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I have been trying to find methods to make modern fantasy roleplaying better mimic the style found in books while still maintaining the presence of meaningful magic and monsters above 3-6th level (that is, I don't want LotR magic and I don't want to limit myself to ogres and trolls). This examination brought me first to a new magic system (not nearly ready for review) and to fundamental considerations regarding melee combat. What follows is a rough idea I have been kicking around regarding melee combat and balance. Nothing below is set in stone and comments are of course appreciated.

I preface all of the below with the following caveat: the system I am developing is built from the ground up rather than an extension of the D&D rules. While I have every intent to try and adapt the system to D&D, I am first developing a system that works and then worrying about how I map the system back to D&D terms. This means that you should consider the below only as it is presented, not as an addon to D&D or any D&D subsystem in any way (ignore feats, magic, magic items, attacks/rnd and typical AC issues for now)

Background
In books, the fighter types take on foes much larger/stronger/tougher than themselves and they win. They do this by using brains over brawn, exploiting opportunities as they arise and by simply being a better swordsman. While fantasy RPGs provide ample opportunity for players to use brains over brawn, they do not mimic the "I know you are bigger and swing a tree stump, but I have been training with a sword since I could lift one" paradigm nor do they provide a mechanic for exploitation of opportunities. One of the things that screws melee types in D&D is that they have no way of dealing with the ever increasing hit points of their foes. A longsword still does d8+change and it does that every time it hits its target, except when it does less. This means that a 10th level fighter with sword, shield and 90hp stands no chance against a Fire Giant with the sword and shield, 142hp and huge strength. The underlying issues why the fighter loses this battle is deeper than just a damage to hp ratio, of course. At a minimum , there is the "auto-hit" syndrome that plagues AC and the fighter's useless secondary attacks, which I guess were supposed to mimic higher degrees of swordsmanship but fail at this miserably. It is these problems that the idea below is designed to address fully or in large part.

The System
Imagine for a moment if monster HP was not tied to monster "level". Instead, what if HP was based on something else entirely, like a CON score + HD type + 1/level or HD (so an oge would have 15 [CON]+ 8 [HD type] + 3 [3hd monster]) 26 hp and a 3rd level fighter would have 28hp (15 [CON] + 10 [HD type] + 3 [3rd level]). Furthermore, the fighter would have a number of "combat tokens" (I imagine a green poker chip and a red poker chip glued together for now) that represented his skill and prowess in melee battle. Fighters would get 1 token per level plus perhaps bonus tokens. Mundane (NPC) types would receive 1 token per 3 levels with more tokens granted based on the combat prowess and level of the class receiving them. Monsters would get tokens as well to represent their melee combat prowess. Untrained monsters (ogres, oozes, whatever isn't a highly-trained combatant) would be relegated to the 1 token per 3 levels/HD (or whatever is appropriate), with more militaristic or skilled hunting monsters (hobgoblins and wolves maybe) getting a racial bonus token. Combat is then carried out normally, but the tokens can be used (flipped from green side to red) to cause any one of the following effects:

• To cause a roll (melee or ranged) that just hit the spender to miss
• To add +x to the attack roll, where x is some meaningful amount, perhaps scaled to level
• To avoid a trample/grapple/disarm or the like
• To avoid an AoO based on movement or action
• To carry out a second melee attack during the spender's turn
• To undo the effect of any token spent by an opponent against the spender
• To confirm a critical hit
• To take an immediate move or move-equivalent action
• to conduct a second AoO against a foe which provoked the user
• To do other things (???)

All "used" tokens would refresh after 5 minutes uninterrupted rest after the last melee attack was conducted.

Benefits

• melee damage stays relevant since HPs are basically flat
• multiple foes are now a threat to the fighter, since he loses a fair amount of capability eventually
• token loss can be used to represent fatigue or other effects
• unskilled opponents still have a trick up their sleeves and must be handled with at least some respect.

Revisiting the 10th level fighter vs the Fire Giant, the Giant would have HP of 21 (CON) + 8 (HD) + 15 (HD count) = 44hp and 15/3 = 5 tokens + 1 for military nature = 6 tokens. The 10th level fighter would have 16 (CON) + 10 (HD) + 10 (level) = 36 hp and 10/3 = 3 + 10 = 13 tokens. Sure, if the Fire Giant lands a blow, the fighter is big time screwed, but the fighter, since he is more skilled than the giant, will more than likely win the battle (unless he is softened up by boulders first, or faces more than one, or gets unlucky with his rolls).

