D&D 3E/3.5 The design processes from 2e to 3e, 3 to 3.5, and 3e to 4e.

[Samnell]

A creature shouldn't have to have lots of skill points, high will saves, and lots of feats just because it's big. Blue whales are not sages any more than killer whales.

Animals do not get high will saves, unless dire and in that case we're not dealing so much with a real world creature as it's bigger fantasy equivalent anyway, or for that matter very many skill points. It's just 2 per HD, plus int. Since that's a penalty, most animals are going to have next to no skills. So far as feats go, there are plenty of extremely obvious feats that an animal can benefit from and even help reflect its toughness and size in the rules without giving blue whales whirlwind attack. A baleen whale has these feats:

"Alertness, Diehard, Endurance, Toughness (2)"

What about that selection is unreasonable? I think it's an excellent selection of feats for the animal. I don't think the system is suggesting that the world's blue whales go to a cetacean dojo under the sea to learn Alertness. I do not see anything that suggests a baleen whale is a sage either. It has an Int of 2. The PCs will not be hiring it to translate some ancient runes.

Your point about racial skill bonuses is well taken, but it's just one way to patch the problem. It would be better IMO to just deal with that directly.

I don't see how racial skill bonuses are a patch any more than ability score bonuses to skills are a patch. These are perfectly reasonable ways for the game to deal with the situations being described. It seems to work excellently for animals, including the animal you brought up.

If you have a complaint about completely fictional characters which ought not to have the benefits to go along with their high HD, I'm afraid I can't agree. Since they're fictional, there's no sense at all applying to reality to determine what sorts of statistics they ought or ought not have. The most obvious analogs to real animals in the game are their dire equivalents, some of which might have had prehistoric antecedents, but the only thing the game does with dire animals that's odd is give them a good will save. That's a spot fix, not a huge-overhaul-of-the-entire-way-monsters-are-done-fix.

 

[pemerton]

You have posted some more stuff since the quote below, but it seems to me to get to the nub of the issue:

How is it counterintuitive that more HD mean more skill points? I would have a great deal of trouble justifying anything else.

In animals, HD is approximately equal to size. So you are, in effect, saying that it would be difficult to justify any allocation of skill points other than on the basis of size. I personally don't see the difficulty. Cows are bigger than dogs, but I don't know of any argument that they are more skilled. If you're suggesting that we can deal with that by making cows Int 1 and Dogs Int 2, then what about horses. Horses are bigger than dogs, and about as smart, but again I don't see any reason to suppose that they are more skilled. With these cases in mind, why is it hard to justify any alternative to the dependence of skill points on size?

Ability score bonuses, skill ranks, and racial bonuses all function the same in the skill check.

I don't see how racial skill bonuses are a patch any more than ability score bonuses to skills are a patch. These are perfectly reasonable ways for the game to deal with the situations being described. It seems to work excellently for animals, including the animal you brought up.

Racial bonuses don't work the same as skill points. For example, all feats with skill pre-requisites express them in terms of ranks, not absolute bonuses.

Racial bonuses also break down in some cases: for example, the anthopomorphic animals in Savage Species have a strange quirk that many of the smaller animals give better bonuses than the big ones, because the anthropomorphic animal inherits the racial bonuses but not the allocated skill ranks.

The need for two distinct ways of measuring an animal's skill - racial bonuses and skill points - is in fact illustrative of the problem, because they draw a distinction in the mechanics where there is no genuine distinction (either in the real world or the game world) to be drawn. This is the sense in which racial bonuses are a patch.

 

[Ry]

Arguing over the internal reality of the game mechanics rather than which ones make the game fun is SO 3e.

 

[Samnell]

Arguing over the internal reality of the game mechanics rather than which ones make the game fun is SO 3e.

I can't bring myself to believe that the notion that a horse might have more skill points than a dog is injurious to the fun of anybody. I can think of a great many reasons why an inconsistent, incoherent system is vastly less fun to play and run, though. I know for a fact it is for me. That's why I quit playing pre-d20 D&D as soon as I could.

