New Edition of Rules

[Koumei]

Hmm... tigers that are good at motor repair. That's kind of funny. Tigers that are charming and well-mannered* is also pretty funny.

*Or beautiful. Or bossy. Or just confident and sure of themselves. Or good at telling the difference between "me" and "not me". Seriously, we should figure out what the fuck Charisma actually means for the new edition.

[Judging__Eagle]

The reason pigs are really dangerous is that they're problem solvers.

They can also keep fighting after it's no longer advantageous for them to do so. Making them worse to fight than a bear or wolf, that could turn (unless they're desperate/starving, which is different).

I'm all for Charisma = "You can tell the difference between yourself and others".

Every person that I've seen that can't tell that someone isn't listening to them is an example of low charisma.


Charisma should also = "self confidence"
Since being able to tell a joke and have it carry requires self-confidence; and performing is 'classically' a Cha skill, I'd say that it should also be part of self-confidence.

...

I just realized that I said that I argued that "Cha = Will saves, not Wis" without realizing it.

Proffession could still be Wis-based, but you can't do it without training. It could be like languages; if you don't know how to do anything in a field, then you really can't do it. Unskilled labour like waiting, ditch-digging and the like that you don't have to go and get actually trained for don't require triining as long as you have a minum int score of "X". If you invest a skill point you're a master or expericened waiter/janitor/ditch-digger; with whatever perks that gives.

Lets use the Tomes method of saying that 1 skill point makes you trained and 2 makes you a master 'whatever').

This allows people to pick up unskilled labour jobs no sweat, keeps animals from being awesome waiters (unless they're awakened, but then they're possibly smarter than some people and can talk two or more languages so it's no big deal) and allows for people who are in a field needing training to have to spend something to show what they are.

[CatharzGodfoot]

1197919793[/unixtime]]T
I'm all for Charisma = "You can tell the difference between yourself and others".

Every person that I've seen that can't tell that someone isn't listening to them is an example of low charisma.


Charisma should also = "self confidence"
Since being able to tell a joke and have it carry requires self-confidence; and performing is 'classically' a Cha skill, I'd say that it should also be part of self-confidence.

So, why are those three connected? Think Woody Allen, Winston Churchill, and Matt Damon.

[Crissa]

Oh, yes, it ... wait, nooo, it does have checks.

Wisdom checks.

It's Track.

You're proposing the Invisibility/Sneaking problem again.

-Crissa

[K]

1197923797[/unixtime]]Oh, yes, it ... wait, nooo, it does have checks.

Wisdom checks.

It's Track.

You're proposing the Invisibility/Sneaking problem again.

-Crissa

I'm saying "remove the check". Its not needed and I hate waiting for someone to roll dice in non-dramatic situations.

Then you've removed the need for an extra absurd stat on an animal.

The only checks I really want in this game is "attacks, level checks, and saves." Everything else is an ability that may require a save.

[Crissa]

I don't want to play a game that has no variability outside of combat.

-Crissa

[K]

1197941045[/unixtime]]I don't want to play a game that has no variability outside of combat.

-Crissa

Ok. I"ll hand you a coin. Every time its heads whatever you are doing outside of combat fails.

[Voss]

How about moving animals back to being food sources and stick to fighting monsters? Grinding boars at second level is frankly fucking boring.

We're talking about a group of people that seriously devote their lives to going out and killing things. Wildlife just doesn't register unless the party is hungry, and most wildlife is going to look at a group of armed people and go wandering off in search of something inoffensive to eat.



Skills outside of combat: they pretty much fall into autofail or autosucceed in 3e anyway. 'I take 20'.

[RandomCasualty]

1197925605[/unixtime]]
I'm saying "remove the check". Its not needed and I hate waiting for someone to roll dice in non-dramatic situations.

Then you've removed the need for an extra absurd stat on an animal.

Yeah, noncombat stuff is mostly like obstacle bypassing. Which might as well be automatic if you've got the schtick, or given an arbitrary chance of failure by your DM depending on how hard he wants the obstacle to be.

Most of the time you're dealing with either an obstacle or a story clue element. If it's a clue element it shouldn't even require a roll, since it was likely placed there so you could follow it. So knowing the party has a ranger, you've placed tracks they can follow. So the party found the tracks and decided to follow em. Why have a roll that arbitrarily decides if the plot randomly stops because they can't track them, even though tracking is one of their schticks? So you've solved the puzzle. You've found the tracks, you've followed them, but there's still a 20% chance you get kicked in the balls for the hell of it. Sounds like 2nd edition magic item creation.

