Is There Possibility of a PF1.5 or a 3.5 Revival? Whether Directly or Something With Similar 'Ethos'

[Alzrius]

Cut back on BAB attack penalties (I think you'd be fine with -5/-5/-5 instead of -5/-10/-15)

I remember that Bad Axe Games' Trailblazer had a section talking about using the following progression for full attack actions:

• A BAB +5 or lower, you made a single attack at your full bonus.
• At BAB +6 through +10, you made two attacks, each with a -2 penalty.
• At BAB +11 through +15, you made two attacks, each with a -1 penalty.
• At BAB +16 and higher, you made two attacks at your full bonus.

As I recall, they showed the math on this, demonstrating that it resulted in characters hitting more often overall than if they got four attacks at the usual iterative penalties (the exceptions being where you were overwhelmingly likely to hit (e.g. only missed on a natural 1), or overwhelmingly likely to miss (e.g. only hit on a natural 20), since in both cases having more rolls mattered more than avoiding large penalties to those rolls).

 

[Celebrim]

I remember that Bad Axe Games' Trailblazer had a section talking about using the following progression for full attack actions:

• A BAB +5 or lower, you made a single attack at your full bonus.
• At BAB +6 through +10, you made two attacks, each with a -2 penalty.
• At BAB +11 through +15, you made two attacks, each with a -1 penalty.
• At BAB +16 and higher, you made two attacks at your full bonus.

As I recall, they showed the math on this, demonstrating that it resulted in characters hitting more often overall than if they got four attacks at the usual iterative penalties (the exceptions being where you were overwhelmingly likely to hit (e.g. only missed on a natural 1), or overwhelmingly likely to miss (e.g. only hit on a natural 20), since in both cases having more rolls mattered more than avoiding large penalties to those rolls).

But is that desirable as an outcome? As I understood the design, it was designed to make only your first few attacks important against peer level foes (and thus perhaps prioritizing maneuvers and stunts against such foes) while providing large numbers attacks against weaker foes so the fighter can do "crowd control". While the math is very slightly more complex and not intuitive to a new player, it creates a very smooth damage curve without the big jumps in effectiveness seen in later editions. A fighter doesn't gain a level and suddenly he's 60% more effective.

 

[Alzrius]

But is that desirable as an outcome? As I understood the design, it was designed to make only your first few attacks important against peer level foes (and thus perhaps prioritizing maneuvers and stunts against such foes) while providing large numbers attacks against weaker foes so the fighter can do "crowd control". While the math is very slightly more complex and not intuitive to a new player, it creates a very smooth damage curve without the big jumps in effectiveness seen in later editions. A fighter doesn't gain a level and suddenly he's 60% more effective.

I thought the Cleave and Great Cleave feats were where the "decimate hordes of lesser foes" paradigm was moved to.

To be fair, my understanding is that a lot of people seemed to discount the idea of the PCs encountering mixed-CR and low-CR foes, at least back in the early days of 3.X. Justin Alexander has a great article about this.

 

[Celebrim]

I thought the Cleave and Great Cleave feats were where the "decimate hordes of lesser foes" paradigm was moved to.

To be fair, my understanding is that a lot of people seemed to discount the idea of the PCs encountering mixed-CR and low-CR foes, at least back in the early days of 3.X. Justin Alexander has a great article about this.

My impression is that this idea that the encounter guidelines restricted you to 4 encounters with CR equivalent foes exists more in theory than it did in reality. The part of the article that resonates with me the most is "I literally can’t understand how this happened, because the very next paragraph read:.." I literally can't understand how this happened, but also because of that and because I never really encountered this idea among any DM of 3e I talked to, I don't think it actually happened.

What I did see was a few players asserting that "wealth by level" was a contract that the DM was obligated to fulfill rather than a guideline, or players arguing that the game only worked if you had magic shops and fungible wealth, but to me that represented a play preference among certain (mostly dysfunctional) players with certain aesthetics. To be quite frank, some of the louder voices struck me as coming from those players who only played in public because no private table would put up with them, and thus their whole experience was cons, living campaigns, and open table nights at local gaming stores. I once accidentally recruited such a group of players by naively putting up a sign asking for players at a gaming store after moving to a new area and being friendless and found myself living the dysfunction of a Knights of the Dinner Table story, and by that I don't mean the comparative healthiness of B.A.'s table.

