D&D General 5e System Redesign through New Classes and Setting. A Thought Experiment.

[Zardnaar]

Saga. The condition track quickly made each fight spiral. Though my group was used to Revised, where a single crit is death, so maybe there was some PTSD involved from that.

Yeah. I dont think d20 is good for star wars. SWSE was he best one. Dont play it like D&D though.

Look at the movies. They weren't in constant combat.

We prefer the old D6 version. You can get 1 shot in that but not getting in a fight or 1-2 is way more common. They use a condition track, 0 hp.

Going down condition track is Leia on Endor or Luke having his hand removed. Even Han was trying to bluff stormtroopers. They're mooks but if they in initiative they only have have to roll 5 or 10 or higher to hit you. A TIE fighter can shoot you down as well.

Grinding HP down doesn't suit the genre imho.

SWSE would work better with BA.

 

[Remathilis]

Yeah. I dont think d20 is good for star wars. SWSE was he best one. Dont play it like D&D though.

Look at the movies. They weren't in constant combat.

We prefer the old D6 version. You can get 1 shot in that but not getting in a fight or 1-2 is way more common. They use a condition track, 0 hp.

Going down condition track is Leia on Endor or Luke having his hand removed. Even Han was trying to bluff stormtroopers. They're mooks but if they in initiative they only have have to roll 5 or 10 or higher to hit you. A TIE fighter can shoot you down as well.

Grinding HP down doesn't suit the genre imho.

SWSE would work better with BA.

Maybe true of the OT, but we were playing the prequels. And it was an absolute poor fit because Jedi ARE big damn heroes. We wanted fights like the Duel of the Fates and ended up with a lot of characters downed quickly rather than long, cinematic combats.

 

[Zardnaar]

Maybe true of the OT, but we were playing the prequels. And it was an absolute poor fit because Jedi ARE big damn heroes. We wanted fights like the Duel of the Fates and ended up with a lot of characters downed quickly rather than long, cinematic combats.

That's a flaw of d20.

I had a short out in a cockpit D6.

Narrated it like a gun fu thing. Combat lasted about 8 rounds. They couldnt hit each other.
Eventually someone runs out of force points, wounded, then dead.

When you assign HP people will play it like D&D. Theres usually some cheesecake combo to end the fight in a round or two. SWSE going nova with force powers could ro it or build around abusing the condition track and 1 or 2 shot everything.

d20 star wars needs hit points rolled at level 2 then handful of hp after that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The worst death spiral game I ever played was Star Wars. For a genre that was supposed to be about swashbuckling heroic action, the group of players I was with quickly turned into battle-hardened Nam vets who jumped at every shadow and only acted when they had overwhelming firepower.

"Attack the Death Star? Not unless you have several battalions up your skirt sister!"

That attitude could be entirely in keeping with certain versions of Star Wars. The Rebellion thought this way until a PC forced them out of it. A good Star Wars RPG with a good GM could handle both IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Maybe true of the OT, but we were playing the prequels. And it was an absolute poor fit because Jedi ARE big damn heroes. We wanted fights like the Duel of the Fates and ended up with a lot of characters downed quickly rather than long, cinematic combats.

The prequels spent a lot of time at war too. Attrition and "war is hell" stories are absolutely part of that era.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's a thing, yeah. After level 5 you get two Actions per turn. One of which can be a Daily or Encounter. The other of which can be an At-Will, such as Disengage, a Weapon Attack, Grappling, Etc.

Which skews these up to:

Floor at level 1: 2x+2x+1x+1x = 6x
Floor at level 5: 3x+3x+2x+2x = 10x
Ceiling at level 6: 6x+3x+3x+2x = 14x (3/day)

But... also taking into account at level 5 your Proficiency increases to +3, so your encounter powers go up one.

