Legends & Labyrinths

[Grek]

You know, the more I think about it, the less I care that the skill check to use a stunt is an autosuccess. As long as degree of success doesn't effect save DC, the difference between doing something reasonable to get a +15 modifer to your favourite skill and doing something supercrazy to get a +90 modifier is really just academic. Only bullrush and aid another are really effected by that sort of nonsense.

[DSMatticus]

There's another whole step to this mechanic, though not a well explained one. Skill checks don't do anything but force your target to roll a save, if I'm reading this right.

It's a mitigating factor for the problem of skill balance. I'm not sure how I feel about it. If the save is too high, then the optimal combat move is spam stunt; if the save is too low, then nobody uses combat stunts. There's a very narrow range of DC where combat stunts will be situationally appropriate moves. It also doesn't solve the problem of D&D's crappy skill balance, because it just means DC X save vs suck compared to DC X save vs super-suck. Spamming paralyze is better than spamming daze.

But it avoids the problem that saves and skills grow at completely different rates and can't really be rolled against eachother without complication, I suppose. A +1 to DC per 5 or 10 you exceed you the target DC might reward investing in skills a little more, or it might break the system wide open. Probably the latter, either by causing people to accumulate D&D skill cheese or forcing people to use weaker stunts.

On the contrary, that sounds terrible to me. I don't want Jumpy McJumperson trying to solve every problem by jumping.

Or fighty mcfighterson trying to solve every problem by fighting. Or casty mccasterson trying to solve every problem by casting. The fact that all your fighting ability is tied into a single number on your character sheet (see BAB) isn't new to D&D, so it's really just a question of how ridiculous do you want your fluff?

Personally, a bard grappling people or sundering weapons with music sounds outright awesome to me, even for mid-level bards. (It's probably not worth an action at high levels, so give it to them when they'll use it, at least.) If it's a level appropriate action, it's a level appropriate action, and groups can decide if the fluff is 'their kind of tea.'

[hogarth]

On the contrary, that sounds terrible to me. I don't want Jumpy McJumperson trying to solve every problem by jumping.

Or fighty mcfighterson trying to solve every problem by fighting. Or casty mccasterson trying to solve every problem by casting.

I agree, having skills called "Fighting" and "Casting" that were also used to solve all problems would be terrible, too.

[DSMatticus]

D&D already has a fighting skill. They call it BAB, and it's a single number tied to level. You go out and you use your fighting skill/BAB to: hit things, disarm things, trip things, sunder things, and nearly all of the other stuff a fighter would ever actually even consider doing in combat. So if you have problems with the mechanics of "one skill to rule them all," you have a problem with the mechanics of BAB. This kind of system is totally precedented mechanically and it works about as well as anything else.

If you have a problem with the fluff of people trying to solve every problem by X, then you have a problem with characters who have one source of phlebtonium. Which is a weird problem, because pretty much all characters only have one source of phlebtonium.

Now, if you're okay with all of a character's abilities being tied to a single level-based number (like fighter), and the fluff of all a character's abilities being tied to a single phlebtonium source (fighters/casters/nearly everybody), that leaves one thing to be offended by, and that's using certain specific skills like jump as a phlebtonium source to do cool things in combat. Which is understandable, because it makes for a pretty ridiculous character concept, and you may not want that in your game at all.

[hogarth]

Now, if you're okay with all of a character's abilities being tied to a single level-based number (like fighter)[..]

I'm not. A class that does nothing but make the same attack roll over and over again is lame.

[Username17]

Now, if you're okay with all of a character's abilities being tied to a single level-based number (like fighter)[..]

I'm not. A class that does nothing but make the same attack roll over and over again is lame.

What if they are using a wide variety of different combat maneuvers and still rolling the same attack roll for each one? What if a class is using a wide variety of spells, but each of them offers the chance to make a save?

---

in any case: I don't think the stunts thing is interesting or relevant. People at high level will be able to activate the stunts, and people at low level won't. The stunts generate a Save or Suck effect when they are activated. Whether they are worth using depends on whether the save or suck is decent for the level the character who is using it is at. I'm guessing that aside from some diamonds in the rough, it will not be.

