Worst...Idea...Ever

[Victim]

I always thought that the historical look of plate armour was very funky, in particular the pig-snout helms, and the germanic overlapping upper over lower helms. The plate armour was not symmetrical because of mounted combat requirements & the tabards, creast & shield all had their ornaments & coat-of-arms.

There is heaps of room for stylizing the historical look but I cannot stand the utterly stupid and death-invitingly-impractical spikes, hooks and anything else which must catch blows and magnify damage.

Well, armor spikes were probably developed to help fight weird monsters that swallow whole or grab people with tentacles and such. When grabbed, neither conventional armor nor weapons do much good. DnD characters have to fight alot more than other people with weapons, so the armor should reflect the different threat environment.

 

[gordonknox]

Multiple rangers operatiing in the same party

I think this is a first edition thing.

No more than two (I think) Rangers could operate together in the same party...wha?

gk

 

[Hawkeye]

1st edition Ranger's able to sneak around in Plate armor and cast magic user spells without any sort of penalty.

Hawkeye

 

[Beckett]

I think this is a first edition thing.

No more than two (I think) Rangers could operate together in the same party...wha?

gk

No more than three.

And considering that rangers added their level to damage against giant class creatures (basically, anything that wasn't a PC race that had a head, two arms, and two legs), I'd say this is actually a very good idea for play balance.

Speaking of rangers, one of the worst ideas I've seen is the Favored Enemy ability from 2e. +4 to hit one type of creature. And this wasn't Giants or Dragons; this was Hill Giants or Blue Dragons, or whatever. +4 to hit can be nice, but I'd still probably hit the Hill Giant without most of the time. And if I chose something that the bonus really would help against, like Red Dragons, well, how often am I going to run into those?

The favored enemy ability of 3e (and particularly 3.5) works very nice, compared to the overpowered 1e and underpowered 2e abilities.

 

[Gez]

Ugh. That sort of strict accounting enforced on monster design would strip DnD of it's wonky charm. Why follow the mythical "everything can be perfectly balanced" goal, which is impossible?

You quoted the answer just below. I don't want to have four different measures of a creature's power -- HD, CR, ECL, and LA. (Even if you can say that there's only three since ECL is the sum of HD and LA.) I want only one. I want a monster with two HD to be CR 2, and to be playable (if appropriate) as an ECL 2 character.

There are already a few aspects of that design -- large and larger creatures have a minimum number of HD, you can't have a Gargantuan Giant with just one HD. Likewise, if you make a Tiny fey with 1/2 racial HD, no class HD, and at will disintegrate, implosion and meteor swarm as free (not swift!) actions, everybody will agree this is bad design. A monster with so potent powers should not have so little hit points, and vice versa.

Do you mean "Level Adjustment" should always be 0? If it's always 0, then you wouldn't need the concept of Level Adjustment at all.

This is precisely why I want LA to always be zero. To get rid of it, and of the CR entry, on a stat block. Just look at the HD entry and it gives you everything you need to know.

 

[Romnipotent]

Savage Species... I can name a few templates that are just crazy

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

This is precisely why I want LA to always be zero. To get rid of it, and of the CR entry, on a stat block. Just look at the HD entry and it gives you everything you need to know.

But that won't work. That means you can't have a 4-HD creature with no special abilities--because it wouldn't be balanced with 4-HD creatures that do have special abilities. Then the system can't model both mundane creatures and fantasy creatures. How do you model fey creatures in such a system? They're small and fragle but might have some very powerful abilities.

So, if you (artifically) add hit dice for every special ability, just because HD = CR = EL = LA, then do Grigs and Pixies have to be 4 or 5 HD creatures?

So, is a Huge Shark now 4 HD (to match it's CR), or do you just change its CR to 10 (to match its HD)?

Do you add hit dice to your Gargoyle (HD = 4, CR = 4) to indicate it has special abilities?


The current system is wonky and not perfect and has problems. But HD = LA = CR = EL isn't any better.

 

[DonAdam]

I'm going to pick something off the wall, because I'm chiming in late:

Medium armor slowing you down. It makes it worthless. Medium armor should cut run speed, heavy armor should cut speed.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But that won't work. That means you can't have a 4-HD creature with no special abilities--because it wouldn't be balanced with 4-HD creatures that do have special abilities. Then the system can't model both mundane creatures and fantasy creatures. How do you model fey creatures in such a system? They're small and fragle but might have some very powerful abilities.

Why do they need to be small and fragile? They're fairies, not bugs. You can't just swat the pixie prince like you can a fly.

So, if you (artifically) add hit dice for every special ability, just because HD = CR = EL = LA, then do Grigs and Pixies have to be 4 or 5 HD creatures?

Since HP can just as easily be "endurance" and "dodge points" as it can the ability to take a blow on your body, why does this break verisiimilitude?

So, is a Huge Shark now 4 HD (to match it's CR), or do you just change its CR to 10 (to match its HD)? Do you add hit dice to your Gargoyle (HD = 4, CR = 4) to indicate it has special abilities?

Probably somewhere in between. Drop a few HD, add a few "sharky" powers that a huge shark would concievably have, pump up ability scores more....

The thing is, HD is tied to level, and when you level up your "monster type," it should be ideally in line with powering up your class level.

Either make HD a universal, or divorce the idea of HD being tied to "level" and invent a different universal (which would, I'm sure, make some quite happy when the NPC classes don't gain HD every level or something similar).

 

[wingsandsword]

Since HP can just as easily be "endurance" and "dodge points" as it can the ability to take a blow on your body, why does this break verisiimilitude?

Hit dice have always been a measure of physical toughness, and hit points always went along with some degree of physical staying power, combat endurance as you noted. It isn't as much dodging (that's a small part of HP), note that you get bonus hit points from Constitution and not Dexterity.

We tried having just hit dice for rating monsters, it was called AD&D, and it didn't work very well. Creating a system to depict a wide variety of fantasy creatures of many types is not going to be so simple. A simple system might work well for humanoids, giants, and animals, but when you start getting to creatures with strange powers. It's very poor for modeling "Glass Cannons" who have huge offensive potential, but little defense.