Math That "Just Works"

[Ice9]

Even in the cases where it is window dressing, it's entirely necessary. The paradox of RPG balance is that:
A) To maintain balance, certain numbers should be "on a treadmill".
B) Most players will be unhappy if that fact is too obvious.

So yeah, it does matter that a DC 50 lock is some kind of demon-forged lock that constantly shifts its shape and burns with hellfire if someone touches it for longer than three seconds. Because that's how you can tell you're a legendary thief, and not just an apprentice cutpurse! That kind of "window dressing" is what creates - or destroys - immersion.


Also, it isn't always window dressing. Not every single challenge in an adventure should be exactly at the PCs' level. Maybe that castle only has high-quality but unexceptional locks, and so the legendary thief can easily open them, even with no tools. That opens up some possibilities for infiltration. Maybe that one cliff really is too difficult to climb - better look for an alternate route up there. If you set every challenge at exactly the party level, you often end up with linear adventures.

And as several people have pointed out, setting fixed DCs for a given type of obstacle lets the PCs plan and react in a non-random way. That's pretty damn important.

[Sashi]

The game needs to come up with new, awesome things the rogue can do with those skills, rather than facing the same old challenge in a new skin. Which means the skill should be "Athletics" instead of "Climb" and "Contrivance" instead of "Pick Lock". Make the skill able to do new things at +16 it couldn't at +5, instead of doing the same thing all the time no matter the level.

If you want high level characters to do crazy things with skills tie it to level-based feats or talents, not pure numeric bonuses, because then the wizard pulls out some bullshit 2nd level spell that gives him a +40 bonus to climb checks and poaches all the epic Rogue tricks.

In a System Where the Math Just Works you don't have bullshit spells like that.

That's just a hyperbolic example. If you let people make a DC 100 Diplomacy check work as an at-will Suggestion then people will try and pile up enough bonuses to do it as early as possible. My point is that it's not about the bonus to the skill but the ranks in the skill i.e. level dependent, not modifier dependent.

[Manxome]

In a System Where the Math Just Works you don't have bullshit spells like that.

That's just a hyperbolic example. If you let people make a DC 100 Diplomacy check work as an at-will Suggestion then people will try and pile up enough bonuses to do it as early as possible. My point is that it's not about the bonus to the skill but the ranks in the skill i.e. level dependent, not modifier dependent.

If your goal is to hotfix D&D 3.5e, that's maybe a good rule of thumb.

Speaking about a generic hypothetical game, though, it's fairly dumb. You're saying that these hypothetical game abilities should be tied to a hypothetical number that our hypothetical game refers to as "X" instead of one it refers to as "Y". That's fundamentally a statement about terminology, not about game design.

What should actually happen is that you should design the game in such a way that level 2 characters simply can't get a bonus that won't be level-appropriate until level 102. You're thinking of skill bonuses and skill ranks in D&D, where it just so happens that they exercised some discipline in designing the ranks and not in designing the bonuses, but we could easily imagine a mirror-universe D&D 3.5e where the opposite was true (maybe there's 20 classes and feats that give you a free stacking "bonus rank" in move silently that ignores the normal cap, but all bonuses from spells and items fall under one of three named types and none are individually higher than +3).

In a System Where the Math Just Works, people who "pile up enough bonuses to do it as early as possible" still don't get it until an appropriate power level. Because that's what it means for the math to "just work".

[Sashi]

Wrong.

As long as you tie the effect to skill bonus instead of level you're allowing someone who manages to get a +4 edge to get the effect earlier than someone who doesn't specialize like that. There is literally no reason to do that because you're actually telling the entire game "don't let anyone specialize in A because then they'll get B too early", and that's both sad and dumb. This is the equivalent of automatically giving 5th level spells to any Wizard with 30 int, or a +11 BAB to any fighter with 30 STR. You can then say "be aware you're breaking the game by letting a 3rd level Wizard get 30 INT because it gives 4th level spells that are off level*" but the response to that is "why were you such an idiot to let the game exponentially break by letting a character have level-inappropriate ability scores trigger level inappropriate class abilities?" Players should be allowed to try and get as good at something as they wish without the game smacking them down and saying "no, you can't get better at that because it breaks the game."

