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So obviously AFTER the 4th contest I get an idea. Basically I wanna make a Space Opera game that uses a rulesset that's pretty close to a reverse-engineered 4e. Everyone has combat powers and is roughly equal, classes define those combat roles, there are per-battle and per-day abilities, etc. (Part of this is that there are so many dungeon crawling games now and I'm really not interested in writing the hundredth variant on "Elves live in trees.") Have the rules live on in a different skin, basically. The flavor is pure Star Wars/Flash Gordon/etc. with an emphasis away from the gritty stuff that a lot of sci-fi games focus on. A heavy bias towards mid/late 70s aesthetics (like, Star Wars had a "used" look but it wasn't Alien) and craziness. So obviously SWSE would also be an influence as well as 4E. One potential issue is that in 4e, classes describe both combat role and much of the flavor, even though you can reskin the latter. (The limiting of skill choices is also a thing though changing that probably wouldn't break anything.) So, for example, I've figured out what a Martial Defender in the game would be- someone like Worf or Chewbacca or Groot who can just wade into combat and shrug off blaster bolts, whether it's because they're a crazy alien or just a Tough Guy. But just "fighter" probably wouldn't be a good descriptor for Chewie, who is also a pilot and does that a lot of the time. Classes in 4e and Saga, as in many other games, are tied to archetypes, and I'm not quite sure where the split the difference between classes and backgrounds/themes. Starships and such are the other big hurdle. There are many potential approaches/solutions- it's largely a case of just giving everyone something to do if they're all in one ship together, without making it so complex that when a spaceship fight breaks out you're playing an entirely different game. This is still entirely in the "musings" stage and I've got a few other writing-type projects that will take more time but... thoughts?
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Aug 16, 2014 20:35
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wallawallawingwang posted:1) What are you going to do with Abilities? As constituted in d&d, they say a lot about what a character can do inside and outside of combat. 4e d&d (sorta)requires you to have a decent strength to be good in melee, which precludes you from being a wizened old kungfu master. Either dropping ability scores or making them not affect combat largely fixes that issue. Two basic approaches seem to be: pick 1 combat class from column A and 1 noncom class from column B or ditch skills entirely and just roll using ability scores. 1. I'm not quite ready to go full DtAS, I want this to be fairly close to 4e mechanics with the obvious broken stuff fixed (feat taxes and such.) Of course something like the wizened kung-fu master I could do as a monk-type class that uses Wisdom for most attacks- in fact I think for most classes I will simplify in that direction, your prime requisite score is what you use for your major class stuff (and just say in chargen rules "Put at least this much there" a la Gamma World.) I'm leaning towards beefing up Themes as the second part of the character, and having those be like your occupation/archetype. So, to go back to Chewbacca, he's a Defender-class in combat but has the Pilot theme which makes him better at flying spaceships and repairing spaceships and so on. Han Solo's more of a striker with the Scoundrel theme, Princess Leia's a leader (spends equal time in combat shooting guys and telling her comrades to get moving) with the Noble theme, etc. 2. The style/fluff is- as you can guess there's a lot of Star Wars in there, and Battle Beyond the Stars and Guardians of the Galaxy and Buck Rogers. Space Opera with an emphasis on heroic action, aesthetics borrowing mostly from late 70s. The setting I'm only barely sketching out now, but basically a war between free planets and an encroaching evil empire, and the PCs are either by choice or by circumstance caught up in fighting the bad guys (who I think are psionic mind slavers- there are "good" psionicists as well, psionics will be a power source.) Everyone can fight, anyone can jump in a starfighter cockpit, you have smugglers and free traders but nobody gives a poo poo how many tons of molybdenum you have, etc. Lots of aliens and robots.
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Aug 17, 2014 17:40
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Yeah I'm definitely gonna make Class and Theme the two big parts of your character. I may use the Gamma World approach of both parts determining your prime ability scores (18 for two or 20 for one) but I have to dig out my rule book for that.
