David Noonan on D&D Complexity

[delericho]

I thought it was funny that they thought "Dispel Magic" caused problems. Dispel Magic has been part of the game since D&D began.

The problem is all of the buff spells WOTC added in 3.X, not Dispel Magic.

Actually, it's more insidious than that.

Neither Dispel Magic nor the buff spells are complex in isolation. They're two fairly simple game elements. The complexity comes when the two interact, and particularly where the Dispel takes down some but not all of the suite of buffs the target has active.

I think that's a factor in a lot of the complexity issues of the game, actually - the individual elements are each quite simple, but the interaction between them becomes complex, and gets more and more complex as the levels are increased and the number of elements go up.

Another example are the stacking rules. The rule itself is actually very simple: two bonuses stack if they have different types, but not if they have the same type. But it immediately becomes more complex once the exception is made that dodge bonuses stack, that circumstance bonuses stack but only if they're from different circumstantial sources, and that unnamed bonuses stack again from different sources.

And then, you suddenly have to start checking every buff that's applied to make sure the right bonuses are added. Does Righteous Might stack with Bull's Strength? With Gauntlets of Ogre Power?

 

[delericho]

Something to remember when looking at this, and I believe this has been brought up already, is that this is the absolute high end on the complexity scale. This is the biggest of the big fighting the baddest of the bad. It doesn't get any worse than this as far as complexity goes.

99% of gaming will never be this complex.

Indeed. Although I think I'd still like some tweaking done to reduce the complexity at that high end. In particular, those particularly complex interactions could use some adjustment.

I really get the feeling that complexity at the table is the result of DM's who want to run every single detail. I don't bother. I trust my players to be able to run their characters within the bounds of the rules. I run the monsters and they run their characters.

That would be nice

Unfortunately, the problem I see is that players are very quick to add bonuses to their characters, but much less quick to mind the limits of those bonuses, or to apply penalties. So, when "Divine Power" is cast, they very quickly add the +6 to Strength, 'forgetting' of course that it doesn't stack with their Belt of Giant's Strength +6.

Likewise, if a character is Blessed, Hasted, Fatigued and Divine Powered, I can be quite sure that if one of the modifiers is 'forgotten', it will always be the Fatigued condition.

Is that cheating? Probably. But I'm not going to call one of my players a cheat when he's got plausible deniability, since I would quite like to retain them as friends, and don't want to see the game collapse over something like this.

So, as the DM, I do need to apply at least some of the 'processor load' to keeping the players 'honest', or else the NPCs are in even worse straights than they are normally.

(Plus, of course, there's the problem that in my last group, two PCs were run by 'expert players' while the other two were run by 'casual gamers'. Nothing wrong with that, except that when we got to high levels there was a need to have some input, to prevent the former two running away with the game.)

 

[Particle_Man]

I think the grapple rules are generally just fine and I don't understand why everyone fusses about them so much.

My group has been gaming since before 3.0. We just this week realized that you don't have to worry about the chance of hitting a buddy when someone not in the grapple does a meelee attack into the grapple. That "problem" only applies to missle weapon attacks, apparently.

Actually my big beef with grappling rules is that the big strong monsters are too good at grappling, and the game becomes less fun for the players. "My turn? I am grappled? I make a grapple check. Oh look, I failed *yet again*. Joy." Here I think realism could have taken a back seat to fun.

One big problem I have with complexity is cascading rules. Fatigue/Exhaustion reduces strength and dex, which impacts on skills, saves, and the ability to use feats. It may also impact on one's encumbrance level, which can affect one's movement rate, and max. dex bonus for AC, etc.

How much easier it would be to say: "Fatigue: -1 on all to hit and damage rolls. Exhaustion: -3 on all to hit and damage rolls."

 

[Justin Bacon]

Third. You may be missing the point of what complexity I'm and others are talking about. Slapping some fighter and rogue levels on a goblin is easy. And a hard fight isn't complex. But a combat where each PC has at least four different buffs on them, each with different durations, against enemies that have buffs as well, where then someone gets nauseated and daed, another is held and affected by a ray of enervation, someone else grapples and a low maneuverability flyer is around and then an area dispel is dropped- that's just to much for many and usual from mid level on.

