Darigaaz: I've done this as part of Rise. You will need a way to provide access to all of the spell effects (Remove Disease, etc.) which assume the existence of prepared casting. I found the best way to do this (and solve a variety of other problems) was to split off those effects into "rituals". Rituals always require material components, are written in a ritual book instead of taken as spells known, and always have reasonably long (1 minute or more) casting times. That provides access to the situational utility effects that casters need while still allowing a fully spontaneous system.
D&D's spell system is one of the most unique things about the game. It allows the game to encompass a great variety of magical phenomena, and it it can make being a magic user uniquely enjoyable, in the right circumstances.
It is also poorly designed and incredibly broken, and Pathfinder did essentially nothing to change that.
Here I present the most important problems with the spell system as currently written. Soon, I will present my proposed Spell Reformation, where I attempt to address all of these problems.
Spells Are Complex, Unintuitive, and Hard to Use
Spells vary wildly in power and utility, even at the same level.
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Sleep is vastly superior to Cause Fear. Daylight does not deserve to be at the same level as Fireball. Crushing Despair is trivial compared to Fear or Slow. Placing Haste at the same level as Rage is ludicrous. There is no shortage of similar examples.
Spell damage scaling makes no sense.
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How much damage does a 5th level spell do at caster level 10 (chosen for easy math)? That depends. Let's take a look. First, AOE spells:
4d6: Mass Inflict Light Wounds
10d6: Cone of Cold, Twinned Burning Hands
15d6: Empowered Fireball
Now single-target spells:
7d6: Maximized Inflict Moderate Wounds
9d6: Maximized Acid Arrow
10d6: Twinned Magic Missile, Empowered Inflict Serious Wounds, Empowered Searing Light
14d6: Maximized Scorching Ray
This is absolutely terrible.
Many spells are too trivial to be worth including.
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Does Helping Hand really need to be a spell? Has anyone actually needed Animal Trance, Calm Animals, Charm Animal, or Hide from Animals?
Spells are used where class features belong.
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What separates a spell from a class feature is that a spell is an optional choice, while a class feature is an inherent part of a class. All of the various "animal control" spells are not strong or useful enough to exist as spells; in order for them to be lowered in level to the point that they would be chosen, they would be overpowered. Instead, they should be redesigned into class features for the druid so that the druid's spells can be interesting and useful.
Many spells are poorly worded, making it difficult to understand their purpose.
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What does Magic Jar do anyway?
Many spells have overly detailed mechanics, requiring excessive amounts of text to clarify their usage.
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Consider the text of Knock:
SRD wrote:
The knock spell opens stuck, barred, locked, held, or arcane locked doors. It opens secret doors, as well as locked or trick-opening boxes or chests. It also loosens welds, shackles, or chains (provided they serve to hold closures shut). If used to open a arcane locked door, the spell does not remove the arcane lock but simply suspends its functioning for 10 minutes. In all other cases, the door does not relock itself or become stuck again on its own. Knock does not raise barred gates or similar impediments (such as a portcullis), nor does it affect ropes, vines, and the like. The effect is limited by the area. Each spell can undo as many as two means of preventing egress.
Consider the following rewording:
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The knock spell opens a locked or otherwise forcibly closed door or container within the area. The spell can undo up to two obstacles on the same object per casting. If used on an arcane locked door, the arcane lock is suppressed for 10 minutes.
The reworded spell is identical, but far clearer, in 95% of all situations. It gained the ability to open gates and portcullises. Is that minor detail worth adding so much complexity to the spell? I would argue absolutely not. There are many spells like this which would benefit from a rewording and clarification.
Many spells have trivial effects which are not worth the time investment to track.
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The attack bonus from Aid, the miscellanous +1 bonuses from Haste, and so on are trivial. It is unlikely that they will make any difference, but they force players to recalculate attack bonuses and other attributes anyway. This is particularly bad if the bonus is typed, since it forces the player to ensure that he does not have any other bonuses of that specific type - an unnecessarily large amount of mental investment for a +1 bonus.
There are too many bonus types.
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Using such a wide variety of bonus types is unnecessary and makes it much more difficult to keep track of whether a particular effect will apply at full strength or not. Compressing the number of bonus types would make buffing spells much simpler.
Buffing before combat is time-consuming and unnecessarily complicated.
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Tracking durations for a variety of spells and making sure that bonus types match up properly is obnoxious. This slows down the game. The more time you spend buffing before combat, the less time you spend actually enjoying the combat.
1 round/level durations scale strangely.
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1 round/level durations are terribly inconvenient. They are unusable at low levels (Touch of Fatigue and Summon Monster I being the worst offenders), and not worth the significant bookkeeping to keep track of precise spell durations at any level after about 8th, when they tend to last for a full encounter. Combat duration doesn't get longer as level increases, so why should duration?
Level-scaling ranges and durations increase complexity substantially for little gain.
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Keeping track of precise ranges and durations is time-consuming. In the vast majority of cases, it does not substantially change outcomes or increase enjoyment in any way, but it is still technically necessary. Flat durations and ranges are much easier to use.
Some spells are terribly designed.
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Scare is just a 2nd-level Cause Fear when first acquired. By the time it can affect multiple creatures, any creatures worth affecting are already immune to its effect.
Spell casting times and components are confusingly formatted.
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Including "Casting Time: 1 standard action" and "Components: V, S" on 95% of all spells just makes it difficult to notice when the casting time or components are different from the norm.
Spell ranges are confusingly formatted on area spells.
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Does "Range" refer to the distance away from you that a spell can be cast, or the distance from you that the spell's area extends? It depends! A spell like Bless is fairly specific; it indicates that the area originates from the caster. Bane, however, is completely ambiguous. The area is "All enemies within 50 ft". Within 50 feet of what? Is this a burst, a spread, or something different? The only spells to use a similar format are Circle of Death / Undeath to Death, which affect "Several living creatures within a 40 ft. radius burst". From context - primarily by comparison to Bless - we can determine that Bane is intended to affect a 50 ft. burst centered on the caster, while Circle of Death is intended to affect a burst within the range. However, this is unnecessarily ambiguous. A reasonable and intelligent person might easily read Bane and conclude that it affects a 50 ft. radius centered on a point within the (50 ft.) range.
Area spells affect arbitrarily chosen and difficult to remember areas.
