"Metadesign Principles of D&D"

[Plane Sailing]

"all classes should be equal fun to play at all levels"

This was why they went to the unified xp chart, amongst other things. Notice that I didn't say 'equally powerful' quite deliberately - the issue isn't power, it is fun-ness to play.

Cheers

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I think there would be a meta-design principle that effects that strongly debilitate only weakly kill and vice versa. The goal is to avoid the so-called "death spiral" when the first attack guarantees victory -- the oh so loved and oh so hated "I am still 100% effective at 1 HP" syndrome.

(The notable exception would be attacks against Con because they generally degrade the Fort save. Nothing so ugly as seeing your buddy get swarmed by spiders and take 7 points of Con damage from the first attack in the Surprise round...eewwww!)

Not sure how to state that succinctly.

 

[hong]

I think there would be a meta-design principle that effects that strongly debilitate only weakly kill and vice versa. The goal is to avoid the so-called "death spiral" when the first attack guarantees victory -- the oh so loved and oh so hated "I am still 100% effective at 1 HP" syndrome.

(The notable exception would be attacks against Con because they generally degrade the Fort save. Nothing so ugly as seeing your buddy get swarmed by spiders and take 7 points of Con damage from the first attack in the Surprise round...eewwww!)

Not sure how to state that succinctly.

"No death spirals"?

 

[Joshua Randall]

This is somewhat off topic, so forgive me.

A while back, in a lengthy e-mail discussion with one of the 3.x designers, the point came up that there are several rules in the game that are mostly there just because they were there in 2e.

For example, Spell Resistance (SR). When the 3.0 design team was porting over the spells, it was much, much easier just to retain SR rather than revisit the entire rule (SR did get translated to a DC rather than a %, of course). However, does SR really add to the game? It's yet another complexity on spells, and its game effect could be duplicated by sufficiently large saving throw bonuses.

Another example is (Su) vs (Sp) vs (Ex). One big reason for these distinctions is the existence of the anti-magic spell. Ditch that spell, and there is really no reason to make such fine Su/Sp/Ex distinctions.

My point is that we might be reading design principles into D&D that are not really there. Some of the rules are just there because they were always there, and it was simpler to port them over than to rewrite them completely.

 

[domino]

"No death spirals"?

What you can tend to get if damage attaches penalties.

If you say that damage leads to a penalty to attack and AC, then if you get hit first, your chances to hit back drop, and your chance to get hit AGAIN increase. And if the penalties are cumulative, then you get hit once, you're likely to get hit again, and again, and again, all the while being even more unable to attack back.

 

[Hypersmurf]

What you can tend to get if damage attaches penalties.

It wasn't a "What's a death spiral?" question; it was hong's attempt at putting the design principle succinctly

-Hyp.

 

[domino]

Dur. I missed that last part.

 

[Plane Sailing]

For example, Spell Resistance (SR). When the 3.0 design team was porting over the spells, it was much, much easier just to retain SR rather than revisit the entire rule (SR did get translated to a DC rather than a %, of course). However, does SR really add to the game? It's yet another complexity on spells, and its game effect could be duplicated by sufficiently large saving throw bonuses.

It is a sufficiently different concept that they had to do something different. Many spells still have an effect if you make the save... they have no effect if they don't bypass SR, so large saving throw bonuses would have a very different effect.

Cheers

 

[Shade]

One that I wish would go away:

"A spell does not need to require a saving throw if it requires a touch attack."

Sure, there are spells which require both, but this is the main conept behind rays.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Here's a couple:

"Don't model the same thing twice. If you're going to add a rule or mechanic, double check to see if it's already handled by some other rule, possibly from an angle you weren't thinking of."

Example: A recent thread on making weapon damage relative to the target's size. This is already modelled by the number of hit die a creature has, CON bonuses and change in weapon damage relative to the weilder's size.

"Game mechanics given as percentages are not meant to be adjustable by the characters the way a d20 mechanic is. "

Examples: Arcane Spell Failure, stability roll when dying. This is a "hidden rule" cited by Monte Cook.