New Edition of Rules

[virgil]

The former. I suppose I keep forgetting that a strategic advantage is still a synergistic bonus, and that it can actually be described as a pure bonus at times.

Ideally it would be such that optimization won't push you into crazy-town (or the choices are set-up ahead of time to avoid this), though there are people who will actively do what they can to make themselves svck "in the name of concept" (had a player outright do this once).

And what about that idea I mentioned earlier, where imbalance in defenses is numerically weighted toward the superior; where a slight disadvantage in one allows for a great advantage in another? This could be in raw numerical superiority in an advantageous ratio, such as my previously mentioned -1 Reflex for +3 Fortitude; or it could be multiple different defenses that you're better at (either way, the bonuses exceed the penalties). Obviously there should be a cap (in either direction), but it would hopefully encourage variance.

[Username17]

I think that it is important that the techniques your character know vary in bonus by no more than +/-2. Furthermore, that the difference between attacking someone's best save and their worst be no more than +/-5.

That is, the best you're possibly going to get against a PC is a +9 bonus from your stat against their defense stat granting only a +4.

And that's you with an 18 in your attribute attacking your opponent's weak spot where they only have a 7. It'll occassionally get worse than that for monsters, because monsters occassionally are supposed to have glass jaws.

If we remove all the crap like Weapon Focus and the like from the mix, the attacker running in with a net bonus of +0 to +5 is something which can well accommodated.

-Username17

[Crissa]

Even if the bonus you get to roll maxes out...

...Having a variety of bonuses and penalties isn't entirely bad. I don't mind that someone is so good that the distance penalty no longer applies to the because they have a pile of bonuses that push it off the max. It certainly beats a series of unending flavor feats which negate specific named bonuses entirely rather than merely their severity.

-Crissa

[Username17]

It would be better to represent someone who is so good that range is no obstacle by specifically reducing the range category that his attacks count as coming from for penalty purposes than to give him a flat bonus. After all, were he to simply get a flat bonus which was greater than the range pnalty, he'd be pushed off the RNG when attacking people who were actually at close range.

The numeric goal is:

• People should have a substantial chance to not hit with their attacks against level appropriate opposition so that there is genuine effect when they roll high or low.
  
  but
  
  
• People should accomplish something on those turns when they don't hit so that people don't become frustrated and bored when they get a run of bad numbers.

And really, we can't hand people scaling bonuses if we want to do that. The +3 sword has to go.

-Username17

[Crissa]

That's not at all what I said, Frank. I don't mind limits on total applied bonus. If you can only have a total of +5 to an action, I don't care if you have bonuses totaling +10. You still only get +5.

Why isn't that an option you're willing to look at?

-Crissa

[Koumei]

For one thing, too many DMs will say "That's a bit arbitrary and stupid, I think it'll be fine if we lift that restriction."

They will then complain that the game is unbalanced

Trust me on this. I've seen people complain about what their own houserules have caused before, chalking it up to the system itself. I've also seen a DM say "Spell slots are dumb, let's just convert them to MP" (never see a low level spell ever again! I didn't even abuse his "It's balanced to not put a cap on the expenditure, too. If you want to meta-magic all your MP away in turn one, go ahead." rule) and "All bonuses should stack. If you have two rings of protection, it makes sense that you get the bonus from each."

They don't understand how it works.

[Crissa]

I don't see that as a problem.

-Crissa

[Username17]

A bonus should provide a bonus.

-Username17

[Crissa]

And a bonus that negates a situation which may not ever happen isn't worth writing down.

-Crissa

[Username17]

1198191237[/unixtime]]And a bonus that negates a situation which may not ever happen isn't worth writing down.

-Crissa

I disagree. Especially if these are expansive conditions you may be able to introduce.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

I actually don't like stuff that negates other penalties or bonuses you may face, becuase it cheapens the game in my opinion. Stuff that says "you may ignore cover" or whatever, ends up making the game simpler and takes away people's options. Everytime you take away the impact of terrain, whether through removing range penalties, flanking, cover or letting people move through difficult terrain, an element of the game goes away. Take away too many and it's just a bunch of minis sitting on a dull featureless void where position and terrain no longer matter.

I think most of us like the tactical wargame aspect of D&D and don't want to see it become gradually dumbed down as characters gain more abilities.

[angelfromanotherpin]

1198193861[/unixtime]]I actually don't like stuff that negates other penalties or bonuses you may face, becuase it cheapens the game in my opinion. Stuff that says "you may ignore cover" or whatever, ends up making the game simpler and takes away people's options. Everytime you take away the impact of terrain, whether through removing range penalties, flanking, cover or letting people move through difficult terrain, an element of the game goes away. Take away too many and it's just a bunch of minis sitting on a dull featureless void where position and terrain no longer matter.

Yeah, because spotters, explosives, indirect fire, and vehicles reduced modern warfare to that dull featureless void. No, wait, I'm wrong. In fact, asymmetric capabilities are what create interesting tactical situations. If one side can ignore cover, the other side stops taking cover and a new dynamic has been established.

