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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6208753" data-attributes="member: 1465">Of course any rule will have its own issues. My proposal is admittedly driven by my desire to keep it as simple as possible. All these examples would not stack under my proposed rule. I don't know if I would want some of these to stack. I don't have a strong opinion on any of these, they may stack they may not... therefore they may just not! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I don't think it's a good idea to agree upon a rule here, based on narrative opinions on what should stack, because those can be very different among people. For example, someone may very much think that the shield on the left and the defending weapon on the right work independently, thus they should stack. Someone else may think that they aren't necessarily independent [i.e. you can hardly use them both against the same attack], so their combined bonus doesn't have to be the sum of them. The problem is that we can argue forever about each case, and this is not a good approach IMO for defining a default rule.A caveat we can keep in mind, is that there is nothing to stop a DM to say that in her campaign these 2 magic bonuses stack. But the opposite would be true also, if they stacked (as they do now) and I don't like so, I can say that in my campaign instead they don't. It's a caveat just to lessen the flames of the discussion a bit, but of course it can't be used as an excuse for making you accept my proposed rule... Here, I just mean to say that I don't worry too much about the specific cases, but rather about the overall results of the default rule.With that in mind, here is my concerns summarized:- if nothing stacks, we are going to need at least some exceptions (cover, shields), and it would be quite awkward for players, to frequently find instances where the get a bonus from race and class but they don't add up, then they take a feat and realize it doesn't work as expected etc.- if everything (mundane and magic bonuses) stacks, there's a chance of threatening bounded accuracy and of encouraging min-maxing, xmas tree effect, etc. plus (maybe) more frequent calculations during combat- if mundane bonuses stack but magic bonuses don't (my idea), those problems are significantly lessened, since mundane bonuses are limited in number while magic bonuses can accumulate almost without limit, and since the bonuses which update more frequently are those from spells being cast during combat- if we go back to a keyword-based system with plenty of keywords, all those problems remain, the only difference is that the difference between players with "system mastery" and the others is increase (we know this from 3e)- if we use a keyword-based system with only few keywords (like your example), it also lessens those problems, but it's definitely an extra chunk of rules to learn, even for a group which doesn't use a lot of magic items</blockquote>

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