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Looks like my latest megathread is going to focus on the removal of potency runes. It's a topic that seems to have very polarised factions, with some extremely dedicated fans (hi there) and, apparently, a lot of opposing voices from the surveys. As survey data indicates that this is not a popular variant, I decided to have a look into it and try to run some numbers.
Firstly, I calculated wealth by level from the Treasure section and removed weapon potency runes from the values (this was easy, because I am also working on AP conversions and I needed the financial ratios. hint: that part is NOT easy). Then compared the new total to figure out how much to subtract. Then worked out what else needed to be done, particularly in relation to Item bonus.
...At this point, I might've started overdoing things.
I took the chance to address Item bonuses throught the book, be it saves, skills, attacks and other bits. I included adjustments to certain classes. I added caveats for warpriest wannabes. I boosted spellcasters, I have no problems in admitting it. I removed steep DC growth from auto-scaling checks. I remade 10.2 to address the new bonuses. I drew guidelines for bestiary conversion. I got annoyed at how my proofreader thought images were clearer than formulas and did something terrible out of spite. I adjusted AC values to account for the reduced economy. I added a Heighten feature to Magic Weapon because I thought it wasn't really needed but it kinda deserved to have one.
Basically, I've done a lot of work that probably wasn't strictly necessary and that will soon be invalidated by playtest updates, and the fact is, I don't care. I did this in two hours because I wanted to.
I truly believe that ABP was the right thing to do in 1e and that a second edition without mandatory bonuses would only benefit.
I will keep updating this anytime an update would invalidate my writings, I will try to improve it each time, and I will more than likely play with ABP once 2e hits release.
I can only hope this is NOT the version of ABP that I will use, because there will be one in the book (or because someone will make a better one). But if that doesn't happen, here's what I'd do as of now.
Note that +5 weapons are not supposed to show up before Epic Levels in treasure progressions as of now, and they do not under ABP either.
Part I: Finances
-All currency, financial gains, loose change and additional wealth are reduced by 30%, except for starting wealth.
-Characters created at higher level are assigned treasure by reducing all item values by 1: for example, a lv10 character will gain a lv8 item, two lv7 items, one lv6 item, and two lv5 items (rather than one lv9, two lv8, one lv7, two lv6). Additional wealth will be reduced by 30% as per the previous point.
Part II: Weapon Damage
-Potency Runes are removed entirely, as well as the lv3 Doubling Rings (and the secondary function of lv11 Greater Doubling Rings).
-Handwraps of Mighty Fists only exist in their nonmagical form of Expert, Master and Legendary quality (and allow weapon trinkets attachments). They allow characters to apply their item bonus to unarmed attacks.
-A character’s proficiency total determines his weapon damage. Characters gain one additional damage dice every 5 points of proficiency total (for example, a level 3 fighter with Sword Mastery would deal 2d8 damage with a Longsword, but only 1d8 with a Warhammer).
-The penalty from the Enervated condition applies to proficiency for the purpose of determining damage.
Classes (but not multiclass archetypes) receive the following modifications:
-Barbarians treat their proficiency as 2 points higher for the purpose of determining damage during a rage.
-Clerics and Paladins treat their proficiency as 1 higher for the purpose of determining damage when wielding their deity’s favoured weapon. Weapons inscribed with Emblazon Symbol or aligned with Aligned Armament are considered to be their deity’s favoured weapon for the purpose of weapon damage and the Warrior Priest feat.
-Rogues treat their proficiency as 1 higher for the purpose of determining damage when striking a target subject to afflictions or negative conditions (such as, for example, fatigued or poisoned, but not friendly or quick).
Part III: Saving Throws
-Armour potency runes are removed entirely.
-Characters do not receive Item bonus to Saving Throws.
-Fight me.
Part IV: Items
-Weapons work as advertised. Armours further allow characters to add their quality Item bonus to AC.
-Quality-based nonmagical item bonuses are unchanged and work as per the Core Rulebook.