What do you think?

Essentially, you are advocating a massive slowdown of HP gain combined with an unusual take on action points. Both of these are good ideas, but you need to look at the numbers involved more carefully.

One of the biggest things to avoid here is 'do X but better' syndrome. What you want is more of 'do Y, where Y != X'. An example of the former in your design is:

LL wrote:To add +x to the attack roll, where x is some meaningful amount, perhaps scaled to level

An example of the latter:

LL wrote:to conduct a second AoO against a foe which provoked the user

The former is boring, RNG-gefucking and not particularly inventive. The latter opens up a lot of interesting creative space and can be used to do cool things which you ordinarily wouldn't have been capable of. In general, you want more of the former.

Additionally, you might want to avoid the 'war of token attrition' which some of your suggestions, particularly 'To undo the effect of any token spent by an opponent against the spender', seem to encourage. I don't believe this adds anything, since the PCs will always have more tokens than NPCs or monsters, which means that for them, this system would essentially do nothing whatsoever, as PCs will have enough token power to negate any meaningful actions monsters take against them.

Last of all, how do the tokens recharge?

Last of all, how do the tokens recharge?

Five-minute rest, so they're basically recharged after each encounter.

One of the biggest things to avoid here is 'do X but better' syndrome. What you want is more of 'do Y, where Y != X'.

This times infinity. You should have choices, not bigger numbers. You want to avoid the 4e route.

Sounds like everyone is even more of a glass cannon now. How does this help one be less so?

I think it needs more pieces for criticism to be meaningful. You may have opened the door for a low level character to be a substantial threat to a high level character: they both have similar hit points and damage per attack in this setup. A high level character who has spent his tokens basically IS a low level character in the other defined combat areas (attack and armor paradigms may alter this). If there is one, an always-hit-on-20 mechanic would make crowds of any level a legitimate threat to anyone because no one can take more than a few blows. Though you suggest you want fighters to be wary of groups this might be more than you want.

Token loss symbolizing fatigue or whatever is potentially interesting, but it's not a benefit yet. You'd have to build the system where your token loss mattered somehow (like in a decreased defense or offense), and then have it do things that you wanted it to do or it's just a neutral thing. Such a system would also help prevent token attrition, by essentially turning them into a "power now, pain later" resource, which might work for what you want, but I'm not sure.

Otherwise, I'd second Sinister's comments (except that part where he said you want more of the former, which looks like he misspoke). Tokens providing options = interesting. Tokens providing numbers or certainty = useful but boring.

One of the biggest things to avoid here is 'do X but better' syndrome. What you want is more of 'do Y, where Y != X'.

This times infinity. You should have choices, not bigger numbers. You want to avoid the 4e route.

Yeah. That is a great point. I added that one as I posted and it should be shot on sight. I also agree that undoing a token with a token is bad, except perhaps on avoiding a critical hit.

As far as the glass cannon, the idea is to have the tokens be more defensive than offensive in nature, so that hits are not nearly as frequent. I am also planning on moving to an "armor as DR" system (no specifics yet but I like the Conan approach), so that a single hit doesn't slam HPs. Yes, melee combat remains deadly, but at low levels, it is not nearly so (since HPs are higher by a fair amount) and at higher levels, what chance did the fighter have against a fire giant before the system? The "glass cannon" is really been a truism all along, it is hardly a step in the direction of making anyone more breakable than they already were and makes them far more viable than they otherwise were.

In fact, I think the token system may be over-biased in favor of the characters. If 1 token / level for a fighter is too high (generating a guaranteed win rather than a 50/50 split 1 on 1), then I can move to 1 token per two levels and the 10 Fighter would have 8 tokens to the Giant's 6. Playtesting is required here, or at least a well-constructed thought experiment.

Also, Con needs to do more in this system. While reducing HP bloat = good, having no incentive to use Con = bad. I'd suggest giving bonus tokens equal to your Con modifier and then giving DR equal to your Con modifier. Let the DR stack with everything, obviously.

Before, they'd have some chance, as long as they weren't some dumbass mook. Now everyone is a dumbass mook. This... isn't helping.