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Aug 19, 2014 20:33
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One thing I want to do for Untitled Space Opera 4e Project is have quick species creation and I'm curious as to how to balance special abilities and how much each gets. Seems it could get into point buy which would make things hella advanced.
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Sep 3, 2014 03:42
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I've begun breaking down powers and while it's clear there was no one unifying formula there are strong enough commonalities that faking one will be feasible.
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Sep 23, 2014 17:55
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P.d0t posted:I'd be interested to see your findings; as has been posted before in this thread, I just burned it to the ground and made my own formulas. Preliminary results/generalizations/etc.: Attack powers are generally built on a base die roll for damage + some bonus effect related to the class's thing. This is most obvious in the At-Wills- so, for example, the fighter has an at-will that does 1[W] + push the target one square and you can shift into its old square. (For powers that don't rely on weapon damage, a d6 tends to be the default but this can easily be stepped up). The base die of damage tends to increase by tier. At Heroic, at-wills do 1D, Encounter powers tend to do 2D, and Dailies do 3D, all + a small perk. They can do less if the tack-on effect is bigger, and here's where it tends to get complicated; multiple tack-ons can be worth a die, or you can do fewer dice but step up the die type, and some status effects are bigger deals than others. This I may have to examine in more detail and it's probably where playtesting will have to show most of the differences. (How much "ranged" is worth is going to be a vital question, since I've already decided the Warlord-esque class in my game will be reliant on firing blasters and telling other people where to shoot.) Paragon powers tend to have Encounters starting at 3D+small perk (so the dailies at level 9 are still better than the Encounter powers you get at 13, at least on paper), Dailies bump up to 4D. At Epic it's a little trickier- Encounters go up to around 4D + perk (but I think clerics average 5D so I may be totally off here, need to double check), and Dailies average 6D but there's always one level 29 Daily that does 7 + usually a basic effect, for pure "SMASH ITS FACE IN!" impact. Within a tier, increasing-level powers of the same type (AED) tend to have beefier tack-on effects so there's always some improvement, and it cycles over with the next tier. So, again, the dailies at the end of a tier are still worthwhile when you get encounters at the start of the next. With some classes it's fairly straightforward, defenders tend to work out fine, controllers are tricky, but oddly enough it's the strikers where I see a lot of weird variance. High level Rogue powers seem kinda muted in terms of raw damage, giving up dice for imposing debilitating status effects and ongoing save-ends damage, but then you also remember that sneak attack starts at 2d6 and does 5d6 at high levels. Rangers keep getting more and more attacks which gets crazy, and Warlocks seem to jump up to rolling d10s regularly. Of course here you have to consider that the strikers tend to be squishy, ditto the controllers, whereas the PHB1 defender and leader types are all well-armored and beefy. So there may be some variance here. So for building powers I'm basically going with the basic numbers above. It's nowhere near MM3 on a business card since, again, I haven't even begun to weigh just what the perks are worth. (Since I don't have a staff or a math degree or anything I may dumb it all down and have fairly simple powers, but that would mean less variety.)
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Oct 4, 2014 05:18
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thespaceinvader posted:It's worth noting two things: big perks are worth lots of dice. 1[W]+Stun for a round is an excellent E13 for the hammer-using Fighter. And unless it's fixed in a putative retclone, 3x1[W] >>>>>>> 1x3[W] in terms of damage. All of that seems to check out, yeah. The big debilitating status effects can indeed be huge, which is why the Rogue's progression is especially wonky on paper. Stun is a big one, blinded and immobilized also stand out, and ongoing damage can be worth a few dice.