Or the guy with weaponsmithing skill that fails at making a sword. Why even bother?

I think most non-combat skill checks are over the top simulationist that should be done away with.

[CalibronXXX]

There will be no more grinding anything, leveling is quest based or arbitrary, and if we don't fight animals, where will we have armies of armored bears, or wolf riding goblins. Actually, don't answer that, I think a number of solutions are fairly obvious.

[Voss]

OK, thats taking it too far. Thats magical handwaving into 'and now we are in the next scene. There are 6 monsters. Combat starts now, hurrah, here is the treasure list, and now on to the next fight' Its as goofy as unbreakable plot items and unkillable NPCs. Its straight up piss poor story design, because the DM didn't come up with anything but the main plot and can't improvise.


Calibron- if leveling isn't grinding based, there isn't much point in fighting animals at all. Animals as mounts are a slightly different thing, but the random encounter of 'there are 3 wild boars. And they are angry' needs to go.

[Bigode]

Why? What about exploring an enraged forest (and no, I don't have any particular liking for D&D's "druids", but this situation totally works)?

[Voss]

Because multiple armed (and trained) people with weapons, let alone magic = dead pigs. All the time. All day. Unless they're Monnonoke style Giant Spirit Pigs, they're just pork, and even then, you've whipped out Giant Spirit Pigs with a straight face. Unless you're running the Giant Spirit Animal campaign, I don't want to talk to you.

Its pretty much the same reason that going into the cellar or sewer to kill rats at first level is sad, hackneyed and lame. Animals don't stand up well to inbred morons with autism, let alone competent heroes.

[RandomCasualty]

1197945198[/unixtime]]OK, thats taking it too far. Thats magical handwaving into 'and now we are in the next scene. There are 6 monsters. Combat starts now, hurrah, here is the treasure list, and now on to the next fight' Its as goofy as unbreakable plot items and unkillable NPCs. Its straight up piss poor story design, because the DM didn't come up with anything but the main plot and can't improvise.

Who said anything about that?

When you want to do something, like track, then first you've got to decide to search for tracks. Then you have to decide to follow them. That's not a poor story design, as you don't' railroad the PCs into finding the tracks. Sure they're a possible way to advance the story, but it's not assured you'll take them.

I don't want to remove the thinking element of deciding to search for, and then follow the tracks. I want to remove the random kick in the balls where you have a 20% chance of failing to follow the tracks. It's like having people roll drive checks in Shadowrun when they're trying to drive to the next area they want to go. And there's a chance they get lost or crash into somebody. That doesn't add anything to the story. That doesn't tell a more interesting story. So why are we rolling dice?

[PhoneLobster]

I'm with K on the attributes and RC on the overcoming navigational complications.

And RC isn't advocating fairy tea party, he is advocating a more fair and playable set of rather minimalist rules in place of an unbalanced and unplayable set of rather minimalist rules.

There are very few rules covering tracking, and those that there are just add suck.

At any phase of the game, like navigation or tracking if you don't have a system as developed as you have in combat what rules you do have will seem (and be) very arbitrary.

In response you either make it as developed as combat or you just do what RC is suggesting and make sure there aren't any stupid speed bumps in between the phases of the game which are more developed.

And really, when the adventure calls for tracking all anyone wants to know is yes or no, are there tracks they can follow? They don't want an engaging mini game.

[JonSetanta]

1197944299[/unixtime]]How about moving animals back to being food sources and stick to fighting monsters? Grinding boars at second level is frankly fucking boring.

We're talking about a group of people that seriously devote their lives to going out and killing things. Wildlife just doesn't register unless the party is hungry, and most wildlife is going to look at a group of armed people and go wandering off in search of something inoffensive to eat.

Take the Pokemon route: low level characters fight weak monsters. Weak monsters constitute the backbone and bottom or near-bottom of the food chain in some areas.

This could mean you're bashing size Tiny Manticores, baby Trolls, or young semi-retarded wild Fey goblins that wandered far from some localized magic gate, not because they have any objective, but because staying near their brethren means being eaten..
At least it's hella more interesting than rats, pigs, bears...

[CatharzGodfoot]

1197947258[/unixtime]]
At least it's hella more interesting than rats, pigs, bears...

Yeah? Well maybe I want the players in a neolithic setting where at low levels they fight other guys with spears, wolf packs, saber-tooth tigers, mammoths, and cave bears. That's actually a fantasy standard, there's no reason why it shouldn't be interesting, and building it out of the game for no good reason is stupid.

It's like saying 'I don't think orcs are interesting in my campaign, I think they should be good at leadership and have low Charisma scores, and I'm too lazy to come up with a way to do that. Therefore, every player automatically kills every orc he meets'.


