Author Topic: Rules Revisions  (Read 3958 times)

Offline Childe

  • Honorary Mod
  • *****
  • Posts: 485
  • Even forever must end, I think. ...
    • View Profile
    • Legend RPG, Rule of Cool Gaming
Rules Revisions
« on: November 19, 2011, 07:55:55 PM »
RULES REVISIONS
GENERAL RULES

Altered Rules Items

The following list of altered rules items is ordered by book alphabetically and then sub-ordered by page number for books with multiple entries.

Metabreath Feats (Draconomicon page 66):
(click to show/hide)

Power Surge (Dragon Magazine 313 page 57):
(click to show/hide)

Sovereign Archetypes (Dragons of Eberron page 30):
(click to show/hide)

Loredrake (Dragons of Eberron page 31):
(click to show/hide)

Base Attack Bonus (Player's Handbook page 22):
(click to show/hide)

Acquiring Feats (Player's Handbook page 87):
(click to show/hide)

Dragonblood Subtype (Races of the Dragon page 4):
(click to show/hide)



Removed Rules Items
Anti-Feats (Kingdoms of Kalamar: Villain Design Handbook 77-78, 80-87) are disallowed.
The following feats cannot be taken:
  • Item Familiar (Unearthed Arcana page 170)
  • Sudden Empower (Miniatures Handbook page 28)
  • Sudden Maximize (Miniatures Handbook page 28)
The following spells are removed from all spell lists which include them and cannot be cast:
  • This section will be updated in the future. Expect it to be draconian and inhumane, banning everything from Magic Missile to Cure Light Wounds! . . . or not. Hopefully this will be a small section.
Bloodlines with the following strengths cannot be taken (Unearthed Arcana page 19;20-31):
  • Minor
  • Intermediate
Characters cannot rebuild ability scores, class levels, races, or templates. This removes the rules outlined in pages 196-206 of Player's Handbook II (Player's Handbook II pages 196-206).
« Last Edit: November 23, 2011, 12:23:45 PM by Childe »
"You had a tough day at the office. So you come home, make
yourself some dinner, smother your kids, pop in a movie, maybe
have a drink. It's fun, right? Wrong. Don't smother your kids."
- The More You Know

Offline brainpiercing

  • PbP Game Master
  • ***
  • Posts: 281
  • Thread Killer
    • View Profile
Re: Rules Revisions
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2011, 11:22:38 AM »

Characters cannot rebuild ability scores, class levels, races, or templates. This removes the rules outlined in pages 196-206 of Player's Handbook II (Player's Handbook II pages 196-206).
Are you going to offer an alternate retraining mechanic, or remove it altogether? I'm asking for two reasons:

-Any kind of shortened level progression will probably lengthen time between levels. In consequence, the game won't be any shorter than a 20 level game, and being stuck with a level of suck for months will not improve gameplay in the least
- there is no inherent imbalance in retraining. With only 5 levels, you should entirely get rid of the Power now/suck later or Suck now/power later paradigms that have plagued roleplaying games. Which means having power now and power later is entirely acceptable, which also means that you SHOULD be able to get rid of first level features which suck at level 5 without any problems. Arguably they suck less with only 5 levels, but still...

What I do for my game(s) is in fact open up retraining completely: you don't need to fulfill the requirements of a new element at the level of the element you are removing, you can in fact qualify at the time of retraining.

Or I'm guessing now that I'm arguing for something different - you are only removing rebuilding. Duh... Well, count my vote for a very liberalized retraining mechanic :).

Offline SneeR

  • Legendary Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1531
  • Sneering
    • View Profile
Re: Rules Revisions
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2011, 07:12:54 PM »

Characters cannot rebuild ability scores, class levels, races, or templates. This removes the rules outlined in pages 196-206 of Player's Handbook II (Player's Handbook II pages 196-206).
Are you going to offer an alternate retraining mechanic, or remove it altogether? I'm asking for two reasons:

-Any kind of shortened level progression will probably lengthen time between levels. In consequence, the game won't be any shorter than a 20 level game, and being stuck with a level of suck for months will not improve gameplay in the least
- there is no inherent imbalance in retraining. With only 5 levels, you should entirely get rid of the Power now/suck later or Suck now/power later paradigms that have plagued roleplaying games. Which means having power now and power later is entirely acceptable, which also means that you SHOULD be able to get rid of first level features which suck at level 5 without any problems. Arguably they suck less with only 5 levels, but still...

