How Mythusmage Would Change D&D for 4th Edition if Wizards Hired Him

[VirgilCaine]

@the topic of the mithril full plate and delericho:
Actually there is some rule about armour sizes beyond large, medium and small especially for full plate. If I may cite the SRD:
(Bold text by me).

Beautiful. Another reason IMC Full Plate of any kind is for the rich/nobles/etc.

Make the books bigger and nonstandard sized, maybe 21x12 1/2 and put holograms on the

...also known as the big ugly book that won't fit on a shelf...

 

[delericho]

Balance? What is this "balance" you speak of. Life has no balance. Life has opportunity. Life has opportunity to be clever and prosper. Life has opportunity to be foolish and fail. You think life is a game. Hah! game for children. Life is no game.

Okay seriously, I'm dumping balance. Balance is for tire alignment, not an RPG. You play a character living in an imaginary world. The real world is not balanced, why should an imaginary one be?

You might have noticed, but life isn't a game run under the d20 rules .

The single most important factor when developing a ruleset for a game should be whether the decisions taken make for a more fun game or not. As a rule, games where the player characters are on a reasonably close par tend to be more fun than games where they are not. (It is possible to run a fun game where one character is far more powerful than the others, but it needs handled carefully. Suggesting that as the default is unlikely to result in careful handling.) Game balance tends to lead to a more fun game for all involved.

(Consider this: would you play a game of Monopoly where all the other players started with twice as much money as you? And yet, there's no reason why the starting funds should be the same - they're not in real life.)

Challenges, opportunity, that is what an adventure is for. And the chance to make an ass of yourself. Furthermore, people in real life differ in their ability. Why should it be different in an RPG?

It's not. 8th level characters are of far greater ability than 1st level characters. The game already handles the difference you want. However, it is useful for the game to have one measure of ability that indicates rough equivalence of capabilities. It is useful to be able to say, "He's a 4th level character", and have that statement mean something. If nothing else, it allows players to bring in a new character to an existing campaign, be able to ask what level to create his character, and not have to worry about whether that's a 'good' 4th-level, a 'poor' 4th-level, or somewhere in between.

Seeing that everybody participates as much as they wish to is the province of the group, GM and players alike. You can artificially balance the PCs as much as you like, it won't help a dang bit when it comes to encouraging participation.

I disagree. If Bob the Fighter and Clive the Knight of the Hidden Moon adventure together, and Clive can do everything that Bob can do, and do it better, then Clive will end up doing at least as much as Bob in every situation. The more powerful character will be more involved in the events of the game, simply by virtue of being more powerful.

The question is not how do you balance an 8th level Wizard of the Blushing Moon (not a real organization) against a 10th level standard Wizard, but how the 8th level WotBM can contribute to the group and participate in the adventure. Or even an 8th level standard Wizard in a 10th level party. How do you encourage participation, that is the question.

In my experience, it is easier to encourage people to participate when their characters aren't overshadowed by the more powerful characters of other members of the group.

Another thing to remember here is that members of organizations gain extra skills and abilities non-members don't. So our 8th level Wizard of the Blushing Moon will be better than an 8th level standard Wizard, and possibly even a 9th level standard Wizard. But, it takes time to learn these extras, time taken away from adventuring. And they are in addition to the standard skills for the class. That means more time to advance. You concentrate on a few skills you will advance faster in them than someone learning a broader range.

Player 1: I'm taking a level of the Wizard class.
Player 2: I'm taking a level of the Wizard class. Don't forget my extra Blushing Moon Training. It takes a month.
DM: Okay. A month passes...

If membership of an organisation requires in-game time commitments of a PC, the DM has four choices: skip that in-game time, turn that in-game commitment into an adventure in its own right, force the player to sit out the game while the rest of the group plays through that in-game time, or force the player to run a different PC for the duration of the in-game time.

The first option removes any penalty from joining an organisation. In effect, not joining an organisation ceases to be a viable option, which sucks if you were going to play the rootless wanderer type.

The second option not only removes the penalty of joining the organisation, but turns the penalty into an advantage.

The third option is certainly not going to encourage participation, and is not going to make for a more fun game. Either everyone will join an organisation, or no-one will.

The fourth option is the best solution, but it's hardly satisfying. It leads to one (or more) players running backup characters for much of the campaign, waiting while their 'real' characters are ready to play again. These backups are disposable, which is hardly going to result in player involvement in the game - the player doesn't care about the backup character, so isn't going to be concerned when he's placed in mortal danger.

