Failure Points of 3.5

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spongeknight
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Failure Points of 3.5

Post by spongeknight »

This thread exists to identify and hopefully correct all of the failure points, insane design decisions and generally fuckery of the 3rd/3.5 game system in an attempt to design a system from the ground up that avoids all those pitfalls while keeping all the amazing parts of the system. There are quite a few guys here (myself included) who are building homebrew systems that are "like D&D", and I'm pretty sure all of us are using 3.x as a base instead of the other editions. So I feel that it's be very helpful to have a big list of the design mistakes of the edition for easy reference in a single thread that all of us can refer to when making shit for our games. Of course, this should also help other people avoid problems and whatever. Maybe we can even link grognards to this thread when talking about design fails, who knows.

Anyway, let's identify game problems. For example: skills. The 3.x skills work really well... if you don't try to min/max them at all and stay away from certain skills. So they basically work for newbs or idiots who don't know how to design a character, presumably because that's how the designers themselves played. Anyway, the problems of the skill system are:

1. Too fiddly. You've got a pile of +1 points to spend every level, and at first level it's just annoying how long skilled characters take to spend everything. This is all for very little gain, because spending time on +1 is chicken shit.

2. The RNG is fucked at level 1. You've got a cleric in shield & chain rolling -6 on stealth while the halfling rogue is busting out +15 on the same checks. They cannot be playing the same skill check minigame at all.

3. The RNG is superfucked at high levels. There are all sorts of bullshit magic bonuses and other nonsense that can leave characters will skill checks 50 points apart. That is just unworkable.

4. Level relevance? What's that? Skills are only really usable to make your character useful at the task if you started spending your points on it at level 1. How in the fuck are you supposed to pick up a new skill at level 10, unless you are a rogue or some shit? If you're getting 2 to 4 skill points a level, you have to spend at least three entire levels of skill points just to get up to level competency in one skill.

5. Not enough. Characters who are supposed to adventure don't have enough skills to adventure with.

Fortunately, solutions to these problems while keeping the basic skill system are pretty easy. Here's one way to do it:

Trained skills get a +3 bonus at level one and then add your level to the skill as well. No more skill points.
Bonuses from magic and shit cap at +5, not +fucking 30
Bonuses from size/race/whatever will be reduced as well (too many to list)
Much more trained skills for almost everybody

So now, with the edition designed around skills that get reasonable bonuses, we can reshuffle the DCs so that they work at both low and high level.



Stuff like that. Basically, this thread should be a compendium of what 3e does wrong and at least one way to fix it while still keeping the same basic framework of the system. Also be sure to mention what you absolutely want to keep in- for example, the "new powers every two levels" paradigm is fucking amazing in my opinion.[/i]
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Post by nockermensch »

Skills:
Some skills have weird efficiency breakpoints: You care to raise tumble until you can't fail a DC 15 tumble check. More points in Tumble have a marginal utility.

Knowledges are divided in a strange way. What the hell is "Knowledge: Local"?

Some skills are important to the core working of some classes, to the point that they should just be level checks: Concentration for spellcasters in general and Spellcraft for wizards being the most obvious examples.

HD:
HD, being tied to skills and feats, generates weird results that elephants and whales know more combat tricks than smart but small animals. The system should recognize some kind of "dead HD", or simply some give some flat bonus HP to creatures that are large but not particularly hardcore.

HD, being tied to BAB and saves, generates weird results in that undead that have large BABs are also impossible to Turn. Some flexibility should be added to decouple HD/Base Attack/Base Saves. I'm not averse of tying combat values to "roles" like kids seem to prefer these days ("Bruiser", "Controller", "Sneak", etc).

NPC classes go up to level 20. It's stupid.

Creature Types:
Sometimes these look too restrictive. Probably the biggest offender are all undead, constructs and elementals being critical immune. A part of these traits should be moved to tags, like [Amorphous] for creatures that are blobs of stuff and therefore don't have weak spots.

Creature types should contain just the defining characteristics. Undead, for example, should be something like: "Undead are animated by negative energy, acquiring a semblance of life. Undead don't need to breath and many don't need to eat.
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Re: Failure Points of 3.5

Post by deaddmwalking »

spongeknight wrote:
Fortunately, solutions to these problems while keeping the basic skill system are pretty easy. Here's one way to do it:

Trained skills get a +3 bonus at level one and then add your level to the skill as well. No more skill points.
Bonuses from magic and shit cap at +5, not +fucking 30
Bonuses from size/race/whatever will be reduced as well (too many to list)
Much more trained skills for almost everybody

So now, with the edition designed around skills that get reasonable bonuses, we can reshuffle the DCs so that they work at both low and high level.
That solution keeps too much of the D&D DNA that isn't working. Call it a partial fix. If you're trying to keep the general system, try this:

All classes get 6 skill points/level + Intelligence. There is no class-skill/cross-class-skill distinction. It's up to you if you want to make the first point '+3' but if you don't have to worry about what your first level was you can do x4 skill points if you want.
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Post by rasmuswagner »

The biggest issue with skills is that some of them are low-level abilities (swim, climb), some are your buy-in to important minigames (stealth, perception) and some are bullshit treadmills (disable device).

