Mearls idea on modifiers in D&D

[jmucchiello]

Man, there is a serious problem if Excel is required to play a game.

You misunderstand. My character sheet is sheets of paper. The sheets of paper have lots of boxes on it like a speadsheet. Read my post above again. I said there are two kinds of pages, summary pages where you just have the fully modified bonus and the worksheet page where you have empty boxes for every possible modifier. At first level the worksheet box is superfluous. At 28th level most of the bonus types are in play and you use the worksheet to see what goes where.

I suppose I should have said my character sheet is ledger book since ledger books are the pen and paper version of spreadsheets.

Unless it's a flight simulator (bonus points if you understand this joke)

I understand but I don't have Excel 97 with which to run it. But you can't blame Dan Bricklin for that. (Bonus points back at you if you knew who he was before you went to google.)

 

[jmucchiello]

Let's take JUST the on-the-fly stuff that you manage while you're conducting a combat. Each combatant can be subject to up to 49 different conditions (flying, prone, flanking, etc.).

Oh, and there are 149 different "modifiers" to those conditions (uncanny dodge, blindfighting, obscurement, etc.)...

That's just in the SRD people.

That's not attack rolls, armor classes, damage, and hit points, and all the things that will modify them.

That's just "condition" and "modifiers".

Good luck, high level DM's!

I can't tell. Are you being serious or facetious? Because I know I've never had anyone subject to all 149 different modifiers to those conditions at once. Nor were they flying, prone and flanking while grappling during a bull rush at once. In fact of 149 different modifiers as you call them, most players have fewer than 12 of them over a bunch of levels. I guess I've been fooling myself that our group plays epic level D&D and never has a problem with the various modifiers.

When you play the character from 1st through high level, you know what modifiers you have and how to handle them. When you DM a character through his lifetime, you know what the character (and tactically, the player) will bring to bear. It ain't rocket science. Proper organization simplifies it greatly. (Maybe I need to sell a character sheet along with a "how to use this sheet effectively" PDF.)

 

[billd91]

Let's take JUST the on-the-fly stuff that you manage while you're conducting a combat. Each combatant can be subject to up to 49 different conditions (flying, prone, flanking, etc.).

Oh, and there are 149 different "modifiers" to those conditions (uncanny dodge, blindfighting, obscurement, etc.)...

That's just in the SRD people.

That's not attack rolls, armor classes, damage, and hit points, and all the things that will modify them.

That's just "condition" and "modifiers".

Good luck, high level DM's!

There were lots of modifiers back in earlier editions of D&D too. Check out the weapon vs armor types tables in the 1st edition PH if you want modifier overload. At least in most 3E character sheets I've seen, there are plenty of places where you can easily reverse-engineer the character back to basics when they enter that anti-magic field. Gotta love that BAB field and temporary stat values.
And as far as conditions go, there's now a single place to go to look all of them up in a concise way. That's a significant improvement.

3E/3.5 may have a lot of mods, sure. But I've found they're more regularly and readily understandable than in any previous incarnation of the game.

 

[Fishbone]

I wish somebody would have clued me in on the notecard trick when I was playing the bard.
"Don't forget I..." was the most said phrase by me in that campaign. Many the near miss I turned into a confirmed crit because of my reminders of that +1 from Elation or that +4 from Inspire Courage. Dungeons and Dragons is a numer crunching exercise after the 11th level. And God help you when you run the BBEG monster with three NPC lackies and a fisful of NACLs. Players have it rough but its BRUTAL on the DM.

 

[ashockney]

I can't tell. Are you being serious or facetious? Because I know I've never had anyone subject to all 149 different modifiers to those conditions at once. Nor were they flying, prone and flanking while grappling during a bull rush at once. In fact of 149 different modifiers as you call them, most players have fewer than 12 of them over a bunch of levels. I guess I've been fooling myself that our group plays epic level D&D and never has a problem with the various modifiers.

When you play the character from 1st through high level, you know what modifiers you have and how to handle them. When you DM a character through his lifetime, you know what the character (and tactically, the player) will bring to bear. It ain't rocket science. Proper organization simplifies it greatly. (Maybe I need to sell a character sheet along with a "how to use this sheet effectively" PDF.)

