harpy
2011-02-25, 08:03 AM
One thing that has always struck me as odd is that move rates are very simplified in the game, with very standard values that have few ways of being changed. The number of squares you move is a fundamental metric to the game, but rather than wedding it to ability stats, you just get a cookie cutter value.
In real life, from a very young age I found myself faster than most other kids. In a certain way it was like a super power of mine. In play, either in the neighborhood or playground, I'd outrun most kids, which was a real advantage both offensively and defensively.
It would be great to have some kind of variable to base speed in the game to reflect differences between people, just as all the other attributes do.
The big issue though is that the grid and scale that was chosen doesn't provide a lot of flexibility. Everything is keyed to 30', and because of how combat works, 5-foot steps, etc. if you end up slicing too much speed away you get to a point where a PC can be very ineffective in a tactical situation.
However, if you do look a bit closer, one bit of granular detail isn't addressed in the rules. It's that the 30' distance drops down to 20' due to size, or being a dwarf, medium/heavy armor, or being encumbered. There really isn't any 25' movement in the game, even though that value is perfectly serviceable to the system.
There is a 15' movement in the game from small characters who are wearing medium/heavy armor or being encumbered. It doesn't drop down to 10' likely do to the need for the system to tease out enough granular movement, and likely also that 10' of movement simply is too crippling.
Likewise, putting aside (what I find completely unsatisfying) Fleet feat, you don't really have a 35' movement in the game. If you are a barbarian or a Monk, you can get your speed bumped up to 40', just as large creatures bump up to that speed normally, but that mid point of 35' is mostly ignored by the system.
So, the system can handle having 15' to 35' movement without causing huge ripples in the game. The thing though is how this variation can be built into character creation as another true stat. Feat expenditure isn't something I want to bother with, there are too many other things to spend feats on, instead it ought to be some other attribute-like element, or keyed off of one or more attributes.
One thing that I'm always trying to do when designing rules for OGL is that I want the new rule to be elegant. The OGL is sensitive to rules chances because the system is built to be very interdependent on many of the rules. Unlike older editions of D&D where sub-systems were siloed off from each other, OGL rules are woven together and a change in one area can have unintended consequences in other areas.
Keeping that in mind, it wouldn't be elegant to just add in another stat, say "Speed" to the established six. The biggest problem there is that you'd then need to add that stat to every other creature in the game. A vast new metric would be inserted and unless you dialed everyone's stat to 10, you'd have a mountain of work ahead of you to make it all fit into the established rules.
However, while adding an extra attribute doesn't work well, you can go to another resource at player creation, the attribute point buy system. One additional option to this system could be added in, where you can spend points for +5' of movement, or gain points by getting -5' of movement.
The tricky thing is to figure out how much those value adjustments cost. To be on the conservative side and acknowledge how potent movement can be in the game at times, it would be good to follow the progression of the point buy values at put +5' as being 3 points. Likewise, -3 points are gained if you lose -5' of movement. I could see an argument of these values being even higher, but more work would need to be done on builds to really sort out how they affect point buy.
As for how you do this with die rolls. I'm not too sure. I wrote off random generation of characters a long time ago. Without doing any math, I'd guess that if you did roll 4 drop lowest, then taking one or two of those rolls and just roll 3 might do the trick.
What do people think?
In real life, from a very young age I found myself faster than most other kids. In a certain way it was like a super power of mine. In play, either in the neighborhood or playground, I'd outrun most kids, which was a real advantage both offensively and defensively.
It would be great to have some kind of variable to base speed in the game to reflect differences between people, just as all the other attributes do.
The big issue though is that the grid and scale that was chosen doesn't provide a lot of flexibility. Everything is keyed to 30', and because of how combat works, 5-foot steps, etc. if you end up slicing too much speed away you get to a point where a PC can be very ineffective in a tactical situation.
However, if you do look a bit closer, one bit of granular detail isn't addressed in the rules. It's that the 30' distance drops down to 20' due to size, or being a dwarf, medium/heavy armor, or being encumbered. There really isn't any 25' movement in the game, even though that value is perfectly serviceable to the system.
There is a 15' movement in the game from small characters who are wearing medium/heavy armor or being encumbered. It doesn't drop down to 10' likely do to the need for the system to tease out enough granular movement, and likely also that 10' of movement simply is too crippling.
Likewise, putting aside (what I find completely unsatisfying) Fleet feat, you don't really have a 35' movement in the game. If you are a barbarian or a Monk, you can get your speed bumped up to 40', just as large creatures bump up to that speed normally, but that mid point of 35' is mostly ignored by the system.
So, the system can handle having 15' to 35' movement without causing huge ripples in the game. The thing though is how this variation can be built into character creation as another true stat. Feat expenditure isn't something I want to bother with, there are too many other things to spend feats on, instead it ought to be some other attribute-like element, or keyed off of one or more attributes.
One thing that I'm always trying to do when designing rules for OGL is that I want the new rule to be elegant. The OGL is sensitive to rules chances because the system is built to be very interdependent on many of the rules. Unlike older editions of D&D where sub-systems were siloed off from each other, OGL rules are woven together and a change in one area can have unintended consequences in other areas.
Keeping that in mind, it wouldn't be elegant to just add in another stat, say "Speed" to the established six. The biggest problem there is that you'd then need to add that stat to every other creature in the game. A vast new metric would be inserted and unless you dialed everyone's stat to 10, you'd have a mountain of work ahead of you to make it all fit into the established rules.
However, while adding an extra attribute doesn't work well, you can go to another resource at player creation, the attribute point buy system. One additional option to this system could be added in, where you can spend points for +5' of movement, or gain points by getting -5' of movement.
The tricky thing is to figure out how much those value adjustments cost. To be on the conservative side and acknowledge how potent movement can be in the game at times, it would be good to follow the progression of the point buy values at put +5' as being 3 points. Likewise, -3 points are gained if you lose -5' of movement. I could see an argument of these values being even higher, but more work would need to be done on builds to really sort out how they affect point buy.
As for how you do this with die rolls. I'm not too sure. I wrote off random generation of characters a long time ago. Without doing any math, I'd guess that if you did roll 4 drop lowest, then taking one or two of those rolls and just roll 3 might do the trick.
What do people think?