Ideally, I'd prefer if taking ranks in Climb was simply not an option at level 10.
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Post by tussock »

By "fixing 3e", I assume you mean "using the 3e monster manual with new rules for PCs". To avoid re-writing the entire monster manual, because that is BIG JOBS.

In that case, the actual bonuses things get to skills need to be the same, because the monsters have those already.

The entire skills chapter can go die in a fire though.
+15 Spot should basically be True Sight, and +15 Climb should be running and fighting on the ceiling or clouds or whatever. +15 Diplomacy should be that you can stop the fight music at will and talk instead. +15 Knowledge (Local, aka Carousing, Gather Info, etc) is where you just know everything there is to know, locally, about everyone, but maybe miss the odd special secret thing.

If you're having a skill called Use Rope, you best end up being Wonder Woman, at +15.

And +15 Tumble is where you just ignore attacks of opportunity for moving. If you have +15, the answer is yes you can, even if it's mostly impossible. If Fighters need to fly by 10th level (and they basically do), then Jump +15 needs to be a functional fly speed, even if it costs you a move action.

Most of the skills don't need folded together, but the Knowledge skills do. Obviously, at DC 15, you should also know everything, except for some secrets.
Like, you could give PCs more skills, another couple per level each does sort of help, but think bigger too.

On Monster Hit Dice not really working for stuff. Again, let's not re-write the entire monster manual, stupid monsters have 2 HD or sometimes 3 HD per CR, and the fact that you can't turn big stupid undead, but instead only little mook undead and the smart ones, is a feature, not a bug. Stab 'em.
Monster hit points are generally a bit big for the sort of damage PCs can do with weapons and damage spells. Don't be afraid to eyeball any monster's hit points, realise how stupid that is, and half it before the battle starts.
The PC saves are too low, like, by a lot. And not just because dragons have stupid high DCs, so do random NPCs, high level characters should make their saves.
Less changy solution: You need both the cloak of saving throws and another +1/3 level to saves before they can work reliably. To some extent you just use +1/level to all saves for everyone, plus the saves cloak. You can't do that for monsters though, because HD and stuff, so don't.

More changy solution: DC 15. Everything is DC 15, no one gives a fuck what the dragon's Con and HD is, nor how Wise is the Cleric (who already gets more spells from it). +12 Fort basically works all the time even naked and +6 Fort can work most of the time with a modest bonus. Giants, middling Dragons, and big Demons all make all their saves all the time, so select your spells appropriately.
You get way too much XP awards from level 3 to level 14. That's where the game works, and instead of levelling up every 13 easy fights, you should probably take four to six times that long around the best bits at level 7 to level 10, as everyone did in AD&D. Just change the XP awards by CR by PC level so that they do that, and yes that means you get less XP for a CR 8 monster at level 8 than you did for a CR 3 monster at level 3.
Do not modify the treasure per encounter. PCs also happen to need about 4x as much treasure in the middle levels, and you should give it to them easily here.
Additive multiclassing is a bad thing and the patches for it amount to hundreds of pages to bring just a few of the possible combinations into functional form.
So, when your 15000 Xp level 6 Fighter decides to go Wizard, just have it cost 1000 XP to get the first level, and then buy Wizard levels like a new character, so that he's level 6 after another 15000 XP, where a single class would be 8th), and when he reaches level 19 the single classes are only level 20 and he doesn't have to be too sad about the Fighter levels still. Keep class totals and swap back and forth as you please.

All your bonuses, attacks, hit points, saves; overlap and do not stack, they're class bonuses. Ditto your feats by level, stat boosts by level, and so on. You've already had a level 6 feat, get to level 9 in any class for your next feat. Record all HD totals by class and use the highest as your maximum.

The numbers, interestingly, come out almost identical to most multiclass patch Prestige Classes, so you can just use the NPCs as written and not even notice.

Also fixes all the playable monsters rules automagically. Overlap and do not stack the class table bonuses and max hit points with the monster's racial bonuses and max hit points. When your class stuff finally gets better, you'll also have level-appropriate powers.

You do just have to give the same XP to everyone in the party to avoid figuring out what level everyone is. Use the highest level PC, NPC, or highest CR monster ally for all XP calculations.

Chuck almost all prestige classes in the bin, if they have any useful abilities, turn them all into a single feat and be done with it. If they are actually an interesting class in themselves, which very few are, write them up as a class, 15 levels or so. You won't do that and no one will care, it's all good, this opens up a huge range of playable characters.

