Mearls: Abilities as the core?

[Anselyn]

IHow about this scenario, a boxed set expansion for the boardgames (Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon) allowing simple chargen and task resolution using abilities and adding non dungeon encounters. Still DM'less but with the ability to score allies and/or helpful items. The game will culminate with a dungeon crawl.

An intriguing idea.

Having tried out Arkham Horror, I just thought I'd rather get on and play CoC. But I have to admit that it's a great boardgame - that fails to be a gateway to the roleplaying experience of the same thing.

A proper boardgame gateway to D&D would be interesting.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Basic D&D - Simple essential styled characters level 1 to 10
Spell casters have a pretty restricted list of powers. No skills, or feats. Non combat task resolution via attribute checks. Can use the reqular 4e monsters and monster vault.

DM advice and encounter and adventure advice.

Basic D&D paragon tier introduces paragon paths and feats, however, no multiclassing or hybrids.

This is what I was thinking.

Want that go to AD&D (formerly known as 4e)

Rather, go buy normal D&D. The same 4e as is on sale now, branded the same. Then, if you want optional rules like weapon speeds and old-style memorization spellcasting (or whatever), go pick up one of the AD&D line of supplements. Optional rule modules that add complications, but don't mess directly with the math.

 

[TerraDave]

You can create any number of justifications for this type of character. A weak, arthritic fighter could be an elderly master of a forgotten fighting style, and there are tons of examples in westerns where the clumsy drunk is the deadliest shot in the west. Young and naive clerics and idiot savant wizards are also classics of the genre.

You can legitimately question whether these character types are realistic. (I have it on good authority that small, elderly martial arts masters go flying when they are kicked in the chest by larger, younger martial arts masters.) In a more "realistic" game, a GM might want to limit characters that are exceptionally poor in the relevant areas. However, these are clearly legitimate concepts for a large number of games. I don't see why the rules should keep them from being playable.

-KS

But is this a role-playing question or a mechanics question?

I say my fighter is 60, but has great experience and tough as nails. Do I go with low physical scores, or decent one, and RP the difference? (my back!). In mechanic terms, if your charecter has a low str or dex, he has to be bad at something. He has to not be able to wear heavier armor, or not climb well, or get hit often. There has to be a mechanical implication.

The drunken fighter or shot is the same thing. He is clumsy when it doesn't count or the player feels like it, but not when it counts (think of him stumbling across a tight rope). Or the "idiot" wizard who know everything on arcana, the young cleric that has an uncanny sense of things...

You should be able to RP a concept you want, but that doesn't mean you have to mess up the mechanics to do it.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

An intriguing idea.

Having tried out Arkham Horror, I just thought I'd rather get on and play CoC. But I have to admit that it's a great boardgame - that fails to be a gateway to the roleplaying experience of the same thing.

A proper boardgame gateway to D&D would be interesting.

Yes Arkham Horror was what I was thinking of.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I can see where you're going with this, but this is way more ambitious than what I was thinking about. I was thinking something more along the way of Essentials, just taken to an extreme. I was thinking if you didn't want to use skills, you could pick a Basic class like Fighting Man or Magic-User that doesn't get skills and uses abilities for everything, but has it's own math to compensate.

If you do a design as I'm discussing, then when you have the structure of the design all working and functional--you have to make some compromises for marketing, playability, expectations, etc. But you make the compromises around the edges, in the naming of things, etc. Not in the structure. Little tweaks that "you'd really rather not" on the edges don't mess up the fundamental design.

This is also why I think something like a Basic D&D expansion of the board games might be a business success, and might even be well designed within its limits (and thus fun to play)--but is ultimately something that will frustrate a lot of people. You try to bolt something like that onto 4E, even as an intro, then you are constrained by what 4E is now. This is highly unlikely to be a perfect match with the structure you need for a scalable complexity game. Your other alternative is to alter 4E, but I think that is worse than just doing a new system.

It might work to do a new structure, but not a whole new game, and then bolt the basic version and 4E to that (making a few compromises), with the intention of evolving 4E into a better fit for the structure later. I doubt it, but it might.

 

[Markn]

Lower commercial success could easily lead WotC to make the lifecycle of 4th edition shorter than the lifecycle of 3rd edition. So, I think it's perfectly plausible to imagine WotC working on a 5th edition now. That having been said, it takes a long time to make a major edition upgrade and one would imagine that WotC is fairly early in that process. Unless this is part of a much larger effort to rope in 3rd party support (which would probably result in some design leakage), any sort of announcement seems quite premature.