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Quick - how large of an area do Chaos Hammer, Confusion, and Sound Burst affect? If you guessed 20 ft., 15 ft., and 10 ft, congratulations - you're really good at memorizing random numbers. Spells that hit a radius can range from anywhere from a 5 ft. radius to an 80 ft. radius, with no particular patterns. Cones extend out either 15 ft., 30 ft., or 60 ft. from you. Wouldn't spells be so much easier to use if their areas were predictable and easy to remember?
Spells which affect multiple targets have inconsistent limitations.
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Why do most multiple target spells, like Mass Bull's Strength, affect creatures "no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart", while others, like Holy Aura, affect creatures "within a 20 ft. radius"? Come to think of it, why do any spells use the "no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart" wording? I don't see any way for that to be easier to work with than "within a 15 ft. radius". Which, of course, raises the question of why we are working with a 15 ft. radius, which is one of the least used values for spell radii.
Spells which affect cylinders can pass through walls.
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A cylinder-shaped spell is explicitly stated to "ignore any obstructions within its area", PHB p. 175.
Spell descriptions are inconsistently formatted.
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Too many cases to list here. Just trust me - they are.
1-round casting time spells are terribly designed.
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I can't count how many times my players have gotten this particular mechanic wrong. The distinction between a "full-round action" and a "1-round action" is absolutely terribly worded, and makes little sense even when you know which one you are talking about. It feels like getting no actions on the turn you do the casting and two actions on the next turn, and it is incredibly easy to disrupt. There is nothing that a "1-round action" casting time contributes to fluff and enjoyment that couldn't be done better with "Full-round action" casting time.
Spell schools and subschools are poorly and inconsistently defined.
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For more on this, see this entertaining thread. And by "entertaining" I mean "incredibly long and complicated". Though I enjoy it...
Combat Spells are Broken
Low-level spellcasters have two modes: "useless" and "broken".
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A single Sleep or Color Spray spell can end an encounter instantly. However, a low-level spellcaster has only a very small number of those spells, forcing her to do various non-magical tasks like pointlessly firing a crossbow in any situation that does not involve an serious threat. This is not a healthy game dynamic.
Moderately optimized Pathfinder quickly devolves into "rocket tag".
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"Rocket tag" refers to the way high-level D&D/Pathfinder characters can essentially all kill each other instantly. For example, a wizard would die if the fighter got a single full attack (or with some builds, a single charge attack), but the fighter would usually die or be rendered irrelevant if the wizard succesfully affected the fighter with a single spell.
The "rocket tag" phenomenon is severely detrimental to the game.
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When everyone is perpetually one bad roll or poor decision away from death, combat has to be fast, efficient, and brutal. There is no room for finesse or subtlety. This promotes highly technical, tactical play and discourages role-playing.
Spells can end combat far too quickly, promoting rocket tag.
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This is caused by a small army of problems. I will let the subproblems speak for themselves.
Spells can (virtually) kill opponents instantly.
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Save or die spells prevent any sort of sane combat from taking place. Since these effects start at 1st level, with Color Spray and Sleep, this is a problem throughout the game. 10 damage/level is still enough to take just about anyone out of the fight until very high levels, when monster HP skyrockets (but PC and NPC HP doesn't...)
Spells can render opponents irrelevant instantly.
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Total action denial spells like Hold Person and Confusion perform the same function and have the same effect as save-or-die spells.
Spells do too much damage relative to HP.
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Scorching Ray deals roughly 1d6 damage per level. Wizards have a d6 hit die. It is trivially easy for a spellcaster to kill another spellcaster with a single spell - particularly after taking into account Empower and Maximize.
Buffing before combat yields massive swings in party capability.
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A party that chooses to buff before a combat can easily go up multiple ECLs relative to an unbuffed party. This makes it extremely difficult for a DM to plan party-appropriate combat encounters. If the party goes in unbuffed against a monster designed for a buffed party, they can easily be killed or routed. If they go in buffed against a monster designed for an unbuffed party, the encounter will often be trivially easy. Limiting the power and usefulness of precombat buffs would significantly even out gameplay.
Many buffs are just too good.
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Haste is the biggest offender here as a mass spell that gives everyone significant bonuses for a mere 3rd level spell. Enlarge Person is also amazingly strong for a 1st level spell.
Some buffs can render entire encounters irrelevant.
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A dire bear's grappling abilities are nearly unbeatable - unless the fighter has Freedom of Movement, in which case the fight will be a breeze. A vampire can be a terrifying foe - but against a party with Death Ward and Magic Circle against Evil, a vampire is just a pale human without a Con score. (Okay, not literally.) The problem is not merely that these spells exist, but rather that they have such a long duration. This means that it is easy to cast the spell on everyone in the party that might need it, and infeasible for an enemy to wait for the spells to expire.
Spells can make the subjects effectively invincible to non-spellcasters.
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Flight effects and Greater Invisibility are the most prominent offenders here.
Many multiple target spells that lack single-target versions are vastly more powerful than they should be relative to single-target spells.
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What level would Haste or Slow be as a single-target spell? What about Confusion or Fear? These spells have effects that would be roughly level-appropriate as single-target spells, but they affect multiple creatures. This makes them significantly better than they should be.
Area of effect spells affect too large of an area.
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At 5th level, when first aquired, Fireball can deal anywhere from 5d6 to 250d6 damage, depending on how many targets are in the 20 ft. radius. An Empowered Fireball from a 10th level caster can deal anywhere from 15d6 to 750d6 damage. A 20 ft. radius is huge.
Area of effect and multiple target spells are too powerful relative to single-target spells.
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If area spells do equivalent damage to single-target spells, why would I use a single-target spell? Just so that I don't hit my allies? But the large radius of area spells is itself a problem. If that problem is fixed, the supremacy of area spells over targeted spells becomes assured. Buff and debuff spells are (usually) significantly penalized for affecting multiple targets - why shouldn't damage spells be the same?
Noncombat Spells Are Also Broken
Spells can make make social interactions trivially easy.
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Glibness, Charm Person, and Suggestion can all turn a challenging social encounter into a cakewalk. The problem is not that those spells exist, but that they are so easily accessible.
Spells can make dungeon delving trivially easy.
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Find Traps, Knock, and Summon Monster can all deal with traps and obstacles easily. These are particularly problematic because they are generally non-interactive. Disabling a trap or opening a door can be tricky, particularly if there is a battle ongoing. These spells do it faster, better, and more consistently than any mundane alternatives.
Spells can make stealth and detection irrelevant easily.
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Invisibility and Silence are nearly unbeatable together.
Spellcasters can perform any of these feats with too little investment.
