3.5 Lacks Discipline!

[The_Hanged_Man]

Not whips and chains, but just some constraints.

Playing CoH last night, it occurred to me that one of the problems w/ 3.5 is that there are no external restraints on how the game is designed. There's nothing telling the designers "this shouldn't be done" except for their own judgment, which in general isn't bad but certainly can overlook things. In CoH, OTOH, the devs can try to make any kewl old thing they want, but in the end they have to deal w/ how that idea will work when 100,000 people are trying to do it at the same time, on computers w/ limited memory and capacity.

Where I've really seen this play out is the difference between Shapechange mechanics on CoH and in D&D. In D&D, it's literally openended. The limits are only what you can imagine yourself turning into. This leads to all sorts of problems w/ stat-buffing, weird power combos, arcane rules, and junk like that. In CoH, you get 2 forms - a "blaster" form that shoots, and a "tank" form that fights. These forms have limited abilities that are kewl, but hardly gamebreaking.

Why the difference? The CoH dev's are pretty shrewd. But more importantly, CoH hasd to deal w/ how shapechanging would play out. If you had the choice of any of 1,000 different forms, it'd tie up processors just looking at choices, it'd take forever to do w/o lots of binds and macros, and would add to the graphics load quite a bit.

Similar things w/ buffs. Instead of a hundred different ways to buff things up (just from the Cleric spell list), CoH only has a few that you can customize to a limited extent. On top of that, ~13 classes all use exactly the same buff (Buildup), w/ different names and graphics but the same effect. Much easier to balance 1 buff than 13.

Obviously, it wouldn't solve all problems, but wouldn't it help if D&D had some discipline. Some external guidelines that every rule had to meet. So my question.

What should those guidelines be?

[User3]

Honestly, this is a problem that D&D suffers from on every level. There are no dev guidelines, there is no negative space. There are no rules for what isn't in the game, and therefore there are no rules for what is in the game.

Consider the lack of Resurrection in games like Shadowrun or Exalted. That's not an oversight, that's a deliberate choice. Raise Dead does not exist, and that means that permanent, tear your character sheet up Death effects do. In D&D there is Raise Dead. But then there's nothing stopping you from making an effect that makes people unraisable (Finger of Death), and there's nothing that stops you from making an effect that raises you anyway (True Res), and there's nothing to stop you from making an effect that keeps you from being raised even with that (Barghest). And so on and so on forever.

In short, because there is no cap saying "ÿou can't do this, fvcker", there's no meaning in the statement

Änd this this kills you really dead.

D&D is defined exclusively by positive space. Positive space is meaningless without negative space to go with it. It's like people trying to get twice as much information on your computer by removing all those zeroes.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Well, I don't have that big of a problem with a set up of all positive space. It's ok to say "There are no absolutes", which is basically what an all positive space system does. Basically any ability is supposed to be able to be beaten by someone of a higher level. So that you can have a death spell that prevents resurrection, but someone bigger and badder than you can nullify it, and someone bigger and badder than him can prevent his resurrection and so on.

Now, the problem is that D&D doesn't even follow that pattern, because they're so determined to add in absolutes. Immunities need to be used extremely sparingly in a system like that. Everything needs to be numeric. And that numeric needs to be tied to level.

The problem with D&D is that they've got no standard for determining the power level of abilities. One guy can hand out a static fire resistance 20 at level 5 another guy can hand out fire immunity at level 3 and another guy can hand out fire resistance equal to your level at level 10. And nothing stops any of these clowns from doing that.

[Username17]

Actually, the statement "there are no absolutes" means less than nothing. It's like the statement "all generalizations are false".

Firstly, because there are "no absolutes", you could jolly well trade a bunch of sundry general points for complete immunity to something. And secondly, because there are "no absolutes", your immunity dosn't actually mean anything because some other asshole could end up with a move that hurts people "even if they have immunity".

Let's face it, Cold Immunity is an absolute, and Cold Immunity Penetration is an absolute, and it's all crap.