-No new nonmagical items or tools are introduced, and while GMs have discretion to add them, I personally advise against it.
-Magical items that confer bonuses to skills or checks are reduced to granting a +1 item bonus (for all items granting up to +3 bonuses) or a +2 item bonus (for +4 and higher).
-Note that item bonuses to damage rolls or healing are unaffected.
-Bracers of Armour's prices, effects and levels change to I: lv2, 35gp. III: lv6, 245gp. V: lv10, 1000gp. VII: lv14, 4500gp. IX: lv18, 18000gp.
-Handwraps and Bracers can be inscribed with property runes.
Part V: Spells
-Mage Armour grants no bonus to saves. Heightening is changed to Heightened (+2): The Item bonus to AC increases by 1.
-Magic Fang and Magic Weapon are altered: The weapon/natural attack is magically empowered, gaining a +1 item bonus to attack rolls and dealing always at least two damage dice regardless of proficiency. The spell also gains Heighten (3) The weapon/natural attack always deals at least three damage dice; Heighten (5) The item bonus increases to +2, and the weapon/natural attack always deals at least four damage dice; Heighten (7) The weapon/natural attack always deals at least five damage dice; Heighten (9) The item bonus increases to +3, and the weapon/natural attack always deals at least six damage dice.
-Weapon Surge is functionally identical but language might need adjusting.
Part VI: Bestiary
-Reduce all checks and DCs (but not spell DCs) by 1 for all creatures and hazards level 12 and higher, and by 2 for all creatures and hazards level 20 and higher.
-NPCs are subject to a similar penalty, but in addition their weapons and armours are converted to Expert (for +1 and +2), Master (for +3 or +4) or Legendary (for +5) versions.
-Opponents' equipment should be treated carefully, as under the new ABP economy they might have too much wealth on themselves (but their items are part of their challenge). Don’t be a bad GM and use their allotted things.
Part VII: Table 10.2 remade
Referencing Update 1.4, table 10.2 is altered as follows:
Easy checks DCs are equal to 7+level.
Medium check DCs are equal to 12+level, with an additional +1 every 10 levels.
Hard check DCs are equal to 14+level, with an additional +1 every 5 levels.
Incredible check DCs are equal to 16+level, with an additional +1 every 4 levels.
Ultimate check DCs are equal to 17+level, with an additional +1 every 3 levels.
A visual version of the table is available >>here<<, but it’s in Comic Sans to encourage a purer, more mathematical approach.
As usual, I encourage discussion and questions. I have a reason for everything I do, but it might not be the right reason, and questions are the best way to find out, so please ask.
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What's the point of removing the potency rune item bonus progression while keeping the quality item bonus progression? The level appropriate item improvement treadmill has been changed from +1-+5 to +1-+3, but it's still there. Why only halve the treadmill instead of nixing it completely?
Edit: Also, huzzah, you allowed weapon trinkets on Handwraps. And armor property runes on Bracers?
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The point is, firstly, that while potency runes take about 30% of a character’s wealth, EML armours and weapons cover a much smaller fraction.
Second, while a +1 is still very valuable, it is not as hugely relevant as a 30-20% boost in damage.you can afford to be without a Legendary weapon for a few levels if you want to focus your efforts elsewhere, and that is usually a good thing.
Lastly, I personally found Item Quality to be an interesting concept and I like it, as long as price is contained and the effects aren’t too massive I think it can be kept. And it’s a decent way of limiting property runes... or maybe I should just call them runes at this point.
And yes, both bracers and handwraps should be able to accept properties.
The point is, firstly, that while potency runes take about 30% of a character’s wealth, EML armours and weapons cover a much smaller fraction.
Second, while a +1 is still very valuable, it is not as hugely relevant as a 30-20% boost in damage.you can afford to be without a Legendary weapon for a few levels if you want to focus your efforts elsewhere, and that is usually a good thing.
