Avoiding "Glut" (Maneuvers, tricks and other options)

[GM Dave]

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For example, if the Elves of Ravenholme have a signature underhanded twirling dagger throwing style, it's less problematic to explore how that can arise from a combination of feats rather than add a new feat with prerequisites "Elf, Rogue, origin Ravenholme, wielding a dagger". Rather than introduce 20 new feats for Ravenholme, it'd be better to discuss one feat that twirls weapons and can be used in many interesting combinations. Sure, that means that the crunch magazine articles need to be structured differently (around a technique, not a fantastic location), but it allows the same number of interesting choices while having far fewer options.

I'm much happier with a label (not pre-requisites) 'Elf, Rogue, origin Ravenholme, dagger'.

When I go through my decision tree there are many opportunities to sort or ignore this piece of information.

If I do not use Ravenholme or their elves than I can discard this information. It is like the library is filled with books that I will never read despite being written by fine authors but I only have so much time and effort to spend on things. I manage the glut of books by deciding non-fiction is not stuff I am currently interested in reading.

If I am not currently looking at making a Rogue character than again, I can choose to set the feat aside until I am making a rogue.

If I have met all the other conditions than I can decide if I am looking for a feat to improve my dagger techniques or decide if something else (singing, wilderness lore, stealth) might be what I am hoping to improve in my concept.

I can also decide if this dagger feat compares better or worse against other dagger feats and weapon feats.

 

[GM Dave]

The limited matrix is part of the problem. Because prerequisites are so limiting, it means that to achieve a particular feat, you need to plan ahead extensively. So while limiting the number of immediate choices seems to help, it doesn't in practice. It just means that people end up reading a lot of stuff they never intend to use, which is boring, plain and simple.

What if I want to build a character that throws around his enemy by hitting them with a hammer? There's likely racial feats that interact with hammers and with pushing, and possibly with pushing hammers. There are several weapon-wielding classes, and some will likely have key powers and feats to enable this build. I'll never find the right rules without a significant system mastery. Especially if it turns out that I should be using a pole-arm for some feats (is there a weapon that's both?) or that this particular combination for sliding is a little easier so if I'm not too picky about pushing vs. sliding I could look at that...

So the limited immediate choices for a particular existing PC doesn't really prevent the problem; rather it's an excuse to release a glut of hyper-specialized feats. It's better to release fewer feats that combine in interesting fashions (retaining the fun of making interesting builds) while limiting the total number of character options rather than limit the interactions with unlimited numbers of options.

Here too: more general feats & powers would help. If the feats & powers available to the paladin were largely also available to the cavalier this would be less of a problem.

[sblock=For exampleSo: fewer powers & feats, but no fewer choices by virtue of more generally applicable rules. Side benefit: this means that the individual rules can be worked out in more detail. Want to make a lightning bolt with an area of effect that doesn't quite fit the standard areas? Now you have space to describe those specifics. Want to describe the effect of a powerful strike on nearby objects? Want to make a tactically interesting surprising roundhouse strike by forcing attacks to resolve in clockwise or counterclockwise fashion, allies included, but without the ability to strike through solid terrain so that the user needs to take into account the state of the battlefield? You've got the space.

I'm advocating fewer feats but with fewer prerequisites. Rather than limit a roundhouse strike to a club wielded by a gnomish monk, let it take a penalty to hits equal to the armor check penalty, and reward high speed and small stature somehow, but leave the implementation flexible enough to be broadly usable.[/sblock]

It looks like they are addressing your concerns in the latest Rule of 3 article May 15th.

In our current vision of feats and themes, for the most part we want themes to be things that transcend class; as mentioned in the first answer, there are a lot of exciting possibilities in the strange combinations. Tying feats to specific class features limits those possibilities, which is something we want to avoid. Plus, we'd like to make it so that players don't feel like they have to chase certain feats to be able to fulfill the promise of their classes. Races are a little different, because we can imagine that there are some themes that tie in well to the race's culture. For example, we might do a dwarven defender theme, or an elven bladesinger theme, which would tie into race as a cultural touchstone, but probably wouldn't tie in especially tightly to that race's mechanics.

I highlighted the section for clarity.

 

[eamon]

It looks like they are addressing your concerns in the latest Rule of 3 article May 15th.

I highlighted the section for clarity.

That's good news! Good timing too ...

 

[Sunseeker]

The problem with that approach is that it's essentially one of resignation: We can't solve glut so let's just ignore it.

We don't need to solve it completely - some avoidance might help too. A system that emphasizes fewer options that interact with each other rather than an unending list of options is a start.

I didn't say we should ignore it, only that "what people are willing to read" is a poor way to measure it.

The limited matrix is part of the problem. Because prerequisites are so limiting, it means that to achieve a particular feat, you need to plan ahead extensively. So while limiting the number of immediate choices seems to help, it doesn't in practice. It just means that people end up reading a lot of stuff they never intend to use, which is boring, plain and simple.

I agree that this is true for 3rd edition, but I'm not familiar enough with older editions to comment. I do believe it was reduced, though not eliminated in 4th.

In any case, I was more referring to the fact that 1/3rd of those spells are for a cleric, 1/3rd are for a wizard, and then 1/3rd are for some other class. Or more simply, 1/2 the options are for casters and 1/2 the options are for melee.

There is going to be "stuff people never intend to use". I mean to this day I've never played a caster in D&D. Do I want all the spells removed from the books? Of course not, that's silly. There are some folks who have never played a fighter, or a rogue, but to say that because they don't like those classes so the "material they'll never use" should be removed is just silly.

