The Core Mechanic: New Design and Development

[Klaus]

I want to know what the heck that picture is of. WHAT IS THAT THING?

Is that a Salamander?

Xill.

Y'know, those evil four-armed extradimensional beings.

That's my guess, at any rate.

 

[Szatany]

This oddly implies to me that AC won't include your Dexterity bonus. Of course, it will probably actually be that you get a +5 to attack a surprised character, or similar. I guess this clears up the classic problem of surprising a turtle, er, I mean Cleric, and finding the AC is the same.

maybe it will include BAB?

 

[Guild Goodknife]

I wonder if your AC advances with your levels, i mean would be kind of strange if your touch AC (your Reflex Defense) advanced with your levels while your normal AC stayed the same.

 

[JVisgaitis]

The thing that confuses me is what Defense do you use for both Armor and Dexterity? It wouldn't be Reflex as that seems to not include armor and it wouldn't be Armor Class as that doesn't include Dexterity.

I started a new thread on this: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=208958

 

[JVisgaitis]

Armor should give a Dex penalty... then it impacts you regardless of Dex.

That's a much better solution than Max Dex Bonus IMO.

 

[Gold Roger]

I wonder if your AC advances with your levels, i mean would be kind of strange if your touch AC (your Reflex Defense) advanced with your levels while your normal AC stayed the same.

I sure hope AC does level. That AC doesn't scale was one of my biggest problems with 3.X: You where to dependent on your armor and a´magic AC bonus and As you got higher in level, you became increasingly easy to hit by equal enemies.

It's been that in Star Wars: Saga and Iron Heroes, both of which I consider indicative of 4ths direction. Also they said they'd adress issues where the math was wonkey.

So I'm pretty sure AC levels.

 

[Green Knight]

There's still the issue of fireballing a bunch of mooks and having them all succeed or fail based on one roll ... unless you roll an attack against each mook (or they all have different defensive scores).

Well, considering that monsters will be coming in different roles, now, it's likely that a pack of monsters won't all have the same stats. Even if they're all members of the same race. So when encountering, say, six Orcs, they won't all be Orc Warriors with identical stats. Instead there'll be two Orc mooks, an Orc lurker, Orc artillery, an Orc brute, and an Orc mastermind, all with different saving throws. Not to mention that, from the sounds of the latest podcast, they're making it easy to mix-and-match different races of monsters in an encounter. So the odds of a couple monsters in each group having different saving throws look to be pretty good.

So I'm pretty sure AC levels.

I just hope it isn't like Saga (This is probably one of the few cases where I DON'T want 4E to be like Saga), what with AC bonus from levelling not stacking with the AC bonus from armor. I don't want to see high-level PC's who have a better AC in a loincloth then they would in Full Plate.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Ladies and gentlemen...we have the first 4e tidbit that I like!

Feels the opposite.

I've hated the AC system for some time now, and was really hoping the Iron Heroization of D&D would extend to this as well. It just MAKES NO SENSE, conceptually.

Let me get this straight: you get better at defending yourself from attacks that "just have to touch you", but not attacks that "have to touch you, and happen to be pointy." wtf? When does a crossbow bolt NOT have to touch you to do damage? Why I can't dodge that the way I would dodge a ray spell?

Also, if both guys are in loincloths, how does it make sense that a 12th level fighter is just as easy to hit as a 1st level fighter? The 12th level guy should be able to parry that 1st level fighter's blows like the tantrums of a child.

Grrr.

I'm sure people in this thread will try to rationalize the above somehow, but don't bother. I've heard it all before. Sorry for the rant.

Also, this would have been a great time to introduce "Players Roll All the Dice" as the default. Vast improvement over normal D&D. Easy to implement though, so I'm not too jazzed about that.

For the curious, my house rules are:
* Reflex & AC are the same thing. They level.
* Dex and Shields add to Ref/AC.
* Armor grants DR.
* Special case rules for fighting an armed opponent when unarmed.
* Must have/be able to take cover or be able to 5' step out of range to roll Ref/AC vs. grenades and blasts.
* Start with a lot of HP, but advance slowly.

Basically, you defend yourself with skill at arms, not HP ablation.

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

Feels the opposite.

I've hated the AC system for some time now, and was really hoping the Iron Heroization of D&D would extend to this as well. It just MAKES NO SENSE, conceptually.

Let me get this straight: you get better at defending yourself from attacks that "just have to touch you", but not attacks that "have to touch you, and happen to be pointy." wtf? When does a crossbow bolt NOT have to touch you to do damage? Why I can't dodge that the way I would dodge a ray spell?

Also, if both guys are in loincloths, how does it make sense that a 12th level fighter is just as easy to hit as a 1st level fighter? The 12th level guy should be able to parry that 1st level fighter's blows like the tantrums of a child.

Grrr.

I'm sure people in this thread will try to rationalize the above somehow, but don't bother. I've heard it all before. Sorry for the rant.

I elect to bother, because you appear to be complaining about a 3e issue.

We have absolutely no idea how AC is calculated. We have some rough ideas from old editions, but they're changing the meanings of things like "core" and "chaotic", so...who knows?

I think it's premature to get angry at them for not doing something we have no information about them doing or not.

 

[Szatany]

I'm hoping Reflex represents dodging while AC represents parrying blows (with weapon and with armor at the same time). So AC could be 10+BAB+Str+Shield+Armor (unless armor grants DR) and Relfex could be 10+base Ref save+Dex. Most of the time you can decide whether you are doding or parrying, but some attacks force you to choose one defense of the two (like touch attacks, can't parry those).