Agreed. I would think that a new edition is at least a 2 year cycle and I believe we are in the early stages of that. I think the lessons learned from 4e is that it is more important to get it right than set a release date - at least I hope that was a lesson learned! At any rate, if this is the first design via community feedback, then the process may take even longer. I think all the calls for an edition announcement at Gen Con this year are a bit premature. You have to have something close to completion before you can announce it - people want details after all. But something new is most definately on the horizon.

 

[KidSnide]

You can create any number of justifications for this type of character. A weak, arthritic fighter could be an elderly master of a forgotten fighting style, and there are tons of examples in westerns where the clumsy drunk is the deadliest shot in the west. Young and naive clerics and idiot savant wizards are also classics of the genre.

You can legitimately question whether these character types are realistic. (I have it on good authority that small, elderly martial arts masters go flying when they are kicked in the chest by larger, younger martial arts masters.) In a more "realistic" game, a GM might want to limit characters that are exceptionally poor in the relevant areas. However, these are clearly legitimate concepts for a large number of games. I don't see why the rules should keep them from being playable.

But is this a role-playing question or a mechanics question?

I say my fighter is 60, but has great experience and tough as nails. Do I go with low physical scores, or decent one, and RP the difference? (my back!). In mechanic terms, if your charecter has a low str or dex, he has to be bad at something. He has to not be able to wear heavier armor, or not climb well, or get hit often. There has to be a mechanical implication.

The drunken fighter or shot is the same thing. He is clumsy when it doesn't count or the player feels like it, but not when it counts (think of him stumbling across a tight rope). Or the "idiot" wizard who know everything on arcana, the young cleric that has an uncanny sense of things...

You should be able to RP a concept you want, but that doesn't mean you have to mess up the mechanics to do it.

I agree that there has to be a mechanical implication, I just think the mechanical implication should be something other than "your character is mostly useless." As it is right now, a Str 12 fighter can't fulfill the defender role and is little more than a joke. But if you just use roleplaying and have a Str 18, then the character is inappropriately good at athletics and doesn't get the mechanical benefit of a high wisdom.

For an old fighter, maybe it's harder to wear such heavy armor, make those athletic checks (or maybe even do quite so much damage), but he can still hit (and land the "hit" based effects of his powers). And, he gets the benefit of being good at perception and unusually effective at fighter Wis powers. That type of character might be somewhat less effective than a pure Str fighter (who does consistently more damage), but it's an interesting, different and viable character.

A core goal of the character creation rules should be to allow players to create a variety of interesting, different and viable characters with minimal rules overhead. Right now, if you want to play a Wis-concentrated melee defender, you need to write a whole new class. Fighter has a minor in Wis. Why can't I use Fighter for that? The answer: because WotC gave too much importance to the primary (to hit) attributes, severely restricting effective character builds for little benefit.

-KS

 

[TerraDave]

Now we are almost nit-picking. You can make a high Wis fighter in 4E (or ranger is 3E) and get something out of it. I guess its a harder build...(edit: you can also do some of this through which skills are trained...)

But I think the freedom you are implying suggest another approach. I mean, the fighter is not supposed to be that elaborate of an archetype. And its not clear to me that it should be.

Point buy...deemphasized ability scores...Later editions of Mutants and Masterminds take this approach--str and dex don't affect attacks--but that is a genre were your powers can have many different sources. In any case, it would be far easier to make the charecter you describe there (and he can fight crime!).

 

[ExploderWizard]

It's worth mentioning that Gygax said on these forums themselves that he very often gave players ways to raise their attributes. Though the rules made them out to be entirely static, that's not how they ended up in play.

Providing possible ways to increase stats is not the same thing as being entitled to stat increases per the rules of the game.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

But I think the freedom you are implying suggest another approach. I mean, the fighter is not supposed to be that elaborate of an archetype. And its not clear to me that it should be.

Point buy...deemphasized ability scores...Later editions of Mutants and Masterminds take this approach--str and dex don't affect attacks--but that is a genre were your powers can have many different sources. In any case, it would be far easier to make the charecter you describe there (and he can fight crime!).

Restraining ability scores can help, but not without other changes too. The problem with ability scores is not that they are emphasized, but that they stack with level, feats, magic items, etc. into one final number to hit. There may be other good reasons for restraining ability scores that are good all by themselves (I can think of a few possibilities), but the real problem here is that "fighter gotta hit," and hitting is "stack everything that applies to hitting".

If you want real variety in fighters, then add options that are important to the role, that don't rely on hitting something.