The Gaming Den

Here are by thoughts so far, made publiclly available for ridicule/improvement:

-Armour-as-DR stays, as does the idea of gaining additional damage from getting a higher roll than needed on the to-hit roll. These are good things, and I think they can be made to work. It may turn out that a one to one correlation between excess score on the to-hit roll and damage is too big and you'll have to accept getting +1 damage for each +2 extra to-hit you get. This will be play-tested.

-Shields should be distinct from body armour and not give DR. I'm currently leaning towards allowing you to use attack actions made on one turn to negate attacks on the next round by parrying them with the cavat that you cannot parry an attack that gets more on it's to-hit roll than you got on the parry to-hit roll. Shields would give you a to-hit bonus for parrying or make it better in some way in exchange for not making attacks with it.

-"Tanking" as a combat role and the "Defender" archtype will be supported by this system. Refusing to attack characters who are defending against you will allow those characters to make attacks at a large bonus/make more attacks at you than normal. Thus, the "Defender" character can contribute by defeating powerful strikes that would kill other, less well protected characters and making sure that those characters do not get attacked.

-HP will be based strongly on size. Current plan is 10+Size Mod+Con Bonus or something thereabout. Possibly 1.5 Con Bonus. This resolves the age old issue of making housecats able to lethally maul commoners by giving housecats tiny HP pools which even a commoner could take out. It also means that being huge makes you scary without actually having to give large monsters any special "can flatten people in a round" powers.

-We will specifically not penalize large character's to-hit bonus for being large, nor give smaller characters a bonus; that perversely encourages giants who defend their entire body with a buckler while using a highly accurate attack style so they can hit at all and pixies wearing plate armour while swinging around a toy great-axe and it's not something we want to promote.

-Rampant killing off of characters will be prevented using an "honor" system in which characters who murder people that ask to surrender become "dishonorable" and, if sufficently dishonorable, are ousted from society and can be expected to be outright killed by anyone that is aware of their reputation who beats them in combat.

-There will be no "caster" classes that get a list of spells which they prepare and cast a set number of per day. These will, instead, be ritual effects. Any person can cast these, but alot of them have weird requirements like sacrificing a goat or having a special astronomical alignment which prevents them from being everyday things.

-Magical classes who are expected to do magic (or psionics) in their day to day life will get class abilities to that effect. Their powers will be explictly no more powerful than what a sufficently skilled individual of the same level could do with their skills. Alot of utility magic could seriously end up being a skill that having the class unlocks, ala the 2.E scrying skill.

-Everyone gets skills. Lots of skills. Enough that everyone has sufficent non-combat contributions to the party to justify their existance even regardless of their actual combat contribution and give them a good share of screen time when nobody is getting killed.

-Items that give you bonuses will be cheap, nonmagical and easy to get. A 100gp masterwork sword will give you the full +1/3 character level vertical bonus that you can ever get to your attack bonus. Any magic items that get handed out will give horizontal powers, like letting your attacks do fire damage, or attack ethereal people.

As far as items go, couldn't we just use balanced wealth? That way you don't even need to explicitly buy magical/masterwork arms and armor, and everything comes as part of the parcel of being a higher-level character.

Grek wrote:-Shields should be distinct from body armour and not give DR. I'm currently leaning towards allowing you to use attack actions made on one turn to negate attacks on the next round by parrying them with the cavat that you cannot parry an attack that gets more on it's to-hit roll than you got on the parry to-hit roll. Shields would give you a to-hit bonus for parrying or make it better in some way in exchange for not making attacks with it.

This is a perfect way to get people to never use shields. 2H weapons already significantly outdamage 1H weapons (even more important if armor is DR), and if the only time a shield comes into play is if you give up an action that could be used to whack someone with a 2H weapon, then there's no reason to go sword&board ever.

Should we stick with E6 to keep damage low so people don't auto-die from vertical increases to damage?

There is no real reason to tie bonuses to equipment save for tradition, and to make it so that characters are temporarily weaker if they have their stuff taken away. If that is not something we want to happen, then no, we do not want to tie bonuses to gear at all.