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The problem with the above examples is not that magic is theoretically capable of performing these feats. It is magic, after all! That is what magic is for. The problem is that every single example above is done with 3rd level or lower spells. In fact, everything except Suggestion and Glibness can be accomplished by 3rd level!
Given time to prepare, a spellcaster can perform all of these feats.
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It would be bad enough if a spellcaster was capable of overriding a single other area of the game at 3rd level. However, because prepared casters can change spells daily, they can actually override any and all other aspects of the game.
Spells can exert control over the game world that nothing else can compete with.
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A well-placed Dominate Person or Suggestion can turn a city on its head. Scrying and Teleport can dramatically rewrite the whole concept of adventuring and travel when acquired. Spells give almost DM-level control of the game to players - but only to some players. That is not a good system.
Free, permanent duration spells are easily abusable.
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Hello, Explosive Runes. Also, Illusory Wall, though not as many people seem to push that to its logical conclusion.
Other Comments
Spell resistance is crude and noninteractive.
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The default SR for a CR-appropriate monster is designed such that a spellcaster will fail 50% of the time. Futhermore, caster level is one of the statistics that a typical spellcaster is least able to modify, and changes comparatively little over a caster's career. This means that spell resistance, when it applies, simply acts like a flat chance of failure. That is not a healthy balancing mechanism. That's like taking a fully optimized Ubercharger build and calling it "balanced" by slapping a 50% chance to miss onto all of its attacks. Spell resistance should be interactive and more sensitive to character development.
Spellcasters are unnecessarily penalized for devoting their resources into spells which the whole party requires.
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Divine Power and Wall of Stone are a lot more fun to cast - and often more appropriate for a character - then Restoration or Teleport. However, the latter spells can be essential in certain circumstances, so the spellcaster is obligated to spend personal resources to memorize and cast these utility spells.
Broken spells affect everyone, not just spellcasters.
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Magic items are constructed based on spells, and virtually every character has magic items. Poorly designed spells yield poorly designed magic items. In addition, NPCs use spells and monster abilities are often based on spells. If spells are broken, so too is the D&D world as a whole.
I used katana instead of long sword (assuming exotic proficiency) simply to drive home how confusing it would be to use two big, large swords as easily as one uses two daggers. Maybe longsword would be better.
This isn't a balance issue per se. It's a world continuity/intuition issue. Why do we have the iconic fantasy image of dual-wielding small weapons if there is no difference between small and large weapons?
This makes it powerful yet still weak since unless you take a feat to increase the damage by 1d6 per feat it will be capped at 10d6 (unless you go into epic levels of course).
Adding a feat to increase it by d6 is a bad idea; it is nearly a must-take at low levels, and mostly useless at high levels.
Allowing that feat to be taken an unlimited number of times is a very bad idea. That means a 20th level character can do anywhere from 10d6 to 20d6 damage at will, making the ability incredibly hard to balance. If that tradeoff is worth it, it's incredibly boring. If not, it's a trap, and it just makes the ability harder to balance. Never force a player to choose between the interesting and the good.
*All things being equal, a typical adventuring party in a campaign world ought to reflect the population of the campaign world. I.e., in Golarion, humans are the "focus" race, and thus ought to be the most well-represented in adventuring parties;
*Players will tend to choose PCs that compliment their builds. Broadly powerful races whose racial features can be brought to bear effectively with most builds of any class will tend to see play most often. I.e., in Golarion, humans' bonus feat and skill point can be useful almost anywhere, and their favored class options tend to be over par, thus humans see a lot of play;
*Therefore, if dunelord wants half-elves to be a common player choice, as they ought to be in a world where half-elves are the most common race, dunelord ought to make their racial abilities powerful enough to attract player attention.
Precisely correct, and better explained! Thank you.
Generally, non-equipped items don't apply the "does not take up a body slot" cost increase, as long as you have to hold it to gain its effect or otherwise activate it in some way. That would halve the cost on both of your items.
With that said, you still run into the problem that magic item prices make no bloody sense whatsoever. D&D 3.5 is terrible about this, and it is one of the things that Pathfinder made no attempt to fix whatsoever, probably on the basis that it was too complicated.
That leaves you with two options. First, you could make up prices by just comparing your new items to existing items on an ad-hoc basis. That's what Pathfinder already does, so you're in good company. Second, you could build a new magic item pricing system. However, you won't be able to build a system that gives you the original prices that items have (because they are assigned more or less arbitrarily). Thus, even if you can build such a system, it won't make much sense unless you convert the existing items to your new pricing structure. And that's a huge change.
So you should probably just make up the prices and go with something that seems reasonable. Unless you want to rewrite all the magic item prices - in which case, we should talk, because I have a system that does (mostly) does that. :)
I would also point out that this feature allows you to gain virtually unlimited utility spells known; just buy a bunch of 10-charge wands (or if your DM is dumb, 1-charge wands) of every spell that you might ever care about.
With that said, that doesn't actually change your assessment that it is "mostly useless or absolutely broken". No ideas off the top of my head, but it does need a fix.
1. d20 system sing fort/ref/will and Pathfinders skill system. Might even go a bit further and strip the skill system out.
What would you replace skills with? They serve a very important role.
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4. BAB being revised into AD&D style/SWSE multiattacks.No more +11/+6/+1 just 3 attacks at +11.
Before you muck around with multiple attacks, you should make sure you understand why they progress the way they do. The progressive -5 penalty has a number of positive effects - the most important of which is that it allows immense variability in target AC without making the math fall apart. If I attack at +20/+15/+10, the target AC be anywhere from 38 to 12 and I will still have a chance to hit and miss independently from the autohit/automiss rules. That means that an extra +2 to attack or an extra +2 AC matters throughout that entire range (with falloff in signifiance at the extremes, of course). The multiple attack system has a lot of benefits. Don't change it unless you know what you're doing.
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5. Ability scores being capped at 20 for players, 30 for monsters.
I actually did a slightly modified version of this for players. But why cap monsters? Eventually you're going to want to design an uber-monster that can surpass that limit. Naturally, he'll need a special ability to surpass the cap. So what's the point? Caps on monsters don't really serve a purpose.
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6. Spells mostly return to AD&D levels of power along with saving throws being boosted to AD&D/BECMI levels. Fighters for example get +5/+5/+4 saves at level 1. Lifting my spells from Pathfinder atm but using old school versions of some of the broken ones. Might go as far as BECMI trimming of the spell lists as well.
