My preferences for D&D are odd

[ferratus]

I got kinda lost with the mix of " Combat abilities (such as Hit Dice and Amour Class) largely cap at level 10" and "epic god-like mythological battles". How does that work, gods have a CR of 12? To have an epic tier your combat abilities need to keep going up.

Apotheosis will change the nature of the game, just as having a keep will. It is going to be less about being strong enough to defeat a supra-powerful entity through a dungeon crawl, and more about creating demi-planes, influencing a civilization through the centuries, and general meddling with mortals. Sure, you might dust off your character sheet (now with a few immortal abilities slapped on) but directly playing your character in standard D&D combat won't be what you do most of the time.

The demon lords and godlings themselves will probably not be faced without defeating and eroding their power base first. So you might have diversions to the heroic tier where priests of your cult, a descendant, or a child you begot on a mortal woman do battle with his minions and followers on the mortal plane and give you power through their victory. A diversion back to the paragon tier might have your church call a crusade against the cult of the demon lord, or your royal line might face a conspiracy from the cult of the demon lord strengthening your position. You might send a flood, or a plague, or some other curse against the civilizations of your enemies, or give a divine gift of a new technology, a baby boom, or some other blessing.

Then battered and weakened, the demon lord can be dealt with on your plane of existence in a ragnagorok/last judgement smackdown. The personal power of your character doesn't end with the heroic tier after all, but it does slow down a lot after those first 10 levels.

 

[ferratus]

I think the original vision for henchmen and strongholds was as money-sinks for rich, high-level characters so as to keep the characters hungry and going back to the dungeon for more. And I think to the extent that post-1e editions had these things, they were there because they were D&D tropes, not because anyone had done much thinking about how they'd work in play.

That sounds very plausible to me. Certainly that would explain why the biggest concerns were how much it cost to build a stronghold, and how much followers and henchmen cost per day.

I think the underlying engine you want -- ascending AC and unified mechanic, but without at-wills, diplomacy or DC and retaining a lot of Moldvay/Cook's clean simplicity -- could be exapted from Basic Fantasy. You'd need to add on the conditions.

I've skimmed over the rules, and yes I think the combat chapter could be a good baseline, but there is a bit too much nostalgia for me to be interested in most of it. I don't see why anyone would want to resurrect the saving throw tables and the cleric undead turning table for example.

The high-level gameplay you want sounds reminiscent of Traveller[snip]

I don't think I could get a hold of that, at least not for the price I'd want to pay for rules I'd extensively rewrite.

 

[ferratus]

We can work within those parameters. I think it would be easiest to start with 4e and work backwards.

Certainly I'll be importing huge swaths of 4e. The rules on conditions and a simplified (or more flexible) powers system would pretty much necessitate that I start with the 4e combat chapter. However, the very fact that I'll want a combat system that is minis optional will require that I can't stay there. Likewise because I want a combat system that can allow me to make full use of minis when the mood strikes me means I can't use 1e or 3e or the Rules Cyclopedia as my baseline for the combat system either.

I think 4e kind of encourages this already (especially with the lack of epic creature-threats out there). Simply highlight these thematic tones in your adventure-design, and you should pretty easily be able to pull it off.

I'd do that if I was completely satisfied with 4e's gameplay mechanics. But largely 4e is designed for dungeon crawling from levels 1-30. It is how you gain XP, and XP is how you gain power. It certainly was the case that older editions paid lip service to having strongholds and noble titles, while in practice you simply abandoned your keep to do more dungeon crawling, and paid attention to it only when the DM attacked it.

I'd like to make the stronghold/ruling/politics aspect of the game a way to gain gold and increased character power like they had in birthright.

I don't understand. If you cap them both, the miss chance becomes static. Perhaps what would work better is if you capped defenses, but allowed bonuses to increase (at a slowed rate (perhaps 1/3-1/5 levels, instead of 1/2).

There will still be a slow increase in power, but I imagine that it will largely depend on gaining more wealth, magic, divine favour, elixirs of immortality, etc. until you gain a immortal apotheosis of some sort. However, your spells and combat will largely be capped at level 10, where you have become a "master" of your craft. I'm largely picturing sending out heroic tier followers to continue the adventuring for you, giving people chances to try out new characters (and character classes) while still maintaining the same ongoing campaign.

