Biggus Geekus: Advancing Your Game
This week's show is mostly about character advancement, which starts around the 10 minute mark.
Regardless of edition, I've never liked how characters advance in Dungeons & Dragons. In 2nd Edition, while you could sometimes make decisions, such as adding the odd non-weapon proficiency here and there, pick a weapon to specialize in, and allocation points for thief skills, for the most part, you got what the game gave you, at a given level.
3rd Edition broke away from this a bit with feats and a more sensible multiclassing system, but class features were often still granted a given level, many feats sucked, as did many multiclassing combinations and prestige classes, and these latter issues were only exacerbated as more books came out with even more classes, feats, and prestige classes.
Additionally, some options and abilities would become less useful over time. Spells were a big one: really on magic missile might have been useful, but over time due to the way it barely scales and eventually caps, it's just not worth it due to hit point inflation and other options.
4th Edition did it the best in that you got to make choices at every level, most were at least functional (and when they weren't you generally had plenty of other "powers", anyway), but it still failed by a wide margin due to--among other issues--multiclassing inflexibility, terrible feats, clearly inferior power options, and powers becoming obsolete as you gained levels (they could be replaced, but even the new ones would become less useful over time).
Another issue was power complexity (I recall more than a few eating up nearly a half page), which coupled with power replacement meant that you might gain something, use it a few times, and by the time you found your groove with it and possibly other powers that synced up well, you might end up retiring it in favor of something mechanically superior.
These are all issues we managed to avoid with Dungeons & Delvers. Most of the time you get to make a decision at every level, though sometimes you get a class feature that is so good that we really couldn't justify both it and a Talent choice (such as a fighter's extra attack). There are no level requirements, though many have Talent requirements so you have various trees you can work toward, but you're never locked into anything, unlike 5th Edition and it's godawful subclass system.
For spells, pretty much all of them can be scaled up (if you're willing to spend additional magic points), and you can also pick Talents that build on them, allowing them to do more.
Now, Randy doesn't want a "giant menu" of options. I'm inclined to agree as this can lead to choice paralysis, as well as unintended combinations that can "break" the game. However, I think that there should be at least twice as many options as there are assumed levels, to avoid characters either being the same, or ending up being the same down the road because they end up having to grab everything because that's all they could take.
In Dungeons & Delvers, we did this for every level in which you can choose a Talent. For example, here's the fighter class:
And here are the tables listing every fighter Talent:
So, I think a lot of options can be good. It depends on how you organize it and what they do. Ialso think it's important to ensure that characters can realize specific concepts, and don't all end up looking the same.
Around 13 minutes Ryan David suggests incremental advancement, no gimmick needed. I'm fine with this for stuff like attack bonuses and skills, things that would likely improve gradually, less so for meaningful class features and abilities like special attacks and spells.
A minute later Randy again criticizes 3rd Edition for its feats, or rather I think he was about to before his train of thought was interrupted. The issue with 3rd Edition feats is that many were garbage or essentially modifier "taxes", stuff like Weapon Focus, Skill Focus, Spell Focus, etc that you almost had to take in order to keep your numbers up, and the constantly scaling monster math was yet another issue that we addressed in our game and I might get to later.
He mentions how Dungeons & Delvers was looking a lot like 3rd Edition, and I can see why someone would think that at a first glance, but a major difference besides all of the math and how classes work is that you have a lot of control over character growth. Additionally, while there is something like "trees" for certain classes, such as fighters being able to focus on special attacks, ranged weapons, one-handed weapons, and two-handed weapons, you're never locked into anything.
For example, you can roll up a fighter and pick up Slayer for the damage bonus, but then if you discover a magic arming sword and prefer that, you can later pick up Defender and go down the sword and shield path. And then later when you get more comfortable, you can also pick up special attacks. Even better, none of these Talents are designed around any sort of expectation that they will be gained and used at a given level, so it's not even like your character is "underpowered" for having started down a given road at a given level.
At 24 minutes someone brings up skill points--specifically spending XP to improve them--something Joe isn't a fan of due to how high the skill ranks could get in 3rd Edition. The solution is to cap skill ranks, and/or reduce the number of skill points you get each level.
Starting with spending XP to improve skills, this is an interesting idea in theory, and something we've considered doing for Dungeons & Delvers 2nd Edition, but a main issue is that having played Shadowrun and Star Wars I find that players will typically only focus on a few key skills. Use guns to shoot stuff? Whelp, you're going to improve guns a lot. Use dodge to dodge stuff? Whelp, you're going to improve that, too.
