Evolving editions?

[GreyICE]

And saying that there are things like chains of dependency and interactions doesn't make it so either. I still haven't seen a single example of one. Every time I ask, I just get pointed to bad rules that already exist. I don't see how that's supposed to demonstrate any inherent difficulty in creating houserules.

Well lets start fixing the monk. I just gave him full BAB, is there a problem with it? I upped the hitpoints he could heal per day to 4xhis level and let him heal up to 2xlvl in any given combat as a swift action. I made the magic item bonuses come swifter, and introduced monk fist weapons that could add other magical properties onto the monk's strike. I also made quivering palm 1/day and upped it to 2/day at 20th level, and fixed it to work off dexterity, not a secondary stat, to reduce MAD.

Did I break anything?

I dunno.

Bet the quivering palm fix could be intersting, but I just literally don't know.

 

[Jhaelen]

If that's evidence of a system that's difficult to houserule, then 2e with skills and powers must have been the most difficult D&D system to houserule that ever existed. Or maybe 1e with UA.

What made it difficult, imho, was that 3e introduced very clear guidelines about encounter design.

Now, in hindsight most people agree that the challenge ratings given in the various monster manuals weren't particulary accurate, but they were still better than having no guidelines.

Basically, as a DM I felt I had to make sure that if I made changes affecting the PCs, I'd also have to make sure to adjust the encounter levels to keep the balance and vice versa.
E.g. what's the effect of granting every pc a feat every two levels instead of every three levels. How much more powerful do they get?

What happens if I increase their skill points per level or get rid of non-class skills?

Normally, you'd think, it wouldn't have much of an effect, but one important side-effect was that it allowed pc's to meet the requirements for prestige classes earlier than expected by the prestige class's designer.

And something like this could seriously change a party's power level, trivializing encounters that should have been challenging for them.

Since monsters used the same rules as pcs, you'd also have to be aware of the effect of making changes to the pc rules. This ís also why it was easier to create monsters in 1e, 2e, and again in 4e: Different systems for monsters and pcs.

No. I remember a lot of hullabaloo about the monk being underpowered, though.

I still remember people feeling the monk was overpowered since monks eventually became immune against most anything and didn't really require equipment. Clerics were actually felt to be underpowered and people clamoured for better prestige classes...

It took a while until people had a good idea about what made a class powerful and what didn't. The designers didn't have a clue either. E.g. the front-loaded class abilities that encouraged excessive multi-classing.

 

[Desdichado]

Well lets start fixing the monk.

Well, first tell me what problem exactly you're trying to fix. Exactly what's "wrong" with the monk is hardly an item of general consensus.

I just gave him full BAB, is there a problem with it? I upped the hitpoints he could heal per day to 4xhis level and let him heal up to 2xlvl in any given combat as a swift action. I made the magic item bonuses come swifter, and introduced monk fist weapons that could add other magical properties onto the monk's strike. I also made quivering palm 1/day and upped it to 2/day at 20th level, and fixed it to work off dexterity, not a secondary stat, to reduce MAD.

Did I break anything?

Probably not. What's MAD? In my group, we rarely play monks because we just don't like them much conceptually, I think. I don't have enough experience to eyeball that and get a feel for whether or not they seem reasonable. If you'd proposed changes to the rogue or the ranger (for example), I'd be all over it, though.

I dunno.

Bet the quivering palm fix could be intersting, but I just literally don't know.

There's an unspoken assumption that without playtesting you'd know for any other system. I'm scratching my head here a little bit trying to understand how that's significantly different for 3e than it is for 2e. Or Savage Worlds. Or Rolemaster. Or Runequest. Or ... I dunno, or than any other system. If you're familiar with the problem that you want to fix, then it shouldn't be difficult at all to estimate what the impact of tweaking the areas that are causing problems are. Let's say that you think the soulknife, which conceptually is supposed to be a psionic ninja of sorts, feels under-powered in its main role, which should be combat. Do you just give him a fighter BAB instead of cleric BAB and be done with it? I did. I don't know why I'd have given any thought to be inordinately worried that I'd have caused some kind of cascading effect that would have ruined my game (in fact, I didn't.)