* I have never been so annoyed at the overuse of "level" in D&D

[Manxome]

One could just as well say "as long as you tie an effect to 'spell levels' instead of character level you're allowing someone who manages to get a +4 edge to 'spell levels' to get the effect earlier than someone who doesn't specialize like that." The answer to that is, of course, "well, the game engine shouldn't let someone get a +4 edge to 'spell levels' if that would break the game, stupid - and if it doesn't break the game, that may actually be a feature."

I'm sure the words "but spell levels are tied to character levels!" are even now on your tongue, but what precisely do you mean by that?

If you mean that you can calculate someone's spell levels or skill ranks based only on their character level, you're wrong - there's multi-classing, partial casters, non-casters, cross-class skills, and skill point limits that all make it possible for two characters of the same character level to have unequal spell levels or skill ranks. Some characters in D&D never put a point into spot and never gain a single spell level.

If you mean that, unlike other variables, they have some relationship to character levels, then you're wrong again. Skill bonus is related to character level, and there exists some maximum skill bonus you can get at any given character level. The relationship might be complex, and supposed "specialists" might have wildly divergent numbers, but that's because there's a poorly designed and poorly balanced relationship, not "no relationship".



In virtually all games, there exist abilities that not everyone needs to get at exactly the same character level. The abilities should be tied to - wait for it - some parameter that only varies in a range that is acceptable for that ability. In cases of extreme sensitivity, that may mean that all characters always get the ability at level X. But if everything works that way, then every character is identical.

There's a whole spectrum between "all characters can fly starting at level 7, regardless of race, sex, class, or creed" and "munchkins get an ability at level 2 that 'normal' specialists get at level 60 because we don't have any fucking discipline at all about how we hand out bonuses to this parameter". Different abilities can and should fall at different points along that spectrum.

[Koumei]

Hmm. It looks more like "How to avoid the big fuck-ups that make the math not work" less than "How to make the math just work".

Is that coming later, or is that rather the point, that there is no magic wand and the best you can do is not make it needlessly hard and annoying?

[TarkisFlux]

I think that's rather the point. Every bit of math in there needs to be informed by your system design goals, and those are going to change how that math needs to look. Without that it doesn't even matter whether it "just works" or not because it's not supporting what you want the system to even do.

[Username17]

In a System Where the Math Just Works you don't have bullshit spells like that.

That's just a hyperbolic example. If you let people make a DC 100 Diplomacy check work as an at-will Suggestion then people will try and pile up enough bonuses to do it as early as possible. My point is that it's not about the bonus to the skill but the ranks in the skill i.e. level dependent, not modifier dependent.

Some things have to be level dependent, some things do not. In 3e D&D, the party must have a magic weapon by level 3 because that's when Shadows show up. But flight could happen at level 4 with the training of a hippogriff all the way out to level 9 getting it indirectly through conjuration. It's not really important, because the adventure that actually mandates having flight (Assault on the Cloud Castle) is a level 11 adventure.

So yes, some things will be problematic if it is possible to get them a level early. Even more things will be problematic if it is possible to get them a level late. But the majority of things have a substantial level range when it is plausible for something to come online without the world breaking. And it's actually advantageous for things to come online at different levels for different characters, because then it feels like the player is actually getting something rather than checking the "is level X" box on their character sheet.

In virtually all games, there exist abilities that not everyone needs to get at exactly the same character level. The abilities should be tied to - wait for it - some parameter that only varies in a range that is acceptable for that ability. In cases of extreme sensitivity, that may mean that all characters always get the ability at level X. But if everything works that way, then every character is identical.

This. Exactly this.

When people get to level 10 and every character automatically gains the ability to see the invisible and punch through DR (as was the case in older versions of D&D), then it makes level 10 feel kind of special, but it sure as fuck doesn't make those abilities feel special. If those abilities are rationed out to different characters and they get them piecemeal between level 4 and level 10, it feels special - even though everyone is still hitting the same benchmarks at level 10.