+5/+5/+4 just from class? I agree that saves are too low, but that seems... excessive.
-dexterity for light and one handed slashing and piercing weapon attacks.
-Strenght for bludgeoning and two handed weapons Attacks.
-str bonus always goes for damage.
So I use Dex to attack with a dwarven waraxe, but I use Strength to attack with a light mace? Are you sure you thought this through?
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-Weapon proeficiencies comes at first level for weapons and armors (no more the same fighter in the game with all those options that youll never gonna use)
I have no idea what this means.
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-Intimidate (Constitution + Charisma/2) and Dipplomacy (Intelligence + Charisma/2) (Bluff inserted here) becomes scores, nor skills,
-Sense motive goes away, now you use youre Will save check against the opposite roll as dc.
These are terrible ideas. Sense Motive scales very strongly with level, but Intimidate/Diplomacy/Bluff barely scale at all. There is no such thing as "training" in Diplomacy or Bluff? Really? A character cannot make any effort to improve those things?
I would continue, but I'm not convinced you have actually thought through the implications of what you are changing.
This is where "Influence bonus by class level" progression chart would come into play, much like D20 Modern, where the more "outgoing" classes progressed faster in Reputation bonus than others. Much like a BAB progression.
Not quite. Let's say that fighters have a good Reputation bonus progression, while wizards have a poor Reputation bonus progression. That would mean that the a fighter would be more influential at a mage's college than a wizard, which is not an acceptable outcome. I think the only way to make this work is to customize interactions based on groups. What distinguishes the fighter from the wizard is not that he has "more influence" in an abstract sense, but rather than his influence affects more kinds of people.
Every other class would fall into this category in one way or another, except the fighter.
I agree with most of what you said, but don't forget that the fighter isn't the only class that can inspire that sort of reaction. Rogues and barbarians are fully "mundane" and deserve their share of the spotlight in this area too (depending on the kind of rogue, of course; a stealthy assassin might not want too much influence). I'd also put clerics, paladins and possibly rangers as classes that deserve a fair amount of influence, too.
Kirth, I came up with an idea that accomplishes your aims (giving fighters more narrative power) while solving my issue with world continuity. I talked about the idea that every high-level character should have some level of influence over NPCs. However, it occurs to me that not everyone reacts to powerful individuals in the same way. Farmer Bob may fear or respect the power of a 20th level wizard, but his reaction would reasonably be different, and far less positive, than his reaction to a 20th level fighter. Likewise, a wizard's academy would certainly acknowledge the prowess of the 20th level fighter, but that would be irrelevant in comparison to their reverence in the presence of a 20th level wizard. Therein lies the key.
To put this into game terms, every character would have "influence" over NPCs. (I am intentionally leaving the precise mechanics of "influence" vague for the time being; that is something which you should create to fit your world.) A character's influence is based on three factors:
Character level. More powerful characters are more influential.
Character fame/renown. Based on the character's actions in the world. A 10th level fighter who is also the general of an army has more influence than a 10th level fighter who has been dungeon-delving since level 1.
How similar the character is to the NPCs.
The last point is where we balance fighters and wizards. Simply put, there are a lot more "mundanes" in the world than casters. A fighter will have influence over a huge variety of NPCs; anyone can respect and admire someone who overcomes challenges through sheer force of arms. (This is completely realistic, as evidenced by the fact that many of our real-life fantasy novels have nonmagical main characters. People find fighters impressive.) In contrast, a wizard is just too arcane and mysterious to have much influence. This means that the number of groups he has influence over will be significantly diminished.
Of course, the world has more than just fighters and wizards. Paladins earn respect from any lawful organization, and they would have crazy influence over "underlings" within their own church hierarchy. Druids would have much less influence within most cities, but presumably great influence with rural people. And so on.
This would provide "mundanes" with a greater degree of influence over the world in a way that perfectly matches their fluff. With this system, their lack of magic isn't a penalty; it is precisely what gives them their influence! This accomplishes your goals without offending my delicate internal consistency sensibilities. I'm actually pretty excited about this idea.
This is 99% correct in that magic item properties are shut down, but in this case, the weapon would literally cease to be a weapon at all in the case of anti-magic. THAT, I feel should be considered, even if lightly.
If we wanted to be really picky, we could discount the cost by an amount equal to the price of a masterwork weapon of the same type...
I assume you feel similarly about the Leadership feat, then? Surely it's nonsensical that certain people inspire far more loyalty than other (more powerful and charismatic) people solely because they chose to hire some guys instead of learning to swing a sword harder?
I'm not a huge fan of Leadership for many reasons, but it doesn't break the world continuity by existing. Leadership is a choice. If I take the Leadership feat, I am implicitly saying that my character goes to the trouble of actually acquiring the cohorts and followers. (This explicitly stated in the 3.5 PHB, and the PF core book comes very close.) It makes perfect sense that a character with the Leadership feat has more followers than any character without it, no matter how charismatic either character is, because people without the Leadership feat aren't trying to hire cohorts or attract followers.
Note that the Leadership feat pays absolutely no attention to what class you are. If fighters automatically got the Leadership feat, I would be complaining rather loudly. I would complain if it was automatically granted to anyone with a sufficiently high Charisma. But that's not the way it is.
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When subjected to the kind of standards you're holding it to, the whole game system breaks down. But people accept the rest of it because that's the status quo.
When the proposed rule change is "everyone except the PCs believes a lie", some amount of breaking can be expected to ensue. I don't think that this makes my standards unrealistically high.
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That said, your exact complaint is a common one, but no one has ever proposed a replacement -- any ability providing the fighter with the kind of narrative power that the casters enjoy, short of making him a full caster. And if you say, "that's impossible," that's OK -- ultimate classes and/or E6 and/or totally unbalanced systems will still work for you -- but I intend to keep looking.
You are right that no one (that I know of) has proposed a fix to give fighters the kind of narrative power that casters enjoy. It probably isn't possible, and at the very least it isn't a good idea. However, there are many, many proposed changes which decrease the narrative power available to casters.
Yes -- but I think that's attaching too much realism to a game with dragons and elfs. Yeah, I get that simulation is important to people, but if that means the game is unplayable, then it may need to take a back seat to expedience.
Yes, a 20th level fighter is akin to a demigod among men. He is capable of amazing feats, and can defeat powerful foes (including mighty daemons). He deserves respect and adoration from the population and deference from mighty rulers.
A 20th level barbarian, paladin, and (maybe) ranger can do the same thing. Surely they deserve equivalent respect.
A 20th bard or rogue is ludicrously skillful. Some of their abilities can seem supernatural.
A 20th wizard can also do that. He can also fly, explode people with his mind, transport people across continents or planes in the blink of an eye, and generally rewrite reality to suit his whims. If the population doesn't like him immediately, he can probably whip out a spell to compel their obedience anyway with little effort. If a 20th level fighter is akin to a demigod, a 20th level wizard is more like a god.
You look at that and say that the wizard is too powerful. And I agree! The wizard is obviously more powerful and versatile. Your solution is that, if everyone pretends that the fighter is more powerful, this makes him more powerful. This is true. From a certain perspective, this "balances" the situation.
However, it also requires the entire population to believe something which is factually inaccurate. This necessarily implies that every single NPC is either stupid or insane. Yes, it's a simpler fix than actually balancing the two classes. But I don't want that anywhere near my campaign world.
Good points that bear thinking about. My reservation is that spells ALREADY give you world-altering powers; if they give it to you twice (as you posit -- once for having them, and again for people reacting to them) then the high-level caster will always be twice the non-caster, barring some other means of evening the disparity. And make no mistake, some evening is definitely needed, IMHO.
Yes, but think about the implications of the argument you are making. You're saying that, because an 18th level fighter doesn't have world-altering powers, people should treat him as if he does. Likewise, because an 18th level wizard does have world-altering powers, people should treat him as if he doesn't.
I'll revisit the distribution a bit more when I get a chance. 500 isn't so far off from 300 that I'd cry at the difference, although I think damage bonuses should be worth less than attack bonuses, all things considered (like maybe half or a third, just scaling it based on the assumption of a character using Power Attack). As an aside, I appreciate the time and thought you put into your posts.
Makes sense. I think a third is too generous. Unfortunately, the numbers get a bit only if you try to say "half" without messing around with the other numbers; that maps to *666 for attack and *333 for damage. Maybe reduce the costs of HP/hardness to make it fit. And thank you!
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Re: buffing mundanes, I honestly really like how the rogue turned out, and I hope to eventually play around a little bit more with the fighter, looking at Burrough's John Carter novels for inspiration -- Carter influences the world because he eventually comes to control its entire military apparatus (The Warlord of Mars), and powerful enemies who see him fight throw their swords at his feet and become his ally (A Swordsman of Mars). That's stuff that affects plot at the level of teleportation and scrying, but it's nonmagic and class-appropriate for the fighter.
Be careful here. I understand what you're thinking of, but I think you're drawing the wrong conclusion. Yes, a substantial part of John Carter's power comes from the way the world reacts to him - and a high level fighter should command a similar respect. However, this isn't because he's a high level fighter; it's because he's a high level fighter. Any character of the same legendary caliber should turn NPC heads, whether they earned that fame through fighting prowess or arcane mastery. That's an important part of high level campaigns, in my view. After 16th level or so, you are the kind of person that can topple kingdoms and make kings bow. That's awesome. Don't make it a class feature - you'll actually be limiting the world much more than you expand it.
I see where you're coming from, but there's an important distinction: the line gets drawn at "in play" vs. "while leveling up/between sessions." One of the goals was to give a lot more "meat" to chew on when designing characrers, because most of the players were veterans who really enjoyed that sort of thing. At the same time, we didn't want to make the game itself too clunky when actually playing it.
See, I definitely get that. There should be a major distinction between "in play" complexity and "between session" complexity. It sounds to me like you are mostly testing with PF veterans, while I have mostly run for players new to D&D/PF, so it's not surprising that we have a different approach to this sort of thing.
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That said, 7500 mojo should more or less equal 7500 mojo; I agree there 100%.
To provide some background, I started off scaling attack bonus a lot more steeply, always starting with 300 gp for +1 (per the masterwork weapon rules), but getting up to crazy numbers for +5 when I did things like bonus cubed or whatever. Ultimately, though, I still wanted +N to attack +N damage +N hardness/hp + N damage reduction penetration to equal 2000 * N^2, and fiddled with the numbers until I got that. I have absolutely no problem with revisiting the distribution of the components(short of devaluing DR penetration too much), so if you see a more equitable spread, please do let me know what you suggest.
Makes sense. There is some value in being able to customize your bonuses a little more. It is just a very difficult trick to pull off, since "overcoming DR" doesn't matter until you hit a +3 weapon. That means that you are effectively paying for nothing until you hit a +3-equivalent for overcoming DR. In other words, with the current system, every single +2 weapon in the game should be cheaper than a "core" +2 weapon because no one sane would make a weapon that was treated as being +2 for the purpose of overcoming DR. This problem exists regardless of the precise numbers that are used.
I tried building a system that allows you to custom-assign DR, but I couldn't find anything that worked. The best I can come up with is a system that allows you to custom-assign everything except DR:
Attack bonus: Bonus squared * 800
Damage bonus: Bonus squared * 800
Hardness: Bonus squared * 50
HP (per +5): Bonus squared * 50
The weapon's effective enhancement bonus for the purpose of overcoming DR is equal to (attack bonus + damage bonus)/2. Thus, the most efficient way to overcome DR is to keep attack bonus and damage bonus equal. This naturally encourages weapons to stay relatively close to the "normal" method, but allows customization.
EDIT: I forgot that you changed the scaling for which bonuses penetrate DR. That solves the problem I mentioned above about why any weapon would have a +2 to overcome DR. My bad!
With that in mind, it is possible to build a system that includes DR in its customization options. I think the issue is just that the prices are out of balance. I'd propose the following distribution:
Attack bonus: Bonus squared * 500
Damage bonus: Bonus squared * 500
DR: Bonus squared * 500
Hardness (per +2): Bonus squared * 150
HP (per +10): Bonus squared * 100
This feels more balanced to me. It also has the added benefit of being very easy to do math with!
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That's been the source of endless discussion and argument, of course: do you knock casters down to everyone else's level, or do you elevate the mundanes to the "crazy levels" that the casters already occupy? The former is easy to do: make all casters either 3.5 edition sorcerers or favored souls, then nerf the hell out of the remaining offending spells, and voila. (Or just play E6, for that matter.) The latter approach is a lot more difficult to get right, which in all honesty is part of its appeal. "Can we keep crazy-powerful casters and still have a balanced game?" And the jury's still out on that -- sadly, none of our 3 playtest campaigns ever got above 9th level.