---

If you actually wanted to have a system in which a higher level guy could always kick you in the nuts, that would be fine. But it still requires that there be some negative space put in. You have to make sure that noone has anything that is listed as "infinity" - because if they do then some other guy is going to need and get "infinity plus one". And that's where the stupid comes in.

You can't have Cold Immunity at first level - or any level. Creatures can jolly well have cold resistance that is so high that nothing of their level can hurt them with cold - but that's not the same thing. And let's face it, it's what they end up having anyway with the stupid anything goes setup we have now.

-Username17

[User3]

<i>Actually, the statement "there are no absolutes" means less than nothing. </i>

I think you're overstating the case here, but we're all in general agreement otherwise.

What's really happening is that things get written as absolutes, then later abilities get written that say, "that's no longer the absolute -- <i>this</i> is now," which is just a generally poor way of doing things.

The other DM in my group tends to use lots of opposed caster level checks for things like these, which works well on the whole.

Personally, I hate the idea of outright immunities. I don't allow them, so I replace them with very high resistances. For example, a fire elemental -- a being made of flame -- has fire resistance of 100 to 150, meaning there's not much non-epic stuff out there that can affect them with fire.

But let me tell you, the look on the players faces when you tell them, "It looks like something burned the fire elemental to death," is nothing short of priceless.

[RandomCasualty]

1109390857[/unixtime]]
You can't have Cold Immunity at first level - or any level. Creatures can jolly well have cold resistance that is so high that nothing of their level can hurt them with cold - but that's not the same thing. And let's face it, it's what they end up having anyway with the stupid anything goes setup we have now.

oh sure, I agree. But it doesn't have to merely be cold resistance versus cold damage.

You can throw on another level of cold immunity versus cold penetration. ANd if ever your cold immunity level is greater than their cold penetration then no damage is dealt at all.

Now this may seem somewhat counterproductive and stupid, but primarily it's there to try to keep the numbers somewhat smaller and more manageable. Because big 3 digit numbers are a problem in an RPG, and we'd like to avoid them if we can. I've found most people can handle 2 digit math, but giving them three digits to handle tends to screw them up.

Whenever possible it's best to maintain one level, but with damage, since the numbers get so high in conventional D&D, I think it might be necessary to have another level of numbers. Solely so people don't have to worry about taking 273 cold damage then subtracting thier 125 points of cold resistance.

[Josh_Kablack]

1109432924[/unixtime]]
You can throw on another level of cold immunity versus cold penetration. ANd if ever your cold immunity level is greater than their cold penetration then no damage is dealt at all.

This sounds loosely like what happens in HERO/Champions with multi-Penetrating vs multi-Hardened defenses.

In Champs, nobody is ever totally immune to any damage type damage, but it's almost trivally easy for them to be nigh-invulnerable vs one type of damage - they just max out their defenses and then buy a 75% damage reduction against the damage type they want to be immune to. (In a 60 active point campaign, this reduces the standard big attack 12d6 EB to dealing only 4 points of Stun)

However, in Champs, you can also buy Penetrating Attacks, which do less damage, but guarantee some of it gets through. (An 8d6 Penetrating EB costs the same as the 12d6 EB and on average deals 8 points of Stun to even the dude with the 30DEF and 75% DR)

However, in Champs, you can also buy the advantage Hardened on your defenses, which means that you ignore the Penetrating damage dealt by penetrating attacks.

However, in Champs, you may also apply Penetrating to your attack more than once, in order to negate the effects of hardened defenses.

However, in Champs, you may also apply Hardened to your defenses more than once, in order to negate the effects of multi-penetrating attacks

Why this largely works within Champions is because both Attack and Defense powers are subject to an Active Point Limit, and each application of an advantage is a small multiplier to the cost of the power. Thus each application of Penetrating or Hardened lowers your normal values for damage or defense, and doing multipls of either eventually makes you so specialized as to be nearly worthless.

[User3]

Champions sounds just complicated enough for me to not play it.

The easiest way to do this is to just have every rule have a number next to it. Thats the level of effect that you need to affect that rule. If two rules conflict, then the one with the highest number prevails.