Roy wrote:Before, they'd have some chance, as long as they weren't some dumbass mook. Now everyone is a dumbass mook. This... isn't helping.

Care to qualify this statement, Roy? Not criticising, just want to know where it's coming from.

Tarkis, you're absolutely right: I type very fast, and thus, mis-speak often. I most certainly don't believe more 'do X, but better' abilities are called for, in ANY part of design.

I think Roy is complaining that the system punishes fighters because the only increase in power they're getting it from being able to do some things more often. The low-level guys are nearly as strong as the high-level fighter, which sucks especially for the fighter.

Roy wrote:Before, they'd have some chance, as long as they weren't some dumbass mook. Now everyone is a dumbass mook. This... isn't helping.

It really depends on his end goals. If you dropped this in 3.x it would be terrible. And do terrible, horrible, unwholesome, unnatural things. It's not a very good idea at all there. The problem isn't the idea though, it's that right now it's just a mechanic in a vacuum. Without the rest of the things that hook into it or even design goals to elucidate the bigger picture.

It's not prima face unworkable and could do some interesting stuff, but it really needs more completed bits attached. Since he's minimizing the distinction in hp and damage between high and low level fighters, he's got to do something to bring that distinction back in terms of DR (a bad idea given non-scaling damage), attack bonuses, AC (auto-hits remain problematic), or something I'm not thinking of. Tokens alone probably won't cover it. And if these things aren't brought back in, what the hell does a level even mean in the system?

Good points all. I will post later with additional info.

A couple of other points on the system (borrowed from Conan). AC is not based on Armor. All characters/monsters have a parry and dodge rating. For a fighter, these advance at +1 per level, equal to BAB.

Parry = 10 + BAB + Str bonus (+4 bonus for shields)
Dodge = 10 + BAB + Dex bonus
Melee Attack = BAB + Str bonus +d20
Ranged Attack = BAB + Dex bonus +d20

The target may choose which defense to apply to any attack. So, when a 1st level fighter attacks a 10th, his melee attack is on the order of d20 + 1 + 3 = 14.5 on average and a 10 fighter has a parry of 10+10+4 = 24 which means that the lowly mook needs to roll a 20 to hit. However, every attack against a single target adds +1 to the attack, so while the first mook needs a 20 to hit, the 5th mook attacking that round needs only 15. Furthermore, the mook has at most 1 or 2 tokens to use and the 10 Fighter has 13, virtually ensuring that only a dedicated mob can bring him down (though eventually they will bring him down, when his luck and ability are expired). I consider this a superior situation to the 10 Fighter killing 300 orcs that occurs today.

Comparing with the Fire Giant:

The Fire Giant, meanwhile, has a similar parry rating: 10 (base) + 10 (BAB) + 11 (Str) - 4 (size) = 26 and a melee attack bonus of 10 (BAB) + 11 (Str) -1 (size) = 20. He hits the Fighter on a 4 (8 if the fighter uses a shield), while the 10 Fighter has a melee attack of 10 (BAB) + 4 (Str) = 14 and hits the giant on a 12. The numbers are still lopsided toward the giant, but the Fighter has 2 times as many combat tokens compared to the giant (representing his combat savvy), and almost as many HP. If he is better armored than the giant and uses his tokens wisely, he stands a fair chance of winning, even if his damage per blow is lower. I think it is quite plausible he could win 1 in 2 against this otherwise unbeatable foe.

This is all first-order approximations and I need a playtest to see it in action, but this is the idea.

I need to consider the effect of Con modifiers per PR suggestion; it makes a lot of sense.

TarkisFlux wrote:It really depends on his end goals. If you dropped this in 3.x it would be terrible. And do terrible, horrible, unwholesome, unnatural things. It's not a very good idea at all there. The problem isn't the idea though, it's that right now it's just a mechanic in a vacuum. Without the rest of the things that hook into it or even design goals to elucidate the bigger picture.

I agree completely. Look - 3.5 is broken, we all know that. The Tomes admit this and use the current MM and caster classes as the baseline because (1) the wizards are level appropriate (less their infinite loops) and (2) there is a fuck-ton of spells and monsters already written and Frank and K had no desire to rewrite the world. Instead they buffed the fighter types and made them viable, but the result, while playable, is not the game I envision. It breaks whatever fantasy is left in the game for my personal tastes. Fighters are better, but now everyone is a superhero rather than just the casters. Everyone should just wear capes and tights to compliment their item/utility belts and admit they are in the Justice League and be done with it.