The analogy is with magic item creation in the game as it stands now: groups just gloss over this time, and rightly so. It's called downtime, and it's skipped because it just isn't interesting. Balancing characters by relying on the use of downtime is hardly a good idea, IMO.

It is not my purpose to make comfortable changes, it is my purpose to make effective changes.

An effective change in the wrong direction is worse than no change at all.

 

[Turjan]

You have apparently never played GURPS. Attacker makes attack roll. Defender makes defense roll. Combat takes twice as long as it should.

I also recommend Stormbringer. Attack- parry - attack - parry - attack - parry - ...

This goes on until the first weapon breaks !

 

[Turjan]

Dear WotC, for once I hope you don't listen to your fans :\

Hehe ! Perhaps, a special edition of a Fantasy Heartbreaker is okay !

 

[wedgeski]

Okay seriously, I'm dumping balance. Balance is for tire alignment, not an RPG. You play a character living in an imaginary world. The real world is not balanced, why should an imaginary one be?

It is not my purpose to make comfortable changes, it is my purpose to make effective changes.

While I appreciate your intent is to design the game exactly as you would like to see it, this does not necessarily mean that you are designing a game that anyone will play. If you want to dump balance, design a life simulator, not an RPG, or any game for that matter.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

I am not a fanatic for game balance. I actually kind of liked the whole "You can only be a paladin if you have ability scores this high" and was unbothered by the fact that the paladin at that time was "Fighter++" But then, I was always tall for my age, and that never helped more than at the amusement park.

That said, since I tried my hand at DMing, I can safely say that balance helps. Unless you also intend to change the power progression to something more linear, an 8th level character w/ organization benefits really MUST be within a tolerable distance power-wise of the other characters at 10th level (to continue using the same numbers). The power increase from level to level is so significant, that if you don't maintain some kind of balance, the under-leveled people die real fast. And then they hamper the rest of the party. And then everyone is having less fun. Alternatively, the "Fighter++" Paladin just rules combat to the point that no one else feels like they're contributing. This is also a fun decreaser.

I appreciate iconoclasticity in all its forms. And I do think that there are fallacies inherent to game balance, but are you perhaps throwing out the baby with the bath-water? Perhaps you are also redesigning advancement in general, or you intend to change the nature of encounters to avoid making a the level difference such a drastic impact on survivability and contribution to combat. (Not that I think the game need revolve around combat. But combat, after all, is the only thing that we really NEED rules to address) But unless you are changing those things drastically, this organization system seems to introduce significant mechanical problems for a minimal and abstract benefit.

 

[Macbeth]

So, basically, a character from an organization gets some special abilities, spends some extra time training (possible including some roleplaying action, special tasks, or an XP penalty), and can be compared to a character of a higher level?

This sounds like a Prestige Class to me.

Consider: 8th Level Wizard Frank of the Giddy Goat gets a special spell selection, a bonus feat, and some skill points or skill bonuses. Frank is now an 8th level wizard plus some special abilites tied to being a member of the Giddy Goat, which makes him equivalent to a 9th level wizard. In exchange, he has to undertake a quest for the High Cheeses of the Giddy Goat once every year.

Consider: Joe, Wizard 8/Giddy Goat Initiate 1 gets all the abilites of an 8th level wizard, plus the abilities of a first level Giddy Goat Initiate (which include special spell selection, a bonus feat, some skill points, and whatever other bonuses the class has). AS part of joining the PrC, he had to undertake a quest for the High Cheeses, and as part of the roleplaying requirements of the class he must undertake a quest for the High Cheeses once a year. Since doing this for the organization is part of the requirements for the PrC, the DM can stop the player from taking new levels is he doesn't do his bit for the High Cheeses. Joe is the equivalent of a 9th level character.

Joe and Frank are both the same, power wise, but Frank is only 8th level, which means that a published adventure for 8th level adventurers won't work well for Frank, but a published adventure for 9th level adventurers would work fine for both..

Seems to me like these organizations that provide benefits that boost a character above others of his level are just stealth PrCs, except since the characters level never rises, an un-prepared DM might underestimate him.

If you want some characters to be more poewrful for joining an organization, slip them some extra XP and have them get a level ahead of everybody else in a PrC for the organization.