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edit, triple ninja, wow
It's because we don't use UI rules here and so we stealthed right up. >:3
"If you're not talking about mechanics when discussing simulationism vs other aspects, then you're not talking about the game system itself, you're talking about a specific interest / playstyle / preference."
There is a difference between discussing design considerations for mechanics and discussing a specific system or comparing different systems.
"And if those interests or whatever are being pushed by the developers, then we end up talking about the mechanics again because the system must conform to the intended goals (even if that conformation ends up bending and breaking it)."
Prior to me clarifying what I meant by gygaxian style, this was my point about why d20 was getting messed up recently, the intended goals of the original d20, which is being used as the core for pathfinder, are different than the intended goals of current developers.
Kinda hard for a system to designed to conform to one ideal, to be altered for conforming to an opposing ideal.
This was my point before the exposition on gygaxian style.
My comment about discussing only the how of rules being used was limited to my post on what I meant by gygaxian style. Which can affect design decisions for mechanics as well as the experience one gets from a particular design.
"Actually it mattered a ton to the enjoyment of the game,"
Not really what I meant. What I meant was that the game was still enjoyable enough, despite it's flaws, to become popular. It's flaws were not so deep and disasterous as to kill the game before it ever went anywhere. It was flawed but most importantly it was fun.
"your experiences with that system could vary wildly from game to game."
And I find this a silly consideration. Trying to get rid of this is like trying to get rid of variation between different book authors, or different movie makers. Every gm is like an author, even when playing a module, they are playing their own take on that module.
I don't think we should be seeking to reduce table variation.
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"your experiences with that system could vary wildly from game to game."
And I find this a silly consideration. Trying to get rid of this is like trying to get rid of variation between different book authors, or different movie makers. Every gm is like an author, even when playing a module, they are playing their own take on that module.
I don't think we should be seeking to reduce table variation.
I said system. Moving from one table to another and having to re-learn half the game is not productive.
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So i keep seeing this D20 legends thing being mentioned by you ashiel and your ideas interest me from what ive seen (and i think i missed the full explanation somewhere?) Is it a Whole RPG your working on or An add-on to PF?
Also I have to say snowblind after looking at your examples of bad feats (the there there there post) your right a lot of bad filler that might not get used ever but as long as there is good stuff in there i don't see a reason to give up on them you can always ignore the bad stuff just use the good. The real thing about it is obviously it sells and you can make good points and convincing arguments but when a large enough audience purchases the product that is a much larger and important voice so it makes sense that they will keep publishing content (designers got to eat after all) I don't buy them for the meh options i buy them for the cool stuff the shines past the darkness. (i think the real reason is i want the opportunity to hear a player explain a concept to me and then remembering something from one of my books pulling it out and giving them the perfect archetype and set of feats to make there concept fully playable and hopefully fun.) It is i guess not really an important discussion since really we can't get a resolution but at the core we agree there is some bad stuff and wish that they would do better then the bad stuff the real difference is in the emotional consideration of positive outlook pathfinder in SPAAAACE and negative of bad rules in SPAAAACE. I mean when you get tired of bad stuff you'll stop buying and if they put out stuff so bad ill stop or if they suddenly do what you would like yay otherwise it just is what it is. (that was defined a nonsensical ramble and I apologize if it didn't make sense.)
"player explain how they are going to do something, you have utterly left the simulation of the game and have broken the 4th wall."
Well, I'm not sure I entirely agree that it matters as it can be done without breaking immersion which is far more important. Additionally, it engages the player to think and not merely react, which is a major factor in what makes it fun, that is the journey part.
If you consider this breaking the 4th wall, then so would any puzzle presented to the players, but puzzles are fun and engaging for many, hence their inclusion.
I don't think it is for everybody, but I do think it would be a big help for most to understand the difference, or at least understand there is a difference of this sort, instead of thinking that the "modern" style is the only style.
I've taught a few who used to think that "modern" was the only way. That didn't know, that they know of alternatives. They had no idea a game could be like that until they played my game. I think that is bad. They should know.
"If the player has no idea how the mechanics of a trap would work, their character is suddenly less likely to handle the traps too, even though their character is the one disarming the trap and is supposed to be an expert on traps."
Not necessarily. Diplomacy makes for a clearer example here but it can work for any skill. The secret is take the spirit of their actions.
So for example, we have a player that couldn't sell water to a thirsty man in the desert, but lets say he is trying to convince a guard to let him pass and says something stupid about being spending money in the market being good for the town, then he rolls really well. That just means the guard heard the core of what the player said and didn't focus on the mistakes of how the player said it.
Likewise with the trap, they girl might say she is going to do some fancy trickery with a wooden spoon to jam the trap trigger. That can be enough to earn a roll. It is still engaging the story more deeply than "I got a 23 on my check."
It even opens things up for funny dialog like "I knew that spoon would come in handy."
"You found that last year."
"Yep. And I was right to grab it."
and that is the good stuff of the game.
Part of the gm's job is to engage the players on their level, which is one advantage over playing with a computer or when the system acts as gm, because a human gm can adapt to the players.
Only a human gm can learn to handle my socially awkward yet direct and technical style in the same group as a young girl who barely understands rolling dice much less fantasy physics. A human can do that, but a computer or system can't.
And requiring rp to roll dice is like that, it requires proper adjudication.
There are no solid answers, only generalities, but even generalities can have gradients between different perfectly distinguishable concepts.
And honestly, if reduced table variation was really a concern, then why is it that 3.x continuously, explicitly, and loudly encourages the gm to adjust the rules as needed, even giving examples on how to do so?
"Going back to the mechanics thing, having better mechanics has actually encouraged players in my games to do more exploration. They explicitly understand that they can do things so rather than playing mother-may-I with everything they are more proactive."
Playing mother-may-I is a gm problem, not a mechanics problem.
