4e Fan Creations and House RulesWorking on variant powers? Statting up a PC race or your version of a monster? Creating or converting an adventure? Put it here!
heh funny story... I made a half-elf bard and ended up thinking the only real gameplay problem with your idea is they get way too high skill checks, and their NADs scale too well.
Also I made a fun combo with MC wizard and paragon path to the spiral tower.
Took the half-elf feat to make the encounter power an atwill.
Took blade opportunity and heavy blade opporunist. Chose frigid blade from the swordmage.
Took combat virtuoso.
Voila! +2 to opportunity attacks in which my bard uses charisma and a longsword to cast frigid blade and lower the targets speed by 9.
The other option, Asmor, is to throw all ability scores out the window and then adjust the rest of the game down 4. That might be somewhat more convoluted, though.
As you say, that would be far too much effort and would basically amount to the same effect. This way, you use the same monsters, the same tools, the same encounters, the same adventures... It's the same game, just with ability scores "virtually" removed.
Even ignoring roleplaying concerns, my group would find all-18s less fun for character design. One of the things a couple of my players lvoe to do is look for combinations of race/class/feat/weapon options that let them use the same one or stats for as many things as possible. Those are often very memorable characters, and I'd hate to lose that.
Also, my groups often do 1 18, then even out other stats as much as possible, or 3 18s and everything else in the toilet., this makes for characters that play differently for both roleplay and game mechanical reasons, and I'd hate to lose that too.
I think everyone should start with 18s in every ability.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crothian
I usually allow players to pick their own stats for their characters and have told my players repeatedly that straight 18's would be fine.
Everybody gets 18s in their primary abilities (attack/damage), and 16s in their secondary abilities (other ones used by class powers or features), and can select any value they want for the rest of their abilities, up to a max of 16. Then apply racial mods. At levels where ability scores increase, you get +1 to everything. Details regarding multiclass and hybrid characters are left as an exercise for the reader.
Net effect:
1. Attack/damage and secondary effects are better balanced between all characters because they are set to a specific amount. You can't have Noob McRoleplay show up with a starlock with 14s in Con and Cha and wonder why he is not dealing as much hurt as everybody else. In fact the only way to screw it up is to take a race that doesn't get any bonuses to those (like, playing a tiefling fighter) but there are other house rules floating around to address that.
2. Tertiary abilities, which really hardly matter, can be as high or low as the role-playing concept requires. If someone puts all 16s, they might wind up with defenses a few points higher, or better skills overall, than someone who puts all 10s. But those few points don't matter nearly as much as the primary and secondary abilities.
I still like Crothian's method the best, I just thought I'd throw this one out there as a compromise.
If you do that, you may want to roll back some of the in-class fixes for ability score disparities like the monk and barbarian's +1/tier to AC or Fort.
I like this idea, but what I would do is let people generate an array of scores (by point buy, or roll, or however the DM wants - and probably using a different point buy system to give lower scores and more variance) to be used ONLY for skills and feat prereqs. All other uses of ability scores count as 18. (Or I might make Init and defenses still dependant on the chosen ability scores to, to keep some variance there.) And I would probably go through the class-specific feats and add some more prereqs (since I believe right now it's just assumed anyone taking a Fighter feat has high Strength) so that there would still be an incentive for classes to take above-average values in their primary scores...
That way you can still have characters with varying levels of skill, and it's unlikely for (for example) a Fighter to be able to take feats for ALL weapon types, just the one with some synergy with their abilities, but the attack rolls and power bonuses don't dominate any more.
Ok, first, props for having the stones to post such a radical idea.
That said, I played around with this in the character builder for a while, trying several classes and builds. Here is what I noticed in my playing:
-healing surge quantity and value is very high, as is HP in general; the Goliath Earthstrength Warden was off the damn charts
-all characters are at least passably good at all skills
-defense values are utterly awesome; your bad save is comparable to (and sometimes better than) a normal character's good save
-chainmail and scale are invalid; only plate armor is strictly better than light armor
-a lot of class features become mostly useless, or slightly overpowered (barbarian agility, earthstrength Con bonus to AC, etc.)
-secondary effects are VERY good; dwarf wizards are now thunderwaving people 25 feet at level 1, while maintaining a delicious +4 attack bonus
-the amount of feats available for choice is staggering. Seriously, any time or effort you save in avoiding ability score selection is easily tripled spending time on looking at feat choices and combinations.