[RandomCasualty]

1198194690[/unixtime]]
Yeah, because spotters, explosives, indirect fire, and vehicles reduced modern warfare to that dull featureless void. No, wait, I'm wrong. In fact, asymmetric capabilities are what create interesting tactical situations. If one side can ignore cover, the other side stops taking cover and a new dynamic has been established.

The problem is the new dynamic is boring, because stuff isn't added, it's just taken away. So the other side stops doing anything remotely tactical and just consigns itself to stand there and fire away with full attacks.

I mean take your typical uber archer in 3.5. Cover don't matter, being in a melee doesn't matter, range doesn't matter, concealment doesn't matter. So ranged combat against these guys means just standing around in the featureless void and firing. That's it, because that's all you can do.

The game has actually become less tactical, because the castle and its complex system of arrow slits is now useless. It doesn't matter if you're standing in the center of an open field firing arrows or if you're firing through a narrow opening. Because they're the exact same modifier. In fact, all terrain is effectively worthless.

[Username17]

Again, I disagree. The uber archer in that case has transformed the enemy defensive fortification into a liability, putting the tactical onus on the defenders. Now it behooves them to close range with the archer and try to stab him in the face.

So by introducing that option, you've got a character who has changed the tactical paradigm from "how can the attacker get into the fortress" into one in which the defenders must ask themselves "how best can we sortie upon these bastards?"

It's not a reduction in tactics, it's a a change in the tactical mode. And while a battle between two characters who both benefitted from these endowments would border on the inane, as long as capabilities in various characters vary the differences magnify the potential tactical quandaries.

-Username17

[Crissa]

When the DM arbitrates, conditionals are harder to force than numbers.

I've been in a wide number of games - and very few have DMs felt comfortable enough to fudge the numbers as much as they are conditions.

If it were the players adapting, I don't mind. But the DM needs to be able to play simply, and that generally means not adapting.

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

1198196277[/unixtime]]Again, I disagree. The uber archer in that case has transformed the enemy defensive fortification into a liability, putting the tactical onus on the defenders. Now it behooves them to close range with the archer and try to stab him in the face.

Only it doesn't really turn it into a liability. It just nullifies it. So instead of standing behind an arrow slit, you might as well just stand in front of the gate. Presumably because you're firing out of an arrow slit, then you're an archer, so rushing in melee doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense for you.

It's not that you're going to change tactics, because you're talking about ranged character versus ranged character. All you're basically doing is taking every arrow slit and piece of partial cover on the map and erasing it. And it's not like hiding behind the arrow slit is tactically worse for you, it's just not doing anything. In effect it wouldn't matter where the fuck you stand because now everything is equal, which basically means your choice of where to stand doesn't even matter. Now, tactical reversal can work, but this is pure tactical nullification.

It doesn't make the fight more interesting, it just takes away factors to consider and dumbs down the strategy required.

[virgil]

If the entire situation is archer vs archer, then the tactical depth is shallow at best. And if there are only uber archers on both sides of the conflict (so any and all attacks ignore non-total cover), then you have a homogenously awesome conflict and the strategy has been simplified in your mind to virtually nothing anyway.

As your power approaches infinity and lose limitation after limitation, then yes, the game becomes a tactical void where it's simply two forces trading attacks. You know what? At that point, it's divine conflict; and do you expect gods to roll around, dodge caltrops, & hide in arrow slits? All of the stories I know of that involve conflict on such a scale actually avoid actual fights and it becomes a game of intrigue and political manipulation (or an orgy of power and explosions that looks pretty).

Now there's a facet to consider, do we want the levels to apply to social trickery? There are many a story of regular schmucks pulling a fast one on the powerful (be it archmage, warlord, superhero, or god), and making it levelled means that's never going to happen.

[Crissa]

There's many stories of regular schmucks defeating huge challenges, too.

Does making it leveled mean that will never happen?

Anyhow, I'd rather a numerical limit that was known than a series of unending tactical changes like 'cover doesn't apply' - as much as I like tactical changes vs numbers for differences between classes and races, I don't like it for differences between levels.

Also, it hints at the unending stupid feats like 'Fortuitous Toss'.

-Crissa

[Username17]

A penalty reduction or negation is just a situational bonus which is defined as not helping to push a character off the Random Number Generator. I sincerely don't understand why you have a problem with it.

That being said, things should be halved or eliminated, never "reduced by 3." Nothing is more frustrating than finding out that turning your steel sword into half fire damage is a net damage loss because the target is more resistant to steel than fire, but the fire resistance counts and the steel resistance counts separately. Argh.

Creatures should be Fire Resistant (half damage) or Fire Immune (no damage).

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

1198194690[/unixtime]]
Yeah, because spotters, explosives, indirect fire, and vehicles reduced modern warfare to that dull featureless void. No, wait, I'm wrong. In fact, asymmetric capabilities are what create interesting tactical situations. If one side can ignore cover, the other side stops taking cover and a new dynamic has been established.

Radar -> Chaff

Good ranged weapons -> Not dressing in gaudy colours

Cannons -> Redesign of static fortifications

Machine guns -> trenches -> tanks

Etc.