Let's get concrete: What would you get rid of, exactly?

I'm probably not the best person to be trying to come up with a solution (because I've never spent an hour statting up a dragon and have to wonder what, exactly, people are doing during that hour which is taking up so much time), but there are a few tools and changes which would greatly simplify my prep:

(1) Buff spells should be standardized to one of two durations: Short and Long. This will make it much easier for me to prep "buff package" stat blocks for my villains. That would give you 2-3 stat blocks for a villain capable of buffing: Unbuffed, with a full buff package, and (optionally) with just the long-term buffs (because the short-term buffs have worn off). And you've only got 1-2 timers for all your buffs, rather than trying to figure out six different timers for nine different spells.

(2) Separate out active abilities in the stat blocks. (They've already started doing this to some degree.) Since I was originally playtesting 3.0 back in '99, my adventure prep included not only separating out the key abilities that would impact the battle, but also including a short summary of their game effects. (So I might have "POWER ATTACK: -X to attack, +X to damage".) This adds a couple of minutes to the prep, but it streamlined gameplay immensely. And I never discovered, half-way through the battle, that the creature actually had damage reduction or energy resistance that I hadn't been applying. Recently I've run a couple of modules out-of-the-box without re-prepping the stat blocks, and I'm constantly losing information in that big block of text.

(3) A large number of pre-selected spell lists built around different concepts/themes. The largest time-killer for me in prepping any stat block is spell selection. If I could have some standard spell lists that I could plug in and tweak as necessary, this would drastically reduce my prep time.

(A comprehensive and matching resource for spellbooks would be great, too. As treasure goes, spellbooks are a PITA to prep.)

(4) A supplement containing nothing but stat blocks for archetypal characters (knights, sages, swashbucklers, etc.) from 1st to 20th level. Because, again, it's easier to take something and tweak it than trying to build it from scratch every time.

This is also why dragons are harder to prep than other creatures, IMO: They don't have a stat block that you tweak, they have a unique toolkit that you use to create a new dragon every time. (Although I think they fixed this to some degree in 3.5, IIRC: There are a few sample dragon stat blocks. But dragons are still mostly a unique toolkit, whereas something like an ogre just uses the standard character building rules now.)

To some extent, I satisfy #3 and #4 in practice by looking at the bulk of material I've either prepped or purchased over the years and stripmine it. "Hmm... I need a spell list and I want his guy to be throwing fireballs around. Where's my notes for that 8th-level fire mage they ran into a couple years ago? I can probably add a couple of levels and a new race to that."

I guess my overall point here is that I still want all the options. I would just like to have the tools put in place to make it easier to prep and use those options.

 

[Hussar]

But, again, how often does fatigue actually come into play? Other than a very few specific spells and monsters, I don't think I've ever seen fatigue come into play. Exhaustion? Never.

 

[Justin Bacon]

Is it more complicated than a straight up attack? Probably. Is each step more complicated? Not really. Just follow the steps. What would likely help most people who have trouble with grapple is if they had put a diagram of a flowchart in the book to illustrate the process.

Here's the trick: I can memorize the basic combat rules. I can't memorize a flow-chart.

That's the problem with the grapple rules. And it's a problem with several of the combat maneuvers described in the PHB: They're not simple variations on the core mechanic. They've got all kinds of odd little special-case rules that I had to look up every time until I prepped a comprehensive cheat sheet that did the work for me.

Charge is a well-designed combat maneuver: Move up to double your speed, +2 to attack, -2 to AC. You do that a couple of times and you'll have it memorized and never need to look it up again. Grappling, bullrushing, and overrunning are poorly designed in his respect.

 

[Justin Bacon]

Another example are the stacking rules. The rule itself is actually very simple: two bonuses stack if they have different types, but not if they have the same type. But it immediately becomes more complex once the exception is made that dodge bonuses stack, that circumstance bonuses stack but only if they're from different circumstantial sources, and that unnamed bonuses stack again from different sources.