Having spend an absurd amount of time building and adjusting the spell system, I think you are dramatically underestimating the difficulty of balancing casters against mundanes without taking away from what makes them feel unique, powerful, and special. I don't think you can ramp up skills to match spells unless you essentially let skills emulate spells (which you currently do with the rogue).
Perception is a catch-all abstraction for "sensing stuff." Much as we don't have wounds to the leg, shoulder, right biceps, etc. -- just "hit points" -- by the same token it's not important to separate visual vs. auditory vs. olfactory, 99% of the time. Yes, I totally agree that it's "less realistic." It's also vastly more conducive to smooth game play.
Part of the play testing was to see which changes, while asthetically pleasing from the standpoint of good simulation, were too "fiddly" to really be worth it, when the dice hit the table. For us, "-4 to sight-based checks, but only on a Wednesday, but not if you own the Egg of Flumph" was generally in that category.
YMMV -- if your table is a lot more detail-oriented with that kind of thing, by all means separate it out.
I understand the concern. But... all things considered, your system generally prioritizes options and versatility much more highly than simplicity, based on what I've seen. For example, your Equipment chapter is one of the most complicated renditions of nonmagical items I've seen in a while. Don't get me wrong - this isn't intended as a criticism right now. But given how far you've gone with other things, differentiating seeing from hearing seems like an odd place to draw the line and say that it's a bridge too far. If it works for your group, though, then go for it.
Kirth Gersen wrote:
TL/DR: There are lots of ways to stack up really big numbers. Overall, that leads to combat playing more like "rock-paper-scissors" than like "rock-em-sock-em-robots." If that's not to your group's preference, by all means use the existing rules in preference to these. (That said, if you manage to make something that's seriously broken, please post it here so we can look at it!)
I actually like the analogy to rock-paper scissors here. Both a "typical" melee DPR character who uses the standard magic item buying rules and a character who minmaxes his weapons to the Nth degree occupy the same "place" in the Rock/Paper/Scissors analogy. No matter how much damage the fighter does, he still can get nuked by spells, and he can still probably beat a rogue in a straight fight. No matter what, a rock is still a rock. That's not my objection.
My objection lies in that it lets the rock kick the butt of all the other rocks. A "typical" character at, say, 8th level would have 27,000 gp worth of equipment at par. If he uses somewhere around a third of his wealth for his weapon, he can have +2 to attack and damage (8,000 gp for a +2 weapon). In contrast, a character using your revised pricing and getting just the attack and damage bonuses could easily come by a weapon that gives +4 to attack and +3 damage (7,500 gp). In exchange he trades... essentially nothing.
Is this overpowered? Well, an extra +2 to attack and +1 damage isn't going to ruin a campaign. But it really isn't fair, either. It's an artificial advantage granted to anyone who digs through the rules and finds out that they can pay less for more.
I would call both of those things less significant than the bizarre nature of the grapple rules, though.
Kirth Gersen wrote:
Entirely intentional -- until (if and when, that is) I can rework skills so that they approach spells, spellcasting still trumps pretty much everything else -- all I did was slow down the inevitable.
I think the better solution here is "make spellcasting not trump everything else", not "pump up skills to crazy levels".
Ran it by the GM and they said to go with 32,000 after relating your post. She thinks not having to attune on the first round is balanced with losing a +1 constant hit and damge for her game.
Thanks for the advise.
Sounds good to me. +4 and +5 are both reasonable options. Glad I could help!
All magic weapons can be shut down by antimagic or dispel suppression; that's not a downside that should be included in the price estimation. The closest thing to "Ignore all DR" is the Transmuting special property from the Magic Item Compendium. The weapon automatically transforms to overcome any DR, which is nice - however, it transforms one round after the character has already hit the creature (and had its damage reduced accordingly on all attacks in that round). Also, it can only overcome one kind of DR at a time. I would say that removing all of the limitations on the Transmuting property would increase the bonus by 2, making it a total of a +4. Then, you just add Ghost Touch on top of that for a total bonus of +5.
As he continues his training, the monk slowly transcends the normal bounds of his mortal existence and can eventually do away with his mortal coil entirely and become something perfectly attuned to the universe.
I like this fluff.
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When calculating any statistic that normally uses his Strength or Constitution modifier, the monk may instead use his Wisdom bonus (if any) if it is higher.
I hate this mechanic. So a 1st level monk can have 8 Strength and 8 Con while still being beefy and hitting like a truck? No slow development into enlightenment - all monks just gain the ability to eschew the need for the body the instant they step out of the monk school.
We may have a difference in perception. But in my head, your normal monk is agile and strong. Yes, there are legends of venerable masters who can transcend physical constraints by the sheer power of their own enlightenment. But that level of power is only gained through years of training, not an inherent part of the monk.
That looks like a much more useful version. I'd happily play in a game with this house rule.
I'm still worried that Combat Expertise is a bit too powerful. With both Expertise and the Improved/Greater feats for a maneuver, you're getting a +7 untyped bonus at 12th level and it is vastly harder to perform maneuvers of any kind on you. The fighting defensively scaling makes sense - it scales both the penalty and the bonus. But Expertise just doubly scales the bonus. I'm not sure that's a good thing.
You disarm an opponent without damaging the item, sure. Just make the player choose which effect he gets, but consider it part of the same maneuver. You don't have to drag an opponent in order bull rush them either, but I don't see a problem with putting those maneuvers together.
Do we need special rules for disarming in a grapple? You can already make attacks in a grapple, and "disarm" is considered an attack. I think it's already possible in the core rules without any need for extra rules.
Fighting Defensively feels pretty pointless at low levels; at only a +1/-1, it's hardly worth the mental space to remember. I prefer starting any situational bonus at +2 or -2. Even a 1st level warrior is capable of fighting in a way that improves his defenses by a decent amount - he just might be bad at hitting people while doing it.
If Combat Expertise allows you to take AoOs against combat maneuvers, that should be mentioned in the feat description.
Giving a AoO against all combat maneuver attempts makes the divide between having Combat Expertise and not having it is pretty massive. What if that granted you an AoO against failed combat maneuvers?
Also, on the subject of combining combat maneuvers, have you considered combining Sunder and Disarm? The fluff of both is "I attack the opponent's item", and it seems like they would be easy to merge; just have the effect of Disarm while also dealing the damage of Sunder. It was always a little weird that items took no damage while being disarmed anyway.
I agree with you, but at the same time pretty much anything is overpowered in comparison to official Rogue options. Rogue could use a boost and this offers it, but I can't help but feel this would be better suited as part of some sort of base Rogue rewrite instead of an archetype.
