3.5X Edition's Biggest Design Problem

[Lago_AM3P]

It's taken awhile, but I'm starting to notice a disturbing design system.

That is, people are writing new abilities and feats and options on the idea that people will use things exactly as intended within a narrow range of scope (hopefully buying no other books). Of course, this fails for two reasons:

These mouthbreathers keep shitting out books at a mind-boggling rate.

They simultaneously expect us to ignore material that came from earlier books.

That's how we have our latest sweet geomancer version.

That's how druids can wildshape into beholders with functional eyes.

That's the entire design principle behind The Word.

That's why we have idiots who seriously consider a level of psion for the Supernatural Transformation feat.

Maybe these dumbasses should keep in mind the material they print from previous books. I mean, I know these people think we have short memories, but I still remember the horror of the feat Multitasking. Remember that shit?

And in conclusion I hate D&D now. I actually don't want a new edition to come out soon. If it does with this task force of retarded clowns, the game is going to suck, it's going to go under like 2nd Edition, and then we'll have to wait for a new company to come up with something that doesn't blow.

Here's hoping it's FanPro. But that'll take forever. I might like, get a life by then.

[RandomCasualty]

Nah. you have to expect that you'll get a lot of ability combos that weren't intended. The thing is that you've often got products being written simulataneously as others, and further not every designer is going to have fully read each and every book produced by everyone else.

Everyone should certainly be familiar with the core, but as far as supplements, I think its' an impossible dream.

And they must keep producing expansion books, it's how they make their money. Crunch sells better than setting material or modules, so that's what they make.

[Josh_Kablack]

Lago, I want to agree with you, I really do, but I just can't.

I mean the design principle that everyone plays with Core + "This Book" does get WotC into a lot of trouble rules-wise. But my issue is that pretty much every other game system ever has been written with the design princile that everyone plays with everything - "What the GM won't allow". And if those are the only two choices, I gotta pick the first one.

I mean polymorph madness is pretty bad, but I have a clearer idea how to run polymorph than I do a Gurps Conan Cyberpunk Russia Bunnies and Burries Humanx game.

Ideally, I'd like to see a more modular approach in design and book production. You could have the Core Books (PHB + DMG + MM) which are all you need to play and never reference any books, then you could also have various "Option" books (The Complete Series, Races of, etc) which offer new character abilities and only reference Core, then you could have the Setting books (FR, Greyhawk, Ebberon), which reference Core *and* prior books in that setting and tend to include a chapter on incorporating or excluding material from the "Option" books. But that's not about to happen.

[power_word_wedgie]

Meh, I'll admit it. The problem whih I have with rules is that there are just some rules I don't agree with. For example, I hate the weapon sizing rule (yeah, I love playing halfling so I got hosed majorly) and I never really liked the material damage resistance.

As for the rules, I'm thinking that it is becoming more of an "a la carte" system where you pick and choose what you want to play. I see both side: one one side you have the nice and tight rules but on the other you have every option under the Sun to allow for variety. The problem is that the latter can have various rules combined for a "massive rule" that overruns everything. There are times where it is in common rules, but often it is also in situation where characters are taking some rules that flavor-wise are really meant to be extremely unique. And so the argument become, "How do I know whether my character would really have this ability or not?" Maybe if they made it a percentile thing for qualification for the extremely unique skills, feats, and classes then the question of should be character really be able to know it would be answered so bickering matches noted on boards between DMs and players would subside to amiciable solutions. (Personally I've never been a part of one - usually my DM and myself have been able to talk our way though stuff)

[PhoneLobster]

I agree pretty much entirely with Lago.

And NO I do not think it is impossible for expansion books to be written in a way which meshes in with everything else written.

This isn't stuff being written by several different companies. Its WOTC, a large (as far as RPG companies go) group with like editors and managers and designers and junk as well as various writers.

Is it too much to expect their writers to have read any and EVERY WOTC publication considered "current" rules?