So what we have is a basic system where low level fighters can't use special combat maneuvers because they lack the skill bonuses to activate them. And high level fighters won't really care to use them, because forcing a single target in melee range to make a save vs. falling down is a fucking insult when the Wizard got his grubby hands on grease nine levels ago.

Basically you're putting "you must be this tall to ride" skill-checks on at-will 1st level spell effects and cantrips. Which means that pretty much no one is going to care at any level unless they stack on some character abilities that synergize with this crap in some way.

I mean seriously, Mearls' abortive Iron Might book came out years ago, so it's not like we don't have data on "roll a skill check, then they roll a save" mechanics.

-Username17

[Ikeren]

I do appreciate his daring and courage to come here to discuss this, however.

[JustinA]

On the contrary, that sounds terrible to me. I don't want Jumpy McJumperson trying to solve every problem by jumping.

So you don't want a system where Jumpy McJumperson can try to solve diplomatic crises by jumping, but you also don't want a system where the DM can tell Jumpy McJumperson that jumping up and down isn't going to make his mommy give him a cookie.

Not sure what to tell you. You've certainly set up an insoluble conundrum for yourself.

But it avoids the problem that saves and skills grow at completely different rates and can't really be rolled against eachother without complication, I suppose. A +1 to DC per 5 or 10 you exceed you the target DC might reward investing in skills a little more, or it might break the system wide open. Probably the latter, either by causing people to accumulate D&D skill cheese or forcing people to use weaker stunts.

We playtested this. Ran into exactly the problem you're describing: Once you allow the action check to set or modify the DC, the system becomes impossible to balance. There's just too many places for skill modifiers to come from.

in any case: I don't think the stunts thing is interesting or relevant. People at high level will be able to activate the stunts, and people at low level won't.

This hasn't been our experience in playtesting. And I'm honestly curious what level character you feel is incapable making a DC 10 check.

You know, the more I think about it, the less I care that the skill check to use a stunt is an autosuccess. As long as degree of success doesn't effect save DC, the difference between doing something reasonable to get a +15 modifer to your favourite skill and doing something supercrazy to get a +90 modifier is really just academic. Only bullrush and aid another are really effected by that sort of nonsense.

Because you can stack multiple effects into a single stunt, the emerging play of the stunt system has been to create more complex/effective stunts as you gain the levels/bonuses.

This is one reason why the system requires you to define the effect of the stunt before performing it (instead of just interpreting the margin of success after the fact). In playtest, the gamble of "how much can I accomplish" was important for keeping the system interesting and non-spammy.

I'm always nervous about high-level performance of mechanics because they're so difficult to reliably playtest. (We can certainly roll up some high-level characters and run 'em through the playtest scenarios, but there's a difference between that and playing the character you've been leveling up personally for the past 12 months.) But with that proviso, the balancing provision of high-level stunting has been action economy. At the very point where people are getting really large stunt effects on auto-success, they're actually having to give up quite a lot to do it. The choice appears to remain relevant and interesting. (Knock on wood.)

TANGENT ALERT: We actually played with the idea of letting characters use an attack action to perform certain stunts. The advantage would have been to provide a dynamic boost to high level fighters (who would be trading less action economy than spellcasters). But the only way to get it to balance would have been for attack-action stunts to require higher stunt DCs. I don't think it's an insoluble idea (and I may return to it in the future), but it turned into a complex equation and we couldn't work out the kinks for L&L.

That's interesting stuff Justin. I'm wondering at the moment about some of the conditions that can be applied through the stunt system as I feel like that's where the system will either shine or bust wide open. If you're willing to talk about it yet I'd like to hear it

Once we settled on the initial framework, we started testing with basically "you can apply any condition". We anticipated this would be broken (and, of course, it was). But it allowed us to start eliminating or modifying over-desirable conditions empirically.

The final list ended up being smaller than we anticipated: Flat-Footed, Prone, Shaken, Slowed, and Stunned. Combined with apply bonuses, applying penalties, boosting speed, forced movement, and causing someone to drop an item, we found that this combination allowed us to easily adjudicate pretty much every stunt players were throwing out.

If I were designing this system for inclusion in an advanced rulebook, there are some additional conditions that we could add in with specific rules limiting and/or defining how they can be used in the stunt system. (Checked, Fatigued, Nauseated, etc.) But given the design goals of L&L, I feel it made sense not to burden the system with a lot of special guidelines (since that's exactly the sort of thing I was working to eliminate throughout the system as a whole).

