scale at a certain rate, not a flat one but rather something like x^2 or 2^x. Scaling buffs may well be your best solution to make that work.

You really don't need better buffs or more buffs, you just need one universal buffing effect.

I agree, kinda. I prefer to have few buff types, so you can have things like "my aura of doom cancels your aura of courage" without the entire buff stack going down. Buff types do need to be much more limited then they currently are though.

Now, the thing is that people are going to be getting fully buffed with low level spells, which you can either live with, or you can apply a downscaling system like the one I proposed for magic item bonuses, only on buff effects, where the level of the spell is used to generate the power level of the buff. So a divine favor might create a attack/damage buff (2), while divine power could do attack/damage buff (8) and so on.

Or you could just let them get bigger and bigger and base your system on it. What simply does not work is the same old level 1 spell getting bigger on it's own though.

[RandomCasualty]

1110641941[/unixtime]]
Uh, which part of "everything needs to scale" means that fighters would not get the same thing? Scaling weapon focus, specialisation, rage, point blank shot and so on. Weapon Focus could just as well be a +1 to hit per 3 levels, rage a +2 str/con per 4 levels and so on.

That just wouldn't work. Because cleircs then get weapon focus AND their buffs, fighters still get only one feat, unless you're planning to allow people to take weapon focus more than once. In which case the system turns into "gotta catch em all" on crack. All scaling does is make each individual feat mroe valuable and the lack of that feat becomes more devastating. It doesn't really help the fighter, because nothing stops clerics from taking those feats.

Scaling feats merely inflates bonuses to all hell, and basically puts tons of pressure on people to take those scaling bonus feats at higher levels.

Unless you made weapon focus and magical buffs not stack. That might work, but still, what's the point? In the end you're not really helping fighters, you're just increasing the gap between people with focus and those without. But everyone is going to take them anyway. And if you don't take them, every few levels you get closer and closer to getting puished off the RNG.

And sooner or later, everyone has to break down and take weapon focus, because the cost of not having it goes up, up and up and when it gets to a certain point, it really is unbearable.

I don't really consider strongarming people into taking certain feats to be a good thing, and that's precisely what you do when you have a single feat grant a +6 bonus at 18th level. Seriously, that's a 30% shift in probabilities, that's huge. And there's no middle ground. You either have that +6 or you don't. And if you don't, well then you're taking it up the ass.

Sort of - let's say you want to have character power scale at a certain rate, not a flat one but rather something like x^2 or 2^x. Scaling buffs may well be your best solution to make that work.

They don't. All they do is create feats that eventually become must take feats, or buffs that create must take buffs. And worse still they create buffs that are absolutely useless at low levels.

This paradigm doesn't work. All it does is create buffs that suck at low levels, buffs that are totally broke at high levels and buffs that might get balanced somewhere in the middle. So why not just use that middle value?

Don't lose sight of the numerical truth. A +1 bonus is a 5% shift, a +5 bonus is a 25% shift. That's true for all levels, for all characters, everywhere. And when you're talking about a buff or a feat, your'e talking about some people having it and some people not having it. This isnt' "one guy has a +5, one guy has a +3 and the other has a +6" This is +6 or +0, +3 or +0. By increasing the value of the buff, you are kicking people in the balls who don't have it.

In addition, if you balance monsters based on the idea they won't have it, what happens if a monster suddenly does get ahold of a +7 or +8 buff?

Remember at the end of the day it's just a percentage shift. Regardless of other bonuses. +35 is 25% more likely to succeed than +30. Increaseing the percentage is a bad thing because it strains the RNG.

If you want scaling bonuses your dice oddly enough need to scale too. At some point you need to jump up to a d30 or a d40 or whatever. It is never a good idea to have 7 or 8 point swings in a 20 point RNG.

Or you could just let them get bigger and bigger and base your system on it. What simply does not work is the same old level 1 spell getting bigger on it's own though.

The problem is that you can't adequately make your system compensate for that. Your RNG is still 20 points. There's no way to make a difference of 8 points look good. Unless you increase the RNG size, then bigger numbers simply mean that more people get pushed off of it. it's "catch em all" bonus style only the stakes keep going up all the time. And eventually if you make one mistake and miss something you could have caught, you're looking at a -30% penalty.

