Creativity and Conflict

They say necessity is the mother of invention. It occurs to me that I have seen an aweful lot of imagination under the fire of ewars. 5th edition has been under a sustained or fluctuating state of well brassy energetic fire... in the midst of the bombing I notice bits of fire that represent damn good ideas from various posters.

Well what are some of these good ideas? I've been ignoring 5e like the plague. So I have no idea of any of the genius that is coming from this.

One idea that I got from one of the DnD Next podcasts was the use of Advantage. This is a mechanic wherein a player gets to roll two d20's and take the highest result. I liked the feel of it and the mathematics are actually interesting.

The way I've implemented it in 4E is in two circumstances.

The first is when a PC wants to aid another with a skill check. I have that PC roll the check, and if successful the PC they are aiding gets to roll a second d20 and take the highest instead of getting a +2 bonus to their roll. If it is a skill where there can be multiple aid another attempts, I will give each successful aid another an additional d20 roll.

The second is with Combat Advantage. If a PC has Combat Advantage, they get the standard +2 to their attack roll. However, if they can get Combat Advantage from two different sources (e.g. flanking a Dazed opponent) then they get the +2 for the first "instance" of CA and then they get an additional d20 roll for the second "instance" of CA. If they manage to get CA from additional conditions (I have a PC that gets CA for charging) additional d20's are rewarded.

There's no real reason I'm doing this other than it makes things interesting and it seems to engage the players a bit more in trying to get CA or aid each other. I think they just like rolling multiple dice. It's one thing to get a flat +2 bonus and miss the target. But if you roll two d20's and end up with a 4 and a 6 on them, it makes for a more exciting table (at least with my players).

Felorn Gloryaxe wrote:

Well what are some of these good ideas? I've been ignoring 5e like the plague. So I have no idea of any of the genius that is coming from this.

Ah I forget some people dont pack flame retardants and tread through the grind ... lets see a recent discussion was about martial counters for magic. I found myself remembering how if you took some features from 1e spells and made them part of many spells there were definite handles for martial types to interact with and counter them.

It brought up the value of spending HD (aka Healing surges to enable various bursty performances) perhaps allowing one to resave or not take half damage on a save and like effects...

http://community.wizards.com/forum/dd-next-general-discussion/threads/4060361

Early on there was a thread where it was discussed fighters trying to figure out something for them
some of the ideas were very like generalizing benefits you see in the Paladin and Rangers like Organization and Favored enemies and the like. Your organization might even include Lone wolf (ie an independent).
Wrecan presented some interesting ideas (so that was a pretty old thread)

As for ideas from next I am fond of something it has called attunement basically instead of limiting ones magic items by slots... you could only attune N items at a given time.(they even had an option for N to be you CHA mod) an unnatuned item doesnt give up all its awesomeness.

But I was thinking how a Paladins gifts could take up those slots... and Big magic items take up more attunement the system needs more slots for this idea but.

I have a fondness for the Paladin who was a fighter++ if those pluses were based on the magic item economy a paladin could even break a specific oath and loose associated gifts without being stripped of all power... I think the playing out a Paladin with oath conflict is part of the Paladin appeal for some people.

Unless you have a fairly thick skin, you should never post a novel idea on those boards. There are too many people there only want the D&D of their choice, usually a reimaging of 2e or 3.x, and will shout down anything that does not conform.
And then you get the problem of wading through all the crap to get to the really good stuff. I can't even go there more than once every couple of days, and even then I usually don't get past thread titles before I give it the old raspberry and close the browser window.
That and the site doesn't work in Opera, which has been my go to browser for nearly 15 year. Using mouse gestures for navigation makes it much quicker, especially in message boards. I've tried plugin in Firefox and Chrome, but they are always clunky and never come close to the smooth seemly use of mouse gestures native in Opera.
TjD

Garthanos wrote:

As for ideas from next I am fond of something it has called attunement basically instead of limiting ones magic items by slots... you could only attune N items at a given time.(they even had an option for N to be you CHA mod) an unnatuned item doesnt give up all its awesomeness.

