This will be.... interesting. So far for most editions the main progression of the warrior classes was to increase to hit, increase damage, or increase armor. Since to hit and armor are now, more or less, fixed, that means we will see a lot more focus on battle axes and less focus on daggers, and a lot more focus on increasing damage and HP so that you can stay in the fight longer while dealing more damage per turn. I can see all sorts of problems arising from this...
so why even play a fighter if you can play the paladin the exact same way behaviorally and get added power to boot. "Paladin" is about accepting better game-enhancing mechanics at the price of more rigid in game behavior.
Really? So it goes something like this?
Fighter: "I want to be a paladin." NPC: "Really?" Fighter: "Yes." NPC: "Very well." Starts reading from a holy book while still in-character "Do you accept having to choose and stick to the lawful good alignment, eventhough neither of us actually knows that it exists or what it is?" Fighter: "I do." NPC: "Do you reject good game balance because you accidentally rolled a high Charisma?" Fighter: "What?" NPC: "I don't know what it means either." Fighter: "Oh. Umm, ok I do." NPC: "In the name of all that is metagamey and broken, accept these better game enhancing mechanics." Fighter: "These what?" NPC: "Just get out there and try to fulfill a million different people's notion of good while not violating and part of any of them."
So the system is designed such that every single hit needs to be described to avoid confusion? Here's a scenario. The players are nudists, everybody in the world are nudists, it's not weird, it's totally normal in this land. They are naked and they fight drakes taking damage throughout, but healing up with surges. Later they meet the guy who raised the drakes.
Part 1: I didn't describe any of the hits. What does he see?
Part 2: Lets say I described the drakes as biting the players, yet they healed up. What does he see?
I was thinking more about this. Armor has not been based on level for a while. Sure you got that stat boost every few levels and if you put it in dex it would improve AC, but that +1 dex did not really improve your defense a noteable amount. (magic items have more effect)
Attack has been based on level for a long time. I wonder how BAB will he handled/replaced. If the wizard and the fighter can both hit the orc with a sword just as easily then the main difference will be damage.
So if the only area of focus left is damage then you could stat seeing fighters throwing huge amounts of damage and to counter this you will see an inflation of HP. That is assuming that damage is based on level. If damage is still primarially based on weapons and strength then a damage vs hp race won't occur.
I wonder if they are counting saves as defense like they did in 4th edition? If they do that is the only level based defence that I can really think of.
So we are loosing BAB and level bonus to saves. Basically the first 4 columns in the classes stat block.... Does that mean that it is now harder to hit foes with weapons and easier to get past enemy saving throws with spells?
Im sorry but ADEU is a French word for goodbye, not a combat system.
You say, "Encounter Power" and I stop listening to you.
This is a very simple problem and I will outline it below. Their are two types of people
Type 1: a lot of people (not all, but a lot) who play see alignment as "I am lawful good thus I must play lawful good"
Type 2: a lot of people (not all, but a lot) who play see alignment as "My previous actions have made people and the gods view me as lawful good.
The difference is subtle but it is the source of the misunderstanding. Alignment does not dictate how you play your character. All it does is tell you, the player, how the rest of the world views you, and your previous actions. Any future actions will be judged by their own merits.
Say you're a baby eating pyromaniac. You are most likely chaotic evil. But one day you decide, "Hey all I really need is love." So you get a wife, have a kid, and get a kitten named Mr. Snook'ems. You become a member of the PTA and help build houses for the homeless. You are no longer chaotic evil. And just because you were once chaotic evil it does not mean that you have to stay chaotic evil.
Alignment never dictates what you can do, it only says what you have done.
Now that is cleared up here is a simple test.
What is the alignment of...
A Police officer:
The average Citizen:
A Vigilante:
The answer is simple. The Police officer is lawful good. He uses the laws of the country and city to arrest people and make them pay their debt to society.
The Citizen is Neutral good. He wants to live is a place that is Good and follows moral and ethical principle, but he sometimes finds the laws impedes him, and he wonders why we spend so much on poor people.
The Vigilante is Chaotic Good. He wants to uphold the morals and ethics of society but finds that the bad guys often slip through the cracks in the law. He takes it upon himself to protect the people from these criminals.
