The death of bonus stacking?

[Crazy Jerome]

If you keep derived abilities (e.g. Str boost from magic affects the ability), or things such as getting +1 from stuff that used to stack, and now only partially stacks, then the complexity of stacking is not reduced, merely rearranged. The tradeoff being sought is between:

1. Make the bonuses manageable (for balance)
2. Make the process of counting the bonuses easier.
3. Still make a nod to "realism", both in diminishing returns and some effect from stacking.

I like the idea of limiting the number of stackable bonus types (around 7 sounds reasonable). Then add one the idea of only picking the best 3. You can pick any three.

Natural Armor +3 and Plate +8 being the same as Plate +8 is not entirely reasonable, though simple. Natural Amor +3 and Plate +8 being +11 is not entirely reasonable, either, though also simple. Plate +8, Nat +3, Arcane +4, Dodge +3 being +15 --and not geting any better unless you find another +4 bonus to upgrade one of the +3, or in one of the (few) remaining types? That's reasonable and simple, and represents diminishing returns.

If you want to make that just a bit more reasonable for the corner cases, then change the total at the end. Perhaps: About 7 types of bonuses. Pick your best three. Subtract one point of bonus if you have have two types active, and two points of bonus if you have three types active. That last bit is kind of cumbersome to say, but simple in practice and maybe worth the nod to the corner cases. So the Natural Armor +3, Plate +8 gives +10. If the creature has Dex Mod of +2, he ends up with +11.

Using something like that, you don't need special rules for Max Dex on armor, either.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

D&D 3.x rewards a character for choosing many different, but stacking, bonuses.
A Ring of Protection +1 and a Amulet of Natural Armor +1 are cheaper than a Ring of Protection +2 or a Amulet of Natural Armor +2, despite both having the same net effect (except in a few corner cases which come up approximately equally often).

I think that lead quickly to the "Christmas Tree" effect, because people needed a lot of these items to get the highest benefit.

I think the basic idea of defining types of bonuses and allow only different types to stack is good, but the number of types must be precisely defined and never be opened up.
If someone wants to add a new name for a modifier, he can do so, but:
The modifier must replace an existing modifier for any given character. The new modifier (or the ability granting it) specifies which existing modifier it can supersede/replace/overlap with, or the character affected by the modifier decides. Anyway, you can never benefit from more than one.

Ability Modifiers and Level derived modifiers can never be replaced.

So, the base modifiers could be like this (only "replaceable" modifiers are listed)
Ability Score: Racial, Enhancement
AC: Armor, Shield, Enhancement, Deflection, Dodge, Circumstance
Attack: Competence, Enhancement, Morale, Circumstance
Skill: Competence, Moral, Circumstance
Save: Enhancement, Morale, Circumstance

Modifiers like Dodge or Circumstance can stack with themselves (provided they have the same source) but no additional bonus types overlap with these. Circumstance and Dodge Modifiers can never be granted as a spell effect (so no spell could say "grants a +2 circumstance bonus to AC", though it could create a summoned monster that can use Aid Another to grant a +2 circumstance bonus to AC)


This doesn't address the complexity of keeping all the varying modifiers in mind, though. Maybe the special abilities in D&D 4 will work in way to reduce the amount of variation of buff abilities active at the same time. Though I doubt this...

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Which is where we are now.

Not exactly. Some of the bonus types mentioned above have been added over the years. I think we've seen some bonus bloat. Currently the number of bonuses you can have active at once is set at "as many as there are bonus types". I'm suggesting it could be an actual number, so that the system could be balanced around an assumed maximum bonus modifier at a given level.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

D&D 3.x rewards a character for choosing many different, but stacking, bonuses.
A Ring of Protection +1 and a Amulet of Natural Armor +1 are cheaper than a Ring of Protection +2 or a Amulet of Natural Armor +2, despite both having the same net effect (except in a few corner cases which come up approximately equally often).

I think that lead quickly to the "Christmas Tree" effect, because people needed a lot of these items to get the highest benefit.

I think the basic idea of defining types of bonuses and allow only different types to stack is good, but the number of types must be precisely defined and never be opened up.
If someone wants to add a new name for a modifier, he can do so, but:
The modifier must replace an existing modifier for any given character. The new modifier (or the ability granting it) specifies which existing modifier it can supersede/replace/overlap with, or the character affected by the modifier decides. Anyway, you can never benefit from more than one.

Ability Modifiers and Level derived modifiers can never be replaced.

So, the base modifiers could be like this (only "replaceable" modifiers are listed)
Ability Score: Racial, Enhancement
AC: Armor, Shield, Enhancement, Deflection, Dodge, Circumstance
Attack: Competence, Enhancement, Morale, Circumstance
Skill: Competence, Moral, Circumstance
Save: Enhancement, Morale, Circumstance

Modifiers like Dodge or Circumstance can stack with themselves (provided they have the same source) but no additional bonus types overlap with these. Circumstance and Dodge Modifiers can never be granted as a spell effect (so no spell could say "grants a +2 circumstance bonus to AC", though it could create a summoned monster that can use Aid Another to grant a +2 circumstance bonus to AC)


This doesn't address the complexity of keeping all the varying modifiers in mind, though. Maybe the special abilities in D&D 4 will work in way to reduce the amount of variation of buff abilities active at the same time. Though I doubt this...

