The death of bonus stacking?

[Majoru Oakheart]

The problem is that as soon as you allow ANYTHING to stack you open it up to abuse. This was the situation they were trying to correct from 2nd edition when people would load up with ALL of their spells since they all had an effect and make one party member WAY too powerful.

So, they make stacking rules, allowing them to put a limit on a character's power due to multiple spells. Only they introduced too many different bonus types, so anyone who wants to be too powerful simply gets around the rules by finding things that DO stack.

If you cast spells/wear magic items that give you +6 enhancement bonus to strength, +5 morale bonus to hit and damage, +5 luck bonus to hit and damage, +1 haste bonus to hit, etc...They might as well remove the bonus types since they don't matter in the slightest. The goal of the stacking system was to prevent over stacking of bonuses, but it doesn't work.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

What is the difference between a sacred bonus and a holy bonus?

... Given that I've never seen a holy bonus, I'm not sure how to answer this ...

Or insight vs. competence?

Insight represents a bonus due to precognition (and is generally the purview of divinations). Competence represents being generally better at something than someone else.

 

[Malhost Zormaeril]

I dislike natural armor. Sure, a bear is tough, and dire armadillo is really tough, but this leads to crazy situations where monsters have wicked high ACs because of stacking. Troglodytes in plate armor, anyone?

I don't think that slapping a suit of leather armor onto an iron golem should make it harder to hurt.

And I hate all the redundant bonuses. What is the difference between a sacred bonus and a holy bonus? Or insight vs. competence?

Insight bonuses stem from precognition, competence from, well, competence. However, I do think the number of bonus descriptors should go down -- perhaps up to seven? Currently, the SRD contains seventeen different bonus types (and that is leaving "unnamed" bonuses aside, which are just the complete collapse of the bonus descriptor system): Ability, Alchemical, Armor, Circumstance, Competence, Deflection, Dodge, Enhancement, Insight, Luck, Morale, Natural Armor, Profane, Resistance, Sacred, Shield, Size. Of course, not every descriptor affects all rolls -- Armor, for instance, affects only AC.

If I had to pare those down, I'd probably keep Arcane (a catch-all term for wizard magic effects), Circumstance, Competence, Divine (subsuming Sacred, Profane and Luck), Morale, and Size. To those, I'd add three special descriptors, Armor, Dodge and Deflection, which can only apply to AC. The problem is, the designers would have to have discipline to always apply a descriptor to every single bonus they get. It would also help if the rules for stacking were the same as the rules to Aid Another: Biggest bonus + 1 for every other source, rather than adding all bonuses up.

That being said, I wish the DMG would address ways of mitigating this problem, especially more visibility to the "buff cards" method of tracking bonuses. I use blank A7 sheets of paper and write stuff like "+3 Deflection to AC until round 7"...

 

[Victim]

I dislike natural armor. Sure, a bear is tough, and dire armadillo is really tough, but this leads to crazy situations where monsters have wicked high ACs because of stacking. Troglodytes in plate armor, anyone?

I don't think that slapping a suit of leather armor onto an iron golem should make it harder to hurt.

Yeah. Natural Armor should just be an armor bonus (or equivalent) that's built into a creature.

 

[Aristotle]

A lot of folks seem (to me) to want to throw the baby out with the bath water. I loved the bonus stacking rules at first glance. In practice, after time, the concept itself seemed pointless. Sure, two bonuses of the same type don't stack but there were so many different types that it wasn't an issue anyway.

I say: Give the armor rules a streamlining, and keep the number of names for bonuses to a minimum. Maybe use power sources as bonus names? So long as the number of additional power sources added to the game are kept reasonable, and non-redundant, that could be a fairly intuitive way to do it.

 

[BryonD]

Yeah. Natural Armor should just be an armor bonus (or equivalent) that's built into a creature.

But shouldn't a Trog in Plate be better protected than a human in plate?

 

[Storm Raven]

A lot of folks seem (to me) to want to throw the baby out with the bath water. I loved the bonus stacking rules at first glance. In practice, after time, the concept itself seemed pointless. Sure, two bonuses of the same type don't stack but there were so many different types that it wasn't an issue anyway.

I say: Give the armor rules a streamlining, and keep the number of names for bonuses to a minimum. Maybe use power sources as bonus names? So long as the number of additional power sources added to the game are kept reasonable, and non-redundant, that could be a fairly intuitive way to do it.

A lot of the zanier bonus types never come in to play if you limit the supplemental source material, which cures a big bunch of the perceived problem right off the bat. I'd also consider it to be perfectly within a DMs perview to redefine bonus types drawn from such sources as being from one of the other types before he allowed the spell, magic item, or whatever into his campaign.

