You Got Magic in my D&D!

[DrPraetor]

How much of this "bonus vs randomizer ratio" issue would be solved by replacing the d20 with (3d6+2df) or with (1d10+5)?

You don't have to do anything so complicated: a curved RNG solves the problem immediately.

So on 3D6, for example, you have a 50% chance of getting 11+. If you have a +1 bonus (so you need 10+) your chance of success goes up to 62.5%; thus, a +1 bonus is equivalent to a +2 bonus on a D20 when you are equally matched with your opponent.

But, you can have a total bonus of +7, meaning you need a 4 (equivalent to +14, meaning you need a -3 on a D20 starting at 50%=11+) without going off the RNG entirely.

Now there are so many math-hammer problems with D&D 5th that I don't know what Frank meant specifically was unambitious - maybe the problem where a bunch of scrubs with bows can take out a Pit Fiend? Just in general the people writing D&D 5th lacked the ambition to make things actually work out? This makes the kind of stuff you want to do in Magic the Gathering very difficult to balance - and the general mathematical illiteracy of the people doing D&D 5th edition doesn't bode well.

As I mentioned to Frank last time we hung out, it boggles my mind that it took WoTC so long to combine their two biggest properties. I admit that I expected things to go the other way first, though - Beholders and Mind Flayers and other stars of D&D appearing on Magic cards, rather than a MtG setting book for D&D.

[Darkholme]

3d6+2df gives you a curved distribution with a full 1-20 range. Each fudge die can add -1, 0, or +1, changing a 3-18 range to a 1-20 range, with the same average of 10.5.

Fair enough on your other points, Praetor.

I think PF has a better "core engine" than 5e (or 3.5), but 5e's content has fewer trap options to wade through, and you don't need to spend 40+ hours preplanning your character progression to make sure you prerequisites line up else feel like you got screwed and now need to beg your DM to let you use the retraining rules.

If I could pick up a Pathfinder that plays like Pathfinder at the table, but has the garbage options balanced upward or culled, and the prerequisites simplified to be essentially just "Minimum Character Level" prereqs, and consolidated progressions for better multiclassing (like 5e's shared spell slots), I would play that every time.

Have you attempted the curved dice probabilities? It would make the bonuses matter more, for sure, but I feel like it would throw all the balance of task DCs and Defenses way out of whack and you'd have to adjust all the monster stats, and determine new guidelines for setting task DCs, no?

[RelentlessImp]

As I mentioned to Frank last time we hung out, it boggles my mind that it took WoTC so long to combine their two biggest properties.

Pretty sure we've (as in, all of us) speculated a few times as to why that is, on these boards and elsewhere. Common consensus seems to be that WotC didn't want to dilute the Magic brand, where they're making serious bank, by throwing it at this even more niche RPG. Now the MtG setting book seems like a desperate cash grab in the face of 5E's lackluster sales in an attempt to either A: Get Magic players, who spend tons of cash on boosters, into spending tons of cash on D&D books, or B: get D&D players into Magic and get them spending tons of money on boosters.

Either way, I don't see this project working out at all for either Magic or D&D. Then again, the RPG community seems less jaded than the video game community when it comes to this sort of thing. If Jim Sterling were into making videos about tabletop we'd probably have a Jimquisition about this, probably saying similar stuff to what I've done, just because we've seen exactly this kind of cross-marketing done when sales are low, or expected to be low, with video games.

5E, however, will never support being a Planeswalker. You're doomed to being a shitty summon forever and ever.

[Darkholme]

Agreed on the planeswalkers. Really, you'd struggle to make a planeswalker balanced for Pathfinder (it would almost definitely need to be in an 'epic' expansion), and 5e's significantly more limited.

[Username17]

5e is just a really fragile system, and the unambitious math base is a big reason why.

-Username17

"the unambitious math base is a big reason why."
What do you mean by this comment? You mean the slow number scaling? Don't lots of RPGs have relatively low numbers scaling? Like, World of Darkness style math or FFG Star Wars math has a relatively small max power level compared to where you'll start, no?

I mean the math is unambitious. Mearls said that scaling to-hit bonuses and damage against AC, hit points, and DR was simply too hard. An intractable math problem that could not be solved. Now leaving aside the fact that this is not actually a particularly difficult math problem, it was in fact literally his actual job to solve it and throwing his hands up was absolutely absurd. FFS, we weren't asking for a harmonious and infinite progression of multiple competing variables (not that that would have been hard to do either, since you can choose to set the growth rate of all the variables to whatever you want) - it's actually only 20 levels of variables that you have to set ranges for and you can set any of them arbitrarily and then solves for the other ones. It's actually dumber than that, because you don't even have to tell people the number of rounds you're assuming combat has to be or even have that number stay static over level rises - it's perfectly reasonable for there to be "grindy" and "rocket launcherish" level ranges so you can claim victory for most plausible outcomes.

Instead we get something so unambitious that literally all the CR 4 monsters in the Monster Manual have the same attack bonus. That's fucking absurd. Like, it's not mathematically difficult to conceptualize a monster that hits twice as often for half as much damage or a monster that hits half as often for twice as much damage. Those things are obviously "balanced" if you care about such things. All you have to do is define a set of arbitrary reference defenses for each level and then set the monstrous attack and damage values to be roughly in line with that. The mathematical design space is extremely easy to map out. We'd kind of complain if that's all they were doing. I mean, it's also not difficult to set some reference attacks for each level and create monsters that have more or less overall offense as a direct tradeoff with defense. We might even criticize that as being too lazy, too flippant, when clearly we could have monsters with temporal tradeoffs where they had limited use abilities or had rage bars such that they were more or less dangerous in the expected first or second half of the conflict.

But we don't get in to any of that. Mike Mearls couldn't be fucked to even try to balance monsters that don't literally hit on the same number on a d20. That's a level of lack of lack of ambition that it's really hard to even wrap your mind around. Tradeoffs between accuracy and damage are the easiest fucking thing in the fucking world. You're just multiplying two factors by reciprocal numbers.



So with that level of aversion to doing any actual design work, is it any wonder that when people present questions like "what if instead of boosting my action, I summon dudes and then have extra smaller actions?" the answer is "GARGLEMACKFNOOOB!?" The game mechanics haven't even attempted to answer even questions, genuinely hard questions are obviously off the table. That's why the game is so fucking fragile. Why summoning a few skeletons or hiring some crossbow wielding mercenaries breaks everything into sad and angry pieces.

-Username17

[Darkholme]

Thanks Frank.

I can see your point.

-

Frank: I know about the 'Tomes' for 3.5, but have you ever made your own game, where you did the game design yourself? I'd be interested in checking out such a thing, if you have.

[Trill]

AFAIK This http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=56993 is his latest one.
How's the status on that, Frank?

[Darkholme]

While that does look interesting, and I've bookmarked it, that's a setting, not a game system.

(Though in a vacuum I guess I can see how 'game' could be ambiguous, I guess I erroneously thought that in the context of our current discussion on game mechanic design made it clear I was referring to mechanics, not setting).

[Whiysper]

Check out 'After Sundown' and 'Warp Cult' on these boards. There's probably others, but those two immediately jump to mind .

[Trill]

While that does look interesting, and I've bookmarked it, that's a setting, not a game system.

they start discussing a new system for it at about half of the third page
I've skimmed it so I can't tell you exactly where they start, but here is where I remember it really starting.
All the other pages in that thread are mostly rules discussion