Note also that it is not even requisite that all abilities scale to level at the same rate. Nor is there a requirement for things you didn't spend any resources on training to improve over levels. It is entirely acceptable if a character without lockpicking training falls farther and farther behind the Rogue who actually has it. And it's entirely OK if lockpicking is very level dependent and gets +2/level, while stabbing is moderately level dependent and gets +1/level, and diplomacy is only slightly level dependent and gets only +1/2 levels.

The only necessary reality is that bonuses do not outstrip or get left in the dust by the DCs that they are actually opposing. There is no reason why any particular bonus has to be in the same range as any other (unless you do something silly like allow players to use one bonus for a different kind of test - something that is a bad idea in almost all RPGs anyway).

Hmm. It looks more like "How to avoid the big fuck-ups that make the math not work" less than "How to make the math just work".

Pretty much.

Is that coming later, or is that rather the point, that there is no magic wand and the best you can do is not make it needlessly hard and annoying?

Well, there are an infinite number of potential sets of math that just works. But I could whip one up, sure.

-Username17

[Koumei]

That was actually the original text for that '70s comic. True story.

(unless you do something silly like allow players to use one bonus for a different kind of test - something that is a bad idea in almost all RPGs anyway).

I'm still surprised no-one was dumb enough to make some kind of "Make a (skill) check instead of an attack roll!" (bonus points for Diplomancy) Feat/feature. I mean, we already have skills for saves (Samurai getting Concentration for Ref saves), though the impact of that tends to not be too bad, skills as spellcasting power (True Naming/Epic Spellcasting, precisely as bad as anyone should be able to predict) and the occasional weird thing like Perform checks for damage (no-one actually gives a shit in this instance).

Well, there are an infinite number of potential sets of math that just works. But I could whip one up, sure.

Awesome. Because to quote the girl in that comic, Math is haaaaaard.

Besides, it involves showing up Mearls and those other useless twats. And spite is basically the driving force for 70% of all stuff produced on the Den.

[RobbyPants]

Numbers should be pretty tight at 1st level too. The entire RNG is only 20 points long, so the days of a Halfling Rogue getting +5 for Dex, +5 for Skill Training, +2 for Racial Bonus and +3 for Skill Focus at 1st level while a Dwarven Fighter gets a -1 Dex modifier to the same task really has to end. Any task that players within the same party are expected to all perform, need to be relatively tight in total bonus one to another.

How tight are you talking? +/- 5 on the d20? Something like that could be workable if you assume anyone has a mod of +0 to +5 (for same-level threats here) for both their offensive and defensive stat. Then, if you assume a base line of success of 50%, you end up with things like:

Good attack (+5) vs good defense (+5) = 50%
Good attack (+5) vs bad defense (+0) = 75%
Bad attack (+0) vs bad defense (+0) = 50%
Bad attack (+0) vs good defense (+5) = 25%

And you could have "intermediate" values of +1 to +4, so you get stuff like:

Attack +2 vs defense +2 = 50%
Attack +5 vs defense +2 = 65%
Attack +0 vs defense +2 = 40%

This model works either by adding the defense to a d20 (for opposed rolls) or to 11 (for static tests). If you want a greater degree of success, you could add 10 - 20% to the base 50% of success, which could be workable too. For instance, if you want your base success to be 65% (roughly 2/3), you end up with:

Good vs good = 65%
Good vs bad = 90%
Bad vs bad = 65%
Bad vs good = 40%


So, do you think something like this is workable? It means that all of your modifiers (not including level based modifiers) must be within five points, which is really tight. That's like saying your armor bonus plus your shield bonus plus your Dex bonus can never add up to more than +5. Is that too tight to work?

[baduin]

There is no reason to separate ability bonuses from level bonuses. A character should have an attack bonus which is a function of level.

In addition, the attack bonus, defence etc would depend on certain options selected during character generation: a character can have higher damage and lower attack, or the opposite. Similarly, he could have higher defence (ability to avoid being hit) and lower toughness (using True20 terms) that is ability to absorb damage. Of course it is essential that all options which can be selected are balanced.

Abilities as traditionally used in D&D are a rather ineffective way to introduce such options.

"That's like saying your armor bonus plus your shield bonus plus your Dex bonus can never add up to more than +5. Is that too tight to work?"