Here's a query: Has anyone ever found a reason for circumstance bonuses to be typed bonuses? The reason "dodge" is a typed bonus is because you lose that bonus if you lose your Dex bonus to AC. That's a mechanically useful distinction. But, AFAICT, circumstance bonuses are mechanically indistinguishable from unnamed bonuses. Which suggests that circumstance bonuses shouldn't exist.

And then, you suddenly have to start checking every buff that's applied to make sure the right bonuses are added. Does Righteous Might stack with Bull's Strength? With Gauntlets of Ogre Power?

This is relatively simple if you can remember (and can condition your players to remember) to write down not just "+4 strength" but "inherent +4 strength" or "enhancement +4 strength".

 

[Justin Bacon]

One big problem I have with complexity is cascading rules. Fatigue/Exhaustion reduces strength and dex, which impacts on skills, saves, and the ability to use feats. It may also impact on one's encumbrance level, which can affect one's movement rate, and max. dex bonus for AC, etc.

How much easier it would be to say: "Fatigue: -1 on all to hit and damage rolls. Exhaustion: -3 on all to hit and damage rolls."

Easier, yes. But it stops Fatigue from affecting your ability to Jump, Climb, and Tumble -- which it should probably be doing.

The trick here is simply one of application: You don't try to go through and find all the cascading effects and modify them. You simply make a note of the penalty or bonus off to one side and then, whenever you're attempting to do something, ask yourself: "Is this affected by this Strength penalty or bonus?"

The exception is the "buff package". If it's a package that's going to be regularly applied to a character, it makes sense to track all the cascading effects for that as part of your prep. (The key word there, however, is "prep". As opposed to "in the middle of combat".)

 

[Gold Roger]

Let's get concrete: What would you get rid of, exactly?

Waht exactly do you mean. How I would change to be more streamlined/easier to use?

If that's what you mean, some of the stuff I'm thinking of:

1) Definitely reduce the durations on buffs to those that last for one encounter/part of one encounter and long duration buffs that last all day. I see no reson why the duration of beneficial spells should be measured by caster level. (I actually suggested a system for this only a few weeks ago). Also definitely put a limit on the number of beneficial effects that can be on one person at a time.


2) Drastically reduce the number of conditions. Do we really need shaken and sickenend (which are almost the same). Stunned, nauseated, dazed and paralyzed? Frightenend and paniced? Dazzled? Fatigued and exhausted?

The current number of conditions is extremely hard to remember. And it only gets worse when people start to be affected by multiple at the same time.

But I just don't think we need all these conditions, because many could be folded together and distinguished purely by flavor (One can be stunned by nausea or fear).


3)Reduce the amount of named boni. The nothing with the same name stacks rule is pure genious. Until you've got 10+ types of boni on every stat. Different flavor shouldn't authomatically mean it's a different bonus.


4) Give all spellcasters some at will abilities, which allows the following change to happen:

Drastically reduce the number of spells per day. This means sometimes a spellcaster casts only one spell per combat. More or less remove spell level and let any slot used for any spell, make all spells scale equally by level, but open up certain effects not before a certain levels.


5) Introduce certain currently non-core options that ease play to the core. For example sudden and immediate spell.

Why? They are easy to use and intuitive. I hate to use protection from Energy. But Energy Aegis (PHB2) is a great example how extra options can indeed easen up your games. No forecasting, no keeping track of duration and energy type, no dispelling, no foreplanning. Just scrap the spellslot and reduce the damage.


6) The combat maneuvers definitely need streamlining. But I haven't spend enough thought on that issue yet.

 

[Particle_Man]

But, again, how often does fatigue actually come into play? Other than a very few specific spells and monsters, I don't think I've ever seen fatigue come into play. Exhaustion? Never.

If you have never seen fatigue come into play, then there is no reason to have that rule in the book, is there?

If one rarely sees fatigue come into play, then this makes things worse when it *does* come into play, because on top of its complexity you now have unfamiliarity.