So, I am setting off an an anti-Tome quest - to do exactly what the Tomes did, only in reverse (yes I know how hard that is going to be). I hope to be able, at some point, to relate my calculations back to the D&D monsters and classes we know so that on-the-fly conversions can be done and a great deal of the written material reused (except perhaps CR, which I am willing to trash or recalculate after the other systems are defined). I am doing the same thing from a magic standpoint (and items and creation and...) with these melee ideas in mind, but that is a far harder task. Since I wanted melee relevancy at all levels and I want Fighters to be able to invalidate magic (a key design goal and absolutely necessary to maintain a melee/magic balance), I first have to build a rock solid melee system that I know will serve as a decent platform to build the modified magic system against and upon. Yes, I am thinking that tokens can be used to counter magic in some way, but until i understand the simple stuff, I am leaving those types of issues aside.

Hopefully this explains the path I am on and helps vet this idea. If this idea generates 50/50 results against level appropriate foes, is fast and easy to understand and is in some readily understandable way portable from a 3.5 point of view then I have a win and can go off to other major tasks ahead of me.

I've frequently considered doing an anti-tome or "low-magic" 3.5 revision.

The difficulty is that you can't keep the monster manual, at least you can't keep large sections of it. It's easy enough to keep the warriors as-is, maybe tweaking them to make more interesting, and then write nerfed down caster classes that are cool without overshadowing the warriors.

Heck, you can go a long way just by making Warblade, Ranger, Bard, Rogue your "iconic party." But the problem is that much of the monster manual will eat them for lunch.

One possible fix is to give the fighting classes power-ups, but not ones which increase their lethality and durability a la tome, merely ones which let them play the game at all.

For instance, a Monk class which got air walk, see invisibility, Ki Strike (ghost touch), and Ki Strike (good) all before level 10 could be a credible force in such a lower-powered variant, even without doing multiple save or dies per attack. That kind of thing would throw open more of the monster manual.

Boolean wrote:One possible fix is to give the fighting classes power-ups, but not ones which increase their lethality and durability a la tome, merely ones which let them play the game at all.

This is the goal of the token system - to provide a more mundane method of allowing the Fighter to compete. Can you provide a MM example you think would break under this approach that does *not* rely upon the monster using magic as a means to overcome his foe? I exclude magic at this point because as my fledgling system stands, there is no magic of any kind.

This isn't to say that I am putting this issue wholly off the table, because I assure you I am deeply involved in designing a magic system, but I am looking for even more basic flaws than that at this point.

If that's the case, most of the monster manual is gone anyway. Also brute monsters are just super tough. There's no need to "power up" fighting classes at all, just make sure they're interesting, because you're writing a completely new monster manual, and *should* probably just write a completely new game.

Well I don't think it means that a new MM is required. It means that magic needs an overhaul and monsters that use it aren't a good comparison for a melee-balancing exercise even if I must consider their inclusion later. If the Fighter can't beat an appropriate melee foe, his ability to deal with a caster is moot.

The way I see it, to keep the current MM intact in general, I need to do one of a few things when comparing this system to monsters that meet the analysis criteria:

(1) find a means to improve my system to deal with a monster I overlooked
(2) Modify the CR of the monster to reflect the new difficulty of overcoming the Fighter
(3) admit failure.

I really don't want to do (3) and I want to keep (2) to a minimum since it tells me little about the robustness of my system, though I accept it may need to happen given the crap manner in which CRs were assigned initially. I don't think any of these options insist that I throw the entire MM away, though.

This opinion is based on part on my fairly-developed ideas concerning the accompanying magic system, which I understand I have not yet communicated. Magic is in for a big change or three, and I plan on keeping not only the spells as written (minus a few changes in how magic works that will impact every spell) but also 91% of all spells listed in the SRD. At least, that is my current thought based upon my preliminary review of the design. Given this, I am even more confident that most of the MM can be maintained. We shall see, however.

