One of the beautiful things about pre-3E was that you could come up with NPCs pretty quickly and easily... and weren't bogged down by the math involved of determining skill points, BAB, feats, and so forth.
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Basically I'd prefer a leaner, meaner D&D... which, I realize, isn't for everyone.
I would too. I'd rather they dropped Feats entirely, lowered the numbers (AC, Defences/Saves, to-hit; not sure how I feel about HP), and changed the way they deal with skills.
I've been thinking about how they presented skills in the Legends & Lore column a few months back. This is how I'd like it to work:
You have some sort of descriptor - a narrative statement - about your character. Then there are a few options that different games have:
1. Your character is especially skilled in that field. You can do things others can't. This allows you to succeed when others would fail. What, exactly, that means is up to the DM. (This would be like Class in oD&D, I believe, or those backgrounds in AD&D - I forget what they are called.)
2. Your character is especially skilled in that field. You can do things others can't. This allows you to roll the dice to see if you succeed on tasks that others would fail. This would be like the old "Climb Walls" ability that thieves had - everyone could climb; not everyone could climb sheer surfaces.
3. Your character is skilled in that field. You have a better chance of success than others who are not as skilled. This gives you a bonus to die rolls when attempting a task and another character/the environment is providing opposition. Following this would be a table of
narrative or game-world modifiers describing what a certain skill level means, as I posted about Star Wars d6 above.
4. Your character is skilled in that field. You may be able to do things that others can't do, depending on the skills' descriptor. When you are attempting a task and another character/the environment is providing opposition, you get a bonus to your die roll.
5. Your character gets a bonus to tasks related to that field. The DC of those tasks is set by your level. (4E method)
The list of descriptors (eg. what you can do that others can't/what you are especially skilled in) could be set by the game, or be setting-dependant.
When it comes to NPCs, in this case, it's easy to determine what they can or can't do, especially if there isn't a set list of skills. What I do in my 4E-based game is give NPCs or monsters a skill based on their monster entry; a drow stalker has a skill called "drow stalker", which tells me a lot about what he can do and what he can't. (I use method 4 in my game.)
And we get into personal preference real quick here, so I don't think my opinion applies. But I personally would still prefer to forget balance altogether and build an ideal narrative system and THEN try to figure out how to balance things later. Not everything is balanced and overwhelming force and weak spots are parts of the way things work.
And even 3E has a lot of "level" to it. As I said, if they REALLY made the game I wanted then it would SUCK BADLY on the marketplace. But 3E is acceptable to me.
Have you thought about making or hacking 3E to fit your own preferences? I've found it extremely rewarding when doing the same for 4E - not just in game play, but it's opened my eyes to game design. A very interesting topic. I find that I'm always surprised by how much I
don't know about how the game works.
If you do that, I'd like to hear about it - because our preferences are very different, I think I could learn a lot.
Anyway. Balance is an interesting subject. I like to think of it in this way: game balance exists when players are faced with multiple options and they aren't sure which one is a better choice.
What I don't believe game balance to mean is in the way some people describe game balance in 4E - if we go into the Tomb of Horrors or if we go into the Dungeon of Despair we'll face encounters that are our level, so we know it's balanced. (I don't believe 4E classes are balanced in
this way - that is, that all classes are balanced with each other so the choice of which class to play doesn't carry a cost - because the way a party is built can have a major impact in play.) Anyway, to me that's not really a choice unless the narrative of the Tomb vs. the Dungeon makes a difference to the game; and in 4E there's no mechanical - or "game economy" - that suggest it does.
(I believe pemerton would disagree with me on this point, insofar as 4E is concerned. Which I consider a flaw of 4E - if they wanted to provide that sort of play experience, they should have made those narrative choices more explicit in the game's advice and in the reward system. Dropping XP for monsters and replacing it with Quest XP only, then tying Quests to Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies would have been my suggestion. Which is the major change that I've made in my hack of 4E, but for different reasons.
Man, I'm rambling.)
In this thread, in this forum, my point is really tied to what makes sense for WotC trying to produce a larger fan base. And I'm a little amused by the reluctance of key portions of the 4E fanbase to allow any progress whatsoever.
I have no idea what will produce a larger fan base. I'm not even going to try to put my thoughts out there.
What I'm interested in is how people with different agendas for play - like you and I - can compromise on mechanics to get a set of rules that will provide the sort of experience we want.
What I find interesting is that I can take your advice on how to set up NPC or monster stats, but use that method for an entirely different purpose - I want the players to be able to judge the level of risk vs. reward based on the game world description of what they're facing, whereas I believe that you want to set up NPCs or monster stats in a similar way in order to get the feeling that you are taking part in a fantasy novel. (Correct me if I'm wrong!)
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