How to use 3.5 DnD without the "Big Six"

[JohnSnow]

I actually find myself annoyed with D&D because of its overreliance on "the Big Six." Basically, they can be broken into:


* bonuses to attack and damage
* bonuses to AC
* bonuses to saving throws
* stat boosts (indirect bonuses to attacks, damage, AC, saves, skills, and spellcasting)


That said, it seems to me that to address this and make magic "magical" again, the game needs to do the following:

1) Increase the Saving Throw progressions. More specifically, make it so that the PCs don't NEED those save boosting items to be good. High Level PCs are, and should be, awesome because of WHO they are, not what they carry. Why does a high level fighter need save boosting items? Besides, requiring items creates a design problem. Do you design a CR 15 critter to challenge the fighter's will save or a wizard's? If you're challenging the wizard's will save, are you challenging him WITH save enhancing items or without? As a result, you've created a vast discrepancy in character power. Either the character spreads his bonuses around, raising his poor saves, and he's not as tough against those fows who challenge his good save as he should be, or he raises his good save and he's vulnerable to attacks that target his weak saves. Deciding that would be easier if saves were inherent to the classes (which they are...until you factor magic items into the equation)

2) Raise the bonuses PCs get to their attacks. You don't need a +4 sword if you get that +4 to your attacks (and +4 damage) you need to confront a CR 16 dragon without the item. To me, the obvious place to go for this is to create feats that provide those bonuses, or build them in as class abilities. Note that eliminating the mathematical bonuses still allows you to place "magic weapons" and have DR X/magic (more on that below).

3) Give the characters defense bonuses that scale alongside attack bonuses to eliminate the need for items that give +X to AC. That allows that high-level fighter to confront the CR 15 dragon without being all magically blinged out. (Although, if he's fighting a red dragon, it might be a good idea if he had a ring of fire resistance.) In that vein, it might make more sense if armor reduced damage and defense reduced your likelihood of getting hit. A side effect of this is that it may make it easier to describe combat, as a miss is a miss, whereas a hit is a hit, but potentially only lightly damaging.

4) Increase the number of "ability score improvements" available to characters. Honestly, what's the difference between a character with a +6 item and +5 to allocate as he sees fit, and a character with +11 points of ability score improvements? If you're worried about the character getting a +8 to a given ability score too early, you could limit the degree to which any ONE stat can be improved at a particular level.

5) Have artifact style items to cover things like the plot device set of items that turns someone from low-level nobody into a "mighty warrior" (like the wargear of Ashen-Sugar in Feist's Riftwar, or Temmer in Stackpole's Dragoncrown War). I understand the flavor reasons for items like those to exist, but they're definitely more "plot device" items than things which ought to be "routine."

Then you can focus on designing magical items that are cool, or let characters interact with their environment in new and exciting ways, rather than on things that increase the character's combat effectiveness. Shoes that allow the character to fly, walk on water, or operate underwater are fine, but buffs are, IMO, boring.

I would allow the weapon descriptors (magic, holy, etc.) and special properties (keen, flaming, etc.) to stay. The ability to bypass DR is cool and flavorful. But, now that there's no "DR X/+3," a magic sword is a magic sword - no statistical bonus necessary. If you want to simulate the ability of magic weapons to bypass mundane armor, you can have have mundane armor grant DR X/magic.

But that's just how I'd do it.

 

[delericho]

Use the "Iron Heroes" BAB progressions. (Upgrade the Wiz/Sor to the Cleric progression, the Cleric & Rogue to the Fighter progression, and give the Fighter a +1 per 4 levels. Don't give out more than 4 attacks per round though.)

Similarly, boost the save progressions. I don't have a handy scheme for this.

Replace the +1 stat point per 4 levels with a +2.

For armour, the thing to do might simply be to introduce class-based Defense bonuses. This also covers the Ring of Protection and the Amulet of Natural Armour.

Retain the 'special' armours and weapons, but increase the price of a +1 equivalent to be +2 equivalent, +2 becomes +3, +3 becomes +5, +4 becomes +6, and +5 becomes +8. Optionally, require magic armour and weapons to also be constructed of one of the special materials. (Introduce an 'Enchanted' special property, costed at +1, with the sole purpose of penetrating DR/Magic.)

Retire the Greater Magic Weapon spell, and the similar spells that enhance armour and shields. Retain Magic Weapon, but it now only grants the 'Enchanted' property. (Possibly replace Greater Magic Weapon with Magic Weapon, Mass, which affects 1 person per caster level.)

And I think that's more or less it. I would also quite like to remove the skill boosting items (Cloak of Elvenkind, Boots of Elvenkind, and the like), probably by granting every class 2 extra skill points/level, and increasing the max to level+5 (also changing Skill Focus to +5, and possibly allowing it to stack).

My primary goal in all of this is to get the numbers on the character sheet as close to the existing equivalents, so the CR system and everything else works reasonably okay. The other option, of course, is to just remove the items, and eyeball the challenges to work without... but I suspect this might be more work in the long run.

 

[Klaus]

Give every character a toned-down version of Vow of Poverty, called something like "Luck of Heroes".

