Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

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Essence
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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by Essence »

Armor, Circumstance, Dodge, Enhancement, Natural Armor, Unnamed.

Six types of bonus. Everything else is superfluous and only encourages cheese. Enlargement should just increase your size category, and the bonus you get for that doesn't need a type. Innate bonuses should just be rewritten "this thingy increases your base stat". Shields should provide an Armor bonus that, as a special exception from the rule, stacks with the Armor bonus provided by, well, armor.

Basically, if it doesn't exist to establish wether AC is normal, flat-footed, or touch AC, then it only needs to be divided into two categories: the bonuses you get from your items/magical effects (enhancements), and the bonuses you get from your own actions, the terrain around you, or other happenstances (circumstances).

Circumstances bonuses should universally stack, enhancement bonuses should universally not.
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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by Username17 »

Shields should provide an Armor bonus that, as a special exception from the rule, stacks with the Armor bonus provided by, well, armor.


That's not different from having them be a separate bonus type. Except that you get into stupid arguments about whether shields stack with Mage Armor or not.

If it quacks like a separate named bonus, and it looks like a separate named bonus, it should be a separate named bonus.

Anything else is madness. Literally.

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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by RandomCasualty »

Yeah shields need to be their own bonus type. Either that or a cover bonus. One of the two.

But lumping them in with armor generally isn't a good idea.
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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by Essence »

OK, then. Seven bonus types. :tongue:
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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by User3 »

Shields should offer a cover(circumstance) bonus.
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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by User3 »

Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1084982501[/unixtime]]Shields should offer a cover(circumstance) bonus.


Or you could totally change the way shields work, from something passive (a small AC bonus that no one ever uses past level 4 unless they use Shield bash and Divine shield, etc) to an active parrying ability.

Of course, a cover (circumstance) bonus would work too.

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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by Username17 »

Noone uses shields? What the heck? Those things are great, especially at higher levels when they give a larger AC bonus on account of being magical.

Regardless, a Cover Bonus does not work, not even close.

Consider the current situation of Cover, in which people get a variable AC bonus based on how much stuff is generally sort of between them and the enemy. That is, if there are two things that individually grant a cover bonus of +4 in between you and your target, this adds up to anywhere between a +4 bonus to a 100% chance of not getting a shot off depending upon how those cover objects are arranged.

Which is about as good as you are likely to get out of a set of cover rules, but do you really want to have to have the DM pull out his Cover Estimation Stick every single time a character is behind another character and has a shield?

Hell no! Cover adding is the single most time consuming portion of most combats that don't revolve around a rules argument. If you had to do that every time anyone had a shield the game would grind to a screeching halt.

There is not a single good god damn reason why a shield shouldn't just provide a shield bonus. It provides something that other things don't, and there's only one of it. It's the absolute classic named bonus in every way. You can make persuasive arguments that armor should work some other way where you can layer them in some kind of diminishing returns set-up, you can make the argument that all special abilities should just stack together, you can make all kinds of arguments that things should be different.

But shields really do behave exactly like the D&D named bonus. You have the choice of using one or not, and using 2 isn't particularly effective. It really is best modelled by having a named unstacking shield bonus. Having it be something else isn't even simpler.

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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by User3 »

Why can't a shield be a static +2 cover bonus? If you get a better cover bonus, you don't get a shield bonus. Simple.

Any magic bonus on it can be an enhancement bonus. If it doesn't stack with your armor bonus, who cares? Either your shield will have the major protection bonus or your armor. Sounds good to me. Having both leads to the "archer with a +3 dex mod and a with a +5 animated shield and +5 mithril breastplate having as high an AC as the full plate guy" stupidity.

I am really tired of the sheer number of ways to break the game with stacking bonuses. The archer cleric build, for example.
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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by Username17 »

Why can't a shield be a static +2 cover bonus? If you get a better cover bonus, you don't get a shield bonus. Simple.


Bullshit.

There's an archer between you and me. I have a shield, why doesn't it help any more? That's completely unnecessary and completely counterintuitive, and not any simpler than having the bonuses stack.

And that's not how any other cover works. If I have a stone block that obscures my left side, I get 50% cover and a +4 AC bonus. If there is another stone block partially in front of that block and sticking out a little more, I now am 75% obscured and have a larger cover bonus. If the second stone block simply obscures my whole right side, I now have 100% cover and you can't attack me.

That's how cover is supposed to work, and it works moderately well. However, adding that on to objects which are on your person makes facing happen and that makes us cry. We have to determine whether the stone block is obscuring our shield side or out unshielded side - despite the fact that the shield is mobile and I can really kind of put it anywhere I want.

Some ideas are just retarded - like folding Shields into cover.

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Desdan_Mervolam
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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by Desdan_Mervolam »

I thought that they nerfed cover untill all it ever provided was a +4?

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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by User3 »

The shield doesn't help anymore bacause your ability to use it is impaired by the fact that you can't react to my arrow since there is an archer between you and me. In the time it takes me to call my shot and put it past the archer, you don't have time to react. the biggest bonus applies(the cover offered by the archer).

If you can't react, you can't put that shield up to deflect my shot. Perfectly intuitive.
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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

You're talking about real combat, not D&D combat. D&D isn't based on your ability to see things and react to them, you're always assumed to see everything - provided you make a spot check.

Introducing any rule based on field of vision or facing completely messes up the system, as proven by the Blind Barbarian rule.
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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by User3 »

DnD has several rules based on whether you can see things. For example, an invisible opponent gets a +2 to hit someone who can’t see him, and concealment grants a flat miss chance.

Flanking is another of those funny rules. Flanking assumes that you are reacting to both opponents, giving both the option to coordinate attacks. I’ve always liked this rule for the solution to the blind barbarian problem.
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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

D&D has no rules on whether you can see things based on stuff being in the way or behind you. A rule that an intervening character somehow blocks your sight, so that you can't react, would mean that your field of view matters. If it matters, than so does facing. If facing matters, than . . . you have flind barbarians.

* * *

That rule's a whole batch of stupid. I don't even know where to start. Wait, yes I do. Let's start w/

If the flanker is out of attacks of opportunity, you can ignore the flanker (and deny the flanking bonus) with impunity.


How dumb is that? You can ignore a flanker b/c of the arbitrary nature of a turn-based combat system?
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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by Username17 »

Desdan_Mervolam at [unixtime wrote:1085073564[/unixtime]]I thought that they nerfed cover untill all it ever provided was a +4?

-Desdan


No, they helpfully removed the chart that tells you how much cover you get, but you still get various degrees of cover. It's now simply "DM's option" with a single fixed point at 50% cover, instead of "DM's Option" with a series of examples.

In 3.5, the scaling cover rules are still there, they just no longer have a chart or examples explaining how they work.

:bored:

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Re: Fixing the Wealth-by-Level system

Post by Desdan_Mervolam »

That's good. I thought it was stupid to cut cover down to a static bonus, and continued to use the 3.0 cover rules.

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