I'm very, very serious. I've DM'd high level D&D dozens of times, and I've had to manage and juggle over a hundred modifiers at one-time routinely. At high level, you're just simply past "notecard" options. Have my players had 149 modifiers to 49 conditions at once? No, of course not. But it sure does become more complex when the access to spells, magic items, and abilities that create, prevent, or modify various conditions become more prevalent.

Otherwise, I agree, that it's not rocket science. Can it be managed? Sure! Do I use excel spreadsheets as a DM, and do my players? Of course. You should have seen my epic cleric's spreadsheet layout. He's a professional business analyst, and he built a masterpiece that pre-calculaed and rolled for him, in all the various stages of buffiness he had available to him, and that was A TON! Of course, it didn't help him that I was constantly trying to dispel him! : )

 

[ashockney]

There were lots of modifiers back in earlier editions of D&D too. Check out the weapon vs armor types tables in the 1st edition PH if you want modifier overload. At least in most 3E character sheets I've seen, there are plenty of places where you can easily reverse-engineer the character back to basics when they enter that anti-magic field. Gotta love that BAB field and temporary stat values.
And as far as conditions go, there's now a single place to go to look all of them up in a concise way. That's a significant improvement.

3E/3.5 may have a lot of mods, sure. But I've found they're more regularly and readily understandable than in any previous incarnation of the game.

Oh, yes! Weapon vs. armor, now that was a table! Or, just go back to old school rolemaster, where every weapon had an entire damage chart for use against 20 different armor types. Ahhhh...chartmaster. Those were the days!

In simplicity, not an improvement over 2nd edition. There is real beauty in the complexity, however, and 3rd Ed helped to really illustrate some innovative ways to combine "effects" into broad "conditions" such as concealment and cover.

For 4th edition, I hope the designers continue in that direction and recognize how much simpler and more elegant the game can become by continuing to work in that direction.

 

[Greg K]

Or, just go back to old school rolemaster, where every weapon had an entire damage chart for use against 20 different armor types. Ahhhh...chartmaster. Those were the days!

My group has decided that they want to switch back to rolemaster for fantasy.

 

[zoroaster100]

I don't have much problem with simple environment modifiers. I do, however, have a problem with the incredibly complex assortment of modifiers from spells, magic items and class abilities which create a math problem out of every attack, saving throw, etc. This is especially the case with things that are temporary, like spells that run out part way through a fight. I think something has to be done to simplify things. Spell durations should be "one combat" instead of rounds/level, for example (the rules already do that for exhaustion after a barbarian's rage, for instance, so why not spells). There should be fewer modifier types or else a limit on the number of buff spells that can affect someone at a time.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Then add in what Bull's Strength might add (variable), area effect assist spells (prayer, bard song, etc.), and so on...then change it all next session when you pick up a different weapon. Yikes!

Strange that I never have problems with this.

First of all the animal buff spells are useless. They're enhancement bonuses. No one uses them.

Then stuff like prayer? Aid? Bless? Rarely cast, however that's what the other sheet of paper is for, the one that you record current hp, nonlethal damage, and things like that.

What you do is simply make a column, then put whatever affects are on you. So, lets say you do have a bless effect on you. What you do is write down +1 attack in that column. When the duration runs out (which the caster is tracking), you cross it out. When you decide to attack, you read off everything on that list and add it.

Perhaps the problem is that people are trying to remember these things themselves, with pure memory? That's what scratch paper is for! Somebody casts enfeeblement on you? Write it down, when the DM tells you its gone, scratch it out. And don't write down -3 Str if you have it cast on you. Write -2 attack -2 dmg down instead. Work in modifiers that mean something.

And, when he gets a new weapon, that can be handled between sessions easily by the Player. Never been a problem, and this is an NPC, not a PC, so I'm doing this as a DM with no problems.

So, careful planning with common strategies and scratch paper, and it works quite well.

The hardest part isn't keeping track of the modifiers for us, its having the spell effects readily available, which we're working on by keeping spell cards. I actually bought those in 2E and making some in 3E can really speed up things a lot. Looking up spells (since we don't have nearly all of them on cards) is probably the most time consuming aspect of high level play IMO.