"I hate math"

[WizarDru]

The amount of time and complexity to do that IS the issue. I'm challenging you to get out of the box and THINK! Can't we have as good a game, without it being too complex?

The title of the thread is a direct quote from two different people at my table at Origins, that's why I chose it as the title, instead of something like "simplifying high level DnD to improve 4th Edition" as the title.

Well, I guess, for me, the issue is that I don't see it as a problem. Even at 23rd level, it isn't that complex for me. Creating monsters? Yeah, I wish that could be a little simpler....but the system itself? I don't really see it as a problem indemic to the system, but to individual tastes and groups.

Clearly, some players/DMs will ahve more problems with the system than others....but truthfully, the math can be as strong or weak as you desire it to be. The goals of a convention group are different than that of my weekly game, for example, and my group's style is radically different than, say, (contact)'s group. The character you listed can be broken down mathematically to a degree of certainty (one quick browse at some of the rules threads will show that). Of all of those bonuses, I don't really see anything more than some addition and some d20 rolls.

 

[Saeviomagy]

A Rogue with bracers of armor +3, Dex 18, ring of protection +1, amulet of natural armor +2, the Dodge and Mobility feats and fighting defensively. The Rogue moves through the threatened squares of a wraith and an invisible fighter wielding a longsword; ends his movement next to a Cleric holding an inflict light wounds spell in his hand and tries to initiate a grapple. The rogue has declared his Dodge vs. the Cleric.

What is his AC vs. each opponent for the AoOs he provokes?

You're just trying to be obtuse. Touch and flat-footed ac should be added up ahead of time (ie - you start with a base ac of 20, a touch ac of 15 and a flat-footed ac of 16 in your example).

Running past the wraith, his ac goes up by 4, to 24. Running past the fighter, he uses his flat-footed ac (unless he's got uncanny dodge) and doesn't get dodge bonuses, so his ac is his flat-footed ac (16). Finally, against the cleric, he uses his touch ac, plus his dodge bonus, for a 17.

I worked all that out, and the only thing I had to check was whether the rogue had uncanny dodge.

The only summing I'd have had to do as DM would be to add +2 to the fighter's attack bonus. All the rest of it is done by the player.

I honestly don't see what the problem is.

 

[woodelf]

You would be surprised how many players still don't know what their character can do after playing it for so long a time. There are players who just don't pay attention, who don't care, and who don't try to understand what all their characters can do.

Some players are just lazy, and despite the ease in which these situations could be helped, some just don't care.

or their brains just don't work in a way in which keeping the rules of D&D straight is easy for them. Or they play RPGs to have fun, and keeping track of lots of little details isn't fun and doing homework between sessions isn't fun. There're plenty of reasons for someone to not do well with D&D3E and yet not be a "bad player"--some of the best RPers i've ever played with were also some of the worst people to play D&D3E (or any other complex system) with. The fault is not with the player, but the system--or, perhaps, just an incompatibility between player and system. Give these same players a system that is simpler (Big Eyes, Small Mouth), or complex in a different way (Four Colors al Fresco), and they thrive and are a joy to play with.

 

[Saeviomagy]

You would be surprised how many players still don't know what their character can do after playing it for so long a time. There are players who just don't pay attention, who don't care, and who don't try to understand what all their characters can do.

Some players are just lazy, and despite the ease in which these situations could be helped, some just don't care.

Then penalise them for it. Institute a no-takebacks rule, and then ask them for their attack roll. Tell them the penalties that apply and let them do the bonuses. If they seem to be too high, ask what bonus they added. If they do it consistently just to make you work out what their bonus is, start declaring misses. If they miss bonuses, they missed bonuses.

Chances are that at least one of the players will know what's going on and will help them.

I mean really - for something as simple as adding up your melee and ranged bonuses, if the player can't be bothered, then his characters can feel free to repeatedly die until he gets sick of the game and goes away.

If a player can't be bothered to know his own character, why should I be bothered to give him an enjoyable game?