I do appreciate his daring and courage to come here to discuss this, however.

I just hope it's helpful.

And I appreciate the feedback from everyone. It's good to know where people are coming from and what they're looking for.

[DSMatticus]

e actually played with the idea of letting characters use an attack action to perform certain stunts. The advantage would have been to provide a dynamic boost to high level fighters (who would be trading less action economy than spellcasters). But the only way to get it to balance would have been for attack-action stunts to require higher stunt DCs.

...

Once we settled on the initial framework, we started testing with basically "you can apply any condition". We anticipated this would be broken (and, of course, it was). But it allowed us to start eliminating or modifying over-desirable conditions empirically.

Now, I've read some of your articles over on the Alexandrian, like the bit about the 'death of the wandering monster' and your article on save-or-dies. Throw in what you just said and your fighter preview (I'll have to wait until I see the wizard and how you do spells to be sure, I guess), and I want to say I'm concerned.

You seem to be aware that save-or-sucks are capable of bypassing the hitpoint mechanic to result in an instant KO. You wrote an article on this. I'm going to have to also assume that you are aware save-or-sucks are mostly in the realm of spellcasters. Wizards have grease, charm person, hypnotism, sleep, color spray, cause fear, web, daze monster, hideous laughter, hypnotic pattern, blindness/deafness, ghoul touch, scare, and that's just the first two levels of core spells. Fighters have melee range trip, disarm, bull rush, overrun, sunder, and that's about it. So when we talk about who has the superior ability to inflict save-or-sucks, it's clearly the wizard. You're putting your combat stunts on the level of 'doing things a core fighter can do,' so they are already weaker than spells, right from the start.

Now, you seem to be under the impression that fighters have more staying power and wizards are 'spike' casters, and you blame a lot of the fighter/wizard disparity on the five minute workday (your death of the wandering monster article). But even if it's desirable to have one character who underperforms until the other character runs out of resources (which is another debate), it just isn't true that wizards don't have comparable staying power. We've already established that a first level wizard's spells are at least as powerful, if not more so, than your stunt system. So let's look at a 10th level wizard and see how many spells he has: 4/4/4/3/3/2 before int bonus. That's 16 spells of level 1 or higher, so for sixteen rounds of combat the wizard can perform 'spell stunts' that are strictly superior to the fighter's 'combat stunts.' Sixteen rounds is more than enough to both contribute and dominate most of the day's combat encounters.

What exactly are fighters getting? Their combat stunts are weaker, and wizards aren't going to realistically run out of spells. Even when wizards run out of spells, they can use skills the same way the fighter can to drop combat stunts on people. So for every round of every combat for all time, the wizard has options that are either exactly as good as the fighter's or better. Being a fighter in L&L is strictly inferior to being a wizard (true in 3.5 as well). Looking at your fighter preview only confirms this: really, look at your high-level class features. Supreme cleave, combat reflexes, two-handed blow, inspire awe. Fighters are getting these at the same time wizards are getting 7th-9th level spells. That's a joke. It's a joke in exactly the same way 4 bonus feats were supposed to compare to these feats in the original 3.5.

[Username17]

This hasn't been our experience in playtesting. And I'm honestly curious what level character you feel is incapable making a DC 10 check.

Who is capable of making a check isn't important. The question is who is capable of failing that check. And at first level, that's pretty much everyone. We have had Artificers to kick around for longer than a Mexican presidential term. We honestly do know what happens when you have to make a "very easy" skill check in order to activate an otherwise level appropriate ability: it is terribad. It means that you have like a 10-25% chance of your level appropriate abilities failing and that's awful. Not because it happens constantly, but because it happens at all. Low level play is actually pretty deadly, a crit from a longsword will drop pretty much anyone, so randomly failing at shit in combat is totally unacceptable. It's incompatible with survival at most levels.

Consider Arcane Spell Failure. Yes, a Wizard can wear light armor, and on any particular turn it probably won't come up. But sometimes it does. And sooner or later, it's going to come up when it really matters and then your whole party is going to die and it will be your fault. That is why Wizards don't wear chain shirts, even though they can.

