The Gaming Den

What if, over time, you just got attributes?

I mean, what if every level of fighter just gave you 2 points of STR or DEX. you'd still have an advancing fighting ability, but you'd also have apporpriate class skills as well. The fighter would be good at climbing and other Str skills, the Archer would have Balance, and a mixed bag guy would be both.

You could even have a system where some people got another 2 points for another attribute every 2 levels, and another 2 every four levels for a third attribute. So, at 2nd level its a +2/+2, at 3rd is a +2, and at 4th its a +2/+2/+2.

Basically, attribute points become your advancement.

Feats would determine your "skill" at using using a weapon or mastery of fighting arts.

Your attribute bonuses would act as your Save bonuses.

Multiclassers could get a feat that allows them to sub a attribute for something else(like using Dex for physical combat), or would allow you to add another attribute up to a limit. A Fighter/Mage might have an "Eldritch Knight" feat that lets him add his mods for Int and Str for spells and fighting, to a limit(2 times gained levels max in bonuses, the same as if you maxed out one stat).

K wrote:What if, over time, you just got attributes?

Then in the long run the game would degenerate into one of one-shot kills. If being a Druid gives you Wisdom and being a Fighter doesn't, then eventually the Druid is simply going to cast a crazy Will-save spell and kill your character with no (meaningful) save.

The game is based on a series of opposed rolls, so if people aren't adding to things in a unified way those opposed rolls are going to spin out of control.

-Username17

Right, so fighters would have to add points to Wis. The 2, 2/2, and 2/2/2 system I've proposed would mean that at any one time you could only add a max of two points a level to one stat, and would be forced to diversify.

If you put all your points into STR, DEX, and CON, then you get a low Will save, and thats your choice. Basically, all the classes would have reasons to put attribute points into Wis, Con and Dex.

Multiple defenses paradigms being what they are, however, the offense wins in such a scenario. There are three defensive stats: Con, Dex, and Wis. There are also five offensive stats: Str, Dex, Int, Wis, and Cha. The important part of that is that when you invest in an offensive stat (like Wis or Cha) you have the opportunity of attacking more than one stat with it, while when you invest in a defensive stat you only protect yourself from one of three kinds of attacks.

So if you get 12 bonuses and distribute them between the defensive stats, you get a total of 4 bonuses in each. But if the Sorcerer just puts 12 bonuses into Cha he's +8 on you whatever he does. And when you attack the Sorcerer, even if you are using your Dex, you are only +4 against him.

In a three defenses system, anyone who invests in offense pulls ahead, getting 2/3 of the value of the total bonuses every time. As long as there are three types of defenses: Dex, Con and Wis, any system where you just increase stats is inherently unbalanced against people who give a damn about defenses. Defenses can't keep up in such a set up, so there's little imperative to invest in them ever.

-Username17

Yes, people who want perfect defenses from all things lose under this scenario.

And that's bad?

The problem with even a three stat system is that investing in defenses at all makes you suck. Imagine the simplest case: We combine Strength and Con into "Strength", we combine all three mental stats together into "Int".

Now compare someone who puts everything into Strength to someone who puts everything into Intelligence - the Strength character has a bonus against the Int character equal to the total number of bonuses handed out. The Int character has a bonus equal to the total number of bonuses handed out against the Strength character. Now le's throw someone who's split into the mix - he's able to attack the Strength character with Dex or Int and thus has a bonus against equal to one third of the total bonuses ever handed out - while the Strength character is being resisted by only 1/3 of the bonuses and is thus getting a bonus of 2/3 the total bonuses.

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So people who have diversity (which in this case is equivalent to "defenses") are completely fvcked. Any points invested into not having the biggest hammer you possibly can get are simply wasted - they make you fall behind 2 to 1 over simply getting a bigger hammer.

So everybody will just put all their points into a big pile because doing naything else is retarded. And in that case, the attack bonuses everybody has are going up all the time relative to the defenses opposing them. So it degenerates into a game of one-shot kills. It can't do anything else, because the attacks are rising relative to the defenses continuously.

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And that's a simplified case. The actual proposal involves not only 3 defenses, but three kinds of attacks that can each choose to attack any defense. So you could invest in Strength, Charisma, or Intelligence, any of which will help you blast your opponents away, or you could try to jack up your Dex, Con, and Wis and still fall behind enemy attacks without gaining an attack bonus to your spells at all.