That last point is the rub for me. I could stomach all the rest of it, but one of your main reasons for the switch is invalidated straight away. You save time in one area, only to increase it in another.
That said, it's STILL not a bad variant. I'd definitely play in a game using it.
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-the amount of feats available for choice is staggering. Seriously, any time or effort you save in avoiding ability score selection is easily tripled spending time on looking at feat choices and combinations.
That last point is the rub for me. I could stomach all the rest of it, but one of your main reasons for the switch is invalidated straight away. You save time in one area, only to increase it in another.
This assumes that a computer is helpfully filtering feats for you. Us grognards who use the book to select feats need to look at each feat ... and then double-check that we have sufficient ability scores to use it. (And really, what sucks worse than saying "Wow, Armor Specialization (Scale) is perfect for my character concept! But... oh... there's no way I can get my Dex that high without totally hobbling my build... *sigh*". This is why I hate ability prereqs in general.) Having low ability scores doesn't speed this up unless you have all the feat prerequisites memorized and can do the filtering in your head.
So for book-users the all-18s system may make feat choice faster and more fun.
How possibly can qualifying for dozens more feats than before quicken anybody's ability to choose feats?
Your situation simply is exaggerated by the 18s idea. Unless your people don't care that much about min/maxing. In which case why do they have a hard time selecting feats anyway?
You might be better off eliminating feat prereqs and house-ruling the two stat classes than going an all 18 method. HP, surge values and all defenses will go up. Additionally, all the secondary bonuses and lesser used attacks with improve. Everyone will be decent at all skills. Essentially your party will be unstoppable. Your simplifying change comes with too much baggage to really make things easier.
Except his solution lets him use all of the existing infrastructure, where the other stuff... doesn't.
I do think you could just get away with giving, say, 3 18s, 1 16, 1 12, 1 8, with +1 to 3 stats at each bump, and get most of the same effect but a little more variation.
Last edited by keterys; 9th July 2009 at 10:44 PM..
You could also just remove the stat bonus from attack+defense calculations.
It's generally still wise to have a high primary stat due for damage - but replacing replacing the stat component makes a few other things easier too, oh, like dealing with weapon expertise.
Rather than have 0.5*level + stat modifer, have something like +0.75*level +3 instead (or, if you will, start at +3, rise by +1 on every level except multiples of 4 plus 1, i.e. 1,5,9,13,17,21,25,29), and ban weapon/implement expertises and the epic defenses feats, and remove the masterwork component from armors (masterwork components which add something other than AC could be reintroduced but would need to be rebalanced). Racial stat bonuses should still affect attacks and defenses, but that's simple to calculate.
For added diversity, you could mandate that your primary stat's associated defense gets a +1, while your non-associated stat takes a -2 or so.
This system would involve less complex calculations than the current system (fewer factors involved) but retain stats for subtler things like damage and skill bonuses.
__________________
4e balanced random loot system
- Think item wishlists are devilspawn?
- Dislike the impact of a few bad item picks by the DM on the party?
- Or find it ludicrous that PC's constantly just "happen" to find magic items tailored to their needs?
Try: A simpler treasure system for (mostly) random loot.
3.5 death&dying variant
- Tired of players that won't cure their mortally wounded allies 'cause "he's only at -2"?
- Tired of a dying mechanic which uses anachronistic d10's?
- Tired of a dying mechanic which never kicks into action for high level characters, which tend to go from alive and kicking to instant death before anyone can intervene?
- Tired of horribly complex house rules?
Try: Death & Dying - a better (and simple!) system
A take might be to use the All 18 for your character statistics, but write regular numbers next to them on your sheet.
These numbers are purely descriptive and have no mechanical effect, but if you think an absent-minded Wizard needs a Wisdom of 8, here you have it.
I wonder how a game without any ability score modifiers should look like. The ability scores still need to have some game impact, but my goal would be to avoid them being necessary for your attacks or defenses. They would impact choices, not translate into direct power. Of course, that means ability scores would just be used for prerequisites, and I am not necessarily a fan of that either. Especially because it is very easy to make high-stat prerequisites feats/powers/talents/moxie be stronger.