HELL NO, University students are expected to slog through far worse reference material per term, let alone once in a career.

Even if you don't make them do that then surely any publisher of this sort of material employing EDITORS should by all rights have an editor, or better yet a team of editors who's job it is to make the new rules fit the old rules as part of the editing process.

Even without that a company employing MANAGERS and DESIGNERS, and you know, people who's job it is to plan the future directions of the product should have those people setting guidelines for future rules expansions. Not only producing limits and instructions for future rules but also actually anticipating and designing future rules that account for current rules by producing them at the same time but staggering the publication of the expansions the different rules appear in.

And if all that were not in place they damn well should be play testing the lot and making changes when it becomes clear where and how the rules fail to work or mesh with prior rules sets.

So no way is it an impossible dream to wish that WOTC would write with some quality and consistancy. Instead its a dream that a company that employs managers, designers, and editors might actually make those idiots do their jobs. And that they'd suck the minor expense of actually doing SOME playtesting...

If anyone says thats an impossible dream I'll kick them, in the ass.

[dbb]

1146445524[/unixtime]]
I mean polymorph madness is pretty bad, but I have a clearer idea how to run polymorph than I do a Gurps Conan Cyberpunk Russia Bunnies and Burries Humanx game.

That's kind of not entirely a fair comparison, though. Running that game is more like running a D&D Eberron Greyhawk Forgotten Realms Planescape game -- the source material is designed to work under the same mechanics, and it can work together, but it's not really meant to.

I do, however, agree in principle with the modular design ideal. In fact, I feel like there should be a fairly strict hierarchy of playtesting and balancing -- mind you, playtesting and balancing at all would be an improvement, but I'm thinking something like this:

Core Books are the things you need to play the game. PHB, DMG, MM and additional Monster Manuals that aren't explicitly tied to a particular setting. These are books that all other material should be balanced against and playtested with. If it doesn't work well with these, it's crap and it's useless.

Core Expansions are things that offer expansions to existing material. The Complete series is here, the Manual of the Planes, Deities and Demigods, etc., are probably here -- these are all things that support the default play dynamics, rather than introduce new mechanics. Material at this level should be balanced both against core material and against other Core Expansions.

Setting Books are pretty much what the name implies; they describe some aspect of a setting in whatever amount of detail. Material at this level should be balanced against Core, mostly balanced against Core Expansions, and not balanced at all against other Setting Books that are not part of the same setting. If Greyhawk material is not balanced when used with Eberron material, I don't really care.

Option Books are books that introduce and support entirely new play dynamics. Savage Species, Book of Vile Darkness, XPH, whatever -- these are Option Books. They should be balanced against Core material, and at least a token effort to balance them against Core Expansions should be made, but I don't care if they aren't balanced against Setting Books or against each other. This is the "advanced players" section of the game line -- if you buy this stuff the expectation should be that you're able and willing to do some balancing to shoehorn it into whatever else you're using in a balanced fashion.

--d.

[power_word_wedgie]

dbb: I really see what you are saying, but in and onto itself, by introducing expansion onto the existing rules, aren't you already introducing new dynamics to play? Really, I'm thinking that this may be part of the problem: by offering these expansions people think that it isn't introducing new gaming dynamics when in fact it is - even when that the new expansion material is not meant to be that way. When you introduce a new feat, spell, or skill, you're going to change the play dynamics in some way. Yeah, play testing may catch some of it, but there's no way that it will catch it all.

[RandomCasualty]

Well, lets remember the fundamental flaw. The foundation stone, the core rules itself, are not balanced standalone. Druids are way better than fighters. Wizards are better than bards, and so on.

There is no balance point to start with because the intial classes going in are out of balance.

Asking supplement books to create some sort of balance when you have spells like polymorph any object out there is nuts. The complete warrior isn't written by Jesus and it's not going to fix all the problems with the world.

The main "design problem" is that they don't have an even foundation to build upon.

