Treating Available Feats like Spell slots

[Judging__Eagle]

Truthfully, I don't really like thinking about the d20 engine (it doesn't deliver as an RPG engine, due to its wargame resolution mechanics delivering primarily binary results, without any form of rubric to determine gradations of success); but this is one idea that came unbidden, and getting it out was better than having it stuck in my head. Actually polishing it enough to be usable in d20; would mean rewriting all d20 feats so that they were closer to After Sundown's Advantages/Disadvantages, than what they have currently been like.

I haven't decided what a satisfying narrative should look like; so I haven't also thought about what he actual details on how this sort of mechanic would work either.

Lokey, the reference is to source material characters; not specifically martial characters. In LoTR, Sauron crafts a ring of great power; but they also crafted blatantly magical architecture; and bred various monsters (from orcs to nazghul steeds) as well. However, if this was happening in a D&D game, Sauron would be only making rings for all of their lieutenants, not just the Nazghul; which would be way more accurate to the title of the books, but that's not what actually happened in the literature.

Really, this exercise demonstrates the flaws in sticking with the rigid wargame limitations of the d20 engine; than the any problems that the organic nature of human storytelling has.

[DrPraetor]

If you're going to do it as an AD&D hack, I would suggest (and periodically start writing up myself):
1) Things you call Feats, which are more like kits or subclasses, and give a bonus roughly equivalent to the package of stuff you get for being, for example, a Halfling.
These are the "big feats" which Frank and K favored and then abandoned.

2) Things you call "techniques", which are set up more or less the way Wizards get spells in AD&D.
You can write them on your character sheet fairly easily, but you can only set up / use some number of them at a time.
Even so, it's important to avoid "technique bloat". If people can swim, you don't want to write a maritime expansion that includes a technique which enables you to swim - implying that you can't swim if you don't have it prepared.

[Kaelik]

Leave it to JE to straightfacedly claim that rolling one die and comparing the number is a resolution mechanic fundamentally at odds with Tabletop RPGs, and that all RPGs have to roll piles of dice and count successes.

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Just no.

[Voss]

Truthfully, I don't really like thinking about the d20 engine (it doesn't deliver as an RPG engine, due to its wargame resolution mechanics delivering primarily binary results, without any form of rubric to determine gradations of success); but this is one idea that came unbidden, and getting it out was better than having it stuck in my head. Actually polishing it enough to be usable in d20; would mean rewriting all d20 feats so that they were closer to After Sundown's Advantages/Disadvantages, than what they have currently been like.

I haven't decided what a satisfying narrative should look like; so I haven't also thought about what he actual details on how this sort of mechanic would work either.

Lokey, the reference is to source material characters; not specifically martial characters. In LoTR, Sauron crafts a ring of great power; but they also crafted blatantly magical architecture; and bred various monsters (from orcs to nazghul steeds) as well. However, if this was happening in a D&D game, Sauron would be only making rings for all of their lieutenants, not just the Nazghul; which would be way more accurate to the title of the books, but that's not what actually happened in the literature.

Really, this exercise demonstrates the flaws in sticking with the rigid wargame limitations of the d20 engine; than the any problems that the organic nature of human storytelling has.

Actually, it seems to point to the flaws in your head. You don't have a logic chain there at all. If Sauron were in D&Dland, forge ring would be one feat out of at least half-a-dozen. Why would he only be making rings? And what the flipping fuck does any of that have to do with wargames? I've yet to see one that focuses on a specific table-top character's ability to make rings or doors.


Gradations of success with d20s: there have been several. +/- 3 (or 5) above the score needed. Natural 20s. Rolling exactly the number needed (psionics was big on this for a while). None were perfect, but they did exist.

And again, it has flip all to do with wargames. d20s are pretty damn rare in wargames... and the few I can think of (infinity) are much more recent than D&D.

[JonSetanta]

I don't like this idea, other than assigning feats to level restrictions alone.

[Judging__Eagle]

Leave it to JE to straightfacedly claim that rolling one die and comparing the number is a resolution mechanic fundamentally at odds with Tabletop RPGs, and that all RPGs have to roll piles of dice and count successes.

..........................................................................................................................................

Just no.

All RPGs can use any sort of mechanic; RPS, tea leaf reading, playing cards, sheep's knuckles, six-sided dice, cow's liver, Scrabbles tiles. However some will be more capable of delivering an acceptable storytelling experience consistently.

Rolling a dice and adding modifiers; then comparing its value, trips up even long-time TTRPG players into doing so accurately. Additionally, the basic mechanic requires: A) constant/multiple table look-ups or B) binarily/wargamely reduces all actions into failure or success. Finally, the dice roll + modifier results in situations where you can "fall off" the RNG, often by mistake. Also, this mechanic tends to falsely promote the importance of dice rolls to the gameplay; when anyone who knows better realizes that the dice roll is perfunctory in the face of the sorts of optimized dice roll modifier values that are possible.

Anyone can use the d20 engine in their games; but it's resultant stories will always feel hamstrung by the engine's effects on the game's physics. I've moved away from them because they don't promise anything more than a fast way to resolve a wargame's actions; and the demands of playing a wargame are generally at odds with getting immersed in an RPG. Even then, the fact that the de facto tabletop wargame franchise argument resolution mechanic can be summed up as "a bucket of dice", sort of puts the nail into the coffin on the notion that dice + modifier, is the be-all and end-all of argument resolution mechanics.

Even my preference for "dice pools" has some fairly massive caveats; the only reason I prefer AS' dice pool mechanic (over about 90-odd other RPG mechanics) isn't purely because its RNG can deliver plausibly conceivable results such "underdog upsets" while also being able to consistently be grasped & understood by people who are completely new to tabletop gaming, and allows them to make characters whose degrees of success can be assessed in moments. An other large part of why I prefer AS's dice pool mechanic is because it also introduced a "universal success rubric" in order to gauge any creatures actions in an as agnostic manner as possible. The most amount of "tables" that I could need to look up to determine what happens as the result of an RNG check in AS is the "Awesomeness" table, and the "Time Increments" table. Only when it comes to ranged combat, or social interactions do more tables show up, but even their metrics resemble those of the initial "Awesomeness" table.

[Prak]

All RPGs can use any sort of mechanic; RPS, tea leaf reading, playing cards, sheep's knuckles, six-sided dice, cow's liver, Scrabbles tiles. However some will be more capable of delivering an acceptable storytelling experience consistently.

Be on the lookout for my Munchkin influenced, new ageism RPG with patented Tea Leaf Resolution Mechanic, due out Summer 2017.

[Judging__Eagle]

I would prefer a game that was honest about using a tea leaf reading argument resolution mechanic over abstruse rules that merely equate to tea leaf reading (or Magical Tea Party). Ars Magica; or most White Wolf, games would probably benefit from that increased level of clarity about how the rules work.

[Prak]

Yeah, at least Munchkin is upfront about that sort of thing (roll a die to see who goes first. Now argue about the results. The winner of the game wins all arguments)