That is the basic breakdown of the good alignment axis. What needs to be remembered is that any one of these people can change alignments, easily. The Police officer could be bought off by a local gang, and suddenly he drops to lawful neutral. The average citizen might find that his neighbors dog is annoying, barking at night and keeping him up. So he poisons its food, now he is no longer good, he is stepping towards true neutral. Maybe the citizen really goes crazy also kills the neighbor, hello neutral evil. It is possible that the Vigilante realizes that the cops are actually doing a pretty good job and decides to become an officer himself, leaving his masked crime fighting days behind him. Now he is Lawful good.
Your alignment is not carved in stone, it is malleable and will change to reflect your actions.
I was thinking more about this. Armor has not been based on level for a while. Sure you got that stat boost every few levels and if you put it in dex it would improve AC, but that +1 dex did not really improve your defense a noteable amount. (magic items have more effect)
I know you may wish 4E never happened, but AC does scale with level in 4E. Just a nitpick though And in a sense AC does scale with level in 3E, albeit erratically, since wealth is presumably spent on better armor and better buffs. AC is not a strict function of level, but it does have an upward trend.
Attack has been based on level for a long time. I wonder how BAB will he handled/replaced. If the wizard and the fighter can both hit the orc with a sword just as easily then the main difference will be damage.
Which makes total sense if you take a moment. Fighter hits enemy for 20 damage, wizard hits for 5 damage, and all is well. It's not like the wizard needs to miss to be less effective as a Str-based melee combatant. If the difference is a lot smaller (fighter hits for 1d8+5, wizard for 1d8) then you've got a huge problem. But if the fighter is getting some level-based bonus to damage (straight bonus, better maneuvers, multiple attacks, some combination of these) while the wizard is getting a different bonus (bonus spell damage, better spells) then their attacks with swords will be appropriately far apart in damage.
So if the only area of focus left is damage then you could stat seeing fighters throwing huge amounts of damage and to counter this you will see an inflation of HP. That is assuming that damage is based on level. If damage is still primarially based on weapons and strength then a damage vs hp race won't occur.
A damage and hp race is exactly what we're expecting. As long as the scaling is done right, this will be the cleanest system to date. If it's done wrong, well, we've seen that one a few times. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with higher damage though.
I wonder if they are counting saves as defense like they did in 4th edition? If they do that is the only level based defence that I can really think of.
Abiity scores will be defenses, as far as we know. So far there's no sign that other defenses besides AC are in. If hit numbers are more or less static, defenses can be too. Or to look at it another way, hit points are a defense. If those go up every level, you already live longer.
So we are loosing BAB and level bonus to saves. Basically the first 4 columns in the classes stat block.... Does that mean that it is now harder to hit foes with weapons and easier to get past enemy saving throws with spells?
It seems like you're picturing DDN as 3E with a few changes. That's probably not a safe assumption - we should all throw out what we think we know about the math or the charts or anything like that.
Ed_Warlord, on what it takes to make a thread work: I think for it to be really constructive, everyone would have to be honest with each other, and with themselves.
Areleth: How does this help the problems we have with Fighters? Do you think that every time I thought I was playing D&D what I was actually doing was slamming my head in a car door and that if you just explain how to play without doing that then I'll finally enjoy the game?
I may have grasped the wrong end of the stick entirely here, so correct me if I have.
Damage going up by level means more hp for monsters, does it not? How does this play into the "let's shorten combat" slog? 4e combat for me and my group was some of the slowest and frequently boring "roleplaying experiences" I have ever played. If the hit points stay the same, I expect similar problems with hour long *yawn* battles.
The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules. -Gary Gygax
I may have grasped the wrong end of the stick entirely here, so correct me if I have.
Damage going up by level means more hp for monsters, does it not? How does this play into the "let's shorten combat" slog? 4e combat for me and my group was some of the slowest and frequently boring "roleplaying experiences" I have ever played. If the hit points stay the same, I expect similar problems with hour long *yawn* battles.
It takes more than hit points to stretch out combat. Decision paralysis, looking up rules, complex resolution methods, and other factors matter a lot too. But if monster hp and PC damage scale well, that shouldn't add more time. For example, if your fighter hits for 8 damage against a 15 hp goblin at level one and hits for 80 damage against a 150 hp hill giant at level 10, then the scaling won't lead to a bad place. Even if your DM makes you fight the giant at level 4 when you only hit for 32 damage, your're still not necessarily in for a long fight. Other factors (complicated rules) could still slow you down, but that's all. The numbers in my damage scaling example are totally made up and probably wouldn't work at all, by the way - just an example.
