Game Designers ASSEMBLE

[TravelLog]

I think we've reached the point where we really need to get some open forum space (or make one here) and start assessing and dividing workloads, or at least more directed brainstorming. As is, we're all over the map, though I'll admit I'm fond of things we're choosing to address. Items-as-Incarnum is certainly something I've thought about, and it does have a lot to say for it. More pointedly though, I agree with the "More D&D, less Sales and Spreadsheets" comment. Magic items should be much less omni-present than in 3.5e imo.

[Garryl]

Agreed with Ziegander. Focusing on how to change things is, at this point of the overall project, unproductive at best and counterproductive at worst. How to do something is pointless if it's how to do the wrong thing, and we won't know what we actually want to do until we decide that. Which we haven't even started yet. At this stage, we should only be identifying what the ultimate goals are and what needs to be done to achieve them. How we accomplish that comes later. If you have an idea you want to share, go ahead, it's your brew, but I'd recommend keeping it out of this thread to keep the planning clear. If you want a place to just toss half-finished ideas for comments or to get them out of your head, there's a thread just for that, and you're welcome to make your own if you want to keep yours separate.

To sum up, decide what to do, and only then decide how to do it. We're still just starting the "what" stage.

[veekie]

Again, we're getting way ahead of ourselves.

The problem with the current usage by D&D 3.5 of the concept of Wealth by Level is that after a few short levels (seriously often times by like 5th level or less) the players are laden down with so many different items that offer little minor benefits here and there that they forget what bonuses and abilities they have.

If we eliminate the +X items, change magic items into things with useful abilities, but then keep the existing notions and practice of Wealth by Level, what we get is a bunch of characters with lots of interesting abilities, where 75% or more of those abilities come from equipped items and carried trinkets. Players will have an even harder time keeping track of what they can do, and may feel even less heroic than they currently do, considering their magic items, and not their build, is where the majority of their versatility comes from.

Wealth by Level, along with Challenge Rating, are at the heart of some of D&D 3.5's biggest troubles, arguably a lot moreso than the imbalance between classes and the uber power of magic. Those issues are/will be a top priority. However, I don't think simply keeping Wealth by Level as is and eliminating +X items solves enough problems, and it definitely creates new ones.

Pretty much. You could even relegate wealth to discretionary, where pretty much all of it is random stuff(largely niche applications), or feat based(feat = budget for arsenal of expendables or iconic devices). Hell if I know which one works better yet.

We got lots of these ideas all over the site, at this point, identifying the type of change or source of problems, rather than proposed solutions would be ideal.

[Wrex]

You have me if you need me, but I am much better at fluff text and abstractions rather than messing around with the nuts and bolts of the system.

[Ziegander]

I think we've reached the point where we really need to get some open forum space (or make one here) and start assessing and dividing workloads, or at least more directed brainstorming. As is, we're all over the map, though I'll admit I'm fond of things we're choosing to address.

I'm working on it. I have a forum set up (right now it's turned off) for us to discuss things. I'm working on coming up with a set of points that I would like to address. Once I'm done with the forum, and those points, I want to start discussion on what we're going to do about them, and then divide the workloads.

There's a method to my madness. Things are slowly moving along.

The nice thing is that Wealth by Level and Challenge Rating are by no means integral concepts to the "D&D feeling." We can drastically change how those concepts are implemented, even throw them in the trash and still design a d20 game that feels like a "fixed 3.5," and I know we've got the talent to address them. So I think that we all acknowledge both systems to be broken and that they are two of the biggest problems is a very good sign of things to come.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

You are missing 2 things, OP:

A way to import 3.5 sources & mechanics. Otherwise you will have difficulty getting people to switch/learn.
A "I want in the development team" option on your poll. Unless of course you think you have already assembled the greatest talent in the world.

The 1st option isn't impossible. Assign 1 person per book. There isn't too much crunch in any book, even ToM

[oslecamo]

The nice thing is that Wealth by Level and Challenge Rating are by no means integral concepts to the "D&D feeling."

Hell yes they are integral. I would even say they're the most integral concepts of D&D. You go into dungeons filled with treasure that will grant you power besides your abilities, and face dragons and other monsters, which grant you bigger rewards if defeated the stronger they are.

After all, those are also the crucial points that made D&D diferent usual wargaming. You no longer play a bunch of characters of fixed power facing enemies of the exact same overall power, where the gear of your enemies is forever outside your reach. You now go around grabbing whatever you can and picking your fights (or being picked by them).

There's no joy in finding a treasure chest if all it does is wear down your back. There's a lot less excitement in a battle if the enemies work exactly like you.

If you can't grasp that most players out there do like to find powerful and interesting magic items and to face wondrous enemies, then this project will not go anywhere.

[Seerow]

The nice thing is that Wealth by Level and Challenge Rating are by no means integral concepts to the "D&D feeling."

