Proposal: Replacing Half Level Bonuses

[Alex319]

Design Notes:

- I based most of the point costs on the point costs given in the OP's initial post. I increased the cost of the attack bonus because that seemed like the one everyone seemed to want.

- The purpose of the diminishing returns for both "buying" and "selling" CMs is to make "min-maxing" less likely and diversity more desirable. (It's effectively the same reason why the ability score point buy has diminishing returns.)

- I added the "3 Related Skills" option because it seemed to fill a gap between the one skill and all skills options. In the OP's system, if you wanted more than one or two skills to have bonuses you might as well just buy all skills.

- The rules for combining individual skills and "all skills" packages may be a little confusing, but it was the only thing I could come up with that was logical, fair, and not easily exploited. The way to think of it is that if you get, say, +2 to all skills, the +2 is the "base" that you've already paid for if you want to buy more for a particular skill.

- The reason you can't get a penalty to an individual skill or 3 related skills is because otherwise everyone would just take big penalties to skills that they didn't plan to use in order to get lots of points to put in other. Also, they could get lots of free points by say, getting +4 to all skills for 12 CP and then selling back all 17 of those skills one at a time for 3 CP each.

- Initiative has a very low "sell-back" value because many characters have little use for initiative, for example back-line characters like wizards and archer rangers that aren't usually the first into combat and often want to wait anyway to see the enemies move up before they attack. These characters would almost always want to sell back as much initative as they can for points if the value was higher.

 

[Alex319]

At minimum, I'd try to remove bonuses to attack from your customizations rules. Either it would become no choice at all, i.e., everyone would grab every attack bonus to attack they could, or else those who did not grab every attack bonus they could would be at an increasingly severe disadvantage in combat, and appropriate encounters would be harder to design.

Although I didn't remove them, I did try to make them very expensive. In the current system you can get 8 CP by selling skills, 2 by selling initiative, and 21 by selling defenses, for a total of 31. So even a +2 attack bonus would force you to sell defenses to get it even if you took a -4 to all skills and initiative (And of course initiative is important in combat too.) If you wanted a +3 attack bonus you would have to take -4 to all skills, -4 to initiative, and -2 to all defenses and still be one point short. And a high attack bonus is no help if your defenses are so low that you get killed first.

If you wanted to, you could even tweak the costs a little more - say make the point values for selling skills -6/-5/-4/-2 instead of -8/-6/-4/-2, and up the costs a point or two, so that you have to sacrifice more combat effectiveness to get that point of attack bonus.

Any customization method like this will make parties more powerful, because they could specialize more. For examples rogues could increase initiative so they could get their first strike bonus, defenders could increase AC and NADs, and back-line characters like wizards who don't get hit as much could sacrifice defense for attack bonus. But it is not obvious that all characters would pump their attack bonus, nor is it obvious that characters who didn't would be significantly weakened.

(For an example, note that not all characters take a 20 (18 + 2 racial bonus) in their primary attack stat - many reduce it so they can buy other stats that improve other things like defenses, HP, and skills.)

What about skill points then? Well, except for the fact that a given character can't have enough feats, I'd say Skill Focus is good enough. For example, a Warlock who wants to take advantage of hiding might use a couple feats to Train and Focus Stealth, and even with a crappy DEX, they'd be good enough.

Do you really need skill points on top of that? And if you do give skill points, but not the opportunity to buy attack bonuses, then the combat centered characters will be given something that they may not find useful, while your skill monkeys will use the skill points to max their favorite skills.

Similarly, is there really any reason to mess with defenses beyond what is already available?

Well, the OP did say that he thought that the current feat system didn't give him the level of customization he wanted.

 

[Smeelbo]

I am very confused by the MLB proposal. You get +1/2 per level as normal, then apply the modifiers? And do so every even level?

On the face of it, it appears to allow characters to trade away things that are not at all valuable to them for things that are very valuable to them.

When is a penalty not a penalty? When the penalty never applies.

Smeelbo

 

[Alex319]

My explanation of the system as a "modified level bonus" may have been confusing.

Basically, you calculate 1/2 your level as normal, then add the CM. You only add one CM - the CM that your character currently has. CM modifier choices do not "accumulate" in any way from level to level.

For example, suppose that you are 2nd level and have a CM of +1 to attack. Then your MLB is +2 to attack, so you use the +2 in place of +1 in order to calculate your attack bonus. So you have +1 more to attack than you would have otherwise.

Now you go up to 4th level. If you don't change your CM (i.e. you keep it at +1), then your new MLB is +3, which is still one higher than it would have been in the absence of a CM, so you still only have +1 more to attack than you would have without the system.

