What big problems remain after the Tomes?

[Username17]

You have to track the differences between people's CAN. I feel like the end result of this is an awkward "I have a 5 combat ranking, you have a 4 lets go to the chart to see what you need to hit me and how much damage it deals" bog down that table top war games get. Is there an obvious solution to this problem I am missing?

Could be. If you're going the Tome of Battle (or 4e) route, you can list CAN thresholds in the special attacks people are using. Or you can have a standard (even linear) rate of gaining extra [W]s or sneak attack dice or whatever for having CAN boosts. You could have a system in which the Rogue class gets a bonus to their CAN when they get conditional or positional boosts to their CAN, and have that generate Sneak Attack damage automatically.

Things don't have to be chart based if you don't want them to be.

-Username17

[virgil]

Have energy resistances give an automatic save bonus against said effects and immunity to any damage of 5 times the bonus or less; aka, Fire Resist 5 means +5 to saves against fire effects and you ignore all the damage of a fire attack so long as it's 25 damage or less (or write it as Fire Resist 25/+5)?

'Twould be interesting if DR worked in a similar manner. DR 10/silver meaning you ignore damage of 10 or less unless it's made of silver, so an 11 damage attack still deals the full 11 damage.

[Krusk]

I wouldn't go a TOB or 4e route with powers. People threw shit fits when TOB came out, and you still find loads of groups that ban it because it breaks the standard 3e mold and is "WOW" or "Anime". Same for 4e with the powers argument. (Whether valid or not, people don't like it and use this as their reason.) Those would be the people you are trying to draw back with 5e, and you'd want to cater to them.

I personally don't have a problem with powers or strikes or whatever, but if you want a new edition that people flock to, the first thing you have to do is say "Its a successor to previous editions and doesn't have those anime style powers on melee dudes".

Although to be honest, you could hide your powers as class features and people would probably be fine with it. Just don't put the power in a card sized block on the page of the book.

- It's smart to use your most powerful abilities on round 1, which creates a lack of dramatic build up in combat.

I was thinking on this last night. What if you have some sort of tension breaker mechanic. Specific spells or class features aren't usable right away in round 1 of an encounter. Once initiative is rolled your blood starts pumping and you can start the tension meter. The DM tracks this with a quick slide ruler or something. Every round it goes up by one (With abilities to modify this). Certain abilities can only be used once that meter has hit a specific threshold. I'd also include some sort of overcharge mechanic, where you can pull out all the stops and really hit that maneuver you are wanting to do, even if you haven't been in a fight long enough. Spend your entire turn, or even 2 turns.

This means that when you pick your level 1 ability, do you take the one with a TB of 1, that isn't as strong or do you go with the TB 3 that is better but means you are "Melee basic attacking" for a few rounds every combat.

[CatharzGodfoot]

If you use a sensible damaging system with a 'soak' score and fixed wound points, the only manipulations you need are + and - constant numbers to the roll. If you don't like subtraction, you can add resistance to soak and vulnerability to damage.

[MfA]

If you use a sensible damaging system with a 'soak' score and fixed wound points, the only manipulations you need are + and - constant numbers to the roll. If you don't like subtraction, you can add resistance to soak and vulnerability to damage.

Yes well I threw sensibility out of the window in the top post ...

For the sake of argument lets assume characters have one HD per level and fireballs do d6 per CL damage.

[malak]

I wouldn't go a TOB or 4e route with powers. People threw shit fits when TOB came out, and you still find loads of groups that ban it because it breaks the standard 3e mold and is "WOW" or "Anime". Same for 4e with the powers argument. (Whether valid or not, people don't like it and use this as their reason.)

I don't agree. The powers format is a good idea, and having everything standardized in format and easy to print out is a good thing.

The problem with 4e is that the powers are too similar and often boring and the fiddly details, not the idea of standardized powers in a easy-to-use format.

[wotmaniac]

I know I'm a little late on this one, but .....

DR is nothing but a "check":
- x/magic? level check.
- x/material? equipment check.
- x/alignment? plot check.
- x/-? death by a thousand cuts check yeah, this one's a little weak -- oh well, it is what it is, I guess.

that's all it was meant to be, period. trying to do more with it simply ignores its intended purpose.

[K]

When I calced out all the things that would be needed to take the next step in fixing 3e, I figured it would take 900 pages.

That's a lot of work for a property that someone else will own.

[Krusk]

I don't agree. The powers format is a good idea, and having everything standardized in format and easy to print out is a good thing.

The problem with 4e is that the powers are too similar and often boring and the fiddly details, not the idea of standardized powers in a easy-to-use format.