Lastly, I personally found Item Quality to be an interesting concept and I like it, as long as price is contained and the effects aren’t too massive I think it can be kept. And it’s a decent way of limiting property runes... or maybe I should just call them runes at this point.And yes, both bracers and handwraps should be able to accept properties.
Agreed that Item Quality is interesting as a concept and for the other ways it can be expressed (# of property runes, difficulty to break). But I just never liked the concept of items adding to your basic ability to use them*. Or at most, one such bonus exploring that contribution to the narrative and then done (for example, an Accuracy property rune giving you a +1 and that's it), a la Iron Kingdoms.
I.e., Han Solo has his personal blaster. He's tweaked it and tricked it out above a regular blaster. So when the situation calls for him to use a stock blaster off the shelf (he doesn't have his own or he has to disguise himself as a Stormtrooper), he's still nearly as good. If his effectiveness with his blaster is 100, using something else would be 95.
*
Can't say I don't like this. The 30% WBL reduction seems a bit hard to adjudicate though, as compared to PF1 numerical WBL. The reduced amount of items expected per level does make good sense, however! Though I feel it kinda unfairly wrecks Spellcasters who didn't want the weapon.
Reading your article makes wonder what are specifically the objetives or standards the devs are looking for. Internal features, like level bonus and proficiency, over external factors, like magic itens and circumstance bonuses; complexity of choices (ten time more feats, etc.) over complexity of usage (different casting pools), etc. I fear discussions could entirely miss the point of the game if players assume things that are not well established or even right about the game. The importance of magic weapons for the DPR, or other meta-game analysis, is completely biased by these assumptions. Hack, are the devs willing to change core tenets based on feedback?
Until we (or myself, I may be unaware) get a clear statement by the devs about their intentios regarding the numerous systems that forms the game, until we players don't clearly state our own biases towards a subject, I don't these playtest will fulfill its objective.
Morning all, let's see what we have.
Agreed that Item Quality is interesting as a concept and for the other ways it can be expressed (# of property runes, difficulty to break). But I just never liked the concept of items adding to your basic ability to use them.
Well, if you were hoping for additional reasons, it also reduces the amount of calculations and adjustments I need to make :D but I might do a full on "no bonus" version later on, who knows.
I like most of what you've set down, but I don't see the point of this part. It only has an effect on specific levels, making it very fiddly. Especially for the rogue and barbarian who need to keep track of it under specific conditions in addition to needing to remember if it does anything this level or not.
The math was to slot Barbarians in the same damage range as Fighters, have Rogues and Cleric in the same range as Rangers and Monks, and keep Paladins as an inbetween. The actual iteration of it was done to give it more of a flavour feel.
I agree that it only really matters at certain levels, but as it was pointed out to me before, previous versions that gave the Fighter more damage than Barbarian for even one or two levels felt "wrong". Hopefully this feels thematic and addresses the math.Can't say I don't like this. The 30% WBL reduction seems a bit hard to adjudicate though, as compared to PF1 numerical WBL. The reduced amount of items expected per level does make good sense, however! Though I feel it kinda unfairly wrecks Spellcasters who didn't want the weapon.
It's actually a weighted average of the 13-41% (average 28%) wealth reduction gained by subtracting potency runes (not magic weapons) from PF2's wealth by level. Both ends of the range are outliers and only appear once. I have spreadsheets.
While I understand it might feel a bit annoying to spellcasters, a backup option is always good (even tho they will always have the worst weapon damage) and hopefully the relatively higher save DCs help with the power loss.Reading your article makes wonder what are specifically the objetives or standards the devs are looking for. Internal features, like level bonus and proficiency, over external factors, like magic itens and circumstance bonuses; complexity of choices (ten time more feats, etc.) over complexity of usage (different casting pools), etc. I fear discussions could entirely miss the point of the game if players assume things that are not well established or even right about the game. The importance of magic weapons for the DPR, or other meta-game analysis, is completely biased by these assumptions. Hack, are the devs willing to change core tenets based on feedback?