What I do for my game(s) is in fact open up retraining completely: you don't need to fulfill the requirements of a new element at the level of the element you are removing, you can in fact qualify at the time of retraining.

Or I'm guessing now that I'm arguing for something different - you are only removing rebuilding. Duh... Well, count my vote for a very liberalized retraining mechanic :).

Barbarian10-->wizard11 FTW!  :lmao
A smile from ear to ear
3.5 is disappointingly flawed.

Offline Childe

  • Honorary Mod
  • *****
  • Posts: 485
  • Even forever must end, I think. ...
    • View Profile
    • Legend RPG, Rule of Cool Gaming
Re: Rules Revisions
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2011, 07:48:22 PM »
Are you going to offer an alternate retraining mechanic, or remove it altogether? I'm asking for two reasons:
I'm not touching retraining at all, only rebuilding. If people want to retrain feats, they are welcome to. If people want to retrain skill points - even for early entry tricks at fifth (or earlier) - they're welcome to. I am, however, removing Rebuilding. I feel this is fair as I (literally) wrote the handbook on using and abusing Rebuilding. Additionally, it's worth noting that Rebuilding was never intended for low-level characters, though since we concern ourselves with Character Optimization, the challenges presented were fair game for the Rebuilding Handbook to accept. That all said, the reason for this is exactly as you state:

Quote
With only 5 levels, you should entirely get rid of the Power now/suck later or Suck now/power later paradigms that have plagued roleplaying games. Which means having power now and power later is entirely acceptable, which also means that you SHOULD be able to get rid of first level features which suck at level 5 without any problems. Arguably they suck less with only 5 levels, but still...

That is, I am intending with this system to disrupt the notions of 'suck now or suck later' class design. I have converted nearly 70 classes into the T5 system so far, and I hope you'll take a look at them in their thread, here: http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1386.0 (PDF here: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?afkotvovz180sh7)
While, of course, I do intend that the levels are both filled with new things to do (as best I could accomplish that with some classes on first iteration*) and are competitive with one another, I realize there will always be shortcomings in such attempts, at least at first. That's why I hope to get feedback on the class revisions. T5 is not a "completed" project. It is still in progress, although getting ~60 classes done and some rules revisions were the milestone that drove me to get it online to be tested.

Quote
-Any kind of shortened level progression will probably lengthen time between levels. In consequence, the game won't be any shorter than a 20 level game, and being stuck with a level of suck for months will not improve gameplay in the least
- there is no inherent imbalance in retraining.
Briefly, to address this: I agree. It would suck having a horrible class for that long. That's why I'm hoping to give the classes things to do or feel useful doing at each level, or at least significant boosts to the power of the class, even if the variety isn't built-in. But towards that end, I have also always intended that this system be played - assuming some of the balancing works out between classes - faster and looser than traditional 3.X. I know I haven't revealed the HP setup yet, but everyone has more HP (even NPCs), and I mean for that to encourage - somewhat paradoxically - a faster style of play. That is, the 8 Con sorcerer won't have to worry at level 1 that a house cat might kill them if it gets a surprise round. The enemy who scores a lucky critical hit won't automatically drop the rogue to -8 and force the DM to jump in with a "you wake up, held prisoner" to avoid the PC actually dying. To preempt a question that might be in your mind: I have no intention whatsoever at this time to give enemies (without class levels) similar HP boosts. T5 is concerned, to some extent, with action, which means enemies have to be able to live fast and die faster.
[/quote]
"You had a tough day at the office. So you come home, make
yourself some dinner, smother your kids, pop in a movie, maybe
have a drink. It's fun, right? Wrong. Don't smother your kids."
- The More You Know

Offline brainpiercing

  • PbP Game Master
  • ***
  • Posts: 281
  • Thread Killer
    • View Profile
Re: Rules Revisions
« Reply #4 on: November 22, 2011, 04:45:51 AM »
I see my folly of mixing retraining and rebuilding... :)

Now:

