Minor Update: Death Threshold

After playing around with various ways to implement the concept I wrote about here, including lots of number crunching and contemplation, I realized that messing with the death threshold and altering it from -10 would necessarily mean I would have to alter some of the other Fighting Skills I'd implemented. Certain abilities already altered how far below zero someone could go without dying. This isn't a major concern on its own, since it's easily enough fixed.

But I also came to the conclusion that unless I was going to go ahead and strip the ability to bring back the dead, as the other person had, then all I was doing was increasing an already generous hit point system at high levels, and in some cases (depending on how I chose to implement it) making lower level characters less likely to survive.

So at least for the moment, I'm not going to be using altered death threshold rules. I'm still fond of the idea, and like the increased realism that such a system would bring, but I'm already concerned about the level of complexity in my system anyway. Until I manage to do some serious playtesting to determine current power levels, I should probably just leave the mechanics alone.

New Exercise Program

I'm by no means a small person, and haven't been for the majority of my life. Part of this is simply skeletal structure passed down by genetics, and part of it is personal willpower limitations. I recognize I should "eat less, move more" to improve my body image and overall health, but quite frankly I find that I'd rather be spending my time on other things, like video games.

My solution? Video games that make you move. Sounds great, except that I don't have a Wii or any other system that really logs movement. I have a PS2, and an Eyetoy, but the only game I have for the Eyetoy isn't really engaging. When I first saw a Dance Dance Revolution arcade game, I thought that would be a great way to lose weight, except for the fact that (a) it costs money every time you want to play and (b) you have to potentially look like a completely uncoordinated goof in front of an arcade full of people. The latter reason became especially true after knowledge of professional DDR players became widespread, with videos like the one where the man starts breakdancing on both dance pads, and ends with a perfect score.

But wait a minute, didn't Dance Dance Revolution get converted to console gaming before they introduced the PS3?

Yes, yes it did.

I am now armed with two DDR titles, as well as a pair of dance mats. They arrived in the mail today, and I'm so far very pleased. Just tonight I have, according to whatever calculations the game uses, done the equivalent of a two mile jog. I'm not sure how accurate that is, since I didn't feel terribly winded afterwards (though I definitely felt like I had a workout!) and I was still sorely tempted to keep going. I'll probably play again for a bit after I'm done here.

I've made a few observations on my initial play-style, however. For one, I have trouble switching legs, with my right leg dominant. It's actually easiest for me, so far, to just stand on my left leg and use my right to do all the steps, even crossing in front or behind of the left leg to hit the left arrow. For some reason, I'm not nearly as adept at playing with my left leg, as when I tried to reverse things and just stand on my right leg, I ended up switching very quickly because of coordination issues. I have to wonder if this comes from the fact that the arrows on the screen are read as a pattern, and therefore under the "left brain's" authority. I also wonder if this is why having two left feet is a negative thing in dancing, since it implies that the left foot is already inferior.

Despite my right leg doing all the steps, though, my left leg may actually get the harder workout as it ends up being my sole balancing post and support for much of the movements. Either way, I'm definitely excited about this prospect.

Death and Dying

I found some RPG discussion forums today, and through them came across someone else's house rules for death and dying here. Essentially, it increases the amount below zero a character's hit points can go to before the character is dead, allows normal healing spells to work on a character that has died within 24 hours of death, and removes the ability to bring the dead back to life beyond that timespan completely.

While I understand not liking the revolving door of death, I'm not sure I'm ready to remove those spells just yet, and I don't know that I like normal curing spells bringing someone back from the dead, even at less than 24 hours, without the formerly-deceased also needing something to restore their mental faculties after their brain has been without oxygenated blood for so long. I dunno, I guess that might fall under the same healing spell.

I do like the idea of changing the amount below zero, though, for much the same reason as the person expresses: it reduces the lethality of a higher-level battle, where any hit sufficient to drop your character to negatives is also likely to kill outright. It also makes characters or NPCs with less than 10 hp a bit more realistic. That goblin with 4 hp and your 20 Con, 3rd level Fighter both need to hit -10 to die?

That said, I think making the "death threshold" equal to the inverse of the maximum hp is a bit much. I'm thinking more like half would be reasonable, and allow a bit more wiggle room without making it nigh-impossible to kill anyone at higher levels.