A player should be able to declare any action that actually makes sense within world, without even knowing the rules, and have the gm reply with "Okay, this is how we are going to do that." In my opinion, a good system makes it easier for the gm to quickly establish a reasonable method to handle any action the playr attempts, but even in a poor system, the gm should still be looking at the rules as in "how do I handle this?" and never let the rules say something can't be done.
The gm should never need to even glance at the rulebook 99.9% of the time they disallow something, because everytime they disallow something, it should be because the action doesn't make sense for the character to be able to achieve it.
I.E. you don't need to look at the book to know that a normal and non-magical human will never be able to fly, and so if a player asks to fly to the top of the building, the gm shouldn't need to find the book rule against humans flying, she should be able to just respond immediately with "Nope. Humans can't fly so you can't fly to the top of the building."
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I never played anything earlier than 3e, but the group that taught me grew up on playing Dungeons and Dragons, almost from its earliest public format. Most of them are family members, so they've stayed in contact their whole life. They played as kids, through highschool, some in the military, some in prison, some in foreign aid groups traveling other countries tries. My point in saying this, is, as a group, they've been a lot of places and played with a lot of people.
They are the ones who informed me of rampant variance in the rules. They explained it to me as, "I could take my 17th level wizard Ice and jump off a 20 foot building and sprain my ankle in Frank's game, or I would die in Cindy's game. So many rules were never clarified aid left up to the GM to determin; imagine having to relearn how physics worked every time you got a new job, and even then, they would spontaneously change during one shift, and revert to normal during the next."
The above is nearly a direct quote of how they explained it to me. The group misses many things about older editions, but it's much of it is centered in nostalgia. They tried running older games recently, and as a group, decided they wanted nothing to do with the older editions. Too much nonsensical rules, or missing rules. As much as they may have loved playing during those days, they prefer the simplified rules of the d20 system, especially since many rules are far more consistent from table to table.
"But if she didn't have the mechanic ability to do that, then her character wouldn't really be what she claimed to be.
For me, mechanical choices influence the concept just as much as conceptual design influences the mechanics."
Indeed this is true, but there is a difference between treating the character as "a twohanded fighter with these feats" vs "a cynical ex-soldier, disillusioned with the government and who gave up on finding justice in the world."
This is why 3.x is constantly encouraging adjusting the rules.
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I played 1st edition ADND for 7-ish years ran it for 2 of those and frankly Im ok with not ever touching it again the later editions (except maybe second ;) are an improvement. I mean why can't my dwarf fighter go above level 6? and the charts oh the charts having to look up the charts for everything. Rules so scattered between book there was one class i wanna say paladin whom was spread between 2 book and wizard spells listed in one book would be in another with no reference to where it was headaches galore. if you want to emphasis role play just emphasis role play.
I said system. Moving from one table to another and having to re-learn half the game is not productive."your experiences with that system could vary wildly from game to game."
And I find this a silly consideration. Trying to get rid of this is like trying to get rid of variation between different book authors, or different movie makers. Every gm is like an author, even when playing a module, they are playing their own take on that module.
I don't think we should be seeking to reduce table variation.
Reading books from different authors can be similarly very different despite both writing in american english, and being printed in the same font, at the same size, on the same paper, etc.
The game system is like that, it is the book details, like font, size, and binding, and bad choices there can make it difficult or easy to read what is within. But the highest enjoyment comes from what is written in the book.
Most players I meet create a whole bunch of books, in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and styles, but with very empty pages within.
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So i keep seeing this D20 legends thing being mentioned by you ashiel and your ideas interest me from what ive seen (and i think i missed the full explanation somewhere?) Is it a Whole RPG your working on or An add-on to PF?
It's a whole RPG that I started designing in my head and have been working on putting together in my spare time between work and trying to maintain the modern social life (which by that I mean I tend to spend a lot of time on my computer).
It's essentially the game I intend to use to run my games in the future and it's born from the experience that I've gathered over the past 16 years of dealing with the d20 system and studying the way the game works and experimenting with different mechanics and game theories. The goal, being, that I want a RPG system that is easy to teach, painless to learn, uses a level based progression, is very flexible in creating characters with a "less classes, more options" sort of position.
Rather than trying to work around the problems that I've found in traditional D20 games and having a massive patch-fix, I decided to go the whole way and just rebuild it so you don't have to re-learn so much.
When people heard that I was working on this thing, when it was in the mostly theoretical stages with a lot of the mechanics being understood but not recorded on paper, there was some interest so I've decided that as I get closer to getting the game complete I'll work on making it available to everyone else, and probably doing an open playtest or something as an acid test. When the time comes, I will want people to see what they can do with the system and try to break it so we can fix the broken bits.
I intend to use an almost programming-dev system of updating the SRD at various points as feedback and testing decides and errata is called for (I'd like to include a changelog page that includes anytime something was changed and the date that it was changed in) and so changes to the game will be something that are easy to find and noted for the reason the change was made (rather than having to dig or wait for a new printing to get errata out).
In the pre-Alpha instances where I've given tiny tech demos or ran short games using elements of this system and Pathfinder where stuff wasn't working (for example, the changes to things like movement and targeting in combat were functional before I began working on spells and such) the feedback from the players was highly positive concerning the changes that those sessions featured. So thus far, I'm happy with the results as they are very slowly coming along.
Aside from doing some dev-talk about certain design principles and stuff that's getting tweaked, I haven't presented a whole lot in terms of the actual rules yet for the following reasons:
1. A lot of the stuff is being developed parallel to each other so as progress or adjustments are being made to certain sections of the rules, other sections of the rules are being revised with them. Because of this, I don't want to release a bunch of stuff that's subject to changing week to week.
2. I'm very self conscious about the quality of my work and I don't want to publish anything for public consumption - even as dirty preview notes - without it being up to a certain standard. That's been true for material I've put on the Paizo forums before, but this is a much larger project than anything I've hammered out in the past (it's literally a revision of the entire d20 system). That means that the text needs to be clear and the formatting not absolutely horrible, and minimizing editing errors.