Floor at level 1: 2x+2x+1x+1x = 6x
Floor at level 5-8: 4x+4x+2x+2x = 12x
Ceiling at level 6-8: 6x+4x+4x+2x = 16x (3/day)

And then this advances at 9th, 13th, and 17th

Floor at level 9-11: 5x+5x+2x+2x = 14x
Ceiling at level 9-11: 7x+5x+5x+2x = 19x (3/day)

Floor at level 13-16: 6x+6x+2x+2x = 16x
Ceiling at level 13-16: 8x+6x+6x+2x = 22x (3/day)

Floor at level 17-20: 7x+7x+2x+2x = 18x
Ceiling at level 17-20: 9x+7x+7x+2x = 25x (3/day)

Those ratios mostly look better IMO. I don't know what the exact sweet spot should be but my gut says that's probably okay.

But that's still an expectation of each character being able to put a floor throughput of 145 on average at level 17-20. A party of 4 would throw out about 704 damage over the course of a 4 round combat. Just using encounters only. (Assuming everyone is just dealing as much damage as possible)

I was assuming you would set the x in damage to whatever made sense. I'm not sure if your damage is DPR or before accuracy adjusted here.

That's enough to take down an Adult Red Dragon in about a round and a half if the dragon is able to be hit by everyone's attacks and can't resist any of the damage dealt. (256 HP Dragon) Assuming maxed attack stat (+5), maxed out magic weapon bonus (+3) at 17-20 you've got a +14 to hit and an Adult Red Dragon has an AC of 19, so a 5 or higher hits.

Missing with a weapon swing would hurt your damage a bit (about 13ish damage) but missing your Encounter drops 35 average. Missing with a daily is 44. To average things out, though, let's just call it a 20% damage loss total, putting individual floor damage to 116.

So it would probably wind up being a 3-5 round combat if the Dragon were to fly around. If there were additional targets in the encounter, they'd also be soaking up a decent portion of those attacks, as well.

If everyone drops their Dailies, the damage jumps to 176 each and 704 as a group. Drop 20% for miss chance and it's 140 and 560.

These are also average (4.5) numbers. The actual range is 82-208 individually (65 and 166 with the 20% taken off) and 328-832 over the 4 rounds for the party (262-665 with the 20% taken off)

I'd have to work through the precise numbers here based on your X for damage, but sounds reasonable enough.

I would note that 'output' to me entails more than just damage output, it was a catch all around healing/control/damage/etc.

However.

Some of that straight throughput is also going to be lost to your class's role. While a Blaster is meant to put out 25x damage at level 17+ if they drop their daily, that damage is meant to be spread across an AoE rather than spiking a single target with it, so the actual value will probably be closer to 20x for ceiling and 13x for floor. So 122 floor and 154 ceiling.

A Support character is similarly going to be losing some of that strict throughput into healing or helping allies. And both of them may try to pin the dragon down so a Tank can get close enough to reasonably fight it through control effects. So, again, 20x and 13x.

And some of that Tank's throughput is going to be eaten up by buffing their own defenses, self healing, or control, as well, in order to keep the dragon from attacking the other party members. Drop that thing down to 20x and 13x, too.

So one tanky fighter, a supporty cleric, a blasty wizard, and a skirmishing rogue is looking at more of a 511 floor and 638 ceiling before factoring AC, resistances, etc. With AC involved that's 408 and 510.

So a single CR 17 dragon is not going to stomp a party of level 17+ adventurers as a solo encounter, but it will probably consume one or two dailies over a 4 round fight. Two CR 17 dragons are going to be a significant threat, though. Or a CR 17 dragon with some minions cluttering up a battlefield.

Meanwhile the CR 24 Ancient Red Dragon is gonna be more of a problem. With AC 22 and 546hp on average, we're looking at a 35% damage loss instead of 20%, so bringing the encounter 4 round damage down to 94 for one character and 377 for the whole party. With dailies that's down to 114 individually and 457. Not enough to kill him without crossing the 5 round thresh hold even if everyone's throughput is 100% damage focused unless they land some important crits.