The reason to go sword & board is not to do more damage, but to prevent more damage, ala a Tome Knight.

Ideally, we do not want to be limited to E6 if that is at all possible. And there's no reason not to scale up DR and dodge bonuses to keep up with damage and accuracy bonuses, thereby preventing any auto-dying from happening.

One reason to keep E6 in is to limit the variability between characters. One thing I liked that GnG did was change extra dice of damage to +x since with the lower HP totals it limits the variability. Furthermore, with this is E6 it would mean that fighter-level characters are viable, as well as rogue-level ones like martial adepts.

E6 can be combined with these rules to acheive that effect, but I would also like them to function as a stand alone module, if that can be acheived. E6+"whatever we end up calling this" would produce the effect you describe, but you could also use just one or just the other.

Sounds good. So how does keeping the change from damage dice to +x damage sound? So +3d6 would become +4 damage, +2d4 becomes +2, +4d8 becomes +6, and so on?

How did you get those specific values from those dicepools?

Base damage is +1 for 1d4, add another 1 for every die size (+2 for 1d6, +3 for 1d8, etc). Then add 1 for every additional die of damage.

I'm not 100% on that exact method (It would need playtested) but I agree that stuff like sneak attack damage will need to become much much smaller when people have HP pools of around 12.

What is the point of any of this? It's never going to be compatible with D&D classes or monsters when you change the basic concepts this much. You're writing a new game from scratch, but you start out with a bunch of niggly mid-level details rather than any high level design goals. So... where are you going with any of this?

As for Armor as DR, the simple systems presented in UA nd GnG have th same problem: they make armor worse. A lot worse. Here's why:

As your level rises, opponents have a higher to-hit bonus and do more damage, right? But the to-hit bonus is always on a d20, meaning that raising your AC by 4 (or whatever) is actually automatically scaling up to be negating more damage per turn as the 4 attacks that miss out of 20 each individually do more damage. But 4 literal points of damage blocked is worth less and less the more damage your opponent is dishing out.

There are things you could do (like move to a proportional soak system like Warp Cult), but if you're trying to claim this is mechanically at all like D&D, then you're going to have to change a lot to make Armor as DR into something that isn't full of fail.

-Username17

That's what both the changing dice to damage (as per above) and removing str to damage with one-handed weapons (and limiting it to 1/2 when using a weapon two-handed) work towards, along with changing power attack. Because damage is a lot more limited, armor-as-DR doesn't suck quite as much.

Ghostwheel wrote:That's what both the changing dice to damage (as per above) and removing str to damage with one-handed weapons (and limiting it to 1/2 when using a weapon two-handed) work towards, along with changing power attack. Because damage is a lot more limited, armor-as-DR doesn't suck quite as much.

Shut up. Shut up so hard. You're talking about this horseshit:

dumbass wrote:Base damage is +1 for 1d4, add another 1 for every die size (+2 for 1d6, +3 for 1d8, etc). Then add 1 for every additional die of damage.

That is made out of poop. 2d6 is very slightly larger than 1d12. And yet, your stupid piece of shit system converts 1d12 into +5, and 2d6 into +3. That is total and complete fucking mathematical failure. I don't even know why you thought that was a good idea, even for a fucking moment.

This is why it is so hard to take you seriously when you post confidently that you've done all the math for your shit. Whenever you actually post mathematical formulae they are wrong. Like, super duper wrong. So wrong that the proper response stops being "I think you forgot to carry the 2" and starts being "Are you fucking with me? What the fuck is this shit?"

-Username17

How often do characters get +1d12 to damage? This doesn't affect base weapon so... hrmmm, wow, it might not be as dumb as it sounds.

Can you think of a way to add +1d12 damage to a character? The biggest thing I can think of is +1d8 from the soulknife (lol) but even then... yeah...

So, Ghostwheel, based on the available classes a sneak attack should probably average around +2 to +4 damage, to compensate for how everything has an HP pool of 12?

I'm asking because the mathematical method of deriving the damage isn't as important as the range of values that the SA attack bonuses will be available in comparison to average HP.