So, a third level fighter with a max of 30 hp gets dropped to -3 from a nasty critical hit. They make a save to resist falling unconscious. If successful, they are awake but still disabled, so they can't move as quick and anything more strenuous than talking causes them to take a point of damage. Unless they get their wound bound or stabilize on their own, they also take a point of damage each round, and if they do get bound it will reopen and need to be bound/stabilized again if they take any strenuous action. On top of that, any time they take damage, they have to resist passing out again. A couple of rounds resisting oblivion and still trying to fend off the enemy puts the fighter at -15. Unless help arrives swiftly, next round they'll die from blood loss.

This is extremely theatrical, allowing scenes similar to Boromir's last stand. I'll probably end up using it.

DDO: Monks and Bards

I discovered something the other night, logging in to DDO. Despite my love for bards and monks, I've actually found they're two of the most stressful/difficult classes to play. I think I've managed to narrow down why.

In DDO, monks get a lot of nifty, customized abilities that weren't part of 3rd edition. It adds some flavor and flash, and there's some talk about them being overpowered, which of course makes them desired by anyone who wants to be unbeatable. I have to admit that they can be very lethal in dealing out massive amounts of damage, and pretty quickly. In that regard, they're on par with a dual-wielding rogue with sneak attack. Yet fighters and rogues both have ways of dealing with the aggro that comes from dealing massive damage: fighters have more HP, and can wear shields to increase damage reduction, while rogues have an enhancement ability that decreases the aggro (or "hate" as it's called in-game) that their sneak attacks produce. Perhaps a Constitution-heavy monk would be better at taking the hits, but they'd also be less adept at giving them. Some of the monk abilities can reproduce a few beneficial (but at low to mid-level relatively unused) clerical spells, like removing blindness or curing diseases, but overall I end up feeling like I should multiclass into rogue or cleric so I can be more useful.

Bards are another issue, one that extends beyond just DDO. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none, yes, I get it. They're supposed to be able to make up for an existing lack in party balance, tossing in whatever low to mid-level magic is necessary that the cleric and wizard are too busy to cast. Plus they get the bard songs. But the bonus the party gets from the songs is minimal, and in many cases is easily replaced by spells from other classes, and you'd be hard pressed to find a party that wouldn't rather have a second cleric than a bard. Because the bard's role is so varied, you either end up wasting time trying to figure out what your role in this party needs to be, or you end up being told what you should be doing which may or may not correlate with the skills and spells you've taken as a bard. Regardless, more often than not you end up feeling superfluous or just plain weak.

More than clerics, I think bards have a significant in-game and balance reason for needing the ability to switch spells on a daily (or in DDO, per-rest) basis. It wouldn't really help their survivability, but it would let them tailor their abilities to each party a bit better, much like a wizard or cleric can. As it is, in DDO they can change one spell every 3 real-life days, and pay in-game currency for the privilege.

The rules for bard and sorcerer spells were based on a system in which the character would be played with (generally speaking) a single group. It didn't account for having five different parties in a single day, and having to re-figure your character's role in each of them.

Intelligence, Classes, and Experience

Multiclassing has faced as well as posed a number of difficulties in D&D. Back in AD&D, the Player's Handbook gave very specific multiclassing options, based upon race. 3rd Edition removed both racial level caps as well as race-based multiclassing, but limited multiclassing through Alignment requirements, as well as arbitrary limitations (Monk and Paladin, I'm looking at you).

After reading through my previous postings, I'm certain most can figure out my thoughts regarding Alignment restrictions on classes. And trying to convince me that you can never gain another level in a certain class because you took one level of something else? No thanks.

The system I grew up on, which had been based out of AD&D, had no multiclassing or alignment restrictions. This worked out just fine for many years, until we ended up with players who started taking four or more classes in order to gain various 1st level benefits and abilities.



Yeah, like that. Only not 1/11th of a class each level, but 11 first level classes all at once.

Our DM decided this was just silly, and so it was ruled that the total number of classes you could have was limited by your character's intelligence. This made sense. Certain classes were considered to be "worth more" than others, like Paladin (because it combined both Fighter and Cleric) and Ranger (Fighter, Druid, and Mage - AD&D, remember). Overall, the system seemed logical and also helped prevent any more Multiclassing Minmaxing. The biggest problem I had with it was the feeling of obligation to "fill up" with the maximum number of classes that the character's Intelligence could support, so as not to waste it.

