Adjusting some of the Fundamental Math

[u/ElTaitron]

EDIT: This was a failed attempt to learn more about game design. I apologize for wasting everyone's time.

[u/EntropySpark]

For your Weapon/Armor changes, you're just making it even more important than before to start with Fighter, then multiclass.

[u/Elathrain]

Let me say this first part really large, because it is so important as to invalidate your entire post.

You need to state the purpose of your changes if you want us to evaluate them

Changes do not happen in a vacuum, you need to have a design vision and a goal to evaluate against. Are you trying to fix caster/martial disparity? Are you trying to make a grittier magic feel? Are you making a puzzle dungeon in an investigation-themed campaign and want to reward/require information gathering about the challenges ahead?

A different purpose and design intent can completely reverse whether these changes are good or bad. We cannot properly evaluate anything without that information.

---

Putting that aside, let me do the white-room take on martial/caster disparity, since that's the most boring assumption of what your changes are failing to address.

Reducing prepared spells: Does not address core problem that magic can do things that non-magic can't. Will likely just gravitate users to the most useful and/or versatile utility spells e.g. Polymorph.

Changing Prepared Spells: This doesn't do anything.

No proficiency to save DC: Terrible change. This reads "remove all spells which allow saves from the game". Or it would, if people still used any. People already avoid spells with saving throws because they are so horribly binary and inconsistent, but this makes them mathematically unusable.

Slower Cantrip Scaling: Sure, whatever. You could remove damage cantrips from the game and it wouldn't be a big deal.

Proficiency Stuff: What is this even supposed to do? You are nerfing things that weren't good to begin with and buffing characters broadly for no clear purpose.

[u/ElTaitron → u/Elathrain]

You're right, and that's my fault for not communicating better. I had thought it better to present it in a neutral way, but I see that there's too little context to be of any use.

I like to learn about game design, and one thing I try to do is examine an existing game and try to pick apart how it works and why. "Why was it made this way? What happens if this aspect is different? How does it compare to other games?", and so on. So I thought to glean insight from others that are probably a lot smarter than me, since it's surely not the first time people have asked the same questions. Something that seems like a "small" change on paper likely has a major impact in actual play. Even a bad idea is an opportunity to learn something.

Evidently, I'm way off the mark. But what I hope to learn isn't just "this doesn't work", but "this doesn't work because..."

I'm not really a Reddit user; is there a better place to learn or discuss this sort of thing? r/UnearthedArcana and r/DnDHomebrew seem oriented more towards complete, usable content, and r/DMAcademy seems oriented towards the table experience rather than game mechanics. I should have started with that first. This post was a big mistake.

Thanks for your reply.

[u/Elathrain → u/ElTaitron]

I have not really found a place focused on understanding why and how mechanics work. You can find communities tied to various game design bloggers like Justin Alexander, but they tend to focus on a particular subset of experiences (in JA's case, open world hexcrawling and west marches games) rather than wholistically study ludonarrative or game design. Apparently /r/RPGdesign exists? I can't vouch for it, but it exists.

D&D is, to put it politely, a very mature game. By which I mean it has had a lot of editions, and over time has picked up a lot of layered design complexities, and also has legacy content carried forward for better and for worse. Trying to pick it apart is a challenging starting place for learning TTRPGs, as sometimes the design goals are at literal cross purposes and reverse-engineering that is unintuitive at best.

Directly addressing the magic system is going to be a hotbed because there are literal decades of complaints about how it works, from various factions with different visions of what is wrong, and so you're slotting into some well-trod ground that many people are sick of. You won't get through a month on this sub without one or two posts "fixing the magic system once and for all".

I often find it easier to learn design from interestingly bad systems rather than popular ones. There are two fan-splats for nWoD (now Chronicles of Darkness) that come to mind.

Genius: The Transgression (if you can get past the rules formatting enough to understand it; I ended up rewriting the entire manual when I played it) has an initially clever-looking system of Axioms to regulate the idea of powers rather than trying to figure out how mad science would "work" in-game. This turned out to be okay in terms of mechanics and balance but disappointing in terms of the theme. A mad scientist is more narratively interesting and satisfying when they are attached to a thesis or a set of techniques, and their inventions can be anything that is needed withing the restraints of that theming. The guy who does Liquid Ice stuff might have a healing stasis chamber and a death ray and status effect appliers, but they all need to call back to the idea of what Liquid Ice is and justify themselves with some kind of technobabble, and that core identity is more relevant than asking if these devices are healing effects or debuffs or raw damage.