 

[Kestrel]

Excellent ideas.

Would it break any licenses or rules for us to start doing this right now, in this thread?

One idea I had for a guideline was to use the gear listing for NPCs in the PHB2. That already breaks down the classes and what they purchase is almost exclusively the Big Six. Take those bonuses and apply them directly to the base classes they are listed with.

For instance: 10th level fighter: +2 weapon, +2 armor, +1 shield, +2 stat increaser

So add: +2 BAB, +3 AC, +2 stat

So on so forth, breaking it down level by level.

Another idea was inspired by the Harhall house rules (which I'm sure came from various system adjustments). How about getting rid of AC altogether and substituting BAB for Defense. Armor types as DR possibly or a bonus to the Defense.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I would say "Here, Player Characters, are your Free Bonuses!"

Level 1: Nothing
Level 2: +1 Attack and Damage
Level 3: +1 Saves
Level 4: +1 AC and DR
Level 5: +2 Ability Score A
Level 6: Nothing
Level 7: +2 Attack/Damage
Level 8: +2 Saves
Level 9: +2 AC and DR
Level 10: +2 Ability Score B
Level 11: Nothing
Level 12: +3 Attack/Damage
Level 13: +3 Saves
Level 14: +3 AC/DR
Level 15: +4 Ability Score A
Level 16: Nothing
Level 17: +4 Attack/Damage
Level 18: +4 Saves
Level 19: +4 AC/DR
Level 20: +4 Ability Score B
...etc.

"You're Welcome."

I might also give them less treasure to make up for it. MAYBE.

 

[Kestrel]

Kamikaze Midget...very nice list, but wouldnt you want to possibly break it down by class? The reason I suggest it is that some classes wouldn't necessarily want the same bonuses. (For instance, a cloth caster is probably not going to need the AC/BAB mods)

 

[I'm A Banana]

Kamikaze Midget...very nice list, but wouldnt you want to possibly break it down by class? The reason I suggest it is that some classes wouldn't necessarily want the same bonuses. (For instance, a cloth caster is probably not going to need the AC/BAB mods)

Sure, you could. But spellcasters don't have an easily increased "bonus." The spellcasters spend gold on wands, scrolls, staves, spell research, and stat-boosters. It's a bit harder to give them a flat, increasing, easy bonus if you're going to be targeting their specific strengths.

That said, when I adopted that list for Final Fantasy Zero, that's pretty much what I did...but for basic D&D (where DC boosts and Caster Level boosts and Spells/Day boosts are a lot rarer), it's harder.

 

[jmucchiello]

Kamikaze Midget...very nice list, but wouldnt you want to possibly break it down by class? The reason I suggest it is that some classes wouldn't necessarily want the same bonuses. (For instance, a cloth caster is probably not going to need the AC/BAB mods)

The multiclassing becomes an issue as these should not stack.

 

[Celebrim]

Use the "Iron Heroes" BAB progressions. (Upgrade the Wiz/Sor to the Cleric progression, the Cleric & Rogue to the Fighter progression, and give the Fighter a +1 per 4 levels. Don't give out more than 4 attacks per round though.)

Not to pick on you specifically, because you are by no means alone, but this is pointless power creep. Nothing will prevent the players from having this and attack boosting items or other enhancements. They will find a way, and frankly the game will be utterly different without at least some magic items anyway. The result of these sorts of boosts will be the continual race between monsters and players we've been seeing in 3.x.

Remember, Iron Heroes is based on the basic assumption that magic items don't exist. Unless you introduce this assumption and enforce it, boosting player stats similarly doesn't help. Moreover, to get Iron Heroes to work with that assumption, Mearls had to play a small trick. He turned every class into a spell casting class by giving them tricks that served much the same role as spells do in default D&D.

Also note that balance is a tricky thing to achieve. You'll never achieve it perfectly. Fiddling with large numbers of things at once just will make for a mess. Either make small changes or else rewrite the whole system. There aren't alot of other good options.

The big six is not in my opinion the problem anyway.

 

[delericho]

Not to pick on you specifically, because you are by no means alone, but this is pointless power creep. Nothing will prevent the players from having this and attack boosting items or other enhancements.

The unspoken assumption I was making was that this would be paired with a House Rule saying "the Big Six items (and similar spells) do not exist. You can't buy them, you can't make them, and you won't find them." With that rule in place, this power creep does not occur (assuming also that you get the maths right).

frankly the game will be utterly different without at least some magic items anyway...

The big six is not in my opinion the problem anyway.

The idea, as I saw it, was to remove the 'Big Six' item types so that the game will see a lot more use of more offbeat and little-used items. It's not really about correcting a problem so much as seeking a different flavour. (That's also why there's no need to go for the 'every class is a spellcaster' cheat from "Iron Heroes" that you described - characters still have magic items, just items of a different type.)

If I really wanted to remove all magic items from the game, I would simply shift to "Iron Heroes" (or a non-d20 system) entirely, because the rewrites would, as you say, be massive. If, however, all I want to do is remove the boring static bonuses from the game, then I require a rather smaller set of changes, in line with the ones I described.