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5 months ago ::
Dec 26, 2012 - 5:29PM
#101
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2008
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And, while I'm thinking about it, even if I were okay with prereqs, making them odd-numbers is just stupid. A score of 12 and 13 aren't different enough to warrant different modifiers, so there's no reason why prereqs should be set at odd numbers.
There is. Odd numbers are generally achieved at higher levels. Going from say 14 to 15 actually gives you something while you are waiting to hit 16 and increase your stat bonus.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 26, 2012 - 6:57PM
#102
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And, while I'm thinking about it, even if I were okay with prereqs, making them odd-numbers is just stupid. A score of 12 and 13 aren't different enough to warrant different modifiers, so there's no reason why prereqs should be set at odd numbers.
There is. Odd numbers are generally achieved at higher levels. Going from say 14 to 15 actually gives you something while you are waiting to hit 16 and increase your stat bonus.
It doesn't give you anything. You still have to buy it, at the same cost. All it does is punish people for not rolling high enough or not putting enough points into that score.
Why Mechanics-Alignment Integration is Bad
Show
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?
D20 Modern Toon PC Race.
Mecha Pilot's Skill Challenge Emporium.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 26, 2012 - 7:09PM
#103
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2008
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And, while I'm thinking about it, even if I were okay with prereqs, making them odd-numbers is just stupid. A score of 12 and 13 aren't different enough to warrant different modifiers, so there's no reason why prereqs should be set at odd numbers.
There is. Odd numbers are generally achieved at higher levels. Going from say 14 to 15 actually gives you something while you are waiting to hit 16 and increase your stat bonus.
It doesn't give you anything. You still have to buy it, at the same cost. All it does is punish people for not rolling high enough or not putting enough points into that score.
It gives choices meaning. If everyone can get everything with any sort of sacrifice, it all becomes to easy and meaningless.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 26, 2012 - 7:14PM
#104
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And, while I'm thinking about it, even if I were okay with prereqs, making them odd-numbers is just stupid. A score of 12 and 13 aren't different enough to warrant different modifiers, so there's no reason why prereqs should be set at odd numbers.
There is. Odd numbers are generally achieved at higher levels. Going from say 14 to 15 actually gives you something while you are waiting to hit 16 and increase your stat bonus.
It doesn't give you anything. You still have to buy it, at the same cost. All it does is punish people for not rolling high enough or not putting enough points into that score.
It gives choices meaning. If everyone can get everything with any sort of sacrifice, it all becomes to easy and meaningless.
The choices still have meaning even without prereqs.
Why Mechanics-Alignment Integration is Bad
Show
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?
D20 Modern Toon PC Race.
Mecha Pilot's Skill Challenge Emporium.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 26, 2012 - 8:00PM
#105
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Date Joined:
May 18, 2002
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If a clumsy person were to be allowed to ignore the Dex prereq on 2-weapon fighting, in what way do they gain a greater benefit from the feat than a person who takes the feat and has a Dex high enough to meet the requirement?
Lawnmowering with Finesse weapons, because why the hell not when a 25 Dex is involved?
Ability score prereqs mandate builds as a side effect of exclusion.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 26, 2012 - 10:32PM
#106
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Date Joined:
Oct 25, 2010
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Ability score prereqs are annoying as hell. The main problem with them is that they exist pretty much to punish organic characters and reward making a build from the start. When you have prereqs you must meet to get certain feats/PrCs/whatever, it's pretty much essential you have your 1-20 progression planned from level 1, so you don't get screwed over at a later level.
That's the sort of D&D accounting I never want to do. It's what made 3E such a pain, and even 4E (though to a much lesser extend).
I'd like to be able to create a level 1 character without having to plan him through 20 levels.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 27, 2012 - 7:34AM
#107
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Date Joined:
May 24, 2012
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I still think making ability scores matter more is a better solution. You can boost the effectiveness of odd stats and add more uses for the ability score as a whole. In 3e and 4e, feats used odd ability scores for prerequisites. I had a ranger that loved his Str 13 for access to Power Attack and Leap Attack. A big issue with DDN is that the core is a little too raw and too many things lack incentives to get out of the "roleplay build" status.
having odd ability requirement for feat or some ability is just a slap in the face.
When I see req: strength 13+, I see 14 because I push an ability to 13 I might as well raise it a pint higher to have some use of it.
In our games we house ruled all odd ability req's a point lower 
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5 months ago ::
Dec 27, 2012 - 7:53AM
#108
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Date Joined:
Sep 10, 2005
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What if we introduced something like the following:
| Score |
Modifier |
Die |
| 3 |
-4 |
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| 4 |
-3 |
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| 5 |
-3 |
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| 6 |
-2 |
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| 7 |
-2 |
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| 8 |
-1 |
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| 9 |
-1 |
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| 10 |
0 |
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| 11 |
0 |
D2 |
| 12 |
1 |
D2 |
| 13 |
1 |
D4 |
| 14 |
2 |
D4 |
| 15 |
2 |
D6 |
| 16 |
3 |
D6 |
| 17 |
3 |
D8 |
| 18 |
4 |
D8 |
| 19 |
4 |
D10 |
| 20 |
5 |
D10 |
The Die column could be used in many ways. The die might be the minimum damage for a weapon favoring that stat (a dagger in the hands of of a rogue with dex 17 deals d8 damage, a club in the hands of a strenth 19 fighter deals d10 damage, etc . . .) The die could be used to accumulate success points in a 5th ed version of a skill challenge mechanic. A feat might allow Substituting the die for an ability score for the d6 of expertise die under specific circumstances.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 27, 2012 - 9:12AM
#109
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Date Joined:
Aug 13, 2004
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How being good at shield using requires less coordination than another parrying weapon ?