So, in the example of Death effects vs Raise vs Resuresection vs Wish vs Bargest, we have:

Plain, vanila Death mechanic(4)
Raise(5)
Death effect(6)
Resurrection(7)
Barghest-style Death(8)
Wish(9)

This way, we know which rules trump which other rules. Regular death can be trumped by a Raise, but a Death effect death cannot. Barghest-style death's can't be affected by Resurrection or Raise, but can be affected by a Wish.

Some rules will have a 10 next to them and that means that no effect in the game should change that rule, either because it would break the game or its unnecessarily complicated to mess with the rule.

It also neatly removes a bunch of unnecessary math from the game if you apply it to Resistances. Teiflings get Fire Resistance 1, which totally makes them immune to Burning Hands(1), normal torches(1), hot weather(1), but not bonfires(3), falling into fireplaces(2), Scorching Rays(2), etc.

Sure, we lose weird cases like Tieflings being hit by Scorching Rays and taking only 2/3s the damage, but being hit by Fireballs and taking as much as 6/7s the damage(or 2/3s on a Save) and being immune to a caster level 1 Burning Hands but only reducing by about half a 5th level caster's Burning Hands. I'm willing to lose that pointless complexity.

Some creatures should just get flat out immunities. Fire subtype creatures should just get Fire Resistance 10, meaning that no fire effect should ever damage them. I mean, how does something made out of Fire get burned by Fire? Cold Vulnerability can also have a number attached to it, meaning that only a very powerful Cold Immunity effect is capable of suppressing their vulnerability.

You can even mix these rules to find out what happens in fringe cases. Lets say that you have an Encase Dudes in Blocks of Ice spell. The encasing part is a Movement 3 rule and the ice damage part is Ice Damage 2. So if a Frost Giant Sorcerer gets hit by this spell, he is immune to the Cold damage part(he has Cold Resistance 10), but he is encased(since the Movement 3 part of the spell trumps his normal walk/run movement that is a Movement 1 rule). He couldn't cast a Fly spell, since thats [/B]Movement 3[/B] and won't trump the encasing effect, but he could cast Dimension Door(Movement 4) to escape it.

You'd have to rearrange some of the levels of spells, and assign a bunch of numbers to effects, but its only about an afternoon of work.

[Oberoni]

...I like it. I think your idea has potential.

However, I'd replace "Ability 10" with "Ability &#8734;" or "Ability *" or something, just so people can continue to play their crazy epic-level games without worry.

[Sma]

Fuck crazy epic level games.

Level 15 has morme than enough epic (as in world changing) powers. More than everyone ever will need.

Having an actual bar that say "if you´re this big, you´re the biggest" is actually good for the game. That way we don´t get level 21 gate guards and avoid arguments as to where being green enough to walk through armies starts.

I´m actually not interested in an open ended, you can rach any level you want game, where, du to limited gaming time you get to play only through the first n levels anyway.

[RandomCasualty]

1109444300[/unixtime]]
The easiest way to do this is to just have every rule have a number next to it. Thats the level of effect that you need to affect that rule. If two rules conflict, then the one with the highest number prevails.

Yeah, this is pretty much what I've been saying the entire time. Place a number next to everything and the bigger number trumps a smaller one.

However, I'd replace "Ability 10" with "Ability &#8734;" or "Ability *" or something, just so people can continue to play their crazy epic-level games without worry.

Actually no, this is kinda the thing that screws up epic games. Infinity actually makes epic games not work, because it sets an absolute power ceiling. Once someone has absolute immunity to mind-affecting for instance, your enchanter is useless even if he is 10 levels higher. Having stuff like that ends up destroying the potential for epic.

If we want to keep things low level, then absolutes can exist. If we want to be able to run from low level to poentially godhood and beyond, then there can't be absolutes except in the rarest of cases which spawns from type alone. It's ok for a fire elemental to have total immunty to fire, but red dragons and people under protection spells should be able to get burned.

[Oberoni]

Wait, one of you dislikes the "Ability &#8734;" wording because you feel it removes the "top level," and the other one dislikes the "Ability &#8734;" wording because you feel it creates a top level?

The fug?

