What if bonuses never stacked?

[Kzach]

Ever noticed that one of the biggest problems in D&D is bonuses stacking?

Why not just forget the whole keyword thing and say bonuses never stack?

You get a +1 to hit? Awesome! You get another +1 to hit? Great! But it doesn't stack with that first bonus. The same with damage. You can choose which source matters, maybe, but other than that, they just don't work together.

Thoughts?

 

[john112364]

You would definitely change the math since the game assumes that your abilities stack with your feats with your powers etc. It would also make magic item less exciting unless you found one with property. A +1 sword would be useless to your average fighter for instance.

None of this is necessarily a bad thing mind you. It would just be a major revision to the game.

 

[Ferghis]

The advantage to this proposed rule seems similar to that eliminating the half-level bonus, and perhaps similar. I'm interested, but I'd like to see someone else deal with the work that it would take to implement.

 

[Redbadge]

I like it to an extent. I think there is room for a few different types of bonus: For example, in a hypothetical altered version of 4e a basic attack with a longsword might be +3 strength modifier, +3 proficiency modifier, and +1 enhancement/inherent modifier for a total of +7 vs. AC (at any level; as discussed in a previous thread I'd remove traditional level scaling).

All other bonuses would be either permanent or temporary bonuses and you can add the highest of each. Examples of permanent bonuses might be Weapon Expertise or Weapon Talent. Someone who wants to be more accurate might take Weapon Expertise. A fighter probably wouldn't because he basically gets it for free; he is expected to be accurate and can use the feat that he would have spent on an attack bonus on something else.

A temporary (or circumstance) bonus would be Combat Advantage, Charge, Heroic Effort/Backstab, or any other number of fiddly power and untyped bonuses that come up in play and then disappear after an attack or a round. You would benefit from the highest at any given time, and couldn't stack charge, CA, and Heroic Effort, for example. This has the added benefit of reducing in-game bookkeeping and math.

Skills would work the same way. I'd keep ability, training (maybe +2?), and maybe proficiency (item bonuses, to mirror weapon proficiency; think Thieves' Tools for Thievery, Climbing Kit for Climbing, Binoculars for perception, Surgical Kit for Heal, etc.) Everything else wouldn't stack; feat, racial, background, boon, etc. would all be the permanent bonues you could choose from (once again, an elf with a racial bonus to Acrobatics doesn't need to take Skill Focus for that skill because he is already recognized at being better than most and so was basically given it for free). Temporary/Circumstance bonuses would be any power-based bonuses (Cat's Grace, Words of Friendship), conditional bonuses (bonus to Perception that elves give nearby non-elf allies, or DM fiat bonuses because of favorable circumstances. Once again, choose the highest, the others don't stack.

What do you think about that, Kzach?

 

[DracoSuave]

This would render Leader builds other than movement or healing-based obsolete.

The game would be less interesting without leaders who do things other than healing word.

 

[Redbadge]

Wanted to add that in my dream scenario, magic items still matter, which is why items/enhancement bonuses are excluded from the non-stacking. Also, I hate magic item Christmas trees (in other words, a slot for every magic item, and a magic item for every slot) or the need to have items to keep up.

Also, I want the math to be such that every new item truly is a treasure. For example, if a fighter finds his first magic sword, say at level 7, he is just as excited at the +1 enhancement bonus (which stacks with his current attack bonus) as he is the increased crit damage and at-will sunrod property. This is because the player likely has already found all the existing attack bonuses that are available to him, and any additional increases in accuracy are very, very rare.

I might place his next sword somewhere around level 16, but this time it's a +2 Flaming Sword. It replaces the previous +1, and now his sword gives him a bit of extra fire damage and a total 10% increase in hit chance. He's excited about it, but the math scales in such a way that he doesn't need it, and the game does not require that he have it.

For skills, I imagine my drow rogue, who wants to be super good at Stealth. Let's say he starts with a +5 Dex bonus, obviously has training, and even got Skill Focus: Stealth (+3 being a bit greater than the +2 racial bonus he got for free). He topped it off with camouflaged clothing, a mundane item giving perhaps a +2 item bonus. Assuming that training gives a +5, the drow has maxed his Stealth check at +15, and will have a very hard time increasing it (except for ability score increases, which will take awhile). Under my system, he will pass the hardest checks (around DC 30) only 30% of the time, so he still isn't quite satisfied. So, when he finally finds that Elven Cloak (+5 item bonus to Stealth), he will probably be very excited to replace his mundane camouflage with a much better magical item. And the math still isn't broke, since although he'll pass every mundane Stealth challenge quite easily, those things that should be a challenge even for the greatest sneak ever still will be (+18 vs DC 30, 45% chance of success; after a few ability bumps, he'll finally be better than a coin flip).

 

[Tony Vargas]

Ever noticed that one of the biggest problems in D&D is bonuses stacking?

Yes.

Why not just forget the whole keyword thing and say bonuses never stack?

Well, if your half-level didn't stack with your primary stat didn't stack with your weapon proficiency, the whole 4e treadmill would come to a grinding halt.

You'd have to define some bonuses as not bonuses, but rather figured into to your base modifier.

Of course, then down the line, designers looking for an easy mechanical way to make the uninspired item/feat/class-feature/whatever they're stuck on more 'interesting' and 'worth taking' would just write "increases your base modifier by X" instead of "gives a +X bonus," and you'd be right back where you started.

 

[Redbadge]

This would render Leader builds other than movement or healing-based obsolete.

The game would be less interesting without leaders who do things other than healing word.

Well, a leader could still have buff options. Some effects I might consider on an at-will attack:

An ally you can see gains combat advantage against the target until the end of their next turn.
An ally you can see gains a +X bonus to their next attack (probably +3, +4, maybe as high as +5).
An ally you can see gains a +2 bonus to attacks against the target until the end of your next turn. If that ally has combat advantage against the target, increase the bonus to +4.

And for an encounter or daily power, I might consider:
An ally you can see automatically hits the target with their next (at-will?) attack.

 

[keterys]

Might be easier to specify a "base bonus" and have all other bonuses not stack with that, but anything that added to base bonus always stacked.

Then not have base able to be added by anything other than race, class, path, destiny. Ie, relatively immutable things - not feats, powers, etc.

Though I'm sure folks will argue about items in that mix

And a leader's bonuses would just have to function with that in mind. That's well onto the 5E path, though. I think that horse has sailed on this edition without a lot of hacking.

 

[wlmartin]

Ever noticed that one of the biggest problems in D&D is bonuses stacking?

Why not just forget the whole keyword thing and say bonuses never stack?

You get a +1 to hit? Awesome! You get another +1 to hit? Great! But it doesn't stack with that first bonus. The same with damage. You can choose which source matters, maybe, but other than that, they just don't work together.

Thoughts?

My thoughts are that you would need to completely overhaul the game system if that happened.

The game relies on modifiers both positive and negative. If you remove an integral part of the mechanics of the game you have to redesign the mechanics and before you know it half the powers out there would be less or more [W] and you would have people up in arms complaining about it.

I dont think there is any problems with bonus stacking.
The reason the bonuses are typed as such ie Power, Feat, Skill etc is so that you cant abuse them (ie having 5 items that give the same stackable bonus) and although minmaxing goes on to take advantage of any area where bonuses can be stacked to great effect, dealing with that as a problem (although I have to admit it is a rare one at best) is a lesser task than removing them altogether.