[Edit]
Also, how close is this going to be to D&D? A lot of the discussion is rendered moot if you want to retain the veneer.
[/Edit]

[Voss]

Actually its not. Its a side effect of the level grind (and a limited graphics set for crpgs). As soon as you're kicking baby trolls (or mini anything) out there to get killed by adventurers, you're doing something wrong.

You should have interesting level appropriate encounters for every level, and not have to default to animals or the mini-big-critter approach.

Ah, RC. I read that slightly differently, as in auto-search w/ auto find (they glow to your mystic ranger senses) and auto-follow.

[Bigode]

I could propose the Giant Spirit Animal (/Plant) adventure (not campaign, I think) with a straight face - any problem? And actually the issue's exactly that: I didn't say that assuming a terribly clear-cut distinction between mundane and else.

[Username17]

I honestly don't think it's a problem to divide monsters up into 10 levels, 20 levels, 3 levels, or a hundred levels if that's what you wanted to do. Consider the following list:

1. Imp
   
2. Basilisk
   
3. Cockatrice
   
4. Nightmare
   
5. Hydra
   
6. Elemental
   
7. Naga
   
8. Chimera
   
9. Manticore
   
10. Sphynx
    
11. Lamia
    
12. Dragon
    
13. Wyvern
    
14. Phoenix
    
15. Feathered Serpent
    
16. Griffon
    
17. Hippogryph
    
18. Sirrush
    
19. Ent
    
20. Golem
    
21. Beholder
    
22. Flame Snake
    
23. Owlbear
    
24. Displacer Beast
    
25. Roc
    
26. Peryton
    
27. Shambling Mound
    
28. Gargoyle
    
29. Sandworm
    
30. Salamander
    

Can you imagine a world in which each of the creatures on this list was uniquely more powerful than one set and less powerful than another? In short: would it be a problem for you if these guys were put into an ordered list of difficulty? Now, can you imagine "demons" or "goblins" who come with various abilities and personalities who come in at approximately the difficulty of each of these monsters? Now, can you imagine an aquatic set for the same difficulties on the high seas? Now, can you imagine a list of Unicorns and shit that can be good versions of some of the eviler things on that list?

Like I said: not hard. And we don't need "baby trolls." Hell, I am counting "Giants" and "Minotaurs" and "Medusae" as classed characters with minimum levels, so it's really easy to pad this list out.

---

Personally I think that times spent sneaking around and tracking monsters and the like are as important or more so than the combat mini-game. I would be deeply saddened if track didn't have a roll involved. That would feel shitty whether DM fiat had you find it or not.

---

Which brings us back to attributes. I think if the attributes are going to be purely defensive in nature that we might as well not have them. As soon as there is no longer an incentive of any kind to have a 7 and a 17 all characters are the same anyway and it would be less confusion just to ignore that line.

And that is a shame I think. Mathematically, I can't condone pure defense stats. It doesn't look like it works.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Holy shit, D&D without ability scores. There'd be riots.

[JonSetanta]

Fuck this. I'm going back to making more 3.5e material. All this chat of things-that-could-be is getting me distracted.

As a disclaimer: I'll probably have a change of mood once Frank and Keith start agreeing on something, but right now it seems like the whole thing is tenuous at best.
Seriously.
This project could collapse in a puff of logic at any moment.

[Koumei]

I dunno, I get the feeling they do this before every major project. It beats the WotC approach, at any rate. We just need to sit back and see who wins.

*lies back in a deck chair, slurping a smoothie through a straw and occasionally waves a Sovjet flag*

[virgil]

I'm working under the assumption that 'attacks' are active abilities, while 'defenses' are passive. What if your defenses were tied to your attacks, almost like a reactive system? The actual effectiveness of the attack wouldn't be influenced by the defense stat, other than the fact that you're actually able to use the attack.

People who try to grapple you get drained by your necromantic energies, while those who try to hit you are mesmerized by your dance, etc. The resolution should probably be simpler for these defense-attacks, but I hope you understand what I'm getting at.

You can limit some of the specialization abuse by limiting the connections (can't connect your specialized attack to all of your defenses). This would create the situation where you try your best to force people to target the defense tied to your specialized attack, much like the tanks of many a party (only more logical).

[Username17]

What if your defenses were tied to your attacks, almost like a reactive system?

Do you mean where your attributes define your defenses and give synergy bonuses to attack types (like I've been advocating? Or do you mean literally that your defenses would be set by your level and then go up and down as you used abilities?

-Username17