Stacking Blues

[Malhost Zormaeril]

Full disclosure: I haven't actually played with these rules, seeing that they're the fruit of some discussions I've seen throughout these forums. So take everything here with a grain of salt.

Many people feel that, at higher levels, D&D is broken, because you can get so many different kinds of bonuses to stack onto your attack/defense/damage/skill checks that they become inherently unstoppable. And then they proceed to houserule each specific offender singly.

I thought to myself, if the problem is stacking, then let's review what we know about stacking. Monte and the others tackled this kind of problem when they introduced the modifier types system, which was a valiant attempt, if they had bothered to stick through it. Unfortunately, even in the 3rd edition core books there were already warts in the system. All too soon things appeared such as "deflection" bonuses which stack just like dodge bonuses and other such nonsense -- if it stacks like a dodge bonus, it should [i/be[/i] a dodge bonus, and deflection bonus shouldn't stack.

The SRD defines 17 types of modifiers, but not all of them are applicable to all rolls -- particularly, five of them (armor, deflection, dodge, natural armor and shield) apply to AC specifically. Thereafter, to contain the stacking extravaganza, directive #1 is:

• Every bonus must have a type, and it must be one of those 17.

Of course, Let us say 12 sources of stacking at up to +5 each still leaves us with +60 potential bonus, which is sort of ridiculous. So we can take a page from the "Aid another" action and redefine stacking:

• Whenever a character has two bonuses of different types favouring an action, the total modifier is the highest one, plus one for each additional bonus applicable.
• Dodge bonuses still stack with each other, where "stack" is as defined above.

Now our bonus total is closer to +16, much lower. If we want to reduce this even further, we can probably collapse modifier types onto each other. For example:

1. Alchemical - Alchemical
2. Armor - Armor + Natural Armor
3. Circumstance - Circumstance
4. Deflection - Deflection + Shield
5. Divine/Fate - Sacred + Profane + Luck
6. Dodge - Dodge
7. Enhancement - Enhancement + Resistance
8. Insight - Insight
9. Morale - Morale
10. Quality - Ability + Competence
11. Size - Size

which allows the maximum bonus to stay within around +12 for attacks and saves and +17 for AC.

There is a caveat in this: AC bonuses should be able to go quite a bit higher than attack bonuses, which is why an AC-only bonus (dodge) can stack freely. With these rules, dodge stacking won't go nearly as far, skewing balance in favour of attack bonuses (which stack freely with BAB). We could solve that by redefining AC slightly:

• AC = 10 + armor bonus + dodge bonus + other bonuses (this last stacked as above).

This way dodge would stack-add with other bonuses to AC, like armor. I still have to do the character builds to sound out this theory, but I'm posting it as is anyway to see if anyone can come up with a good angle.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Last time I checked, deflection doesn't stack. Maybe something new in eratta or FAQ. Anyway, my solution is to just limit bonus types and ways to get them. No items with insight, luck, etc... bonuses is the biggie. Anyway you say potato, I say I'm lazy.