I've done something like that in our home games due to our 'improved inherent bonuses' rules (i.e. they also get free feat bonuses to attack, damage and defenses and item bonuses to damage rolls which are worth about four feats and three items of about their level). This pretty much wipes out the need to ever look at a feat or item because of its ability to boost your attacks or damage so that the items the PC's DO have tend to be a lot more flavorful.

To keep things from getting out of control and to be able to completely ignore wealth by level (since we're doing a Kingmaker style game where all the PC's are nobles and could basically just pull from their treasuries if they really needed/wanted an item) we then added a rule that only magic items with a total value of one item of your level-1 carried on your person can function at any one time and it normally takes at least a short rest before any magical properties can be re-tuned to a new item.

However, because that limit can really hit certain types of items hard and the push was for more unique items, any weapon, armor or neck-slot item properties/powers that are based of its enhancement bonus (critical dice, bonuses to skills/resists, etc.) use the PC's inherent enhancement bonus instead.

Durriken wrote:

Unless you have a fairly thick skin, you should never post a novel idea on those boards.  
TjD

To slay the Dragon become it, but even this hide gets painful and dry at times. And being such a beast itself can be at best unpleasant. (if they can desire imaging there 2e,3e I can desire aspects which support 4e concepts)

Chris24601 wrote:

Garthanos wrote:

As for ideas from next I am fond of something it has called attunement basically instead of limiting ones magic items by slots... you could only attune N items at a given time.(they even had an option for N to be you CHA mod) an unnatuned item doesnt give up all its awesomeness.

I've done something like that in our home games due to our 'improved inherent bonuses' rules (i.e. they also get free feat bonuses to attack, damage and defenses and item bonuses to damage rolls which are worth about four feats and three items of about their level). This pretty much wipes out the need to ever look at a feat or item because of its ability to boost your attacks or damage so that the items the PC's DO have tend to be a lot more flavorful.

To keep things from getting out of control and to be able to completely ignore wealth by level (since we're doing a Kingmaker style game where all the PC's are nobles and could basically just pull from their treasuries if they really needed/wanted an item) we then added a rule that only magic items with a total value of one item of your level-1 carried on your person can function at any one time and it normally takes at least a short rest before any magical properties can be re-tuned to a new item.

Bithright style? keep wondering what that would be in 4e.
nods, tight reins it sounds like, I am considering a best of both worlds approach by emphasizing alternate rewards since they take up the same conceptual economy as items the attunement becomes more significant. Some items might only be attuneable once (you cant put aside Stormbringer/Excalibur in any voluntary way) . Some more costly. I like how you only gain some lesser effect of a 5e unattuned item - attunement becomes like learning the item and might be even more gradual... I want the number of attunements to increase over time and One of those complex items might allow you to gain progressively more from it with deeper attunement. (like having attuned and deeper as bonded which is unchangeable)

On inherent bonuses : I do kind of like how normally an item can have bonuses but they are like a temporary boost till your inherent bonuses catch up.

Garthanos wrote:

Bithright style? keep wondering what that would be in 4e.

We've made some slight modifications to the Kingmaker rules from Pathfinder for building/running kingdoms and cities and the DM uses the random kingdom events tables for some adventure seeds. Mostly, its pretty traditional Paragon tier stuff, but with the characters having explicit goals related to aiding the kingdoms they've been helping to carve out of the wilderness since the campaign's start (i.e. when a monstrous horde invades, instead of being the murder hobos hired by the local lord, we ARE the local lords and we bloody well better deal with a monstrous horde that's threatening our people with motives ranging from 'I have sworn to protect all under my care from harm' to 'if our serfs are killed how can we extract labor and goods from them?').

We're also getting ready to try something new with it as well. Each player will set certain requirements for their honor guards (ex. one is going to be only halflings due to ruling a halfling duchy, mine is going to be 'must be an unclaimed bastard or orphan with a martial or arcane (except warlock) class'). Then we're each going to make heroic tier characters for the respective honor guards and round robin DM heroic tier threats to the different kingdoms that the honor guards would be called on to deal with (since the main PC's are busy dealing with paragon tier threats).

