Kitchen Sink Roleplaying

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 12:34 pm

The dropping abilities system is difficult to implement, not so much for attack powers, which you don't care about anyway, but for utility. While it's pretty easy to make magic missile or even elven accuracy obsolete, doing the same to augury, comprehend languages or speak with animals is a difficult problem.

One such method of handling it is a trading up system. This would work where abilities are more like feat slots instead of classes. Basically the heroic tier ability would have say "speak with animals" and "tracking" as separate feats. While the paragon tier would simply have "Ranger" which gives you speak with animals, tracking and a few other heroic feats. This means that your ranger character upon getting to paragon can grab the ranger paragon feat and thus have way more feat slots open to take other stuff. This basically means that while being a "ranger" is a major choice at heroic tier, at paragon tier it's only a small part of your total character.

This could potentially create characters who don't have to ever gain new feats and can be perpetually trading up. Each character could have say 9 slots total or something to that effect and constantly be upgrading as they gain tiers.

It still doesn't of course solve the problem of trying to make epic and paragon characters capable of playing on the same battlemap as heroics, but it solves a lot of the upgrading problems.

I'm really not sure how you could do that with a class based system though.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 1:05 pm

If you give players fewer opportunities to cycle old behavior into new bonuses the less min-maxxing you'll end up with. Duh. If being a Fighter/Angel Knight makes you a better character than a Barbarian/Angel Knight then the class system has failed.

Now while you could carefully arrange bonuses and permutations so that a Fighter/Archlich ends up just as powerful as a Wizard/Archlich that's just too much work for too little payoff You're an Archlich now, you do Archlich things. Casting magic missile or using Tide of Iron is beneath you. No matter what you did in the past, your movelist bottoms out at Wave of Darkness anyway. So why risk the chance that someone goes 'oh wait, I have a super secret barbarian ability that makes Wave of Darkness get a +2 bonus to attack!' when they're not even supposed to be using their shitty barbarian abilities? At the very best it's a shit-ton of extra work for the designers and at the worst it means your class system becomes unbalanced again.

I disagree with your opening assessment, at least in this context. Giving a player multiple opportunities, instead of just one opportunity, to make their character's numbers better doesn't decrease min maxing at all. The only reason an average player would even need to min max is if surviving in the system required it (A'la DnD). But if, in this hypothetical system, every class/subclass combination has a viable path that you can take then it shouldn't be necessary to HAVE to rewrite your character every tier just to survive and so the average player probably won't bother to do so.

I personally like the idea that an Archlich, a Holy Knight, a Dragon Summoner, what have you would be at least a little tied to what they did before. But if you're going to make the argument that an Archlich isn't using their old moves anyway then it really doesn't matter what he was before because he's not using any of those early abilities. If going up a tier means you have to get a whole new suite of abilities to match your new shirt then I'm willing to accept that and I am willing to accept that an Archlich/Barbarian has a lower tier ability that might or might not be useful. If the +2 bonus that barbarian gets is pitiful at any time in the game then, IMO, that is a failure of the system but not the idea.

Same reason that once you actually get accepted into college no one gives a shit what your grades were in high school. You're playing a new ball game now, kick all that kiddy shit to the curb.

Except that that's completely retarded, seeing as though get the money you get, your preparedness, previously earned college credit, and a host of other things can aid you if you do them before hopping into college. Not to mention factors such as timing (some people don't go to college right after high school, some get in it early), choosing a major (heavily influenced BEFORE you become an undergrad), and any number of other factors. Hell I know that in some places not everyone even gets to try and go to the college if their previous grades and background aren't up to code.

No, that's not a fix. That's what 4E tried to pull to epic failure.

One of the big reasons why 4E epic does not feel like epic is because they force you to do the same basic bullshit you did at level 1 at level 21. This is because the game still wanted your level 1 shit to matter oh-so-much. But if your level 1 shit is still supposed to matter 20 levels later then there's only so much room for growth the challenges (and thus the scope of your character) can actually have.