Although many have presented a form of this idea in this thread, this is the best implementation IMO.

 

[Celebrim]

I think the basic idea of defining types of bonuses and allow only different types to stack is good, but the number of types must be precisely defined and never be opened up.

Yes, basically, that's the problem. Many of the problems people complain about in 3.X don't come from the core rule books, or if they do, they aren't experienced in there worse form by just using the core material. The real problem comes from the splat books that open up all these different options.

And as for the 'christmas tree effect', the real problem isn't the static bonus items like amulet's of natural armor because with those, you just compute your AC once and then you don't look at the number. The real problem in 3.X came from the spell buffs, and IMO it came as the unintended side effect of what was otherwise a good decision. In a nutshell, its the side effect of 'nerfing' fireball. In theory, you could have got yourself in the same sort of situation of tracking lots of dynamic bonuses from various spells in 1st edition, but in practice it didn't happen that often because direct damage was just so much more efficient than buffing your allies. When 3.0 capped damage on evocation spells and simultaneously buffed monsters with big CON bonuses plus increased monsters damage dealing capacity, it created a situation where tactically buffing your party had bigger returns on the investment of resources than just blowing up the opposition. Bonus hoarding was always a problem in AD&D, but in 3.X it became the problem. Attempts to fix the problem by reducing the duration of buff spells as was done in 3.5 only made the problem worse, because it put you in a situation where you couldn't treat the bonuses as psuedo-static (and contributed to the 15 minute adventuring day). Bonuses could be changing from round to round, and were certainly changing from encounter to encounter. At low levels, no big deal, but at high levels the math became tedious if you cared about accuracy at all.

But IMO the problem is managable within core. It's only with the nearly limitless options (most of which were never playtested and certainly never playtested together) in the splat books that things start getting truly out of hand, and you start getting like 16 types of bonuses, some with durations in rounds, some in minutes, some in 10's of minutes, some effectively per encounter, etc.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I thought the Christmas Tree effect always referred to magical items, but you are quite correct - the accounting nightmare certainly is a direct result of spell buffs.

I wasn't aware of the AD&D/D&D 1 and D&D 3.x differences in spell effectiveness, but I think your analysis makes a lot of sense.

What's making things worse in D&D is certainly that the buffs became a necessity after some time, especially with new published modules/adventures and more splat books.

 

[billd91]

What's making things worse in D&D is certainly that the buffs became a necessity after some time, especially with new published modules/adventures and more splat books.

I don't think they were ever made necessary, rather, they became a dominant strategy.

Personally, I thought the stacking bonus rules were an elegant way around the clunky rules about whether or not rings and cloaks of protection offered AC and save bonuses together, with magic armor, and with whatever new magic items came down the pipe.
I think the problem was the proliferation of bonus spells and items. The whole system needed some tighter limits, perhaps even a limit on the number of bonuses that could be stacked together for any one thing.

 

[anton1066]

I think we need to break this problem down in to a few different components

1 Spells
Every wizard pretty much has mage armor up all day. There are a number of other spells like this (IE. buffs with a duration of 1 hour per level). Just make their duration 24 hours. No more need to keep track of them. Better yet, just make them abilities that characters can gain.

Some spells are super good, but are complicated. Give these spells a 1 round duration. It's easy to handle a spell that gives you a +5 to attack and defense as long as it only lasts one round. No adjustment to the character sheet, just an adjustment to a roll.

Items
Items can also be divided up into the limited use, or always on type. any item or spell that lasts for 24 hours or is always on does not stack. anything that provides a bonus for only one round, does.

 

[MerricB]

And as for the 'christmas tree effect', the real problem isn't the static bonus items like amulet's of natural armor because with those, you just compute your AC once and then you don't look at the number. The real problem in 3.X came from the spell buffs, and IMO it came as the unintended side effect of what was otherwise a good decision.

No, that's a different problem.

AC increased far too easily in 3e for PCs (and NPCs) due to the number of different (cheap) sources that could increase it. This caused monsters to have a very short "life" in the game - you could use each one for only a couple of levels before it couldn't hit the PCs any more.

See Lizardfolk for an extreme example. A +1 attack bonus isn't going to hit any competent fighter of above 3rd level except on natural 20s.

Cheers!

 

[Plane Sailing]

An alternative method to restricting stacking is to cap the maximum bonus.

If the rules said (for instance) that you can have no more than a total +6 bonus to anything (AC, saves, abilities, whatever), and they then let you stack away to your hearts content but capped the maximum bonus you could get no matter how many different sources it came from... that might work too.

Cheers