A difference in Defence between dexterous character who uses a shield and a strong and lumbering character which uses two-handed weapon should be probably about 5.

This could mean that a character gets +2 for using a shield and +3 max for being dexterous. But that is not the only option. Equally well, it could mean that dexterous characters should fight with sword and shield or two weapons, and strong characters should fight with two-handed weapons. Any character which selects the wrong weapon receives in effect a penalty and falls outside the 0 to 5 range.

All playable characters should be balanced (or alternatively, weak characters should be clearly labelled as non-combatants). This does not mean that all options should work for all characters - as long as it is clearly said which options are wrong.

[RobbyPants]

There is no reason to separate ability bonuses from level bonuses. A character should have an attack bonus which is a function of level.

Well, the idea is you have some base chance of success (like 50%, or 65% or whatever), and you add in your offensive or defensive modifier to figure out how you do against an equal level threat. So, using the numbers above (for 50% base) and assuming you get a +1 bonus to all d20 rolls every level (or whatever, but this is an example), then you can look at the difference of a level 1 fighter and a level 3 fighter. We assume they each have the "good" +5 bonus to both melee attacks and melee defense. So the numbers look like this:

Level 1 fighter (+5) vs level 1 fighter (+5) = 50%
Level 3 fighter (+7) vs level 3 fighter (+7) = 50%
Level 1 fighter (+5) vs level 3 fighter (+7) = 40%
Level 3 fighter (+7) vs level 1 fighter (+5) = 60%

So the idea is you set your basic acceptable success levels for equal level opponents, and then decide the rate at which you want level to affect both your offensive and defensive rolls. This allows people to slide at some rate up and down the RNG solely due to level differences. Also, you get stuff like a level 6 wizard ("bad" melee offense and defense) fighting a level 1 fighter and getting to 50%.

[KevinBlaze]

* The numbers have to start large enough that they can get smaller. Player characters can't really start in the AD&D "single hit die" crowd, because it is sometimes game mechanically relevant for there to be children or cats. Basically this means that a first level character who begins life with less than 10 hit points or so feels ridiculous in the face of potential hazards that are supposed to be substantially weaker than they are (like familiars or poisonous snakes).

* Numbers actually shouldn't diverge very much as levels continue to rise. This is not to say that an 8th level character has to take shit from a 4th level character, but that two 8th level rogues need to have fairly similar abilities with lock opening for an "8th level lock" to have much meaning.

* Numbers should be pretty tight at 1st level too. The entire RNG is only 20 points long, so the days of a Halfling Rogue getting +5 for Dex, +5 for Skill Training, +2 for Racial Bonus and +3 for Skill Focus at 1st level while a Dwarven Fighter gets a -1 Dex modifier to the same task really has to end. Any task that players within the same party are expected to all perform, need to be relatively tight in total bonus one to another.

* Any ability gained at any level needs to be competitive at the level they have it. Which in turn means that abilities need to either go obsolete or stay numerically competitive in a predictable fashion.

* And finally, characters need to be different one from another. Despite the fact that them diverging much is what makes the game fall apart and the math stop "just working" - it is precisely the existence of the difference at all that makes one character feel different from another. Players seriously do want their characters to have a different Sneaking bonus than another character.

I've got a basic rewrite for playing dndish d20 following these ideals I plan on posting up within the next few days. Basically it ends up being a total redo from dnd 3.5, except I don't think that d20 task resolution is fundamentally flawed. So I can work with that. It just has a more restricted RNG compared to some other ways of doing things.

How tight are you talking? +/- 5 on the d20? Something like that could be workable if you assume anyone has a mod of +0 to +5 (for same-level threats here) for both their offensive and defensive stat. Then, if you assume a base line of success of 50%, you end up with things like:

Aimed at Frank I know, but I think this the range one has to allow on a d20. Once you get beyond 10 point differences you fall off the rng. +0 attack roll vs 20 AC for example [0 bonus vs a 10 bonus].

[JonSetanta]

Nice charts Robby. It helps to see the numbers in a row.

[RobbyPants]

Nice charts Robby. It helps to see the numbers in a row.

Thanks. I personally prefer the basic 65% success value, but that's just my opinion.

