An idea struck me today right out of the blue. So in D&D 3.5 everyone knows that characters get an extra attack for every 5 points of base attack bonus beyond +1 up to 20. We also know that these so-called iterative attacks are at -5 for each subsequent attack, such that a 16th-level fighter's fourth attack is penalized a full -15. A common criticism of the system in this respect is that the iterative attacks grant a diminishing return. Whereas the wizard continues to gain more powerful and higher level spells as he levels up, the fighter and his kin receive weaker and yet weaker attacks as they progress. That is hardly balanced and is often a central part of the argument that spell casters are far too powerful compared to fighting classes. In the past I have considered getting rid of this penalty to iterative attacks altogether and simply reducing the number of iterative attacks to three, granted at +8 and +16 respectively. But what about something more internally consistent?
Consider that monsters in 3.5 all have a primary attack which receives the full base attack bonus and secondary attacks which are all at a -5 penalty. Well this works well for monsters like dragons and trolls. Why couldn't it work for PCs too? At 6th-level the fighter gets a second attack at -5 and again at level 11 and level 16 he gains a third and fourth attack, but these are also at merely -5, instead of -10 and -15. This might go some of the way to ameliorating the imbalance between fighters and wizards. Obviously not a cure-all, but it is internally consistent with the way monsters work and also gives the fighter more reliable iterative attacks.
-Marionnen
Friday, November 30, 2012
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Backgrounds and Archetypes
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about the 3.5 edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Specifically, I have been thinking about ways to keep the things that I love (the internally consistent mechanics) while trimming some of the fat which I believe interferes with the development of characters. Anyone who has played 3.5 knows that it has a glut of rules and options. That is what players probably like most about it: the choices. But in my old-school style of play there are things I would like to do with a D&D game that 3.5 provides barriers to. I will demonstrate with an example from my current D&D campaign.
I am running the Shackled City Adventure Path published by Paizo. I have set the adventure path within the world of Eberron (my favorite setting for 3.5) and made some adaptations to the story where necessary. Anyway, that is the short-hand background. I have three players and the group dynamic is good; I really don't want to add a fourth or more. Sessions flow smoothly and I feel I have the freedom to give each player a good amount of time to develop their characters, a fact of which I am very proud; stories are very important to me. But the problem lies in the adventure path itself. If I do not make major adjustments to the challenge level then the players have a very difficult time of things. Early on I addressed this by granting each player character 20 bonus hit points at 1st level and 4 bonus skill points per level to give them added survivability and flexibility respectively. But the player characters are now 13th level, and they have entered the realm of frequent save-or-lose effects like finger of death or dominate. Extra hit points and skill points simply are not going to help them handle this. So to address this new dynamic of high-level play I offered the players several options for selecting cohorts to act as a buffer and backup characters, but the response I got was generally that the players felt their characters were already complicated enough, and the group doesn't even have a dedicated spellcaster! In the end, only one player opted to take on a cohort.
Legendary heroes of phenomenal (and indomitable) power are all well and good for some games, but I have never felt D&D was that kind of game. And the Eberron campaign setting certainly isn't meant for that style of play. Characters who get beyond 10th level in Eberron are already bordering on the stuff of legend. But D&D has a long tradition of large parties of adventurers and heroes going off to face dangerous circumstances, which for some will mean their ultimate demise. Character death is part of the game, but it makes it difficult to keep that flavor of danger and suspense when there are so few heroes in the group. If I, as the Dungeon Master, allow even one of these characters to die, the party loses a very significant portion of its strength, which means I must be careful to walk a thin line between keeping things dangerous enough to keep the game interesting but not so dangerous as to actually kill a character, as doing so would spell almost certain doom for the entire party. We will probably continue to the end of the adventure path with the current party make-up mostly the way it is now, three heroes and one cohort, but this is not ideal. Ultimately it hamstrings my ability to challenge the players because the death of a single character is so detrimental. So I am forced to break with the milieu and run a game which I feel does not truly capture the essence of D&D. I've resigned myself to that for the sake of this campaign. I am still having fun, but there are things I wish I could do differently.
So this has got me to thinking about how I intend to run things the next time I run a D&D campaign. I love many things about 3rd edition, and at this point it would be difficult for me to break from it. But I have begun to consider ways in which characters might be made simpler so that the prospect of taking on the responsibility of playing a second (or even a third!) character might not seem so daunting.
