The Gaming Den

Been a while since I ran a game. Running a one-off tonight using the LotFP adventure, 'Thulian Echoes'. It has an interesting twist to the old, 'you find an adventure journal' hook to a dungeon. Instead of giving the players lots of hand-outs to represent the journal, the players actually run through the original adventure using pregens. Events and actions in the prelude trigger tags that effect the environment later for the current era. One minor cosmetic example: The original party has certain stores on a boat. If they consume apples during the adventure, stunted apple trees will be now be encountered on the island.

Enough back story. I don't have LotFP, just a stripped down d20 SRD. I don't want to use tactical maps, but I do want the Fighters to provide some value. I was thinking about allowing Fighters to treat their BAB as a pool that they can use for the following combat effects:

1:1 = +1 BAB (Attack, Tactic, Trick)
1:1 = +1 AC
2:1 = Increase Damage Die one Step

So a 5th level fighter has a 5 points that he can divide between his BAB, AC, and Damage to better react to a type of threat or designate some to a comrade to control the battlefield.

These pips can be used to enhance their own combat abilities or granted to another party member. A Fighter can state they are shielding the squishy magic-user, by assigning some of his BAB to the magic-user's AC.

These effects last until the Fighter's next action.

Anyone see an unexpected exploit with this option? Thank you.

At low levels, it's a small buff. At high levels, AC is far less useful and people get killed on a single failed save.

Can this stack from multiple uses? Can three level 5 fighters combine to give a fourth fighter a 6 die step increases on damage and +3 to hit? You might run into the Knights of the Round problem where having one fighter is kinda useless but you can build a party of fighters to murder people super hard. Alternatively, your fighters might become buff-bots to greatly increase the effectiveness of your druid/rogue/whatevers instead of using it on themselves.

Should I allow the fighter to spend bab pool and apply to saving throws to represent tactics? 1:1 +1 to all saves?

So a +1 to save vs a Medusa gaze: fighter yells, 'shield your eyes!' Or he pushes his shield to front of your face at the right moment.

spongeknight wrote:Can this stack from multiple uses? Can three level 5 fighters combine to give a fourth fighter a 6 die step increases on damage and +3 to hit? You might run into the Knights of the Round problem where having one fighter is kinda useless but you can build a party of fighters to murder people super hard. Alternatively, your fighters might become buff-bots to greatly increase the effectiveness of your druid/rogue/whatevers instead of using it on themselves.

I was kind of thinking this was a feature. You want fighters to work together if something is too hard to hit or has high DR. It is mathematically inferior to give your pool to someone just for more damage, unless you are armed with a stick, as most of the damage comes from your weapon die.

The rule made for some interesting moments at the table. The one character who ran a 3rd level fighter gave away all his points every round, relying on his 18 Strength to power his to-hit and damage bonus. The best moment of the night was when the character playing the rabbi suggested he should be able to turn golems instead of undead, then used two points from tactics to fuel a successful turn golem roll that was otherwise impossible. Since I hadn't been clear what the tactics could be used for, I had to let it ride. The guy running the fighter felt versatile in a fight and we all had good fun. I think something along these lines is going to make it into my fantasy heartbreaker.

BAB is a resource that every character has. If everyone is using it, I don't know that the Fighter is going to feel special.

We come back to the whole 'using a weapon to stab things dead is not a protected role'.

Make the BAB-buffs exclusive to classes with full BAB, since the designers thought it was so awesome it compared to having spells.

How would that work with multi-class characters?

But the point is that a Cleric at 4th level has only 1 less BAB than a Fighter and even wizards can gain full BAB with a spell.

2:1 = Increase Damage Die one Step

Right. I have the immediate impression that you don't know what this means. Because this is terrible AND fucking insane at the same time, because you have to go all in to get even vaguely meaningful results..

At low levels, especially with single handed weapons, this is utter shit.
2:1 gives you d6->d8. Average damage increases by 1. Power attacking for 2, gives you +2 damage, or d6+2 vs d8. The choice is really clear and really obvious.

