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Delnyn
Senior Scribe
USA
889 Posts |
 Posted - 29 May 2023 : 21:16:14
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Scribes,
I am interested in your observations on how yo allocate feats.
Would you want more frequent, more incremental benefits? Or would you prefer fewer, more powerful benefits?
Would you allow a feat to create a class feature or just to augment a pre-existing class feature?
Would you give all benefits all at once or gradually parcel out benefits by character/class level, skill training or other feats?
There are no wrong answers. My group is considering a rework of game rules for our FR campaign. We are aware of alternate game systems to Dungeons & Dragons.
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TBeholder
Great Reader
2382 Posts |
Posted - 30 May 2023 : 10:27:36
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Reworking d20 is like trying to develop a breed of turtle suitable for cavalry charge: you may end up with something much better than what you started with... but this will be a waste of time anyway (except maybe as an exercise).
IMHO. |
People never wonder How the world goes round -Helloween
And even I make no pretense Of having more than common sense -R.W.Wood
It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo. -Ed Whitchurch |
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Diffan
Great Reader
USA
4426 Posts |
Posted - 31 May 2023 : 11:26:44
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quote:
Originally posted by Delnyn
Scribes,
I am interested in your observations on how yo allocate feats.
Would you want more frequent, more incremental benefits? Or would you prefer fewer, more powerful benefits?
Would you allow a feat to create a class feature or just to augment a pre-existing class feature?
Would you give all benefits all at once or gradually parcel out benefits by character/class level, skill training or other feats?
There are no wrong answers. My group is considering a rework of game rules for our FR campaign. We are aware of alternate game systems to Dungeons & Dragons.
Looking at the three editions of D&D that had feats, they're all different in terms of power, usefulness, and design concepts. Personally, Iiked that the feat got better as you leveled up, which is what 4e did via "tiers". But I also like that they were as good as an Ability Score bump too.
I
I Personally wouldn't allow them to mimic strong features, but pilfer a fraction of one or two would be ok. Like Arcane adept might give you a smidgen of magic power, but fully replicate a mage.
I'd also steer away from lengthy Feat Chains. It requires too much planning and forces more system mastery which, IMO, was never a good idea to begin with. |
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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist
USA
11690 Posts |
Posted - 31 May 2023 : 15:06:25
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What edition of the game are we talking about, because 5e feats and 3e/3.5e feats are very different? I like the ability to modify your character in pertinent ways, but I can also see where 3e/3.5e started getting a little unwieldy with its sheer volume of feats. I would agree with Diffan in that making the chain requirements to get a feat short, because it gets ridiculous if getting a feat basically turns someone into a one trick pony.
On this question
Would you allow a feat to create a class feature or just to augment a pre-existing class feature?
yes and yes. Of course, it depends on the class feature. For 5e, one of my favorite homebrew feats is one which simply raises the level of spell you can prepare/know in your multiclassed spellcasting classes. Note that I say prepare/know... not cast... nor necessarily increasing the NUMBER you can prepare/know... I don't increase the number of spell slots by level that you have (for instance, if you have both cleric and wizard classes and you would normaly be able prepare say 2nd level cleric and 4th level wizard spells... but you have say spells slots up to 5th level... a feat that increases your ability to prepare say 4th level cleric spells and 5th level wizard spells seems ok to me for 5e since you still only have a limited number of spell slots and number of prepared spells)
Would you give all benefits all at once or gradually parcel out benefits by character/class level, skill training or other feats?
Again, depends on what you're doing. The number of different feats needed for two weapon fighting got a little out of hand in earlier editions, so I can see maybe some feat that gives out a large number of low level bonuses on say a fighting style at relatively low level, but that at higher levels maybe the benefits of the feat are more focused on a certain specific benefit. As a for instance, a feat that lets you get a small bonus to AC when fighting with a shield and ALSO allowing you to wield a shield as a weapon effectively sounds like a good idea, but later feats might focus on either improving defensive OR offensive shield use. |
Alavairthae, may your skill prevail
Phillip aka Sleyvas |
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Delnyn
Senior Scribe
USA
889 Posts |
Posted - 01 Jun 2023 : 21:52:54
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| To answer Sleyvas' question, I don't specific any of D&D's 3 editions that use feats or Pathfinder for that matter. Sleyvas' answered my inquiry quite well. TBeholder also provided valuable feedback in terms of questioning the feat mechanism. If the scribes have an alternative mechanism in mind, feel free to discuss. There are no wrong answers. |
Edited by - Delnyn on 01 Jun 2023 21:55:47 |
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Delnyn
Senior Scribe
USA
889 Posts |
Posted - 04 Jun 2023 : 20:39:23
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quote:
Originally posted by TBeholder
Reworking d20 is like trying to develop a breed of turtle suitable for cavalry charge: you may end up with something much better than what you started with... but this will be a waste of time anyway (except maybe as an exercise).
IMHO.