The bottom line is that the game is designed such that team monster is probably going to lose. In fact, any particular encounter is heavily weighted towards the PCs. TPKs are not the norm and they never will be. But if you introduce things that make the PCs fizzle hard at infrequent, random intervals, TPKs become a lot more likely. TPKs happen because a confluence of unlikely failures happen concurrently and the player characters get wiped out by something they were "supposed" to be able to beat. So every time you introduce new ways to fail (critical failures, miss chances, fumbles, power activation rolls, or whatever), you're increasing the chances that your players are going to fail spectacularly. And spectacular failure is what actually ends the game prematurely.

-Username17

[Grek]

TANGENT ALERT: We actually played with the idea of letting characters use an attack action to perform certain stunts. The advantage would have been to provide a dynamic boost to high level fighters (who would be trading less action economy than spellcasters). But the only way to get it to balance would have been for attack-action stunts to require higher stunt DCs. I don't think it's an insoluble idea (and I may return to it in the future), but it turned into a complex equation and we couldn't work out the kinks for L&L.

One reletively simple idea would be to allow stunts to be made as an attack action if and only if they are done using the relevant attack roll and not with a skill. The average attack roll scales linearly with level, and scales faster than HD advancement if you have a BaB of 2/3rds or better without ever getting to the point of being an automatic success.

I'm also somewhat suprised that there's nothing mentioned for the shaken, slowed, flat-footed, stunned, etc. in the stunt rules you went over. And that you weren't able to balance entangled, on fire, sickened, dazzled or deafened in the stunt rules.

[Psychic Robot]

looking at the fighter preview here and I have some questions

1. why is cleave a 3rd level ability
2. why is supreme cleave a 14th level ability
3. why is combat expertise a 9th level ability
4. why is power attack not 2-to-1
5. why is combat reflexes a 15th level ability
6. why is the RNG still fucked with favored weapon
7. why is this the 20th level ability

Inspire Awe (Ex): At 20th level, the fighter’s legendary prowess inspires awe in their allies and opponents. As long as the fighter is not disguised, their allies gain a +2 morale bonus and their enemies suffer a -2 morale penalty on their attack rolls.

8. why do we care if the fighter heals double

also why is everything alphabetized rather than listed by level that is difficult to read

[Maxus]

I do appreciate his daring and courage to come here to discuss this, however.

He seems to be taking the critiquing quite well. Although we can't exactly check to see if his hair's standing on end...

[Stubbazubba]

I commend you for coming out to the Den, for you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. That being said, you'll also find high quality critique and analysis, if somewhat hostile at times.

[Seerow]

This hasn't been our experience in playtesting. And I'm honestly curious what level character you feel is incapable making a DC 10 check.

Who is capable of making a check isn't important. The question is who is capable of failing that check. And at first level, that's pretty much everyone. We have had Artificers to kick around for longer than a Mexican presidential term. We honestly do know what happens when you have to make a "very easy" skill check in order to activate an otherwise level appropriate ability: it is terribad. It means that you have like a 10-25% chance of your level appropriate abilities failing and that's awful. Not because it happens constantly, but because it happens at all. Low level play is actually pretty deadly, a crit from a longsword will drop pretty much anyone, so randomly failing at shit in combat is totally unacceptable. It's incompatible with survival at most levels.

Consider Arcane Spell Failure. Yes, a Wizard can wear light armor, and on any particular turn it probably won't come up. But sometimes it does. And sooner or later, it's going to come up when it really matters and then your whole party is going to die and it will be your fault. That is why Wizards don't wear chain shirts, even though they can.

The bottom line is that the game is designed such that team monster is probably going to lose. In fact, any particular encounter is heavily weighted towards the PCs. TPKs are not the norm and they never will be. But if you introduce things that make the PCs fizzle hard at infrequent, random intervals, TPKs become a lot more likely. TPKs happen because a confluence of unlikely failures happen concurrently and the player characters get wiped out by something they were "supposed" to be able to beat. So every time you introduce new ways to fail (critical failures, miss chances, fumbles, power activation rolls, or whatever), you're increasing the chances that your players are going to fail spectacularly. And spectacular failure is what actually ends the game prematurely.

