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Admittedly you lose granularity by doing this, but I'm not sure it's really valuable granularity. I don't think we gain anything from, for example, enabling someone to play an 18-strength fighter vs a 16-strength fighter. They could be the same. The only real loss is it prevents people from...

We should get rid of all ability scores. Drop your pitchforks! A character should be defined by their class. Each class should have optional abilities you can pick that define things they are good at. The system should assume a baseline competence and then permit the players to boost themselves...

But this is just what you're doing because you're a good game master. It's not something you're doing thanks to the system itself. The system does nothing to facilitate this kind of play at all. Your other example is the same thing. You could have a crappy GM instead who has read the exact same...

It is true that D&D 5e is extremely survivable and probably more survivable than many other systems in the same style, but it still relies on and rewards optimal play and it has little in the way of mechanics to handle things like being captured. This is going to vary from group to group, but...

I think the big problem that D&D has isn't that it doesn't have particular mechanics, but that the system itself punishes stupidity. D&D would be more appropriate if you could more easily avoid death as a consequence of doing something stupid. I think the simplest way to adapt D&D for AT would...

Slightly sidetracking the discussion, but I always thought the interesting component of the narratively-focused style of role-playing-game design is how you can use game mechanics to guide play towards something that is more genre appropriate. For example there was a big and fairly heated...

Regarding the language objection that someone raised earlier: It's perfectly fine to call it whatever, but you start tossing around terms like, I dunno I'll make up something stupid like Ludus Ex Fabulum (I don't speak latin, sorry) or something like that people might rightly start calling you a...

That's an interesting approach, but I'm not so sure if that is accurate. A system like Fate or Lancer are highly tactical in combat, but they also have extremely "narrative" systems for use outside of combat.

I haven't yet had an opportunity to play it, but Icon has some epic scaling going on, and it works a bit differently than how scaling does in D&D. The idea in Icon is that characters improve in two different ways: They gain more bonuses to their moves, and after a number of levels they are moved...

Below is applicable to designing something D&D-like only. If I were to make a system that does not try to play at all like D&D I would go more wild than I do below. PCs and NPCs should be designed using completely separate systems. The system used for NPCs should be as simple as is possible...

I never said the rules mention Bounded Accuracy. I did not actually list BA under my list of 5E jargon. My point is that D&D makes use of some highly specific terminology and then it turns out that when everyone is used to this language they don't even notice that it is unusual.

That is my interpretation of this post, yes: This was said by @Micah Sweet and since the point of reference here is Bounded Accuracy, which is a term heavily associated with D&D 5e, I made the reasonable, in my opinion, assumption that it is actually D&D we are talking about as a comparison to...

Yeah anyone saying there's no lingo in D&D is deluding themselves. Class, Hit Points, Saves, Checks, Ability Scores, Alignment, Divine, Arcane, Evocation, Conjuration, Initiative, Death Saves, Advantage, Disadvantage, Hit Dice, Inspiration, Bard, Monk and Armour Class. I can imagine people...

I'm not sure it's that limiting in practice. I admit I haven't played any PbtA-like systems or even Fate, but I have played Nobilis. Nobilis has the interesting quirk that detailed prep is impossible, because the characters are so overpowered that a D&D-style level 20 wizard is weaksauce by...

No the 3.5 fighter can't pick any class features. The problem with the trashy 3.5 fighter is that they don't have any class abilities at all. They can pick feats, not features. I mean things like other class abilities.

Sure. Then let all non-casters pick all abilities a'la carte too.

That could also work, but it has the weird problem that it makes all casters have access to the same spell lists. It makes classes even less distinct than they are already. If we had some kind of tag system like in PF2 it would work better. I love the tag system.

I'm starting to suspect that reason they avoid mentioning classes in the spell section of the book is that they were expecting to add more classes to the system. There are only two real benefits for omitting classes there You expect to add several new classes later on, so you avoid the problem...

The solution seems obvious: Make the spell lists unique to each class. I mean. There's no sensible reason why a Cleric would need access to a list of Wizard spells, for example. This would also be beneficial in that it would require that spell lists contain only unique spells. It would make the...

This is why stats are bad and charisma is the worst and I'm getting so many bad vibes from that whole situation I am going to have to take a shower. I love how this is one of the few threads I see here where everyone pretty much agrees with each other.