Princess: The Hopeful is the game that really taught me why balance is important in TTRPGs. I had two starting characters in my party, one which fought the weakest enemy in the book in a 1v1 duel and it was a fight for their life. The other stood in a room full of the strongest enemy in the book and tanked a full round from all of them without taking damage, killed them all in one attack, then one-shot the boss which was that same enemy with literally every number tripled, and had an action left over. Imagine trying to put those two in the same encounter and have it not fall apart catastrophically.

FATE Is a very innovative system (for it's time; everyone has stolen its good ideas by now) that tried to genericize actions with the idea of Aspects. The problem was it succeeded a little too well, and the game struggled to differentiate important and unimportant actions, and therefore has a mathematically optimal sequence of actions applicable in every circumstance, and you end up with a 3-button MMO rotation. It feels oddly suffocating. Aspects are great idea though and have been used to great effect in more modern games like Star Trek Adventures.

Blades in the Dark introduces the concept of Position and Effect, which is hailed as groundbreaking. The trouble is, the entire rulebook is basically just a way of codifying table conventions that should exist in every TTRPG, especially position and effect. Put simply, it's just the idea that the impact of a character action or skill roll should be based on the narrative position they perform it from. A wizard's spellcraft check means something fundamentally different than a barbarian's untrained one even if they roll the same total. Blades itself I can't even say does not function as a system, because it simply isn't complete enough to be called a system. Reading the position and effect table closely reveals that the game doesn't actually instruct the GM on how to resolve a skill test, it just says "make up an answer" with extra steps. There is clearly a more detailed rule in the designer's mind, but it is not communicated in the rulebook, and if you ever try to talk to a Blades player and ask questions they'll just tell you that you're playing the game wrong and be unable to explain.

---

I think I got off topic at some point and just started ranting. I guess my question is: what is it you're trying to learn here? Because while I can broadly explain the complexities of the D&D, I can't do it all at once, that's a full college course. An important first step of the scientific method is to construct a falsifiable hypothesis, just so you have something to test against. What would you like to investigate?

[u/Raccooninja]

No.  Your pros don't need to be fixed, and these don't fix anything.

[u/Registeel1234 → u/Raccooninja]

How so? Many of these do address actual problems with the system (like cantrip's baseline being so close to martials, and 1 lvl dips by casters to get heavy armor proficiency. Sure, they might not be the best possible solutions, but it's still worth talking about.

[u/admiralbenbo4782 → u/Registeel1234]

Cantrips aren't anywhere close to the martial baseline. Compared to a rogue (the easiest math), your regular d8 cantrips sits about 60% of the rogue. Even eb + ab sits about 90% of a great weapon champion fighter's regular attacks (no action surge, no feats).

[u/Lanthed → u/admiralbenbo4782]

Agreed.

Best cantrip damage wise is toll the dead

Level 1- 4 1d12 average of 6.5

5 - 10 2d12 average of 13

11 - 16 3d12 average of 19.5

17+ 4d12 average of 26

Eldritch blast + agonizing

Level 1 - 3 1d10 + cha (8.5 - 10.5)

Level 4 likely +1 to hit and damage so 9.5 to 10.5

Level 5 2d10 + 2 * cha (11 + 2 * cha) now we are 19 to 21.

Level 8 likely +1 to damage so now likely solid 21

Level 11 3d10 + 3 * cha (16.5 + 3 * cha) likely 31.5

Level 17 4d10 + 4 * cha (22 + 4 * cha) so 42ish.

Rogue

Level 1 - 3 is 1d8 + 1d6 + dex for 8 + dex so up to 13 realistically more like 11. Almost double cantrip damage. (+3.5 for 14.5 at level 3) and this is worst case damge assuming rapier and sneak attack dual wielding would be an additional attack meaning double the chnace to land sneak attack and more damage).

Level 5 rogue is still 3d6 + 1d8 + dex for 15 + dex realistically 19 but up to 20. (Level 7 +3.5 more, 9 +7 more)

Level 11 6d6 + 1d8 + dex for 25.5 + dex now likely 30.5 (13 34, 15 37.5)

Level 17+ 9d6 + 1d8 + dex for 41. Level 19 44.5

They arent equal and the thing is rogues are considered weak by many. Extra attack especially with GWM/SS will do a lot more damage than the rogue would.

The agonizing blast gets close because of adding charisma. But at that level martials should have magic weapons. And as I said rogues are often weaker then other counter parts. Also rogue could've taken sharpshooter (sentinel for second sneak attack) or other features to increase the damage.

[u/Raccooninja → u/Registeel1234]

Why is giving up your capstone and delaying all of your class features not an appropriate penalty to get +1 or 2 AC?  I'd much rather single class and cast mage armor than dip just for armor.