Sadly breaks the thing where you can be a Fighter/Ranger/Barbarian who's slightly better than a Fighter or Ranger or Barbarian. Don't care, and neither do you.
Talking about Feats. Fighters have 10 of them at 10th level, Wizards 7, and everyone else 4. They need to be really good at that, because firstly it's all Fighters get, and secondly there's too many of the bloody things otherwise.
This has been covered, but in general each chain of 3-5 feats needs to just be a feat. Maybe some things come online later, or they all start immediately, either way is fine. So with Power Attack you can also Sunder, Overrun, and Bullrush. With Combat Mobility you can also Spring Attack and Whirlwind Attack. Mounted Combat is every damn feat that requires it. Still/Silent/Quicken. Whatever, bundle 'em up.
Class features, some of them are very bad. Make them worth knowing.
Pathfinder Smite, for Paladins, that's a smite, it lasts all fight, does solid level-appropriate bonus dice damage, makes people care that it exists.
Trap Sense is terrible, it should do something that matters.
Evasion is good. Sneak Attack is good. Animal Companion is good.
Favoured Enemy needs to be a lot better, like +5d6 damage and a whole new enemy to hit it with, and also 8 categories instead of 33, so that you can just fucking use it.
Iterative attacks, the penalties are stupid. Your off-hand/face/foot attacks are all at -5, or -2 with multiattack(/etc as one feat), your iterative attacks are all at +0. No, there is no penalty for swording while using your "I can kick things" feat to kick things while also using a sword.
Just, in general, melee PCs need to be doing more damage, not less, cheese it up. Missiles it just saves you using touch attacks.

Also, your iterative attacks should be a standard action, or charge, or spring attack. All primary attacks for monsters should be too. Two claws +9, bite +7, that's two claws on a charge. You can use your off-hand extra attacks, shield bashes, or whatever, once you're stuck in combat.

Monks have full BAB, plus extra attacks, with this, OK, also everything else you can imagine to give them, including being a Tiger.
Critical hits are both very uninteresting, and the monsters will kill your character with them if you ever give them picks or even axes.
For the most part, a critical hit chance should be an extra attack that uses the special combat attacks with no touch attack or AoO required. They should only work on your first attack in your action, and can be targeted against a different critter.

Now, when the troll crits you, it's a free trip attack, and combat got more interesting. It's still likely +4 to the next attack and a rend, so yeah, good luck, but less instant-kill from the axes and stuff.

Those x3 and x4 crits, probably need something else if you want to keep the weapons in play, either a bonus to trip/disarm/whatever, or some small damage added to the special attack.
Things that just do double or triple damage, like a lance charge, that's fine, those replace iterative attacks if you use 'em though, mostly good for punching through DR.

But speaking of special combat tricks, Grappling is awful, most of the rest aren't much better. Who wrote all that shit.
Really. The numbers are both terrible and in the monster manual. So eh, leave 'em. But mechanically ....

Everything should be a touch attack, then the higher roll gets to trip, or sunder, or disarm the lower. No attack of opportunity, they can just win, or not. Both down on a tie. In the case of a grapple, you're either both free if the defender wins or both grappled otherwise.

See also touch attacks, because those are also stupid.
Touch attacks you say? Bad! No you can't just cast Harm on high level things like that, what a stupid fucking mechanic.
But, there's another mechanic that uses the right modifiers anyway, the Reflex save! Any time a touch attack is called for, use a Ref save instead. DC 15 if using all DC 15 saves, or 10 + half HD + Dex otherwise.

Collectively, this handily makes high level characters and monsters mostly immune to being tripped or disarmed, except on 1st attack crits or special automatic trip/grap/etc monsters. You could also allow them a Ref save to mostly avoid that particular automatic brand of bullshit and make the Freedom of Movement thing less compulsory, especially noting that the trip feat is just free with all the other expertise/disarm/whatever ones, and not your entire character concept.
Residuum of a sort. It's good for the game, mechanically if not in concept. When you have magic items you don't want, either swap 'em for other randomly generated magic items at the shop, or build your own with your feats and use those as the component cost.
Note that as you get no more magic treasure for burning it, and treasure needs hacked to bring it higher, you can always turn 1000 gp of magic you don't want into 1000 gp of magic you do want, OK. So if you need a submarine for a while, just make one out of excess swords, and that cloak you're not using right now, and get the cloak back later by burning the sub. It's fine, just uses downtime and a touch of XP or whatever.

Personally I'd say magic is all runestones and gems and embedded eye of beholder, so when you break it down you have a nice masterwork sword and all the magic components to work into other stuff, nothing is actually burnt to magic dust, but the cost and replacement thing is nice and more appropriate than shopping.

The shops are all randomised. All of 'em. Always.
XP costs are ... well, they make sense in world and suck for PCs. Same for level drain. In general, the old AD&D fix was a good one.
When drained, you have max XP (your original total), and current XP. When gaining XP, you gain max XP and gain double current XP until they match. Effectively the long-term cost is nothing, but it still limits how much you can spend on a per-adventure basis.