[User3]

1109452832[/unixtime]]
However, I'd replace "Ability 10" with "Ability &#8734;" or "Ability *" or something, just so people can continue to play their crazy epic-level games without worry.

I honestly think a number is fine. If people want to have a crazy powerful epic level guy who's so powerful he can burn fire elementals to death -- that kind of thing is fine in an "epic" game. Yes, it sounds somewhat screwy and contradictory, but no more so than shooting the sun out of the sky with an arrow or any of a whole bunch of other things you see in certain myths and legends. Fairy tales often don't adhere precisely to rigorous logic when it comes to the way the world works -- in fact, I'd go so far as to say that's pretty much their defining characteristic.

--d.

[Username17]

Sma seems to want a numeric cap on how big things can get, that having Ability 10 should be as far as it goes. RC wants the numbers to keep going for as long as you feel like playing.

Neither wants an �‡ number, for reasons that should be obvious. Let's face it, having an �‡ is a shitty idea, and just puts us back to where we started. Your going to end up giving some creature total mindlessness so it has "Immunity to Mind Affecting Shit: �‡", and then you're going to end up having a Golem Singer somewhere who charms mindless crap, which is a completely reasonable thing to have, actually. But what does that end up looking like? "Penetrate Immunity to Mind Affecting Shit: �‡+1" Fvck that. Fvck that hard.

If there's some fire elemental, it's made out of fricking fire. But there are still going to be things that damage it. Things that damage it by burning it. Flame Strike, for instance. You can get rid of that whole stupid thing about how it does "divine damage" - you just give it a Fire Penetration Value higher than most things that are made out of fire.

The Frost Giants of the world wander around naked on glaciers. They use the breath of Winter Wolves to clean their hair. And you know what? If the Sons of Niefel come back and hit them with the Sword that is Not, they're still going to freeze solid. That's the way things are supposed to work.

The Shape of Fire and the Sword that is Not have very big penetration numbers. And there are things that can use them without being burned/frozen solid. They have even bigger protection numbers. And so on.

And that's fine. These numbers can go on forever. And they can stop whenever your game does. There doesn't need to be numbers as high as the Shape of Fire (Fire Penetration: 11) if you don't go on to game at high enough levels that you need to care. Essentially, the game can (and probably should) be divided into a set of three or more "power levels" - Human, Super Human, and Epic.

At Human levels of power (say, levels 1-10 or so), penetration levels just don't go above 6. If something is made out of Fire, you can't burn it. At all. And people can object to you doing things by saying that it's absurd. At Superhuman levels of power (say, levels 11-20), pretty much anything goes. Penetration levels are all over the map, and people have to go on quests to get special high penetration effects to deal with powerful creatures with high Protection levels. And you get to look at people like they're stupid if they say that something you are doing isn't vaguely possible. At Epic levels (say 21-30), Protection and Penetration values get all regimented again. Only this time, Penetration wins. You set fire to things made out of Fire, you charm rocks and trees with your voice - and you make fun of people who bother to do things that humans are actually capable of.

And if you want to play in one of those dynamics, you play in that power level and fvcking deal with it.

-Username17

[User3]

1109491307[/unixtime]]
And that's fine. These numbers can go on forever. And they can stop whenever your game does. There doesn't need to be numbers as high as the Shape of Fire (Fire Penetration: 11) if you don't go on to game at high enough levels that you need to care. Essentially, the game can (and probably should) be divided into a set of three or more "power levels" - Human, Super Human, and Epic.

If it weren't for the fact that it's "traditional" within D&D, I'd even go a little further and make these three separate games that happen to all share the D20 mechanics. Because, let's face it, as soon as we start having 1-10/11-20/21-30 divisions, some jackass is going to insist that players start at level 1 and work their way up to level 21 so they can start playing what they actually want to do, because starting at levels higher than 1 is "powergaming".

That's completely retarded, but having the levels of the appear to stack -- even when the difference between 10 and 11 is substantially higher than the difference between 9 and 10 -- creates an opportunity for people to do retarded things. The hell with that -- just have there be three "level 1s". If you reach 10th level in a "heroic" game and want to cross over to "superheroic", you don't advance to 11th level -- it's more like becoming an Immortal in D&D BECMI, where you rewrite your character for a whole new game system rather than just making his numbers a little bigger.