Of course, this will mean that most monsters will be able to be defeated by a 10th level party, while an 11th-20th level party will have an easier time of it but not laughably so. The exception to this will be a special class of BBEG, which maybe have to be defeated by figuring out his weakness. The Lich would be the prototype for this type of bad guy.

I think if you simply required that your PCs describe their skill uses before rolling, you would eliminate this (and other) problems associated with them. "Describe" does not necessarily mean "role-play," but could. If you did away with Diplomacy completely, however, it would probably not break the game...

The PC's generally use the diplomacy skill as a "force NPC's to comply" skill, and get very angry when anyone tries to tell them any different. In fact, Diplomacy pretty much crowds out the other social skills from the game such as intimidate, bluff, and insight. Why bother with trying to fast talk them, lean on them, or figure out the motivations of NPC's? Just push the diplomacy "do as I say" button. Sure, bluff and intimidate are a bit that way, but I think it is saved by the fact that it is generally leads to long term unreliability. Someone who has been conned will generally figure out if they have been conned, and someone who has been intimidated generally finds their spine after the immediate danger has passed.

So the PC's use the diplomacy skill as a sledgehammer to force the DM's NPC's to comply with their wishes. Granted, DM's could learn to be more cooperative and not think it is their job to turn down reasonable requests that are in the NPC's best interest.

As for At-Wills, I recommend that you encourage your players to do similar things that are dependent on their environment and situation. If they are having trouble getting out of the mindset of spamming powers over and over, reward them +1 to hit with a slightly altered (on the fly) At-Will that takes advantage of environment/situation at hand. That should provide the incentive to get them started.

I'll do that while I'm still playing 4e. I think "roleplaying bonuses" to attack, damage, or skill checks are a good idea in general, and I'll think I'll boost their prominence in the all-star D&D system I'm tinkering with.

 

[ferratus]

Be sure everyone is on board before you kill yourself. If they are - have at it. Personally, I really do not want to spend my time figuring out someone's half-thought out homebrew system. So be sure you do not have a couple of people like me in your group

Largely it is going to be for me rather than my group. I'm not even sure if I'll ever play it. So I'll keep my ambitions down. I've been working on it for 6 months and largely I have a collection of ideas rather than any workable rules yet, so I'm not grinding myself down to get it done. I spent those 6 months largely figuring out what kind of D&D system I wanted and what I wanted for its play style. Figuring out how to get that to all fit together is going to take... a decade or so? If I actually keep up with it that is.

 

[ferratus]

For what aspects of "realm management" do you want more rules? There are in fact rules dealing with the subject in D&D books (Original, Advanced and Expert).

The Rules Cyclopedia actually has a good start on what you do with your stronghold, how you draw income from it, what your expenses will be, how much a building costs, and how strong your walls are when you are attacked. The more widely played "Advanced" versions of D&D didn't have this information though, which is largely what I was complaining about. Basic D&D also treats it as a sideline to your adventuring though, rather than its focus.

I'm not too worried about finding rules to crib for the stronghold and realms management aspect of the game, because I have the Birthright boxed set which should be a good baseline, though some of the rules systems need significant tweaking.

Why should someone score XP for doing nothing?

Because the PC Lord is receiving the benefits to his own power by deploying a follower to advance his interests or solve one of his problems. What is XP except the accumulation of experience that in turn means personal power? If the game is based on how you deploy your minions, manage your realm, winning battles, and intrigue... why wouldn't you give XP for how you deployed your minion?

If this is just supposed to be a sideline, why bother with having many rules for running a keep at all? This is why followers and building keeps were largely tossed aside in 3e, 4e, and Pathfinder in favour of high-level dungeon crawling and killing gods and demon lords.

Henchmen (in AD&D, anyhow) get half the XP they would have received as independent characters. The latter reap the full rewards secured with the assistance of the henchmen (and followers, and hirelings, and slaves, and charmed victims, and magic swords, and whoever else contributed to the expedition).

That is how "followers give XP to their lord through their adventures".

I'm not sure if that actually works though. If you cause the henchman's death, you generally don't get another one because you've caused their death by adventuring with them. As well, since the module is designed to challenge you, any henchmen you have are going to end up dying from the monsters and traps only you are high enough level to handle.

