Weakest FRW fix - simplest possible way

[Eric Finley]

This just hit me. Easy as pie.

Rather than increasing three stats instead of two, which I am still not sure whether I like or not, for now I may just use this:

At 8th, 14th, 21st, and 28th levels, add +1 to your (then, after ability score boosts for that level but without equipment) weakest FRW defense.

There - done. Assuming you are boosting two different FRWs with your stat boosts, your third one just kept up with that rate of improvement. The only exception being that you presumably went for an Epic Destiny which improved your high stats... but not all EDs even improve stats, and in any event this is only meant to alleviate, not eliminate, disparities here.

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An alternately simple approach: Improve the various "increase a specific defense" feats by one point of bonus. But you can only buy it if that defense is (before the feat) your lowest defense, or tied for lowest.

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Presto. Done.

 

[malcolm_n]

It looks pretty straight-forward to me. I don't quite get the reason behind the choice in levels. Wouldn't it be easier to just say 14, 18, 24, 28 or something similar? My feelings on whether it's necessary aside, I could see this being used in cases where somebody's lowest NAD puts them in an auto-hit situation.

 

[Eric Finley]

The choice in levels is because those are the levels where you pick up your second, fourth, sixth, etc. attribute boosts. So those are where, on the whole, you could reasonably expect your other FRWs to go up as well.

 

[eamon]

This is a decent low-impact solution. Compared to raising all stats at levels 4/8/etc, it does solve a few less problems, however, so it's worth examining those:

- it doesn't address builds with aligned primary/secondary stats
- it doesn't fix light armor builds without a Dex/Int primary or secondary.
- it doesn't fix skill divergence.
- it doesn't fix builds with multiple attack stats.

A lot of in-game math depends on your six ability scores, and none(*) of it is improved by ability score modifiers diverging as levels rise. Fixing this underlying divergence is in that sense the simplest fix.

But if you shy away from such a big change, your proposed fix is certainly excellently targetted and is likely to work well in 90% of the cases. I presume you'd combine this fix with a generic +1 to attacks and FRW at levels 5/15/25 and then ban expertise and the epic defense raisers? Not that thats strictly necessary, of course ;-).

* AFAIK. ;-).

 

[Eric Finley]

You'd assume correctly, in that last paragraph. I'm not partial to increasing all stats, but I'm weighing the distinction between this and the "increase three stats" sense.

Skill divergence, for example, I actually like. I don't use the standard skill challenge system; I use Obsidian for the most part, mixed with plain and simple puzzles/wingin' it. So skill divergence lets me present ever more spectacularly difficult things to the specialists... and, if I know my PCs well, still present effective 'secondary challenges' to the nonspecialists in a given area.

Your points are well taken... but to me, raising all ability scores has the big downside of making players feel like, well, it's just a math fix, you're just presenting us with bigger numbers but we're not actually net advancing. Big whoop. Keeping it as raising only a few stats helps make it feel like there's an optimization and decision space there.

 

[eamon]

[...]to me, raising all ability scores has the big downside of making players feel like, well, it's just a math fix, you're just presenting us with bigger numbers but we're not actually net advancing. Big whoop. Keeping it as raising only a few stats helps make it feel like there's an optimization and decision space there.

I can well imagine that the raise-all-stats rule wouldn't be for everyone. The real risks (IMHO) are to balance, however, and not, the way I see it anyhow, in terms of player choices. I don't like this particular optimization space because I see to many people "screw it up": they "round off" lower stats instead of raising their highest two stats, and end up playing stats they could have achieved with a lower point buy and end up with lower bonuses where it matters. In short, the 4/8 level point allocations are not really an optimization space, they're more of a chance to shoot yourself in the foot. There's very little real choice (very occasionally an off stat boost can be worth it for a prereq, and even then, you should be asking yourself if you didn't mess up your initial stat allocation), and very much real risk of people that "go for the flavor" end up gimping their character in combat.

So, I think it's an illusory choice and a source of traps for inexperienced players that I wouldn't mind removing.

From that background, raising all ability scores makes more sense, since it focuses player choice where it should be: your initial stat array allocation, and not the 4/8 boosts. It also avoids punishing roleplayers for not exquisitely planning their character advancement (avoiding the "sorry, you just don't have the right prereqs for that feat and can't get it without gimping your secondary and/or primary stat!" effect) - now, stat prereqs are merely a matter of time. A well planned char may get em a few levels earlier, but that's all.

I much prefer your system to the three-stat raise. I don't much see the point in three-stat raise fix; it's more complex, doesn't fix all builds, doesn't have all the nice other side effects of raise-all, and has almost all the downsides of the raise-all-stats approach. I'd say, either focus on a minimal impact fix (i.e., your fix), or fix the root problem and get broader fix that fixes slightly more builds and a few other problems while your at it, but also has more side effects in terms of balance (I believe these to be unproblematic, but you never quite know). The three-stat raise strikes me as the worst of both worlds: fixes hardly any more cases that your system, but has the risk of balance side-effects almost just as the raise-all approach does.