Hell yes they are integral. I would even say they're the most integral concepts of D&D. You go into dungeons filled with treasure that will grant you power besides your abilities, and face dragons and other monsters, which grant you bigger rewards if defeated the stronger they are.

After all, those are also the crucial points that made D&D diferent usual wargaming. You no longer play a bunch of characters of fixed power facing enemies of the exact same overall power, where the gear of your enemies is forever outside your reach. You now go around grabbing whatever you can and picking your fights (or being picked by them).

There's no joy in finding a treasure chest if all it does is wear down your back. There's a lot less excitement in a battle if the enemies work exactly like you.

If you can't grasp that most players out there do like to find powerful and interesting magic items and to face wondrous enemies, then this project will not go anywhere.

Nothing you said actually has anything to do with wealth by level or challenge rating as game mechanics. Yes, of course D&D is going to have loot. Yes of course D&D is going to have monsters that increase in power. No this does not mean the CR system is integral to D&D (given it existed in one edition, and was absolutely broken in the one edition it existed in), no this does not mean wealth by level is integral to D&D (hell a lot of people really hate it because it translates into you can't actually give your Dragon a huge hoard of treasure, for fear of making your PCs overpowered. It also makes it so you can't run low magic games, which is a pretty real desire among the community.)

[linklord231]

I don't think Ziegander meant that there shouldn't be magic items, only that magic items should be interesting.  You don't have to have +1 Longswords for it to feel like D&D - you still need magic swords, but flat numerical bonuses are just boring. 
Kicking down people's doors and taking their stuff is essential to D&D.  Heck, that's what D&D is.  But when the loot you get at the end of the adventure is just the same stuff as you were already wearing with an additional +1 tacked on, it just doesn't feel quite as rewarding as when you find a Helm of Brilliance or a Rod of Wonder. 

[oslecamo]

Yes, CR tecnically only starts in 3rd edition.

But guess what, before that the DM was forced to make up his own CR system so the game was playable at all. You can't throw a gold dragon at the 1st level party or it will tear them apart. There's not much point either in throwing half a dozen goblins at a lv10 party either. The DM had to make stuff up, and then 3rd edition finally provides some guidelines, which even if inperfect, are still better than nothing at all.

And yes, dragon hoards should matter and not be just scenery.  If you want a low magic RPG, then you should go look for another system. Magic gear has been a staple from D&D since its begginnings.

Also funny, the same people who complain they're afraid of PCs becoming overpowered, are also the ones that claim PCs should always win everything, so what's the point? If your PCs aren't suposed to lose, why are you afraid of giving them more power? This is, if dragons with huge hoards are just chump mooks you beat every friday night whitout trouble, then the PCs are already at the peak of power.

Or you can just make the dragon a worthy oponent. He didn't collect that huge hoard just by sleeping. He earned every last coin. So if the dragon's got a huge hoard, you'll already need to be pretty powerful yourself to be able to take it.

linklord231: Allow me to point you to this earlier quote

If we eliminate the +X items, change magic items into things with useful abilities, but then keep the existing notions and practice of Wealth by Level, what we get is a bunch of characters with lots of interesting abilities, where 75% or more of those abilities come from equipped items and carried trinkets. Players will have an even harder time keeping track of what they can do, and may feel even less heroic than they currently do, considering their magic items, and not their build, is where the majority of their versatility comes from.

As you can see, Ziegander isn't happy with Rods of Wonder and Helms of Brilliance either.

[Unbeliever]

I think +X items are iconic to D&D.  But, not the proliferation of them that is de rigeur in 3E and beyond. 

What I'm saying is this:  I'd hate to see one get rid of a longsword +3.  That's a sword that is sharper, better balanced, etc. than a usual sword.  But, I'd be more than happy to do away with the whole wardrobe's worth of garters of resistance and rings of deflection needed just to "maintain" the appropriate numbers in 3.X. 

There's a nice salutary effect there.  If everyone had the "right" numbers to begin with, then a tiara of resistance +3 is actually kind of a big deal -- it shows that you are particularly resistant to a set of effects, in much the same way that Paladin's divine grace works now b/c it is (in all the times I've seen it used) a huge boost. 

My $.02 on other issue:

• should be as compatible with 3.5 as possible.  Otherwise, you run into the same problem all homebrew does -- high initial costs for uncertain gain.
• CR is relatively new to D&D.  But, it's also fantastic.  However imperfect it is, it actually gives you some guidelines.  In the past we just had to guess.  Sometimes with hilarious and disastrous results.  One of the things that separates out D&D, and probably a source of its popularity, is the ease with which you can just get into playing.
• Magic items and getting loot are iconic to D&D.  Wealth by Level is sufficiently new and abstract that it's not.
• Anything that reduces the bookkeeping for bookkeeping's sake, which is common in D&D and even more so in Pathfinder, is appreciated.