The only way you can actually have a transformation from 'heroic' to 'epic' tier is to get epic abilities that completely overshadow your heroic tier abilities. If you try to keep old bullshit like Combat Challenge or Tide of Iron relevant then this means downgrading so-called epic challenges. This means either you have to transform the old stuff to something suitably epic (losing your old functionality in the process) or slapping on so many new abilities onto your character sheet that you don't have time to use your old shit--and if you're doing the latter then you might as well erase your old stuff to save space.

Now I'm not saying that a character has to lose everything at once when upgrading from fighter to Angel Knight, but you honestly might as well. It reduces min-maxxing and creates a greater sense of awe. You're not learning a new trick, you're doing your first class change ever. Cecil becoming a paladin is awesome and will be remembered for all eternity, the black mage learning Fire3 is a yawnfest. But the underlying fact that at some point you need to start erasing and rewriting your character sheet is non-negotiable if you want to play a game with stark power scaling.

At the very best you end up like a 3E wizard and you have a huge chunk of spells you never use except when you want to hog even more spotlight. And that's when the system breaks down. When it's working as intended you end up like the 4E wizard, who can't do anything cool because the game demands that they spend at least three rounds a combat at level 21 spamming At-Wills they've had since level 1. :facepalm

4e fucks up at level 1 by making the assumption that decorating "auto attack every turn" into "spam best at will every turn" is actually change. When you cease casting Fireball and start casting Nuke you are essentially doing the same thing except that Nuke is a heavily scaled version Fireball. Yes I think that there should be better abilities at higher level but I also think that the only way to make them precious at all is to make it so you don't just spam your newest abilities every turn. Sure you could make up higher tier abilities with "little guns" and "big guns" label filed off but then there really is no point in making new abilities at that point because you could just make the "big guns" from last tier scale into the little guns of this tier. That way you get the sense of awe when you used to save your Nukes for boss battles and now you're using that any time you want saving Orbital Strike for the crunch moments. And you'll still be looking forward to the Doomsday ability you get in the next tier.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 2:15 pm

This is a slight topic change, but I'm curious as to poeple's thoughts about how much versatility is needed to keep a class from being stale. Take a fire mage, for example. What does he need to be able to do to stay interesting?

I figure, at a minimum, he can blast people with fire, perhaps provide damage over time by igniting enemies, use smoke as crowd control (concealment, sickening, etc), and put up walls of fire and stuff to corral enemies. I'm sure with a bit of creativity, we could easily add more.

So, what types of things constitute different "actions" or "choices"? I'm assuming if you have a choice of Fire Bolt (single target) and Fire Ball (AoE), switching out one for the other isn't much of a tactical choice, because you're really just spamming "fire damage". What about other considerations like Spell Resistance (perhaps Inferno ignores it), or targeting different saves (Fireball for Reflex and Hellfire for Fort, or whatever)? Are these all too similar, and just more "fire damage"?

Are choices like Fire Damage, Cloud of Smoke, and Wall of Fire enough (mixed in with a few defensive buffs like Veil of Smoke)? I'm just looking for people's opinions on how many options we want players to have with a given class.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Sat Mar 20, 2010 3:41 am

Interesting that WOTC considers displacer beasts, githyanki, githzerai, and mind flayers to be Product Identity when D&D "borrowed" these concepts from science fiction novels. Would that shit even hold up in a court of law? And does it even matter, given how many lawyers they can bring to bear?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 20, 2010 6:13 am

Ganbare Gincun wrote:Interesting that WOTC considers displacer beasts, githyanki, githzerai, and mind flayers to be Product Identity when D&D "borrowed" these concepts from science fiction novels. Would that shit even hold up in a court of law? And does it even matter, given how many lawyers they can bring to bear?

Ever since they announced product on these, I have been wondering what the fuck they thought they were doing. The Githzerai, as well as all the weird Gith castes they invented over the years, are protectable. Al the rest of those are just stolen outright from science fiction - some as recently as the 1970s.

No idea what the hell they think they are up to. But of course, Tolkien's estate thought they could sue over the word "orc" only to have Gary Gygax bust out some Middle English on their ass - and they dropped it from their suit voluntarily. I would not put Githzerai or g"lathk githyanki into a printed book under any circumstances. But frankly, I don't even want to. The word "Gith" is an actual English word that refers to poisonous plants that grow in wheat fields - so if you just use the short name you can give the middle finger to everyone.