Until we (or myself, I may be unaware) get a clear statement by the devs about their intentios regarding the numerous systems that forms the game, until we players don't clearly state our own biases towards a subject, I don't these playtest will fulfill its objective.
Yeah.
Also I realise in my copypaste I left in something I should've taken out.
Additional wealth for characters created at higher levels should not be reduced.
It only impacts about 4% of total wealth, but it's a step closer to accuracy.
What about just nerf the potency runes in place of removing then completely? I can imagine many ways this could be done by basically changing the progression of the bonus.
Examples:
Plus 1 to damage for a +1 weapon, plus 1d4 for a +2, plus 1 weapon dice for a +3 and so on - growing in power as the magic power increases style or an opposite trend based on a pattern of diminishing returns. Even a rune based on peak of power (+1, +2, +4, +5, +6) that would shift the gold by damage ratio towards the middle of the distribution could be used.
What you think?
Coming back because I noticed a pretty big mistake after a bit of gameplay.
A mistake, not an error.
The math is right, the stats work, and the system rolls. Buuuuuut, level 7-8 have a tricky crucial point.
You see, a +2 weapon is an expert weapon. And a +3 weapon is a master weapon. This because at level 4-5 the cost of an expert weapon isn't a big deal, and at level 12-13 the cost of a master weapon isn't a big deal.
However, a +2 weapon costs about as much as a Master weapon. And I corrected the bestiary so that it'd still assume a +2 item bonus to hit at level 7... while cutting out the price for weapon runes from players' finances.
That's been a pretty big WHOPS moment.
So, if you try this, please alter the levels at which you need to adjust monsters to 8, 16 and 20 to match the expected purchase of +2, +4 and +5 weapons rather than +3 and +5.
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I completely agree item bonus should be removed.
Numerical bonus items are not fun:
Numerical bonus magic items, like magic weapons, armor, potent items to boost ability scores, and items with bonuses to skills, are not fun. They are required to keep up in effectiveness with level appropriate challenges, taking up character resources that could be used to gain interesting abilities instead. The game would be much more fun if those items, and the assumption of having them in the game's math, were removed. This would free magic items to be things with interesting effects.
Items giving new actions/activities would more increase versatility than power, because you can only use one action at a time. That decreases the chances of unforeseen synergies that are overpowered.
Getting rid of item bonus from weapon quality would be good too. Weapon quality could still affect hardness and number of property runes possible.
Magic item access and reselling price:
A starfinder like system of access gated by level, combined with GM controlled treasure found seems like a much better way to control character power through wealth, especially if combined with things like removing numerical bonus magic items. Also, having the games economy balanced around reselling items for similar value to their price would make sense from a world perspective.
Consumables:
Consumables seem very expensive, especially compared to permanent magic items. A system like focus or resonance, combined with cheap consumables, seems much better for curbing abuse. Problems like potions of haste being too cheap for higher level characters comes from a static cost for an equal benefit across level not working well with a quickly increasing system of expected wealth. As is, appropriate level consumables are far too expensive for a character you expect to play across levels (vs a one shot) to buy. They rely on the GM providing them, and adjusting expected wealth for their use.
Activated power dependent on character level:
One way to control activated item/consumable use/abuse would be to have a variable cost depending on character level and item level. Items could use more resources like focus or resonance if used by a character of level less than the item level. For example characters can use items of level greater than their level by spending two points, or one point if the item level is equal to or less than theirs. This could be done on an item by item basis instead, with different costs and level cutoffs for each item.
Yeah, I think my biggest rage moment was when I realised how soon a Demon Mask's DC 20 Fear fades into uselessness, while its +2 bonus is good forever (at least until you need the +5 from the higher version).
Note that my ABP does not affect Item DCs directly (saves are reduced, but that's only a short term partial solve) - I have other houserules that would affect that.