Plus as well, if you get too many followers and hirelings along, it starts to slow down combat a lot, even worse than 4e's combats if you get enough of them. If everyone has to have an attack and move, and you have 4 followers for each PC along with you, that increases the amount of actions per round from 4 to 16. But if you aren't going to have your followers along with you on an adventure, what are you using them for? 3e's Leadership ability was the worst, because you had a henchmen who was 1 level lower than you (usually a cleric) which effectively doubled (or more) of your power. The rest of the followers however, were NPC class shlubs that didn't have any role during the adventure. They just hung out at your castle.

So I want to bring back the playing style and goals of Battlesystem and Birthright for my upper tier adventures. I want to do it in such a way that the knights, knaves, saints and occultists of the party will continue to grow in power and influence.

The rulebook for playing politics is The Prince, by Machiavelli.

That's just flippant. You might as well say that the guide for mass combat in D&D is Sun Tzu's Art of War (or Machiavelli's Art of War for that matter).

 

[Ariosto]

I don't see why anyone would want to resurrect the saving throw tables and the cleric undead turning table for example.

Because they are dead fast and easy relative to having to calculate everything from scratch.

If you prefer to spend your time doing arithmetic, then there's not a single thing to stop you. You can just ignore those couple of pages after getting your "DCs" and "plus factors"!

I don't think I could get a hold of that, at least not for the price I'd want to pay for rules I'd extensively rewrite.

Or just not use, unless you have a need for rules for building spacecraft.

The trade and commerce rules are three (digest-sized) pages in Book 2. They are like this:

There are 36 trade goods. The referee rolls 2d6 for 11-66, with modifiers to the first digit based on planetary population ratings. "This throw indicates that a search by the characters has determined that this type of trade good is the best item available. A throw may be made once per week."

31 Petrochemicals
Base Price: 10,000
Purchase Dice Modifiers: Non-Agricultural -4, Industrial +1, Non-Industrial -5
Resale Dice Modifiers: Non-Agricultural -4, Industrial +3, Non-Industrial -5
Quantity: 1d6 (interstellar shipping tons of volume in this case)
(Purchasing just part of the lot entails a 1% handling fee.)

Bribery and Administration skills may be used as Dice Modifiers (DMs).
There are also Brokers who can give +1 to +4 in return for 5% to 20% commission.

Roll 2d6 and add DMs, maximum modified range 2-15.
For results 4-10, Percentage Value is (result x 10%) +30%. 2-3 = 40-50%. 11-15 range from 150% to 400%.

Do that once to find the multiplier of Base Price to get Purchase Price, and again to find Resale Price.

 

[ferratus]

2) That a player had to discover details of enchantments, from creating a spell or scribing a scroll, to brewing a potion or forging a magic sword, to breeding a chimera or safely(?) invoking a Pit Fiend, was by design. Mysteries requiring more than looking up in a handbook -- even in the "forbidden" DMG -- were of the essence of the game.

That works if you have a very good DM who can say yes while keeping the game under control. I consider myself a fairly good DM, but I think I'd still prefer to think things out and put some guidelines in place.

It never ceases to amaze me how determined some people are to see prohibitions where my friends and I have ever seen only their absence.

By in large when players want to do things that aren't in the rules, the standard DM response was always no. Why that attitude? A variety of factors perhaps. The idea that the DM was there to challenge the players by tricking them or making their lives difficult was probably the biggest one. The idea that the players are constantly trying to get an advantage to break the game if they actively sought special abilities or powers not covered by the rulebooks was probably another.

 

[ferratus]

Because they are dead fast and easy relative to having to calculate everything from scratch.

By that logic we should use a table to determine our ability to hit AC as well. No, attacking a monster's will defense is a much easier way to do it than using a turn undead table. Especially since you then have to divide the number of HD you affected by your table roll among the assorted undead beasties. Close burst attack rolls vs. Will defense is much faster and easier to figure out.

The saving throw table has a different problem of not being comprehensive enough, unlike Fort, Ref, and Will.

If you prefer to spend your time doing arithmetic, then there's not a single thing to stop you. You can just ignore those couple of pages after getting
your "DCs" and "plus factors"!