1. As someone already suggested, limit bonus types to a small number. Spell them out clearly and make a single consistent rule about what stacks and what doesn't. Require all official supplementary material to follow those guidelines.

Good idea. Particularly, I'd like to see luck, morale and sacred combined.

2. Eliminate or heavily restrict dependent bonuses/penalties. Bonuses/penalties shouldn't change during a normal game session very often and shouldn't be dependent upon your foes abilities/spells/feats except in very limited ways. Example: Eliminate the differences between "touch" and "incorporeal touch". There's no reason to differentiate between the two. Mage armor should either count against both or count against neither.

This is a really great one - eliminate exceptions. Mage armour is just like armour EXCEPT... The shield spell is just like a shield EXCEPT...

3. Eliminate buff spells that do nothing more than change a number on your character sheet and make magic into something "fantastic" again. IMO, any remaining buff spells should be "personal" range only.

Bad,bad idea. Suddenly the wizard and cleric are no longer party players, and/or buff spells just go out the window.

Or do you mean spells which boost statistics? I could certainly see eliminating bulls strength and that suite of spells, simply because noone uses them any more, but also because they're a pain.

 

[woodelf]

A Rogue with bracers of armor +3, Dex 18, ring of protection +1, amulet of natural armor +2, the Dodge and Mobility feats and fighting defensively. The Rogue moves through the threatened squares of a wraith and an invisible fighter wielding a longsword; ends his movement next to a Cleric holding an inflict light wounds spell in his hand and tries to initiate a grapple. The rogue has declared his Dodge vs. the Cleric.

What is his AC vs. each opponent for the AoOs he provokes?

Figuring this sort of thing out on the fly turns the game from "fun" into "work" for me. YMMV.

Well, if i were running things?

• 10
• bracers of armor +3: +3
• Dex 18: +4
• ring of protection +1: +1
• amulet of natural armor +2: +2
• and fighting defensively: +2

=22, if i remembered all the values right (i haven't played D&D3E in over a year now, and don't have any books handy to double-check things like the fighting defensively bonus).

So far, so good. Now, let's see:

• wraith: ignore armor for touch, which is five points, so 17 looks good to me
• invisible: ignore dex, which is 4 points, so 18
• cleric: more touch attack, but he's dodging the cleric, so 19

And that took me a lot longer to type up than to figure out. Now, i may have misremembered exactly which things count against incorporeal attacks, or invisible attackers, or whatever. So what? So long as i'm consistent, playing in good faith, and attempting to make some sense, who cares? What i just came up with is close enough, if not spot-on. The problem is in equal measure the complexity of the rules, and slavish adherence to them.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure: i played a D&D3E game for 2.5yrs, and it would take being paid to get me to run it, and it would take extraordinary circumstances to get me to even play it again. And i was only playing a monk with no buffing items. So i'm with you in the "this just isn't fun" camp. I just wanted to point out that some of this one brings upon oneself through playstyle--you can cut down on the mental gymnastics significantly by just playing fast-n-loose, without the need to switch to a completely different system. Of course, on the gripping hand, if you're not gonna use anywhere near all the detail, you may as well switch. And you'll probably be happier then, too. But if for some reason you're stuck with D&D3E, and you don't enjoy all the crunchiness, you can tone it down.

 

[woodelf]

You've said this a couple of times. Where is this math that you speak of? So far as I have seen, there was a deliberate effort by the designers of D20 to remove all math except simple addition and subtraction. All modifiers, bonuses, and penalties boil down to simple addition and subtraction. If you add a miss chance (which is either 20% or 50%) you may have to add a second operation when making an attack (one die roll), but that's as complex as it gets. The allusions to higher math I keep seeing in this thread seem to be based on fiction.

And multiplying by .5 and 1.5. Not that either of those is a particularly burdensome bit of math, but i do wish they'd been eliminated, 'cause they're sorta annoying to do on the fly.