I don't think we need gated items, the economy does a fairly good job for that - some consumables might be troublesome, but they get Dispelled very easily too, so there's that. And if the game included an Heightened Dispel Magic that acts on multiple instances of the same spell, the strategy of mass Haste potions would be considered risky at best, just for the fact that it exists.
Why not go with the simple solution of removing item bonus completely?
Just give every character 2X damage at level 4, 3X at 8 and so on.
I guess with spell DCs relying on ability score boosts to increase instead of item bonus, but I think the current ability score generation method has a lot of flaws and should be scrapped anyway.
This does reduce specialization in skills, so you could have every skill feat give +1 conditional/circumstantial/untyped if you are expert and have 1 skill feat, +2 if master and 2 skill feats, and +3 if legendary and 3 skill feats.
Small update:
As I work on possible alterations to the math, 1.6 users should remember that Barbarian's proficiency alteration needs to be lowered by 1.
I am currently trying out alternative versions that do not need a numerical adjustment.
Monster spell DCs get reduced just like all other DCs.
However you are right in saying that there is still an overall loss in saves, precisely at levels 4 and 12. That is fully intended.
At the same time, monsters save fall behind at levels 8, 16 and 20, while player’s DCs do not. That, also, is fully intended.
Spells and abilities succeed more often, which is in line with most feedback points on how they feel weak, and the most popular suggested solution, increasing their success rate.
You’re welcome.
(Also, Alchemical Item bonus to saves becomes usable with this houserule)
Weapons should be magical +1X
and Legendary magical +2X maximum
crafting should add fixed damage from +1 to +5
The ABP system I'm looking into using:
Weapons
* You gain an extra damage dice every 4 levels.
* Potency runes are gone
* Weapon quality still determines to-hit
* Property runes unchanged
This results in up to -2 to-hit at high levels because Legendary quality only gives +3 to-hit against a +5 potency's +5. This is fine. Monster math will account for it.
Armour
* Potency runes are gone
* Armour quality works the same
* Property runes the same
Max AC down by 2 for not having Potency, but that's fine, monster math will account for it. Saves don't get buffs, but saves overall were too high since things failed too often. Monster DCs will be adjusted if needed.
Skill Items
* Skill bonuses from items still exist. When crafting, you can make any item with an additional item bonus by increasing its cost by 150/750/2,500/10,000 for a +2/+3/+4/+5. Additionally, the item becomes at least level 5/9/13/17. An item can only give an item bonus to a single skill.
Item bonuses were a nice way to specialize. While everyone got relevant potency runes for weapons/armour, skill items were more personal and not a problem. DCs will not always assume you have these, so they should make you stand out and be special. Letting you graft the bonus onto any item should reduce every diplomatic character having the exact same ring, or so on.
The weapon/armour stuff is easy for me to adjust monsters to, because I only use homebrew monsters so they'll be built initially with this system in mind.
A simpler version and pretty much to the same result, but I loathe the mandatory item bonuses too much to give it a full thumbs up, sorry.
I try to have skill item bonuses not mandatory, because I threw 10-2 away a long time ago, and utility items giving things such as invisibility/flight/truesight/transformation will often be far more useful for your money. I also put the costs for adding them to other items as not-too-cheap, ideally, and might push them higher.
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The other way to have skills still scale up a lot and encourage specialisation, would be to increase the proficiency modifiers, for skills only, from -4/0/+1/+2/+3, to -4/0/+2/+5/+8 (or similar) - this gives effectively the same total bonus you have with items.
Pros:
* Characters are item independent
* Proficiency ranks in skills matter notably outside of skill feats
* Lets alchemist item bonuses stop clashing
Cons:
* Unevenly benefits extra skill increases, aka rogue.
* Breaks the symmetry of the system - skills would be the only thing with different bonuses from proficiency
It's a close thing to me, but I might go for it.