With bigger weapons, this quickly runs to crazy town, since by 'one step' I assume you mean the size increase table. If you don't, I have no idea how you think it works (d8->d10->d12->???)?

But see, the size increase table wanders off:
d8 turns into 2d6, and then takes another step to ramp up. 2d6 (and d12)->3d6->4d6->6d6->8d6
d10 goes d10->2d8->3d8->4d8->6d8->8d8 (presumably. Not much goes beyond that point on the chart, but past level 10 with this system, PCs would.

Now the catch is, even at 4 dice, this is a terrible trade. A greatsword fighter(or cleric or whatever) taking -4 BAB (thus getting 4d6) is getting an average of +7 damage. With power attack and a two handed weapon, its +8. After that, the average damage increases faster for increasing the die type (+7 more rather than +4 more). And if you aren't starting with a great weapon, well, the returns are much lower, because you have to overcome those steps where you're get +3.5, +2.5 or even +1 per step.

So at level 6, greatswords and great axes are like waving around single target fireballs with no save and no hit bonus. Meanwhile a daggermaster is reminded that he just made a bad life choice a level 1, and should have picked up a greatsword, because that's what his dagger effectively functions as if he throws all his BAB away first (and since he probably wanted a precision-kill fantasy this pretty much seems absurd).

On the other hand, heavy crossbow guy suddenly has a ballista, but... eh. What is the party facing that one shot at +dex to hit for 4d8 damage even matters?

As a bonus, once to they get to the point having buckets to dice, they now have to deal with the high variance that comes with it. Is crossbow guy really going to be happy with a life of 'IF hit, ~18 damage' will probably happen?

deaddmwalking wrote:How would that work with multi-class characters?

But the point is that a Cleric at 4th level has only 1 less BAB than a Fighter and even wizards can gain full BAB with a spell.

Off the cuff, if you aren't spending levels on a 1/1 BAB class, you just don't have access to this shit. It's a fighter trick, you need to be a fighter to use it. Or a ranger, paladin, what the fuck ever.

So a BAB-based class feature, not a universal BAB mechanic. Seems like that was the original intent since this was specifically for capital-F Fighters in the first post.

I ran a plain-jane featless, minimal d20 - sort of like white box d20 or castles and crusades minus all the AD&D 1E worship.

Zaranthan wrote:Make the BAB-buffs exclusive to classes with full BAB, since the designers thought it was so awesome it compared to having spells.

I only allowed Fighters to do this. Rangers and Paladins have spells and other features. Barbarians get left out, but thematically this fits with historical accounts of legionnaires versus the unregimented Germanic tribes. I envisioned the fighter to be a warrior, tactician and a warlord all rolled together. Since I said I didn't intend to use battle maps, I needed a method to simulate all of these concepts efficiently.

voss wrote:With bigger weapons, this quickly runs to crazy town, since by 'one step' I assume you mean the size increase table.

I meant an increase in the top end of the rng:

d4->d6->d8->d10->d12->2d6->2d8->2d10->2d12->3d6->3d8=>...

Power Attack is a superior choice, you're not wrong. The BAB pool concedes that Fighters should be able to Power Attack, Shield Another, Fight Defensive, Flank Tactically right out of the gate. I didn't assign any feats to the pregens and if I were to introduce them later, their use might be to alter the bab to bonus ratio or provide synergy effects. Also, as Robby pointed out, even a complete mutable BAB resource becomes a trivial effect after the Heroic tier of adventuring, so at some point even a BAB pool doesn't save the fighter from becoming obsolete.

You're also right to point out end results for optimal fighter scenarios. The BAB pool design premise is to allow players a method to game the system and decide how best to use their resource against mobs, bosses, goons or other resilient targets. To that end, I might remove iterative attacks and extend the available options to include sweeping (multiple attacks against weaker foes) or fewer more precise strikes.