With a more reasonable party spread, though... that damage is dropping to 332 and 414 over 4 rounds. You might need the whole party to Catch Their Breath and drop another set of encounters in rounds after 5.

And god forbid that Ancient Red Dragon flies around and picks at the party to any degree. You'll be at this all day. Downing healing potions and stuff!

Can you imagine? A CR 24 Ancient Red Dragon being a serious challenge to a high level party for more than 5 rounds?

Based on the number spreads you are getting I have concerns about any encounter building guidelines working for such large variance in parties. In such a tightly tuned system, if the DM cannot adequately set the appropriate encounter difficulty then you run serious risks of bad things happening to the PCs as they have very limited levers to pull to change the outcome of the encounter once it begins.

In normal 5e those levers are more more daily and short rest resources into such encounters. Allowing the players to significantly increase their output as needed to match threats.

Kinda sorta not really? The 5MWD issue isn't that fights are over quickly, it's that fights are over quickly -and- the party doesn't have the resources to continue on so they immediately take a long rest.

I dunno. IMO, if the players start expecting the fights to be over quickly and they aren't because they lack resources then they will rest to get the resources so the fights match their expectations.

I mean having the lower ceiling and floor variance helps, but having some variance is required IMO, and as long as that's the case then we aren't systemically solving for 5MWD, we are just designing the game so psycologically the player hopefully doesn't engage in that kind of loop anymore and it's not quite as bad on gameplay if they do, but there's no guarantees here.

Dailies are more attractive than encounter powers, obviously, but if the floor is high enough that people feel fairly confident about continuing, they can. It also means that easier encounters won't require big power use which encourages saving dailies for later.

Given Paladin's predominate playstyles, I have no faith that people will generally not use their resources nearly as quickly as they can. Some will, but I cannot say that will be the general case.

This is a misunderstanding. You have 3 daily uses per day, 1/encounter. But you wind up knowing 6 different options to use with those 3 slots. I apologize for miscommunicating that, before!

That helps, but that covers 3 encounters, which ideally would be about the top end for an adventuring day in my book.

(Also characters who prepare spells or abilities could prepare 6 each day, and have a list of options instead of being stuck with the first 6 they pick. Everyone else needs to spend some downtime to retrain their stuff)

Sure. I like the more options than slots. Though that can always lead a bit to output creep. More often having the perfect tool for the job is an implicit output increase. We didn't take this into account, but it's basically caster optimization 101.

 

[Steampunkette]

Those ratios mostly look better IMO. I don't know what the exact sweet spot should be but my gut says that's probably okay.

I'm going off a similar gut level and, as shown in the CR 17 dragon encounter, it looks like it lines up with expectations -fairly- well...

I was assuming you would set the x in damage to whatever made sense. I'm not sure if your damage is DPR or before accuracy adjusted here.

Ah, yeah. The X is 1d8. So average of 4.5. Of course not every roll will use d8s, and there's also weapon variation to consider (Rogues with Daggers or Shortswords instead of Rapiers, Cantrips that deal 3d4 damage instead of 1d8+4, Spells that drop 8d6 instead of 6d8, etc)

I'd have to work through the precise numbers here based on your X for damage, but sounds reasonable enough.

I would note that 'output' to me entails more than just damage output, it was a catch all around healing/control/damage/etc.

Yup yup! It's further down in the breakdown.

Based on the number spreads you are getting I have concerns about any encounter building guidelines working for such large variance in parties. In such a tightly tuned system, if the DM cannot adequately set the appropriate encounter difficulty then you run serious risks of bad things happening to the PCs as they have very limited levers to pull to change the outcome of the encounter once it begins.

There's always "Catch your Breath" to pull out more encounter powers, a much more powerful late game utility than early game utility.

In normal 5e those levers are more more daily and short rest resources into such encounters. Allowing the players to significantly increase their output as needed to match threats.

S'truth. But it leads to the 5MWD problem to use that lever much, if at all, as resources are burnt to get through a given fight faster, even though they're not needed to end the encounter successfully. The goal is for most encounters to -just- use up your Encounter Powers, so that when you need to pull out a daily it's a pretty big swing.