That's a problem with bonus bloat, not with the underlying mechanic of the system. Also, I agree with you that DC's are generally a waste of time if you expect the PC's to succeed most of the time.

 

[Dragonblade]

I find this thread fascinating partly because I'm of a like mind to ferratus. I love the foundation that 4e provides to D&D but I would make changes to aspects that I dislike in 4e.

1) My core dislike is the mini mandated nature of 4e combat. I vastly prefer narrative combat except for big set piece battles.

The problem with moving 4e towards narrative combat is divorcing powers from minis. All the movement powers are a real pain in narrative combat. I came up with some house rules to address this though and posted them in the 4e house rules forum months ago. I can repost if there is interest.

2) I also dislike the powers system principally because I dislike the encounter/daily power paradigm. I also hated daily based power usage and spell slots (another daily resource) in 3e and prior editions as well.

I personally believe that controlling PC resource management should be entirely in the hands of the players. I believe the current system of splittling resource management between player choice and DM fiat is a heavy contributor to the 15 minute adventuring day.

I don't see the one encounter and were camping issue as much in 4e as I did in 3e but now I see the 3 or 4 encounters and we're camping issue (often determined by how many surges the PC have left). Which is an improvement from a metagame standpoint, but IMO just as bad from a verisimilitude standpoint, especially if those 4 encounters took only about one hour of in-game time.

Essentially, I'd prefer a system that gave PCs complete control over the refresh of their abilities after every combat and that didn't require ever camping or taking an extended rest in the middle of a dungeon. Trailblazer from Badaxe Games had some good ideas in that regard which I think are worth looking at, though its geared more towards DMs that want to use 3.5 as their D&D foundation instead of 4e.

3) My next issue with 4e is the horribly bland nature of magic items, often offering nothing more than a bonus and an underwhelming daily power. This requires a bit more work on the DM's part, but I would probably use the inherent bonus rules and then all magic items are rare but are like mini-artifacts. The artifacts in 4e are more like how I think magic items should work.

4) The next big change I might consider making in 4e is to remove the 1/2 level advancement from all PCs and to likewise also subtract 1/2 level from all monster bonuses and defenses. IMO, this grealy increases verisimilitude where high level PCs still fight epic stuff, but orcs and goblins are still a threat as well. Leveling up gives you new abilities, hit points, and damage output, but it ends the ever escalating bonuses that essentially makes high level PCs walking demi-gods.

There are settings where that makes sense, but I prefer my game to be a bit more grounded. Sure the PCs are still extremely tough and powerful, but they should still have one foot grounded in reality. You can challenge mighty dragons, but getting jumped by assassins in an alley is still a threat.

This rule is also good if you want to run a long term campaign where PCs found an empire or dynasty but you still want your players to be able to play those characters regularly without having to throw demon lords at them just to challenge them all the time.

 

[Ariosto]

Because the PC Lord is receiving the benefits to his own power by deploying a follower to advance his interests or solve one of his problems.

That is NOT the same as "doing nothing"!

What is XP except the accumulation of experience that in turn means personal power?

It is points scored in the game for overcoming difficulties in the way. The difficulty assessment includes challenge to player thought as well as to character powers, potential for bypassing difficulties as well as for bashing them down head-on.

The objectives are always wealth in some sense.

If Mighty Joe Younger sacks Brooklyn with the assistance of an army, that is not suddenly a totally different thing from sacking the Dungeon of Despair with a handful of men at arms.

If Old Nick gets the Bilderbungians to buy a thousand barrels of beer, that is not suddenly a totally different thing from getting Frix the Fence to buy a sack of gems, miscellaneous magic potions and a sword +1.

The question is whether the feat was a worthy challenge. Otherwise, it gets pro-rated, or may even be worth nothing. D&D is supposed to be a game of adventure, not of piddling quotidian chores -- regardless of the character's level. How did Nick acquire the beer? What did it take to make the sale?

Setting a "gold piece" value on treasures is usually convenient, but not necessary to their basic function. Real wealth is not always easily monetized. A desirable marriage can be a treasure for reasons peculiar to an individual (i.e., out of keeping with the wider market). The rescue of a child might be worth all the money in the world to a parent, but that does not mean it's worth infinite experience points!