I think the basic concept is workable, but I'm hoping that a five point swing won't cause players to balk at how little control they have over stuff. Of course, this is as far as I've though the idea out. I haven't put much thought into where your bonus comes from. For example, lets say our fighter gets +5 on his melee defense. That could be:

• A hard-coded value in his class table.
• The bonus you get from wearing heavy armor.
• A sum of armor + Dex bonus (in this case, your max Dex for armor would be 5 - the Armor bonus, and unarmored would cap at +5).
• Something else I haven't even considered.

I kind of like the armor + Dex approach, but that has it's own issues. That means that if you've got a +3 Dex mod, you don't ever want to wear armor that grants a bonus better than +2, and if you've got a +0 Dex mod, you always want +5 armor unless there is some other compelling reason not to (movement penalties or whatever). I don't know. Maybe that's a good thing. It encourages nimble guys to avoid armor.

Maybe if you get some +3 armor, you might have incentive not to boost your Dex mod to +2, assuming you could invest that elsewhere. This might be the case of a fighter voluntarily accepting an intermediate melee defense (+3) in exchange to get an intermediate boost (+2) elsewhere, like Will defense, or something.

Again, this is still really a very rough concept. Could it work?[/list]

[Username17]

I'm still surprised no-one was dumb enough to make some kind of "Make a (skill) check instead of an attack roll!" (bonus points for Diplomancy) Feat/feature. I mean, we already have skills for saves (Samurai getting Concentration for Ref saves), though the impact of that tends to not be too bad, skills as spellcasting power (True Naming/Epic Spellcasting, precisely as bad as anyone should be able to predict) and the occasional weird thing like Perform checks for damage (no-one actually gives a shit in this instance).

Oh, crap like True20 and E20 work like that.

Awesome. Because to quote the girl in that comic, Math is haaaaaard.

Besides, it involves showing up Mearls and those other useless twats. And spite is basically the driving force for 70% of all stuff produced on the Den.

True. In fact, let's make this math needlessly complicated so as to demonstrate how not that hard this actually is.

OK, the first thing you have to do is figure out what stats do to your skill numbers. The obvious answer of course, is "nothing". And indeed to just jettison stats altogether as a bad job. A character who is skilled in sneaking can have the level of that skill determine what level they sneak at, and there is no compelling reason why being good at archery should change the value of your skill level. Attributes could be quite profitably dropped completely from the system to b replaced by feat-like things or they could be left only as defaults, that are completely replaced by larger skill modifiers for trained characters.

But let's say for the moment that we're going with an AD&Desque model, where attributes exist, but the bonuses they provide are in fact quite small. Maybe +1 or +2 to various tests, like the old days and disregarding great strength. Maybe this is done with attribute tags (where you would either have "strong" or you would not, but you wouldn't have an actual strength score). But you could also do it seriously old school, where having a Dexterity of 15+ gave you a +1 modifier. These days I'm honestly leaning towards the tag system because it better incorporates access to Herculean and Hulk strength levels - for fuck's sake a genuine strong man has a strength of like thirty something according to the lift rules in Essentials.

Anyway, it's not super important. Because one way or the other you're basically either getting a +1 or +2 bonus or you aren't for being strong or fast of some shit. Thereafter, you have proficiencies that negate a -4 penalty, and you have focuses, that provide a +3 bonus. Other than that, it's all your level bonus. And yes, that means that the difference between someone who is untrained and someone who is fully tweaked out in training will be nine points. And that's most of the RNG. But more importantly, it since Proficiencies are very easy to get and people will usually consider something they lack proficiency in to be something they "can't do" the real difference between someone who invested heavily in doing something and someone who is doing something because their main schticks are inoperable for whatever reason is going to be "only" 5 points. And yeah, that's still a lot. And it's going to get even worse because players are going to get their grubby hands on +2 equipment bonuses eventually, but hopefully by that time characters should have enough focused abilities to be usually doing something that their character "does" and the numbers are going to narrow to +4 for a character with super strength and a magic sword vs. a character with neither.