If your current XP is down a level, use the negative levels mechanic. Never actually lose a level, even with level drain, that's overly punative. This limits item creation and hurts short term with drains, you just catch up.
Some specific spells are also somewhat problematic for the game in general.
  • Polymorph (Other and Polymorph Self), please see 2nd edition versions. Basically, if you get turned into a Troll, use the MM entry only, also go insane and lose the character after a while. If the Wizard turns himself into a Troll, use the Movement rates, skills, and senses of the Troll only.
  • Alter Self lets you become a Humanoid, no matter what you are. All those monster manual entries with weird polymorph (but only to a Humanoid form), they have Alter Self.
  • Gate is less bad if he takes a share of XP and ups your level for XP calculations, and they are self willed, barely sane, and will want to murder you if you mess with them.
  • Planar Binding ditto, just, be cool, work with the desires of the monsters. Angels will help you defeat demons, and take a share of the XP. Efreeti might murder you for your insolence, but also totally make a fair deal that they stick to, figure out what it wants, maybe use your +15 to Arcana.
  • Wish is a little off, in general, but rule of thumb, if you wish for anything that could possibly get you another wish, or any other stupid loop, it will monkey-paw your ass so quick. But if it's just a one-off, you get what you want, it's fine.
See also touch attacks, PC saves, a lot of things are much less "lost initiative? game-over!", especially in concept and planning, if they work a lot less reliably.
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Post by Kaelik »

I admit I stopped reading after like the third or fourth one, but is there literally anything Tussock said that is actually good in that list? Or is this Peak Tussock?
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Post by spongeknight »

tussock wrote:By "fixing 3e", I assume you mean "using the 3e monster manual with new rules for PCs". To avoid re-writing the entire monster manual, because that is BIG JOBS.
No no, the Monster Manual is getting a complete rewrite. Like I said, many of us are making entire homebrew systems that are based on 3.x edition, but the goal is to fix all the flaws, not keep a bunch of them and only fix certain things- we've got Pathfinder 2 to look forward to for that.

So, onto flaws of monster design!

1. Hit die should correspond to level. What's the fucking point of making construct HD so shitty and then just giving constructs three times as many HD to compensate? If you want monster attack bonuses, AC, saves and HP to be appropriate to their challenge rating, give them good progressions on their HD and good stats/feats/abilities. Nobody is going to lose their shit if undead get charisma to hit points or whatever. If a 7 HD monster is always supposed to be a challenge for a 7th level character, the world will rejoice.

2. Monsters as characters. People sometimes want to play as the troll under the bridge or the sexy succubus seductress, the rules for that need to actually work. It's been mentioned a few times that you could tie monster powers to the magic item system instead of levels to allow people not to get hosed when playing monstrous races, let's go with that for now.

3. "You must have X ability to fight this monster." I'm talking about magic to hit incorporeal, flying or bows to fight harpies, that sort of thing. Monsters who have a defense that PCs might not have access to are completely fine- but there needs to actually be a realistic CR progression such that PCs can have access to shit needed to fight those monsters at the level they're expected to. There can't be shadows at CR 2 if you don't have magic weapons at level 2.

4. The [Awesome] tag. It's unnecessary and designed to kill players, get rid of it.

5. Many monsters are just beatsticks. Give them something cool, and for mercy's sake give them all a decent ranged weapon. Flying should not solve half of all monsters.

6. Skills. Tied to the HD problem, some monsters have way too many skills (too many HD) and many have way too little (terrible HD progressions & no int). Set monster skills more like PC skills, and if they have good HD progressions and the same HD as the PCs they are fighting it should work.
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Post by Chamomile »

spongeknight wrote:1. Hit die should correspond to level. What's the fucking point of making construct HD so shitty and then just giving constructs three times as many HD to compensate? If you want monster attack bonuses, AC, saves and HP to be appropriate to their challenge rating, give them good progressions on their HD and good stats/feats/abilities. Nobody is going to lose their shit if undead get charisma to hit points or whatever. If a 7 HD monster is always supposed to be a challenge for a 7th level character, the world will rejoice.
There is absolutely no reason to make monsters' type be their class. Almost all monster types have some monsters covering basically every combination of HD, BAB, and save progression in the system. Ditch types as classes entirely.
5. Many monsters are just beatsticks. Give them something cool, and for mercy's sake give them all a decent ranged weapon. Flying should not solve half of all monsters.
Beatsticks serve a vital function in combat encounter design: You can add an essentially unlimited number of beatsticks to an encounter as backup dancers to something more important, and no matter how many of them there are they won't increase the complexity at all. The GM isn't being asked to keep track of which of the fifteen fire giants he's added to the mess have used their rage or their heat aura or whatever, he just needs to track their HP. The only limit to the number of beatsticks you can add to support other, more interesting monsters is the patience of players while the GM takes their turns, and you can get a whole lot of monster turns out of the way in a hurry when all they're doing is rolling attacks.
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Post by mlangsdorf »

spongeknight wrote: 1. Hit die should correspond to level. What's the fucking point of making construct HD so shitty and then just giving constructs three times as many HD to compensate? If you want monster attack bonuses, AC, saves and HP to be appropriate to their challenge rating, give them good progressions on their HD and good stats/feats/abilities. Nobody is going to lose their shit if undead get charisma to hit points or whatever. If a 7 HD monster is always supposed to be a challenge for a 7th level character, the world will rejoice.
Constructs and Undead having Con 0 and Immunity to Fortitude saves was a terrible design decision that needs to be thrown out. They already have immunity to most biological effects. Giving them proper Constitution and Fortitude saves lets you distinguish between a fragile machine, held together with duct tape and baling wire, and a robust machine with lots of backup mechanism.