And even if you use one of your dailies, that's 11 dailies left across the group for the rest of the day. Not -everyone- has to do it, after all.

I dunno. IMO, if the players start expecting the fights to be over quickly and they aren't because they lack resources then they will rest to get the resources so the fights match their expectations.

It's a definite possibility. But at least we'll have pushed the 5MWD into a 15MWD if everyone's just burning through their daily slots really quickly and then diving into the sack.

I mean having the lower ceiling and floor variance helps, but having some variance is required IMO, and as long as that's the case then we aren't systemically solving for 5MWD, we are just designing the game so psycologically the player hopefully doesn't engage in that kind of loop anymore and it's not quite as bad on gameplay if they do, but there's no guarantees here.

The only guarantees are death and taxes. And I haven't died, yet, so I must be immortal.

And will, thus, pay taxes forever.

Given Paladin's predominate playstyles, I have no faith that people will generally not use their resources nearly as quickly as they can. Some will, but I cannot say that will be the general case.

It's definitely a possibility, yes!

But if someone drops a level 5 daily and kills the level 1 goblin the rest of the party doesn't have a chance to drop theirs, so the group at least has dailies, left!

That helps, but that covers 3 encounters, which ideally would be about the top end for an adventuring day in my book.

Really? I was looking at 6-7. How big are your dungeons? 'Cause we've seen how big the dragons are!

Sure. I like the more options than slots. Though that can always lead a bit to output creep. More often having the perfect tool for the job is an implicit output increase. We didn't take this into account, but it's basically caster optimization 101.

It is an thing, yup. Which is why we have the throughput guidelines above!

 

[Lanefan]

This is an absolute mismatch of expectations on both ends. New players don't know what they are and aren't capable of. New DMs don't know what PCs are able to handle fairly. That creates a double set of errors: PCs don't know when (or even that they can or should) run, and the DM doesn't know to adjuciate the power they have because there is nothing giving them guidance.

Players don't know that their PCs should sometimes run because they aren't given that advice in the PH. Instead, they're given the expectation that they should be able to beat or even curbstomp whatever the DM puts in front of them - the whole Big Damn Heroes piece - leading directly to those mismatched expectations you mention when the DM actually puts the screws to them.

You can teach a group of toddlers how to swim by throwing them one by one into a pool and letting them figure it out. Then you hope the latter toddlers will figure out what to do after they see the earlier toddlers face down in the bottom of the pool. But that's not a particularly good method of fostering a life-long love of swimming.

This is an awful analogy.

When chucked in a pool you only get one chance to sink or swim, with failure meaning death.

Losing at an RPG isn't going to kill the player at the table (Jack Chick's Marcie notwithstanding) any more than would losing at checkers or Risk or Mah Jong. The player in an RPG can always generate another character and try again.

I meant underestimating as "Oh, this fight should be challenging" and then the PCs destroy it in one round without major resource expenditure.

That's hardly a campaign-ruining moment; never mind the DMGs of various editions suggest that a few of the fights and encounters the PCs face should be easy to very easy.

Overestimating would be assuming the fight is properly difficult and then destroying the PCs in a few rounds without them ever mounting a reasonable offense.

Which is what I thought you meant, given the context.

While I do love magic items, I have learned to temper the good stuff for later on. Giving a paladin a holy avenger at level 3, breaks the game in ways a +1 longsword or even a frostbrand doesn't. And lets not forget what a Deck of Many Things can do to a campaign, especially if the DM doesn't know the rammifications that one item can have...

Decks are a regular, if infrequent, occurrence in my games and the players love them. Seriously - cheers go up at the table every time one of those things shows up!

The holy avenger, though...well, I'll have to take your word on that. Paladins tend to have short careers here; I haven't seen one played in years and have probably only DMed one or two holy avengers in my life, which never crossed paths with any of those short-lived Pallies.