What if bonuses never stacked?

[Gryph]

As others have said, you are right that the amount of stackable bonuses is very much a problem in 4e. Just eliminating stacking will, again as others have pointed out, break the current math and require massive system overhaul.

I think there is a seam to address this issue in narrowing down the types of bonuses by combining some of the existing bonus types and then applying the existing stacking rules.

So, you could combine Enhancement bonus and Item bonus into a single type. Feat, Race and Power bonuses into a single type. And so on.

If there were only 3 or 4 types of bonuses instead of the 10 or so there are now, I think you could reduce the problem without breaking the math.

 

[keterys]

And how is this different from your suggestion of taking the +1 feat bonus all time and the +2 feat bonus while charging?

They don't stack.

The three feats in question all stack and all apply to every single attack the thief makes.

Which is one of the reasons there's such a large gap between people who optimize, and people who don't.

 

[Mirtek]

They don't stack.

Except that they are build in a way to be higher than the general predecessors and thus do pratically stack. Whether I take the +1 unnamed all the time and the +1 unnamed while charging or the +1 feat all the time and the +2 feat while charging is the same.

The three feats in question all stack and all apply to every single attack the thief makes.

Actually Nimble Blade is a situational feat like the one you desire people to take in the non-stacking world. Except that this Nimble Blade would be a non-stacking bonus one point higher than the other non-stacking bonus except that a +1 stacking bonus. Same result.

 

[keterys]

Yeah... I think we can go ahead and agree to disagree on the interpretation of non-stacking

 

[delericho]

I suspect it would probably be easier to get rid of the keywords and rule that everything stacks.

You'd need to adjust the math, of course, but I suspect that would be better than "some things stack, but not others", and it's marginally less complex than "nothing stacks" - you don't need to work out which is the single biggest modifier, just add everything.

 

[keterys]

Except part of the point is to have a lot less crap all being added to the same stuff... so that only works if you also, for example, don't allow bonuses to damage from more than one type of item, more than one feat, what have you.

Which I just can't imagine flying.

It's fine to give people the choice "I want to try and get extra damage from CA" "I want to try and get extra damage from charging" or whatever, but it's problematic when it's "I get extra damage from CA, charging, knocking prone, pushing, cold damage, radiant damage, dragonshard, bracers, gloves, weapon, helm, my stance, my leader's bonus, my..."

It's why you can have two level 30 characters have a 300% gap in damage. One knows how to gather it all up, and the other doesn't.

 

[Redbadge]

This is not interesting, that is just mechanically working off a list of feats from the most to the least advantage, aka just the same people are doing know except with a lot of more annoying little things to remember all the times (Ok, since it Tuesday, full moon and I am facing a prime number of enemies I have +7 at the moment, too bad it's not new moon and a uneven number of enemies that were born in May, because than it would be +10)

Also then the same people complaining now would be complaining that everyone takes all the defense feats, the not dying feat, ....

Also isn't that actually what we have today anyway? The rogues take their light blade expertise general feat and their nimble blade situational feat and ...

Hopefully (IMO), this theoretical system would have 0 situational feats. The goal would be to have a variety of always on, interesting feats, that players can get excited about taking, but which limits the possible range of the math (to better predict challenges with regards to optimizers vs non-optimizers). Basically to narrow the scenario where you have one level 30 rogue with +30 vs AC with another rogue in the party with +42 vs Ref (and 7.5x the average at-will damage) down to something like +30 vs AC to +33 vs Ref (maybe doing twice as much damage). And I'm not complaining about the current situation per se, I think it works fine; I'm just speculating about improvements that could be made in future iterations.

Here's my thread about the feat system I envision if your interested: http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-discussion/305574-ways-fix-feat-system-future.html

 

[Mirtek]

Yeah... I think we can go ahead and agree to disagree on the interpretation of non-stacking

The non-stacking +1 all time and then the non-stacking +2 while charging was your own example.