Monsters at CR 5

Magic:

Barghest
Djinni
Elemental
Beard Devil
Green Hag
Mummy
Nightmare
Phase Spider
Ravid
Basilisk
Pixie
Werebear
Weretiger
Winter Wolf
Wraith
Yuan-ti


Pseudo-Science

Achaierai
Arrowhawk
Cloaker
Animated Object
Rast
Shadow Mastiff
Ochre Jelly
Gibbering Mouther
Skeleton
Troll
Scrag Troll
Zombie

"Nonmagic"

Dire Lion
Hieracosphinx
Manticore
Hydra
Orca
Giant Constrictor Snake
Spider Eater
Tojanida

So depending on how much you're willing to bend "reality" you're losing either 40% or 80% of the monsters at level 5, and it only gets worse from there.

Well LL, you're already going to have to do some CR tweaking. Or rather EL tweaking, because things don't stack nicely...

Single combat seems to be worked out, but what about group combat? Let's take a group of level 1 fighters and a level 11 fighter. I don't know how your stats change with levels, so I'm going to assume they don't for now and just start them with the same stats (which will cancel largely) and an 18 con for hp, the rest won't matter much anyway. Let's say they're all armed with longswords, and all do the same damage (same weapon, same stats). Here's what you've got:

Level 1: +1 BAB, 11+Str AC, d8+Str Dmg, 29hp
Level 11: +11 BAB, 21+Str AC, d8+Str Dmg, 39hp

Let's put them in a fight, but let's use 6 of the level 1 guys against 1 of the level 11 guys. In old school 3.5 that'd be a crap encounter... (math)

I'm going to leave crits out, but they generally help the side that rolls more (screwing the high level guy). Also leaving itterative attacks out, because I don't know if you want them and their effects on damage per round against your scaled back hp. And I'm leaving out auto-miss numbers, they'd just lower the high level guy's average damage and make him even less likely to win.

1st level 1 guy hits on a 20. Second level 1 guy attacks same guy, and so hits on a 19. Repeat until 6th guy hits on a 15. Average damage to level 11 guy per round: (1/20*Dmg + 2/20*Dmg + 3/20*Dmg + 4/20*Dmg + 5/20*Dmg + 6/20*Dmg) = 16/20*Dmg. Assuming a standard 3.x longsword and +3 str mod, the level 11 39hp guy takes an average of 6 dmg/round. When one of them is dead, average damage drops to 3.75/round. This will be important.

Level 11 guy hits on a 1, and so his average damage is 20/20*Dmg, or 7.5/round. He kills a level 1 guy in an average of 4 rounds, after he has taken 24 points of damage and has 15 left. He is at 0 when he drops the next level 1 guy 4 rounds later, on average. He might die earlier, he might get through a couple more guys, but it is very unlikely that he will survive the 24 average rounds he needs to kill them all.

Tokens don't really help him either. If fighters get 1 token per level, and no bonus, the level 11 guy has 11 tokens to their 6 and is in a much better position, though they can spam theirs on him for an early advantage and he can't. This is the only scenario that he could maybe win though. If fighters get even 1 bonus token, he has 11 tokens to their 12 and is screwed. If fighters get tokens every 2 levels, he has 5 or 6 tokens to their 6 and is still screwed, regardless of bonus.

Because of the linear growth, it's even worse to put a level 10 fighters up against a level 20 fighter. The hit numbers and average damage are the same, but because they have more hitpoints it takes him longer to drop one, and it's the only one he drops. Under any mentioned system of token growth they have vastly more than he does, and can still hit him with 6 in a round.

Short version: Level 11 fighter dies to 6 level 1 fighters in 8 rounds on average, varies based on token growth. Level 20 fighter dies to 6 level 10 fighters in the same, but is vastly outnumbered in any token growth mentioned. Six characters 10 levels below aren't even a level appropriate encounter right now, they're a massacre, and CR and EL means vastly different things than you or I are used to. Welcome to the problem of linear growth :-/

Things you could do: explicitly state an itterative attack pattern (so higher level characters can deal with multiple targets, but that boosts their damage against single targets significantly), allow higher level characters more powerful token abilities (so higher level characters who get mobbed by low level characters don't just play token attrition), something I'm not thinking about right now. I still think DR will be an issue if you don't build in scaling per-hit damage. If you don't cap it people can just become invulnerable, and even if you do it just functions as unseen hit point bonuses and extends combat as if you'd given out more hp, which you don't seem to want.