More HP: IMHO there is an inherent problem with differentiating between PCs and NPCs or even monsters when creating a ruleset that is supposed to create a convincing game world. For instance, what happens when a monster takes a class level - does it suddenly get the bonus HP or not?
Now... I tried to run a modified E6 game where everyone and their mother got their Con score as bonus HP. This meant that PCs usually had around 20+HP at first level, and monsters - depending on what they were - often had far more. At level 2 the PCs fought enemies that had 50-60HP. While this created exactly the effect I wanted - namely longer, more dramatic and close-cut battles, the players were unwilling to go along with it and make their characters even remotely competent in the damage dealing area. That... sucked. I had characters dealing 1 damage per round! Also, it makes low level SoDs really, really powerful, since whitling down the HP takes a long time, whereas the single colour spray can instantly take someone out of the fight. I somewhat alleviated that problem by allow Tier system gestalting balance, as in, Tier 1s and 2s don't get to gestalt, whereas basically everyone else does. So my goal of not having wizards was again met - but a Full-BAB gish beguiler, or worse, would have been a total option, and entirely devastating. So I'm thinking this was again a consequence of that particular game group.

I'll reply to classes in the classes thread.

Offline Childe

  • Honorary Mod
  • *****
  • Posts: 485
  • Even forever must end, I think. ...
    • View Profile
    • Legend RPG, Rule of Cool Gaming
Re: Rules Revisions
« Reply #5 on: November 23, 2011, 01:01:57 PM »
I see my folly of mixing retraining and rebuilding... :)

Now:

More HP: IMHO there is an inherent problem with differentiating between PCs and NPCs or even monsters when creating a ruleset that is supposed to create a convincing game world. For instance, what happens when a monster takes a class level - does it suddenly get the bonus HP or not?
I may have worded my last reply a bit erroneously. "Everyone" having more HP applied only to those with class levels (PCs and NPCs alike, but not monsters with only racial HD).

The way the system is set up now (which I'll unveil fully in Patch 1.2!) is that taking a class level gives you a certain amount of bonus HP, and NPCs can be set by the DM to either have that bonus HP or to have a lesser amount - whether they take a PC Class or an NPC Class isn't tied to that. It's tied to each level - class or racial HD?

There isn't one "you have a class!" lump sum of bonus HP. If, for instance, a Bugbear takes a level as Rogue, it would have the bonus HP for that level. I'm hoping that it works out to be a useful tool for DMs to customize: do I want this NPC to be minor or significant? If it doesn't work out, I'll revise the system and see what I can do to improve it. But it's intended to give the DM a few more dials to use: does this NPC have an NPC class or a PC class?; do I give this NPC the full bonus or the reduced bonus? With the system you can have NPC Wizards that are - at least in one aspect, HP - objectively weaker than the PCs. The same goes for other classes, of course.

Quote
Now... I tried to run a modified E6 game where everyone and their mother got their Con score as bonus HP. This meant that PCs usually had around 20+HP at first level, and monsters - depending on what they were - often had far more. At level 2 the PCs fought enemies that had 50-60HP. While this created exactly the effect I wanted - namely longer, more dramatic and close-cut battles, the players were unwilling to go along with it and make their characters even remotely competent in the damage dealing area. That... sucked. I had characters dealing 1 damage per round! Also, it makes low level SoDs really, really powerful, since whitling down the HP takes a long time, whereas the single colour spray can instantly take someone out of the fight. I somewhat alleviated that problem by allow Tier system gestalting balance, as in, Tier 1s and 2s don't get to gestalt, whereas basically everyone else does. So my goal of not having wizards was again met - but a Full-BAB gish beguiler, or worse, would have been a total option, and entirely devastating. So I'm thinking this was again a consequence of that particular game group.
I'm a lot less concerned with giving boosts to monsters. While I want T5 to have some degree of realism and to have a lot of options for high-tension, dramatic adventures and combats, if Team PC can regularly drop racial-HD kobolds in one hit at level 1, I'm not too worried about that. Maybe it means pulling back a little for Team PC if enemies can't even land a hit before they die, or maybe I push Team Monster up just a tiny notch, but I don't intend to make monsters a whole lot harder.

Now, enemies with class levels will be a bit more challenging, but hopefully the HP system makes it so that Team PC is always clearly extraordinary in some fashion - that boost is what makes them the heroes of the game/story/world.

Now, there might be a rare enemy that has that same degree of skill - class levels, full HP boost - but that's not mandatory. That's an option for the DM. If the DM wants the Evil Wizard to be really competitive, they won't use an NPC class to be "close enough"; they'll use the actual Wizard class, and they'll give her the full HP bonus, and maybe the Evil Wizard will even be max level with a few bonus feats past 5th.

