3.5 as a chess variant?

[NineThePuma]

So, I've been thinking about how to run a game of D&D chess, and the general principals (two players, limited resources/units) while basically lifting the principals of chess and placing them soundly into the 3.5 system. On paper, this means working it as two players controlling adventuring parties and pitting them head to head. In practice this means juggling things so that "Team Fullcaster" isn't the absolute best thing ever. To that end, you probably either need to fix problem spells or outright ban most full casters.

However, I'm curious to know if there are ways to balance a "chess match" like this. It would clearly require a PbP environment, but it's the general thought process of balancing out the game for this kind of set up. No Fluff, pure crunch, and a mechanical emphasis on combat. But I'm hoping that in practice it more closely resembles a game that is both workable and has solid variations on the execution of the basic premise (CTF style matches, perhaps protection details... Asymetrical maps, with accompanying variations in tactical set ups) and all sorts of bells and whistles.

The thought has occurred to me that 4e might be better for this sort of thing, but I'm not as familiar with 4e as I am 3.5

[Yora]

You're actually going full circle with this. RPGs originated from tabletop wargames, which in turn evolved from taking the principles of tactical thinking from chess into something that mimics actual battlefield conditions.

[NineThePuma]

I'm aware of the circling. I'm questioning if anyone possesses a less hamhanded solution than "ban full casters" and looking for suggestions.

[Psyren]

Unless you're prepared to do a lot of banning and tweaking (particularly for everything T3 and up) you're going to have a hard time with this. Even playing with the exact same "pieces" (classes), 3.5 enables such a wide variety of approaches and techniques that you lose the mechanical balance necessary for a true chess match. You'll get flying/invisible pieces, shapeshifting pieces, pieces controlling other pieces, pieces summoning other pieces, pieces pretending to be other pieces, pieces doing AoE, pieces partitioning/altering the battlefield, teleporting pieces etc. With the right builds, you can get all of the above and more into one piece.

4e seems to me much more suitable for this sort of thing; it definitely has a much stronger "boardgame" vibe than 3.5 because the various powers lend themselves much more to grid-based combat. The PCs also have less freedom in terms of things like summoning, domination and action-economy that could wreak havoc with a chess-style balance.

[NineThePuma]

Well, as with all PvP RPGs, that's something that'll come up. For example, my "strongest" strategy that emerged just during me doing some basic optimization at level 1 was that a bunch of rogues aiming for stealthing around and then blasting people away with Heavy Crossbows, all aiming to down the "Big threats" first, and then breaking contact in a skirmish style.

You're right that 4e might be better, and certain aspects of it are already showing in my proto-type rules for how the "party" works skills.

[Fax Celestis]

I'm aware of the circling. I'm questioning if anyone possesses a less hamhanded solution than "ban full casters" and looking for suggestions.

..play the D&D Miniatures game?

[Snowbluff]

Only time I would say use 4e

Maybe clerics are bishops, sorceror for queen, the (un?)silly not-bard thing for king?

[navar100]

King - Fighter
Queen - Wizard
Rooks - Rogues
Bishops - Clerics
Knights - Paladins
Pawns - Barbarians

[Psyren]

You're right that 4e might be better, and certain aspects of it are already showing in my proto-type rules for how the "party" works skills.

This is my point exactly - in trying to nerf, tweak and balance the game out to this degree, you're just going to end up creating 4e. It would honestly take you less time to learn 4e than it would to do this (though I suppose it would be cheaper, unless you're giving up some source of revenue to work on it.)

[Keegan__D]

First, I must point out that there is a form of chess in Complete Warrior, but not anything with real thought put into it.

Go with a point system. Each side gets a number of points, agreed upon by the two players. Casters will simply be worth more than others, and you will have less, more powerful units. Creatures with LAs could be used, but it probably shouldn't be a direct 1/1 point per LA, or with class levels either. Get your friends together (or forumites) and get a price list going.
Charging points for specific spells is also an option, and of course banning ones like Wish.

[Zale]

Perhaps you could use the tier system with it?

Arrange the different tiers with increasing point values.

But still, a lot of weak classes don't always equal one powerful one.

I mean, how many fighters would it take to defeat a wizard?

[Geigan]

I'll add a vote for 4th ed on this one too. Much more balanced across the board and would probably be easier than trying to re-balance 3.5 for this purpose.

That said, I've thought about doing something similar myself so I'll give you some of my thought on it.

-First things first, you need a ban list. Some things obviously just don't work here if you want even the illusion of a balanced game. You might want to check out the old Tests of Spite (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150821). They had a fairly good ban list going and looking through their archives you'll see some good examples of arena play, albeit only 1v1 PvP and some PvE. You'd obviously want to expand on that as this was just 1v1. There are likely to be all sorts of combos with multiple controlled characters that would need fixing/nerfing.

-You need to set a max level for characters, preferably a low one. Epics are of course right out, but even at the level of 13 ToS was still ridiculous in some places. I'd probably go down to level 10 or even just limit the thing to E6. I had the idea myself(which I see some others have suggested as well) of making certain classes worth more than others in how many levels you could get. A quick and dirty way would be to make sets of modifiers based on the tier system, though I'm fairly sure that's just me being lazy and grasping for an easy metric(JaronK never intended the tier system as anything but a measure of a class' potential options, not as any sort of PvP viability measurement). Some classes(*cough*casters*cough*) would obviously be worth more, but PrCs would also need modifiers as well if you allowed their use. The interplay of multiclassing makes the system a lot more complicated with potential for broken combinations of class features that gets exponentially worse as you go up in level, which is why I would suggest keeping it as low as possible while still keeping it high enough to retain complexity. This would be a very difficult balancing act.

-Keep in mind that this results in a sort of point system, similar to the ones used in some war games. That may be a good thing, that may be a bad thing, but it does raise the question of why you'd be trying to turn a cooperative RPG into a PvP wargame. Anyway, one way you could limit the game is in the total ECL allowed for each team in total, with the max cap being how high any one unit could go. The modifiers I mentioned above could be used to influence the count(so for example, going all casters wouldn't necessarily be best due to their greatly reduced power).

This is just a sample of some of the work you'd have to do. Of course these are all just ideas and you could go about it completely differently, but I think this is the sort of framework you'd need to lay out IMO. If this discourages you I'd go for 4e as it'd be much easier to convert into a chess like format like I think you're looking for. The interplay of mechanics is more standardized and less prone to breaking under the weight of unequally distributed power, like you see in 3.5. Class power while of course not perfect, is leagues above 3.5 in terms of overall balance.

My 2gp on the matter.

[Frosty]

Go with a point system. Each side gets a number of points, agreed upon by the two players. Casters will simply be worth more than others, and you will have less, more powerful units.So...turn this into Warhammer? :smalltongue:

[NineThePuma]

Thanks for the help with this, everyone. I've migrated to the 4e section of the board to get some tips and tricks for how 4e works, and should be able to think something up.


As a preliminary, my thought process is:

PARTY SIZE OF 4: In the vein of the "classic" d&d party, the party must consist of a "Defender/Striker/Leader(Support)/Controller" in 4e terms.
Low level: Currently, I'm thinking level 3 or 4.
No Dailies: Due to the frame work of it, I'm dropping dailies, though if I expand the base premise to include NPCs or more than, say, three players, I will re-add them.
RPG ELEMENTS WILL BE LIMITED: I'm probably going to cut back on the RP elements and unit personalization, mostly by trimming off certain choices (IE, skill choices.)

Other than these particular deviances I'm not set on much else.

[nedz]

The Miniatures Handbook contains rules for this.

[NineThePuma]

The miniatures handbook is not available to me or the group I play with.