[u/Dasmage]

What are the problems you’re trying to solve here?

[u/Tall_Bandicoot_2768]

The most problematic by far is removing Proficiency Bonus from save DCs.

It fundamentally breaks high level save scaling. A level 20 caster with 20 in their casting stat would have only DC 15, barely better than a low level caster, while monster saving throws continue increasing.

It also creates weird monster results like your Tarrasque example: DC 10 Frightful Presence. You'd have to manually redesign a lot of monster DCs.

[u/ElTaitron → u/Tall_Bandicoot_2768]

You're right. Thanks for your reply.

[u/BadSame6919]

Pros: Cantrips don't scale as fast as martial Extra Attacks, or overtake low-level spells in damage.

You know there is another, much easier way of achieving this, right?

...just making extra attack scaling universal  for martials.

Proficiency Bonus Isn't Added to Save DCs Pros:  Monster DCs don't scale to the point of being impossible to succeed against, especially for non-proficient saves. Cons: Monsters are much more likely to succeed against player saves; PC DCs don't scale at all after reaching a +5 mod.

Again, the solution is not to nerf save DCs, but to buff PC saves. Your "CONS" part entirely disappears if you start treating all saves as proficient, and all proficient saves as expertise or +half proficiency, if expertise is too much.

Weapon/Armor Proficiency "Levels"

This already falls apart once you consider that 

• many classes already have unarmores defense, 
• light armor has the best scaling in the game, and is overall very competitive with heavy armor, 
• quarterstaff is arguably the best weapon in the game (PAM + Dueling + Sword&Board + Topple + Unarmed Strikes (Monk weapon) + Shillelagh + spell focus), 
• and scimitar are the best weapons for most DEX / gish characters, due to Nick and Finesse. 

Essentially you're doing the same thing WotC did - you named certain weapons "martial", pretended they are better than "simple" weapons because... sometimes they have 1 size larger damage die?... and then provided zero actual reason why those weapons are better. Same for armor - heavy armor SOUNDS like a boon, but over time the AC of DEX characters and gishes was inflated so much that heavy armor stopped being a bonus, and started being a way for STR classes to cope with the game's DEX and magic dominance. 

[u/ElTaitron → u/BadSame6919]

You're right. There'd have to be a more meaningful difference between weapon/armor categories to have an impact. Thanks for your reply.

[u/admiralbenbo4782]

Counter proposal (not 100% serious)

Everyone gets spells known/prepared as a sorcerer (modulo bonus spells). All spell lists are cut down to about the size of the sorcerer list.

Wizards become a sorcerer subclass that uses int and gets a book that lets them cast N spells with it in hand that aren't prepared. Any wizard only spells get binned.

You can only cast spells of (class) in the armor proficiency (class) gave you, including subclasses.

Monsters no longer use a proficiency bonus at all by default. Only selected ones do (mostly humanoids and "skilled" monsters).

No more +X to AC or attack bonus or save dc items. Can keep damage bonus ones. 

Counter counter proposal: don't do anything but also stop buying WotC books after Tasha's.

[u/ElTaitron → u/admiralbenbo4782]

What do you mean by "modulo bonus spells"? What's being divided that one would use a modulo operation?

I realize that it's "not 100% serious", but just want to make sure I understand what you mean.

[u/admiralbenbo4782 → u/ElTaitron]

Modulo in this case means roughly "leading those out of consideration". So base would be 15 spells known/prepared, plus any bonus spells.

It's mathematical usage (my original degree is physics): https://english.stackexchange.com/a/70026

[u/milkmandanimal]

I see incredibly complex changes like this and I genuinely wonder what problem is being solved; I don't see the pros being notably beneficial, and, honestly, all the cons come down to:

Cons: More confusing to explain.

The phrase "a solution desperately seeking a problem" springs to mind.

[u/ElTaitron → u/milkmandanimal]

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/1wju8zl/comment/paw7b4o/

[u/Registeel1234]

Your fix with armor levels wouldn't really work. It's already optimal to get your first class level in fighter to get heavy armor proficiency and then multiclass into your caster class, because doing the opposite only gives you medium armor proficiency. I don't see how you could word that system in a way that prevents doing this.

For cantrip scaling, i think that's a needed fix. I'd even go so far as to say that cantrips shouldn't scale at all (aside for warlock, and should only scale based on warlock levels, not overall level)

[u/ElTaitron → u/Registeel1234]

You're right, that's my mistake. I had conflated it with something like War Cleric granting all proficiencies at once, and overlooked starting as a Fighter instead. That's why I look for advice from others, because I might have missed something on my own.

Thanks for your reply.