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Oct 5, 2014 23:10
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What's the consensus on costs for rituals? I know they're too drat high RAW but should they be chopped or totally done away with? Are rituals balanced just by not being able to be cast on the fly? I'm definitely going to have some Psychic Meditations and maybe adapt something like Martial Practices. Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Oct 12, 2014 |
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Oct 12, 2014 20:29
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Accidentally posted this in the general 4th thread, I'm getting good feedback there but I'm curious as to what you guys all think: Started writing up guard powers- mostly fighter rewordings but I have hope that as I get more used to the ad hoc formulae I'll be able to come up with more original ones with similar effects. (I'm trying to simplify some of the weapon specific ones though). Observation- a lot of fighter powers would be good for a pro wrestler type if you gave them something to bypass the "requires weapon" bit. Feat or class/theme feature? (I'm trying to really limit growth of the former.) Basically thinking that the guard shouldn't be quite as weapon dependent- your Worf types may have a favorite Bat'leth or whatever, but they do a lot of just plain brawling too. I'm already axing/revising a lot of the "if you're carrying an axe/polearm/mace" conditional powers mainly because that feels much more like a D&D thing.
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Nov 20, 2014 00:25
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My decision on the unarmed combat thing is now that the Guard, like the Monk, gets the Improved Unarmed Strike "weapon" with better damage and proficiency. I had been thinking of making the Monk a defender too, but this may make them too similar now, I'm not sure. The Monk's attacks are all Wis based so that's the main difference but I'll work on making them unique. Anyway I've written up Guard powers up through Paragon (Epic may require more work since everyone says 4th runs into problems there as is, and I have a sort of vision of play at that tier- basically New Gods). Next work when I get to it may be on the Commander/Warlord type. My big change here is that they're more about ranged combat, while the default Warlord is all melee- the archetype is Princess Leia, Padme Amidala, Star Lord, so mostly shooting and yelling "go there! Shoot that!" It's a question of just how much more useful ranged combat is than melee, and if it's a lot, how to scale down powers.
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Dec 12, 2014 19:20
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P.d0t posted:What's everything that ability scores do in your system? And are there multiple defenses? Still the three defenses + AC, and it's pretty close to the 3/4 core here except I think basic attacks may key to a class's prime ability. For scores I'm gonna go with arrays but you get a 16 in both your class and Background's key ability, or an 18 if they're the same. Forget the exact layout but there's an 8 at the low end so there's always something you're less than good at. I'm aiming for something close to 4e proper, but in a different genre and of course OGL.
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Dec 14, 2014 05:49
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Background is where your skill selection comes in. I may, like defenses, have skills use the best of two or more abilities- or have them all tied to your background ability, but I want some variance, so you're not always just using your best ability for everything.
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Dec 14, 2014 17:11
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Transient People posted:The solution is to make the abilities just be 'pick whatever you want man', within reason. See: FATE Atomic Robo, which just LETS YOU start with five or six capped out abilities if that's what you need (normally in FATE you're lucky to just get one) and is a much better game for it because this way your character is in fact as competent as you envision him to be. I'm trying to make a close clone of 4e, with tweaks to work in a new genre. That more or less rules out DTAS. I'm making skills and attacks more flexible to mitigate but characters having some weak spots is okay so long as I try and make sure all weak spots are equal.
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Dec 14, 2014 17:39
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On thinking I might just decouple them as a whole- so, a character with a good Con who's trained in Intimidate scares people by putting cigars out on their forehead, Int goes all Sherlockian on 'em, etc.
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Dec 14, 2014 18:49
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Azran posted:Would you be able to charm an important person/defuse a hostage situation by flexing? It is important. But of course! 4e is pretty close to being an effect based system, is the thing. It's not quite there RAW, but a lot of the clones already go in that direction and it doesn't take much.