As to your greatsword vs dagger ... that's how the world actually works, but If you want a game that supports the fantasy that a dagger wielder can dish out as much damage as a greatsword wielder, then you need to just toss out the weapon charts entirely and go with something that ties melee damage to class.

Harshax wrote:
d4->d6->d8->d10->d12->2d6->2d8->2d10->2d12->3d6->3d8=>...

Average result of 2d10 is 5.5+5.5=11.

Average result of 2d12 is 6.5+6.5=13.

Average result of 3d6 is 3.5+3.5+3.5=10.5.

Average result of 3d8 is 4.5+4.5+4.5=13.5.

So we have a system where adding one extra die step could do anything from increasing your damage by three points to decreasing it by 2.5, with no consistency as to which.

The system as I understood it was 1d4 > 1d6 > 1d8(2d4) > 2d6(1d12) > 3d6 > 4d6 > 6d6 > 8d6 > 12d6 > 16d6 > 32d6 > 64d8

With 1d10 turning into 2d8 and then following in the same manner.

Yeah, that's the standard increase for size changes. As Voss pointed out, it's either weak to the point of useless, or more powerful, but still not that exciting.

The one Harshax used is never worth using, so it might as well not be included as an option. It also has some typos/math errors on it.

As much as I like and want Fighter-players to experience fist-full of dice damage, I should probably just let them Power Attack. But to correct my math, I think I meant it to go like this:

d4 (2.5) > d6 (3.5) > d8/2d4 (4.5) > d10 (5.5) > d12/2d6 (6.5) > d4+d10 (8) > d6+d10 (9) > d8+d10 (10) > 2d10 (11) > d12+d10 (12)

... Spending 2 pips increases the damage range by 2 (but you can still roll poorly).

If you want to give fighters fistfulls of dice comparable to Power Attack, how about letting them add +1d6 damage instead of stepping up the dice? Trading -2 BAB for +3.5 average damage is basically the two-handed Power Attack value except usable with any weapon, compared to trading -2 BAB for +2 average damage which is basically the rather underwhelming one-handed PA value, and it's likely that a player with a greatsword sacrificing 6 BAB (for instance) would find rolling 5d6 damage faster and easier to remember than rolling 2d6+1d8+1d10 and it works out to the the same damage (min 5, max 30, average ~17).

Heck, instead of requiring them to sacrifice attack bonus for things, you could go full-on 5e and just give them a pool of [2*level-1]d6 each round that can be spent on things like damage rolls, AC against certain attacks, Fort saves, physical skill checks, special combat tricks, and so forth, up to whatever limit of bonus dice per roll that you want to set and gated behind whatever class feature choices or feats you see fit. The 5e fighter may suck in general, but it seems like stealing that system would basically do what you want here.

This seems like it can get fiddly at the tabletop adjusting your numbers to be optimal accuracy/damage depending on the target's AC and so on.

It seems solid for what you're going for though.

Harshax wrote: ... Spending 2 pips increases the damage range by 2 (but you can still roll poorly).

Don't look at the range or max roll; look at the average. You're advocating a trade of -2 to hit for +1 damage. Power Attack already exists and works better. Either make this better than Power Attack or scrap it. In its current form, it's a trap option.

If it is a resource that is exclusively available for Fighters then divorce it from BAB. If you tie it to a resource that everyone has, everyone will expect that everyone should be able to use it.

It sounds like you want to give Fighters a pool of points not too dissimilar from a 'rage pool' that Pathfinder gives Barbarians.

You could start with a number of points equal to Level + STR (coincidentally, that would be equal to BAB). You would need to decide refresh rate, but you can then give lots of things a cost. Some suggestions:

1 point - +1d6 to a d20 roll
1 point - +1d6 damage
1 point - +2 AC versus one target for a round
1 point - Take an extra 5' step
3 points - Make a Reflex save equal to an attack roll against you; if you succeed, negate the attack
4 points - Treat next attack as a critical threat if it hits

Something like this gives the Fighter some tactical options each round without necessarily making it overly complicated.