So anyway, mostly to show that we can, we're going to split level progressions into three categories:

• Highly level dependent stuff rises at +2/level. Athletics and Macguyvering advance like this.
• Moderately level dependent stuff rises at +1/level. Attacks and Perception advance like this.
• Minimally level dependent stuff rises at +1/ 2 levels. Diplomancy and Craft advance like this.

This is because there is some stuff that you really want to be able to say "I'm too high level for this shit, I win" and other stuff that you want to be to some degree able to interact with lower level types as if they were the same species as you.

So we're starting with default assumptions of Defenses in the 10 range, modified for level and possibly with those stat bonuses. Meaning that at first level you swing a sword and your bonus is going to be between +1 and +6, and your target has a defense DC between 11 and 13. At 10th level, you'll likely have magic weapons and protection, and your attack bonus will be between +15 and +17, while your defense DC will be between 22 and 24. So you can't quite tell 1st level enemies to completely fuck off until the double digits of level.

So here are some Athletics DCs:

Challenge	DC	Is Easy For Level	Is Hard For Level
Climb Tree	8	1	-
Climb Stone Wall	18	6	1
Climb Smooth Stone	20	7	2
Climb Doom Tree	30	12	7
Climb Blood Fountain	35	14	9
Climb Rain	40	16	11

Meanwhile, Diplomancy is almost completely situation dependent at all levels. Being a silver tongued character with a Dipomancy Focus has you walk in with a +5, and by level 10 you have a +10. DCs basically don't really need to move, you just encounter things with the -5 to talking "Hellspawn" trait now and then at 10th level and call it a day.

Now the part where things go apeshit is damage and hit points. This shit is hard, because it's not just a level treadmill with DCs and bonuses chasing each other Red Queen style at some rate or another. Instead, you're trying to keep the damage roll relevant (rolling a d8 +25 is lame sauce, and even 2d4+1 the roll scarcely matters at all if your enemies have 10 hit points). And you're trying to keep the number of attacks per target manageable. And you're trying to keep the numbers getting bigger, and you're putting more enemies on the table and dumping bigger area attacks, and so on.

So while it's tempting to just give everyone a static pile of hit points and add your level to attack damage and subtract it from incoming damage, that's probably not what people want. It is actually desirable for the relative amount of damage that a monster "of your level" inflicts on you drops as you go up in level. Not nearly as much as in 4e of course, because we'll eventually have to go to bed and eat food and just don't have time to wait for 4e fights to finish.

So here is an example of a projection of potential PC toughness against the damage output from a level appropriate minion, skirmisher, or elite. The idea is that Skirmishers have a high damage output relative to their toughness, so players would be encouraged to engage skirmishers first. Elites would be doing the most damage, but since they would be the toughest by more, you'd still be encouraged to attack them after you took out the Minions.

Level	Hit Points (Min/Max)	DR (Min/Max)	Minion	Skirmisher	Elite
1	11/13	0/4	1-6	1-10	4-11
2	13/17	1/7	2-7	2-11	5-12
3	16/22	1/7	2-9	3-13	6-16
4	20/28	2/8	3-10	4-14	8-18
5	25/35	2/8	4-10	4-18	9-23
6	31/43	3/9	5-11	5-19	11-25
7	38/52	3/9	4-13	6-21	13-27
8	46/62	4/10	5-14	7-22	15-29
9	55/73	6/10	5-14	8-28	17-32
10	65/85	7/11	6-15	9-29	19-34
11	76/98	7/11	7-17	10-35	21-41
12	88/112	8/12	8-18	11-36	24-44
13	101/127	8/12	8-20	14-39	27-47
14	115/143	9/13	9-21	15-40	28-54
15	130/160	9/13	10-25	16-46	31-57
16	146/178	10/14	11-26	17-47	34-60
17	163/197	10/14	11-26	18-53	36-67
18	181/217	11/15	12-27	20-55	39-70
19	200/238	11/15	13-33	21-61	44-75
20	220/260	12/16	14-34	25-65	50-81

Now, clearly you're looking at a progression where the number of enemies on the table has to increase over time, because their damage output falls comparatively to PC defenses. A 1st level cloth wearer could seriously drop in two lucky hits from minions, but the same character could take max damage from minions nine times in a row and not fall at 20th level. So the unit of threat stops being counted in individual minions and even ends up in 10 minion packages that you might be clearing out with firestorm attacks or whatever at 20th.