Ed_Warlord, on what it takes to make a thread work: I think for it to be really constructive, everyone would have to be honest with each other, and with themselves.
Areleth: How does this help the problems we have with Fighters? Do you think that every time I thought I was playing D&D what I was actually doing was slamming my head in a car door and that if you just explain how to play without doing that then I'll finally enjoy the game?
Damage going up by level means more hp for monsters, does it not? How does this play into the "let's shorten combat" slog? 4e combat for me and my group was some of the slowest and frequently boring "roleplaying experiences" I have ever played. If the hit points stay the same, I expect similar problems with hour long *yawn* battles.
It works like this. It chukifies hit points. So if the Fighter increases damage by 1d6 per level (which is absurd) Then you know that at level 8 a monster needs 8d6 Hp to surivive 1 hit. So if you want the monster to take 3 hits it needs 24d6 HP. This allows the DM to know how many hits a monster can take before it goes down.
So if a party of 4 at level 3 attack a monster and you want the combat to last 3 rounds how many Hit Points does the monster need? The answer is 4*3d6*3. That is 4 hits per round (one for each player), 3d6 per hit, and 3 rounds. The monster needs 36d6 hp.
Now with a constant hit rate you can help lower that monsters' hit points. So if the players have a 50% hit rate you know that instead of 4 hits per round only 2 will hit. So now the monster's HP only needs to be 18d6 to survive for 3 rounds against 4 level 3 adventures.
The idea is that you turn the monsters HP it to chunks. Each hit removes 1 chunk. So if you know the number of hits and how long you want the monster to surivive you can easily know how many chunks of HP it needs. But don't expect to see HP listed in boxes like Shadowrun or Cyberpunk. It sounds like HP chunks will probably be defined as either d6 or d8 Hit dice so they will still have a number. Like how our monster has 18 chunks, which is 63 hitpoints.
Im sorry but ADEU is a French word for goodbye, not a combat system.
You say, "Encounter Power" and I stop listening to you.
This is a very simple problem and I will outline it below. Their are two types of people
Type 1: a lot of people (not all, but a lot) who play see alignment as "I am lawful good thus I must play lawful good"
Type 2: a lot of people (not all, but a lot) who play see alignment as "My previous actions have made people and the gods view me as lawful good.
The difference is subtle but it is the source of the misunderstanding. Alignment does not dictate how you play your character. All it does is tell you, the player, how the rest of the world views you, and your previous actions. Any future actions will be judged by their own merits.
Say you're a baby eating pyromaniac. You are most likely chaotic evil. But one day you decide, "Hey all I really need is love." So you get a wife, have a kid, and get a kitten named Mr. Snook'ems. You become a member of the PTA and help build houses for the homeless. You are no longer chaotic evil. And just because you were once chaotic evil it does not mean that you have to stay chaotic evil.
Alignment never dictates what you can do, it only says what you have done.
Now that is cleared up here is a simple test.
What is the alignment of...
A Police officer:
The average Citizen:
A Vigilante:
The answer is simple. The Police officer is lawful good. He uses the laws of the country and city to arrest people and make them pay their debt to society.
The Citizen is Neutral good. He wants to live is a place that is Good and follows moral and ethical principle, but he sometimes finds the laws impedes him, and he wonders why we spend so much on poor people.
The Vigilante is Chaotic Good. He wants to uphold the morals and ethics of society but finds that the bad guys often slip through the cracks in the law. He takes it upon himself to protect the people from these criminals.
That is the basic breakdown of the good alignment axis. What needs to be remembered is that any one of these people can change alignments, easily. The Police officer could be bought off by a local gang, and suddenly he drops to lawful neutral. The average citizen might find that his neighbors dog is annoying, barking at night and keeping him up. So he poisons its food, now he is no longer good, he is stepping towards true neutral. Maybe the citizen really goes crazy also kills the neighbor, hello neutral evil. It is possible that the Vigilante realizes that the cops are actually doing a pretty good job and decides to become an officer himself, leaving his masked crime fighting days behind him. Now he is Lawful good.