The net result is that the offensive specialists are +12 against each other, and only +8 against the Defensive specialists, but the Defensive Specialists are still at +zero.

You asked at the beginning of the thread "What if?" Well, if you did that, the game would become a game of slap fighting with hammers wielded by eggshells. That's what would happen, the math can't support any other conclusion. And yes, I believe that's a bad thing. If you don't like how combat works at low level you should change it, if you like how combat works at low level you shouldn't jack up all the attacks with no compensation, because it won't look like the thing you liked any more.

-Username17

YOu might be able to make it work if you put in a balance rule. You could say that all abilities have to be within 8 of all other abilities. Or that you need to alternate ability drops. Or that you get bonuses to unimproved abilities at various points. Or you could only have bonuses go to "attack" attributes, and have a set "defense" attribute scale.

But all of those things end up with soemthing very like BAB/saves.

Frank,

I don't see your point. If some levels give you a +2 to one stat and +2 to another stat, how can there be a point where one guy has a big pile and another guy has nothing? Check it out:

Every level gets a +2.
Every other level is another +2
Every fourth level is another +2.
No stat can get more than a +2 per level.

In this system at 20th level, the most minmaxed you could be is +40 to one stat, +20 to a second stat, +10 to a third.

Investing in more than one attack mode requires splitting up your levels and bonuses, and would leave you eggshelly were it not for the fact that multiclasses (people who specialize in more offenses or defenses) have the option of hook-up feats, and stats like Dex and Wis double as offenses for some characters, and some characters are born with hook-up feats.

I dunno. I'm still trying to work out a system that unifies all the stats into a simpler, cleaner system that preserves the DnD feel.

But you'd have to min-max, otherwise you lose. If you didn't have +40, +20, +10, and teh +40 was to your offensive stat, you've just created Deadboy. You'd have +20 to attack, +10 to one defense, +5 to another defense. Assuming everybody else does the same, and there's 3 of each, that puts you at +10 1/3 the time, +15 1/3 the time, and +20 1/3 the time, for a total of +45. Defensively, you're the same in reverse, for -45.

If you diversify and nobody else does, you'd have +10 to one attack, +10 to 2 defenses, and +5 to another (there's no point to haveing 2 middle attacks). You'd be at +0 1/3 the time, +5 1/3 the time, and +10 1/3 the time, for a total of +15. Defensively, you'd be at -10 2/3 the time, and -15 1/3 the time, for a total of -35. So, you gain 10 on defense, but lose 30 on offense. You're dead.

Are you trying to unify stats, or unify the levelling mechanics into stats?

The model doesn't take into account magic items, armor, and a bunch of other things like feats that let you use a mod for a different offense or defense.

A pure number crunch is not going to give you satisfying numbers with just the basic system.

The goal is to have the a fewest stats for the same thing. They system, as written now, uses stats as a measure of power that is independant of the level system, and I'm trying to make the level system work by tying it to stats.

K wrote:A pure number crunch is not going to give you satisfying numbers with just the basic system.

And since the numbers are a pure number crunch, your proposed system is going to give you unsatisfactory numbers. No matter how you slice it. Note that adding magic items and feats and bonuses and such are going to make the problem even worse. After all, they also will have the same basic offense/defense inequality built in and will thus encourage people to distribute bonuses such that they have more of them on the things that are already breaking the game with their bigness.

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The flavor of people having six stats and being able to attack with any of them in various oposed rolls and having people specialize more and more as levels increase is unsalvageable. That flavor produces unbalanced mechanics.

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If you want to have stats increase over time, you are pretty much obligated to put a cap on the disparity generated by this, which means that in an ultimate sense you are actually just letting people have choose starting stats and then having flat bonuses that add to that.

If you want to make offense/defense trade-offs work out in any kind of reasonable way, you're going to have to have just two kinds of defenses. Any more than that and defense becomes a waste of time proportionally. In my four-stat system, all four stats are balanced, but that's only because you use two of them on any kind of attack, meaning that there are only really two kinds of defenses to worry about for stat distribution, despite there being 7 kinds of energy and four different characteristics, and at least 5 basic combat tactics.

The original D&D stats were never intended to be fair, they were intended to be completely unfair, and they are. There is no way to use them straight and have the game be balanced. Your choices are: either make the stats and associated bonuses so small compared to level dependent effects that they don't matter much; use different stats altogether; or just suffer the fact that the D&D stats inherently generate a game which is just a glorified initiative test.