As a side effect, it makes Construct and Undead HP somewhat proportional to their HD.
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Post by tussock »

spongeknight wrote:So, onto flaws of monster design!

1. Hit die should correspond to level. ... If a 7 HD monster is always supposed to be a challenge for a 7th level character, the world will rejoice.
Yes, though beware that's got it's own set of problems. There is a thing called the 4th edition monster manual on a business card, because you can fit the whole thing on a business card. Don't do that.

I'm not really in favour of magic item slot monsters, because it implies every monster's powers need to increase with level in a predictable way, and that's probably going to end up a bunch of flavourless shit.
3. ... There can't be shadows at CR 2 if you don't have magic weapons at level 2.
Did you know, at level 2, there's only one shadow, and you can walk in the other direction. At level 6 there's four shadows, but you will have magic weapons. If a level 6 fight is supposed to be a possible TPK at level 2, then some CR 2 monsters should be at least somewhat immune to the things that level 2 characters can do.

Yes, dragons should have +1 CR, so should a few other things. In fact, if you're designing from scratch, and you're going from 1-20 at an even pace, you really really want to spread them out a whole lot, from CR 1/4 to CR 16 at least needs a fairly steady set of options, instead of almost everything being CR 4-7.
5. Many monsters are just beatsticks. Give them something cool, and for mercy's sake give them all a decent ranged weapon. Flying should not solve half of all monsters.
Dungeons and Dragons. There's a reason most of the monsters don't go outside, and most of the monsters that do can fly or use missile weapons. The amount of XP you get for strafing wolves should obviously be nothing, unless there's a Druid nearby to windstorm you out of the sky or whatever.

Skills and Feats, yes, those can work for the monsters like they do for the players, where that is desirable, but mostly if they don't have class levels too then that shit is just getting in the way of the game. More monsters should have a few class levels mind you.
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Post by Emerald »

Kaelik wrote:I admit I stopped reading after like the third or fourth one, but is there literally anything Tussock said that is actually good in that list? Or is this Peak Tussock?
He mentioned the common "you shouldn't be making iterative attacks at -10 or -15" and "polymorph effects shouldn't let you mix-and-match your abilities with monster abilities" suggestions, which seem reasonable.
spongeknight wrote:It's been mentioned a few times that you could tie monster powers to the magic item system instead of levels to allow people not to get hosed when playing monstrous races, let's go with that for now.
I see this suggested in lots of places, but has anyone ever actually sat down and hashed out how it would work beyond the vague "gaze attacks take up eye slots and breath weapons take up throat slots and something something level appropriate monster abilities" setup?
mlangsdorf wrote:Constructs and Undead having Con 0 and Immunity to Fortitude saves was a terrible design decision that needs to be thrown out. They already have immunity to most biological effects. Giving them proper Constitution and Fortitude saves lets you distinguish between a fragile machine, held together with duct tape and baling wire, and a robust machine with lots of backup mechanism.
Agreed. Con is already basically a measure of how strong the positive energy flowing through your body is because D&D biology breaks physics, so there's no reason it can't measure the strength of an undead creature's negative energy or a construct's elemental animating force.

Also, Int as a nonability should go too. Trying to fit everything from a particularly dim cow to a particularly clever elephant and beyond into either Int 1 or Int 2 makes no sense, particularly when certain animals like ravens, dolphins, and octopodes have exhibited near-humanlike intelligence, and giving animals next to no skill points because of the -4 or -5 Int mod and then throwing around lots of racial bonuses is pointless. Just slap an (Animal) subtype on that modifies monster behavior and ability targeting like the (Mindless) subtype does, spread out the Int scores a bunch, and call it a day.
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Post by Lokathor »

spongeknight wrote:
tussock wrote:By "fixing 3e", I assume you mean "using the 3e monster manual with new rules for PCs". To avoid re-writing the entire monster manual, because that is BIG JOBS.
No no, the Monster Manual is getting a complete rewrite.
Dag.

What's even the point then? Like, if you're going to have an RPG that presents to the players as a better made game but still lets me use the Monster Manual and other pre-made adventures with a little fudging in my head, that's cool. If I have to go get a whole new monster manual and all new pre-made adventures, what's even the point of saying we're "based on" 3e any more?

But here's my suggestion: At the end of every game session, regardless of levels and in addition to possible level up skill points, everyone gets 2 skill points. Bam, I fixed skills. Go me.
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Post by FatR »

You want breakpoints? Here are some of those I've strived to fix in my own DnD fork (which will probably be updated with a lot of new material next month).