[PhoneLobster]

When you introduce a new feat, spell, or skill, you're going to change the play dynamics in some way. Yeah, play testing may catch some of it, but there's no way that it will catch it all.

But change isn't bad. Its Bad change which is bad.

Having writers conversant with the existing rules, editors policing the new rules for stupidity, designers carefully planning the new rules in advance and play testers testing the new rules before release means you end up with less in the way of bad unanticipated changes and more in the way of good planned changes.

WOTC sucks more and more because they cut corners more and more and produce crap quality material more and more.

Nobody half cooks a cake and says "Well gee I guess it was always inevitable that some parts of it won't taste nice, and anyway how could anyone possible have prevented it from not getting entirely cooked? A cake we actually attempted to cook all the way through, thats an impossible dream."

(edit: and to extend the metaphor to RC's post, no one says "well gee the first cake I cooked had really unpleasant dried fruit in it, I guess I'm just going to have to make all the rest of my cakes with detergent and rat poison in them")

[power_word_wedgie]

Oh, I appreciate that. However, IMHO, all I'm trying to highlight is that really there is core and there is non-core because once you anything, even if it is meant to be an expansion of an existing rule, then you have changed the dynamics in play. Really, the only way not to is to do nothing.

As for improvement in bad rules, this is onethat has always got me thinking. Really, would I prefer to buy material $5-10 more so that the system is "tighter?" (Seriously, I'm not trying to belittle the option - it is an excellent question) Yeah, there is always yelling at the existing guys, "Hey, do a better job or you all are fired" and maybe that is an option. I can appreciate why they don't want to use free playtesters - even with all of the NDAs under the Sun, just go over to EnWorld and you can hear about the system from the "free playtesters" waybefore the release. And, yeah you can go around sueing all of them, but them you get the wonderful reputation of the latter days of TSR. So, I do agree that it isn't "impossible", but there are some things that would have to be done to make sure it happened. YMMV.

[dbb]

Maybe "play dynamics" was a bad choice of phrase. Or maybe it's just that I'm not seeing the problem the same way other folks do -- it's totally possible.

But ... you do see what I'm driving at, don't you? I have a hard time explaining exactly why Complete Warrior is a book of an entirely different order than Savage Species, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is. Yes, CW introduces things that change the way we play the game, but not in the same way that BoVD does, or that SS does, or even that the XPH does.

CW is about having more options with which to play the game the same old way we've always played it. SS is about playing the game in a way that's not "the same old way we've always played it" -- at least, as far as 3.x goes; the monster-as-character play dynamic itself has a long history in D&D games (and has not worked well in any of them).

It's not that I expect perfection even from the Core books -- but I expect more care and effort in balance from published material the further up the ladder you go. Or at least, I'd like to be able to say that's what I expected.

--d.

[Josh_Kablack]

Actually, I always thought that the main design problem was something like this:

1. In any RPG system characters can have combinations of abiltiies.

2. The possible number of combinations is going to be a function of the number of abilities.
2a. Only in rare cases will this function be a polynomial, and in those cases it will usually be a high-degree polynomial. (For example, looking at D&D levels 1-20 feats only and neglecting bonus feats, there are only N^7 ability combinations, where N is the number of feats available)

3. In order for a game company to stay in business, it must sell new product.
3a. Most game companies include new abilties in their new product

4. If the number of abilities is still growing, then the number of possible combinations of abilties is growing at a faster (usually exponentially so) rate.

5. Evaluating all possible ability combinations is impossible before all abilities have been written.

Thus, perfect playtesting in any live and supported system is actually impossible, and perfect playtesting in any dead or completed system is still going to be computationally intractable.

Thus since perfect playtesting is going to be either impossible or very expensive on a product which is not generating new sales, it is not in game companies' intrest to even attempt it, and they are better served by using more cost effective methods, such as consumer feedback, editorial discretion, or abandoning playtesting altogether.

