tomBitonti
Hero
Hi,
I was running through a number of "design points", and am looking for feedback on the following.
Note that I distinguish these from "design goals", such as: Increasing fun, decreasing tabletop disagreements, increasing immersion. Those are goals that the design is measured against, and I consider them to be separate from the actual design.
*) No fixed DC for success between leveled agents. (So, having a fixed DC for breaking a simple wooden door is OK. Having a fixed DC for a player vs monster or NPC is not OK. For example, Tumble, which some house roll to fix. Has anyone tried this for casting defensively?)
*) Skills should be noted as being Ability Dominated or Skill Dominated. Level bonuses should apply at most minimally to ability dominated uses.
*) Most activities can be attempted untrained. That means that anyone can at least try to use a magic device, or trip someone.
*) Feats should not enable skill uses, just make those particular uses easier. (This is in response to a number of feats which unlock special uses of skills.)
*) Special attacks should be limited to 1 per round (e.g., trip and power attack), probably by making these a standard action.
*) Spells or feats should rarely break established mechanics. That means no spell that allows a ranged attack that removes the attack-of-opportunity (see the spell compendium).
*) Abilities from feats must have a unified mechanic. This needs to be applied ruthlessly, per the engineering adage. I'm thinking: Trip, Power Attack, Overrun.
*) The simple increase of abilities by increasing levels (adding +1 to AB or DB, for example), should be rethought when these increases are very easily factored out. That is, when both AB and DB increase by 1 (or a fixed amount) per level, or when PVP/PVM skill values increase by a fixed amount. As an example from 3E: The addition of natural armor bonuses to compensate for increases in attack bonuses.
*) Be very careful (and therefore avoid) abilities that have a multiplicative use. For example, Combat Reflexes multiplying across dexterity bonus.
*) Skills that are core to a class (for example, athletics for a fighter, or knowledge: Arcana for a wizard, or knowledge: Nature for a druid, or Knowledge: Geography) should automatically increase with level. (This seems to be an interesting way to define classes: Pick a number of "core" skills and define a class selection by this skill selection.)
As a side note:
There are a number of skill uses which are scattered across the splatbooks. Many of these are enabled by feats. Have these ever been collected into a single compilation? (The rules compendium has a lot of it, but how much is missing?) How much work is there to do to pull together the skill uses from all of the available sources and fit them into a framework where many more can be tried by anyone / where the particular uses are practically "unlocked" by increases in skill level?
I was running through a number of "design points", and am looking for feedback on the following.
Note that I distinguish these from "design goals", such as: Increasing fun, decreasing tabletop disagreements, increasing immersion. Those are goals that the design is measured against, and I consider them to be separate from the actual design.
*) No fixed DC for success between leveled agents. (So, having a fixed DC for breaking a simple wooden door is OK. Having a fixed DC for a player vs monster or NPC is not OK. For example, Tumble, which some house roll to fix. Has anyone tried this for casting defensively?)
*) Skills should be noted as being Ability Dominated or Skill Dominated. Level bonuses should apply at most minimally to ability dominated uses.
*) Most activities can be attempted untrained. That means that anyone can at least try to use a magic device, or trip someone.
*) Feats should not enable skill uses, just make those particular uses easier. (This is in response to a number of feats which unlock special uses of skills.)
*) Special attacks should be limited to 1 per round (e.g., trip and power attack), probably by making these a standard action.
*) Spells or feats should rarely break established mechanics. That means no spell that allows a ranged attack that removes the attack-of-opportunity (see the spell compendium).
*) Abilities from feats must have a unified mechanic. This needs to be applied ruthlessly, per the engineering adage. I'm thinking: Trip, Power Attack, Overrun.
*) The simple increase of abilities by increasing levels (adding +1 to AB or DB, for example), should be rethought when these increases are very easily factored out. That is, when both AB and DB increase by 1 (or a fixed amount) per level, or when PVP/PVM skill values increase by a fixed amount. As an example from 3E: The addition of natural armor bonuses to compensate for increases in attack bonuses.
*) Be very careful (and therefore avoid) abilities that have a multiplicative use. For example, Combat Reflexes multiplying across dexterity bonus.
*) Skills that are core to a class (for example, athletics for a fighter, or knowledge: Arcana for a wizard, or knowledge: Nature for a druid, or Knowledge: Geography) should automatically increase with level. (This seems to be an interesting way to define classes: Pick a number of "core" skills and define a class selection by this skill selection.)
As a side note:
There are a number of skill uses which are scattered across the splatbooks. Many of these are enabled by feats. Have these ever been collected into a single compilation? (The rules compendium has a lot of it, but how much is missing?) How much work is there to do to pull together the skill uses from all of the available sources and fit them into a framework where many more can be tried by anyone / where the particular uses are practically "unlocked" by increases in skill level?