Would you recommend something like the Players Options series that came out toward the late years of AD&D 2nd edition? |
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TBeholder
Great Reader
2382 Posts |
Posted - 12 Jun 2023 : 23:52:00
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quote:
Originally posted by Delnyn
Would you recommend something like the Players Options series that came out toward the late years of AD&D 2nd edition?
At least it was flawed rather than hopeless.
I mean, PO was a great idea, and a fairly good attempt at implementation. But it had a few problems that mostly killed it.
1. Demand of 100% backward compatibility.
2. Over-complication. Mostly as a result of (1).
3. Entrusted design of S&P ("core" of PO) to a designer that was not Richard Baker (who did the good stuff), nor half as good. As a result it was a mess.
3.1 MTHAC system: it was contrary to the entire point of PO as a concept (C&T moves away from "padded sumo", let's do the opposite to psionics - the only part of AD&D2 that was not padded sumo) and very poorly designed (e.g. the only result of a successful attack being drain of PSP... less than the cost of the attack). Derp.
4. Poor to non-existent editing.
4.1 Entrusted naming of things to Richard Baker, without much postprocessing. He was IMO one of the best game designer at the time, but occasionally lapsed into Leonard de Quirm syndrome. Odd naming, among the other things, increases misunderstanding among the developers.
If you want to see the result of the same approach without jumping through the hoops of compatibility with AD&D 2.0 - take a look at d100 Warhammer 40k RP series. Aside of having combat mechanics designed specifically to not look like padded sumo, we can compare similar parts that were clunky in PO and see they did not need to be clunky:
- Character points were redundant. Remove the middleman, give advancements cost in XP, count total for levels (this mostly reduces levels to prerequisites for advancements).
+ AD&D 2.x could use this approach even better, because AD&D 2.x used different types of XP awards. Specific XP pools could be available for relevant advancements (whether in list-based or affinity-based variant). As in, if the character gets Wizard XP awards, those can only be sent on Wizard advancements, etc.
+ Some variation of this could improve multiclassing. Whether taking d20 route for dealing with HD and levels, or some other (e.g. divorce HD from classes altogether, so that a Fighter generally gets a greater HD/level rate than a Wizard, rather than more hp per HD).
- Damage and Severity (for critical injury effects) were redundant. Could as well use damage roll as severity roll, with a few extra adjustments.
+ ...it makes sense to adjust by Constitution and Size (d100 does this simply via damage reduction from Toughness).
- Trying to make a more generic model clashes with keeping it centered on demihuman stats range. PO:C&T critical injury system was made for a wider variety of sizes and body types. d20 tried to go with this even further, so made the problem even more obvious.
- Difficulty number as an explicit and uniform part of mechanics is good (the only thing d20 had done right, though broken skill system negated even this), explicit and uniform degrees of success/failure are even better. Both were used in AD&D 2.x sometimes, but in rules haystack rather than core, thus with more complications and less benefits.
- Erring on the side of nerf is not automatically a good habit. 
-? Skill system needs attention. It was not good in d100, though even that was much better than silly inflation in d20.
+ ...Maybe look at other games, like Alternity or Stars Without Number (original edition). Increasing costs of advancement and sensible skill trees help to keep things sane.
+ AD&D 1 and 2 had a messy weapon skill system, but this also led to better ways of using it: related WP, narrow/broad group WP. Obviously, the same can be done with the rest of skills. d100 eventually had to, but unfortunately, turned toward more lazy d20 copypasta in design. |
People never wonder How the world goes round -Helloween
And even I make no pretense Of having more than common sense -R.W.Wood
It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo. -Ed Whitchurch |
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Ayrik
Great Reader
Canada
7966 Posts |
Posted - 13 Jun 2023 : 01:51:02
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| The PO rules were all strictly optional. Each rule was optional. There was no requirement to use any of them, there was no requirement to use them as an "all-or-nothing" package full of rules you liked and rules which didn't work for you. |
[/Ayrik] |
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TBeholder
Great Reader
2382 Posts |
Posted - 17 Jun 2023 : 00:24:42
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quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik
The PO rules were all strictly optional. Each rule was optional. There was no requirement to use any of them,
Hence attempts at 100% backward compatibility, yes.
quote:
there was no requirement to use them as an "all-or-nothing" package full of rules you liked and rules which didn't work for you.
It's not a random salad of houserules. Some don't make sense without others. And if rules which don't work for you (or at all) are part of prerequisites for other rules - too bad, they are in the way.
If you use critical damage for spells, presumably you use it for weapons and claw/claw/bite. If you use point based character generation, you will need it to work for all characters, and if one class is screwed up, you are not going to oh just skip it. |
People never wonder How the world goes round -Helloween
And even I make no pretense Of having more than common sense -R.W.Wood
It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo. -Ed Whitchurch |
Edited by - TBeholder on 17 Jun 2023 08:23:24 |
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Feats