I have one idea which has been building in my mind and is influenced by some of the developments I have seen coming from the playtest of D&D Next, the latest incarnation of the game which is still in development, as well as the idea of kits, which were introduced in 2nd edition. The idea is the concept of backgrounds or archetypes. Now 3rd edition D&D already has a lot of complexity in character creation, and I think that might be one of the main barriers to players feeling they can play multiple characters. It isn't so simple as rolling stats then picking a race and a class. But I want to make it that simple, in practical terms anyway. Probably a better way of saying this is that I want to make it as close to that simple paradigm of stats/race/class as possible, and the way to do that is with backgrounds and archetypes.
A background is independent of character class and can represent the way a character developed early in life. It influences his early training as well as his feat and ability score increase choices. To put it succinctly, it is a set of pre-selected feats and ability score increases intended to reduce some of the thought needed to put into character development. Actually, this has already been done for 3rd edition in an official way in the Player's Handbook 2. If I wanted to do things the easy way, I could just steal Table A-3: Feat Progressions by Role. But this has a couple disadvantages. First, it assumes your character is staying in the same class for 20 levels, which, in my experience, few characters do. Second, it is limited to three roles per class. (It also does not select ability score increases, but that is a more minor detail.) In my ideal world, each and every background would be completely independent of class. You could select a background that grants you the Power Attack, Cleave and Improved Sunder feats with any class or multiclass combination you like.
Archetypes are based on class, stylized on the way you intend to play the class. Mechanically they are skill and options packages for classes which make leveling the character easier by building in your choices on skill points and other class features, such as bonus feats and the like, from 1st level. A fighter who chooses the Archer archetype, for example, would gain bonus feats like Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot and Rapid Shot. I would not allow myself to be beholden to the class skills as described in the Player's Handbook either. If a skill made sense for an archetype, it would be treated as a class skill.
Now there are a few problems that need to be worked out. First of all, I would have to make sure that there is little to no overlap between archetypes and backgrounds. Otherwise, there would be the obvious complications when a feat is indicated by both. And they would need to be designed so that archetypes and backgrounds which are similar would be synergistic. And of course this whole idea might detract from the very value of playing 3.5 for many players as well. I freely admit that what draws many players to 3.5 is its options and customization. But quite frankly, when I have players of relatively simple classes like the soulknife telling me they have too many things to keep track of to take on the responsibilities of a second character, I have to wonder if perhaps the character generation system is part of the problem.
This is only step one. The 3.5 system could do with a good bit of simplification. More unified rules for combat maneuvers, such as those found in the Pathfinder system might definitely be called for. (I have no interest in actually playing Pathfinder, but that is a discussion for another day.) A simplified spell system would likely be in order, although that is a tougher beast to tackle; still, I have some ideas. Ultimately, however, I hope to develop within the next year (and in time for my next campaign) a more streamlined system in which playing more than one character will not seem like a burden but rather an opportunity.
-Marionnen
I am running the Shackled City Adventure Path published by Paizo. I have set the adventure path within the world of Eberron (my favorite setting for 3.5) and made some adaptations to the story where necessary. Anyway, that is the short-hand background. I have three players and the group dynamic is good; I really don't want to add a fourth or more. Sessions flow smoothly and I feel I have the freedom to give each player a good amount of time to develop their characters, a fact of which I am very proud; stories are very important to me. But the problem lies in the adventure path itself. If I do not make major adjustments to the challenge level then the players have a very difficult time of things. Early on I addressed this by granting each player character 20 bonus hit points at 1st level and 4 bonus skill points per level to give them added survivability and flexibility respectively. But the player characters are now 13th level, and they have entered the realm of frequent save-or-lose effects like finger of death or dominate. Extra hit points and skill points simply are not going to help them handle this. So to address this new dynamic of high-level play I offered the players several options for selecting cohorts to act as a buffer and backup characters, but the response I got was generally that the players felt their characters were already complicated enough, and the group doesn't even have a dedicated spellcaster! In the end, only one player opted to take on a cohort.