-Username17

Look, we all played 3.0, or at least I think most of us did. Imagine the 3.0 wizard being able to increas his intelligence each level, and you had to try to increase your strength (for attack bonuses since you have no BaB), Dex (ref saves), Con (hp/fort) and wisdom (will).

As Frank said, it'll go to one shot kills very fast. Allowing overspecialization just doesn't work. You actually want to limit one dimensional specialization in this manner, not encourage it, because this is the kind of thing that breaks the game.

IMO a game without ability scores would be a lot more doable then one without BAB/saves.

Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1099124211[/unixtime]]IMO a game without ability scores would be a lot more doable then one without BAB/saves.

Definitely. You don't need ability scores at all, it's just that people tend to want to know how strong their characters are, but you don't really have to know that.

RC wrote:ook, we all played 3.0, or at least I think most of us did. Imagine the 3.0 wizard being able to increas his intelligence each level, and you had to try to increase your strength (for attack bonuses since you have no BaB), Dex (ref saves), Con (hp/fort) and wisdom (will)

DCs based of ability scores just can't work. Under this system, they'd have to be based off of level.

This system works for straight combat.

Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1099174949[/unixtime]]
DCs based of ability scores just can't work. Under this system, they'd have to be based off of level.

This system works for straight combat.

It doesn't matter if they're based around level or int, having no base saves means you dont' get defenses by level. instead all your defenses are based around a fighter requiring a 30 wisdom , 30 dex and 30 con and that's just not going to happen.

Raising your defenses is much more difficult than raising your offenses, so spell DCs just won't work in this system. Saves as a whole will actually be broken.

RC wrote:Saves as a whole will actually be broken.

Not if DCs are scaled down.

And having warriors with strong wills and some mental abilities is only a good thing.

But that's not what you are generating. You are generating strong stupid fighters, smart fragile wizards, and fast weak archers. And in so doing you are completely hammering any concept of "defenses". This is really simple:

If you have more than two stats that feed into defense, and stats feed into attack at all, the statistics are unbalanced by defintion. We've already gone through the math on this, stop trying to weasel it with rapid hand motions. This is an abstract fact about all game systems and there is no set up you can have that addresses this in any way, shape, or form.

Now, if you were to go through with some kind of hodge podge where spell DCs were based on level that could actually work. But that's because you would be bring BAB back into the game. Call it what you like, but a level based attack bonus works just fine. Assignable attack and defense bonuses only work if:

1> There are no more than 2 fundamental options (regardless of how many separate stats are used with those options).

and

2> There is an absolute cap on the difference between your assignments.

Period. That's an abstract mathematical fact about all game systems and you cannot get around it with any hypotheticals at all. No "and then we'll have it cost diminishing returns", no "magic items will somehow save us all", no "the DM can step in and fix broken characters", none of that shit. If you offer people the chance to distribute points between three different piles to determine how good their attacks and defenses are, the game is broken. Period.

-Username17

Basically, you're saying that players can never be given any choice as to what their character looks like under any system ever designed more complex than rock, paper, scissors.

Brilliant. We never need to have another conversation again. I'll never get any useful feedback.

Of course there can be. But the attacks can't even be as complicated as Rock Paper Scissors on the undercarriage of the system.

Champions, for example, has only Physical Defense and Energy Defense. The actual combat system is far more complicated than RPS and there are a number of additional attacks that go against defenses that people are not expected to have, costed as though noone has defenses against them (mental attacks, "No Normal Defense Attacks", and Drains are all costed based on the fact that the standard defenses that people have don't apply). Further, it has lots of other stats, such as Presence, Dexterity, and Recovery.

Having to distribute points between "Your Favorite Attack", "Defense 1", "Defense 2", and "Defense 3" is broken. Completely, unrecoverably broken. Having people have "Defense 1" and "Defense 2" doesn't have to be.

It's a basic fact that at any particular time you are only attacking with one thing, and that you are only defending with one thing. It is also a basic fact that you choose what you are attacking with and you don't choose what you defend with.

So if you make people have to distribute points between more than 2 basic defenses, they will be "guessing wrong" more than half the time. And that means that more than half of their points are wasted on defense, and that means that defense sucks.

You can have "Physical Defense" and "Mental Defense". You can have "Physical Defense" and "Energy Defense". But you can't have "Physical Defense", "Energy Defense", and "Mental Defense". There's just no way to do that. But at the same time, that's only the back end. You can have intermediate states wherein there are an arbitrarily large number of sub categories of these defenses, so long as the only points that are being distributed are subcategory defense points.