Even if that is the issue, I think 4e was the final nail in the coffin for using powers. If 5e uses anything that even looks like a 4e power people won't give it a chance based on that alone. If you disguise your powers as class features people will read them over. Then you can release a supplemental product that puts them in nice easy to read cards or something.

[BearsAreBrown]

When I calced out all the things that would be needed to take the next step in fixing 3e, I figured it would take 900 pages.

Care to share the calculations?

[K]

When I calced out all the things that would be needed to take the next step in fixing 3e, I figured it would take 900 pages.

Care to share the calculations?

150 pages for a system for monsters and ECL.
150 pages for new monsters in that system
150 pages for spells to be cleaned up.
100 pages for badly working subsystems like followers, diplomacy, castles, etc.
150 pages for new magic items and wealth system.
100 pages for feats to be made the equal of spells.
50 pages to rewrite classes and races with new feats in mind.
50 pages of sample adventuring to demonstrate the new systems.

[Hicks]

And that, shadies and gentle devils at home, is a complete rewrite of the core d20 system, which is itself around 900-1,000 pages across 3 books.

That's a lot of work for a property that someone else will own.

[MfA]

That's a lot of work for a property that someone else will own.

That's not exactly how the OGL works.

[BearsAreBrown]

I don't understand how those page values are anything but arbitrary. Could you break down why you think it takes 150 pages for magic items and wealth, for example? And as Hicks' said, do you not think it's possible to 'fix' 3.5e, only to rewrite it from scratch?

[violence in the media]

Also, do you actually have to rewrite everything in a section all at once? Using the spell section as an example, do you actually have to worry about any spell that doesn't grind the game to a halt? Sure, magic missle may suck, but it's resolved with the same speed as a regular attack for the most part.

So, you could focus on rewriting only the Illusion school, plus some individually problematic spells from everywhere else at first. Maybe you save the Enchantment rewrite for when you're tackling the followers/diplomacy/social interaction rules, just so those mechanics fit together clearly.

K's view is the perfect world solution, and the Tomes are currently a "good enough" option. However, couldn't we move towards a "gooder" option without needing to embrace the perfect?

[wotmaniac]

I think that 900 pages is a bit hyperbolic. I think the aggregate could probably be pared down to less than 300 -- it's all in the verbiage. (unless, of course, you're gonna use the current D&D trend of using huge type, excessive spacing, gratuitous margins, and take up half the page with pictures).

yeah, you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

[Username17]

I think that 900 pages is a bit hyperbolic. I think the aggregate could probably be pared down to less than 300 -- it's all in the verbiage. (unless, of course, you're gonna use the current D&D trend of using huge type, excessive spacing, gratuitous margins, and take up half the page with pictures).

yeah, you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

900 pages is unfortunately not hyperbole.

There's only so much you can do with spot fixing. Sure you can make a spot fix to the Barbarian or the Monk, where you make a real class that someone might want to actually take after they learned how the game worked, but we did that. Now what? Well, you can issue some nerfs to Wish so that the infinite power loops don't happen, we did that. Now what? Well you can... keep running around putting out fires for a long time. Hundreds and hundreds of page of nerfs to broken combos or boosts to underperforming options. Errata to nonsensical monsters, lists of base classes, and so on and so forth. And so what?

Eventually you run into the hard problem that when you start to tackle a new problem you start treading on the spot fixes you issued to another part of the game that was more urgent. Eventually you get fatigued. You realize that however much your spot fix improves the game, asking people to learn your spot fix is onerous as well. You're causing table fatigue problems as fast as you're fixing things.

K and I never settled on a Bard or Ranger fix we really liked. And I don't think we're going to. Adding more classes, more rules revisions, more stuff is really honestly making things worse through bloat as fast as it improves things. I think to get substantially better, you're going to have to go smaller, not bigger. In this case, the perfect really is the enemy of the good. Making the game better involves rewriting and condensing the monsters, the player characters, the magic, the everything. Because once you've made things even as incompatible as Pathfinder, you have to write a new monster manual to fit the new paradigm.

So yeah. That's the abyss of making things "better" any more. It's about 350,000 words of text. And not in tome-sized 40,000 word chunks. All at once. And no one is going to even read that if we don't have art.

-Username17

[Krusk]

Also, do you actually have to rewrite everything in a section all at once? Using the spell section as an example, do you actually have to worry about any spell that doesn't grind the game to a halt? Sure, magic missle may suck, but it's resolved with the same speed as a regular attack for the most part.

