FrankTrollman wrote:Koumei wrote: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