Absolutely correct, and that compensates for two-handed fighters who would get +1 damage at first level (assuming they had 16 str) and climbing to +3 from power attack, and then they could easily get another +2 from Weapon Specialization if they sank a feat into that.

On the other hand, rogues usually find ways to get multiple attacks and can sink ability points into dex rather than Str, increasing both their attacks rolls and AC at the same time.

Ghostwheel wrote:How often do characters get +1d12 to damage? This doesn't affect base weapon so... hrmmm, wow, it might not be as dumb as it sounds.

Can you think of a way to add +1d12 damage to a character? The biggest thing I can think of is +1d8 from the soulknife (lol) but even then... yeah...

Yes. There are a number of spells that add d12s of bonus damage. But that's not even the point. The point is that your failure to remember things that use specific die types in no way makes up for your failure to do comparative mathematics.

For fuck's sake, dice of damage are just amounts of damage. A d4 isn't half as much as a d6, it's 5/7 as much. Plus one d6 of damage every two levels isn't half as much as +1/level, it's almost twice as much. If you were going to do some sort of numerical transform from larger damage bonuses to smaller ones, you would start with one that made any fucking sense at all. Figure out how much average damage people were actually doing and then converting that to whatever your system is. Your formula is bullshit covered in more bullshit. You take things and put them in and he results are completely random. You're a 10th level character using Burning Blade, and your damage boost goes from 13 average damage to 12. Meanwhile, you're a 10th level Rogue and your damage boost from sneak attack goes from 17 points to 5. What the fucking fuck are you thinking?

-Username17

Right. Thought so. Because I was getting confused by Frank's post and was wondering "Why does it even matter how he derived the damage bonus?"

What's important is the calculating the average "survival time" of a PC, and the chance of one-shot deaths.

That said, design-wise, do you have a target number for the following?

* The average HP of an NPC or PC.
* The average damage of a character (breakdown depending on situation - i.e. using two handed weapon, single handed, SAing, etc).
* The average chance to hit (correlated to the average damage breakdown above)
* The average effect of AC on damage.

Because once you determine your preferred averages, it's probably much easier to work backwards rather than deriving it.

Even if damage is rising more slowly though, it still is rising, so Armor-as-DR needs to be rising likewise; maybe a gradual rise, but not a static number.

Option A: Flat bonus. Pro: Simple. Con: Heavy armor gets less useful as time goes on. Eventually everyone wears light armor.

Option B: Multiplier. Pro: Accurate. Con: If you want it to rise slowly, you'll have to multiply by annoying values like 1.3 or whatever. Or at least by quarter and half values.

Is there really any reason why damage dice should scale up at all if we've already decided that HP are not going to scale up much if at all? I'm tempted to simply have the sneak attack bonus be +1d6 for all levels, and have damage scale by giving extra attacks. The 1st level rogue is doing 1d8+1d6 with his sword and sneak attack combo vs. an orc with 12 hp and a DR of like 5, and the 10th level rogue gets to do two attacks per round like that vs. a golem with 16hp and DR 8.

@Zine:
Ghost has stated a preference for combats that last up to a max of 10 rounds at the very most. A more typical fight should be about 6 rounds. That means that, for a 4 person party, the opposition should need 24 attacks before they are all dead/fleeing/surrendered. And yes, monsters fleeing combat/surrendering when beaten rather than being brutally executed is a design goal.

HP totals for NPCs should be much more variable than that of a PC, based on the fact that they're a much more variable and weird, seeing as they don't have to be something that can be an adventurer at all. But it should be based on the same system as PC HP, and shouldn't ever go above about 50 or even approach that for the vast, vast majority of monsters. That's the HP for Godziilla.

The average PC should have about 12 HP total, increasing to no more than about 25 as they grow in level, and only if their main sthick is "really fucking huge dude that can take loads of hits"

Because fights are supposed to last for about 24 PC attacks, and each NPC should have about 15 HP (high HP monsters are more common than low), but should also give up before actually dieing. So we'll call it 12 HP per enemy beaten per player per combat, or 2HP per player per round of combat. All assuming a party of 4, of course.