That's the real problem, and the only solutions for it are

1. Consumers can stop buying unplaytested games (good luck with that)

2. Games can contain much smaller numbers of abilities and combinations. (Like anybody would buy those)

3. Games can be written with all abilities in the first book, and later books consisting solely of examples, settings and advice (ala HERO). This is the only solution that's even remotely viable, and it's still not very good. Any game that has characters sufficiently customizable enough for us to find interesting is going to have a very intractable number of ability combinations. Seriously: how many different HERO characters can you make in a 100+150 supers game with 60 active points? It's a finite number*, but you probably can't calculate it before the sun burns out.

*Well, it's finite if you exclude Duplication, Multiform, Follower and Summon chains and you also exclude all flavor aspects so that a guy with a 6d6 web entangle and a DNPC(Normal 11-) Aunt May counts as the same character as the guy with a 6d6 ice entangle and a DNPC(Normal, 11-) buddy Jimmy.

[power_word_wedgie]

1146453846[/unixtime]]But ... you do see what I'm driving at, don't you? I have a hard time explaining exactly why Complete Warrior is a book of an entirely different order than Savage Species, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is. Yes, CW introduces things that change the way we play the game, but not in the same way that BoVD does, or that SS does, or even that the XPH does.

I understand what you are trying to say. However, IMHO the disconnect is that it is just an illusion.

I'm a designer but I'll admit up front that it isn't gaming material. However, in my line of work, the saying is that it is the stuff that should look straight-forward will be the stuff that will trip you up. The easy stuff (ie expansion of existing rules) is going to be harder than it look and the hard stuff (ie creation of new rules) will be easier than it looks. Maybe gaming material is different, but my gut feeling is telling me, "No way!"

I can possibly understand where setting books are separate - you're not going to have FR feats in Ebberon. However, beyond that, just declaring all other accessories non-core removes a boatload of mines - there becomes more of a uniform notion of what material needs to be.

Josh: Nice analysis.

[RandomCasualty]

1146452589[/unixtime]]
(edit: and to extend the metaphor to RC's post, no one says "well gee the first cake I cooked had really unpleasant dried fruit in it, I guess I'm just going to have to make all the rest of my cakes with detergent and rat poison in them")

Actually the cake metaphor would be.
"The basic cake has rat poison and detergent in it and we want frosting we can put on that makes the cake edible."

I mean imagine you've been given the task of writing the complete warrior. You have an idea for this new prestige class.

What do you balance it against?

An average core fighter?
A twinked out core fighter/barbarian/ranger?
A moderately optimzied core cleric?
A nonoptimized core bard?
A fully optimized core druid?
A partially optimized core monk?
Monsters of a corresponding CR?

Because the core is not balanced agaisnt itself, the supplement writer doesn't even have a balance to go by. There is no right answer to this question, only wrong answers. Regardless of what he prints, you can always pick one of those balance points (or any of thousands of other points) that will show that his new class is unbalanced. Forget about feat/PrC combos from three different splat books, this is just one PrC + core.

And It's a no win situation.

[Neeek]

Here's the thing: I've read probably 95% of *everything* ever written(that was crunch) in a 3.5 book. I'm not getting paid for it. If you *paid* me, I could easily read all of it and retain most of what I've read. All of us here can. It's not that hard, even with the 1000+ pages of rules. You just need to keep the categories straight.


The other problem is the poor editting that goes on. In the last week and a half, the WotC Psionics board came up with this list of problems with the Complete Psionics. I noticed at least 15 of those things on my first read-through. Why is this so hard?

EDIT: Also, what's with the lack of errata on things that are obviously wrong, like the Rainbow Servant's text/table disagreement? They'd have to be actively ignoring it to not notice, since people make lists of these things for them, for free.

[Username17]

While comprehensive playtesting is impossible, basic playtesting is easy. It doesn't take a fully integrated recombinatorial to figure out that the Swashbuckler, Hexblade, and Samurai from CW al get their asses handed to them by enemies of equal level out of the Monster Manual.