Firstly, I calculated wealth by level from the Treasure section and removed weapon potency runes from the values (this was easy, because I am also working on AP conversions and I needed the financial ratios. hint: that part is NOT easy).
I'd really like to see your spread sheets here, if you don't mind.
Pad300,
It’s a bit of both honestly. Yes, suffering a failed save sucks, but at the same time casting spells as a monster doesn’t feel meaningful enough at times, so I believe a light boost could help. By lowering DCs by 3 and saves by 5, I achieve that. Especially considerig that alchemical items can still boost saves temporarily, giving value to preparation.
At the same time, PCs spells need a bigger boost, and leaving DCs as they are and saves by 3 should help with that.
On the other hand, these alterations are gradual and not immediate, so the effect isn’t fully felt until late levels.
Captain Morgan,
I’ll try to upload them to a google doc later tonight. Been putting it off for a while.
Pad300,
It’s a bit of both honestly. Yes, suffering a failed save sucks, but at the same time casting spells as a monster doesn’t feel meaningful enough at times, so I believe a light boost could help. By lowering DCs by 3 and saves by 5, I achieve that. Especially considerig that alchemical items can still boost saves temporarily, giving value to preparation.At the same time, PCs spells need a bigger boost, and leaving DCs as they are and saves by 3 should help with that.
On the other hand, these alterations are gradual and not immediate, so the effect isn’t fully felt until late levels.
Captain Morgan,
I’ll try to upload them to a google doc later tonight. Been putting it off for a while.
Aesome, thanks!
That took me a while. Sorry.
My calculations, WBL graphics, comparisons, and a bunch of notes can be found here. It's not as neat as I'd like, but I eventually did get around to post it, so I hope it can be forgiven.
Additionally, I had to write down a simplified version of my damage criteria for a game I'm about to start:
Under Simplified ABP, weapon damage increases at levels 8, 16 and 20 for everyone, and upon any increase in proficiency for the classes that gain them.
The exception is Fighter, who does not gain a damage increase on his Expert rank for martial weapons, but only on Master and Legendary.
Ok, has anyone else ran into the thought about how extreme going from a regular attack to a +1d attack is. It is basically doubling damage. Which would almost be like cutting the opponents HP in half. For some reason, that full impact had not really fully impacted on me until recently.
For a magic weapon, that hadn't seemed to be as big of a deal as I knew there was Magic to it. I however was all for pc's as well as other NPCs needing an ability to do more damage with various weapons over time innately, just like we see happen with many monsters. However, it finally struck me that from a simple natural progression of skill, being granted innately, doubling the damage seems like a really big step in performance which would have a really big game impact.
So if I consider where such a jump might make sense, In one hand, one could look at second level being really the first step where HP increases by the largest percent of their original HP. But if we presume that creatures should have somewhat similar mechanics, that would bring the lethality of the early levels back, and spread it past first level into second or even third level if 2nd level opponents tended to on average have 2 dice worth of damage.
An alternative was to try to buffer this extra damage advancement by having something between getting nothing and getting a full extra die for damage. The idea I came up with was the idea of there being a stage where you roll 2 die for damage and take the higher result. It is a bonus that buffer the stage from 1dX to 2dX. It is a bonus that favors the larger dice just a little bit, but is significantly less than getting a full bonus die.
On the other side of things, with response to your Automatic Bonus Progression, are you planning on applying these rules then to the monsters too? Since most monsters aren't getting scaled to +5 dice for their use of weapons unless they are described as being magic +5 weapons. (otherwise, when I'd looked at monsters, I'd seen a +1d per around +10 in attack. (which admittedly probably roughly included not just proficiency, but also attributes bonus)
Monsters’ damage isn’t calculated in the same way as character damage, so no, they will not use this system.
While in my own campaign I will have some additional system to add value to lower dice weapons, this is meant to be for everyone’s use - and hopefully the devs. This is just ‘another way to get there’ rather than ‘let’s try and get somewhere else’.