I mean, I see your point about system obtuseness... I just don't think that the system is particularly obtuse relative to most other systems.

 

[Desdichado]

What made it difficult, imho, was that 3e introduced very clear guidelines about encounter design.

Now, in hindsight most people agree that the challenge ratings given in the various monster manuals weren't particulary accurate, but they were still better than having no guidelines.

Basically, as a DM I felt I had to make sure that if I made changes affecting the PCs, I'd also have to make sure to adjust the encounter levels to keep the balance and vice versa.

I'm sorry, but that sounds like sophistry to me. Giving us tools to help us balance encounters made balancing encounters more difficult, because basically we just didn't care about it until we had rules to help guide us? And now that we have these guidelines, suddenly what was never important before is so important that we're stressed out about it, and feel uncomfortable making changes that would effect these guidelines which... let me reiterate... we never had nor cared about before?

Correct if if I'm somehow fundamentally misunderstanding where you're going with this.

E.g. what's the effect of granting every pc a feat every two levels instead of every three levels. How much more powerful do they get?

What happens if I increase their skill points per level or get rid of non-class skills?

I guess I'm still sufficiently old school enough in my play paradigm to not care.

Normally, you'd think, it wouldn't have much of an effect, but one important side-effect was that it allowed pc's to meet the requirements for prestige classes earlier than expected by the prestige class's designer.

Also not seeing how that's a concern.

And something like this could seriously change a party's power level, trivializing encounters that should have been challenging for them.

First off, you're assuming that prestige classes are more powerful than regular classes. I'd argue that that's only true if the prestige classes are badly designed. Granted, many of them are, but that's not related to how difficult the system is or isn't to houserule. Again, if anything, it's incentive and motivation to houserule, not to not houserule. Secondly, in my experience, the factor that has the most significant--to the point of completely trivializing any other factors--impact on making encounters more or less difficult than the GM plans them to be, is a handful of rolls during combat. A blown save, a critical hit, a round or two where one side gets a bunch of whiffs and the other side does higher than average damage, etc. Somebody having a level or two of a prestige class earlier than the designer thought they would seems completely inconsequential in comparison.

And lastly, if you're finding that encounters are easier than you think--after a couple of encounters, buff up the NPCs or monsters a bit. Give them a few more hit points, or an extra +1 or +2 to damage. Throw on a template if you feel like you need to go so far as to mechanically represent that "correctly" in the rules.

This kind of ongoing kaizen-style tweaking of encounters throughout a game is a key GMing skill. Always has been. If we've somehow lost that as a community because folks have been leaning on the ECL/CR system instead of using their judgement, well that's not the system's fault.

And it doesn't have anything to do with the system being harder to houserule.

Since monsters used the same rules as pcs, you'd also have to be aware of the effect of making changes to the pc rules. This ís also why it was easier to create monsters in 1e, 2e, and again in 4e: Different systems for monsters and pcs.

No you don't. Why would you assume that because you change rules related to PCs that you need to go update statblocks of monsters? That's a complete strawman. That's not true at all.

I still remember people feeling the monk was overpowered since monks eventually became immune against most anything and didn't really require equipment. Clerics were actually felt to be underpowered and people clamoured for better prestige classes...

It took a while until people had a good idea about what made a class powerful and what didn't. The designers didn't have a clue either. E.g. the front-loaded class abilities that encouraged excessive multi-classing.

Yeah, I remember. **shrug**. I also remember that I didn't start with major houserules the first few weeks or months I played the game either. After 12 years of playing d20 games, though, I'm pretty confident that I can make changes to aspects of the system that I don't like and be pretty confident that I can predict what the impact is going to be. In fact, I consider doing so trivially easy.

Plus, and this is true for any system ever, not just 3e--sure, you never know for sure until you playtest a change. And after playtesting, you may find that additional tweaks are required to get it just right. But again; I don't think that's at all unique to d20. Quite the opposite, in fact.