If you'd actually done it, you'd know.
The shield attacks are not the same as with a lighter weapon, positioning the shield or ourself behind it depending on the incoming attack requires anticipation and reflexes, and you have to coordinate all of this with the attacks with the main hand.
It's a lot easier with something that large than with something so precise as an off hand weapon. There's tons more going on with an off-hand weapon.
It's easier to protect with a shield, but if you haven't a good training and coordination, you will have to choose between attacking or parrying.
Which is better than with an off hand weapon where if you don't have the training, you're dead or not using your off hand at all.
If you are not trained with shield, you do nothing with a shield except hiding behind and taking the full power of attacks in your arm.
You operate at the same level of coordination with any weapon in you off-hand, shield or not. A shield is not an inferior off-hand weapon because D&D tags them as shield to not have to address the fact that shields are parrying weapons, and that the base of weapon fighting is two-weapon fighting, and not one-handed weapon fighting. If training with a main-gauche takes more time, then Dexterity is not the prerequisite, it’s time. But you will still develop experience with a shield after having learnt the basic use of it, and you will still use the best of your coordination, all what you would do with another off-hand weapon. There’s nothing to justify requiring more coordination to learn a combat style, except if a teacher decides that it would be a loss of time to teach it to a category of people.
But a person who sucks with a weapon in the off-hand will probably also suck with a shield in the off-hand. Coordinating two hands and a body doesn’t differ in itself depending on the weapons you wield.
"They are making it clear that when modern design and common sense come into conflict with tradition, tradition wins." - thecasualoblivion
"Vancian isn't broken, you just have to set your game to the wizard's clock!" - Oxybe
"In many ways, making a new edition of D&D is alot like trying to sell a car to the Amish." - Dwarfslayer
"Encounters are the heart of the AD&D game" - PHB AD&D 2nd edition.
"you shouldn't even bother trying to become like me." - Gary Gygax (Elfcrusher confirmed)
"Feel free to claim I said anything you like. How's someone going to call you out on it? Are they going to be all like, 'I know all of the things that Gary said, and that's not one of them?'"
- Gary Gygax
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5 months ago ::
Dec 27, 2012 - 10:08AM
#110
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Date Joined:
May 27, 2012
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Ability prereqs ignore the concept of training. Taking two-weapon fighting means being able to do it because of your training in it (that's why you spend a feat to get it). People will be better or worse based on their natural gifts, but the ability to do it comes from the training and not the natural gifts or lack thereof.
Even assuming training, there are some things that people just can't do. No amount of training will get me to climb a wall if I lack the physical strength for it, unless that training is sufficient to change my basic attributes. Granted, that would make for a fairly interesting system (when you learn the Power Attack feat, your Strength increases by +1; when you learn Two-Weapon Fighting, your Dex increases by +1), but that doesn't make the ability pre-requisite any less reasonable of a method.
It would have prevented it from occuring in some situations but made it more powerful when it happened. And, given ability score boosting magic items and spells in past editions, it wouldn't be as niche as people like to think it would. That's one of the key reasons why attribute prereqs don't balance; they create a situation where the only people who can take the feat are those who get the greatest benefit from doing so.
Even though the system could break down at the edges (or possibly more frequently, at high levels), they certainly seemed pretty effective to me. I mean, I've probably come across dozens of light-weapon high-Dex two-weapon fighters over the years (with Weapon Finesse, as soon as they could pick it up), and their per-attack damage was fairly low (aside from Rogues when they could pull off a sneak attack); the only high-Strength non-finesse two-weapon fighter I ever came across was one time someone wanted to play a Samurai. Otherwise, it was cost prohibitive in terms of ability scores and feats. At a practical level, the system prevented high-Strength off-hand attacks unless you were a Samurai, which was the design intent behind those pre-requisites.
To the best of my awareness, becoming non-lawful didn't make you not a monk anymore or negate any of your monk abilities. It just meant that you couldn't progess as a monk anymore. If I am recalling correctly, Monk/Barbarian is a very possible class combination.
Chaotic monks couldn't gain monk levels, and lawful barbarians lost the ability to rage. Again, there was no hard-coded rule that you couldn't start lawful with a level of Monk and then turn chaotic to gain Barbarian levels and then raging flurry with a quarterstaff, but it was impractical enough that I never saw it attempted. Contriving to change alignment isn't something that can really be planned in advance, or at least I've never seen anyone actually attempt it.
It's fine to disagree with the restrictions that alignment place on character options, but in my experience, they have always been fairly effective at what they were intended to do.
The metagame is not the game.
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