So, for example you could have 4 elements for physical attacks to belong to, and give everyone 8 points of elemental resistance. Then you could build in to the system the basic expectation that people would have 2 points of elemental defense. That is, you drop the base AC (or whatever you want to call it) by 2, and you let people add their elemental resistance to AC against all attacks. Or you could have all attacks inflict +2 damage, and have everyone subtract their elemental resistance from the damage of every attack. Or both. Then some people would decide that they wanted to be nearly fire proof, and put all 8 points of elemental resistance there, and they'd take a little more damage the rest of the time and bounce Fire Attacks off their chest. Some people would just play it safe and the rule wouldn't really affect them much. And so on, for whatever it is that you personally want to do.

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You can have all kinds of extra layers of complexity. But having people choose between being a better swordsman, being a better spellcaster, protecting themselves from fireballs, protecting themselves from poison, and protecting themselves from mind attacks is not a balanced choice. Even if you split up the attacks to three basic types instead of only 2, it still would not be a valid balanced choice. If there are three types to distribute between, attacks are better, end of discussion.

-Username17

The issue behind this, of course, is that attackers get to always use their best attack, and defenders don't get to choose which defense they're using. This needn't be the case.

If you had, for example, attack types of Strong, Fast, and Skilled, and defense types of Block, Soak, and Dodge (Strong beats Block, ties with Soak, loses to Dodge; Fast ties with Block, loses to Soak, and beats Dodge, and Skilled loses to Block, beats Soak, and ties with Dodge)-- and the defender got to choose which type of defense he was using against each particular attack -- then balance can once again be found, because a character can be equally served by being near-immune to Strong attacks as he can being moderately resistant to all three kinds.

Essence wrote:The issue behind this, of course, is that attackers get to always use their best attack, and defenders don't get to choose which defense they're using. This needn't be the case.

True. You could have a system in which people could have a "physical defense" or a "magic defense" and whatever it happened to be it just worked against whatever kind of attack your enemy happened to use. This generates its own sorts of problems, but it does avoid the problems of "attacker chooses".

Essence wrote:If you had, for example, attack types of Strong, Fast, and Skilled, and defense types of Block, Soak, and Dodge (Strong beats Block, ties with Soak, loses to Dodge; Fast ties with Block, loses to Soak, and beats Dodge, and Skilled loses to Block, beats Soak, and ties with Dodge)-- and the defender got to choose which type of defense he was using against each particular attack -- then balance can once again be found, because a character can be equally served by being near-immune to Strong attacks as he can being moderately resistant to all three kinds.

Um no... That's just like "Attacker chooses" except that the defender also has to play a shell game to get the advantage of his defense points. So now he's in a position where he's not only going to be wasting his defense points in a 2:1 ratio like normal "attacker chooses", but he's also going to guess wrong in the shell game a lot and get smacked even if he does invest in defenses.

Your suggestion is an interesting game mechanic, but it makes defenses a little bit crappier, it doesn't fix the attacker chooses paradigm at all.

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If you wanted to layer a completely separate "defense manuver" paradigm onto the game, wherein people picked manuvers that performed variously well against certain classes of attack, that's fine. It makes combat more strategic, more skill oriented. However, such a system has to be completely separate from the rest of the bonuses. You can't let people have "+4 at strong attacks" or any of that shit - because those bonuses actually serve to undermine the manuvers system.

As soon as people start collecting bonuses in the various manuvers, you get to the point where people only use the manuvers they have bonuses in. Essentially you've just set it up so that people are going to have more and more narrow choice of what manuvers are worth using as the characters advance - and in such a system the defenses are gefuct.

-Username17

You're talking about a rock/paper/scissors model where there are 2 outcomes, win or lose. That's the standard RPG model, where you roll dice and either hit, or miss, and then do damage which doesn't need to be stat based at all.

You could have a totally different system. Say for example you did full damage for a win, half damage for a tie, and no damage on a loss. Say you do 100 damage. Assuming all stats are either good (100) or bad (0), using Str v. Con is a loss - you do nothing. Using Str v. Dex is a tie, you do 50 damage. Using Str v. Wis is a win, you do 100 damage.

It'd take a lot of thought to make that sort of system work would take a lot of, will, work, though. And I'm not sure it'd be worth it, since you can get the same results in much easier ways - particualrly by just having fewer stats, or lower stat bonuses. Both of those would work fine.