All the numeric inputs are essentially arbitrary and require regression, and dare I say it - playtesting. But that's the kind of place you'd start.

-Username17

[TheWorid]

True. In fact, let's make this math needlessly complicated so as to demonstrate how not that hard this actually is.

I see what you're doing here, and it's cool, but do we really need to make something that sucks (in terms of complexity) entirely out of spite? I mean, I know this is the Den, and we run on spite, but wouldn't it be more productive to make something that someone would actually prefer to use over another thing, even if both were mathematically sound?

[Sashi]

Maybe if you get some +3 armor, you might have incentive not to boost your Dex mod to +2, assuming you could invest that elsewhere. This might be the case of a fighter voluntarily accepting an intermediate melee defense (+3) in exchange to get an intermediate boost (+2) elsewhere, like Will defense, or something.

Any "The math just works" system has to take equipment bonuses higher than +2 out back and shoot them. It's not that equipment doesn't (or shouldn't) matter, it's that there just isn't room for bonuses bigger than that without folding them into level-based assumptions about "the math", at which point you're just arbitrarily taking a table that says PC's get +1 to defense/level and separating it into two tables, one which says the PC's get +1/2 to defense/level for their class and another that says they get +1/2 to defense/level to defense for their magic armor, which is just needlessly complicated and obfuscates the fact that when equipment gives you a +1 higher bonus than you're "expected" to have, that's an actual special ability and you're paying for it by giving up immunity to lightning or a bonus to Will.

[Koumei]

Oh, crap like True20 and E20 work like that.

Oh snap, I forgot. Yeah, so does BESM d20. Where cross-class skills are optional, and there is no maximum to the ranks you can put into a skill. You can probably see where this is going. It means to be good at hitting people you don't play this:


Nor this (slightly better though):


No, you play one of these:


Also, I'd recommend against google-image-searching the Disgaea 3 ninja there. At least, if you have safe search off.

[RobbyPants]

Maybe if you get some +3 armor, you might have incentive not to boost your Dex mod to +2, assuming you could invest that elsewhere. This might be the case of a fighter voluntarily accepting an intermediate melee defense (+3) in exchange to get an intermediate boost (+2) elsewhere, like Will defense, or something.

Any "The math just works" system has to take equipment bonuses higher than +2 out back and shoot them. It's not that equipment doesn't (or shouldn't) matter, it's that there just isn't room for bonuses bigger than that without folding them into level-based assumptions about "the math", at which point you're just arbitrarily taking a table that says PC's get +1 to defense/level and separating it into two tables, one which says the PC's get +1/2 to defense/level for their class and another that says they get +1/2 to defense/level to defense for their magic armor, which is just needlessly complicated and obfuscates the fact that when equipment gives you a +1 higher bonus than you're "expected" to have, that's an actual special ability and you're paying for it by giving up immunity to lightning or a bonus to Will.

No, you're missing the point. You get two sets of bonuses:

1) Your level bonus. This could be +level or +level/2, I don't really care. The point is, this bonus is what slides you up and down the scale, so that a level 5 guy is more badass than a level 1 guy. The rate of advancement chosen is what determines how much more badass you are. Frank covered that in his most recent post as well.

2) All your other bonuses. What these are doesn't hugely matter. It could seriously be a lookup table (fighters get +5 on melee attacks, rogues get +2, and wizards get +0), or it could be derived from several things added together. The point is, however you get this number, it must fall between +0 and +5


So, #1 is a linear rate of advancement and #2 is a static amount that doesn't change (other than buffs and circumstance, but not by level). So you get a base rate of success, and it gets better as you gain levels. This is countered by the fact that your opponent's defense gets better as they gain levels.

So, given the two above assumptions, any two guys of the same level will always be within 5 points of each other on both attack and defense. So you assume a base percentage chance of success (50%, 65%, whatever makes people happy), and you go from there. Once you take level into affect, it will add the additional level mod in there, so if a level 1 fighter has a 50% chance to hit another level 1 fighter, a level 3 fighter will have a 60% chance to hit a level 1 fighter, but he'll only have a 50% chance to hit another level 3 fighter.