I don't see how this is different from just a stacking +1 all time with another stacking +1 while charging.

Both are spending two feats for +1 all time, +2 if charging

That and you can still have a +1 feat bonus to damage all the time feat... alongside a +2 feat bonus to charge damage feat.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I would just observe that all of this is pretty much possible now, just by setting bonus types carefully. In fact I think this WAS the original vision for 4e, it just got subverted by the difficulty of milling through all existing feats and figuring out what bonuses they all needed to have in order to make it work well. It was just easier for every new guy that came along with an idea for a feat to slap an untyped bonus on it and call it a day.

However, if you think about it... all magic items could contribute enhancement bonus, so you get just the best one. Now magic weapons are optional but are a good option. You could instead have some kind of bracers or gauntlets or whatever, which would take up a slot but would contribute to attacks with pretty much any weapon. Certain things could provide 'ability bonus' which wouldn't stack with ability score bonus, but would allow you to operate without a min/maxed primary score (probably good for combining powers from different classes, but could also work for odd builds).

Feats would effectively ALL be feat bonuses. Any general ones would simply be low bonuses and niche ones would be high bonuses. This failed with some feats way back when, but it can work if it is done carefully. Power bonus and such will work fine and leaders do their stuff fine.

It is really just a matter of more careful overall design of 4e with more attention to the whole system. The best option would be to pretty much just obsolete all existing feats and start over with them, as those are the most problematic stuff. In THEORY you can still get a pretty good bonus somewhere, but in practice since items are now totally DM controlled and feats wouldn't stack you'd be pretty well limited. Honestly this isn't even a huge deal with permanent to-hit anyway, it is fairly controlled.

Skills are probably where it is needed more. That could be achieved with a pretty modest amount of errata.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

If there were only 3 or 4 types of bonuses instead of the 10 or so there are now, I think you could reduce the problem without breaking the math.

This. No more than 5, tops--and only that many if you need that much to really make everything clear and easy to use.

If you want to retro fit or otherwise deal with the possibility that you might not have a complete handle on it (new edition), put in some diminishing returns. That is, you might have a chart where everything up to +5 in bonuses counted as +1 each. But getting to +10 in bonuses only bought you +8 total. That is, you assume that there was some non-stacking stuff inside that category, but you don't worry about what exactly.

However, that is a bit fiddly, even for something like 3E or 4E. So an alternative that is almost as good is to simply put in a cap, that moves with level. Make it high enough that the only way to hit it is to power game fairly heavily or go nuts in one or two categories to the neglect of the others--but not quite so high that it is impossible to hit. Now, it doesn't matter what combinations people come up with, there is a max limit on what you can get. Or if you want people to be free within categories, simply put the limit on the total, after stacking.

Now, power gaming shifts from breaking the math via inflated chances to hit to efficiency of getting to the cap. While this can still be a problem in some games, it has limited payback if the rest of the group is in the ballpark. If you can get to the cap more efficiently, saving yourself 2 feats compared to the guy next to you, what are you going to do with the two feats? You can try to power game some other element, and I guess some people would. But if those weren't your first choices, you are already being restrained. And at some point, even the most stickler of power gamers says, "Heck, chuck it. I'm not killing myself for another +1.375% increase in effectiveness. Linguist is looking fun for this guy... "

BTW, this isn't just limited to handling runaway effectiveness, either. With a cap, you can also put in a floor. Then you shift from, "take what sounds interesting or take what makes you powerful," to, "get numbers in this range somehow that interests you, and then take interesting stuff from there on." The best thing about that is that a cap and floor, being essentially assumptions about campaign style and the degree of balance needed, can be tweaked. The designers are telling you where people should be to fit what they designed. If you want to go outside those boundaries and let people be disparate in combat effectiveness, you can. Just widen the range. If you widen it a little, you know you or the players might need to address an occasional issue. If you widen a lot, you know the group is taking responsibility for this aspect (to the extent that you even care).