Again we're back to one of those impossible metrics about who plays what that's never going to get us any real progress. There are always going to be options that you're not going to use because you can only play one class at a time.(even if you're multiclassing you're still technically only leveling one class at a time).

What if I want to build a character that throws around his enemy by hitting them with a hammer? There's likely racial feats that interact with hammers and with pushing, and possibly with pushing hammers. There are several weapon-wielding classes, and some will likely have key powers and feats to enable this build. I'll never find the right rules without a significant system mastery. Especially if it turns out that I should be using a pole-arm for some feats (is there a weapon that's both?) or that this particular combination for sliding is a little easier so if I'm not too picky about pushing vs. sliding I could look at that...

So the limited immediate choices for a particular existing PC doesn't really prevent the problem; rather it's an excuse to release a glut of hyper-specialized feats. It's better to release fewer feats that combine in interesting fashions (retaining the fun of making interesting builds) while limiting the total number of character options rather than limit the interactions with unlimited numbers of options.

I personally don't have a problem with this. I once made a Tiefling paladin with a hammer-theme. The feats are not all that difficult to get and the PP Hammer of Moradin is pretty easily picked up too(all you have to be is a Paladin!).

Here too: more general feats & powers would help. If the feats & powers available to the paladin were largely also available to the cavalier this would be less of a problem.

[sblock=For exampleSo: fewer powers & feats, but no fewer choices by virtue of more generally applicable rules. Side benefit: this means that the individual rules can be worked out in more detail. Want to make a lightning bolt with an area of effect that doesn't quite fit the standard areas? Now you have space to describe those specifics. Want to describe the effect of a powerful strike on nearby objects? Want to make a tactically interesting surprising roundhouse strike by forcing attacks to resolve in clockwise or counterclockwise fashion, allies included, but without the ability to strike through solid terrain so that the user needs to take into account the state of the battlefield? You've got the space.

I'm advocating fewer feats but with fewer prerequisites. Rather than limit a roundhouse strike to a club wielded by a gnomish monk, let it take a penalty to hits equal to the armor check penalty, and reward high speed and small stature somehow, but leave the implementation flexible enough to be broadly usable.[/sblock]

I'd like to see this to come extent, the "you push things with your weapon of choice" feat or whatever. It would certainly limit the amount of material, but at the same time, I wouldn't mind a few of these pre-baked in specific packages. So while you could take the "I push people with my weapon" feat, there would also be the Hammer of Moradin package that would give you a bunch of these general feats already made into a hammer theme.

 

[Steely_Dan]

The 3rd Ed Hammer of Moradin PrC was juicy, which book is the 4th Ed PP version in?

 

[erleni]

The 3rd Ed Hammer of Moradin PrC was juicy, which book is the 4th Ed PP version in?

Divine Power

 

[Starfox]

Glut is the ugly rear end of having a wide range of options. A class system tries to make this more comprehensible by limiting the options by class. So even iof the game contains (say) 1,000 options, having 10 classes reduces this to 100 options that the player of each class has to contend with. The more you group powers like this, the more each class becomes a mould with no true freedom.

Each of us has to pick a point in this progression we are happy with. I prefer to err on the side of options - the homebrew I'm playing has no classes (tough it still has levels of a sort). Others prefer more rigid classes, with more fixed options.

Bu there is a third way out of this dilemma - abstraction. Give the characters function-related attributes with no detail - like Fighting, Charm, Investigation, Luck - and then let each player describe how he uses his powers. Playing a knight entails describing your Fight stunts as might sword strokes, playing a mage entails casting Fireballs - but mechanically they are identical. I think 5E is aiming at something like this (if not nearly this extreme as my example) - fight glut simply by reducing complexity.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Divine Power

Cool, thanks, though that's one 4th Ed book I don't have (what with being a DM all the time, why god, why?!).

 

[triqui]

Really? I never realized there were that many races and classes!

It's the official recount in the 4e database, yes. It includes stuff from Dragon, optional rules, and class/race variants

I disagree as "how much people are willing to read" is a really subjective and unreliable measure. Some folks may not be willing to read more than 2-3 entries, I don't think "how much the average player is willing to read" is really going to be a beneficial line of reason.

Sure it is subjetive. But the notion does exist. Everybody *does* have a limit on how much they want to read. You might find ok to read the 9000+ powers in 4e, but maybe you won't be happy to read 90000+. And if you do, you will not like 900000, or 9 millions, or 9 billions.

How much people does want X amount of stuff, is the key. I guess gamers are in a bell curve. Some (very few), will want as little as 8 options max (4 races, 4 classes, no other option). Some others will want to have, dunno, maybe 100000 spells or feats. The huge majority falls in between. I don't know the magical number, maybe it's 1000, maybe it's 10000, whatever. However, my point is, whatever is the magical glut number, WotC will get there, given enough splatbooks. It's a given. The only thing they can do, is to slow (or haste) the pace to get there.

And once glut is there, it's probably time to builtd 6e, Sisifo-like.

So saying "how much people are willing to read" which has no real definition, added to the fact that "how much people are willing to read" is expanded by how well they are engaged by the material(another thing we can't really measure), and how much exactly that is expanded varies from person to person, I don't think we're really going to get anywhere saying "well there should only be as much as people are willing to read" because what that is could be well, anything.

Sure. I'd be fond of 1000 boring feats, and probably will like 2000 interesting feats. This changes the *pace* of the glut. But I'd hate to read through 10000 feats, no matter how interesting they are. This is a hobby, a passtime. I don't want to need a Major Degree and 1000 hours of reading to play it