arscott
First Post
There's a problem that nobody's addressing here: BAB, Saves, and other automatically scaling scores are important because they establish minimums.
Many skill-based games have the problem of the required skill--that is, there is a skill that is so vital to certain situations that no character can be without it--even when having that skill wouldn't make sense for the character as imagined.
What if Saves and Hit Points were skills in D&D? Characters that didn't take those skills would be in for a short, messy end. Offensive stuff like attack bonuses aren't quite as cruicial as defenses, but even wizards need BAB sometimes.
The strength of set progressions like BAB, Saves, and Hit points is that they establish general ranges where these stats are likely to be--and designers can take those ranges into account when designing other game elements.
Consider a 20th level wizard--even though he hasn't devoted anything to being healthy, he's still got the HP to survive a 1st-level fighter's sword and the Fort to survive a 1st-level wizard's spell. And even though he hasn't devoted any resources to martial skill, he's still got the BAB to insure that his ray spells will hit.
There are certainly different ways to solve this problem--but at that point, you're probably making enough modifications that changing attack bonus into a skill is only a small part of it.
Many skill-based games have the problem of the required skill--that is, there is a skill that is so vital to certain situations that no character can be without it--even when having that skill wouldn't make sense for the character as imagined.
What if Saves and Hit Points were skills in D&D? Characters that didn't take those skills would be in for a short, messy end. Offensive stuff like attack bonuses aren't quite as cruicial as defenses, but even wizards need BAB sometimes.
The strength of set progressions like BAB, Saves, and Hit points is that they establish general ranges where these stats are likely to be--and designers can take those ranges into account when designing other game elements.
Consider a 20th level wizard--even though he hasn't devoted anything to being healthy, he's still got the HP to survive a 1st-level fighter's sword and the Fort to survive a 1st-level wizard's spell. And even though he hasn't devoted any resources to martial skill, he's still got the BAB to insure that his ray spells will hit.
There are certainly different ways to solve this problem--but at that point, you're probably making enough modifications that changing attack bonus into a skill is only a small part of it.