(1)3.X got stuck in the weird place where it wanted to be a square-based skirmish wargame, but without going all the way and rejecting the ability to tell standard fantasy stories in favor of being the best wargame it could be. We only play(ed) it because at least most of the rules were written competently. Or at least they weren't a total dumpster fire, and you could massage them into something reasonable. But as the result of its shift towards wargame, its combat became overtly fiddly and restrictive. Counting 5ft. squares was obvious bullshit at high levels, where you fought flying dragons and whatever.

(2)Skills. They probably were never intended to matter much if at all beyond very low levels, but they were extraordinary fiddly and time-consuming to calculate. There was also a problem that at low levels where skills were still relevant most characters did not have enough to make a well-rounded adventurer capable of not falling flat on relatively basic task. Also, a few subsustems like Diplomacy or Stealth just did not work and hardly anyone used them as written.

(3)Classes with real abilities and classes with no real, meaningful abilities, beyond hitting stuff, in the same system. Depending on whether you want down-to-earth or high-powered system, whatever fork you plan should either operate on the secret knowledge model, where access to magic is just a matter of learning cheat codes of the universe and everyone can do rituals or draw runes, if not equally well; or go the full anime fighan magic route, where becoming good enough at swording allows you to run on air and rearrange landscape with your attacks. But what DnD has chosen since the time classes and races became different things was the worst of both worlds, and it never created balanced parties, neither in play, nor in DnD-inspired (or directly set in DnD) fiction.

(4)Different worth of HD, which partially ties to #3, but was most noticeable in monsters. For myself I've decided that CR=HD, except for edge cases like weak animals and 1st-level NPC soldiers. Also tendency to give shit ton of HDs just for being bigger than humans, which both made bears and elephants far too strong for nonheroic people to handle, and provided said bears and elephants with eyebrow-raisingly large amounts of skill points and feats.

(5)Speaking of feats, I'm inclined to think that the whole model was a misfire, and feats for monsters in particular were a big error (making their charlists unnecessarily difficult to read). Feats could not efficiently serve as a substitute for real powers for those classes who lacked them, because powered classes got feats as well. Feats were dispensed too often, particularly for certain classes, which pressed designers into writing shit tons of feats. And to make this work easier, they've started placing too much of basic shit, like power attacking or most of combat maneuvers, beyond feat gates, when without an appropriate feat, or even a whole chain, it was either impossible or foolish to ever attempt them. Also because there was a shit ton of feats, there was very little balance between them, and a number of powerful synergies, and unlike with spells, you could not easily got rid of a feat that proved itself shitty, so feats were among the main contributors to planning your character from level 1 to 20 at the start.

(6)Excess of buffs, to the point when at high levels you could easily have a dozen and make your charsheet look entirely different with them.

(7)No way to run a combat against a large number of opponents gracefully. Rules on mass combat units as solitary monsters were too blatantly written to disfavor PCs. I don't remember if proper rules on using ships and other vehicles in combat even existed in 3.5. In PF they do, but unsuprisingly suck dicks.

(8)Most monsters were written on the assumption that they'd fight groundbound PCs in melee. A lot of those who weren't had a hidden [Awesome] subtype like dragons, and/or were full casters in monster skin.

(9)Just generally too fucking much options at high levels, at least if you play a class with real abiliies. This very noticeably slows down the game, and more so if players are intelligent and like to be prepared.

(10)Iterative attacks at -15 bullshit.

(11)Special unarmed strike rules that produced all sorts of weirdness.
Last edited by FatR on Thu Jul 06, 2017 10:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by hogarth »

I like FatR's list, although the last couple of items I don't really care about one way or the other.
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Post by Chamomile »

Emerald wrote:
I see this suggested in lots of places, but has anyone ever actually sat down and hashed out how it would work beyond the vague "gaze attacks take up eye slots and breath weapons take up throat slots and something something level appropriate monster abilities" setup?
You get one magic item per level, up to a maximum of eight. These can be whatever magic items you want. If you want to wear a stack of eight magic hats, you can, and it's not any different from having two rings, an amulet, a sword, a shield, some magic chain mail, some boots, and then just the one hat.

Special monster abilities take up magic item slots. Usually they take up the bottom slots, so for example if an ogre automatically has an enhancement bonus to Strength as though he were wearing a belt of Ogre Strength, that goes in his first, level one slot. His inherent magic mojo is used up powering his automatic abilities, so he can't use it to power a magic item the way a similarly experienced hero with a less magically taxing anatomy could. Some monsters have multiple powers, so a troll has the strength thing but then also regeneration that occupies his second slot, which means all trolls must be a minimum of level 2, whether they have two monster hit dice or they're PCs with two levels in their actual class.

Some monsters have powers that are drastically overpowered at level 1, but they don't have a suite of other magical powers that can fill in lower level slots, so you can just say that a medusa's Stone to Flesh gaze occupies her seventh slot. This makes the medusa a minimum of seventh level, but then her first six magic item slots can still be used to power regular old magic items.

