Rant on d20

[bloodymage]

Mini-Rant

There's lots I could rant about concerning 3e but I'm going to limit it to two items: feats and PrCs.

I never liked 'kits' in 2e, I don't like PC templates in general and that's all PrCs are. Besides, it's irritating as hell when I read somewhere about a Fighter7/Barbarian1/AwesomeBloodyMauler3 and I have no idea what an ABM3 might be! For that matter, I never much liked classes! Oh well.

Feats drive me nuts. Sure, the feat system was the mechanic to individualize all these characters and that's a worthy goal. I have a real problem though, with my characters waking up in the morning suddenly knowing how to perform some complicated task that he didn't know the day before. And the sheer number of them give me a headache! Each one is a minor (or major) tweaking of the basic system. It's like house rules from the Abyss!

I promised two so I won't go into movement or time or...

 

[Thorvald Kviksverd]

ROTFLMAO!!

Hong, those are simply classic!

I'll be doing a little cut & paste later today

 

[Thorvald Kviksverd]

******BREAK******

mmadsen--

There's a discussion going on over in house rules concerning Alignment Tracking, and I re-posted some of our ideas from a few months ago. I thought you might like to drop on by and expand upon it a bit.

******RESUME******

 

[trix]

. . .

What about:

If you take damage greater than your CON, the damage is doubled.

Ie: If you've got 150 hitpoints, and take 20d6 falling damage, thats an average of 70 damage... but you take double damage (con20)?... and since its greater than 50points (or is it 50%) you make a system shock check (is that still in 3e?).


Double damage on damage>con is quite lethal. Low level characters face weaker opponents, so it shouldnt affect them.

High level characters facing higher/equal opponents will be 'threatened' just as much as they threaten those high level opponents.

This potentially breaks a rogue's backstab and other significant modifiers, but if you think about it...

an attack for 1d8+20 should kill a 0-level character.
likewise, a high level opponent standing still with no armour should also be killed while taking 1d8+20 without armour, etc.


that 1d8+20

-Tim

 

[Thorvald Kviksverd]

Re: . . .

What about:

If you take damage greater than your CON, the damage is doubled.

Or, you could make a FORT save versus DC 'N' each time you take damage greater than your CON, otherwise you are 'incapacitated' or 'wounded'.

I don't know what 'N' should be, but it should probably be fairly low.

 

[Oracular Vision]

Re: Re: Re: Combat more deadly... the simple solution...

If you play with armor as DR, and you keep Hit Points high, no one will ever get hurt, and combat will take forever. Play out a test fight between two typical knights in full plate armor with swords and shields. You may want to widen the Crit Threat Ranges or keep Hit Points low.

If you have any hit do one point of Con damage, then you've created an odd parallel Hit Point system where everyone has around 10 Hit Points, but all weapons do one point of damage.

Yes, I understand that. In full plate, a longsword isn't going to be very effective. You would want to switch to a great sword or a magical sword which does more damage. If you have spent all that money on plate, and live with its armor penalties, you should get something for it. In 3rd Edition, you get a higher AC. In the modified system, it is very hard to hurt you with small melee weapons or normal ranged attacks. That seems fair, and more realistic too considering that was what historical plate armor was for.

The parallel hit point system, as you call it, also seems more realistic, as there is no way anyone could fight more than a few battles in a day without exhaustion setting in. It also encourages quicker action and less exhuberance about having more than 100 hit points. At high levels, fighters can become blaise about combat, and thats not good. This system, which I am not 100% sold on by the way, fixes some minor problems in ways I like. I will use it in some gladiatorial games to see if I like it before forcing it onto the players.

And the DR has to be from melee weapons, ranged attacks, and area-effect spells. Magic missile would bypass this, and all individually targeted spells. This would not limit spellcasting much. This would also allow that expensive plate armor to suck up some of that ice storm damage that fell on you, which currently it has no effect on for some reason, but not protect you from magic missiles.

Sounds better all the time. We'll see how it works.

 

[mmadsen]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Combat more deadly... the simple solution...

In full plate, a longsword isn't going to be very effective....If you have spent all that money on plate, and live with its armor penalties, you should get something for it.