3. Connected with the previous two, presenting mechanics that are heavily subject to change or are dirty could actually hurt the reputation of the final version and cause it to be dismissed prematurely.
Since folks like Lemmy have noted that they're interested in seeing some harder previews than the soft stuff I've been previewing on the forums, I'm trying to get everything into a state that's cleaner and consistent between the different chapters post recent revisions, and put more work of concept material into it.
To continue the analogy, it seems rather rare to me for players to realize they could actually write in the books they create.
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I said system. Moving from one table to another and having to re-learn half the game is not productive."your experiences with that system could vary wildly from game to game."
And I find this a silly consideration. Trying to get rid of this is like trying to get rid of variation between different book authors, or different movie makers. Every gm is like an author, even when playing a module, they are playing their own take on that module.
I don't think we should be seeking to reduce table variation.
Reading books from different authors can be similarly very different despite both writing in american english, and being printed in the same font, at the same size, on the same paper, etc.
The game system is like that, it is the book details, like font, size, and binding, and bad choices there can make it difficult or easy to read what is within. But the highest enjoyment comes from what is written in the book.
Most players I meet create a whole bunch of books, in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and styles, but with very empty pages within.
Except I'm talking about the system again. What you are talking about is narrative and story telling style. To borrow your own metaphor, since I'm talking about the system, it would be akin to having to re-learn half the English language when picking up a new book.
Which is not productive.
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That definitely sounds interesting I assume if i keep an eye on this thread when something hard comes out ill be made aware yes?
I've personally always thought about trying my hand at game design but it always seemed daunting and really never enough time on my hands.
The idea of having it online like the srd is good makes it an evolving living thing almost.
"Except I'm talking about the system again. What you are talking about is narrative and story telling style. To borrow your own metaphor, since I'm talking about the system, it would be akin to having to re-learn half the English language when picking up a new book.
Which is not productive."
I can't really agree.
I play 3rd over here, 4e over there, marvel heroes, palladium, savage worlds in many varieties, Each are not simply half-way different, but completely different. No problem at all.
In fact, even if only half the rules stayed the same, it'd still be good, much like the many variations of d20. You have dnd, d20 modern, star wars the first d20, star wars saga, pathfinder. All of these are only half-way the same, but that still makes each of them easier to pick up and learn.
Savage Worlds does the same thing. It has a core set of rules, and each setting that comes out is a different take on them and has it's own quirks, changes, and differences. For example, normally magic uses power points, but in the swmlp setting, magic is free instead. Didn't make it any harder or less fun.
I don't limit myself to one author, nor to one system. Why would I? If I'm going to consider each gm as different, much like considering each author different, then why not take their vision of the game with their houserules as part of that difference that sets them apart from other gms?
I guess, why treat rpgs like a board game? Why not treat them like an interactive book instead?
Boardgames are static. They are all about testing your skill against another.
RPGs are dynamic, they are about being part of a story, not about proving skill at all. The point of an rpg is the story. You are trying to best other players and prove yourself the best at some particular skill. You are there for the same reason as one might read a book, to experience the story.
So I guess you might say that the difference between modern and gygaxian is whether you treat rpgs as a game to be beaten, or as medium for experiencing stories.
And yes, it could be both, but that would be extremely difficult to pull off since the motivation for playing games vs reading/watching stories are so different, and would be like proverbially mixing fire and water, it requires the right vessel.
In fact, even video games with heavy story have each the game and the story discretly separate. You play, then you get story, then you play some more.
"The goal, being, that I want a RPG system that is easy to teach, painless to learn, uses a level based progression, is very flexible in creating characters with a "less classes, more options" sort of position."
Have you looked at Savage Worlds? With the exception of levels, sw fits all those goals in my opinion, so it may have some good ideas for you.
Also, ever think about swapping that d20 for 3d6? I really get tired of the inconsistency of the flat chance on a d20. Also, 3d6 would be less prone to the internet forum's infamously bad rollers, since each check would get 3 results from the rng rather than just one.
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"Except I'm talking about the system again. What you are talking about is narrative and story telling style. To borrow your own metaphor, since I'm talking about the system, it would be akin to having to re-learn half the English language when picking up a new book.
Which is not productive."
I can't really agree.
I play 3rd over here, 4e over there, marvel heroes, palladium, savage worlds in many varieties, Each are not simply half-way different, but completely different. No problem at all.
...Those are entirely different games.
EDIT: They may be built from the same basis or in the same genre, such as 2D fighting games as a genre, or Street Fighter II vs Street Fighter IV, or whatever. But each of those games have their own rules for those games.
If each time you went to a different friend's house to play Street Fighter IV, you got a randomly different game with vague similarities to Street Fighter IV, that would be a discouragement to play Street Fighter IV for most people.
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"The goal, being, that I want a RPG system that is easy to teach, painless to learn, uses a level based progression, is very flexible in creating characters with a "less classes, more options" sort of position."
Have you looked at Savage Worlds? With the exception of levels, sw fits all those goals in my opinion, so it may have some good ideas for you.
An amazing coincidence was how a friend of mine and I were just talking about Savage Worlds being garbage since its mechanics can actually make a character who is supposed to be better at a thing have a lower chance of succeeding at a task than someone who is supposed to be worse.
Also, ever think about swapping that d20 for 3d6? I really get tired of the inconsistency of the flat chance on a d20. Also, 3d6 would be less prone to the internet forum's infamously bad rollers, since each check would get 3 results from the rng rather than just one.
No, I will never do that because it generally screws with the balance of the system really hard. In d20, every +1 is effectively +5% chance of success, but with a 3d6 system, that's no longer true. Anything that forces rolls to not have an equal % chance of landing on any die result pushes the rolls towards averages. This makes numbers only a few points higher significantly harder to successfully hit, and lower numbers trivially easy to hit.