-Username17

I'm failing to see the difference between a character failing his stunt check 25% of the time, and a Wizard's target making his saving throw 25% of the time and the Fighter missing 25% of the time. Except of course that the stunt has a save DC of its own, but then Fighter miss rates are typically higher than 25% at level 1, and Wizard save DCs aren't generating 75% success at level 1 either.


Not saying I totally buy into this stunt system just yet, but I do not think that just because an ability can possibly fail does not make itself inherently bad. That is a part of the game, especially at low levels.

[DSMatticus]

The net failure chance just is. After all's said and done, the ability has some percentage chance to fail, and that is the number that has to be balanced towards level appropriateness.

If a 50% chance to trip opponent X for 1 round is a level appropriate ability (which it probably isn't, considering wizards have had a 50%+ chance to at least stun opponent X for 1 round since level 1), then the stunt DC and the stunt save DC have to be geared towards that 50% net failure chance.

Unfortunately, the skill side of this equation is completely unpredictable. Skills, depending on what they are and the build, vary from super-sucky to super-awesome. So if there is any chance of stunt failure at all, stunt save DC's need to go up. But due to the fact that D&D did a shit job of balancing skills around levels, the people who can auto-succeed on those tasks enjoy the benefits of higher save DC's and none of the downsides of potential failure on the stunt DC end.

So the only way the stunt system really works is if pretty much everyone just can do every stunt, right off the bat. At least the stunts that correspond to level appropriate maneuvers. Trip, which is weaker than the stun wizards have, should be an instant success on the stunt DC end. And on the save end, it needs to have a 50-ish% chance against equivalent CR opponents. Otherwise, it's significantly weaker than being a wizard and dropping color spray.

[Seerow]

The net failure chance just is. After all's said and done, the ability has some percentage chance to fail, and that is the number that has to be balanced towards level appropriateness.

If a 50% chance to trip opponent X for 1 round is a level appropriate ability (which it probably isn't, considering wizards have had a 50%+ chance to at least stun opponent X for 1 round since level 1), then the stunt DC and the stunt save DC have to be geared towards that 50% net failure chance.

Unfortunately, the skill side of this equation is completely unpredictable. Skills, depending on what they are and the build, vary from super-sucky to super-awesome. So if there is any chance of stunt failure at all, stunt save DC's need to go up. But due to the fact that D&D did a shit job of balancing skills around levels, the people who can auto-succeed on those tasks enjoy the benefits of higher save DC's and none of the downsides of potential failure on the stunt DC end.

So the only way the stunt system really works is if pretty much everyone just can do every stunt, right off the bat. At least the stunts that correspond to level appropriate maneuvers. Trip, which is weaker than the stun wizards have, should be an instant success on the stunt DC end. And on the save end, it needs to have a 50-ish% chance against equivalent CR opponents. Otherwise, it's significantly weaker than being a wizard and dropping color spray.

The other alternative is you can have a few stunts available right away with no DC to use, with a set relatively low (say DC 10-14) saving throw that doesn't improve with anything, for use at low levels before you can make your DC10-15 reliably.

You then have your higher level stunts that kick when you can make those (and higher) dcs without trying, that have variable DCs, something like 10+1/2 skill ranks+skill's linked attribute. (Note that is skill ranks not skill bonus. No, you can't use your 5 +30 rings of jumping with different bonus types to get a DC90 saving throw)

[DSMatticus]

Hm. Skill ranks. Good idea, except I don't think he's using skill ranks: someone said something about 4e skills? I was under the impression he was just using level or 1/2 level and trained/untrained bonus or whatever it is 4e did. In which case it reduces to a DC of 10 + level-derived number + linked attribute, which except for the linked attribute bit is effectively identical to what he's doing: level vs CR table, look up.

So we're back at square one, there: he's got the good parts of that idea, at least. Linked attribute might be worthwhile, but probably won't have a strong effect in the end.

[JustinA]

We honestly do know what happens when you have to make a "very easy" skill check in order to activate an otherwise level appropriate ability: it is terribad.

(looks at the Tome series, filled with abilities that require checks to use them)

Huh. Well. That's interesting.

I have to admit you haven't actually convinced of the validity of the general design principle.

That's 16 spells of level 1 or higher, so for sixteen rounds of combat the wizard can perform 'spell stunts' that are strictly superior to the fighter's 'combat stunts.' Sixteen rounds is more than enough to both contribute and dominate most of the day's combat encounters.