This also automatically gives you some cool rules for magical transformations. If werewolves have two magic powers, then getting bitten by one at level one means your ability to channel the magic power running through you in insufficient and you die, but if you're second level or higher, then two of your magic items are consumed and you're good. Maybe some of the magic items you're wearing stop working because you no longer have the mojo to power them. Vampires might turn you into either a spawn, with a handful of minor powers wrapped up in a one-level slot, or a full-on proper vampire if you have four levels of magic item slots to spare. This also means that something like an ogre or a troll needs to be a higher level in absolute terms in order to handle the powers granted by both their own natural abilities - which they cannot simply cease powering the way they can a magic item - as well as the vampire powers. It also means that creatures with enough inherent magic powers are unable to become a werewolf or a full-on vampire or maybe even a vampire spawn, because they hit the eight power limit before they can contain all the new powers shoveled onto them by the transformation.

This system can also work for powers that are too strong for a single magic item to be worth the cost. Maybe the medusa's eye beams need to take up two or three slots. You can either just have the power take up multiple slots, or you can have the powers only be available as part of a package set with other powers that take up slots but are just a bunch of lame cantrips that you don't actually care about. This second one works particularly well for things like demons and devils and so forth, who have a couple of resistances and immunities that track very well to magic items, usually one or two signature powers that are clearly too powerful for a single magic item, and then also some random flavor powers that you don't really care about. So long as there's no way to ditch the flavor powers, nor any way to get the flavor powers without getting the super powers as a package deal, this is basically the same as a power that takes up multiple slots except that you also get some flavor stuff no one cares about. This method has the advantage of making the overall package seem more impressive because each slot is giving you something specific, but it has the disadvantage that GMs can't mix and match existing monsters to make their own as easily, whereas if super powers just took up multiple slots they could grab the medusa's gaze, attach it to some demon resistances, and have a demon with stone-to-flesh.
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Post by Wiseman »

Emerald wrote:
spongeknight wrote:It's been mentioned a few times that you could tie monster powers to the magic item system instead of levels to allow people not to get hosed when playing monstrous races, let's go with that for now.
I see this suggested in lots of places, but has anyone ever actually sat down and hashed out how it would work beyond the vague "gaze attacks take up eye slots and breath weapons take up throat slots and something something level appropriate monster abilities" setup?
You really shouldn't need to. If monsters have racial HD then those monster powers are essentially their class features, and should be treated as such.
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Post by Voss »

Lokathor wrote: But here's my suggestion: At the end of every game session, regardless of levels and in addition to possible level up skill points, everyone gets 2 skill points. Bam, I fixed skills. Go me.
So... apart from not at all fixing any of the actual problems with skills, a party arbitrarily gets more skills the more INeffective they are at going through an adventure?

A hyper-competent party that cuts through the bosses with laser-like focus and finishes the adventure in three sessions gets 6 skill points each, but a party of bunglers that half-asses around and takes ten sessions gets 20 skill points each.

And that's before you get to deliberately metagaming sessions to be two hours rather than six, assuming people even _want_ more skill points thrown onto the pile of shit that doesn't work.
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Post by hyzmarca »

nockermensch wrote:Skills:
Knowledges are divided in a strange way. What the hell is "Knowledge: Local"?
It's Schrodinger's knowledge skill that tells you everything you want to know about the area that you're standing in, but only while you are standing in it.

You want to know what the best restaurants in the city are? That's Knowledge:Local.
You want to know which Inns have been recently deloused, that's Knowledge:Local.
You want to know where the enterance to the Thief-King's secret base is, that's knowledge:Local.
You want to know which harlots have Syphilis and which ones don't, that's Knowledge:Local.

It's probably better handled by actual magic, since it's basically a better form of Commune for getting answers about the local area, including things that your character has no legitimate way of knowing.

Which is one of the reasons that knowledge skills in general are bad. They're either way too narrow or way too broad.
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Post by obexpe »

Knowledge "Cultural" is a far better name for Knowledge "Local". A well-cultured character would be aware of the landmarks, restaurants and dynamics of most major cities and some smaller towns. "Local" doesn't tell you any of that, except when it logically applies to your specific locale.

The execution and purpose of the knowledge is sound, it just suffers from a terrible name, like nearly every aspect of D&D does. While not specific to 3.5, a terminology rewrite would be one of the biggest things on my list for a 3.5 improvement--"caster level" should have a different name so that it is properly separated from spellcaster level, the actual levels you have in a caster class. This isn't even getting into terms that are just stupid on the face of it like 'hitdie' or 'armor class'. Well, I would be ok with keeping AC just because people expect it.[/i]
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Post by Harshax »

I think characters should automatically have Knowledge at Level + 3 in Local, History, Geography about their home region or town. Druids, Rangers, Priests and Wizards should automatically have Nature, Religion and Arcana as appropriate.

Murderhobos don't waste skill points on knowledge skills. Trying to play something else penalizes characters that then have to invest in these skills. Better to just dole them out freely as a way to disseminate world information and adventure hooks from an in-character point of view.
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Post by Lokathor »

Voss wrote:So... apart from not at all fixing any of the actual problems with skills, a party arbitrarily gets more skills the more INeffective they are at going through an adventure?