--d.

[RandomCasualty]

I can definitely agree with dividing the game into three separate tiers of power. And 10 levels is really pretty good for whatever tier you wanted to play on.

1-10 should be like Lord of the Rings and Conan. Where 9 and 10 represent characters like Legolas and Conan. Badasses in their own right but still human.

11-20 should be sort of what 5-20 D&D is now ,where you've got common flight, invisibility and so on.

21-30 should have all sorts of weird epic stuff happening.

As for the fire elemental though, I'd really prefer if they were just totally immune to fire. I've always been in favor of having fire heal fire elementals, in the same way healing spells heal humans. I think all creatures should have some base element that actually heals them. For most living things this is positive energy, for undead its negative energy, for certain elementals, it should be that elemental type. But really that's just my personal preference when it comes to burning fire elementals.

[User3]

If there's some fire elemental, it's made out of fricking fire. But there are still going to be things that damage it. Things that damage it by burning it. Flame Strike, for instance. You can get rid of that whole stupid thing about how it does "divine damage" - you just give it a Fire Penetration Value higher than most things that are made out of fire.

Nah, thats kind of dumb. Fire should never burn Fire Elementals. Untyped or "story-typed" damage still needs its own mechanic if the overall system is to remain expandable and fluid. Untyped damage has to be priced differently than any of the common types of damage because of its greater utility. Untyped damage still needs its own tag through, so that you can have the adventure where your Eclipse Blast[darkness] is useless against the Lords of Perpetual Shadow. Since that kind of stuff tends to be a one shot adventure that may or may not happen in your campaign, you don't need an elaborate system for that as well.

-------------
The system should also stop at 10. Epic play needs to be reconcepted anyway, so I don't really care about being extensible to level 1000. Some things just need blanket immunities. However, that doesn't mean that a lot of things don't need a rewrite. Undead immunities to mind-stuff needs to be reworked, since we all know that they can be rebuked, commanded, controlled, etc through a number of ways. They need to be immune to Charms(because the friendship of the dead is pretty wrong), emotional spells(except perhaps Fear subtyped stuff), but compulsions like Dominate and Control Undead should affect them.
------------

As for reworking the system to let Tall Tales crap where fools shoot out the sun... well....I say drop it. DnD, in all its versions, has not had that kind of stuff. No one has even done third party versions. I'd say its a sign that no one really cares.

[User3]

1109501536[/unixtime]]As for the fire elemental though, I'd really prefer if they were just totally immune to fire. I've always been in favor of having fire heal fire elementals, in the same way healing spells heal humans. I think all creatures should have some base element that actually heals them. For most living things this is positive energy, for undead its negative energy, for certain elementals, it should be that elemental type. But really that's just my personal preference when it comes to burning fire elementals.

I can see that. One of the things that I loved about the original Final Fantasy when I first played it was that some monsters were healed by magical attacks, which made sense. I'd like it if D&D had that mechanic more often, because if you really want to do crazy sh1t like that, you can just Rule Zero it. It's not like it should really come up that often.

I'm against the tiered approach. One reason that D&D sucks is that it's already a tiered system, because it's level based. While suddenly dinging and getting new abilities mid-fight works for a video game, it doesn't make a lot of sense (in terms of realism) in a traditional role-playing game.

One big problem I see with the suggested numerical approach is that it's all-or-nothing. So, if you have a peasant and a chosen hero of Hephaestus with Fire Immunity (6), and they get hit by a Fire (7) effect, the hero's immunity to weaker fire does squat. That doesn't feel right.

[Oberoni]

So K, I think we all have found something we like about your idea, but we're of different mind on the particulars of it.

At any rate, good job.

[Neeek]

Well, you could have a Fire(7) effect hit a Fire Resistance(6) guy as a Fire(1) effect would hit a normal person.