It overly complicates things because the value of a +2 to AC is vastly different depending on what the creature's starting AC is. If the character would have hit them on an 11, it's about normal for d20. But if the character needed a 14+ to hit them, putting them at needing a 16+ makes the character way harder to hit because 2d10 produces results of 11 far more often than not and the further you move away from that average in either direction the less frequently those numbers appear.
Oh, a concept I came up with recently. Make classes a special kind of thing to advance in, such that a character could invest entirely in non-class abilities and feats, but they could choose instead to advance in a class instead of buying a couple feats.
Basically, you'd have prestige classes, but not classes. If someone took a class, they be spending most of their advancement resource on that class, and get benefits similar to being a specialist vs a generalist.
I.E. any character could learn illusion magic without a class, but the Illusionist would be the specialist in illusions and could do more with illusions than anyone else.
Also, since they would be merely optional, limited in scope, and generally not mutually exclusive, they would still be rather open for character concept design.
Another example, Paladin. Any classless character might know swords, armor, and healing magic, but the paladin would fuse the three together, reducing the penalties for casting healing spells in armor, or just making heal spells not require somatic components which makes cure light suddenly look like lay on hands conceptually.
I'll actually be using this as a mod to my rnr system for the Wizards-wish-rewrites-physics-with-an-rpg-book setting that I haven't named yet. (think Goblins comic, where characters are aware of normally meta-elements such as class and lvl.)
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I never said mechanics were an issue, in fact nothing in my post counters your point at all, unless you consider perfectly balanced rules to be the only way to have good rules. I personally think you can have good rules without them being perfectly balanced, but that is aside from my point.
The important part,
The entire post was about the rules are used, not what rules are used.If you're not talking about mechanics when discussing simulationism vs other aspects, then you're not talking about the game system itself, you're talking about a specific interest / playstyle / preference. And if those interests or whatever are being pushed by the developers, then we end up talking about the mechanics again because the system must conform to the intended goals (even if that conformation ends up bending and breaking it).
Sure some systems might be specifically designed for one way or the other, and the first few editions were not well designed (it didn't really matter to the enjoyment of the game though now did it?), but honestly it doesn't really matter which system.Actually it mattered a ton to the enjoyment of the game, because so many holes existed in the systems that your experiences with that system could vary wildly from game to game. Many of the mechanics that did exist stifled enjoyment of the game because of things that they either restricted or promoted (such as the idiotic dual classing mechanics) or were just cumbersome (like THAC0, which was so much of a hassle that many GM screens had charts printed on them so you could see the number you needed to hit an AC), or were overly frustrating (like having 1d4 hit points and 1 useful action per day, you die at 0 HP, and need more XP than anyone else in the party to level up, on the promise that one day if the campaign lasted for a long time, you would be the second coming).
The mechanics matter a whole lot in determining the enjoyment of an RPG. The...
>(Aratrok did comment that he missed the encounters and stuff I made 'cause he still finds himself preparing for all kinds of hazards and such, and how it never means anything because he's been playing in APs lately with other GMs and he never had to face an invisible foe over 17 levels. It made me smile. :>)
Uh-huh. Admit it, you cackled madly like the Dark Lord you are.
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That's more or less how D20 Legends works, albeit without those explicit mechanics. Your class doesn't determine whether or not you can do things like wield weapons or cast spells. You do, however, have a selection of resources (that work much like feats) that can be expended to specialize in class features.
Thus anyone can cast abjuration spells. However investing your talents into Abjurer talents can make you better at using them, provide bonus spells known, or modify the way you cast them in some way.
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>(Aratrok did comment that he missed the encounters and stuff I made 'cause he still finds himself preparing for all kinds of hazards and such, and how it never means anything because he's been playing in APs lately with other GMs and he never had to face an invisible foe over 17 levels. It made me smile. :>)
Uh-huh. Admit it, you cackled madly like the Dark Lord you are.
...Okay. Maybe a little. (>//>)
"An amazing coincidence was how a friend of mine and I were just talking about Savage Worlds being garbage since its mechanics can actually make a character who is supposed to be better at a thing have a lower chance of succeeding at a task than someone who is supposed to be worse."
I didn't say everything was better, but it has many concepts that really work well.
For example, powers, each power works generally the same mechanically, but certain details change based on source. For example, both a wizard and a mad scientist might have the bolt power. The bolt does the same damage, but the mad scientist has it as a gadget which has it's own power point pool and a chance of being broken each use, while the wizard has a single power point pool. Each has advantages and disadvantages, but yet still simple and easy to learn, and written once.
You could use that model for arcane vs divine vs psionic. Same spell list, but power type/source can set/modify things. I.E. psionics might last longer, arcane might have +1 cl, and divine might not have somatic components.
Other things are like the drawing cards for initiative, which is a rather fun way of handling initiative though not so much for pbp.
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....
Also, ever think about swapping that d20 for 3d6? I really get tired of the inconsistency of the flat chance on a d20. Also, 3d6 would be less prone to the internet forum's infamously bad rollers, since each check would get 3 results from the rng rather than just one.
Swapping dice mechanics is really hairy.
You would need to totally rework how critical mechanics work. And natural 1/20 mechanics, for that matter. Anything which depends on certain numbers having a certain probability of showing up.
Combats (in the sense of multiple creatures making rolls against eachother) get skewed towards the opponents with the greater numbers. A creature might have a 20% chance of hitting a more dangerous creature with a d20, but only a 2% chance with 3d6. On the other hand, the bigger one might have a 70% chance with a d20, but a 90% chance with 3d6. It makes increases to numbers more valuable when the number is already high. This creates a very strong incentive to push for extremely high modifiers, since it can very easily remove almost all possibility of failure. Consider what a 1st level wizard would do if their color spray would only fail to incapacitate someone 10% of the time.
Also, a take-20esque mechanic might look weird, since getting a max roll would take about 200 times more time on average. But you kind of need a shortcut, since even getting >=15 from 3d6 requires about 10 rolls (as opposed to 3-4 on a d20)
There is also the whole issue around some mechanics assuming a minimum of 1 or a maximum of 20 (exactly 20) is in play.