[linklord231]

Hrrrm.  I didn't notice that post before.  So, Zieg, what would your proposed solution be?  Throw out magic items altogether?  Decrease the total WBL such that characters only get a few magic items, thus limiting their options and bringing the focus back towards the character instead of the gear?

I think we can all agree that the current CR system in 3.5 is borked.  But there should still be some kind of guideline for what obstacles characters should be able to handle based on their level.  Even though older systems might not have had an explicit system, they still had an implicit one, even if it was just "You're the DM, figure it out!"  Fighting goblins and kobolds at low levels, then progressing to orcs and ogres, then eventually to big things like Pit Fiends is part of the D&D experience.  There needs to be some kind of standard to figure out how powerful you have to be in order to take on tougher foes. 

[Ziegander]

Seerow got what I meant perfectly. Magic items and powerful monsters are integral to D&D, yes. The concept and execution of the D&D 3.5 game mechanics known as Wealth by Level and Challenge Rating are not.

I'm not talking about removing magic items. I'm not talking about making all monsters the same level, or removing all guidelines of monster power. Don't put words into my mouth.

Talking about how I don't want 75% of a character's power to come from magic items with interesting effects =/= talking about how much I hate interesting magic items. If you can't see that, then, to be blunt, I have nothing more to say to you.

Talking about how the Wealth by Level and Challenge Rating systems are broken and could be thrown in the trash for all I care =/= talking about how throwing them into the trash is one of my design goals. It also does not equal talking about eliminating items and/or item/challenge guidelines altogether. Again, if you don't get that, well...

I'm NOT going to get into a flame war here about any ideas I might have before I even talk to my design team about said ideas (and, gasp, their ideas). I may be the Design Lead, but that doesn't mean that I come up with every single idea and just dispense tedious drafting work to peons. I respect the members of my team, and I picked them because I value their creativity and perspective. I have lots of ideas. I'm sure my design team has lots of ideas. Discussing them here and now does nothing to help the project.

I have already locked the Giant in the Playground thread. Once I get the new forum up and running properly I will have this one locked as well. I'm tempted to request it be locked as is.

[Ziegander]

A way to import 3.5 sources & mechanics. Otherwise you will have difficulty getting people to switch/learn.

See, I don't consider this to be very important, if at all important to the project. It's going to be a d20 game. People use Iron Heroes and other d20 game material in "standard D&D" games all the time. It's not my plan to make my game so different that it can't be used in a similar way.

A "I want in the development team" option on your poll. Unless of course you think you have already assembled the greatest talent in the world.

If you want to be a part of the Design and/or Development teams, by all means, send me a private message. Adding this option to the poll is pretty fruitless since I don't know who checked that option unless they also post saying that they did. At which point, why not just skip that entirely and PM me?

The 1st option isn't impossible. Assign 1 person per book. There isn't too much crunch in any book, even ToM

This is well beyond the scope of Phase 1. Phase 1 is to put out a core rules book that works out of the box. It is decidedly NOT to emulate every last bit of crunch that exists in D&D 3.5. That's just a patently unrealistic goal to have with zero funds and a small team of people.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

At which point, why not just skip that entirely and PM me?

... zero funds and a small team of people.

You got me there and I misunderstood your resources.

[Prime32]

Any progress on this?

(click to show/hide)

No feat or PrC should have more than one feat-based prerequisite, unless it combines two things together. If Greater TWF requires Improved TWF which requires TWF, then that counts as Greater TWF having two prereqs and is bad. Level and skill prereqs are okay, though the latter should also be minimal. Granted, this approach would remove some of the "puzzle" aspect of 3.5e which many find attractive, but also means you don't have to plan your build from lv1.

Feats should be signature abilities. In other words, if a character has a feat then it should be obvious from observation - no feats should just boost your numbers, since that's indistinguishable from being higher level/having higher ability scores (and boring). You should be able to guess a character's feats from hearing bards sing about them (and not in the sense of "he's a barbarian, all barbarians have Power Attack", more "he drank their souls to increase his power" or "he threw his weapon and it ricocheted around the room to hit multiple enemies"). This means fewer PrCs, since feats cover the same ground, but it lets you play PrC concepts from lv1.

Applying metamagic to a spell is done at casting time, and requires expending other prepared spells of equal or higher level (applying a +2 modifier to an lv5 spell would require you to expend either two lv5 spells or an lv6+ spell, in addition to the normal slot), assuming a system more like psionics isn't being used. Silent Spell/Still Spell/Eschew Materials are folded into a single feat called Simplified Spellcasting, which lets you remove one component from a spell for each additional slot expended.

Possibly all spellcasters work like sorcerers but their spells take a full-round action to cast. In this case a "Spell Preparation" feat exists which functions much like Arcane Preparation, and lets you cast them as a standard action (or a swift/immediate action, if you use a higher-level slot).