And small buffs at level 1 still suck ass, and always will suck ass because losing an action for a +1 to attack and damage just isn't worth it in combat, and never will be. 5% at the end of the day is still 5%.

Damage is perhaps the only thing that truly needs to scale because D&D's damage system scales. The d20 roll bonuses might as well be static. Making big numbers makes people feel better, but it does bad things for the game. Real bad things.

[Oberoni]

So RC, you still have a problem on scaling buffs, and you just sorta accidentally typed "psionics" instead of "scaling buffs" a few posts ago. Repeatedly. Gotcha.

[Murtak]

Ok, let's say that for some odd reason you want a character's to hit bonus to double every level and you want to use a system resembling DnD.

You could either have a BAB like this:
+1
+2
+4
+8
.
.
.

Or you could have your old BAB
+1
+2
+3
+4
and add buffs that scale, so you end up with
+1+1 = +2
+2+2 = +4
+3+3+(new buff)+2 = +8
and so on

More likely though you might want to measure not to hit bonus but something like damage output. So if you wanted damage output to double each level you might want to go with, say, 3 scaling buff types (a combination of to hit and damage buffs), something that gives you extra attacks and of course BAB. Granted, this is not easy to figure out, but many games actually work like this (some of them unintentionally, I'm sure).

And no matter how often you tell me that this system does not work if you intentionally break it - the basic setup may well work. Sure, if you insist on giving monsters a bonus they never were intended to have they will kick everyone's ass - just like they do in every other game. What kind of argument is that anyways? How come you always assume things like that? Is it not much more resonable to expect monsters to have morale bonuses themselves in this kind of system? The same goes for pretty much every other argument you made.

Let's go through them ony by one.

(about scalable buffs) They don't. All they do is create feats that eventually become must take feats, or buffs that create must take buffs. And worse still they create buffs that are absolutely useless at low levels.

Level 1: Mork has a +1 morale to hit, Gork has a +1 rage to hit. Both are useful bonuses and I don't get why you would consider them useless.
Level 10: Mork has a +6 morale to hit and a +4 rage to hit. Gork has a +5 rage to hit and a +5 morale to hit. Upon leveling up they will increase one of these bonuses by 1.
alternatively:
Level 1: first bonus type: +1
Level 2: first bonus type: +2
Level 3: first bonus type: +3, second bonus type: +1
Level 4: first bonus type: +4, second bonus type: +2
Level 5: first bonus type: +5, second bonus type: +3, third bonus type +1
Level 6 onwards: old bonuses increase, no more new bonus types. No gotta catch them all.

The only thing that happens at higher levels is that you get more worried about loosing one of your bonus types. Read: Higher levels feature more tactics. That is not necessarily a bad thing. And even so, it only matters if you actually have game effects that make you loose a bonus type entirely.

This paradigm doesn't work. All it does is create buffs that suck at low levels, buffs that are totally broke at high levels and buffs that might get balanced somewhere in the middle. So why not just use that middle value?

You keep saying this. And I don't get it. Why? you keep saying that a +1 to hit is a good thing to have from level 1 on. And that is all that keeps happening - add another +1 to hit.

Don't lose sight of the numerical truth. A +1 bonus is a 5% shift, a +5 bonus is a 25% shift. That's true for all levels, for all characters, everywhere. And when you're talking about a buff or a feat, your'e talking about some people having it and some people not having it. This isnt' "one guy has a +5, one guy has a +3 and the other has a +6" This is +6 or +0, +3 or +0. By increasing the value of the buff, you are kicking people in the balls who don't have it.

No shit. That is fine, as long as you are aware of it. It stinks in DnD because the cleric archer gets it all and the fighter gets nothing. Is it so hard to imagine that everyone might have access to a similar amount of bonuses? If that is true "you are kicking people in the balls who don't have it." becomes "you are kicking people in the balls who made a bad tactical decision and had their bonus taken away rfom them". And I am fine with that.

In addition, if you balance monsters based on the idea they won't have it, what happens if a monster suddenly does get ahold of a +7 or +8 buff?

The very same thing that happens in your system if you add another +8 to hit. Or in any d20 system.

If you want scaling bonuses your dice oddly enough need to scale too. At some point you need to jump up to a d30 or a d40 or whatever. It is never a good idea to have 7 or 8 point swings in a 20 point RNG.