 

[Samnell]

In animals, HD is approximately equal to size. So you are, in effect, saying that it would be difficult to justify any allocation of skill points other than on the basis of size.

Hit Dice, but sure there is a correlation between HD and size. It would be strange to have a colossal creature with 1 HD. Counterintuitive, even.

I personally don't see the difficulty. Cows are bigger than dogs, but I don't know of any argument that they are more skilled. If you're suggesting that we can deal with that by making cows Int 1 and Dogs Int 2, then what about horses. Horses are bigger than dogs, and about as smart, but again I don't see any reason to suppose that they are more skilled.

Any int penalty whatsoever will put any animal creature at 1 skill point per HD, plus the usual extra 3 for the first HD. So the only difference is by HD, sure. But is it really that big of a deal? The most HD a horse is given in the SRD is four. A dog has 1 HD, a riding dog 2. You are suggesting that a difference of at most three skill points is sufficient reason to vastly overhaul the system by which monsters are built? That seems very extreme to me.

Racial bonuses don't work the same as skill points. For example, all feats with skill pre-requisites express them in terms of ranks, not absolute bonuses.

If an animal really needs the feat, make it a bonus feat. That's what they're for, just like racial skill bonuses. They cover these trivial corner cases.

Racial bonuses also break down in some cases: for example, the anthopomorphic animals in Savage Species have a strange quirk that many of the smaller animals give better bonuses than the big ones, because the anthropomorphic animal inherits the racial bonuses but not the allocated skill ranks.

A quirk in one template in one supplement is the very definition of a corner case. Are you suggesting that the system of rules that model monsters in the game needs to be changed because one template is a bit wonky?

The need for two distinct ways of measuring an animal's skill - racial bonuses and skill points - is in fact illustrative of the problem, because they draw a distinction in the mechanics where there is no genuine distinction (either in the real world or the game world) to be drawn. This is the sense in which racial bonuses are a patch.

There are not two distinct ways of measuring an animal's skill performance, which is the real issue. Skill performance depends upon the final skill bonus, however it is arrived at. Racial skill bonuses are an exceptionally elegant and smooth portion of the system geared to fix the corner cases where the overall system does not quite give the result we expect. Is it a patch when a halfling gets a bonus to move silently instead of a straight up, bigger, dex bonus? I don't think so. Halflings are more dexterous than humans, but they're even quieter than their dexterity score would indicate at the outset. So might an eagle get a racial Spot bonus that shoves its Spot score way above what it could get with ranks and ability bonus alone.

But I suppose I'm arguing semantics here. It doesn't matter if it's a patch or not. It's an astoundingly good and elegant patch if it is one. It's easy to apply, even on the fly, and adjudicate. Furthermore, its inclusion points the way for DMs who hit this modeling issue to handle it in a way consistent with the rest of the system.

 

[pemerton]

Even more elegant is a system like HARP or RM that divorces skill points and level from HD.

 

[Samnell]

Even more elegant is a system like HARP or RM that divorces skill points and level from HD.

If, and only if, the same system applies to PCs. I don't expect that to happen.

 

[TerraDave]

And the gold goes to:

Arguing over the internal reality of the game mechanics rather than which ones make the game fun is SO 3e.

The OP wins the silver.

 

[Scribble]

Hit Dice, but sure there is a correlation between HD and size. It would be strange to have a colossal creature with 1 HD. Counterintuitive, even.

What if it's a 1d100000000 hit die?

 

[pemerton]

Even more elegant is a system like HARP or RM that divorces skill points and level from HD.

If, and only if, the same system applies to PCs. I don't expect that to happen.

As I understand things, in 4E monsters will not be built on the same basis as PCs. This at least opens up the possibility that monster skills and HD will not be treated in the same way as character skills and levels. Am I right in thinking you would find this a move away from elegance?