-Username17

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Sat Mar 20, 2010 9:47 am

Maybe they did it to try and keep themselves from having to answer up if a bunch of people used the Githyanki and then the holder of that came after them for starting a cascading wave of copyright infringement.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 20, 2010 12:20 pm

Lokathor wrote:Maybe they did it to try and keep themselves from having to answer up if a bunch of people used the Githyanki and then the holder of that came after them for starting a cascading wave of copyright infringement.

Good chance. Possibly they claimed it as closed content because they noticed that they really didn't have the legal authority to tell other people what could and could not be done with the concept. Even if that was to simply say that anyone could use them - could potentially get them in trouble if people actually did and those subsequent works offended the original writers.

In any case, for Kitchen Sink, defining the roles would be a good step. Right now they don't even need names, they just need designations like "03" and "14." It would be nice to fill out the following table:


Class	Number of Roles	Path 1	Path 2	path 3
Artificer
Bard	2	Warchanter	Beguiler	Spellsinger
Druid
Hero	3	Avenging	Questing	Inspiring
Necromancer	1	Skull General	Deathspeaker	Zombiemaster
Paladin
Monk
Psion	2	Telekinetic	Telepath
Ranger
Rogue	3	Assassin	Scoundrel	Swashbuckler
Warlock
Wizard
[Gish]	3

Superficially, it seems to me like the Warchanter Bard will end up with the same role as the Inspiring Hero. The Spellsinger and Beguiler Bard could possibly end up in the same role as the Telepath Psion.

-Username17

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Sat Mar 20, 2010 4:02 pm

Not even sure I understand the chart, but here goes:

Artificer --- Fastcrafter, Mastercrafter, Lifesplicer

Druid ---- Plantmaster, Animalmaster, Elementalmaster

Paladin ---- Defender, Avenger, Crusader

Monk ---- Soft, Hard, Balanced (I assume by monk you mean martial artist)

Ranger --- Protector of Outposts, Protector of the Wilds, Slayer of Great Beasts

Warlock --- Devilbargainer, Demonbaiter, Chaosbringer

Wizard --- Loremaster, Enchanter, Fartraveller

Gish --- Armored Mage, Shielded Wizard, Mageblade

Utterfail · Post by **Utterfail** » Sat Mar 20, 2010 5:30 pm

Better names for the three (potential) monk roles might be more along the lines of Fast, Strong, and Wise.

Or, if you want it to be more fancy, the Wise one could be called a "Sage". Not sure about the other ones.

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Sat Mar 20, 2010 9:22 pm

Utterfail wrote:Better names for the three (potential) monk roles might be more along the lines of Fast, Strong, and Wise.

Or, if you want it to be more fancy, the Wise one could be called a "Sage". Not sure about the other ones.

Hare, ox, dragon?

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Sat Mar 20, 2010 9:53 pm

Gentle fist, Empty Hand, 7 Elements/5 Animals for the Monk.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 7:16 pm

This is all I've got so far:

Artificer

* Infusor (Buffer) - Fulfills the role of the "classic" Artificer.
* Puppetmaster (Pet User) - Invests power in homunculi (singular, multiple).

Druid

* Beastkeeper (Pet User) - Invests power in magical beasts (singular, multiple, swarm).
* Elementalist (Ranged DPS) - Elemental blaster. Uses Call lightning, fire storm, all that jazz.
* Geomancer (Controller) - Focuses on nature-based battlefield control and debuffs.

Necromancer

* Death Knight (Melee DPS) - Transform themselves into undead creatures and hit things with axes.
* Netherspeaker (Buffer? Controller?) - Summons the spirits of the dead to help his allies and hinder his foes.
* Reanimator (Pet User) - Classic undead squad-based pet/debuff class.

Psion

* Psychokinetic (Ranged DPS) - From Firestarter to Psychonauts, people seem to love psychics that can set shit on fire.