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Dec 14, 2014 19:08
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Okay, so having written up Guard powers (the majority of which are rewritten Fighter powers and I may replace a bunch of those as I get used to the system), I'm moving on to 4000 A.D.'s Martial Leader class, the Commander, and this is where things get a little more challenging. The Commander is basically a ranged Warlord. The model is someone like Princess Leia, or Padme Amidala, or Peter Quill- you tell everyone "Fire on my target!", you inspire them to shake off wounds, etc. Uses mostly laser pistols and similar light weapons- the point isn't the damage they do but the aid they give others. All well and good, but we get into the "ranged" part of it and it's tricky. I'm modelling the powers on Warlord powers, but the Warlord is almost all melee. Ranged combat is theoretically better, so if I just find/replace "Melee" with "Ranged" for powers they become, well, better, and the class may be too good as a result. I can nerf a few of the side perks but it's tricky especially at first level. So, theoretically you get something like: quote:Indirect Attack or quote:I Fire, You Move I'm trying to shave off a few benefits here and there- for "Indirect Attack" you don't get the bonus to damage- but with the second one there I can't think of anything yet. So how much better are these than the Warlord's At-Wills? Has anyone actually sat down and worked out how much of an advantage being at range gives?
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Jan 13, 2015 06:38
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I totes wrote that wrong, sorry. The Commander doesn't make a roll, just gives the other PC an attack as per Commander's Strike. Someone on RPG.net told me Martial Power 2 had a ranged Warlord build, and checking DDI the ranged equivalent of that power uses fixed ranges to limit things just a little, may go with that as much as I was looking forward to not just cloning powers for once (again the lack of an OGL means I have to guess where 'rules' end and 'expression' begins.)
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Jan 15, 2015 00:40
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So, while I move in fits and starts on writing class powers, I was thinking about another part of 4000 A.D.: Starship combat. My major goals regarding this: 1) Everyone has something to do. This is easy enough if everyone has their own ship (a la Battle Beyond the Stars) but the typical situation for this kind of sci-fi is everyone's on board one ship, so there need to be enough stations and activities to keep a party of 4-6 occupied. 2) It's not so complex that you're layering another game on top of things. 4e as written already has a bit of a split between combat and noncombat situations- you break out the battlemat and markers and so on- but that's almost unavoidable with tactical games. The transition between space combat and not-space-combat should be about that smooth. 3) Starship combat should be something the players are interested in getting into as much as other kinds of encounters. Sometimes rules for this can be enough on the lethal side that characters are disinclined from jumping in a starfighter, whereas jumping into a starfighter should almost always be a good idea here. Basic thinking: There are three broad categories of ship. Starfighters are your one-to-two-man affairs, a cockpit strapped to some engines and guns; Cruisers are large-ish ships that can be flown by a small crew (i.e. about as many as there are in a PC party). Capital ships start at "size of a small town" and have a large crew- if PCs are in control of one of these they're giving orders to raise the shields, lock weapons on that vessel, etc. Spaceships have powers. Instead of using your own combat powers in a spaceship fight, you use the ship's. There are at-wills, per-battles, and instead of "dailies" you've got powers that recharge only after you've put in at a port (you need to load up more torpedoes or reset the afterburner, etc.) These are keyed to certain stations on the ship, and you have the PCs each take a station. Have a little simplified schematic where players can put their counters, next to the grid map showing the spaceships flying around. Obviously, though, the issue is how to have the ship have enough neat things to do so that nobody's on the sidelines. Obviously whoever's in the cockpit can fly the ship and use powers that let it do fancy maneuvers, you can have more than one gunner firing weapons, you can have someone in the engine room repairing damage or giving boosts, etc. Not sure that's enough, though. Don't want anyone trapped doing the boring stuff or just riding shotgun. There are a few other things to work on- gauging ship power vs. PC power for purposes of encounter building, potential problems in asymmetrical design (what happens when they hijack an enemy gunboat?), making battle vs. capital ships more interesting than just shooting at a slightly bigger counter, etc.- but this is getting rambly enough as is. Input? Ideas?
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Jan 27, 2015 09:10
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Good suggestions all. There will definitely be minion equivalent starfighters ('snubs' maybe) that explode on one hit, at least if nobody important is on board. Damaging specific systems is going to have to be a thing, so you can have "the hyperdrive is damaged, we'll have to land on this hostile world and see if we can get it repaired." And fights against capital ships will largely be about taking out key systems (weapons, shield generators) in order to blow things up instead of just doing hull damage. Maybe whenever a smaller ship goes against one it's more like an environment with mini-enemies (gun batteries and such).