And I know this because this is what I did, and it got so insane that I could nearly one-shot kill virtually anything the GM threw at us, and if he threw something that challenged my character? Basically none of the other players could scratch it. I do think that this could potentially be mitigated or even resolved through clever design, but the question is do I want to go through all that hassle, as well as work out XP costs for all of the various talents?
Eh...maybe, we'll see.
Currently in Dungeons & Delvers, most classes get 1 skill point each level, and skills cap at a +5 proficiency bonus (race and other modifiers can exceed this). Bards, rogues, and I think rangers get bonus skill points here and there. The upside is that skill bonuses remain low, the downside is that characters essentially "master" skills very early on, though this might be fine if you consider that characters probably aren't overly focusing on those skills, anyway. So, I guess the characters aren't really mastering anything, just getting really good at something.
And while Joe thinks that even if you reduce skill points and reduce the overall cap it'll still get out of control, I want to point out that in our Dungeons & Delvers playtest campaign, by 17th-level Melissa's rogue/ranger/wizard had a total Stealth modifier of something like +11: +5 proficiency in Stealth (the max), +5 Dexterity after maxing it out, and +1 from being an elf.
In a 3rd Edition game she could have easily had something like +25, and depending on the skill wouldn't even have to wait very long: I recall some method using skill synergies in 3rd Edition, where a half-elf bard could easily have a Diplomacy modifier of over +20 by like 3rd-level or somesuch.
Now, in Dungeons & Delvers 2nd Edition we're dividing skills into Primary, Secondary, and Other. The original idea was that you pick Primary skills at 1st-level, and these automatically improve by 1 each time you level up. You also get 2 Skill Points at each level: Secondary skills improve by +1 for each skill point spent, Other skills need 2 points to improve.
The potential downside is that you can again get high modifiers, though if you don't have lots of items, magic items, racial mods, synergies, and other effects you can keep the potential modifier limited to something like +25 at 20th-level, assuming a relevant ability score is also maxed out at +5.
However, a big change to this is to have it so that only at even levels, Primary Skills are increased by +1, and at odd levels you spend Skill Points, but cannot improve Primary Skills. This is slightly more complicated but does restrict the modifier to 11 + ability score mod at 20th-level, and other skills are stuck at 10 + modifier, assuming you keep a select few maxed out. So, less than half as much, and makes sense given that characters are adventuring and not just practicing a given skill all the time.
Non-Weapon Proficiencies bother me because, while you can get more of them as you gain levels, you can't improve them. Also some were very hyper-focused, like firebuilding, which I assume most any adventurer would know how to do without needing to invest a precious NWP slot.
Around the 33 minute mark, Joe again rolls back to skill points and clarifies that he doesn't like spending all the points every level for little to no payoff, and this I absolutely agree with, as 3rd Edition had a lot of skills, many could only be used if you had at least one skill point invested (or two if a cross-class skill), and many would never see use (like most of the Craft and Profession stuff, many Knowledges, and Rope Use). Worse, there were a lot of instances where, if you didn't have a skill at least mostly maxed out, chances were it wasn't going to work, anyway.
In Dungeons & Delvers this isn't much of an issue because there aren't as many skills, the cap is +5, so even if you only invest a few points you're still good, and the game doesn't assume that a skill will be maxed out at any given point in time. In 2nd Edition we're expanding the list quite a bit, but you get 2-3 skills that autoscale, and there's still no assumption of a skill being at a certain point in order to succeed, so you can invent a handful of points in, say, lockpicking, and still be likely to succeed (though it'll probably take a lot longer than expected).
We're also changing monster stats by removing levels and Hit Dice, so even against a classically high Hit Die monster like a giant, you still won't need really high skills in order to succeed at various tasks (since their HD/level values are more an assumption of inherent toughness than combat skill or life experience).
At 35 minutes Randy claims that the more options that exist, the more likely unforeseen combinations can crop up. This is mostly true, but depends on how things can be combined. Again, in Dungeons & Delvers there are many options, and while some Talents have others as requirements most don't interact with each other. I think something that helps is that there isn't a list of "general" Talents: they are mostly class specific, the exception being some classes like the barbarian and paladin allowing you to also choose fighter Talents where and there.
But these are easy to reference and ensure that you don't run into any "broken" combos. I could potentially see an issue with numerous splatbooks, but the solution is to focus on writing adventures and settings as opposed to lots of character options because it's easier and/or you just want money.