Is it really that hard to figure out that an ability that gives you +1 o a save when your class doesn't get that as a good save isn't an ability? Is it really hard to figure out that empty warrior levels are an NPC class that players don't respect?

Some things shouldn't even require playtesting. We've all played a lot of D&D, we know that playing a Bugbear as a 4th level character is a joke, and playing a Minotaur as an 8th level character isn't even funny. We don't have to do it, it's blindingly obvious.

---

But the problem isn't just that people are riting rules that they know aren't good and then noone is stopping them. The problem is that there isn't even basic direction for what rules terms are going to mean. Consider the Prestige Class Prerequisite. Possibly the most important single rule for upplements, as new prestige classes are the portion of each new product most likely to see play (since a 20th level character has taken 20 levels and only 7 feats). Do you lose the powers of the prestige class when you lose the prereqs?

The DMG and Complete Divine say no.
The Complete Warrior and Races of the Dragon say yes.
Other sources imply it one way or the other.

FTW?

That's the problem. Not that developement cycles are going simultaneously without inter-department communication. It's a game company with a huge product turnover rate, you can't avoid stuff like that. But the thing where different designers don't even agree on what the Core Rules are, that's inexcusable.

-Username17

[Fwib]

Can you please give page numbers etc. for where in the DMG and Complete Divine it says that you keep your prestige class powers etc. if you no longer have the entry requirements?

I presume that it is implicit rather than explicit? Do you mean the '10th-level power of the Dragon Disciple makes you ineligible to join the class' thing?

[Username17]

1146506910[/unixtime]]Can you please give page numbers etc. for where in the DMG and Complete Divine it says that you keep your prestige class powers etc. if you no longer have the entry requirements?

I presume that it is implicit rather than explicit? Do you mean the '10th-level power of the Dragon Disciple makes you ineligible to join the class' thing?

The definition of the prerequisites of a prestige class is "characters must meet requirements before they can take their first level of a prestige class."

And then on top of that, you by defintion don't meet the the prereqs of Dragon Disciple or Ur Priest once you have those classes. So it's not just that the definition of a prestige class requirement excludes needing to meet it every second of every day once you are in that class - it's also that many prestige classes in those products are written to the exclusion of that being possible.

-Username17

[Fwib]

So aside from PrCs which remove their own requirements, it doesn't explicitly say 'you can keep your powers when you no longer have the prereqs' anywhere that you know of?

What I'm getting at, I think, is that 'you never said I can't' isn't a great argument for rules.

I think that each PrC ought to have its own rules for 'ex-PrC' - as the Paladin and things do, then we wouldn't have this problem.

Make that 'should have had' rather than 'ought to have'

[Username17]

In this case, the "it never says I can't" refers to the people who claim that you lose anything when your prereqs go away. It doesn't even require you to have prereqs to take the second level. You don't prereqs to take "a level" of the the class, or "any level" of the class" or even "to take" the class. No!

It specifically takes extra words to say that you need it for the first level. Once you have the class at all, you're home free unless the class has later additional prereqs that kick in like the Sensates do.

So when you take level one of Ur Priest, you can cast divine spells, but that doesn't matter because you don't need to not cast divine spells to take level 2 of Ur Priest.

The argument that isn't good is the one where people say that you do need prereqs on a continuous basis because that's how feats that aren't bonus feats work.

-Username17

[User3]

Infinite new material is possible, but only if you do one simple thing: tell everyone what a character of X level should be capable of doing.

Sure, its a little boring, but we all know how this works if we don't do it. If we don't know what level a PC should be flying, then we don't know how long Titantic Tigers and Fiendish Dire Bears are real threats. Is it character level 5, when most spellcasters get Fly, or is it character level 9 when most people invest in a griffon, or is it their listed CR of 15+?