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Jan 28, 2015 22:08
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Okay, brainstorm on spaceships based on thread input- A spaceship is basically a collection of modules, each with HP based on level. (For the sake of simplicity all modules in a ship are the same level.) A module has a level, HP, powers, and a role. Starfighters are usually single modules, cruisers are 4-6. It works like monster math, I think- the basic level 1 module has a certain AC and damage and so on, you add to that based on its role and level. Keeping things moving fast will be a concern- there should be a way to disable a ship without taking out every single module. HP could be lower or damage higher. Capital ships get built around "elite" modules. So a cruiser vs a capital ship is a bad proposition but if it's a big battle with allies taking fire you may be able to target single modules. For something like the Death Star you'd have the equivalent of a landscape with individual modules for gun towers, etc.
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Jan 31, 2015 00:33
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I like the idea of utility powers, I just think figuring out the balance on them will be tricky. I haven't quite figured out where to silo them- there are some that make more sense to be bound up with a character's background (like the ones that aid thievery and bluffing), while others are part of a class' abilities (for healers, etc.).
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Mar 7, 2015 08:23
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wallawallawingwang posted:I don't think the normal rules scale quite as well. MM3 math assumes PC damage goes up about 2 points of DPR each level. If you look at it from enough distance that might be true. I'm sure level 30s can pull off 70 points of DPR. But I don't think most of that growth in DPR comes in smoothly. It seems like its a lot of levels of nothing or +1 and then a sudden +5, followed by more nothing. More importantly, its harder for characters to do that level of damage using their at-wills, or without using combos of feats, items, encounters and dailies. So that level of damage isn't very consistent. There's a very specific pause in the page 42 damage table and its DMG 2 equivalent- without it the rise in, say multiple target damage (Low) is about .5 per level, but there's a line in the chart (in different places per type which is annoying) where it doesn't go up at all. I'm wondering why that pause is there. It'd be great to have something like that chart but not just copy-pasting it, which is tough since I'm trying to use mostly the same math.
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Mar 8, 2015 20:12
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Have been distracted by a couple of other projects. The focus has been on powers, and for a while it has been a struggle to get away from just rephrasing 4e powers in my own words. Actually creating new stuff is trickier. The Guard/Fighter I'll probably have to totally redo, the Rogue and Warlord/Commander I managed to get slightly away from that, but the Duellist- which I based on the Ranger but am making into a more "Flash Gordon swashbuckler" type- has potential (I've already given it a bit of forced movement so it can separate a target from the pack and whittle them down- the idea is the Rogue is all about sneaking up on you from the back and the Duellist is all up front and have-at-you.) But yeah it's a big project.
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May 19, 2015 22:48
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Certainly I'm glad for the heavier mutations like Strike!, but I do also think 4e is a pretty great rules set and I'm interested in keeping it alive, as it were. It may be petty but I feel like we deserve our own Pathfinder, for all that current D&D and the hobby as a whole is doing to distance themselves from 4e fans. I'm basically trying to preserve the structure and math of the system (with the most broadly agreed upon fixes), and basically smuggle into the OGL as much of the game as is legally allowed. (13th Age went part of the way but there's no full AEDU, it's not tactical, etc.) That makes it a harder task than if I were designing something from the ground up.
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May 20, 2015 21:45
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With the Duellist powers mostly written up I'm thinking about the first class that'll be totally original, the Gunner. The gunner is your heavy weapons expert and Martial Controller. They shoot big guns and there are two big things involved- area of effect damage (blasts and sprays and so on) and changing the battlefield by blowing up big parts of it. The second will be a little dependent on there being obstacles for the Gunner to properly turn into rubble but 4e's based on the assumption of showpiece battles in interesting terrain so I may just lean harder on that and make it explicit. I'm also thinking about grenades as a resource for limited powers.