Oh, a concept I came up with recently. Make classes a special kind of thing to advance in, such that a character could invest entirely in non-class abilities and feats, but they could choose instead to advance in a class instead of buying a couple feats.
Basically, you'd have prestige classes, but not classes. If someone took a class, they be spending most of their advancement resource on that class, and get benefits similar to being a specialist vs a generalist.
I.E. any character could learn illusion magic without a class, but the Illusionist would be the specialist in illusions and could do more with illusions than anyone else.
Also, since they would be merely optional, limited in scope, and generally not mutually exclusive, they would still be rather open for character concept design.
Another example, Paladin. Any classless character might know swords, armor, and healing magic, but the paladin would fuse the three together, reducing the penalties for casting healing spells in armor, or just making heal spells not require somatic components which makes cure light suddenly look like lay on hands conceptually.
I'll actually be using this as a mod to my rnr system for the Wizards-wish-rewrites-physics-with-an-rpg-book setting that I haven't named yet. (think Goblins comic, where characters are aware of normally meta-elements such as class and lvl.)
If I was writing an RPG, I would actually try to go in the opposite direction. There is an enormous amount of half decent stuff in Pathfinder that is forever doomed to be trash because it is linked to utter crap and the overall trade isn't worth it. Instead of that, give a character a number of points to select "Paths" with. That way you could have a "Knight" path, a "minor divine caster" path and a "Champion of Good" path (or possibly something a little more nuanced, this is a pretty flexible approach), and a character would only need to select those three to be a classic paladin. Each path could have it's own selectable abilities which are on theme, so a player doesn't end up with too much option paralysis while still getting a lot of flexibility in the development of their character. Classes could literally just be a list of "if you want to make an X, then pick A,B,C and maybe D,E, or F".
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*dice stuff*
Indubitably.
If I was writing an RPG, I would actually try to in the opposite direction. There is an enormous amount of half decent stuff in Pathfinder that is forever doomed to be trash because it is linked to utter crap and the overall trade isn't worth it. Instead of that, give a character a number of points to select "Paths" with. That way you could have a "Knight" path, a "minor divine caster" path and a "Champion of Good" path (or possibly something a little more nuanced, this is a pretty flexible approach), and a character would only need to select those three to be a classic paladin. Each path could have it's own selectable abilities which are on theme, so a player doesn't end up with too much option paralysis while still getting a lot of flexibility in the development of their character. Classes could literally just be a list of "if you want to make an X, then pick A,B,C and maybe D,E, or F".
It feels weird to say that d20 legends is much like what I think Alicorn was describing while also being much like what you're describing.
In d20 Legends, all the classes are essentially like talent trees and you build your character by spending talents into picking up and advancing into those classes.
So like druids are big into the whole wild shaping thing, rangers have the animal companion thing going on, rogues have the "rip your kidney out through your back" thing going on, champions (think Paladin/Cleric crossbreed) do the whole divine power thing, etc. You then just mix/match them to create the ideal character that you want, completely independent of Hp/BAB/Skills/Spells.
Thus if you wanted to make a Paladin with a mighty steed, you'd go Champion/Ranger. If you wanted to make a barbarian who was like a werebeast, you'd go Barbarian/Druid and turn into a raging beast.
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so you kind of build the class you want to play in a way? choose class abilities and there separate from the base stuff? or am i understanding that wrong?
"because 2d10 produces results of 11 far more often than not and the further you move away from that average in either direction the less frequently those numbers appear."
Um, yea. That would be what I mean by making things more consistent.
I find it rather irritating to roll a professional level of work then roll something a novice would easily best.
Should half my rolls be above 10 before modifiers? definitely. Should 5% of my rolls be 20 before modifiers? Absolutely not, but shouldn't be impossible either.
Of course, this is admittedly a preference, but I also don't see any problem with the subjective value of a +2. But I consider the number to be objective. The mid 30s are olympic level, therefore, a character with olympic level of skill should regularly achieve olympic results and only rarely get a result outside that. Likewise a character that is barely a journeyman, should not have as much a chance of getting an olympic result as their average journeyman result. But rare occasions of getting something outside the normal range shouldn't be impossible either.
This is the viewpoint from which I find a flat chance distasteful. I care more about what the results mean than what the percentages are (percentages can be fixed in the background of the system, unseen by the players during play.)
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so you kind of build the class you want to play in a way? choose class abilities and there separate from the base stuff? or am i understanding that wrong?
Yes.
It works like this.
At level 1 and every level after, you choose a "path".
Martial = Best HP/BAB/Skills, worst Magic.
Magical = Worst Hp/BAB/Skills, best Magic.
Hybrid = Decent at everything (think Bard).
You also gain a "talent" which is used for gaining a class (it's currently planned that talents can also be used for things like paragon racials or monster abilities when the monster-PC rules are added).
So assuming typical stuff you pick a class at 1st level.
Your class provides some sort of gameplay element that is new.
Barbarians = Rage
Bards = Performances
Champions = Divine Power (lay on hands, smiting, channeling, etc)
Druids = Wild Shaping
Rangers = Animal Companion buddy
Rogues = Cunning Strike (similar to sneak attack)
Etc.
Each class also unlocks new things to spend future talent points on. For example, once you have unlocked the Rage class feature, you can then unlock the ability to gain Rage Powers at certain character levels. Similarly, once you have Bardic Performance, you can invest talents into making their performances more powerful or altering them.
At 2nd level (and every 2 levels thereafter) you gain another talent.
So at 2nd level you might specialize further into your 1st class, or you might decide to get a 2nd class. At 4th level, you might decide to specialize further into your 1st or 2nd class or pick up 3rd class, and so forth.