Yes you do actually have to rewrite everything. Maybe not all at once, but you need to say "Hey I haven't done evocation spells yet so don't take any" not "I haven't done evocation yet, so use 3.5".

Magic missile sucks, and so it needs an overhall. Every single spell needs to be looked at. Then redesigned from the ground up with the new system in mind. That is fine if your redesign borrows 95% of the elements from 3.5.

This is that hard work I mentioned earlier. Anything else is just "Tome 2.0". Which is great and all, but not 5e.

[MfA]

6 levels, fighter, rogue, wizard, cleric and enough monsters for a single module would be a nice start.

[MGuy]

I think that 900 pages is a bit hyperbolic. I think the aggregate could probably be pared down to less than 300 -- it's all in the verbiage. (unless, of course, you're gonna use the current D&D trend of using huge type, excessive spacing, gratuitous margins, and take up half the page with pictures).

yeah, you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I agree with Frank's assertion. Quite heavily. I came to the conclusion myself when all I wanted to originally was draw back the power of spells. The more I did the more things I realized I needed to change. It kept building up until I just figured I might as well write a new system altogether.

[Kaelik]

This is that hard work I mentioned earlier. Anything else is just "Tome 2.0". Which is great and all, but not 5e.

Why the hell in a thread about improving the Tomes, is 5e a good thing, and Tome 2.0 a bad thing?

Go post in one of the four hundred 5e threads that will never amount to anything, instead of posting that no one should improve the Tomes in a thread about improving the Tomes.

[wotmaniac]

considering that, then that much work really wouldn't be worth it at all, unless you really were gonna do 5.e.
that seems like what it boils down to. Seriously -- 900 pages is a new system/edition.

[Krusk]

Why the hell in a thread about improving the Tomes, is 5e a good thing, and Tome 2.0 a bad thing?

Go post in one of the four hundred 5e threads that will never amount to anything, instead of posting that no one should improve the Tomes in a thread about improving the Tomes.

Read the first sentence of the OP.

Within AD&D, 3e, the Tomes, TNE ramblings and hell even Pathfinder there is the potential for an edition which can move the game significantly forward while still having mechanics familiar to the player bases of those games in a way 4e never was ... a grognard's 5e so you will.

. The whole thread is about making a new edition or 5e.

Also, I didn't say Tome 2.0 was a bad thing, just that its not the desired end goal. I wouldn't want a 3.6, or tome 2 for 5th edition. I want something new and stand alone. If someone wants to go at a tome 2.0 they should feel nothing but encouraged. Just not when we are in talks about a potential 5e.

removed extra quote tag --Z

[Hicks]

Why the hell in a thread about improving the Tomes, is 5e a good thing, and Tome 2.0 a bad thing?

Because my Tome0.7rev139.pdf is 437 pages, and my Hardbound Shadowrun 4e book is 352! The patch is bigger than an actual complete game, complete with mechanics, art, example characters, monsters, and padded out, long-winded fluff text. The addressed problems that have been inherent to 3.x are bigger than Shadowrun. And I say "addressed" because there are fundamental mechanics you cannot change without rewriting huge tracts of 3.x:

• Anything that affects the statistic blocks in the Monster Manuals (all 4 of them)
  
  Anything that affects the Spell System (between 2,000-3,000 entries, and all of the Monster Manuals)
  
  Anything that affects Ability Scores (which requires a total rewrite of the Skill System, Monster Manual, and DMG).

The short of it is that The Tomes and any future additions are limited in what they can revise, until so much revision has taken place that it is not even 3.Tome anymore but some mutated beast that molted out of the carcass of 3.Tome, and a new edition is an inevitability of continuing revision; the only salient differences between writing a new edition from scratch as opposed to eventually revising every word of the 900+ pages of 3.x is that the former achieves a whole game faster than the latter, and the latter would be able to be played while it progressed inexorably through its revision.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Side note, the percentage marks (reduction levels? Resistance levels?) can just let you ignore some damage for energy. You have 25% fire resistance? Congratulations, you ignore fire damage unless it's more than ten points.

That is painfully counter-intuitive.

Probably right, though I should have amended that to 'mundane fire damage' or some such.. But I'm not seeing too many other ways to handle energy resistances and have them matter. Having Fire Resistance 25 and getting hit with a red dragon's breath weapon makes a difference of "there's a few charred tatters of meat still on the bones." vs "all the soft tissues got burned off". Then it's supposed to bump up to flat immunity.

I'm open to better ideas, myself.

How about "energy resistance" meaning that you subtract your level and then divide by two (rounding up)? It's both complicated and imperfect, but it is easy to remember and lacks major discontinuities.