And rpg doesn't have that. You have the rules and once you ignore them all new ones don't spring up to root your abilities in different ways. Without that it will devolve into two guys who stand still and trade attacks.

[Username17]

1198232956[/unixtime]]

1198194690[/unixtime]]
Yeah, because spotters, explosives, indirect fire, and vehicles reduced modern warfare to that dull featureless void. No, wait, I'm wrong. In fact, asymmetric capabilities are what create interesting tactical situations. If one side can ignore cover, the other side stops taking cover and a new dynamic has been established.

Radar -> Chaff

Good ranged weapons -> Not dressing in gaudy colours

Cannons -> Redesign of static fortifications

Machine guns -> trenches -> tanks

Etc.

And rpg doesn't have that. You have the rules and once you ignore them all new ones don't spring up to root your abilities in different ways. Without that it will devolve into two guys who stand still and trade attacks.

At the limit of infinite levels maybe. But at the limit of 20 or 30 levels that's not true at all. You've got a guy whose psychic blasts go through cover who starts putting up walls of thorns and you've got the blind archer who starts calling up mists. The fact that individual characters on either side ignore or halve penalties from various situations cause them to manipulate the battlefield more until a theoretical endpoint of tactical versatility which a level-system can simply define as unreachable.

---

Which isn't to say that you can't include higher level tactical considerations to step up to the plate by the time lower level tactical considerations are bypassed by many battle participants. You could, for example, have an entire RPS battle with flight, high winds, and ground crawling plant tendrils. The idea that tactics necessarily become simpler as levels and abilities increase is batshit insane. No level-based system has ever worked that way.

If anything, we need to handwave away a lot of lower-level concerns just to make the tactics not become completely intractable at higher levels as characters walk in with double sided pieces of paper filled with crazy.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

1198234289[/unixtime]]
At the limit of infinite levels maybe. But at the limit of 20 or 30 levels that's not true at all. You've got a guy whose psychic blasts go through cover who starts putting up walls of thorns and you've got the blind archer who starts calling up mists. The fact that individual characters on either side ignore or halve penalties from various situations cause them to manipulate the battlefield more until a theoretical endpoint of tactical versatility which a level-system can simply define as unreachable.

Thats not quite what I meant. The reason the evolution of warfare example is invalid is that defense and offense evolve in tandem and unpredictably. An RPG makes the evolution predictable, especially after people have a bunch of games under their belts. Simple penalty ignore abilities also make it hard for defense to keep evolving at all. Once you ignore cover the enemy abilities that grant cover are gone.

You can get around this with good design but that doesn't make mentioning it pointless.

The idea that tactics necessarily become simpler as levels and abilities increase is batshit insane. No level-based system has ever worked that way.

I think RC's point is that a monotonic decrease in the number of negative conditions you care about will make tactics simpler. If low level penalties are being taken out there need to be high level ones introduced.

[RandomCasualty]

1198240021[/unixtime]]
I think RC's point is that a monotonic decrease in the number of negative conditions you care about will make tactics simpler. If low level penalties are being taken out there need to be high level ones introduced.

Yeah, exactly.

If you're eliminating cover or concealment, then you need something to replace it. SuperCover or SuperConcealment or some other new ability that people have to contend with that fits in a similar tactical role.

The problem is that in general tactical mechanics aren't added, they're just taken away. And eventually you're left with nothing besides boring old standard attacks.

[Username17]

The problem is that in general tactical mechanics aren't added, they're just taken away. And eventually you're left with nothing besides boring old standard attacks.

That's a concern of course, but you do realize that there is no danger of that actually happening, right? Seriously, people are getting new tactical abilities all the time. The battlefield is filling up with walls of ice and clouds of locusts and summoned flame squirrels and it's really complicated at high levels.

Having people clear away giving a damn about low level terrain effects is only fair when the world is gradually filling up with high level terrain effects. Indeed, it's probably the only way to stay sane.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1198259222[/unixtime]]
That's a concern of course, but you do realize that there is no danger of that actually happening, right? Seriously, people are getting new tactical abilities all the time. The battlefield is filling up with walls of ice and clouds of locusts and summoned flame squirrels and it's really complicated at high levels.

Having people clear away giving a damn about low level terrain effects is only fair when the world is gradually filling up with high level terrain effects. Indeed, it's probably the only way to stay sane.

Actually there is a danger. This is because abilities are ignoring Mechanics, not terrain. If you could like shoot through stone walls or wood walls or whatever, that wouldn't be a problem. The thing is that regardless of what uber walls you get, they can't provide you cover, ever. Because the cover mechanic is gone.

So an adamantine wall or the cover from a web spell or whatever, it all basically doesn't mean dick.

Now flight you can deal with by having three dimensional terrain. Solid fog for instance, can create difficult terrain for flyers.

Unfortunately when you ge to mechanical removal stuff, like magical flight preventing creatures from being tripped or feats that ignore cover, you've actually just lost a core mechanic, and you can't really get it back. It's just, gone...

High level play really does get into tactical reduction, where the tactical wargame becomes simpler and simpler at its core.