Some class features do not stack because they provide the same sort of bonuses. For example, most core offensive abilities are the same sort of bonus, which prevents easy exploitation such as Rage+Smite+Strike=instant exploding enemies. Most have secondary features in addition to dealing damage though (rage makes you physically tougher, smites penetrate DR, strikes can trade their damage away for status ailments) so while diminishing returns are a thing, you aren't punished for combining core features.
So basically you can use this system to create most anything you can think of within reason. Combining Ranger/Druid can get you the classic D&D druid for example. While combining Ranger/Rogue gets you a cunning hunter with a pet. Druid/Rogue would be great if you intend to turn into a feral cat and maul people, and so on.
Since your base statistics are not tied to your classes, you could make a druid who is a full martial with light magical abilities. Alternatively you could make a druid that is all magic and uses their wild shape for more utility purposes. A champion who goes martial paths would look more like a traditional D&D Paladin, while a hybrid would look like a Cleric, and a magical would look like a Priest.
In this way, as the classes are expanded upon (most of the magic-supporting classes like mages & sorcerers aren't constructed) you will be able to make tons of different characters (such as more martially oriented mages).
Finally, class features unlocked by spending talents scale with your character level. So unlike in traditional d20, multiclassing doesn't gimp you. You won't have to worry about losing out on level appropriate features because you multiclassed. Your features will always be level appropriate, you are just limited in how many of those features you can have from any given class at one time (so someone invested 100% into a given class would be an iconic paragon of that class, but if you went say Barbarian 25% / Champion 75%, you'd have a few barbarian class features and mostly Champion features).
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This is the viewpoint from which I find a flat chance distasteful. I care more about what the results mean than what the percentages are (percentages can be fixed in the background of the system, unseen by the players during play.)
If that is true I haven't seen any evidence of it. What you have told me through your explanation is that you want to keep the DC numbers but want them to mean something different than they do now in terms of how difficult those things are.
For example, if a DC of 11 is a 50% chance of success for a normal person, a DC of 30 equates a -95% chance of success. You would need to achieve +145% chance for success just to get back to 50% chance of success. This means that each level you are slowly working you way up the latter from -95% to -85% to -80%, and so on until you reach a positive % chance, and then ever closer still, until finally, performing a DC 30 check is as routine as it was to perform the DC 11 check.
But with 2d10, the progression doesn't work that way at all. Until your natural modifier is essentially DC-11, your chances of hitting the DC are pretty terrible and your progress is slower. This means that in a 2d10 system a DC of 30 means something different from a DC of 30 in a d20 system. Even if the maximum numbers are the same, the effect of the RNG is so different as to change the entire balance of the game.
Since I would prefer that players be able to become progressively and noticeably more likely to achieve success as they gain levels, I'd rather not discourage them from trying things until they are only a few points away from simply taking 10 on it.
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So looking at this is it fair to say you intend to depart from the vantician magic system ive noticed talk about build up spells from a base of lower effect and focusing more on them to expand them (so like burning hangs to socrching ray to fireball i think)
makes me think very skyrim-ish
"The goal, being, that I want a RPG system that is easy to teach, painless to learn, uses a level based progression, is very flexible in creating characters with a "less classes, more options" sort of position."
Have you looked at Savage Worlds? With the exception of levels, sw fits all those goals in my opinion, so it may have some good ideas for you.
An amazing coincidence was how a friend of mine and I were just talking about Savage Worlds being garbage since its mechanics can actually make a character who is supposed to be better at a thing have a lower chance of succeeding at a task than someone who is supposed to be worse.
I know SW *very* well, and I have never heard on their forums of such an example. Can you supply a for-instance?
In addition to TheAlicornSage's recommendation, I would second Savage Worlds as an excellent system to consider. After being forced to GM in PF for a couple of years, I was so sick of it in so *many* ways, and SW is everything that PF is not. In addition, it *does* have "levels" of a sort (that allow you access to more magic spells and feats, for example), but only 5 of them. However, there are 4 "advancements" within each "level", so 20 improvements overall.
EDIT : ok, there's *ONE* instance - when rolling a d10 vs. a d12 against a Target Number of 12 (you want to roll a 12 or higher), the d10 has a 0.64% better chance of making it than the d12. But that's it! And a TN of 12 is pretty high (so pretty rare), and do you really want to quibble over a half a percent?
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So looking at this is it fair to say you intend to depart from the vantician magic system ive noticed talk about build up spells from a base of lower effect and focusing more on them to expand them (so like burning hangs to socrching ray to fireball i think)
makes me think very skyrim-ish
Well, sort of.
A lot of my players like D&D magic, so a lot of the classic elements will be there but with some noticeable changes.
1. There are no class spell lists. Instead there is one spell list and you pick spells from it to create your ideal spell loadout. For example, my friend Arcane Knowledge selected spells like flame blade and produce flame on his Bard/Champion during a pre-Alpha demo of the mechanics. His Martial/Hybrid built character used these spells to great effect.
2. Spontaneous casters know more spells than they do in Pathfinder but their selections are relatively stuck unless you end up retraining. Prepared casters can try to "catch 'em all" but the number of spells they can have available at once is more limited than spontaneous casters (making spontaneous casters more flexible in the moment, and prepared casters more flexible overall).
3. Prepared casters work similar to arcanists in that once your spells have been locked in, they are treated like spells known and you expend spell slots to cast from them.
4. Spontaneous and prepared casters have the same spells/day. Pearls of power do not allow you to prepared additional spells they just give you +1 spell slot for that level. This means that the pearls are useful for both spontaneous and prepared casters but prepared casters cannot use them to become pseudo-sorcerers like they can in Pathfinder (in Pathfinder, a wizard can intentionally prepare a wider selection of spells than they normally would and then use the pearls to act as a spontaneous caster, whereas here their differences are in some ways softer yet more rigid at the same time).
5. The level of a spell does not determine its chance to land. Your character level and ability score do. This means that Paladin-type characters don't suck at magic, they are just limited in what kind of magic they have access to.