A hyper-competent party that cuts through the bosses with laser-like focus and finishes the adventure in three sessions gets 6 skill points each, but a party of bunglers that half-asses around and takes ten sessions gets 20 skill points each.
If you beat an adventure in 3 weeks instead of 6 do you just stop playing the game and do nothing on week 4? That's not what we do. We just play other adventures. In fact usually the group wanders the countryside doing random crap like some sort of wandering adventuring group that just interacts with exciting situations that come up. Could be just me, but I don't think it's just me.
And that's before you get to deliberately metagaming sessions to be two hours rather than six, assuming people even _want_ more skill points thrown onto the pile of shit that doesn't work.
1) People want more skill points. Maybe you don't. Maybe particular others don't. But, people in general want more skill points the instant you offer them out.

2) Are you suggesting that players will metagame the system by meeting up to play for 2 hours and then... quit early? So that they can get the most skill points per hour? Do your players care more about average skill points gained per hour than they do about the idea of playing the game itself at all? What? What?
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Post by Kaelik »

Lokathor wrote:If you beat an adventure in 3 weeks instead of 6 do you just stop playing the game and do nothing on week 4? That's not what we do. We just play other adventures. In fact usually the group wanders the countryside doing random crap like some sort of wandering adventuring group that just interacts with exciting situations that come up. Could be just me, but I don't think it's just me.
if you beat the adventur faster, then you level up faster, and if you do some other adventuring, you level up even more faster.

If the same character has two versions, A and B, and A did a really bad job at the adventure, and did the dumb slow grind, and B accomplished the adventure quickly, and bypassed pointless things and/or handled problems quickly, it seems weird that A would have way more skill points at the same level.
Lokathor wrote:2) Are you suggesting that players will metagame the system by meeting up to play for 2 hours and then... quit early? So that they can get the most skill points per hour? Do your players care more about average skill points gained per hour than they do about the idea of playing the game itself at all? What? What?
Still should avoid incentivizing it if you can, even if you think it will be overridden.
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Post by Voss »

Lokathor wrote:
Voss wrote:So... apart from not at all fixing any of the actual problems with skills, a party arbitrarily gets more skills the more INeffective they are at going through an adventure?

A hyper-competent party that cuts through the bosses with laser-like focus and finishes the adventure in three sessions gets 6 skill points each, but a party of bunglers that half-asses around and takes ten sessions gets 20 skill points each.
If you beat an adventure in 3 weeks instead of 6 do you just stop playing the game and do nothing on week 4? That's not what we do. We just play other adventures. In fact usually the group wanders the countryside doing random crap like some sort of wandering adventuring group that just interacts with exciting situations that come up. Could be just me, but I don't think it's just me.
I'm not sure why you think this is a relevant or coherent argument. When people run adventures incompetently they take hours dicking around, coming up with bad plans, arguing and not accomplishing very much. Now they get a bonus at the end of the night?

If you proposed giving out bonus skill points for actually achieving things, I could understand (some) of your indignation. But your idea rewards checking out on the phone or the xbox as much or more than actually playing.

And it still doesn't solve (or attempt to solve) any of the problems with skills.

And that's before you get to deliberately metagaming sessions to be two hours rather than six, assuming people even _want_ more skill points thrown onto the pile of shit that doesn't work.
1) People want more skill points. Maybe you don't. Maybe particular others don't. But, people in general want more skill points the instant you offer them out.
Great... and do what with them? They've still got level based caps and cross-class bullshit and are just going to be stuck throwing them into skills they don't use very often and don't have level appropriate bonuses even if they did and IF the skills were effective at their job anyway. Which you don't address at all.
2) Are you suggesting that players will metagame the system by meeting up to play for 2 hours and then... quit early? So that they can get the most skill points per hour? Do your players care more about average skill points gained per hour than they do about the idea of playing the game itself at all? What? What?
You just said they were super desirable and people want more skill points. People do in fact try to get more of things they want. You can't claim skill points are instantly desirable but simultaneously claim no one would actually try to exploit the system to get them.
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Post by Eikre »

obexpe wrote:The execution and purpose of the knowledge is sound, it just suffers from a terrible name, like nearly every aspect of D&D does. While not specific to 3.5, a terminology rewrite would be one of the biggest things on my list for a 3.5 improvement--"caster level" should have a different name so that it is properly separated from spellcaster level, the actual levels you have in a caster class.
First you gotta justify to me why base CL shouldn't just be equal to character level.
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Post by obexpe »

Eikre wrote:
obexpe wrote:The execution and purpose of the knowledge is sound, it just suffers from a terrible name, like nearly every aspect of D&D does. While not specific to 3.5, a terminology rewrite would be one of the biggest things on my list for a 3.5 improvement--"caster level" should have a different name so that it is properly separated from spellcaster level, the actual levels you have in a caster class.
First you gotta justify to me why base CL shouldn't just be equal to character level.
For the base classes, I think they should, but in case some bizarre prestige class has mechanics which require a nerf to caster level, the term should be changed.
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