To the extent that the belief system that challenge couldn't be highly varied existed, I laud the Alexandrian for pointing how that wasn't even how the game was written or presented by examples (such as the original WotC adventure path), but I suspect he's tilting at straw men to some extent.

 

[payn]

What I did see was a few players asserting that "wealth by level" was a contract that the DM was obligated to fulfill rather than a guideline, or players arguing that the game only worked if you had magic shops and fungible wealth, but to me that represented a play preference among certain (mostly dysfunctional) players with certain aesthetics. To be quite frank, some of the louder voices struck me as coming from those players who only played in public because no private table would put up with them, and thus their whole experience was cons, living campaigns, and open table nights at local gaming stores. I once accidentally recruited such a group of players by naively putting up a sign asking for players at a gaming store after moving to a new area and being friendless and found myself living the dysfunction of a Knights of the Dinner Table story, and by that I don't mean the comparative healthiness of B.A.'s table.

Thats certainly one sided view of things. Another issue was not many GMs understood the impact of being below WBL on the CR system. So, if folks got loud about it, its because GMs were running games tweaked too high for PCs to actually function in and not understanding that.

 

[Celebrim]

I thought the Cleave and Great Cleave feats were where the "decimate hordes of lesser foes" paradigm was moved to.

My impression is that correct design on all feats should just make you better at something you could already do, not create a feat tax where you could only do the things if you had the feat. This is one of the reasons feat design is so hard.

One of the biggest problems 3rd party publishers had is that the assumed that because feats were short designing them was easy.

 

[payn]

My impression is that correct design on all feats should just make you better at something you could already do, not create a feat tax where you could only do the things if you had the feat. This is one of the reasons feat design is so hard.

Alot of the 3E design allowed you to do anything, but without a feat, its likely to fail and/or get your PC killed. So, it might as well be impossible without the feat.

One of the biggest problems 3rd party publishers had is that the assumed that because feats were short designing them was easy.

A lot of 3P designers put in feat tax shortcuts that were very welcome, IME.

 

[Celebrim]

Thats certainly one sided view of things. Another issue was not many GMs understood the impact of being below WBL on the CR system. So, if folks got loud about it, its because GMs were running games tweaked too high for PCs to actually function in and not understanding that.

In every version of D&D, it's the responsibility of the GM to ensure that the party has the potential to acquire the resources necessary to overcome the challenges he presents. If you don't do that, you are as bad as the Monte Haul GM who gives away many more resources than are necessary to overcome the challenges he presents. I don't deny that there are out there bad GMs that enjoy beating the players and lauding their power as a GM over the players, but my impression of the players based on talking with them is that any attempt to test the players ability to solve problems was bad GMing. For example, they would claim that in 3e it was wrong to have hidden treasure, since if a treasure was hidden then that might imply the treasure would not be found and in that case the GM was not fulfilling his contract to supply wealth to the players. This is surely not D&D.

I never found in 3e D&D I had to run the game differently than I had run it in 1e AD&D. The only difference was running it was much smoother because I had more tools and the game was better balanced and the players had more abilities to mitigate against bad luck (at least under my house rules). But I could hide treasure, not have magic shops, and otherwise run the game in a very Gygaxian manner.

 

[Celebrim]

Alot of the 3E design allowed you to do anything, but without a feat, its likely to fail and/or get your PC killed. So, it might as well be impossible without the feat.

I always thought that was poor design. "Improved Trip" is a case in point where without it there was seldom a reason to try it and with it there was seldom a reason not to. The gap between utility and non-utility should ideally be smaller. However, the general idea here that feats don't gatekeep an action that could be performed by the unskilled, but merely let you do that action expertly is not wrong. Anyone should be able to grapple for example, but an expert one would be at a significant advantage when doing so.

 

[Pedantic]

I always thought that was poor design. "Improved Trip" is a case in point where without it there was seldom a reason to try it and with it there was seldom a reason not to. The gap between utility and non-utility should ideally be smaller. However, the general idea here that feats don't gatekeep an action that could be performed by the unskilled, but merely let you do that action expertly is not wrong. Anyone should be able to grapple for example, but an expert one would be at a significant advantage when doing so.

Fantasy Craft's tricks were a significant improvement on this style of feat design. They took a different resource that was more plentiful, and they were all explicitly written as riders on existing actions, with an inherent limitation that you can't use more than 1 per action (barring some fairly high level class features).

That's a subsystem I'd happily steal for a reworked 3e derived game.