Let's say that instead you dropped the attack bonus CM to zero at 4th level so you use the 5 extra CP to bump all your skills by 2. Then effectively at 4th level you didn't improve your attack (since the MLB stays at +2) but you got to improve your skills more (because instead of the MLB for skills going from +1 to +2, it went from +1 to +4).

It might be easier to think about if you don't think of the CM as modifying the level bonus at all, you just think of it as an extra static modifier that applies to the check.

 

[Smeelbo]

IMing the author, I am a little clearer on the MLB concept. The customization is a static adjustment to the +1/2 level bonus. However, I am still not convinced.

For example, my fighter could trade a -4 penalty at three related skills, say Arcana, History and Religion, and -1 at Diplomacy, in exchange for a +1 on attack bonus.

Given a choice, every character will do something similar. Skill monkeys will trade penalties on skills they don't use for bonuses to skills they do use.

More attack is bad for the game, plain and simple. Trading away skill bonuses that are rarely used for attack bonuses is an even worse idea. You can't even buy +1 attack bonus for a feat, let alone an imaginary penalty.

I am sorry, but if I understand this correctly, I think it's back to the drawing board.

Smeelbo

 

[Alex319]

I thought I was pretty clear on this that you cannot sell back individual skills or groups of 3 related skills. You can ONLY sell back all the skills at once, so you can't just sell back the skills you don't use. The only reason the chart has values for negative bonuses in those rows is for if you want to sell all skills and then buy back some of them.

I think I might actually change the rules for skills, given how confusing they seem to be.

EDIT: Change is done. See the post for details.

 

[Smeelbo]

Okies, here's the problem I have with this whole effort, beyond the immediate balance issue, and that is, "What is this really intended to accomplish?"

As I read it, it is intended to satisfy the desire for a more customized character. So what do you mean by that, and why isn't what's already available good enough?

Are you saying, "Well, my character concept is that I am a really good attacker, even better than normal, so I need +1 to attack rolls." To which the correct response is, "Get in back of the line, buddy, so are all these other characters. They all want to be the best they can possibly be at attacking."

So being a better attacker is not really a distinctive character concept.

Are you saying, "My character has abilities outside his class?" Then there are numerous feats, especially skill training and multi-classing, that do the trick already.

Are you saying, "My character is willing to have a glass jaw in order to pay for better powers?" Since you point buy your ability scores at character creation, you can already trade off attacks and defenses.

As much as my heart yearns for more customization, I think 4E already provides a great deal of variety. Better, the existing 4E options force significant trade-offs, which is more fair.

Smeelbo

 

[Nifft]

Nifft, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you here. Magic and mundane gear is modular. If my rogue chooses to wield a +2 proficiency bonus weapon and burn a feat to get medium armor, he (or she) is down a point of attack and up a point (or two) of AC.

In the case of the Rogue, he's also lost all his powers (since they require the use of a Light Blade), and probably gained nothing (since there is no "Medium" armor, so he'd be throwing away his Dex bonus to AC by going into Heavy, which for a typical Rogue nets out to nothing, or to a penalty for a PC who started with a 20 Dex).

Maybe a different example would better express your point? If you want to talk about the Rogue, your suggestion is not a minor step down, but a leap off the sheer cliff of utility into powerlessness.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Starfox]

The 3/4 level limit prevents your base success probability from exceeding 75% so you still can't build a character who is always successful at something.

This just inst true and is based on a fundamental misunderstanding.

Letting players vary their level bonus from zero to 3/4 means there will be an escalating difference as they progress over levels. It will NOT "prevents your base success probability from exceeding 75%". If you introduce a special +5 bonus, that will make people go from 50% chance to succeed to 75% chance to succeed. A +5 bonus over and above the normal +1/2 levels in your system takes 20 levels to earn if you concentrate fully. That is, for the first 20 levels, people will have less than 75% chance to succeed, for level 21-30, they will have more, up to just under 90% at level 30.

This might nor be a desirable effect or not - I don't want to argue with your goals here. I just want to point out that limiting the level bonus to 3/3 each level does not give you a 75% chance to succeed.

 

[amnuxoll]

That is, for the first 20 levels, people will have less than 75% chance to succeed, for level 21-30, they will have more, up to just under 90% at level 30.
...
I just want to point out that limiting the level bonus to 3/4 each level does not give you a 75% chance to succeed.

You're absolutely right. Thanks for pointing it out.

The thrust of the proposal is to allow a level of customization without unbalancing the game. You could just as easily set a different maximum bonus. I think the original cap is fine, since you won't get above 75% until the Epic tier and you'll never get above 85%.

In a way, this addresses Smeelbo's comments too because it illustrates how these bonuses are too small to be game breaking. It maxes out at +2 over "normal" at the top of the Heroic tier and and +5 at the top of Paragon. And, of course, the cost of getting there is high in terms of lost ability in other areas.

:AMN: