Too much streamlining of established Cows only turns the game to tactical D&D skirmish game (see 4e). The real question is deciding where you as a designer want those operational calculations to matter in your head, or on the paper.

There is a sweet spot for how many operations "feels" right. I question whether your example makes the game "samey" along the lines of linear armor-types <> Difficulty numbers - then the extra modifiers for Stats on top of that, minus differences if you play with weapon-types vs. armor types etc.

If you don't care about any of that stuff... then you're still using the same basic operators. Especially when you toss in miscellaneous modifiers.

Whereas you could do something like assuming Active Defense, where the Difficulty to hit someone is based purely on their combat rating with whatever weapon they have in hand. All those modifiers are already making the operation one-stop shopping and has elements of "realism" for combat. And you can allow armor to do DR as normal, which is a modifier to damage.

There are downstream effects to this... but they're minimal. But you know... for some, it's killing sacred cows. For other's it's mutating the cow. It's still not going to be enough to "kill" D&D. Only WotC can do that. But you (and everyone else willing to do the work) can roll the dice and be there to offer that alternative. The players will make the final decision, of course.

I think your claim about pre-WotC mechanics weren't best is... murky. Post-WotC introduced the most detrimental design element of D&D ever: the 20-lvl Progression. It's *horrible*.

Quote from: tenbones;1118267If you don't care about any of that stuff... then you're still using the same basic operators. Especially when you toss in miscellaneous modifiers.

This is one of the few areas I give 5e credit for (that I didn't at first until I actually tried using it for a playtest).

In testing I found that an advantage/disadvantage mechanic created far more fun (the best description I ever got from a tester for advantage was that it felt like a "save vs. failure") than even bonuses that were statistically better than those advantage would provide. It's also resolved via simple comparison (i.e. is this number better/worse than that number?) and easy to apply post-hoc if forgotten about in the moment (i.e. you don't have to remember the original roll number, just roll again if it might change the outcome; i.e. you don't have to roll again if you already hit with advantage or if you failed with disadvantage; and use the new result).

I knew it was a winner for myself the moment a person rolled a 1 on the die to hit, then remembered they had advantage and rolled a nat-20. There was no way that even a +10 modifier would have giving the same endorphin rush that gave the players.

As a result my flat-footed mechanic changed from "-X to defense" to "roll twice, use better result" and a number of my penalizing conditions got consolidated into "roll twice, use worse result."

QuoteBut you know... for some, it's killing sacred cows. For other's it's mutating the cow. It's still not going to be enough to "kill" D&D. Only WotC can do that. But you (and everyone else willing to do the work) can roll the dice and be there to offer that alternative. The players will make the final decision, of course.

For me its only about killing cows that aren't performing.

Like I said before, "Roll to hit vs. Armor, then roll damage" easily passed muster as a good mechanic.

Hit Points (though I had to call them something else due to all the associations with meat whereas mine are entirely non-physical) easily passed muster as the best balance between realism and playability in a heroic fantasy setting (i.e. the heroes get banged around with minor/cosmetic injuries a lot, but only if they're dropped to 0 do they suffer a serious life-threatening injury).

The six ability scores spread roughly equally between mind (Intellect and Presence for mine), body (Strength and Endurance) and speed (Reflexes and Wits) also were the most well received.

Using a d20 as the primary task resolution die also proved the best for people to work with as it provided a big enough range for someone's abilities to be overridden by a particularly good or bad roll, and was mathematically easy enough for people to judge "easy, medium, hard" because of the flat bell curve for a single check (multiple checks are another matter entirely and why attack roll vs. defense target number with variable damage that ablates hit points actually still results in bell curve like results to battles while feeling swingy in a round-by-round sense... which is my ideal for how combat should feel).

One area where modern D&D falls short by my findings though were too many skills (even 5e); my list ended up chopped down to an even dozen.

Having the proficiency for weapons and skills improve at identical rates also wasn't all that great a design choice for 5e (because skill results are often entirely binary and generally need a wider range of difficulties to represent tasks, but combat isn't usually determined by a single die roll and strength of an opponent can be modeled using damage and hit points in addition to just the target number needed to hit them).

Using skills at all for success on basic climbing, jumping and swimming movement; particularly with requiring multiple checks to succeed and rather horrible results for a failure; is another area where WotC-era D&D was poorly done.

QuoteI think your claim about pre-WotC mechanics weren't best is... murky. Post-WotC introduced the most detrimental design element of D&D ever: the 20-lvl Progression. It's *horrible*.

I was speaking of task resolution mechanics, not leveling up. I also make a distinction between "mechanics used during a game session" (where you want them to be as intuitive as possible so the game keeps moving) and "mechanics for leveling up/calculating the numbers used during a game session" (where you can go in less intuitive directions because its generally something you're doing between sessions).

In terms of the 20 levels (or 30 for 4E) I agree with you. My system only has 15 levels with level 11+ mapping pretty cleanly to OSR's name levels and few campaigns even needing to get all the way to level 15 in order to be finished (the bulk of a PCs career will occur during levels 5-10). It technically has level 0 for NPCs and levels 16-18 for certain powerful monsters (mostly semi-divine beings like elder dragons, angels and demons), but those aren't relevant to player characters.

Another element I felt 3e and 5e do particularly badly is multi-classing (4e did better; but relied way too much on feat taxes).

I don't think 5e went far enough in terms of backgrounds (I split skills and all non-combat features out of classes and made those a function of background... while classes provide only combat abilities). Being a barbarian or outlaw is a background, not a class (i.e. you could be a barbarian berserker, a barbarian hunter/stalker or barbarian spellcaster... a wizard could be an outlaw and pick up rogue-ish skills as easily as guy who uses a short sword to stab you in the back).

I also found that pre-WotC's approach to hirelings and and support NPCs to also be generally preferable whether the play-testers were grognards or had never gamed before. So it includes that (and the combat rules/statistics were assembled in such as way as to be able to conduct mass battles without needing separate statistics for mass battle rules; one of the benefits of starting the design from the ground up).

Bottom line; no game is going to be perfect (mine included), but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take the time to explore "best practices" when building a system. "Tradition" and "Change is Always Good" are both extremes that do design no favors. For my own system I started with what my own interests were for a game system and then took play-tester feedback on what they found enjoyable and fun to mold it into something that will hopefully appeal to anyone willing to try it. Overall that did favor the unified mechanics approach over the old-school "use a different resolution mechanic for everything" so take that as you will.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118231How exactly does having consolidated task resolution mechanics that handle everything in the game devolve into bean counting while having a completely different and inconsistent mechanic for every single tiny thing in the game does the opposite?

I have watched those games with those so-called superior mechanics and watched a 10 minute combat take an hour and a half hour combat take two hours.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118246OD&D gets props for being first, but viewing its mechanics as best would be like considering the OS/360 (introduced in 1964) as the be all and end all of computer operating systems.

That's funny!

The first computer I used was a Mac+, zero freeze ups, never slow, never had a problem, user friendly to an extreme. 10 years later, Macs had freeze ups and crashes just like other computers, ran slow just like other computers and much less user friendly just like other computers. Today's computers with infinite power compared to a Mac+ have many freeze ups and crashed, run noticeably slower, lots of problems and the concept of user friendly was long ago left by the wayside.

All that advantage in computing power is squandered with poorly written programs.

OD&D runs fast and uncomplicated. Today's games are monolithic monstrosities by comparison that run slow and difficult.

Yes, OD&D could have been improved on, but WotC and Pathfinder failed to.

Quote from: ElBorak;1118335That's funny!

The first computer I used was a Mac+, zero freeze ups, never slow, never had a problem, user friendly to an extreme. 10 years later, Macs had freeze ups and crashes just like other computers, ran slow just like other computers and much less user friendly just like other computers. Today's computers with infinite power compared to a Mac+ have many freeze ups and crashed, run noticeably slower, lots of problems and the concept of user friendly was long ago left by the wayside.

All that advantage in computing power is squandered with poorly written programs.

OD&D runs fast and uncomplicated. Today's games are monolithic monstrosities by comparison that run slow and difficult.

Yes, OD&D could have been improved on, but WotC and Pathfinder failed to.

Really "Today's computers with infinite power compared to a Mac+ have many freeze ups and crashed, run noticeably slower, lots of problems and the concept of user friendly was long ago left by the wayside"?

That does not seem credible.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118246There are definitely things in various editions of D&D that pass a "best practices" test (depending what you're testing for obviously). For example, Armor as a target number (vs. DR) with rolled damage (vs. basing it on a margin of success) is easily the most effective setup for fast-moving combat with minimal math (the operations are "addition then compare" and "addition, target then subtracts" where both rolls can be done at the same time).

DR and margins of success might be more realistic, but both add extra operations to the resolution that slow it down (DR turns damage into "addition, then subtraction, then subtraction again... margin of success turns addition and compare to addition then subtraction, possibly followed by addition or multiplication if the attack has a base value or damage multiplier). If you're writing a game about personal dueling then such detail might be needed. If you're writing a game where heroes are cleaving through a dozen mooks in multiple combats per session... it's probably just slowing things down.

What works best in certain situations definitely depends on what you're attempting to accomplish and includes an element of give and take. In my case I prefer the trade off of more "realistic" DR over faster "Armor as TN" mechanics, because I'm too autistic to stomach the idea that "armor makes you harder to hit" as opposed to "armor mitigates damage". Plus armor and evasion (however it's treated in the game) tend to compete with each other mechanically, since armor tends to limit how much you benefit from "dodge defense" (such as max DEX bonuses in D&D). Which makes armor overall less useful in "Armor as TN" games vs treating it as DR, since DR serves as a trade of for losing "dodge defense" while in "Armor as TN" mechanics you get nothing in return.

I also like Degree of Success, but tent to keep them limited to just five (including fails): Critical Fail, Complete Fail, Partial Success, Complete Success, Critical Success. It's an extra thing to track, but it's not that difficult and I always keep track of critical success and failure in D&D when rolling natural 20s and 1s anyways. So it's a trade off I'm willing to make.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118246In terms of best principles a lot of pre-WotC mechanics were just not best at all. Attacks were resolved one way, saves another way, non-weapon proficiencies still a third (and that just three using a d20), some others uses percentage, others used one or more d6s.

Knowing "if I want to do something with a chance of failure then I'm always going to roll a d20 and add something to it and the higher the result the better" is just flat out better design because it reduces the number of things players and GMs have to internalize without stopping to reference the rules document (by contrast, the individual modifiers needing to increase at a consistent rate is far less important because players/GMs are only dealing with the current number on the character sheet, not what it might have been last level or what it will be next level).

That's what I was trying to say in the post that kicked off this side discussion.

Quote from: tenbones;1118267There are downstream effects to this... but they're minimal. But you know... for some, it's killing sacred cows. For other's it's mutating the cow. It's still not going to be enough to "kill" D&D. Only WotC can do that. But you (and everyone else willing to do the work) can roll the dice and be there to offer that alternative. The players will make the final decision, of course).

Sacred cows are a dish best served cold, cuz I like to kill 'em with a vengeance.

Quote from: tenbones;1118267I think your claim about pre-WotC mechanics weren't best is... murky. Post-WotC introduced the most detrimental design element of D&D ever: the 20-lvl Progression. It's *horrible*.

20 LV progression already existed pre-WotC, though. Granted, WotC made it worse, with more bloated class features and power creep across levels, but 0D&D even had rules for 36 level progression. Regardless, that's a separate topic from consolidated task resolution mechanics vs "every single thing has its own specialized and totally different roll" mechanics, which WotC D&D did do better than TSR D&D.

Quote from: ElBorak;1118333I have watched those games with those so-called superior mechanics and watched a 10 minute combat take an hour and a half hour combat take two hours.

I watched 0D&D games be ground to a halt by bickering over a DM ruling. Not that that proves anything on it own, but since we're exchanging empty anecdotes in leu of addressing actual points or making actual arguments I thought I'd pitch in mine.

I don't even want to buy into 5E, but I've bought some of the books. I’d still rather DM 1E AD&D.
Are they seriously planning a 6E?

No edition of any ruleset will ever be perfect for everyone.  It's just fairy dust to even think that it's possible; but if you can appeal to a large market segment, you can make a living off of your game.  So, I expect the next edition of D&D to chase the winds of change; because they know that it can't be a rerelease of 5E, with new artwork.  They will try to attract people who aren't already playing 5E.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118284Like I said before, "Roll to hit vs. Armor, then roll damage" easily passed muster as a good mechanic.

If the game has high HP amounts, yes. If the game has lower HP amounts, I like armor as DR.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118284Hit Points (though I had to call them something else due to all the associations with meat whereas mine are entirely non-physical) easily passed muster as the best balance between realism and playability in a heroic fantasy setting (i.e. the heroes get banged around with minor/cosmetic injuries a lot, but only if they're dropped to 0 do they suffer a serious life-threatening injury).

Agree.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118284The six ability scores spread roughly equally between mind (Intellect and Presence for mine), body (Strength and Endurance) and speed (Reflexes and Wits) also were the most well received.

Nice schema! I might steal that. Is Presence also Willpower?

Quote from: Chris24601;1118284Using a d20 as the primary task resolution die also proved the best for people to work with as it provided a big enough range for someone's abilities to be overridden by a particularly good or bad roll, and was mathematically easy enough for people to judge "easy, medium, hard" because of the flat bell curve for a single check (multiple checks are another matter entirely and why attack roll vs. defense target number with variable damage that ablates hit points actually still results in bell curve like results to battles while feeling swingy in a round-by-round sense... which is my ideal for how combat should feel).

Agree, but I like 3d6 as well. Depends on the game.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118284One area where modern D&D falls short by my findings though were too many skills (even 5e); my list ended up chopped down to an even dozen.

I like the precision of longer skill lists. Not too long, though.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118284In terms of the 20 levels (or 30 for 4E) I agree with you. My system only has 15 levels with level 11+ mapping pretty cleanly to OSR's name levels

I like 20 levels. Not sure why. Maybe because of the D20?

Quote from: Chris24601;1118284Bottom line; no game is going to be perfect (mine included), but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take the time to explore "best practices" when building a system. "Tradition" and "Change is Always Good" are both extremes that do design no favors. For my own system I started with what my own interests were for a game system and then took play-tester feedback on what they found enjoyable and fun to mold it into something that will hopefully appeal to anyone willing to try it. Overall that did favor the unified mechanics approach over the old-school "use a different resolution mechanic for everything" so take that as you will.

Excellent work. Thanks for sharing your design notes.

Let's just skip 6e and go to 7e.

Quote from: Orphan81;1117577Is 6E coming out anytime soon? Last I heard it was still a ways off.

The OP didn't say it was coming out he said WHEN it comes out.  Why are people thinking 6th edition is coming out?

Quote from: Aglondir;1118444If the game has high HP amounts, yes. If the game has lower HP amounts, I like armor as DR.

This is true. Smaller numbers are always easier to work with. The trick to a good system using DR is that damage should also be pretty static lest DR either become irrelevant (if DR doesn't scale) or impervious to weaker foes (if it scales up too much - unless that's what you're going for).

Another interesting design element is that if your damage is based purely on margin of success then a defense score acts functionally as DR in that the smaller the margin by which it's overcome, the less damage is dealt. As such, you really only need DR or MoS damage; both is over-complicating things for a table-top game.

I ended up tweaking my "hit point" values several times in relation to my damage numbers to find what seemed the best range. Ultimately, people responded best when the values were in the double-digit range.

Less than 10 and they felt too fragile to encourage heroic fantasy style action (i.e. any hit could drop them so players were risk averse... if they see a family being attacked by a half-dozen goblins they don't try to rush to the rescue).

Conversely, at higher levels people started to check out when their hit points were above a hundred and damage had scaled up to match. Subtracting 18 points from 50 is one thing; subtracting 37 points from 112 is another.

So the range I ended up with for PCs (monsters can go lower or higher) started at about 25 at level one (for comparison a level one monster would do about 10 damage per hit) and climbed to about 75 by "name level" and capped around 95.

QuoteNice schema! I might steal that. Is Presence also Willpower?

Part of it. I use four defenses; Armor, Dodge (you can also use it in place of Armor if it's higher), Fortitude and Willpower.

