April 17, rule of 3

[Kzach]

And I wish I wasn't so pessimistic, but given what we saw throughout 3e's run (and still see from some critics), I think it's inevitable.

Ahh, but this time around it (might) be a good thing, no?

If the CharOppers get a hold of a beta version and then mangle it into an unrecognisable, heaping pile of molten goo, and then hand it back to the designers and say, "Umm... we found a few flaws... and it imploded..." then maybe those flaws/holes can be fixed before release?

 

[El Mahdi]

Third question, baseline competence built in, best thing I've heard thus far. I hope they stick to that.

Me too. That's an excellent core philosophy to apply to the game. It will definitely help with it's versatility aspects as well.

Nice to see that I appear to be singing from the same hymnbook as these guys. Basic competence in all aspects of the game, with the option to specialize as you gain levels and the ability to choose that specialization. Fantastic.

As to #2, I can see what's being said here. I like the differing dice for different weapons, but, I also don't want to see any weapon be the "best" weapon that everyone who can should take. So, maybe a longsword does d8 slashing damage, and a mace does d8 bludgeoning damage and a spear does d8 piercing. All three do the same damage, but, you get the differentiation in the key words.

And, I imagine that the key words will interact with specific feats and possibly powers to allow specialization.

I'd love to see that with weapons also. That sounds really Cool!

 

[billd91]

Ahh, but this time around it (might) be a good thing, no?

If the CharOppers get a hold of a beta version and then mangle it into an unrecognisable, heaping pile of molten goo, and then hand it back to the designers and say, "Umm... we found a few flaws... and it imploded..." then maybe those flaws/holes can be fixed before release?

That is not a good thing any more than redlining an engine until it burns out and claiming it was flawed is a good thing.

 

[Imaro]

We'll see how it looks after the optimization crowd gets ahold of it. I expect "baseline competence" will quickly become incompetent in messageboard debates because the PC who is at or near the baseline isn't optimized enough.

Yep, this. Even in 4e the baseline competence ended up being irrelevant when faced with characters who optimized their bonuses in skills. I only see this working if there are hard caps on skill bonuses, perhaps based on level or ability score...

 

[Kzach]

Yep, this. Even in 4e the baseline competence ended up being irrelevant when faced with characters who optimized their bonuses in skills. I only see this working if there are hard caps on skill bonuses, perhaps based on level or ability score...

From what I understand there sort-of will be a 'hard cap' on how many bonuses you can add to a d20 roll. I think they're going the route of named bonuses but also not having any unnamed bonuses, which was always the real problem in 3/4e. So you could only have one bonus from each 'source' contributing to a d20 roll and there are only so many sources.

At least that's the gist I've gotten from what I've read so far.

 

[Imaro]

From what I understand there sort-of will be a 'hard cap' on how many bonuses you can add to a d20 roll. I think they're going the route of named bonuses but also not having any unnamed bonuses, which was always the real problem in 3/4e. So you could only have one bonus from each 'source' contributing to a d20 roll and there are only so many sources.

At least that's the gist I've gotten from what I've read so far.

Ok, then I could see it working much better than in 3e/4e.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I think they're going the route of named bonuses but also not having any unnamed bonuses, which was always the real problem in 3/4e.

In 4E I always thought they missed an opportunity to corral these bonuses in a simple way. They could have defined any bonus derived by a power as a Power Bonus; Racial Bonus; Class Bonus; Item Bonus; etc.

3E seemed to have less unnamed bonuses, but then new ones were heaped on top of the plentitude that already existed. 4E could have had a set of simple named bonuses that tied directly to the source of the bonus.

 

[Mattachine]

Another method is having overlapping bonuses, or only the two highest bonuses, etc.

The game could definitely use better stacking rules.

 

[gweinel]

Noone mentioned the possible modules that they have in mind: Hit locations! Lingering wounds! Hexes! Firearms!

I loved every concept of these, and is certain that i will use em (especially hit locations and ling. wounds)

 

[Sunseeker]

We'll see how it looks after the optimization crowd gets ahold of it. I expect "baseline competence" will quickly become incompetent in messageboard debates because the PC who is at or near the baseline isn't optimized enough.

Yeah but that's the CharOp guys, they'll always be like that in every game no matter what. About the only way you could prevent character optimization is if everything was fixed. But then I'm sure they'd turn into DiceOp boards and develop all sorts of tricks and techniques on how to roll your dice properly.