6. Spells can be cast using higher level slots than are normally used to cast them. This allows you to treat them as a higher level spell (such as when trying to overpower a [light] or [darkness] spell), and for some spells can provide a greater benefit than normal (for example, casting the ignite spell with a higher level slot raises the AoE and damage potential of the spell).
7. "Save or Die" type spells exist still but they are primarily for sweeping minions while providing inconveniences to more level appropriate foes. That is because you have to beat someone's Fort/Ref/Will defenses by a lot to deliver the worst effect immediately.
For example, flesh to stone might cause someone's body to become partially petrified, staggering them, and then slowly turn them to stone over multiple rounds (giving characters a chance to react or break the spell before you end up as a lawn gnome), but if you crush their defense it's instant birdbath. So one-shotting the BBEG is hard, but turning his goblin lacky into a doorstop is pretty easy.
8. All magic requires a Concentration check to use. If you're not actively threatened in combat (as in, nobody is in range to attack you with a melee weapon) then you can typically take-10 on this check. The DC is harder when you are casting higher level spells.
This mechanic is important to the new system. Various effects and conditins increase the DC of the concentration check, which means that you may suddenly find yourself unable to cast your best spells or use higher level spell slots, or just being threatened makes casting spells harder (because you can't take-10 so you risk failure if you get cornered).
Most status ailments increase the DC of Concentration by a flat rate and they stack which can make casting extremely difficult if you've been hit with a few status ailments.
Armor applies the armor's check penalty to your Concentration checks (-2 for light, -4 for medium, and -6 for heavy) as do shields (-1 for bracers, -2 for light, -3 for heavy, and -4 for tower). There's no flat spell-failure %.
Here's a hypothetical example.
Merlin our mage is 4th level and has a +4 ability score giving him a +8 bonus to Concentration checks. The DCs to cast Tier I spells (1st-3rd) are 12, 14, and 16 respectively. He can take-10 when casting to cast any of his spells without fail. He could even wear light armor or carry a light shield without ruining his ability to cast 3rd level spells via take-10.
However, Zeke the rogue sneaks up on Merlin and gets in his face. Suddenly Merlin has to roll to cast successfully and he really dislikes that. Unfortunately still, Zeke got the drop on him so his Cunning Strike gets bonus damage, but Zeke decides before his attack to trade some of those extra d6s for the chance to inflict the Staggered and Bleeding conditions on Merlin for 1 round. He lands both status ailments and Merlin is in trouble (each effect adds +2 to the DC Merlin has to make).
The staggered condition makes it impossible for Merlin to take a step back without provoking, and now the DCs to cast his spells are DC 16, 18, and 20, and if Merlin wants to cast defensively, it'll add another +4 onto those, and he cannot take 10.
Merlin drops to his knees, "Oh sweet rogue, don't kill me!" Q_Q
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I know SW *very* well, and I have never heard on their forums of such an example. Can you supply a for-instance?
EDIT : ok, there's *ONE* instance - when rolling a d10 vs. a d12 against a Target Number of 12 (you want to roll a 12 or higher), the d10 has a 0.64% better chance of making it than the d12. But that's it! And a TN of 12 is pretty high (so pretty rare), and do you really want to quibble over a half a percent?
Here ya go.
Savage World Dice Probabilities.Depending in the target number you have to reach, a number of smaller dice actually have a better chance of succeeding that larger dice due to the exploding dice mechanic (that is, when you roll max on the die you re-roll and add again). When he mentioned this fact, I remembered this oddity existing in Deadlands too.
For example, at TN 6, a single d4 is better than a single d6, and yes a similar thing happens with the d10 vs d12, because the exploding dice mechanic means having a larger die reduces your chances of re-rolling your die (a d4 has a 1/4 chance of re-rolling causing it to become a 5-9, and so forth). It makes a greater difference when you're rolling more than one die.
But that's what you get when you're progressing progress using increasing die size while using an exploding dice mechanic. It's an inherent flaw of the system, as opposed to systems using modifiers.
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Why does this make me think about the origins of harpies and their banditry?
That's a rather unique origin story for some monsters, yah. :P
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Well it hardly needs editing to make work out in a sense.
Once there was a great goddess, who provided for her people all they should need. And the people were happy. Each week she would arrive and bestow bounties upon they.
But one week, she did not come. The people waited, but soon their fear and rage took over. Where was she? What barred her path?
Their ire became directed at those others whom the goddess shared her company with. Surely they had done something to keep her from them and hoard her bounties for themselves! And so enmass they lashed out, assaulting those chosen few the goddess associated with.
When the goddess did arrive, she saw the carnage and was enraged by the harm her people had caused, and threw them out for their crimes, to become self sufficient and learn.
But the people did not learn. Embittered, they chose instead to embrace the anger that had arisen rather than take responsibility. They would not grow, but take instead. If they were to be forsaken, then forsaken they would be. Yet in their hearts they would never forget what they had lost and never know peace.
This is the viewpoint from which I find a flat chance distasteful. I care more about what the results mean than what the percentages are (percentages can be fixed in the background of the system, unseen by the players during play.)If that is true I haven't seen any evidence of it. What you have told me through your explanation is that you want to keep the DC numbers but want them to mean something different than they do now in terms of how difficult those things are.
For example, if a DC of 11 is a 50% chance of success for a normal person, a DC of 30 equates a -95% chance of success. You would need to achieve +145% chance for success just to get back to 50% chance of success. This means that each level you are slowly working you way up the latter from -95% to -85% to -80%, and so on until you reach a positive % chance, and then ever closer still, until finally, performing a DC 30 check is as routine as it was to perform the DC 11 check.
But with 2d10, the progression doesn't work that way at all. Until your natural modifier is essentially DC-11, your chances of hitting the DC are pretty terrible and your progress is slower. This means that in a 2d10 system a DC of 30 means something different from a DC of 30 in a d20 system. Even if the maximum numbers are the same, the effect of the RNG is so different as to change the entire balance of the game.
