The Gaming Den

@Frank I think you're misunderstanding what I meant. Let me apologize and reclarify what I imagine when I describe my version of a multiclass system partially inspired by 1E Dual-classing. For example, let's say a character starts with a class of their choice at 1st level. Let's say our player chose...

Uh... why? You're basically implicitly assuming 3e multiclassing as the standard and demanding that the game make it function. That's an achievable goal. It's difficult because you're asking characters to increase in power every level and dilute their main shtick by a variable percentage based on t...

Either we add another universal stat (which is not necessarily bad, especially if the system is designed to use it often) or we utilize the existing Fort, Ref, and Will Defenses and implement some elegant way to make attacks that merely do damage have a good chance at beating those defenses and Save...

Could you give an example Mfa?

A fun game will not have perfect balance because interesting classes have asymmetric abilities. However they should be reasonably close in overall effectiveness. It's possible to work and create a system such that classes are roughly balanced toward each other. And because that is possible, it's sim...

Why not just apply a save/defense penalty if they survive? That sounds cleaner to me. Problem with your numbers is though that nobody expects the first sod to work. So unless you really know you can basically do nothing for your first turn, it sucks to use it, Not to forget sometimes the first one ...

The fact that a Wizard 5 / Rogue 5 is not roughly equal to a Wizard 9 / Rogue 1 or a Wizard 10 has been a longterm compliant of 3E. The fact that in 2E you'd be smarter to be a Fighter 10/Wizard 11 rather than Wizard 10/Fighter 11 pissed people off, you'd get a lot of extra HP and get Exceptional st...

In the past, designers simply haven't put significant effort into making multiclassing work. 1E/2E straight up didn't try. 3E made BAB so martial classes had some synergy, prestige classes had some synergy, but Spell/Martial combos had no synergy. 4E had multiclassing as an entire afterthought and h...

In talking about ways of stacking, namely dealing damage on a failed save still does damage whereas a failed save or die often does nothing got me thinking on an alternate system. We'll introduce a new stat called Death's Door until someone suggests a better name. Whenever a save or die spell (power...

The only good idea to come out of Mutants and Masterminds was that instead of making Save or Dies all-or-nothing you got a status penalty whose size was dependent on how much you failed your save. You fail it by one or two points and the penalty isn't that large, fail it by 15 and you're out of the...

Alright, so Save or Dies got some flack in the 3E era, but in response to the padded sumo of 4E got some love again. Here's the question. For whatever base amount of lethality in the system, say generally speaking, we want an average of 6 attacks (player turns) to equate to 4 hits which equates to d...

Let me show my calculations so far: http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/1555/screenshot20111124at640.png These numbers are for an attacker against a level 1 defender. Levels 2 & 3 show the damage types for the kind of attacks they would deal against an average level 1 PC or Monster. If you look at ...

Alright, so in a previous thread we discussed how many hits on average it should take for a same level monster to die, we roughly decided on 4 hits. Now, the question is how many levels above another challenger such that on an average hit they will die? For example, should it take a level 5 characte...

I've changed Fire Surge to grant 20+Level bonus to AC. I'm universally changing everything to power points. That way spells, psionics, and warrior maneuvers can utilize the same pool easily and we can have a universal chart for power point acquisition by character level rather than individual class ...

People seem to have some really weird ideas about MMOs and how they have to be designed. Designers seem to have a problem just implementing the game rules into an online format. It's funny because the classic 1980s and 1990s D&D games stayed mostly true to the source material. Such a shame, oh w...

I kind of see your point Frank. If we can cherry pick other classes lists, then we encourage dumpster diving. It feels very gamist to insist or to limit what a Fighter could subclass with while it feels much more simulationist to allow free multiclassing at any time for any class. Dumpster diving is...

The proposed system this will work with will use a D100 base for attacks, skill checks, etc.. Thus base AC is 50. HP and damage values for everything are designed such that in roughly 4 hits, a character will fall unconscious. For the moment I'm playing with the idea of an average attack dealing 25 ...

Late in the cycle of 3.5E, an oft and unfortunately little talked about innovation was the idea of spells being able to be multi-functional, a spell could be cast as a defense and then become expended to become an offense. In my D&D revamp I'm trying to combine this concept with the idea of Psio...

Actually no it does not. It speaks of material components being a joke in their implementation but doesn't address the base idea of having spell components nor does it address components or foci with significant costs whether this is a 3e spell or a 4e ritual. So again I invite you all to actually a...

Oh I'm aware of the Dungeonomicon, but it doesn't actually answer the questions I asked

In 3.5E and earlier editions of D&D, many spells had spell components. Fireball required bat guano and so forth. There were some ways of getting around this. Eschew Materials made it such that you weren't required to have material components that cost a gp or less. However it wouldn't work for A...

You're correlating attack bonus directly with damage which takes away variety from the game. Now you cannot have accurate but minorly damaging attacks nor can you have inaccurate but highly damaging attacks. A soak roll replaces the standard damage roll from the weapon and adds the standard interest...

Well, if one's goal is to keep attribute scores = bonuses, with your suggestion a few things would be required. Either Stats do not add up bonuses to attack, AC, etc. and thus 3-18 in attributes is purely in the realm of skill checks, arm wrestling contests and so forth, and has no direct attributio...

In 3.5E PHB, if you have 18 Levels of Fighter, and take 1 level of Wizard. You cast spells as a 1st level wizard and have a caster level of 1. With Tome of Battle, you can take 18 Levels of Wizard and take 1 level of Warblade. You can use maneuvers as a 9th level Warblade and have an initiator level...

In 3.5E and earlier editions players could choose both utility and combat spells within the same spell slots. Comprehend Languages and Color Spray are both first level spells. Acid Arrow and Knock are both second level spells. 4E tried to separate (most) utility spells into Rituals and left the comb...