Maybe an approach would be that ability scores only determine how many feats/powers related to an ability you can pick? So if you play a Fighter with Str18 you can pick a lot of strength related powers. But if you do only have a Strength of 13, you need to branch out, maybe even having to learn some magical tricks. One might even be able to keep something like combat roles in the game - you would have to offer powers for every role for every ability. (Which shouldn't be too hard.)
And of course, no matter how terrible your abiltiy scores are, you should never be unable to pick a new feat or power at all. Your choices would just be more limited.
Now, you can roll 3d6 in order, 4d6 drop lowest, all 18s, 25 point buy, pick your stats...
Another possible take could be that magical and ability score modifiers don't stack. A Longword +4 is nice if you have a Strength of 15, but irrelevant if you have a Strength of 18. But you would probably need to move away from traditional magical items. Maybe don't have the +x weapon at all, but just say a magical weapon grants you a +5 bonus to attack and damage that doesn't stack with your ability bonus.
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Last edited by Mustrum_Ridcully; 22nd July 2009 at 01:59 PM..
Another possible take could be that magical and ability score modifiers don't stack. A Longword +4 is nice if you have a Strength of 15, but irrelevant if you have a Strength of 18. But you would probably need to move away from traditional magical items. Maybe don't have the +x weapon at all, but just say a magical weapon grants you a +5 bonus to attack and damage that doesn't stack with your ability bonus.
This idea almost sounds like it belongs in the threads about reducing item dependence from heros.
A related idea I think, a magic item that is itself skilled ... it changes your effective level for computing level gained attack bonus. A level 6 skilled blade only gives you benefit if you are less than level 6.
Heh, I just had the same thought the other day. I do agree it would work, and would eliminate some hassle in this edition of D&D. I'd play a game run this way.
In my own game, I won't be doing it, though. My group still rolls for stats, and uses them to suggest a character or character traits, rather than coming up with all that then trying to fit stats to it as envisioned beforehand. Ability score rolling is inspirational, so, no, I won't do all 18's, even though it works.
And as far as sacred cows go, I think ability scores are Numero Uno on the list. I don't think I would consider the game D&D anymore without them, and without the range of numbers associated with them.
I will add, however, that in original D&D, the ability scores mattered very little (mechanically) and could easily have been ignored. They were a roleplaying aid and determined which classes you were eligible for, that is all (unless the DM considered them in ways that weren't specified in the rules when you tried different actions). They didn't really factor into the game like we are used to today. I see the all 18's idea as a similar situation.
It might be fun to try defining characters by actual character traits (perhaps even randomly rolled) instead of by basic physical and mental capabilities.
Last edited by Jack Colby; 22nd July 2009 at 07:20 PM..
Another compromise is that your ability scores still modify skills as normal, and are still used for ability checks, but attack/damage/defense/hp are calculated as 18s. (Other games, like M&M, do something similar, where your attack and defense are independent of your abilities, but your skills are tied to your abilities.)
It works because ability and skill checks don't impact combat very much, and in those cases where they do (rogues with Stealth, for example) you can assign the score you want without worrying about whether it will unbalance your basic combat aptitude.
Plus Racial bonuses, that's probably better balanced against the default encounter level. In my experience, few players using point-buy purchase 18s because they are so dang expensive (16 points) that the rest of your stats are nowhere close to 18. OTOH, a pair of 16s, or 16/14/14, is pretty common and, if your racial mods are in the right place, leads to an 18 for your attack/damage and at least 1 of your defenses (maybe 2 or 3, in the case of someone like a halfling rogue with Dex 18/Cha 18 that can add to AC, Reflex and Will).
Eh... I'd have to go with the "just have your players pick stats" method, too.
I've done that before, and I've found that players don't want to be good at everything. What they want, in general, is to be good at something. They want to be a master swordsman, or a past-master of fire magic, or the world's best tennis player.
Given the opportunity, they'll choose stats that suit them for the goal they're after, and then pursue that goal during the game. But they'll also choose weaknesses they feel appropriate. The dashing, roguish swashbucker will pick high dexterity, intelligence, and charisma (maybe even all 18s, but probably not -- my players tend to choose one 18 when I do this, rarely two), but a low wisdom, and probably an average-ish strength and constitution.
They'll likely end up with a build "worth" more points than the standard, but not egregiously so. In terms of bonuses, they might end up +3 or +4 ahead.
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