[Edit] You're probably going to have to rethink what you want a level to mean in your system, 'cause you're pretty much off the 3.x level definition rails presently. Which is cool, just means you need to sit back and think about what a level 2 character can do that a level 1 can't, and what a level 5 character can do that a level 2 can't, and so on. And if you want them to fall to a large enough group of nobodies, you're in a good place already, but it really does mean you can't use EL math anymore, and CR math is probably going to be tricky as well.

LL wrote: I preface all of the below with the following caveat: the system I am developing is built from the ground up rather than an extension of the D&D rules.

This is a quote from your original writeup and I think it's important to focus on it. The stuff you've written isn't compatible - even slightly - with Fire Giants or Dragons as written in the D&D Monster Manual. Which means that you are making a game from the ground up. The concessions you keep making to try to make a D&D expansion out of something that you've already admitted is not an extension of the D&D rules pretty much ruins it.

The monsters in D&D are supervillains. And if you don't have a cape, you can't fight them. Scaling things back is fine, but you have to scale everything back. You have to rewrite it.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:The monsters in D&D are supervillains. And if you don't have a cape, you can't fight them. Scaling things back is fine, but you have to scale everything back. You have to rewrite it.

-Username17

Thats not 100% true, the fire giant LL has mentioned isn't a supervillain, hes a level 1 mook with really big numbers. And thats why hes a bad metric for level appropriateness, his level is arbitrary. Going to the trouble of balancing against dumb melee brutes with a variety of numbers doesn't tell you anything about the interesting monsters the PCs will actually be fighting. If just means you've based your numbers off some other game's least interesting encounters.

You need to think out what level will mean first. Pretty clearly less than D&D or you'll need to have far less levels. You should think of things like how much more powerful than a level one PC is a giant and how many levels do I want to be between level one and giant killing power.

@ TarkisFlux: Yes, I am clearly offbase here. I actually ran into this issue during conceptual design and tabled it and never did anything about it. It remained forgotten until you mentioned it. I have an idea or two here, but it clearly needs fixed.

@Frank: I find your lack of faith disturbing Actually you are right, I am making a new game, but I do want to be able to reuse the bulk of the prewritten material and I want to do it in a way that someone could port stuff of their own into the new game.

@Draco_Argentum: I guess to some degree, I am not certain why the Fire Giant is not a good touchpoint for this design. One of the core issues with D&D melee progression is that the brutes out-tough the fighter. If the Fire Giant isn't a suitable CR10 brute, what is? Level means something fundamentally different in this system. From a melee perspective, it relates to skill at arms, not "toughness". In the main, people do not "get tougher" in this system, they become more skilled as they progress. I do agree that the idea of level needs to be better defined, and I will address this in my next cut.

Thanks all for your comments. It is clear that this system is incomplete and I also have realized I neglected to post my DR rules as well, which obviously changes the equation quite a bit. I will rework a few things, do some new approximations and repost the entire thing. If anyone has a criticism or suggestion in the interim, please let me know.

Are you going to do anything about the RNG-fuckage that 3e has, or are you mainly going for a low-power conversion?

Either way, I think you need to do four things:

1. Moar DR. Enough so that a +2 chain shirt can dramatically increase the fighter's survival. Even Frodo got away with this. (Assuming you're not going to scrap the entire magic item system, of course.)

2. Scaling damage. Outside of the odd +1 longsword, characters need to be able to do more damage in order to keep up with DR. Even if it's something like +1 damage at fifth level and every five levels thereafter, damage needs to increase slightly. (Since AC scales accordingly with attack power in the Conan system, you'll have to modify PA, as well.)

3. Greater differentiation between characters of lower levels and characters of higher levels. (The above two go with this.) There needs to be a reason why a group of commoners with crossbows can't kill said fire giant. Even if the fire giant can knock away their crossbow bolts 95% of the time, you're still looking at the odd crit that will knock him down a few pegs.

Hundreds of pages of the PHB are devoted to spells. 7 of the 11 PHB classes get them. ONe of the biggest chunks of the DMG is magic items and another big part is about the interactions between various magic effects. Most monsters have magic, although a lot of it can be explained as super-science if need be.

You aren't using "the bulk of the pre-written material" andto claim so is laughable.