 

[comrade raoul]

I like this general approach, and think reducing the number of bonus types is the answer to lots of things. For example, it simultaneously streamlines play and potentially reduces a character's reliance on magical items. (A character might get the same AC bonus from a ring of protection and an encounter-long buff spell, for example, such that the ring would be more of a convenience than anything else.) In particular, I think you could do a perfect job with just three bonus types.


-- "Unnamed" bonuses might come from defining features of a character, like feats or class abilities. Under this approach, all and only unnamed bonuses would stack with each other. These would be rare and generally always apply (you wouldn't have to keep track of them apart from setting them down on a character sheet).

-- "Enhancement" bonuses might come from stable but external sources, like magical items or buffs that last for a full encounter or more. These are the kind of extra bonuses that characters rely on pretty habitually when adventuring; you might call them the "normal" extra bonuses. Preventing enhancement bonuses from stacking with one another means that characters should almost never have to stack lots of buffs before an encounter--someone with a ring of protection, for example, would under this view basically be set as far as defensive buffs are considered.

-- "Circumstance" bonuses come from special, situational sources, or occasionally from character abilities designed to supplement a character's "standard" magical enhancement, like a bard's song, tactical bonuses coming from things like helpful terrain, or even certain very short-term buff spells. These are what you might call "special" bonuses that would typically get applied on the fly, as needed, in the middle of an encounter. Preventing circumstance bonuses from stacking still reduces excessive buffing, and makes applying highly conditional bonuses a lot simpler. (On this view, there'd generally only be one bonus at work that you didn't expect to be working all the way through the encounter.) However, the presence of circumstance bonuses would still provide a place for extra, contingent boosts.

 

[Victim]

But shouldn't a Trog in Plate be better protected than a human in plate?

It seems like secondary sources of protection (eg, the Trog's natural armor underneath the plate) would drop off in effectiveness - if the attack can readily beat the defense of the plate armor, then it can probably also beat the weaker defense underneath. If you put a bunch of tough leather jackets on a tank, is the tank better armored? Probably not, I'd say. Otherwise, you have no justification for armor not stacking - if a person wearing full plate doesn't gain extra protection from wearing a set of leather armor underneath or having a magic forcefield (mage armor), then why does a person get extra protection if he has leathery skin?

Should a Dragon be better protected if it wears full plate? Do we think it's a good idea to reward dragons for wearing armor?

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The one problem with non stacking bonuses is that bonuses that don't stack are basically non factors. If helpful terrain doesn't stack with bard song, or whatever, then characters aren't going to take advantage of terrain if there's a bard. Why bother with clever manuevering when it doesn't stack? Or there might not be a bard, if terrain is readily available. Stacking bonuses is also important in group dynamics. If you have 2 buffing characters in a group, you probably don't want one of those 2 to be redundant (since his buffs aren't stacking with the other guy's).

That's why supplemental material generally emphasizes other bonus types - if the spells don't stack, then one spell simply replaces another (or not, if the change in spell level isn't favorable compared to the change in effect). So some new high level buff basically has to provide an unusual bonus, since characters will have the other kinds of bonuses and the spell won't be worth its level if it's not adding the full bonus. Similarly, I haven't really seen characters with Speed weapons anymore. Since characters only get 1 magic bonus attack, inferior methods of getting that extra attack (mostly compared to Boots of Speed since we're looking at magic items) don't get used.

 

[Someone]

I like this general approach, and think reducing the number of bonus types is the answer to lots of things. For example, it simultaneously streamlines play and potentially reduces a character's reliance on magical items. (A character might get the same AC bonus from a ring of protection and an encounter-long buff spell, for example, such that the ring would be more of a convenience than anything else.) In particular, I think you could do a perfect job with just three bonus types.


-- "Unnamed" bonuses might come from defining features of a character, like feats or class abilities. Under this approach, all and only unnamed bonuses would stack with each other. These would be rare and generally always apply (you wouldn't have to keep track of them apart from setting them down on a character sheet).

-- "Enhancement" bonuses might come from stable but external sources, like magical items or buffs that last for a full encounter or more. These are the kind of extra bonuses that characters rely on pretty habitually when adventuring; you might call them the "normal" extra bonuses. Preventing enhancement bonuses from stacking with one another means that characters should almost never have to stack lots of buffs before an encounter--someone with a ring of protection, for example, would under this view basically be set as far as defensive buffs are considered.

-- "Circumstance" bonuses come from special, situational sources, or occasionally from character abilities designed to supplement a character's "standard" magical enhancement, like a bard's song, tactical bonuses coming from things like helpful terrain, or even certain very short-term buff spells. These are what you might call "special" bonuses that would typically get applied on the fly, as needed, in the middle of an encounter. Preventing circumstance bonuses from stacking still reduces excessive buffing, and makes applying highly conditional bonuses a lot simpler. (On this view, there'd generally only be one bonus at work that you didn't expect to be working all the way through the encounter.) However, the presence of circumstance bonuses would still provide a place for extra, contingent boosts.

Get out of my head!!!