I agree. If this was a core class feature in a new version of a Rogue, I wouldn't be complaining. (Well, I would, but for different reasons). It just doesn't fit as an "option"; experienced players will recognize that it's better than other options, and newbies will continue to have weak rogues. Better to make options just be options, and fixes just be fixes, instead of trying to combine the two.
Personally, I love this, and is something I've been tinkering with in my own homebrew. I'm glad that someone else was thinking along similar lines.
I love it when different people working independently come up with similar results. It makes me more confident that there is value in it.
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Overall, I liked quite a bit of what you did, but didn't have the time to finish. I'll read more of this tomorrow.
Glad to hear it!
Marakash Arkenrae wrote:
kudos on all the hard work! it looks lovely and I will probably "borrow" some of these ideas for my next campaign...
Feel free! That's what it's there for, after all. And if you do take anything specific, I always like hearing how it went. That way, if it causes a problem, I can try to improve it!
Makhno wrote:
Uh, where are chapters 6 and 9?
My changes to those chapters were very marginal, like assuming that adventurers walk 10 hours a day instead of 8 hours a day. 95% of what you would read in those chapters is the same as the SRD, and a lot of the most interesting stuff that was originally in those chapters can't be legally included. It seemed like it would be kind of wasting people's time to treat them as being as important as, say, the Magic or Classes chapters. If you're curious what's in them, they are included in the full PDF.
So I can trade a trivial amount of noncombat utility and a few talents for the ability to godmode against bosses? Doesn't seem like a fair trade to me.
Note that I'm not saying it's overpowered relative to other classes. I'm saying it's overpowered relative to other rogue options.
very interesting stuff. I'll be keeping an eye on this for sure.
Excellent. I'll be updating soon with rewritten Cleric domain abilities and a new, more rigorous system for building spells. This will allow spells to be systematically compared them to each other and (hopefully) prevent accidentally creating overpowered spells, while also giving more tools for casters to customize existing spells with metamagic.
Cranefist wrote:
Thanks for the dl. Your work is beautiful. I fully respect the labor of love.
:3 Thank you very kindly. See, it's comments like that which just make my day.
What critical failures? A 1 is just a miss. Or are you using an alternate system? I've used the -10/30 system, and I wasn't a big fan, maybe because I was a skill monkey (3.5 Scout), and at a certain level, you should be successful on a common skill, even if you roll a 1.
Maybe if a natural 1 was -11+your level, then it would be OK, but kind of complicated (at 4th level, you'd be subtracting a lot of sevens...).
I like it when my level 10 whatever can just "take 1" on relatively easy skill checks. It makes the game faster.
I would never use this system for skills. For essentially the reasons you desribed, that makes no sense. They don't automatically fail on a 1 in the original system, and they shouldn't have a critical failure on a 1 with this revision. (Also, a 20 should not be a critical success! That defeats the whole concept of "taking 20", will cause weird issues all around.)
But iterative attacks make fumbles much more likely than that. A 20th level fighter has a nearly 20% chance (18.5%, if you're picky) to "fumble" on at least one attack every single round. Heaven help him if he is dual-wielding; that increases the odds of fumbling at least once to about 35%! Critical failures are way too common.
They should reduce the penalties for rolling a 1 as you go higher up in level; Level 1 characters make mistakes about that often, but not when you're hovering around Level 15. Would if a Critical Fumble required 2 d20 rolls - the first is when you first roll a 1 and the second lets you confirm by rolling a number *below* a certain checkpoint - and the second reduced more the higher up in levels you go? Like, at level 1, there's the first roll which - if it hits a 1 - goes into another d20 roll where you must roll more than 20 - Class Level, with the exception of another natural 1, which means you still fumble?
I think this is needed; 1's happen too often and a level 15 character doesn't fumble as easily.
I agree that 1s and 20s don't scale well, but that sounds unnecessarily complicated. Why not say that rolling a 1 is treated as "rolling a -10" and a 20 is treated as "rolling a 30"? Then you could just use the results as written. If you roll a 1 and get a negative result, you really screwed up. If you roll a 1 and your result is still positive (higher level character), you almost certainly didn't hit, but you didn't stab yourself in the kidney like a twit either.
This also neatly solves the weirdness of letting commoners hit Balors 5% of the time. 5% is a lot.
Mechanics and fluff go hand in hand. It makes little sense to say that all dwarves are hardy if they have no abilities which actually make them hardier than any other race.
That isn't to say that this needs to be specifically represented through ability score modifiers. Moving ability score modifiers to classes can work, as long as the races still have different abilities. But if you make all of the races mechanically identical, you are subtracting from the fluff and depth of the world, not adding to it.
Would haste still be powerful if it were single target? Absolutely. It wouldn't be the game-changing spell it is now, but it would still be significant and easily worthy of its third level slot. Make it single-target and add in a mass haste spell at higher levels. That's what I did.
I'd like to see rules we already have formalised, like damage.
For example for all intents and purposes you have Base, Conditional, Critical, and Extra.
Sounds like my compression of all bonus types into four categories: Inherent (base attack bonus, ability modifiers, etc.), Competence (feats, most constantly active class features), Enhancement (Spells, magic items, some class features), and Circumstance (circumstantial... stuff). It definitely helps simplify things.
(The full rules are slightly more complicated, but that's the gist of it.)
The really hardcore alignment stories are like banana peal stories. I hear stories about slipping on a banana peal but as many banana peals that I've seen on the ground and how possible I know it is, I've never seen anyone slip on one.
Seconding this. Some of the most entertaining PCs I've played with have been paladins. I will always remember Lucied and his battle cry of "EAT MY JUSTICE!". Not to mention his noble steed Guftas, best known for his talent at midair barrel rolls. Paladins are fantastic.
I'm a bit of a latecomer to this party, so if things have already been addressed in this thread, feel free to just point me to where it was discussed. With that said, I have some minor points:
Why does being dazzled give a -4 penalty to my ability to hear things? This could be fixed with the wording "In addition, it applies a -4 penalty to Perception checks made to see." Or perhaps "to visual Perception checks."
Why does a ring of protection make it harder to touch me, but not affect how difficult I am to grapple? Grappling involves touching, right?