No player should be rolling more than about 3 damage dice per attack, but they should have different combinations of dice. We'll use the rogue example above, so 1d8+1d6, or an average of 8 damage. Which means that he should have 3/4ths of this eaten by misses and DR.

The two obvious solutions are a 75% hit chance and a DR of 4 or a 50% hit chance and a DR of 2. I like the former better, as people want to hit more often than not, even if their mean damage is the same.

Grek wrote:Is there really any reason why damage dice should scale up at all if we've already decided that HP are not going to scale up much if at all?

Well, one of your long list of contradictory life goals is apparently to be able to plug classes like Rogue and Swordsage through the GnGalizer machine and play them out of the box. Getting scaling damage bonuses is in fact the entire reason that people take more than one level of Rogue. And getting higher level boosts and maneuvers that do more damage is similarly the reason that people take more levels of Swordsage.

If you abandon the life goal of being able to use previous D&D writings for classes, equipment, abilities, and monsters, then sure. You can go ahead and write a new set of classes where there is some entirely different reason that characters want additional levels of whatever class you will write at some point in the future that gets a sneak attack analog that apparently doesn't scale much (if at all). But it will still need some sort of paradigm to convince people that they are getting a good deal when they continue to take levels of your Assassin class (or whatever you end up calling it). I can't tell you what that paradigm will be, since so far the only thing you've come up with is that it probably won't be the ever increasing spike damage that the 3.5 Rogue gets to inflict. But you are probably aware that there is an infinite number of other possibilities you could make up to fill that void. The class could get greater levels of battlefield mobility, being ultimately able to do Nightcrawler-style hit-and-run teleport attacks. Or anything else. Literally anything else, because you are writing entirely new classes for an entirely new game system that you haven't written but the tiniest piece of and whose entire raison d'etre is - to be as polite as possible - rather opaque.

But it's important to note that if you were going to go that way, you still wouldn't need a bullshit conversion system where 1 bonus die converted to 57% effectiveness and 4 bonus dice converted to 36% effectiveness. You wouldn't even need a sensible conversion factor, because you'd still have to write all your classes and abilities from scratch.

-Username17

Ah, thanks Grek!

Grek wrote:Is there really any reason why damage dice should scale up at all if we've already decided that HP are not going to scale up much if at all?

I would say that it should still scale up a bit, because as you noted some monsters may have high HP.

FrankTrollman wrote:Getting scaling damage bonuses is in fact the entire reason that people take more than one level of Rogue. And getting higher level boosts and maneuvers that do more damage is similarly the reason that people take more levels of Swordsage.

Patently untrue. You also advance in rogue levels to get 8+Int skill points per level, evasion and the other rogue special abilities. I don't remember enough about the swordsage class offhand to say for sure, but I would be very suprised if it didn't also have something worthwhile to offer other than "more damage dice".

Grek wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:Getting scaling damage bonuses is in fact the entire reason that people take more than one level of Rogue. And getting higher level boosts and maneuvers that do more damage is similarly the reason that people take more levels of Swordsage.

Patently untrue. You also advance in rogue levels to get 8+Int skill points per level, evasion and the other rogue special abilities. I don't remember enough about the swordsage class offhand to say for sure, but I would be very suprised if it didn't also have something worthwhile to offer other than "more damage dice".

Uhh... are for realz? Rogues get a small hit die, a shitty attack bonus, and the worst saving throws in the entire game. People do not take level 7 in Rogue because of the skill points. They also weren't in there for the bonus to Trap Sense or the Uncanny Dodge. Seriously, they weren't.

The entire point of the Rogue is sneak attack spike damage. That is the only reason that anyone takes the class seriously. Because it can put out enough damage to fucking kill things, and most other classes can't. If you take away the Rogue's ability to kill level appropriate opposition by taking more Rogue Levels or remove the requirement to take more Rogue Levels to kill level appropriate opposition, then no sane person is ever going to take a second level of Rogue.

And if you can't see that instantly, you have no place designing a D&D patch. For realz.

-Username17