Does that make more sense?

[Sashi]

I get that. What I mean is that if you want any two guys of the same level to be within 5 points of each other and you have weapons that give +5 to attack, then you have two choices:

1) Have that be the only bonus that exists.
2) Have game rules that mandate a level 20 character have a +5 armor to counteract the +5 weapon so all the other "other bonuses" (strength, class, proficiency, specialization) don't overflow the difference.

[RobbyPants]

Well, yeah. That's the point. Maybe it's a single class-based ability, or maybe it's a sum of two abilities which always cap at +5. What's the problem with that?

[Sashi]

Wait, what? Make sense.

[Username17]

There are only three possibilities as regards +4 weaponry:

• Having a +4 weapon makes you noticeably more powerful than not having one, such that characters with +4 weapons can fight enemies noticeably more powerful than the challenge system allows for. This was how AD&D would have worked if their challenge system had been coherent.
• The system assumes that players will have +4 weaponry at some level, meaning that players who get +4 weapons "early" are able to plow through encounters above their level, characters who get them "late" will struggle or lose, and characters who put them down will be pussies compared to the monsters they are supposed to be the same level as. This is how 4e works.
• The game pulls sleight of hand on you, so you don't actually have a relative +4 bonus. Either it gives you compensatory bonuses if you don't have a +4 sword or it improves the monsters if you do, and in any case nothing actually changes if you have or don't have a +4 sword.

Personally, I prefer option 1. Once the game has been set up where the math works, and beating enemies beyond your level means something, getting tools that let you fight enemies beyond your level and then fighting them is fun. But that being said, you'd have to go back to an AD&D model of weaponry where you couldn't expect to buy or produce a +4 sword. Possibly a model in which you could make +2 magic items, but higher bonuses happened when swords were used in historically significant ways and leveled up. So literally every magic item with a higher than standard bonus was an artifact with a history.

-Username17

[Shazbot79]

No, you're missing the point. You get two sets of bonuses:

1) Your level bonus. This could be +level or +level/2, I don't really care. The point is, this bonus is what slides you up and down the scale, so that a level 5 guy is more badass than a level 1 guy. The rate of advancement chosen is what determines how much more badass you are. Frank covered that in his most recent post as well.

2) All your other bonuses. What these are doesn't hugely matter. It could seriously be a lookup table (fighters get +5 on melee attacks, rogues get +2, and wizards get +0), or it could be derived from several things added together. The point is, however you get this number, it must fall between +0 and +5


So, #1 is a linear rate of advancement and #2 is a static amount that doesn't change (other than buffs and circumstance, but not by level). So you get a base rate of success, and it gets better as you gain levels. This is countered by the fact that your opponent's defense gets better as they gain levels.

So, given the two above assumptions, any two guys of the same level will always be within 5 points of each other on both attack and defense. So you assume a base percentage chance of success (50%, 65%, whatever makes people happy), and you go from there. Once you take level into affect, it will add the additional level mod in there, so if a level 1 fighter has a 50% chance to hit another level 1 fighter, a level 3 fighter will have a 60% chance to hit a level 1 fighter, but he'll only have a 50% chance to hit another level 3 fighter.

Does that make more sense?

Here is my issue.

In the system that you outlined wherein characters receive a level bonus and a static bonus based on all other factors, for the sake of argument we'll say some arbitrary amount like "+3", then the progression of numbers throughout your characters career looks like:

level+3

Here the math "works" and is balanced, assuming of course that challenge numbers are commensurate with this value...but characters are pretty much on a treadmill where they never gain any real ground, except against challenges below their level. Is this the way it's supposed to work?

My understanding is that characters should be getting steadily better against level appropriate challenges as they progress.

Given, you could simply increase the number of options that characters have available to them in lieu of simply giving them bigger bonuses...but these options are going to effect the numbers if they are going to be any more compelling than say, blue attack that does blue damage vs. red attack that does red damage. I'm not really a fan of stupendously intricate character creation personally, but I would like a few token decision points so that my toon isn't on autopilot throughout his/her career.