Since I would prefer that players be able to become progressively and noticeably more likely to achieve success as they gain levels, I'd rather not discourage them from trying things until they are only a few points away from simply taking 10 on it.
Being discouraged until only a few points away from taking ten is a factor of how failure is handled. If failure is highly discouraged, then sure a bell curve narrows the field. But if always-fail-forward is used or some other similar case of failure being acceptable, then it isn't much of a problem.
In terms of being "progressively and noticeably more likely to achieve success as they gain levels," that doesn't change. What changes is how wide of a zone it is for "likely to succeed" and "not likely but possible to succeed."
I'm not actually asking for the dc numbers to change their meaning. According to the current rules, mid 30s is Olympic levels of skill.
However, I will say that the direct combat stats and abilities, like hp and certain combat feats and attacks per round don't follow the same progression, but then again, combat is intended to be fun rather than realistic and doesn't translate to reality the way the skills, environmental effects, and other secondaries do.
All in all, everyone knows of those ideas that are great on paper but suck in reality. I think this is a reverse case, easy to naysay the idea as bad on paper, but actually works fairly well. I use it often enough to know that bell curves are fine. In fact rnr uses bell curves, though not the same as 3d6.
Also, unearthed arcana addresses the issues like critical ranges, take 10/20, and such quite well and is one of the better variants in that book.
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That definitely sounds interesting I assume if i keep an eye on this thread when something hard comes out ill be made aware yes?
I've personally always thought about trying my hand at game design but it always seemed daunting and really never enough time on my hands.The idea of having it online like the srd is good makes it an evolving living thing almost.
If you are interested in d20legends, you can skim my favourites. At some point I got tired of searching for specific posts I wanted to show my friends, so I went through this thread and favourited every post I could see myself wanting to look up later on, which includes everything related to d20legends.
>TheAlicornSage said:RPGs are dynamic, they are about being part of a story, not about proving skill at all. The point of an rpg is the story.
That's...just false. I could name 10 "points" of RPGs (reasons people play them) without stopping to draw breath that don't relate to experiencing the story in the slightest. If you like RPGs because you like stories, it doesn't mean that everyone else does. But mechanical systems should generally aim in their design to support the playstyles of all their players, not just some of them.
--
>I also don't see any problem with the subjective value of a +2
Problem is that Pathfinder assumes that +2 provides you with the same power boost all across the board, while if you were to switch to 3d6 it wouldn't be. That would mean that relative power of all spells, abilities, feats and so on that provide a set numerical bonus would shift completely unpredictably. Do you know how many abilities, spells and feats that is? That's right, majority of them. So after this shift to a new dice set you would have to go over the whole system, check wherever things just broke unpredictably, shift most of the things around, probably scrap half of the stuff, certainly scrap the bestiary... Then you would have to test the system for months to see if you missed some weird combination that would completely break things. And all that for what? Rolls being more average?
And it really is a huge numerical problem. If you use 1d20, a +5 bonus gives you +25% higher chance to succeed no matter what you do. If you had to roll a 20 to suceed(5% chance), +5 increases it to 30%. If it was 50%, it increases it to 75%. Same powerboost.
If you use 3d6, +5 increases 0.46% to 25.6%, but 50% to 95.37%(!!!) That is +25% and +45% respectively. Power of your boost has almost doubled based on the original chance.
Same with maluses- minus 5 gives -25% in 1d20, but -16%, -53%, -58% and -26% if you start with 100%, 90%, 83% and 26% success chances respectively in 3d6. If the power of your buff/debuff can change by as much as 3.6 times, you can pretty much throw all your old balance considerations out the window-they are about as much use to you now as used toilet paper.
Ashiel already is reworking a whole lot of Pathfinder. Switching to 3d6 would just force her to completely start from scratch, since those 1d20 probabilities lie so deep within the system you can't tear them out without destroying everything else.
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I think we'll need to agree to disagree. I don't want to over encourage such heavy overspecialization. When your RNG is weighted towards the average, every +1 becomes that much more important because it never really has a point of diminishing returns.
It influences the relative balance of everything, right down to how valuable racial adjustments are since a +X to an ability score is now worth significantly more than before.
This is the spread of values for 2d10.
# %
2 1.00
3 2.00
4 3.00
5 4.00
6 5.00
7 6.00
8 7.00
9 8.00
10 9.00
11 10.00
12 9.00
13 8.00
14 7.00
15 6.00
16 5.00
17 4.00
18 3.00
19 2.00
20 1.00
A method of rolling 3d6 is even worse.
output 1 (10.50 / 2.96)# %
3 0.46
4 1.39
5 2.78
6 4.63
7 6.94
8 9.72
9 11.57
10 12.50
11 12.50
12 11.57
13 9.72
14 6.94
15 4.63
16 2.78
17 1.39
18 0.46
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Swordsaged by Klara. :P
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Swordsaged by Klara. :P
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Swordsaged by Klara. :PToo slow, my lord.
I would also like to say that your post was so beautifully eloquent and hit on everything I was trying to much better than I was managing to do so. Many props.
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I would also like to say that your post was so beautifully eloquent and hit on everything I was trying to much better than I was managing to do so. Many props.Swordsaged by Klara. :PToo slow, my lord.
Do I get to sit in on one of your games and see the famous master of deadly encounters in action as a reward? :)
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Swordsaged by Klara. :PToo slow, my lord.
Another one joins the fold! Tis a glorious day!
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Do I get to sit in on one of your games and see the famous master of deadly encounters in action as a reward? :)I would also like to say that your post was so beautifully eloquent and hit on everything I was trying to much better than I was managing to do so. Many props.Swordsaged by Klara. :PToo slow, my lord.
I would be fine with that. I'm not actually running any games at the moment though (much to the chagrin of my friends on Discord I fear). In an effort to force myself to be more productive the next game I run will be with d20 legends, even if it's a barebones version of it. :P