If the game is based on how you deploy your minions, manage your realm, winning battles, and intrigue... why wouldn't you give XP for how you deployed your minion?

Why do you claim that one does not?

You score points, as in other games, by attaining an objective. That is the test, regardless of how you go about it. You don't score points by just "trying", regardless of how you go about it.

Get the ball through the goal = bring the treasure home.

I'm not sure if that actually works though.

There is reasonable skepticism -- then there is being a Flat Earther. You know what? If you won't believe the testimony of however many people telling you now, or the evidence of however many hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people having played the game, then you can go ahead and try it yourself.

If you cause the henchman's death, you generally don't get another one because you've caused their death by adventuring with them.

If YOU caused a henchman's death, then indeed you may end up lonely for a while. There are penalties to reaction rolls when you get a reputation for replenishing your strength by plunging your soul-draining black blade into your companions' guts!

You consider this undesirable? You prefer that "henchmen" should be disposable figures, consequently trivial to secure? Fine, then. Simply set up price lists for higher-level hirelings.

"I'll take ten Lords a-leaping, a dozen Patriarchs prancing, and a Wizard in a pear tree."

As well, since the module is designed to challenge you, any henchmen you have are going to end up dying from the monsters and traps only you are high enough level to handle.

That's baloney in the old D&D that has henchmen in the first place.

I'm a second-level magic-user, newly minted "evoker" with 2,501 x.p.. I take on as henchman a 1st-level fighter, Sharl, with 0 x.p.. She accompanies me on all my adventures, getting the same share of treasure as me but at only half the x.p. value.

The result? Assuming no death or level drain, I make Wizard (11th) another 372,500 x.p. later. That's a net 186,250 x.p. for Sharl, making her midway through Superhero (8th).

If I'm stingier with shares, then the gap will be greater. If she undertakes adventures unaccompanied by me, though, then obviously she can (except under your rule, of course) get additional x.p. and so catch up. She might even get full x.p. value.

Of course, she always gets points to herself for monsters slain single-handedly.

If need be, we can "slum" at upper dungeon levels a little, giving me in proportion fewer experience points so she can catch up.

Considering that (constitution bonuses aside) she is likely to have on average 44 hit points at 8th vs. my 27.5 at 11th, and usually a better armor class, it seems rather more likely that I must watch out for things that only she can handle. For instance, an 8th-level m-u's lightning bolt does on average 28 points without a save (or 14 if I make it).

The original tournament characters for G1-2-3 range from 9th to 14th level.

When Sharl is a Lord (9th), it would certainly seem meet to me for her to have independence appropriate to her station. She can become a peer, and so free a spot for another henchman. Being higher level myself, I may attract candidates above 1st level.

Between the general doubling of x.p. requirements per level up to "name", and the pro-rating that makes full value increasingly rare afterward, it is not too hard too catch up with the high-level bunch.

Plus as well, if you get too many followers and hirelings along, it starts to slow down combat a lot, even worse than 4e's combats if you get enough of them.

False. 45 minutes is quick for 4e in my experience. It's the longest combat Mike Mornard reports ever encountering in Gygax's game -- and IIRC that involved henchmen and hirelings as well as hundreds of orcs (which might be the greater drag in 4e).

Nine or ten players at a table in old D&D is not the drag that even eight seem to be in 4e.

That's just flippant. You might as well say that the guide for mass combat in D&D is Sun Tzu's Art of War (or Machiavelli's Art of War for that matter).

No.

We don't need a complicated abstract simulation of talking, because we can actually talk quite easily.

That's how we play the whole dang game! We talk with one another.

There's a thing called "role-playing" in which I act as if I were Baron Ald. I pursue Ald's interests with Ald's resources as if they were my own.

Dave Arneson, who invented the fantasy role-playing game, and Gary Gygax, who revised it into D&D, were good at that. Dave for instance didn't use artificial "rules" to get away in a helicopter with the treasury of a banana republic in a "Braunstein" game.

He "role-played" his way from student pamphleteer to beating every political party, intelligence agency and army and winning the game. The helicopter even let him meet his special victory condition of distributing handbills far and wide...