Legendary heroes of phenomenal (and indomitable) power are all well and good for some games, but I have never felt D&D was that kind of game. And the Eberron campaign setting certainly isn't meant for that style of play. Characters who get beyond 10th level in Eberron are already bordering on the stuff of legend. But D&D has a long tradition of large parties of adventurers and heroes going off to face dangerous circumstances, which for some will mean their ultimate demise. Character death is part of the game, but it makes it difficult to keep that flavor of danger and suspense when there are so few heroes in the group. If I, as the Dungeon Master, allow even one of these characters to die, the party loses a very significant portion of its strength, which means I must be careful to walk a thin line between keeping things dangerous enough to keep the game interesting but not so dangerous as to actually kill a character, as doing so would spell almost certain doom for the entire party. We will probably continue to the end of the adventure path with the current party make-up mostly the way it is now, three heroes and one cohort, but this is not ideal. Ultimately it hamstrings my ability to challenge the players because the death of a single character is so detrimental. So I am forced to break with the milieu and run a game which I feel does not truly capture the essence of D&D. I've resigned myself to that for the sake of this campaign. I am still having fun, but there are things I wish I could do differently.
So this has got me to thinking about how I intend to run things the next time I run a D&D campaign. I love many things about 3rd edition, and at this point it would be difficult for me to break from it. But I have begun to consider ways in which characters might be made simpler so that the prospect of taking on the responsibility of playing a second (or even a third!) character might not seem so daunting.
I have one idea which has been building in my mind and is influenced by some of the developments I have seen coming from the playtest of D&D Next, the latest incarnation of the game which is still in development, as well as the idea of kits, which were introduced in 2nd edition. The idea is the concept of backgrounds or archetypes. Now 3rd edition D&D already has a lot of complexity in character creation, and I think that might be one of the main barriers to players feeling they can play multiple characters. It isn't so simple as rolling stats then picking a race and a class. But I want to make it that simple, in practical terms anyway. Probably a better way of saying this is that I want to make it as close to that simple paradigm of stats/race/class as possible, and the way to do that is with backgrounds and archetypes.
A background is independent of character class and can represent the way a character developed early in life. It influences his early training as well as his feat and ability score increase choices. To put it succinctly, it is a set of pre-selected feats and ability score increases intended to reduce some of the thought needed to put into character development. Actually, this has already been done for 3rd edition in an official way in the Player's Handbook 2. If I wanted to do things the easy way, I could just steal Table A-3: Feat Progressions by Role. But this has a couple disadvantages. First, it assumes your character is staying in the same class for 20 levels, which, in my experience, few characters do. Second, it is limited to three roles per class. (It also does not select ability score increases, but that is a more minor detail.) In my ideal world, each and every background would be completely independent of class. You could select a background that grants you the Power Attack, Cleave and Improved Sunder feats with any class or multiclass combination you like.
Archetypes are based on class, stylized on the way you intend to play the class. Mechanically they are skill and options packages for classes which make leveling the character easier by building in your choices on skill points and other class features, such as bonus feats and the like, from 1st level. A fighter who chooses the Archer archetype, for example, would gain bonus feats like Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot and Rapid Shot. I would not allow myself to be beholden to the class skills as described in the Player's Handbook either. If a skill made sense for an archetype, it would be treated as a class skill.
Now there are a few problems that need to be worked out. First of all, I would have to make sure that there is little to no overlap between archetypes and backgrounds. Otherwise, there would be the obvious complications when a feat is indicated by both. And they would need to be designed so that archetypes and backgrounds which are similar would be synergistic. And of course this whole idea might detract from the very value of playing 3.5 for many players as well. I freely admit that what draws many players to 3.5 is its options and customization. But quite frankly, when I have players of relatively simple classes like the soulknife telling me they have too many things to keep track of to take on the responsibilities of a second character, I have to wonder if perhaps the character generation system is part of the problem.
This is only step one. The 3.5 system could do with a good bit of simplification. More unified rules for combat maneuvers, such as those found in the Pathfinder system might definitely be called for. (I have no interest in actually playing Pathfinder, but that is a discussion for another day.) A simplified spell system would likely be in order, although that is a tougher beast to tackle; still, I have some ideas. Ultimately, however, I hope to develop within the next year (and in time for my next campaign) a more streamlined system in which playing more than one character will not seem like a burden but rather an opportunity.
-Marionnen
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