Armor uses its value plus Strength or Reflexes (though heavier armor needs sufficient Strength to avoid penalties) and mostly reflects using your armor to turn aside blows (you don't have to dodge completely, just enough for it to glance off your armor). Because "hit points" are non-physical skill, fatigue and luck, a successful attack means you're having to spend some of your stamina and position to turn an otherwise lethal blow into one that still glances off and are now closer to the point where your skill and stamina won't be enough to save you from a telling blow; a missed attack is one you turn aside with virtually no effort.

The other defenses each use the better of those two attribute pairs;

- Reflexes or Wits for Dodge, Reflexes is you're physically quick enough to dodge, Wits is that you're aware enough of your surroundings to not need to (you noticed the dragon was getting ready to breathe fire a few seconds before everyone else did and were already running for cover).

- Strength or Endurance for Fortitude.

- Intellect or Presence for Willpower (Intellect resists things like illusions or enchantments with logic, Presence resists with sheer force of personality).

QuoteAgree, but I like 3d6 as well. Depends on the game.

3d6 is nice, but I ran play-tests for a wide range of ages (I believe the youngest was 10) and the d20 helped speed things up because you didn't have to add up the dice in addition to adding the modifier (which I kept pretty low).

One could argue that kids should learn to do math better and having to add 3d6 rolls will help that, but my findings were that instead it led to disengagement from what was supposed to be a fun activity (side-bar: I think my favorite playtest was for two of my friends and their kids... playing RPGs as family fun time is about my favorite thing ever).

Kids (and adults) also have an easier time grokking a linear distribution. It's not exactly intuitive that needing a 14+ on 3d6 is only about a 15% chance when a roll of 14-18 is 30% of the possible range. By contrast, knowing they need an 18+ on a d20 is very intuitive for school age kids (18 out of 20 questions on a quiz means you need to do really well... 14 out of 18 is only a C grade so not as hard).

So that's why, at least for my game, I decided a d20 would be the most fun for the largest range of players. I also opted to make all player damage use only a single die (that scales up with level) plus a modifier instead of multiple dice to be added together.

QuoteI like the precision of longer skill lists. Not too long, though.

In the end I went with the idea that fantasy heroes are generally portrayed as broadly competent, but the attributes alone didn't quite give me the range I wanted.

The list I ended up with was; Acrobatics (Ref), Arcana (Int), Culture (Int), Deceit (Pre), Engineering (Int), Fitness (End), Insight (Wit), Intimidate (Pre), Medicine (Wit), Nature (Wit), Persuade (Pre) and Stealth (Ref).

Strength was potent enough on its own it didn't need any skills tied to it; it already determined how much you could carry, how quickly you could climb and swim, how far you could jump, was the default score used for melee attacks and damage and could by applied to your Armor and Fortitude defenses.

Endurance got Fitness because it represented both things like resisting fatigue, but also that if you did need to lift more, swim or jump harder, climb just a bit further it was because you were digging deep into your physical reserves; Endurance is also the ability score most responsible for how far you can push in a day (it doesn't determine your "hit points", but it does determine how quickly they recover and how deep you can dig to pull off exceptional feats) which is why it only gets one skill.

Reflexes gets two because it's also used for initiative, is the default for ranged attacks and might determine your Armor and Dodge defenses. Of note, sleight of hand and picking pockets also falls under the Stealth skill.

Each of the others gets three skills each to respresent common areas of expertise.

Background talents can also improve specific actions with those skills to further differentiate them (Guttersnipe gives a bonus to using Stealth to pick pockets for example).

QuoteExcellent work. Thanks for sharing your design notes.

You're quite welcome. I appreciate your own feedback as well.

25 Hit Points at Level 1?  Shucks, they can each go off on solo adventures and survive.

Quote from: tenbones;1118449Let's just skip 6e and go to 7e.

The odd numbered editions do seem to rock harder, don't they?

Quote from: Razor 007;1118485The odd numbered editions do seem to rock harder, don't they?

   They do seem more focused on being hardcore Dungeons & [strike]Demons[/strike] Dragons. To meld two of my more outlandish predictions, I expect that 6E will be announced, designed, and cancelled before launch for not being D&D enough, and 7th Edition will launch with the logo of the rainbow dragon ampersand inside a blood-red inverted pentagram.