(Taken from the thread about grappling) You seem to have retained the core mechanics for Pathfinder's grapple system. CMD should not be used to resist attempts to escape a grapple. Yes, it's convenient. It also happens to make no sense whatsoever. Here is a short list of things that make you better at holding onto an opponent in a grapple:
Rings of protection
The Dodge feat
That one ioun stone that gives an insight bonus to AC
Having cover
An ally using Aid Another to improve your AC (but not your attack rolls or grapple checks!)
Yes, it's a core Pathfinder mechanic, not a change you made, so it may or may not be something you are interested in fixing. But given how thorough an overhaul you gave to other areas, I think it is at least worth considering.
Your note about the renaming of "mojo" amuses me greatly.
Have you ever had a player try to create custom items with your rules? It seems to me that allowing players to get massively discounted weapons that only provide attack or damage bonuses would be really, really abusable. Only 7,500 for a weapon that gives +5 attack bonus? Yes, please!
A rogue would do roughly 1d6/level + 1d6 damage with each attack. His hit die is 1d8 per level. Therefore, if he hits himself (or, for the sake of clarity, a different creature which we assume has identical stats to the rogue), he would deal enough damage that a single blow would be lethal. Eventually, the slightly higher hit die would even this out - but eventually, the rogue gets multiple attacks. My point is that combat would not be expected more than a single round or two with this system. And a system with such short combats is not healthy.
I can't tell you with absolute certainty that it would be overpowered relative to the alternatives. I can tell you that getting +1d6 damage per level on each attack is brutally high damage, and will only exacerbate rocket tag. Such a rogue would be able to kill himself in a single round with little difficulty for almost his entire career. That's not a good design.
Update: A new version is up. If you find it difficult to work with the single massive PDF file, I now have a solution! You can take a look at a version separated by chapter here.
The ranger and rogue have been substantially rewritten. Many of the ranger changes owe a debt to good ideas from Kirthfinder (though my version is still very distinct, so don't blame Kirth if you don't like it!). A number of errors and inconsistencies were also corrected. A brief summary of the changes to ranger and rogue follow:
Ranger:
The core concept of the ranger is now that of a hunter and woodland warrior. I was confused before on exactly what it should be.
New class feature: Quarry. The ranger can designate an enemy as his quarry a certain number of times per day as a swift action, and gets bonuses when fighting his quarry.
New class feature: Ranger lore. Rangers get a ranger lore ability every 3 levels. Many iconic ranger abilities that fit the characters of some, but not all, rangers (such as the combat style feats) are now options within "ranger lore".
Ranger no longer casts spells
Other, more minor new features and level progression adjustments.
Rogue:
Sneak attack progression is now d6 per four levels.
New class feature: Ambush attack. The first sneak attack a rogue makes against a single foe in an encounter is an ambush attack. Ambush attacks add d6 extra damage, plus d6 per four levels. This encourages the rogue to move around the battlefield, taking ambush attacks against multiple foes.
Additional advanced skill tricks were added.
Two high-level rogue abilities were added: Jack of All Trades (all skills are class skills) and Master of All Trades (rogues have ranks in every skill except trained skills).
Other minor changes and level progression adjustments.
I am very interested to see what people think of the revisions, and curious if there are any particular areas that people think need more work.
We're getting into hazier territory on my end, because the difference between my preferred implementation of grapple and Pathfinder's implementation are much more substantial here. As a result, I just don't know the full implications of Pathfinder's system here. To the extent that I follow your numbers, it seems reasonable. I would say that when both parties roll a d20, high modifiers are a bit less scary than normal, since there is the potential for one person to roll poorly and for the other to roll well.
Oh, and one more thing, since we've more or less figured out base grapple rules:
CMD should not be used to resist attempts to escape a grapple. Yes, it's convenient. It also happens to make no sense whatsoever. Here is a short list of things that make you better at holding onto an opponent in a grapple:
Rings of protection
The Dodge feat
That one ioun stone that gives an insight bonus to AC
Having cover
An ally using Aid Another to improve your AC (but not your attack rolls or grapple checks!)
This is incredibly stupid. Now, there are a couple of ways to fix this. The most obvious is to say that, unlike most things, breaking out of a grapple requires an opposed CMB check. Yes, it breaks the symmetry of always using CMB vs CMD. But... come on. Shield of faith and protection from evil help you grapple people? I mean... really?
For what it's worth, I agree with you 100% and wish the grapple rules had been designed with more focus on speed and simplicity to begin with. Unfortunately, for some reason the grapple rules deviate from most other rules, which I believe put a higher value on fun and playability than realism. If I had been trying to replace the RAW with (in our opinion) superior, less complex grapple rules, I think we would've found this a lot easier. But if I'm going to stick to RAW and RAI as much as possible, it seems I'm also going to have to tango with the "simulation style".
Makes sense. The closer you stick to core, the more portable the changes are (and the more likely your DMs are to agree with them), which is always nice.
upho wrote:
You know, this could work - the default limb is "arm" and the initiating party will only have to choose if the choice might actually make a significant difference or the opponent lacks arms. (It might make the grapple rules seem more open to DM fiat, but in fact all rules are, so I don't mind.)
I'll show this to my DM and see what he thinks. Thanks!
This is not a fair trade. As a general guideline, you can consider two spell slots of X level to be roughly worth one spell slot of X+1 level. (This isn't perfect, but it's reasonable enough.) Thus, a 4th level spell would be about two 3rd level spells. Your system would let me empower a scorching ray for two 2nd level slots, which is significantly too powerful.
Also, letting casters exceed the normal level cap is just a bad idea in general. Yes, that's a bad bloodline ability at low levels. As ShadowcatX said, there are a lot of bad bloodline abilities. If you want to fix it, change the ability, not the fundamental structure of metamagic.
And SquirmWyrm, what are you talking about? If I am a 3rd level Sorcerer with a 16 Charisma, that doesn't mean I have a 3rd level bonus spell slot for metamagic. That would be crazy.
Or, a DM might say: I always find that y slows down the game.
This is a great place to start. (Stealing from one of my posts in a different thread.) There's a specific thing in D&D/PF that I hate: when the player tries to do something simple ("I grapple the monster"), and then everything has to grind to a halt while the DM has to explain "it's not actually that simple, here are the rules and implications of the choice that you didn't know you had to make".
The rules for defensive casting are a perfect example of this: a new player tries to cast a spell while threatened, and then everything grinds to a halt while I explain the rules and implications around the defensive casting choice they didn't know they had to make (ignoring that it's stupid not to just 5' step away, which is another level of complexity...). A good streamlining should minimize or eliminate those moments as much as possible.