Quote
I'll reply to classes in the classes thread.
Sounds like a plan!
"You had a tough day at the office. So you come home, make
yourself some dinner, smother your kids, pop in a movie, maybe
have a drink. It's fun, right? Wrong. Don't smother your kids."
- The More You Know

Offline brainpiercing

  • PbP Game Master
  • ***
  • Posts: 281
  • Thread Killer
    • View Profile
Re: Rules Revisions
« Reply #6 on: November 24, 2011, 10:50:29 AM »

I may have worded my last reply a bit erroneously. "Everyone" having more HP applied only to those with class levels (PCs and NPCs alike, but not monsters with only racial HD).

The way the system is set up now (which I'll unveil fully in Patch 1.2!) is that taking a class level gives you a certain amount of bonus HP, and NPCs can be set by the DM to either have that bonus HP or to have a lesser amount - whether they take a PC Class or an NPC Class isn't tied to that. It's tied to each level - class or racial HD?

There isn't one "you have a class!" lump sum of bonus HP. If, for instance, a Bugbear takes a level as Rogue, it would have the bonus HP for that level. I'm hoping that it works out to be a useful tool for DMs to customize: do I want this NPC to be minor or significant? If it doesn't work out, I'll revise the system and see what I can do to improve it. But it's intended to give the DM a few more dials to use: does this NPC have an NPC class or a PC class?; do I give this NPC the full bonus or the reduced bonus? With the system you can have NPC Wizards that are - at least in one aspect, HP - objectively weaker than the PCs. The same goes for other classes, of course.

Alright, fair enough. Generally monsters will have more HP anyway.

Quote

I'm a lot less concerned with giving boosts to monsters. While I want T5 to have some degree of realism and to have a lot of options for high-tension, dramatic adventures and combats, if Team PC can regularly drop racial-HD kobolds in one hit at level 1, I'm not too worried about that. Maybe it means pulling back a little for Team PC if enemies can't even land a hit before they die, or maybe I push Team Monster up just a tiny notch, but I don't intend to make monsters a whole lot harder.
In my experience, while PCs do need a statistical advantage, you can always compensate for monster power with poor tactics, which is why I tend to do the opposite: Bump up the numbers, especially for dumb monsters, and play stupid. Generally, the best fights are those where the players start out thinking No-Fair, but then pull through.

Quote
Now, enemies with class levels will be a bit more challenging, but hopefully the HP system makes it so that Team PC is always clearly extraordinary in some fashion - that boost is what makes them the heroes of the game/story/world.

I tried to do this via Gestalt/no gestalt. In this E6 game there were the elite casts, so to speak, which had either T1 PC classes or some sort of Gestalt, then there was the trained group, ranging from PC classes without gestalt to to NPC classes at the low end, and finally commoners - even those with up to three levels by default. Monsters were different, they had no gestalt, but compensated with inflated ability scores.

The reason for this is that Gestalt often just gives more options where just giving numerical boosts is more boring, and can also have greater problems. Of course, the Tier system gestalt can actually go the other way, there, because what you produce is often just any odd class gestalted with Warrior, which means full BAB.

Quote
Now, there might be a rare enemy that has that same degree of skill - class levels, full HP boost - but that's not mandatory. That's an option for the DM. If the DM wants the Evil Wizard to be really competitive, they won't use an NPC class to be "close enough"; they'll use the actual Wizard class, and they'll give her the full HP bonus, and maybe the Evil Wizard will even be max level with a few bonus feats past 5th.

Do understand that all a HP boost does for enemies is actually make the lower tier classes WEAKER. HP boosts without save boosts means that melee can go packing and anyone with BFC or SoDs will rule the world. Now while optimised melee can be every bit as bad as wizards playing rocket-tag, this is just something to watch out for.

You might want to consider looking at the 4th Ed save mechanic: Making spells roll vs Save AC is generally a more balanced mechanic. At these low levels the numbers should all still come out approximately right.
Save AC should be 10+save bonus+ ability mod+other mods;  Spell attack roll should be 1d20+spell level +ability mod+other mods. A spell that has no save now might still always hit. Rays stay the same, attack with Dex and target touch AC as before. Only rays with additional saves create problems, which might be alleviated with two attack rolls or attacking the higher of either Touch or Save AC.

Depending on the results of this, maybe change the spells/day or the bonus spells/day table.

Damn now I'm talking about this so much I want to play this old E6 game again :(. And I have neither a group nor time to run it, really.