 

[woodelf]

The only RPG I know that doesn't get more complex as the players gain in power (in games where character CAN appreciably gain in power) is RISUS. RISUS is a narrative game. All conflict is resolved the same way, be it swordplay or speed basket weaving. The winner of the conflict determines the outcome of the conflict. The losing swordsman cries in shame. The losing basket weaver impales himself fatally on a piece of wicker. Not every group is capable of that level of narrative play though.

Actually, there're lots of narrative RPGs that don't get more complex with increasing power: RISUS, Over the Edge, Dust Devils, Four Colors al Fresco, probably others. And i'd say that Everway, while a mix of narrative, simulationist, and even a touch of gamist, likewise doesn't complexify with increased "level". But, yeah, your basic point, and mine, stands: a gamist/simulationist RPG is pretty much gonna have to get more complex with increasing character capability.

POINT2: The title to this thread is wrong. The math is not complex in high level play. The interaction of choices is complex. You have to know that some +2 bonus to your AC is a deflection bonus, not a dodge bonus even though they are similar in effect. Some find this too complex to deal with. I wish the title of the thread were changed to "too many bonus categories".

Exactly: the actual math is somewhere between trivial and easy. But figuring out what math to do can be a headache.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Well, if i were running things?

• 10
• bracers of armor +3: +3
• Dex 18: +4
• ring of protection +1: +1
• amulet of natural armor +2: +2
• and fighting defensively: +2

=22, if i remembered all the values right.
So far, so good. Now, let's see:

• wraith: ignore armor for touch, which is five points, so 17 looks good to me
• invisible: ignore dex, which is 4 points, so 18
• cleric: more touch attack, but he's dodging the cleric, so 19

Not quite. This depends on the rogue's level, and whether or not he's tumbling to eliminate attacks of opportunity by movement (probably not).

Wraith: 20, as the Bracers of Armor +3 are effective against incorporeal touch.
Invisible: 22, assuming the PC has four levels of rogue, since he has Uncanny Dodge and doesn't lose his Dex bonus due to invisible opponents.
Cleric: 18...22-3 (Armor) - 2 (Natural Armor) +1 (Dodge).

I'm also unsure if he would be fighting defensively vs. the wraith and invisible fighter, since he's just moving when he triggers AoOs.

Brad

 

[woodelf]

Yes, I can. A story, as a work of the humanities, exists to transmit an original discovery of natural law from the teller to the recipient in a manner consistent with the manner by which that discovery originally occured. There is no such process extant in tabletop RPGs, ergo it is not a storytelling medium.

That's a pretty narrow definition of "story", and would eliminate not only a lot of things that are colloquially referred to as stories (anything that is entertaining but pointless), but almost the entire body of what is formally referred to as story in the study of folklore, since (1) folktales often transmit no discoveries of natural law, original or otherwise, and (2) the teller is generally not the originator of the story.

Your definition may be accurate as used in the study of literature, but i contest it if you're gonna claim it applies to "the humanities". And, furthermore, i'm not sure that a definition that far at odds with colloquial usage is useful outside of its originating discipline. Sure, RPGs differ in significant ways from most sorts of storytelling, but i think that, at least for some, they share enough crucial elements to be appropriately classified as "storytelling"--whether or not the product of an RPG session qualifies as "a story". If your goal is to create an interesting narrative, then why does it matter whether rules are involved or not, whether the story is spontaneous or retransmitted, whether there is one teller or many, or whether or not there is an audience? You are still storytelling. Now, if you play for other goals, and never retell the experience, i can certainly see the argument that you are not storytelling--but that's not the same as saying that no one playing an RPG is storytelling.

 

[WizarDru]

Actually, there're lots of narrative RPGs that don't get more complex with increasing power: RISUS, Over the Edge, Dust Devils, Four Colors al Fresco, probably others. And i'd say that Everway, while a mix of narrative, simulationist, and even a touch of gamist, likewise doesn't complexify with increased "level".

But does anyone actually play those games?

Seriously, do you have a link for RISUS? I've never heard of it, before.