Garthanos wrote:

nods, tight reins it sounds like, I am considering a best of both worlds approach by emphasizing alternate rewards since they take up the same conceptual economy as items the attunement becomes more significant.

Actually the "attunement" has worked best in a post-apocalyptic heroic tier game where most equipment is bronze-age at best and each racial group can only access one power source other than martial (i.e. the races of men can only take martial or primal classes, the races of elves can only take martial and divine classes, the races of the dragon can only take martial and elemental classes and only the 'corrupted' races; tieflings, shadar-kai, etc; can take the arcane classes... with a couple of exceptions; artificers are considered martial and monks and O-ssassins are considered arcane for 'who can take them' purposes and any of the mixed source classes like the hunter and skald can be taken as martial only versions with more limited power choices).

The game is level 8 and out of six characters only the human artificer has a specific magic weapon (lightning gauntlets), the rest have mundane weapons and armor and boons and/or wondrous items (though the human scout took the executioner multiclass feat so they could use a ki-focus, which plays a lot like a boon anyway). It makes it a lot of fun because the DM can do thinks like sunder your weapon and you can just pick one up off a fallen foe and keep right on going.

Not familiar with Kingmaker I am afraid... I basically think 3e/Pathfinder is too complex and confining for my tastes. Honor Guards sound fun.

Here is a bit of creativity in the Next arena

http://community.wizards.com/forum/dd-next-general-discussion/threads/4058286

Garthanos wrote:

Not familiar with Kingmaker I am afraid... I basically think 3e/Pathfinder is too complex and confining for my tastes. Honor Guards sound fun.

Kingmaker in general isn't THAT complex (and for a game with five kingdoms takes maybe 15 minutes to play through a kingdom turn every game month) as its more of a mini-game that can spawn traditional adventure seeds than something you need to devote entire game sessions to.

The gist of it is that your kingdom has certain stats (size, economy, loyalty and stability are the primary ones) and resources (build points, which roughly translate to 4000 gp in coin, goods and/or services) that you use to maintain and hopefully grow your kingdom during once per game month kingdom turns (stability checks to see if you can keep your kingdom under control, economy checks to determine how many resources you generate, loyalty checks when an event happens that might shake the people's faith in you). You also check each turn for random events that influence your kingdom (with increased odds if didn't have an event during the previous month) for good or ill.

skwyd42 wrote:

One idea that I got from one of the DnD Next podcasts was the use of Advantage. This is a mechanic wherein a player gets to roll two d20's and take the highest result. I liked the feel of it and the mathematics are actually interesting.


The second is with Combat Advantage. If a PC has Combat Advantage, they get the standard +2 to their attack roll. However, if they can get Combat Advantage from two different sources (e.g. flanking a Dazed opponent) then they get the +2 for the first "instance" of CA and then they get an additional d20 roll for the second "instance" of CA. If they manage to get CA from additional conditions (I have a PC that gets CA for charging) additional d20's are rewarded.

I think this is fantastic; the "increasing advantage" thing works really well imo.

CHIA wrote:

skwyd42 wrote:

One idea that I got from one of the DnD Next podcasts was the use of Advantage. This is a mechanic wherein a player gets to roll two d20's and take the highest result. I liked the feel of it and the mathematics are actually interesting.


The second is with Combat Advantage. If a PC has Combat Advantage, they get the standard +2 to their attack roll. However, if they can get Combat Advantage from two different sources (e.g. flanking a Dazed opponent) then they get the +2 for the first "instance" of CA and then they get an additional d20 roll for the second "instance" of CA. If they manage to get CA from additional conditions (I have a PC that gets CA for charging) additional d20's are rewarded.

I think this is fantastic; the "increasing advantage" thing works really well imo.

Does seem like it could be swipeable .. Combat Advantage with Greater Advantage when they double up.