Ranger

* Sniper (Ranged DPS) - Classic Ranger + Arcane Archer schticks. Uses bows, crossbows, guns.
* Warden (Melee DPS) - You turn into a bear or a dracolisk or whatever and rip people's faces off.

Warlock

* Felbinder (Pet User) - The WoW Pokelock. Pet + ranged DPS.
* Abomination (Melee DPS) - Opens themselves up to demonic possession, tears things to pieces.
* Eldritch Adept (Ranged DPS) - Throws infernal fire at people, reduces them to piles of smoking meat.

Wizard

* Summoner (Pet User) - Ye Olde Final Fantasy-type summoner. A less demonic option for having a magical pet then the Warlock Felbinder.

Gish

* Runic Knight (Melee DPS) - Adds spell effects to melee attacks.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 8:12 pm

Frank, mind if I take a lot of this and put it into the PDF for the "Less Basic RPG" I'm working on? It's pretty great to have lots and lots of info on extra race and creature ideas for people to read through.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Mar 29, 2010 4:36 am

MGuy wrote: I disagree with your opening assessment, at least in this context. Giving a player multiple opportunities, instead of just one opportunity, to make their character's numbers better doesn't decrease min maxing at all.

It's not supposed to decrease min-maxxing. It's supposed to decrease the gap between a min-maxxer and a non-minmaxxer.

A real minmaxxer doesn't really care that they only have one chance to get things in order for Real Ultimate Power. They'd make it work anyway.

Except that that's completely retarded, seeing as though get the money you get, your preparedness, previously earned college credit, and a host of other things can aid you if you do them before hopping into college.

But once you're IN college all of that old shit doesn't matter anymore except for earning college credit.

4e fucks up at level 1 by making the assumption that decorating "auto attack every turn" into "spam best at will every turn" is actually change.

No, that's a totally separate issue. 4E could have a much more robust combat and power system than it does and it would still have the underlying problem of epic levels not feeling like epic.

When you cease casting Fireball and start casting Nuke you are essentially doing the same thing except that Nuke is a heavily scaled version Fireball.

Sure, if it's just one ability that's fine, because blasting never goes out of style. But if ALL of your abilities end up as being nothing more special than scaled versions of your old shit then there's absolutely no reason to call yourself higher tier.

Yes I think that there should be better abilities at higher level but I also think that the only way to make them precious at all is to make it so you don't just spam your newest abilities every turn.

Again, that's a totally separate issue. What makes new abilities special isn't the fact that you're contrasting them against shitty old abilities (which is what 4E does and fails miserably at), it's that your new abilities can do shit that your old stuff can never dream about. Going from 'scorching burst' to 'fireball' is boring as fuck. Going from 'send peasants flying in every direction with 3rd-degree burns' to 'melt castles made out of adamantine' is awesome.

That way you get the sense of awe when you used to save your Nukes for boss battles and now you're using that any time you want saving Orbital Strike for the crunch moments. And you'll still be looking forward to the Doomsday ability you get in the next tier.

Again, that's what 4E tried to complete failure. Using your 25th and 19th-level dailies then having to fall back to your level 1 At-Wills didn't make us feel awesome and transformative, it made us feel like suckers still sucking the teat of obsolete old abilities.

The game can only be as awesome as the weakest of your relevant abilities. If Magic Missile is still a relevant ability then your game will be less awesome than if Fire Seeds was the bottom floor for a relevant ability. If Magic Missile doesn't keep up then it should be erased from your character sheet. If it does keep up then either Magic Missile went through some hardcore transformation (which means you lose the flavor of Magic Missile) or your character is inherently gimped.

A vanilla sword and shield-bash combo is a cool enough ability at level 1, but if at level 25 said trick is still worth using then it means that your opposition isn't all that stronger. Seriously, the idea of someone changing the tide of battle by bashing an Iron Colossus or a demilich in the face with a shield is insulting unless the shield is a shapechanging sphere of annihilation or some shit. It's insulting because you're fighting paper tigers by doing shit a peasant can do. Which means that your character is a gimp.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Mar 29, 2010 3:08 pm

Lokathor wrote:Frank, mind if I take a lot of this and put it into the PDF for the "Less Basic RPG" I'm working on? It's pretty great to have lots and lots of info on extra race and creature ideas for people to read through.