Your alignment is not carved in stone, it is malleable and will change to reflect your actions.
so why even play a fighter if you can play the paladin the exact same way behaviorally and get added power to boot. "Paladin" is about accepting better game-enhancing mechanics at the price of more rigid in game behavior.
Really? So it goes something like this?
Fighter: "I want to be a paladin." NPC: "Really?" Fighter: "Yes." NPC: "Very well." Starts reading from a holy book while still in-character "Do you accept having to choose and stick to the lawful good alignment, eventhough neither of us actually knows that it exists or what it is?" Fighter: "I do." NPC: "Do you reject good game balance because you accidentally rolled a high Charisma?" Fighter: "What?" NPC: "I don't know what it means either." Fighter: "Oh. Umm, ok I do." NPC: "In the name of all that is metagamey and broken, accept these better game enhancing mechanics." Fighter: "These what?" NPC: "Just get out there and try to fulfill a million different people's notion of good while not violating and part of any of them."
So the system is designed such that every single hit needs to be described to avoid confusion? Here's a scenario. The players are nudists, everybody in the world are nudists, it's not weird, it's totally normal in this land. They are naked and they fight drakes taking damage throughout, but healing up with surges. Later they meet the guy who raised the drakes.
Part 1: I didn't describe any of the hits. What does he see?
Part 2: Lets say I described the drakes as biting the players, yet they healed up. What does he see?
Yeah, as I said, the numbers I was using were absurd. They just made math easy. It will probably be like 1d6 per 3 levels or some such thing. Basically I have a feeling it will increase like rogue's sneak attack.
Im sorry but ADEU is a French word for goodbye, not a combat system.
You say, "Encounter Power" and I stop listening to you.
This is a very simple problem and I will outline it below. Their are two types of people
Type 1: a lot of people (not all, but a lot) who play see alignment as "I am lawful good thus I must play lawful good"
Type 2: a lot of people (not all, but a lot) who play see alignment as "My previous actions have made people and the gods view me as lawful good.
The difference is subtle but it is the source of the misunderstanding. Alignment does not dictate how you play your character. All it does is tell you, the player, how the rest of the world views you, and your previous actions. Any future actions will be judged by their own merits.
Say you're a baby eating pyromaniac. You are most likely chaotic evil. But one day you decide, "Hey all I really need is love." So you get a wife, have a kid, and get a kitten named Mr. Snook'ems. You become a member of the PTA and help build houses for the homeless. You are no longer chaotic evil. And just because you were once chaotic evil it does not mean that you have to stay chaotic evil.
Alignment never dictates what you can do, it only says what you have done.
Now that is cleared up here is a simple test.
What is the alignment of...
A Police officer:
The average Citizen:
A Vigilante:
The answer is simple. The Police officer is lawful good. He uses the laws of the country and city to arrest people and make them pay their debt to society.
The Citizen is Neutral good. He wants to live is a place that is Good and follows moral and ethical principle, but he sometimes finds the laws impedes him, and he wonders why we spend so much on poor people.
The Vigilante is Chaotic Good. He wants to uphold the morals and ethics of society but finds that the bad guys often slip through the cracks in the law. He takes it upon himself to protect the people from these criminals.
That is the basic breakdown of the good alignment axis. What needs to be remembered is that any one of these people can change alignments, easily. The Police officer could be bought off by a local gang, and suddenly he drops to lawful neutral. The average citizen might find that his neighbors dog is annoying, barking at night and keeping him up. So he poisons its food, now he is no longer good, he is stepping towards true neutral. Maybe the citizen really goes crazy also kills the neighbor, hello neutral evil. It is possible that the Vigilante realizes that the cops are actually doing a pretty good job and decides to become an officer himself, leaving his masked crime fighting days behind him. Now he is Lawful good.
Your alignment is not carved in stone, it is malleable and will change to reflect your actions.
Yeah, inflating damage with level (and hp to match), would have atrocious consequences, but the reference to fighters' ability to deal more damage as they reached new levels was probably made minding that fighters may complete more actions per round as they level-up.
This needn't mean monster hp inflation; it could mean more monsters attacking, which is what happened in 1e: whole troops of goblins and orcs might be encountered in the Caverns of Tcojcanth wilderness (levels 6-11), IIRC.
And in a sense AC does scale with level in 3E, albeit erratically, since wealth is presumably spent on better armor and better buffs. AC is not a strict function of level, but it does have an upward trend.