I sure hope you plan on removing effects like slow, solid fog, bestow curse, poison, stinking cloud, blindness, invisibility, blur, blink, ghostform, disintegrate, slay living and darkness from your game then. Oh, and walls. Not wall of iron, a blain mundane brick wall. Heck, trees and bushes too. All of these generate swings at least as large as +8.

With scaling buffs you end up with high level characters vs. high level monsters being unable to hit once their morale bonus is gone. In todays DnD you end up with people dead. Or taken out of combat entirely. Heck, at first level people can drop in one shot quite easily, that is far beyond a mere "you can't do damage until you drink a potion/cure yourself/get yelled at by the paladin".

[RandomCasualty]

1110647098[/unixtime]]
Ok, let's say that for some odd reason you want a character's to hit bonus to double every level and you want to use a system resembling DnD.

What? Why would you ever want it to double? I think that's your problem right there.

Levels aren't based on exponential increases, they're based on linear ones. You assign a value to each level, and that's how much you get. So +2 to attack per level is ok. Level squared, is not.

And that's what happens, you end up wtih a (2 ^ level) progression when your bonus always doubles. And here's the progression

Level: Bonus
1: +2
2: +4
3: +8
4: +16
5: +32
6: +64
7: +128

That's what your system turns into. So by level 5 your bonuses are already off the RNG. That system could never work, and I don't think I need to explain why.

And no matter how often you tell me that this system does not work if you intentionally break it - the basic setup may well work.

No it doesn't. The basic setup is inherently broken.

Sure, if you insist on giving monsters a bonus they never were intended to have they will kick everyone's ass - just like they do in every other game. What kind of argument is that anyways? How come you always assume things like that? Is it not much more resonable to expect monsters to have morale bonuses themselves in this kind of system? The same goes for pretty much every other argument you made.

Ummm... well lets see. How about a monster and a wizard are travelling together and the wizard buffs the monster? Maybe the monster actually has caster levels. Seriously there are a lot of ways monsters can get buffs, and some monsters, like dragons, are competent casters in thier own right.

Level 1: Mork has a +1 morale to hit, Gork has a +1 rage to hit. Both are useful bonuses and I don't get why you would consider them useless.
Level 10: Mork has a +6 morale to hit and a +4 rage to hit. Gork has a +5 rage to hit and a +5 morale to hit. Upon leveling up they will increase one of these bonuses by 1.

For one this is going to be incredibly difficult to balance and you run into the numeric problem displayed above when you are constantly adding bonus types. Eventually your system will self destruct. When you keep piling on new types, you will push someone off the RNG.

The only thing that happens at higher levels is that you get more worried about loosing one of your bonus types. Read: Higher levels feature more tactics. That is not necessarily a bad thing. And even so, it only matters if you actually have game effects that make you loose a bonus type entirely.

Yeah, and this happens when you have feats. Feats are entirely all or nothing. Buff spells are entirely all or nothing. You have a divine favor, or you dont' have a divine favor. YOu have weapon focus or you don't. And you want to increase the gap between people who do have focus and those who don't.

This paradigm doesn't work. All it does is create buffs that suck at low levels, buffs that are totally broke at high levels and buffs that might get balanced somewhere in the middle. So why not just use that middle value?

You keep saying this. And I don't get it. Why? you keep saying that a +1 to hit is a good thing to have from level 1 on. And that is all that keeps happening - add another +1 to hit.

Here's where you misunderstand. +1 isn't a good bonus to have at level 1 for a buff. It's nice for a fighter and weapon focus, but not for a buff. But, you have to always be mindful of the RNG and pushing people off of it. There's a reason you can't take weapon focus 20 times in a row, or spend all your 1st level slots stacking divine favors. There's only a certain amount of times you can "add another +1" before the system falls apart.

Level systems need to be somewhat linear. Your bonus should be some constant + level. When you change it to be something weird like 2 ^ level or level squared, You will start pushing people off the RNG and the level gap where that happens comes along very fast. Remember 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128. You're talking about values in the thousands well before you hit level 15.

No shit. That is fine, as long as you are aware of it. It stinks in DnD because the cleric archer gets it all and the fighter gets nothing. Is it so hard to imagine that everyone might have access to a similar amount of bonuses?