Do what you like. May of these ideas have been used in D&D likes in the past. None of my work is under restricted copyright.

Lagos wrote:It's not supposed to decrease min-maxxing. It's supposed to decrease the gap between a min-maxxer and a non-minmaxxer.

A real minmaxxer doesn't really care that they only have one chance to get things in order for Real Ultimate Power. They'd make it work anyway.

Well, and also to increase the number of lifepath builds that are viable in a min/max context.

Remember, if you have six prestige classes to go into, and there is a "right" lifepath to lead into it, then whatever you've done, you really only have one option. If none of the lifepaths matter, then you have six options.

If you need to be a Hero first before you go God King in order to get the tie-breakers on your heaven sword technique, then min/maxers who are paying a Hero are going to be doing so because that's what you do to play a God King. And then they won't end up playing an Iron Lich or a Star Hunter. And that's boring. You actually get more choice by scrapping the old class paths than you do by keeping them.

In 4e, adding more races doesn't increase choice, it reduces choice. It means that Dwarves can't be Druids anymore, because Wildren or whatever the fuck they are called are genetically superior at being Con based Druids. Making early classes continue to matter for your prestige class paths increases the total number of theoretical character ability combinations you could have, but it actually decreases the number of choices that are "correct."

-Username17

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Mon Mar 29, 2010 3:13 pm

That's assuming that there is one "correct" path, and that past abilities affect current/future abilities.

I don't see why that's necessarily the case: your Arch-liching doesn't need to have much to do with the fact that you can talk to animals.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Mon Mar 29, 2010 11:50 pm

Well you've got me there. In theory, lowering the power gap would reduce the need to min-max and erasing your character every 5 levels to make a new one would indeed do this. I could go along with the whole "right" path thing because their will always be "right" ways to build your characters whether or not you make restart tiers but the larger power discrepancy between having your choices tied to the past and making new ones every 5 levels is undeniable.

This:

But once you're IN college all of that old shit doesn't matter anymore except for earning college credit.

is only true if you want to ignore the reasons you're doing what you're doing, if you think that the classes that' you're taking, your funding, and all of these other, usually, relevant factors don't matter. If you boil college down until its nothing other than how many credits you have then you are right. But if you think what you actually DO, or why you do it, matters at all then it is not true.

No, that's a totally separate issue. 4E could have a much more robust combat and power system than it does and it would still have the underlying problem of epic levels not feeling like epic.

I know it was my point was that 4e does a number of things that COULD have worked out but didn't because of various failures by the designers. In other words saying "4e failed to do it so it just be a failed idea" is not good for an argument.

Sure, if it's just one ability that's fine, because blasting never goes out of style. But if ALL of your abilities end up as being nothing more special than scaled versions of your old shit then there's absolutely no reason to call yourself higher tier.

That IF would be a separate issue with the system. I brought this up because I'd imagine that as you go up in tiers (rewriting your character) you'd HAVE to replace old abilities with newer and simply scaled versions of older abilities. While if your abilities simply auto scale you actually have more room to get"different" abilities. Though I didn't explain it well at all when I typed it and after that I went on a another tangent that doesn't have anything to do with my original point.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Tue Apr 27, 2010 7:17 pm

Frank, do you mind if I use the write ups for the different races as reference, and write ups for a new game I'm working on?

Having open source background material, and having it originate from a specific place, makes the setting a lot easier to write, and explain to players.

Having Oni, and Tanuki, and other Japanese mundane, magical, and mythical creatures coming from Japan, makes the setting easier to explain and understand for a new player.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Apr 27, 2010 7:25 pm

Judging__Eagle wrote:Frank, do you mind if I use the write ups for the different races as reference, and write ups for a new game I'm working on?

Having open source background material, and having it originate from a specific place, makes the setting a lot easier to write, and explain to players.

Having Oni, and Tanuki, and other Japanese mundane, magical, and mythical creatures coming from Japan, makes the setting easier to explain and understand for a new player.

Go for it.

-Username17