D&D 3E/3.5 Meta engine of 3.5

[Evenglare]

Is there a site that breaks down how everything interrelates in the 3.5 realm? This may not be understood, im not looking for the rules of 3.5 im looking for how 3.5 was created. For instance each class, to my knowledge, is based off of their Base attack advancement or HD (doesnt really matter the starting point because they are both sort of top tier in class formation). So your HP and BAB are intrinsically related right? 1/2 advancement of BAB gives you a d4, 3/4 BAB advancement HDs are d6 or 8 right? Anyway, im looking for someone that has stripped the system down and examined how everything relates to everything else.

 

[Manabarbs]

I don't think there is one or can be one, because TTRPG design isn't that exact of a science. In general, classes with full BAB have d10 or d12 HD, Classes with 3/4 have d6 or d8, and classes with 1/2 have d4, but that doesn't even hold up throughout the PHB - the Ranger has a d8 HD and full BAB. I wouldn't be surprised if there are plenty of other exceptions scattered throughout the system. There's no hard and fast rules for what sort of spellcasting progression you're allowed to have with various HD and BAB or anything like that. Skill points are all over the map. Saves are all over the map. In general, classes that are strongest in some areas are weaker in other areas - if they weren't they'd just be all-great or all-terrible - but there aren't any rules. The reason that large HD and high BAB tend to go together is that characters with high BAB are weapon combatants, and we imagine weapon combatants as typically being tougher. (Plus most weapon fighters are melee fighters, so they're tougher to not just get killed super easy in combat, since they can't protect themselves with distance as easily.)

That doesn't mean that 3.5's design was unprincipled (although there are places where early estimates about the relative value of different features were perhaps somewhat off), just that it doesn't decompose into anything like a set of axioms. There are certainly tendencies, but those are driven as much by tradition and by the fact that the game hews to resonant fantasy tropes as they are by any big rules about what a class is allowed to be like. Classes can only really be evaluated holistically.

 

[pemerton]

My understanding is that the Trailblazer 3E clone (I hope that's a fair description of it) does an analysis of this sort - though I think it may be more focused on action resolution than on class building.

 

[Hussar]

I think there are a few analyses along these lines.

Upper Krust is known to have done some pretty stellar analysis of the CR system: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?66470-v4-Challenge-Ratings-pdf-(3-5-compatible)

That should be a good place to start.

 

[the Jester]

Is there a site that breaks down how everything interrelates in the 3.5 realm? This may not be understood, im not looking for the rules of 3.5 im looking for how 3.5 was created. For instance each class, to my knowledge, is based off of their Base attack advancement or HD (doesnt really matter the starting point because they are both sort of top tier in class formation). So your HP and BAB are intrinsically related right? 1/2 advancement of BAB gives you a d4, 3/4 BAB advancement HDs are d6 or 8 right? Anyway, im looking for someone that has stripped the system down and examined how everything relates to everything else.

It is totally not that simple.

There are probably d4 classes (or at least prestige classes) that give you a different BAB advancement than "slow", and there are any number of d8 classes/prestige classes that give you "good" BAB.

A given class (ideally, anyway) is a careful balance between mechanical bonuses (e.g. BAB, save boni), abilities (can this guy cast spells? is he immune to fear? does he smite?), skill progression, etc. There are really no hard and fast rules to it, as long as the final product comes out balanced. And it's often hard to say what the value of a given ability, BAB progression or whatever is; for instance, "+1d6 damage against aberrations" is much better if you can cast aberrate 2/day.

It's all about the total package, rather than the parts.

 

[Dandu]

Unfortunately, the designers did not correctly value each part, which lead to some pretty odd (and hilarious) results.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

There were a number of efforts to deconstruct and/or back-engineer character classes in order to provide a set of guidelines useful in constructing classes from scratch, like the one here. As others have noted, many of the initial balance assumptions of 3.X transpired to be somewhat off-key in practice.

 

[innerdude]

Is there a site that breaks down how everything interrelates in the 3.5 realm? This may not be understood, im not looking for the rules of 3.5 im looking for how 3.5 was created. For instance each class, to my knowledge, is based off of their Base attack advancement or HD (doesnt really matter the starting point because they are both sort of top tier in class formation). So your HP and BAB are intrinsically related right? 1/2 advancement of BAB gives you a d4, 3/4 BAB advancement HDs are d6 or 8 right? Anyway, im looking for someone that has stripped the system down and examined how everything relates to everything else.

I have the Trailblazer PDF, mentioned by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. You could certainly do worse than to start there. It's most instructive for comparing relative class strength for purposes of encounter building, but their mechanical breakdown, particularly for relative success / failure at different levels, is fascinating.

DriveThruRPG has it for $5 I think.

 

[Manabarbs]

There's additional complication when you look at the whole edition in that the design itself doesn't treat various features as having a constant cost. There are two strains of design in 3.5 expansion books (with some stuff in the middle.) The first recognizes that the PHB is home to most of the strongest and most of the weakest classes in the entire edition, and essentially abandons the PHB's valuation of the relative worth of different features, shooting for a middle ground. The drawback of this design is that it tended to produce classes that were either obsolete on arrival and mostly thematic choices as a result (Warmage), in the cases where the class was a fairer version of a very powerful class, or classes that made the PHB classes look like chumps (Warblade). The second strain of design treats the PHB classes as acceptable baselines and bases the relatively value of things around that. These designs essentially agree to roll with the PHB's estimates, which means that the designs produced by this method tend to fall fairly close in power level to the PHB classes they're based on. The drawback of this design strategy is that it produced additional crazy powerful monster classes (Archivist) along with more total wastes of space (Samurai).

Designs that use the first strategy essentially are reassigning the abstract "point values" that the PHB picked; they recognize that no, having a large HD and a full BAB is not on its own around as good as having access to a massive spell list.

It's also difficult to weigh things across the edition's lifespan because the value of things changes over time, although not all things. If "d10 HD" is a 20-point feature with just the PHB, it remains somewhere in that range even when you throw in all of the edition's material. If "unrestricted access to the cleric spell list" is a 600-point feature with just the PHB, though, it might be a 1200-point feature with everything accessible because that's more spells.

 

[delericho]

Is there a site that breaks down how everything interrelates in the 3.5 realm?

Trailblazer is the best I've seen in this regard. But you should also be aware that although 3e gives an impression of mathematical rigour, in reality it was constructed largely on a "best guess" basis. Things like multiclassing, monsters-as-PCs, magic item creation, and everything above about 10th level actually got vastly less playtesting than they should, and only work if the group are more or less determined not to break the game.

And it's also the case that the 3.5e revision received even less playtesting than did 3.0e. Many of the 'improvements' made in that revision are actually nothing of the sort.

For instance each class, to my knowledge, is based off of their Base attack advancement or HD (doesnt really matter the starting point because they are both sort of top tier in class formation). So your HP and BAB are intrinsically related right? 1/2 advancement of BAB gives you a d4, 3/4 BAB advancement HDs are d6 or 8 right?

There's a correlation there, but nothing more. In Pathfinder BAB was deliberately tied to Hit Dice (with the exception of the Barbarian's d12), but this isn't the case in 3.5e (where the Ranger gets good BAB and d8 hit dice, while the Barbarian gets d12 and the same BAB). Basically, the designers put things together because they 'felt right', and then went to playtesting.