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Jun 11, 2015 17:57
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Since again I'm mostly just familiar with the core PHBs as far as classes and powers go, are there any good examples of powers which let you destroy cover objects? I'm trying to figure out the best way to make those work.
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Jun 28, 2015 18:46
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Since that's untested territory, then, I'm limiting that to one Level 9 Daily and maybe we'll see if it's ridiculously overpowered. What would be a good racial ability to represent regeneration? It doesn't actually have to work like troll's regeneration but I want something easily fluffed as being like Groot's ability to knit himself back together. (Also, approaching the psionic classes. I feel like I should at least try to port over the Augment system but I haven't studied it yet and it looks like a whole new set of math.)
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Jul 20, 2015 17:49
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gradenko_2000 posted:Lizard regeneration? That's more real-time. Groot's ability to come back as a sapling reminds me more of a Phoenix's reincarnation. Nah, there are also scenes where people are shooting and kinda chipping at him but he grows back (foreshadowing the sapling bit). Obviously real regeneration could easily get stupid overpowered, so I'm trying to find something that's like that but not really.
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Jul 20, 2015 17:55
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Trying to think of some good class features for the Gunner. I'm thinking of grouping them together under the heading "Heavy Weapon Mastery", and I can think of one that gives a +1 accuracy bonus, but not quite sure what else.
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Aug 6, 2015 07:57
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The powers are all focused on area of effect attacks with some terrain modification, and I've got an at-will suppressive effect, so the real challenge I think is finding ways to vary that across 20-some levels of powers, and what to make inherent to the class. Existing controllers vary widely in how their features augment their builds, whereas every striker has some kind of "augment damage" effect, every defender has some form of marking, etc.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:51
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To be sure I do make it easier on myself by having 2 per tier after the 1st, so there's always some choice but it's not insane. Basically "If you're this kind of build take this power, if you're the other kind take that." A basic "suppression" and "push" mechanic both sound good, it's now a question of how to actually express that. Leaning towards an interrupt- normally a defender type thing but at range.
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Aug 9, 2015 02:34
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In the core book the "expected damage expressions" are basically meant to be used both for improvised stunt damage and traps and such, so yeah, it's one bit of the mechanics that is actually kinda symmetrical.
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Aug 11, 2015 05:05
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So, with the Gunner written up, I come to the psychic classes. The one I have the strongest idea of is the Seeker. Which I know is a name that has negative connotations among 4e fans since that class ended up not being so good or whatever, but this is another area where I'm trying to avoid copyright violation- see, these are basically Scanners.  For those who haven't seen the movie, the idea behind "scanning" is that it's not just mind reading, but actually interfacing and connecting with another central nervous system. If you have enough control you can do anything, stop someone's heart, boil their blood, make their head explode, as well as more subtle mind control effects. You can even do this with computer systems. So the Seeker is a ranged Striker who works by eye contact- they pick their target and start inflicting damage and status conditions, mostly against Will and Fort saves. So off the bat one of their features is like the Warlock's Curse or other striker extra damage abilities, you "link" with someone (still not sure what to call this) and get a bonus. Not sure about other features, but I see a potential for a build that focuses on domination and mind control effects, so I'll have to see how 4e handles them in a way that's not stupid OP. The psionic classes in 4e, of course, all work from a different structure than the others with no Encounter powers, but augmentable At-Wills. I think people will want to have this system available (since part of the purpose of this whole thing is to smuggle out the 4e system and make all its neat things OGL) so I'm going to dig in and crunch the numbers. Since I only have two power sources I'm working with this may lead to a kind of fighter/caster divide but the game is balanced enough that it can handle asymmetrical design- I like that AEDU classes are easy to balance with each other but I think the system is strong enough to handle other types (the complaints about the Essential classes are more that they're dull than that they're over or underpowered.)