Around 42 minutes they start talking about superhero games and how it's odd for a superhero to "level up". I think it can work, though I'd definitely provide a way to "rank up" certain abilities so you don't need to keep getting more and more stuff. So, for example, a telekinetic character would be able to, say, use his power more quickly, increase the weight cap (if there is one), and affect more objects at once. It could also still require more energy or whatever to use, it's just that these upgrades allow you to exceed current limitations.
About 47 minutes in someone mentioned XP for gold, which is a retarded nonsense mechanic that should never be used.
At 48 minutes they talk briefly about medieval prices, and yeah Dungeons & Dragons is so far off the mark it's insane. For example, daggers cost something like 2 gold pieces, but a more accurate price would be something like 3 copper pieces. And I'm not even saying that anyone should bend over backwards trying to make the prices super accurate (which would be incredibly difficult or even impossible for many items), just try not to make things like a hundred times more expensive.
At 53 minutes Joe asks about making everything skill-based. I think this could work, however you run into an issue if weapons and/or defense are skills that must be increased on their own. If you're playing a fighter-type, then you'll basically just keep upping these forever, and it becomes a sort of "skill tax". It could be mitigated if players knew about what they needed to be good at fighting, so they could at some point stop, or even slow down.
This is one reason I prefer class-based systems: you level up, all of your necessary abilities and numbers increment automatically, without you having to invest anything at all. So, fighters get an increased attack and defense bonus, because that's central to the class, and can then spend points and Talents on other stuff as desired.
Randy mentions a wound system, which I've developed for d20 games over here. It works, and works pretty well, I just don't want to go through the hassle of reworking everything to fit with it.
On the topic of hit point bloat, I comment in the video that one way to mitigate this is to have Constitution apply only to the HP total, and not each time, which is how we're doing it in Dungeons & Delvers 2nd Edition. Constitution has other benefits, such as resisting fatigue and healing, which now requires a roll instead of occurring at a set rate (and mending potions trigger a healing check as well).
We're also reducing HP all around. Currently, wizards get +1 each level, rogues +2, and fighters +4. Monks and rangers would probably get +3, and barbarians might get +5. However, barbarians get quite a bit of other stuff so we might also set them at +4, instead of giving them the most HP "just because".
Joe suggests having HP just be equal to your Constitution score and no modifier at all. I'd also be fine with this as a baseline, and then modified by class. However in our game it wouldn't change anything since ability scores aren't values that return a modifier, just the modifier (ie, you don't have a Con of 12 with a +1 modifier, you'd just have Constitution +1).
At the 54 minute mark Joe comments about leveling up and getting a bunch of stuff. I don't have much of an issue with this, as it makes it easier to eyeball a character and get a general sense of "power". A possible workaround is to spread things out over many levels, and then make it easier to level up.
For example, a 2nd-level fighter might only gain +1 HP. Then at level 3 he gets +1 HP and maybe +1 to attack. And then at 4th-level he gets +1 HP and maybe +1 Defense. At 5th-level he gets +1 HP, and perhaps +1 Damage to all attacks. Something like that. The table would be stretched out over like 100 levels, with minor benefits gained each time, and the XP requirements would be drastically reduced. Maybe something like 50 per level instead of 100 or 1,000.
55 minutes in Joe mentions a video where a guy suggested using Strength to determine HP. I could see this, with Con being used to determine recovery. Interesting idea.
For HP on a level up, Randy states that you'll gain some but is leaning towards a die type. I used to be for this, probably just due to nostalgia, not so much anymore. A static value I think would also make it easier to keep HP on the low side if that's your aim. He's also leaning towards a classless system, which I am also for and have a number of thoughts on how to accomplish this, but that needs its own blog post.
Joe thinks it's silly that, say, a wizard can never learn to use a sword. I agree, and would go further to say that it's also silly that wizards can't wear armor. In Dungeons & Delvers we resolved all of this, and with different math, so your wizard can learn to use a sword and actually be useful with it, though he'll never be as good as the actual fighter. It'll be even better in 2nd Edition.
They both think it's silly to have single-digit hit points at 1st-level. Perhaps, though if armor reduces damage it's not such a big deal. In Dungeons & Delvers 2nd Edition DR from armor is much higher, plus with the "dead man walking" rule you don't just immediately go from perfectly functional to immediately dead.
I don't mind slow leveling up, so long as in-game events are interesting. It's also not so bad if you give players neat abilities earlier on. In Dungeons & Delvers a lot of the really cool stuff is attainable around 9th-level or so. For example, wizards can get meteor swarm early on, and monks focusing on the kirin fighting style can get an attack that lets them teleport and deal lightning damage to everything near where they appear.
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