Once you know what a character should be doing at X level, you can then create infinite numbers of new abilities and not worry too much about "broken-ness." Crazy charge builds that stack half a dozen feats and class features to one-shot dragons.....that stuff goes out the window if you can honestly say something like "yeh, at level 20 a fighting guy should be doing around 50 points of damage with each of his three attacks, or one attack of 100 points of damage with a chance to incapacitate an enemy."

Once you know what should be happening at X level, you can objectively rate a character's abilities. If one character is sacrificng ten class features to do the same thing as another character who is using five class features(or less than one, in the case of spellcasters), we all will know who is getting boned in that equation. By the same token, if you are looking at a PrC or feat or class or item and you are finding that it is not letting a character hit his or her "breakpoints" of appropriate abilities (like average damage, counters, movement forms, fun or flavorful tactics, etc), you can go back to the drawing board until you have it right.

Once we get that crap cleared up, we can get to the business of playing DnD. Personally, I'd prefer a game where the creativity you invest into the game comes out in RP and play, and not character creation where you do crazy crap to get a decent character like looking through every published book for a viable build, only to bargain with a DM for an hour or two.

[Fwib]

Ah well, I guess until that halcyon day, we're all stuck with DM-bargaining

(unless we have a DM who either allows everything, has rulings for everything, or just says "no!" to everything (like a friend of mine does))

[RandomCasualty]

1146513470[/unixtime]]Infinite new material is possible, but only if you do one simple thing: tell everyone what a character of X level should be capable of doing.

Yeah, the problem is that D&D isn't on a design model like that. D&D is based around the M:tG game model, where new abilities power creep characters, and the only time things get toned down is when abilities are cycled out (such as not allowing 3.0 material anymore).

And like M:tG you've got different kinds of games, crazy Type 1 anything goes games, where you're going to have one round kills most of the time since everyone combines the best of everything.

Then you've got more limited types which cut down on what material can be used, which in turn cuts the power of characters down.

Unfortunately, as it's written, making a character in D&D is always going to be a deck building exercise.

I'd love for them to buckle down and try to set coherent level limits, but I dont' think that's ever going to happen, beacuse that means they'll have to stop the power creep, and power creep is what's selling their books.

Remember, they want people to buy their books, and you wouldn't do that if the next book didn't have anything useful to power up your character. They're selling to PCs not DMs, and that means power creep is their main selling point.

[Book]

I'm guessing that WotC's Mechanics Tracking/Oversight and Product Testing groups do not have anybody that is well-versed in Extreme Threshhold Testing and Combinatorial Optimization.

And we're talking about experts who have a keen understanding of the entire 3.0/3.5 product line (FR, Eberron, Core, etc.) as well as a game hacker's mentality.

While such a person/group may not have been neccessary in the nascent stages of 3.X, they are needed now because of the HUGE amount of "crunch" products in the 3.X inventory and pipeline.

After all, a significant number of D&D gamers like to plunder mechanics from the various sourcebooks to add into their own game. So it actually does become a concern to keep Eberron stuff balanced and in-line with FR and Greyhawk material due to the wild array of mechanics permutations in any given game.

[power_word_wedgie]

RC, you bring up a good point. Yeah, game balance is noted on many of the message boards that I have visited, but does it really sell? On one side you have the player buying the book hoping that the DM will let it into his campaign because it will give their future characters more power. On the other side, you have DMs saying, "Heck, I haven't seen an accessory that is balance and thus I don't allow them." And with these dynamics in play, thus it begs the question of whether the gaming base is all stating in unison the same customer requirements. Yeah, monster characters are not as powerful as base race characters, but is that really a true requirement stated by the majority of players in customer surveys?

I'm not stating one way or another - I haven't polled the majority of gamers who play D&D. All I'm doing is throwing out the question. Now typos and rule conflicts are a completely different matter - I don't know anyone would would prefer to have that in their books expect for the matter of extra cost to address it, if needed.