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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6873713" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Well, neither is the average RPG.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm familiar with a lot of systems, and of "realistic, balanced, and easy to play" I would say <strong>at most</strong> you pick two features when designing a system, and realistically you end up with just one. I'm a child of the 80s, and I remember all the fetishizing of realism in RPG design back in the day, and I've been there. Most tables will not want realism as a major aspect of play. What they really want is verisimilitude to the story they want to tell, which is generally speaking not a realistic one. Hit points play very very nicely with having overarching narrative goals in your play, which is one of the big reasons cRPGs have pretty much always stuck with them.</p><p></p><p>As for wound overlays, 3e D&D already has a built in granular, modular, wound overlay system - it's call ability damage. Most wounds can be modeled by ability damage... and most of the time blows should not cause wounds unless you are trying to turn the D20 engine into some sort of gritty survival horror game. Indeed, all my wounds, even 'lose limb' are modeled primarily using hit point and ability damage, with occasional references to a Disadvantage system (that allows you to play a lame, one armed, character if you really want).</p><p></p><p>I occasionally generate wounds from critical hits, coup de grace type attacks, and falling damage. But I don't real having it happened to a PC in 6 years of play. That's basically by design.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The problem 3e has is that the standard small sized races treat small as almost a straight up benefit and are in theory balanced accordingly. The only real drawbacks of small in 3e are reduced speed and reduced grappling bonus - and the reduced speed tended to get dropped. The upside of increased stealth, superior AC, and increased attack bonus. This is because 3e protects small sized PC's from the main penalties of small size - reduced reach and reduced ability scores. The way STR and CON scale in 3e, a creature the goes down a size class should get a -4 penalty to STR and a -4 penalty to CON, in exchange for a +2 bonus to DEX. So a typical small sized race should have unbalanced net negative ability score modifiers. Instead, a typical small sized race like Halfling only has a -2 penalty to STR and no penalty to CON at all. Pretty much any 3e race would get better by shrinking if it kept it's stats - after all, your grappling bonus doesn't matter in the long run as you start facing high HD gargantuan creatures with 30+ strength. You either have some sort of near absolute resistance to grapples, or you get squashed basically no matter what your bonus is.</p><p></p><p>I'm basically avoiding those problems because none of my small races in my homebrew are standard races. They are balanced as small creatures with unbalanced net negative ability scores but large bonuses elsewhere.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Quite right. As I said, most small sized races have at least 2 more CON than they should. In general, the CON of most creatures in the game is too high. This can be easily shown by the fact that basically nothing, not even a mouse, has lower CON than an elf. Something like a rat should have no more than 4 CON. That's tremendously high CON for a 2-3lb creature.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>All I can say is my races are fairly well balanced (except half-elf, which kinda sucks, but people take it anyway). Tweaking the balance for your game isn't something I can do. But all of my small races have at least a -2 CON penalty to ensure proper scaling.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6873713, member: 4937"] Well, neither is the average RPG. I'm familiar with a lot of systems, and of "realistic, balanced, and easy to play" I would say [b]at most[/b] you pick two features when designing a system, and realistically you end up with just one. I'm a child of the 80s, and I remember all the fetishizing of realism in RPG design back in the day, and I've been there. Most tables will not want realism as a major aspect of play. What they really want is verisimilitude to the story they want to tell, which is generally speaking not a realistic one. Hit points play very very nicely with having overarching narrative goals in your play, which is one of the big reasons cRPGs have pretty much always stuck with them. As for wound overlays, 3e D&D already has a built in granular, modular, wound overlay system - it's call ability damage. Most wounds can be modeled by ability damage... and most of the time blows should not cause wounds unless you are trying to turn the D20 engine into some sort of gritty survival horror game. Indeed, all my wounds, even 'lose limb' are modeled primarily using hit point and ability damage, with occasional references to a Disadvantage system (that allows you to play a lame, one armed, character if you really want). I occasionally generate wounds from critical hits, coup de grace type attacks, and falling damage. But I don't real having it happened to a PC in 6 years of play. That's basically by design. The problem 3e has is that the standard small sized races treat small as almost a straight up benefit and are in theory balanced accordingly. The only real drawbacks of small in 3e are reduced speed and reduced grappling bonus - and the reduced speed tended to get dropped. The upside of increased stealth, superior AC, and increased attack bonus. This is because 3e protects small sized PC's from the main penalties of small size - reduced reach and reduced ability scores. The way STR and CON scale in 3e, a creature the goes down a size class should get a -4 penalty to STR and a -4 penalty to CON, in exchange for a +2 bonus to DEX. So a typical small sized race should have unbalanced net negative ability score modifiers. Instead, a typical small sized race like Halfling only has a -2 penalty to STR and no penalty to CON at all. Pretty much any 3e race would get better by shrinking if it kept it's stats - after all, your grappling bonus doesn't matter in the long run as you start facing high HD gargantuan creatures with 30+ strength. You either have some sort of near absolute resistance to grapples, or you get squashed basically no matter what your bonus is. I'm basically avoiding those problems because none of my small races in my homebrew are standard races. They are balanced as small creatures with unbalanced net negative ability scores but large bonuses elsewhere. Quite right. As I said, most small sized races have at least 2 more CON than they should. In general, the CON of most creatures in the game is too high. This can be easily shown by the fact that basically nothing, not even a mouse, has lower CON than an elf. Something like a rat should have no more than 4 CON. That's tremendously high CON for a 2-3lb creature. All I can say is my races are fairly well balanced (except half-elf, which kinda sucks, but people take it anyway). Tweaking the balance for your game isn't something I can do. But all of my small races have at least a -2 CON penalty to ensure proper scaling. [/QUOTE]
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