I don't disagree with that all; in fact, I'm normally the one arguing that. On the other hand, keeping Hit Points in the dozens while giving almost every Fighter DR 8 (without magic) means those Fighters are immune to pikemen, taking no damage from typical attacks, rarely taking damage on a Critical Hit, and at worst taking, say, 10% of their Hit Points from a Critical Hit (1-in-400) that does max damage (1-in-64 for double 8's).

In the modified system, it is very hard to hurt you with small melee weapons or normal ranged attacks. That seems fair, and more realistic too considering that was what historical plate armor was for.

If a typical character only has one Hit Die, it can work -- or if you drastically increase the likelihood of a Critical Hit. If you give characters dozens of Hit Points and enough DR that they rarely take more than one Hit Point's damage at a time, you end up with an unplayable and unrealistic system -- even for heroic "realism".

The parallel hit point system, as you call it, also seems more realistic, as there is no way anyone could fight more than a few battles in a day without exhaustion setting in. It also encourages quicker action and less exhuberance about having more than 100 hit points.

Why track 100 Hit Points and Con damage? That was my question. If you want to replace Hit Points with Con damage, that makes some sense.

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Eh...while I think that there are some things to be desired about the D&D combat system, I used to play Rolemaster for years--and while Rolemaster had a much more realistic system of combat--the critical hit system made it so that in many ways, hit points were not especially relevant--it still made for a complex and time-consuming combat system, even if it was more realistic, and even superior to D&D. I think that certainly one of the greatest attractions to D&D--and why I decided to switch from Rolemaster to D&D--is that smooth, simple efficiency. That is also one of the reasons why I think Rolemaster is in a perpetual niche, with few players. Such will always be the case I think, and an important consideration if you want to find people to play with.

I fear that efforts to "correct" the D&D combat system, while laudable--seems destined to add levels of complexity and time-consuming details to the game that will ultimately bog it down, and make it less attractive to play.

Just some thoughts though.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[mmadsen]

There's a discussion going on over in house rules concerning Alignment Tracking, and I re-posted some of our ideas from a few months ago. I thought you might like to drop on by and expand upon it a bit.

Thanks for the heads-up, Thorvald. I can't believe I didn't save a copy of any of the posts where we discussed Pendragon traits! Sigh.

 

[VoodooGroves]

Rolemaster? The guys that worked on that were CRAZY!!!!!



Ok well here's the deal. When I was younger I tried to fix every game. Every one had some set of glaring flaws (to me at least). Alot of us still have this tendency...how many of us went out and bought the PHB, took it home, read it and before playing had at least one thing we'd change if we were to write it?

That said, I'm a gamer and I like games. Too generic though and the game may lose its flaws but really, it becomes less fun.

GURPS is a good example (for me at least). GURPS Shadowrun just isn't any fun. Neither is GURPS Vampire. Its the funkiness of the system that gives each game their edge.

Let me go on a limb here - please don't crucify me. My next statement is NOT about people involved and frankly I completely understand the reasoning behind various decisions to do certain things to certain games.

That said...L5R. Now, if the setting weren't so damn cool AND I hadn't played the old game, I wouldn't be interested in the D20 version.

(ducking)

Seriously, I would not have given it a chance.

(ducking)

But the reason is that I frankly like D&D for what it is and like other games for what they are even though they have "flaws". I liked the old Marvel (with the column shifts, etc.). I liked Rolemaster and MERP. Even though I thought MechWarrior was one of the absolute dumbest RPG attempts I had ever seen, I still played it for YEARS. Even though the Palladium games tend to stress automatic / leap dodges and PP far more than any other single aspect of the game, I still played them and loved them. However, I'll never play a Palladium Fantasy converted to D20 because to me, that "world" belongs in that "system".

Some "worlds" go beyond systems. I'll play a Robotech game in whatever system its next version represents. Same for Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer (although really, talk about horrible D20 versions of a game) and others because I like the setting.

And I'll keep playing in Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and other D&D worlds even if the D&D 4e is the absolute worst game system at the time.

Sure, D20 is class based and has hit points, wizards memorizing spells, armor class, etc. I'll still play. It also has a wealth of other things about it that even when represented in those terms still are "cool" to me.

Long live (?) Iuz, Incabulos and Loviatar - I'll keep coming back for more.