The answer is taking the cleric archer's bonuses down to linear, and controlling his bonus types. For instance here's a simple scheme.

-The max bonus a spell can grant is +3.
-Bonuses from spells do not stack.

Now obviously you've got to account for some oddball spells like divine power which get away with granting bonuses without calling them bonuses, but if you stick to the spirit of that formula you can fix the cleric.

With scaling buffs you end up with high level characters vs. high level monsters being unable to hit once their morale bonus is gone.

Yeah and this is hardly a good thing. Because some people may not have caught that morale bonus, and in a scaling buff system if you don't catch em all, if you miss even one... you are shit. Pure undiluted shit. Once you start the downward spiral you can never pull up. You are doomed.

[Murtak]

Ok, let's say that for some odd reason you want a character's to hit bonus to double every level and you want to use a system resembling DnD.

What? Why would you ever want it to double? I think that's your problem right there.

Levels aren't based on exponential increases, they're based on linear ones. You assign a value to each level, and that's how much you get. So +2 to attack per level is ok. Level squared, is not.

Why? Either one can work, if you build your system around it. By the way, DnD is currently working like that, even for the fighter. You certainly do more then 20 times the damage to the basic orc at level 20 than you do at level 1.

And that's what happens, you end up wtih a (2 ^ level) progression when your bonus always doubles. And here's the progression

Level: Bonus
1: +2
2: +4
3: +8
4: +16
5: +32
6: +64
7: +128

Uh, yes. That is basic math.

That's what your system turns into. So by level 5 your bonuses are already off the RNG. That system could never work, and I don't think I need to explain why.

No they aren't and yes you do. 1249387358945 attack vs 1249387358945 defense works just like 5 vs 5 does.

Ummm... well lets see. How about a monster and a wizard are travelling together and the wizard buffs the monster? Maybe the monster actually has caster levels. Seriously there are a lot of ways monsters can get buffs, and some monsters, like dragons, are competent casters in thier own right.

Are you deliberately ignoring me here?

Is it not much more resonable to expect monsters to have morale bonuses themselves in this kind of system?

Let me explain. Level 10 fighter has a +10 BAB, +5 morale, +5 luck, +5 enhancement, total 25. CR 10 dragon has a +10 BAB, +5 morale, +5 luck, +5 enhancement, total 25.

For one this is going to be incredibly difficult to balance and you run into the numeric problem displayed above when you are constantly adding bonus types.

What. The. Fvck.

Level 6 onwards: old bonuses increase, no more new bonus types. No gotta catch them all.

Yeah, and this happens when you have feats. Feats are entirely all or nothing. Buff spells are entirely all or nothing. You have a divine favor, or you dont' have a divine favor. YOu have weapon focus or you don't. And you want to increase the gap between people who do have focus and those who don't.

3 bonus types. 3. Yes, I have no problems telling a level 20 fighter that if he did not bother to get his 3 bonus types (which should be class features anyways) that he will get his ass kicked. Just as it does not trouble my conscience to see level 20 fighter or rogue types with a whopping +5 will save go down every other combat.

Level systems need to be somewhat linear. Your bonus should be some constant + level. When you change it to be something weird like 2 ^ level or level squared, You will start pushing people off the RNG and the level gap where that happens comes along very fast. Remember 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128. You're talking about values in the thousands well before you hit level 15.

Yes, and that works fine if the rest of the system is designed for it. By your very words it is impossible to hit a dragon around level 15. After all his natural AC alone pushes him completely off the RNG, right?
No. What actually happens is that the characters have comparable to hit bonuses. see, +54 to hit vs 64 AC works fine. Just as fine as +4 to hit vs 14 AC.

No shit. That is fine, as long as you are aware of it. It stinks in DnD because the cleric archer gets it all and the fighter gets nothing. Is it so hard to imagine that everyone might have access to a similar amount of bonuses?

The answer is taking the cleric archer's bonuses down to linear, and controlling his bonus types. For instance here's a simple scheme.

-The max bonus a spell can grant is +3.
-Bonuses from spells do not stack.

Now obviously you've got to account for some oddball spells like divine power which get away with granting bonuses without calling them bonuses, but if you stick to the spirit of that formula you can fix the cleric.

That is one way of adressing the problem. Why is it so hard to accept that other systems may also work?

With scaling buffs you end up with high level characters vs. high level monsters being unable to hit once their morale bonus is gone.

Yeah and this is hardly a good thing. Because some people may not have caught that morale bonus, and in a scaling buff system if you don't catch em all, if you miss even one... you are shit. Pure undiluted shit. Once you start the downward spiral you can never pull up. You are doomed.

So what? Seriously. Why do we want dumb people to survive their dumbness? Do you insist on people without negative energy protection to not be harmed by negative energy? If you are a fighter and you want to kick the dragon around without actually using your class features, why should the system make that possible? You are saying "well, I don't care if the dragon just took away my 20 BAB, I stillw ant to hit it". Why?

[RandomCasualty]

Alright, you said I actually needed to explain why a 2^level progression doesn't work.

Here's why.

Lets list the table again.

Level: Bonus
1: +2
2: +4
3: +8
4: +16
5: +32
6: +64
7: +128

Yup ok... so now take a level 7 fighter versus a level 6 fighter. He's got a +64 edge to hit him. And assuming somehow ACs are competetive for level, he is also facing a guy with +64 AC over what he has. Now, considering he only has a +64 to hit, he can't possibly hit that. So basicalyl you've created a system where a level 6 character doesn't have a chance in hell agaisnt a level 7. So use a monster 1 CR higher than the group and its game over, instantly. The party can't even hit it and the monster hits every time.

I'm not sure how that can't be plainly obvious unless you're fucking wtih me here by deliberately playing dumb.

[Murtak]

This is where I quote myself again. I guess you might have missed this

More likely though you might want to measure not to hit bonus but something like damage output.

It is a little cumbersome to talk about "to hit, number of attacks, extra damage, and buffs" though, so I went with just comparing to hit bonuses. The basic system of "a level x+1 character is y times more powerful then a level x character" is a fundamental part of DnD. It also has the advantage of each level being as significant as the last. In a straight linear system a level 2 character is twice as powerful as a level 1 character. A level 20 character however is only a tiny amount more powerful then a level 19 character. That means you have the fun choice of either trivializing character advancement after a certain level (if you advance every x sessions, no matter your level) or to hand out levels faster and faster. The former option is no fun and the latter pretty much means that you run into the very problem you just described - a session 90 character is level 50, a session 91 character is level 70 and thus off the RNG if you keep handing out linear bonuses.

[PhoneLobster]

Well, cumbersome or not I'm prepared to talk about to hits.

Not in the current system but in RC's proposed flat bonus utopia.

1) RC proposes magic item bonuses be basically a flat on/off afair that from level 1 add up to +4 to hit (yeah with some silly complexities but it boils down to that).

2) He has been hinting something along the lines that he would like all attributes to collapse into some sort of mysterious singularity. Since I don't recall an actual proposal put forward I will assume that he is not wanting the current -4 to +5 type range of attribute modifiers seen at level 1 and instead will institute a system thats similar to his magic item one where you are either a "strong" character in an attribute or not. Another on/off flat +4.

3) Here he is proposing that buffs should similarly be an on off flat affair that never stack with each other and take their scale from the mid range of current buffs. Even weapon focus might end up in this shite category. So now thats another flat on/off +3 to +4 (lets be generous and call it +3).

Are people beggining to see a problem?

4) RC does like tactical modifiers. But lets assume he takes the same scale and the same on/off non stacking mentality. So now thats another (generously small) on/off +3.

Now even if there is nothing else ever that adds to attack that is, FROM LEVEL 1, a net +14 to attack rolls (beyond BAB variation) that a character can have part, all or NONE of.

AC starts at a DC of 10, +0 attack vs 10 AC is your standard or evenly matched match up. A mere +10 attack means that what is an even match up for the fellow level 1 character who didn't net any of these bonuses is an auto hit for our +14 guy who netted them all.

Worse though for there to exist ACs which are a similar "even match" for Mr +14 attack (or anyone in the range of attacks from +10 to +15, even though this system doesn't make that full range so easily available, but still) there are like at least 5 ACs which are totally off the RNG for Mr +0 attack, the worst one is even off the scale for Mr "I only netted one of these dumb ass flat bonuses and have at best +4 attack".

So lets see, current system, rapidly creeps off the RNG and may even start off the RNG at level 1 with sufficiently rare and extreme circumstances.

RC's system, STARTS off the RNG in exceptionally COMMON circumstances. Completely destroying RC's whole "I'm doing it for the good of the RNG, and fluffy puppy dogs" claims.

[RandomCasualty]

1110658477[/unixtime]]It also has the advantage of each level being as significant as the last. In a straight linear system a level 2 character is twice as powerful as a level 1 character. A level 20 character however is only a tiny amount more powerful then a level 19 character.

I think this is your basic conceptual problem. In a linear system each level is as important as the last.

in a system for instance where you gain +1 to attack each level, Each +1 is a 5% better chance to hit, and that's the same. Don't look at it in relative terms. +21 from +20 is as significant as +2 from +1. It isn't "double the bonus" it's a 5% shift. The 2nd level fighter only has a 5% better chance to hit than the 1st level one, not double.

When you're dealing with d20 rolls, a +1 remains significant regardless of what the prior numbers were. You never need to accelerate to higher bonuses just to make bigger levels feel bigger. It's a perception issue.

Now, when you talk about damage/hp, that's a bit different. This is where the 2nd level character really is twice as powerful in terms of hp. +1 damage to 23 damage is significantly less than +1 damage to 2 damage. But damage is weird, and damage goes off a totally different system than attack rolls, saves, etc. It could be ok for damage buffs to scale. Though the damage system is admittedly rather crappy in D&D to begin wtih so I'd prefer just to axe it.

So yes, scaling concerns can apply toward the damage system, but they don't apply anywhere else.

[grey_muse]

The former option is no fun

That's a matter of opinion. I think it's a great deal more fun than characters that scale exponentially.

It also has the advantage of each level being as significant as the last.

This is flat out wrong. It has the disadvantage of making each level more significant than the last. It also means that more than a 1 level difference between characters results in the lower level character having virtually zero chance of doing anything meaningful, which is a pile of suck. You're right that it keeps the relative multiplicative power of different levels constant -- a character 3 levels higher will always be 8x as strong -- but that gives you a bell curve where anything more than a couple of levels away from you is either totally out of your league or completely insignificant.

Also, RC, your math is a little off. A +1 isn't always a 5% change, though that's the intuitive truth. Rather, it's always a 5% relative to the possible results of the RNG, but not to the result of the action. An action that only succeeds on a 20 normally but now succeeds on a 19 with the +1 has increased its probability by 100%, making it a worthwhile +1. At the same time, a +1 to something that already succeeds on a 1 has increased the probablity of the result happening by exactly 0%, which is useless.

Assuming the attack and defense of two characters are approximately equal, a +1 should remain equally valuable at first level or twentieth. Part of the problem is that the defense of monsters scales up faster than the attack of melees -- which should actually make that +1 more valuable at higher levels than less, even though it seems counterintuitive.

I don't really have a problem with buff spells that give a +1, but I think buffs should either be +1 and last all day or +3-4 and last for a combat. And really, I'm fine with the duration of a spell being "1 combat" like the effects of rage fatigue, rather than "1 minute per level".

But then, I also don't like the counterspell rules as they're written, because it's almost always pointless wasting an action in the hopes of countering your opponent's spell instead of hitting them with a spell of your own.

[RandomCasualty]

1110669172[/unixtime]]
RC's system, STARTS off the RNG in exceptionally COMMON circumstances. Completely destroying RC's whole "I'm doing it for the good of the RNG, and fluffy puppy dogs" claims.

Well, no not very common circumstances at all. Its going to be rare when someone doesn't have anything, since weapon focus, dodge and so on will be considered "buffs" essentially always on buffs. The benefit you get from getting dodge from a feat for instance is that it's always on.

So you'll have an attack roll that looks like this: level (BaB) + ability modifier (I figure somewhere between +0 and +3) + weapon quality mod (+0 to +4) + attack buff (+0 to +3).

AC will be 10 + level + defensive ability mod (+0 to +3), armor type mod (none +0 through heavy +3) + armor quality bonus (+0 - +4) + armor buff (+0 to +3)

So yes, you do have a potential for a lot of variance, however, consider that for 1st level characters, weapon/armro quality will begin at a +2 or +3 because level 1 characters don't need magic weapons to get the full bonus,
armor type is fixed based on the type you've got, and buffs will be pretty much level based, with always on buffs being +1s, +2 and +3 for short term buffs.