[Josh_Kablack]

Right now, D&D has a bunch of semi-tiered resistances (SR, 3.0 DR, Dispel Tjecks), a fair number of attacks with no defense (divine power damage of flamestrike, lantern archons) and a whole lot of weird immunities (Undead vs. Mind-Affecting, poison immunity vs Cloudkill, Cold subtype) and immunity sidestepping (Requiem feat, energy substitution,spells with no saves nor SR).

While, I would prefer a strictly-tiered, strongly typed system to that mishmash, I don't think I'd like a tiered like the one being presented here very much overall. It runs into complexity issues as soon as every attack needs to have an additional number attached to it, and I find the lack of a way to account for partial resistances unappealing - that's asking for a lot of highly frustrated players.

I'd much prefer a FF-style system where all damage types and status ailments were strongly typed, and creatures could have the [Normal], [Double], [Half], [Absorb], [Immune], [Reflect] or similar tags describing their resistance or vulnerability to each existant type or ailment. If you don't like total immunity, then ditch the idea of [Absorb], replace the [Immune] tag with a [Minimum] tag, which reduces damage to 1 point per attack or 1 point per die in the attack or some other floor, and have [Reflect] just split damage half and half rather than being a total reflection.

[Neeek]

1109532528[/unixtime]]
I'd much prefer a FF-style system where all damage types and status ailments were strongly typed, and creatures could have the [Normal], [Double], [Half], [Absorb], [Immune], [Reflect] or similar tags describing their resistance or vulnerability to each existant type or ailment. If you don't like total immunity, then ditch the idea of [Absorb], replace the [Immune] tag with a [Minimum] tag, which reduces damage to 1 point per attack or 1 point per die in the attack or some other floor, and have [Reflect] just split damage half and half rather than being a total reflection.

You somehow think that giving every creature 10 or so additional tags is less confusing that just adding a number to the end of every effect?

[Essence]

The assumption being that if you don't see a tag, it's [Normal]. So, at most, for something like a Baatezu, you'd only have two tags:

Damage Effects
[Immune]
Fire, Poison
[Half]
Cold, Acid

(and IMC, I'd add:
[Absorb]
Profane
[Double]
Sacred, for four. Still not bad.)

[Josh_Kablack]

1109532728[/unixtime]]
You somehow think that giving every creature 10 or so additional tags is less confusing that just adding a number to the end of every effect?

Yes, actually I do, and I can prove it.

You're proposing a system where each and every attack needs an additional pentration number from 1-10. (or possibly from one to inifinity)

I'm proposing a system where each creature has 1-10 (or possibly more) different tags on it.

Does the game have more attacks or more of creatures? (Hint, aside from the Shreiker, all creatures have at least one attack, and some creatures have more than one)

So, my system is provably simpler, and that's before we get to the additional complexities which have been suggested above, like of adding level ratings to each defense or resistance in the game or tagging movement abilities with a level tag.

[Neeek]

1109536961[/unixtime]]

Yes, actually I do, and I can prove it.

You're proposing a system where each and every attack needs an additional pentration number from 1-10. (or possibly from one to inifinity)

I'm proposing a system where each creature has 1-10 (or possibly more) different tags on it.

Does the game have more attacks or more of creatures? (Hint, aside from the Shreiker, all creatures have at least one attack, and some creatures have more than one)

So, my system is provably simpler, and that's before we get to the additional complexities which have been suggested above, like of adding level ratings to each defense or resistance in the game or tagging movement abilities with a level tag.

That's simply false. Sure there are more attacks than creatures(though I'm not sure we'd need one for normal, physical attacks). However, there are fewer attacks per creature than there are types of effects. Consequently, there are *less* attacks than total tags by a huge amount. It's also takes up far more room than just (X) after every effect. The numeric system actually takes up less room than the existing system, where your takes up more(since we'd have something like "Resist/Fire(1)" rather than the existing "resistance to Fire 5" as it currently reads) . One of your tags takes up at least as much space as 2 numeric tags, and usually more.

It's also far less flexible, since all your effects are absolutes of some kind or another, which was the entire thing we were trying to get away from in the first place, where the numeric system actually allows for various levels of resistance.