I tend to agree. If you're only seeing 16 rounds of combat in a day and the wizard is free to dedicate all of their spells to combat utility, 3rd Edition is going to break open like a ripe melon by mid-to-high levels.

Honest question: Do you really feel that wizards in your 3E campaign would not have their power increased if they had no daily limit on the number of spells they could cast?

If so, then you've got a problem with 3E that only a roto-rooter would fix (which is beyond the design goals of L&L). If not, then there's something wrong with your premise.

One reletively simple idea would be to allow stunts to be made as an attack action if and only if they are done using the relevant attack roll and not with a skill. The average attack roll scales linearly with level, and scales faster than HD advancement if you have a BaB of 2/3rds or better without ever getting to the point of being an automatic success.

That's a good idea. I wonder if maybe capping it to attack bonus, but still leaving open the option of using skills would work? Might.

He seems to be taking the critiquing quite well. Although we can't exactly check to see if his hair's standing on end...

I've gnawed off my left arm. It's a sad day here in Casa Alexander.

[Draco_Argentum]

Honest question: Do you really feel that wizards in your 3E campaign would not have their power increased if they had no daily limit on the number of spells they could cast?

Honestly? Not really by mid level, assuming they had to stick with their memorised spells for the day. Combatwise they'd be around the same.

Out of combat there would be some things you could do with 20 castings of a spell that would matter. I don't think I'd care that much, wizards are all that and a bag of chips already. Adding some more world dominations is more fluff really.

[hogarth]

On the contrary, that sounds terrible to me. I don't want Jumpy McJumperson trying to solve every problem by jumping.

So you don't want a system where Jumpy McJumperson can try to solve diplomatic crises by jumping, but you also don't want a system where the DM can tell Jumpy McJumperson that jumping up and down isn't going to make his mommy give him a cookie.

I have no idea what the second half of the sentence is, so I can't comment on it. It's not based on anything I said above, as far as I can tell. Could you quote the two things I said that you think are contradicting each other?

[liquid150]

Well, personally, I just think the whole concept of stunts is, itself, stupid. It doesn't really make any intuitive sense, and it feels like a wholly unnecessary addition. It doesn't actually do anything useful, it doesn't fit for flavor, and overall just feels retarded.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the work that goes into something like this. However, this just feels like a copped "at-will ability" from 4E.

In other words, I think it's lame.

[hogarth]

Now, if you're okay with all of a character's abilities being tied to a single level-based number (like fighter)[..]

I'm not. A class that does nothing but make the same attack roll over and over again is lame.

What if they are using a wide variety of different combat maneuvers and still rolling the same attack roll for each one?

I think that, for example, changing 3E so that normal attacks, grapples and trips all used the same attack roll vs. AC would be less interesting than the current system, if that's what you mean.

What if a class is using a wide variety of spells, but each of them offers the chance to make a save?

Likewise, I think if you made every spell require the same saving throw (instead of having the choice of Fort vs. Will vs. Reflex, and having some spells be ranged touch with no save, and having some buff spells where saves are irrelevant, e.g.), then that would also be less interesting than normal 3E.

As noted above by liquid150, 4E is a good example of how encouraging hyperspecialisation in one power is boring.

[tussock]

In other words, I think it's lame.

A design goal is to be compatible with 3e (like, play the same modules against the same statblocks at the same level without breaking anything), which means things Fighters can do will have to be a bit lame.

Three Druids and a Cleric, problem solved. Truism is true.

[Hieronymous Rex]

(looks at the Tome series, filled with abilities that require checks to use them)

You'll need post some examples. I just checked the fighter, and it has all of one ability that requires a roll at all. That being said,if you do find examples of what's being discussed, it might result in changes to the Tomes; the contributors to the Tomes don't consider it perfect.

About stunts themselves: what is the point of the extra roll? Saving throws are essentially a check from another direction; you could have, for instance:

*The save is against the stunt user's attack bonus + 10.
*Opposed save vs attack roll.
*You need a minimum BAB to use different stunts.
*Cut out the save entirely; attacks and touch attacks only.

Admittedly, you are a bit ham-stringed in that in order to keep compatibility, you are obligated to have reflex saves, which don't really make sense (given that touch AC, which means virtually the same thing, also exists).