So you'd have a level 1 character who took weapon focus with an attack bonus of

+1 level, +2 weapon quality, +3 ability mod and say +1 buff (weapon focus)= +7

His AC in a chain shirt would be: 10 + 1 (level) + 0 ability mod + 1 (light armor) + 2 armor quality: 14 AC.

If this fighter took dodge for instance instead of weapon focus and put his ability mod in defense, then you'd be looking at a +3 to hit and an 18 AC. All reasonable.

Chances are no first level character is going to be able to afford a magic weapon or armor to give him a huge armor/weapon quality bonus, and even if he does it's only another +2 at low levels. If he decided to wear heavy armor, full plate, you might see an AC up to 16 or 17, but that's ok. A short term activated buff (like rage) might grant a +2 bonus instead of a +1 from weapon focus, but that's ok too. A short term buff that takes a standard action to activate, like divine favor, probably grants a +3, but you are paying an action to do it of course.

There's really no way to push anyone off the RNG at low levels unless you create situations that won't happen, like a naked guy with no defensive ability mod facing off against a maxed ability mod guy with a magic sword and divine favor.

Even then, you're talking about a +11 versus an 11 AC. while it is an automatic hit, favorable tactical conditions can easily keep that on the same RNG. And this is a situation where one guy has actually "caught em all" against a guy who has literally nothing.

On the other hand a maxed AC character, with enchanted full plate and max defensive ability score and a +3 defensive buff would have an AC of 24, versus an attack bonus of +1 for a guy wielding a damaged bamboo pole. Again, seemingly off the RNG, but admittedly not by much.

And these are the extremes of the system. This is as far as the system goes, ever at equal levels. So if you assume equal levels, you're still able to keep the other guy on the RNG if you have some tactical advantages, and that's in a worst case scenario. Obviously it's much more even when you aren't talking about someone totally maxed against a guy running around in his birthday suit.

[RandomCasualty]

1110669910[/unixtime]]
I don't really have a problem with buff spells that give a +1, but I think buffs should either be +1 and last all day or +3-4 and last for a combat. And really, I'm fine with the duration of a spell being "1 combat" like the effects of rage fatigue, rather than "1 minute per level".

Right. When I say "buff spell" I'm generally talking about a spell with a 1 combat duration that requires a standard action to cast.

All day buffs should really be close to what weapon focus is giving you, and probably deserve to be in another catagory balance wise (though their bonus types can be the same of course).

[Murtak]

1110669612[/unixtime]]

1110658477[/unixtime]]It also has the advantage of each level being as significant as the last. In a straight linear system a level 2 character is twice as powerful as a level 1 character. A level 20 character however is only a tiny amount more powerful then a level 19 character.

I think this is your basic conceptual problem. In a linear system each level is as important as the last.

in a system for instance where you gain +1 to attack each level, Each +1 is a 5% better chance to hit, and that's the same. Don't look at it in relative terms. +21 from +20 is as significant as +2 from +1. It isn't "double the bonus" it's a 5% shift. The 2nd level fighter only has a 5% better chance to hit than the 1st level one, not double.

When you're dealing with d20 rolls, a +1 remains significant regardless of what the prior numbers were. You never need to accelerate to higher bonuses just to make bigger levels feel bigger. It's a perception issue.

Now, when you talk about damage/hp, that's a bit different. This is where the 2nd level character really is twice as powerful in terms of hp. +1 damage to 23 damage is significantly less than +1 damage to 2 damage. But damage is weird, and damage goes off a totally different system than attack rolls, saves, etc. It could be ok for damage buffs to scale. Though the damage system is admittedly rather crappy in D&D to begin wtih so I'd prefer just to axe it.

So yes, scaling concerns can apply toward the damage system, but they don't apply anywhere else.

Your reasoning works for to hit bonuses. It does not work as well for things like HPs and more importantly it does not work for overall character power. If (and that's a big if) you manage to get rid of everything that scales (HPs for example) and of everything that basically multiplies your power (like extra attacks) then straightly linear leveling may work.

A side effect of such a system will be that your linear power chart begins at an arbitrary point - meaning that you can basically freely choose how big level 1 is in relation to all the other levels. That is a bonus I guess, if you want starting characters to be "little heroes" instead of "commoners turned adventurers".