The death of bonus stacking?

[BryonD]

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?

If you want to say that natural armor should have a decreased then I can see it.
But to claim that having tough leather skin under plate armor would provide zero added protection, just as if you had normal human flesh seems completely absurd.

Mage armor is a bad example because the "armor" bonus there has always been a hand wave at the tradition of it not working with armor and still working with rings of protection. Logic has been dropped off from the start. A much better analogy is a ring of protection. If you have a forcefield that gives you protection (deflection bonus), it makes complete and total sense that the fighter in plate with the ring would be harder to hit than the fighter in plate without the ring.

If you start preventing things from stacking then you will get into jarringly illogical scenario after jarringly illogical scenario.

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?

Ummm, yes. Bolting plates of Steel on a dragon should make it better protected.

 

[Jhaelen]

It seems like secondary sources of protection (eg, the Trog's natural armor underneath the plate) would drop off in effectiveness

That's what I'd think, too.
This reminds me of the Runequest system which allowed wearing several different types of armor on top of each other (normally one type of soft armor and one type of hard armor). IIRC, you only added half of the lower AC to get the total AC.

Personally, I always found it more intuitive that armor should provide DR rather than being factored into an AC value to decide if an attack connects.
If armor provided DR it would be straightforward to apply stacking rules...

 

[Jhaelen]

It seems like secondary sources of protection (eg, the Trog's natural armor underneath the plate) would drop off in effectiveness

That's what I'd think, too.
This reminds me of the Runequest system which allowed wearing several different types of armor on top of each other (normally one type of soft armor and one type of hard armor). IIRC, you only added half of the lower AC to get the total AC.

Personally, I always found it more intuitive that armor should provide DR rather than being factored into an AC value to decide if an attack connects.
If armor provided DR it would be straightforward to apply stacking rules...

 

[olshanski]

So long as the number of additional power sources added to the game are kept reasonable, and non-redundant...

Good luck with that. I predict at least 1 new power source per year, perhaps 2. I also predict that by the 2nd year after release, things start looking at least partially redundant. By year 4 there will be some obviously redundancies.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I really, really like the stacking bonus rules from 3.XE.

The way I see it, there are two possibilities if you want to get away from this paradigm:

1. Everything stacks with everything. This is obviously problematical for many reasons.

2. Nothing stacks with anything.

3. There is an arbitrary limit on the number of sources that will stack

So long as there are fairly restrictive guidelines on the magnitude of bonuses available, the total bonus on any given character's AC or to-hit or saves, etc. will be predictably within a certain narrow range. I think the problem isn't stacking, but as MerricB notes, the possible number of sources for stacking effects. That's the problem that item slots tried, and failed, to combat.

edit: Reading some of the suggestions in the thread, there seems to be two ways to do this:
a. Have any number of bonus types, but set a limit (say, 3) on the number you can benefit from at any one time
b. Actually reduce the number of bonus types

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

3. There is an arbitrary limit on the number of sources that will stack

Which is where we are now.

 

[BryonD]

Which is where we are now.

And all it all it works quite well.

I'll readily agree that there have been some bad specific calls made on how bonuses are defined and the ready use of "unnamed" bonuses creates headaches. There are lessons learned and things can be improved.

But the different types are not there for the purpose of power gaming. They are there because logic dictates it. That power gamers use this isn't going to make the logic go away. And if it were changed just to tweak power gamers you'd just have power gamers doing different max/min stuff, only in a less logical framework. Cause one thing that wouldnt result from this change would be a real change in powergaming.

If a fighter has an enhancement bonus to his strength it is illogical that blessing of divine power couldn't make him stronger yet. And it is illogical that the blessed/enhanced fighter could be made 12 feet tall without gaining further strength. And it is also illogical that the bless/enhanced/12 foot fighter wouldn't get stronger when he uses his rage talent.

Some things simply need to stack.

 

[Mallus]

Here's an idea... what if most (if not all) bonuses didn't stack, but it was common for bonuses to come in 'bundles' of beneficial effects? It would making choosing enhancements a little more tactically rich than simply looking for bonuses that stack.

For instance, a player can use (only) one of the following:

a) a wizard's spell that grants a flat +4 AC or

b) a cleric's blessing that grants +2 AC and +1 on all saves or

c) a martial technique that grants +2 AC and increases movement by 10'.

Or something like that...

 

[Brother MacLaren]

If a fighter has an enhancement bonus to his strength it is illogical that blessing of divine power couldn't make him stronger yet. And it is illogical that the blessed/enhanced fighter could be made 12 feet tall without gaining further strength. And it is also illogical that the bless/enhanced/12 foot fighter wouldn't get stronger when he uses his rage talent.

Some things simply need to stack.

There are a few ways around this that would reduce powergaming and streamline gameplay. Str-boosting items could go back to giving a flat bonus (Gauntlets of Ogre Power in earlier editions, Divine Power in 3.0). That's not a bad mechanic as long as the buffs are curtailed enough that an 18 Str is *usually* a boost.
Enlarge doesn't have to boost the Str score. It effectively boosts certain Str-related things (weapon damage, carrying capacity). Removing the +2 Str bonus, you'd sacrifice a tiny bit of power for a tiny bit of speed of gameplay.
Rage isn't necessary, and in fact I hope to see it removed -- along with a lot of other abilities that let you trade defense for offense. The effect is that the barbarian shines more brightly -- doing more damage -- while the cleric has to spend more actions and spells on healing. If DMs are NOT willing to kill PCs, then the barbarian really suffers no drawback for this. If the DM is willing to kill PCs, then the cost generally falls on the player of the cleric.

In general I hope they pare back the number of things that increase ability scores. Obviously Polymorph will need to change, but that's nothing new.

 

[Quartz]

How about making the distinction that between permanent, temporary and transient? The former stack with each other, the latter don't.

If you've got a +5 weapon, that's a permanent bonus which stacks with other permanent items and permanent bonuses like feats and stats.

A temporary bonus would be one whch will expire: like Bull's Strength.

A transient bonus might be +1 to hit because you happen to be uphill or because the guy just insulted your mother.

This does lead to spells like Bull's Strength stacking with a Belt of Strength, but is that such a bad thing?