So over the past few days, I've put together a ruleset on multiclassing for my own system. In this system, your total number of "effective classes" is what determines your experience needed per level. No more taking a class just for one level.

Taking more classes than your Intelligence would allow can be done. Doing so, however, increases the experience needed for each level based upon how many beyond the "maximum" you took, even above what would normally be required just by having the additional classes. As any college student knows, it's much harder to remember everything when you're taking too many classes.

On the other side of the coin, if you take fewer classes than your Intelligence can support, you gain a discount on the experience needed each level, based upon the difference between the number you were allowed and how many you took. You can learn faster, because you're capable of learning more than what is being presented.

On a previous topic, I asked my wife how she viewed magic users in D&D - whether the power was coming from within, being channeled, or simply using ambient energy, or even something completely different. She reminded me of how Steven Brust has things set up in his Jhereg series: Dragaeran sorcery is more or less grabbing available energy and tossing it, while Eastern witchcraft is mentally and physically taxing on the practitioner. And then there's Pre-Empire sorcery. Let's not get into that.

Taking that into consideration, I see a correlation between Brust's witchcraft and Druids, so I would most likely leave Constitution as the power source for them. Equating Dragaeran sorcerers with Mages, however, still doesn't give me a well-defined source of power. The Dragaerans pull energy through their link with an artifact-level magic item, which basically gives them an inexhaustible supply of mana. I can't really have that.

I've tinkered with a number of options: Base mana off of Cunning, to represent craftiness through the handling and redistribution of ambient mana. Base it off of Perception, to represent the ability to see or notice the surrounding power in order to use it. Base it off of Luck, to represent the idea that ambient power levels can vary from location to location. I've even considered the option of reworking Shadowrun's system of magic, where spells don't take mana, but instead have a chance of draining you when you cast one. Fail too many "Drain" checks, and you're unconscious. Trying to balance that in a d20 system, though, would take a great deal more work than I'm willing to expend on just this one aspect right now, and still leaves Mages with a potentially inexhaustible supply of power.

I briefly considered making each Mage subclass (Illusionist, Transmuter, Evoker, etc.) have a different stat that it uses for power, but I think that would just make things far too complicated and confusing. And it still wouldn't answer what stat to have Mages use. At this point, I'm tempted to either stick with Constitution, or assign it to Perception, the latter mainly because I don't have a lot tied to that stat yet.

Suggestions?

Ability Scores and Casting - Multiclassing

Reviewing everything I've posted so far on spellcasting mechanics, it came to my attention that basing some classes' mana off of Constitution also would alter the dynamics of multiclassing. AD&D and 3rd Edition both use a spells/day system, so multiclassed spellcasters, even if both classes used the same stat for spells, don't have to worry about sharing a mana pool. In the system I grew up on, however, each casting stat has its own mana pool (ie: Intelligence gave Arcane mana, Wisdom gave Divine). This meant that while you could play a Mage/Illusionist, or a Cleric/Druid, you wouldn't gain any additional casting power, just another spell list to choose from.

By making Constitution the casting stat for Mages, Druids, and Rangers, I've now reduced the effectiveness of a Mage/Druid or Mage/Ranger multiclass combination.

I also have a system I've developed to give Fighters and other melee-based classes more versatility and variety than AD&D without making them quite as powerful as 3rd Edition's tireless killing machines. This system uses Endurance points, also based on Constitution. They aren't magical abilities, but I can still see arguments for a Mage/Fighter using a single pool for both casting and the fighting abilities. After all, if you've drained your body by channeling arcane or nature-based force, why would you still have just as much Endurance?

Effectively, though, this would mean that hardly any melee-based class would want to multiclass with Mage or Druid, while Rangers would end up being almost at a disadvantage since they come prepackaged with both spells and the fighting abilities. Power-wise, anyway. The benefit, still, would be increased versatility despite the lack of additional power. Whether this would be worth the increased Experience cost to level, I'm not sure. I guess that would vary, depending on the person.

On the other hand, it would open up Cleric/Druid as a more potent multiclass option, since Clerics draw power from Faith. Paladin/Druid would still have the problem of splitting Constitution between Endurance and Mana. Mage/Cleric would still be just as effective as before. The Thief class gets a few Endurance based abilities, but not as many, which means multiclassing into Mage or Druid might be a slightly more attractive option than it is for the more combat-focused melee classes.