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Aug 28, 2015 16:52
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P.d0t posted:I used a power-point sort of system in the first RPG I wrote up. I stuck with d6s and d10s for everything, so when you scaled up damage, it went from 1d6->1d10->2d6->1d6+1d10, and then just increased it by one of each die as you went up in tiers. Might be a handy tool for you, just for damage expressions. What I'm seeing from 4e so far is that Augment 1 adds a small perk, Augment 2 basically makes it even with an Encounter power of that level. Again that's just at a glance.
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Aug 28, 2015 20:20
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thespaceinvader posted:My general thought with scores is either 'kill them entirely for combat stats, use a fixed progression for attacks and defences' or 'all attacks use highest ability score to hit, second highest for secondary effects' then keep them for skills. The problem with that being you're still heavily pushed to have at least two high scores. I think two high scores is doable, though- Gamma World worked like that. You're strong in two main areas, okay at a few other things, weak in one place. It's a good spread.
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Aug 29, 2015 19:10
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Looking at psionic powers. Dailies are dailies, as before- no big change there. Instead it's all about the augmentable at-wills. Formula seems to be- start with 1W+some perk, Augment 1: Perk gets slightly better, often conditional to reign it in, Augment 2/4/6 (it goes up by tier)- either 2/3/4W (again by tier, with some exceptions) + a much improved perk or a multi-enemy attack. Also, the Ardent is pretty close to being the Jedi class already.
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Sep 4, 2015 07:19
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Backtracking a bit in light of some 4e discussion I've had on RPG.net- The consensus is that Twin Strike is overpowered to the extent that there's no reason for a Ranger not to take it, and not taking it is sort of a newbie trap. Newbie traps are bad. At Wills are hard to tweak properly because they're at the low numerical end of the system, and in this case attacking twice is, as was pointed out before, really inherently very useful. At the same time I'm wary of just making it an Encounter power because the Duelist is doing the Ranger's thing of singling out targets and attacking a bunch (they're the closest thing to a "simple" martial class, and I see nothing wrong with having that so long as more complex options are on the table.) Also At Wills are the one type of power I want a good number of because you get up to three to start. Thoughts on how to render "attack twice at will" in a way that makes it more reasonable?
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Oct 16, 2015 17:28
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Re: nuking ability scores, I'm still not gonna do that but I'm leaning towards not using them for +To Hit and replacing that with a flat +3 bonus (maybe have it go up at level 5 to replace the Expertise tax.) I'll keep it as a damage modifier because assuming a range of scores of 16-20 (where 16 is someone who doesn't choose an optimal race/class combo, which they shouldn't feel like they have to), an extra one or two to damage isn't nearly as big a deal as a one or two to accuracy. (Far as I can tell a +1 to accuracy is worth around three points of damage, at least that's what one power suggests. With that out of the way I may be able to actually do a little more with ability scores if they're not tied to such an important role.
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Oct 25, 2015 02:20
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wallawallawingwang posted:The only thing that might become a problem if you take away ability scores from damage is that as character's level up that +3 grows to +7 or so. I wanna say that most character's static damage improves at a rate of about 1/2 a level between ability score bumps, magic items, and feats. I'm keeping them for damage, so you still get some benefits and there's a score associated with each class. Like, if you're a Commander, you're not necessarily using your Charisma to hit the enemy, but your sheer stylishness makes your hits all the stronger. Looking at page 138 of the DMG 2 it may be possible to flatten a lot of the "expected increases" (including Expertise) into a BAB progression chart. Still have to put in those increases to damage and defenses but it's one less "expected" thing. Hadn't thought about ability score increases, tho- charop would be to put those in your best score but is it something monster AC expects?
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Oct 31, 2015 02:26
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 12:33 |
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After remembering to add in proficiency the BAB chart now works out to a 10 to hit an enemy of your level which seems to be what they intended. I feel like I wanna keep half level just because it's used in just about everything else and so it'd be at least consistent to have that marked out everywhere instead of "Okay, skills use half level but attacks don't."
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Oct 31, 2015 18:48
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