Remove BAB?

[Ninjadeadbeard]

This has probably been asked before, but I want a system-specific answer if I can get one.

Given a setting where Armor is rare due to the prevalence of early firearms (1700's thereabouts), what would happen to the relative balance of D&D if we were to remove the Base Attack Bonus, and force characters to rely entirely on Strength/Dexterity to hit?

I'm curious as I'm experimenting with my players, but I tend to overlook glaringly obvious faults in my own logic. Many thanks!

[Aegis013]

Is magic still about? It substantially widens the divide between Mundane versus Magician.

It will be extremely difficult to scale your to-hit bonus appropriately with monster/enemy defenses, as most of them come from things other than armor anyway, so the mundanes will, assuming fighting monsters, become weaker and weaker as they level up, becoming unable to defeat opponents who should be quite weak.

The loss of iterative attacks makes anything that grants bonus attacks substantially better. Haste would probably become the most desired buff in the game, for mundanes and every mundane would wear Boots of Speed. Rapid shot and Manyshot might become super desirable, but you'd never surpass their penalties.

Overall, I personally don't think it would be a good idea. If I were in that situation I'd refuse to play anything that wasn't a full caster, and take no spells which needed attack rolls, even against Touch AC. Though, there are some other playgrounders who can probably give you a better assessment.

[eggs]

Given that one of the biggest problems in D&D's balance was that the developers valued full BA about as highly as they did level 9 spells, dropping any advantage from the full BA classes is just going to kick the weakest classes without noticeably affecting the strong ones.

[Thespianus]

Given a setting where Armor is rare due to the prevalence of early firearms (1700's thereabouts), what would happen to the relative balance of D&D if we were to remove the Base Attack Bonus, and force characters to rely entirely on Strength/Dexterity to hit?

Spontaneously, it seems like you would hurt non-magical melee-based characters even more. It would make encounters with monsters harder to balance (but maybe that's not a problem for you) and it would make Power Attack useless (since you need to sacrifice to hit "up to your BAB" to use it).

There are probably ways to mitigate some of these effects, but casters would get very odd benefits, and melee characters wouldlose out.

Also, iterative attacks disappear, but you could adjust that some way, I assume.

One thing that I have been thinking about, in a similar vein, is to reduce BAB of the low BAB casters to 1/4 progression, rather than 1/2, and potentially increase the BAB of non-magical melee characters to 3/2, but that is something completely different from what you talk about here.

Can I ask what gain you see coming from going through with your alternative rule?

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Is magic still about? It substantially widens the divide between Mundane versus Magician.

I'm fiddling with magic as well. The short of it is that spellcasters are capped at 6th level spells (I believe that was true of older editions), and only high level spellcasters would gain access to more than a few spell schools (assume my re-balancing goes uncommonly well and the schools are essentially equal in power). In essence, I'm making magic more utility than combat orientated.


It will be extremely difficult to scale your to-hit bonus appropriately with monster/enemy defenses, as most of them come from things other than armor anyway, so the mundanes will, assuming fighting monsters, become weaker and weaker as they level up, becoming unable to defeat opponents who should be quite weak.

Do you have any specific examples? Of monsters as well as the non-armor defenses?


The loss of iterative attacks makes anything that grants bonus attacks substantially better. Haste would probably become the most desired buff in the game, for mundanes and every mundane would wear Boots of Speed. Rapid shot and Manyshot might become super desirable, but you'd never surpass their penalties.

What would you say then to granting iterative attacks as class features? We won't count the BAB numerically, but use those numbers to determine when to add another attack (at a small penalty to hit) to a character's repertoire.


Overall, I personally don't think it would be a good idea. If I were in that situation I'd refuse to play anything that wasn't a full caster, and take no spells which needed attack rolls, even against Touch AC. Though, there are some other playgrounders who can probably give you a better assessment.

Well, thank you for your input. It was still very useful!


Spontaneously, it seems like you would hurt non-magical melee-based characters even more. It would make encounters with monsters harder to balance (but maybe that's not a problem for you) and it would make Power Attack useless (since you need to sacrifice to hit "up to your BAB" to use it).

As I said to Aegis013, I do have an idea about iterative attacks, but what you say about Power Attack is true. I hadn't thought of that (and that's why I like having editors to catch my slip-ups). Although the monster issue isn't too worrisome as I rarely use monsters (fighting people is more my style and that of my players), and any monster I use against them would inevitably be 90% homebrew anyway.


Can I ask what gain you see coming from going through with your alternative rule?

I have always heard on these forums that AC becomes useless at higher levels due to how far outstripped it gets by BAB. And in a 1700's -ish setting like the one I'm writing, armor would be outmoded by firearms. So my thought was, "Remove Armor, but then BAB would become really good."

So I figured I'd remove BAB so that there wouldn't be auto-hitting at higher levels. Since magic is getting severely cut-down, adventurers can't rely on that to make up the loss of AC. Did I not think this through all the way, do you think?

[gomipile]

You'd have to make adjustments to every enemy from CR 5 or so until about CR 15. WBL doesn't support the level of optimization and equipment required to hit enemies reliably until level 15 or so if the melee don't have their 1/1 BAB.

Unless, that is, your intent is to force everyone to depend on casters and massive use of magical buffs and touch attacks to hit anything reliably, ever after level 5.

[Mithril Leaf]

Does the polymorph line of spells exist? If so, then draconic polymorph into a nice bladerager troll for a cool 36 base strength. Unless you give iteratives based on class (basically the purpose of having BAB in the first place) then any old transumation wizard can still outfight the fighter, but now even easier.

[TuggyNE]

Do you have any specific examples? Of monsters as well as the non-armor defenses?

Nearly all higher-level monsters have substantial natural armor bonuses. A number also have deflection bonuses from various special abilities, or sometimes other bonus types. Concrete example A: Elder Air Elemental, CR 11, +8 natural armor. B: Nymph, CR 7, +Cha deflection.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Nearly all higher-level monsters have substantial natural armor bonuses. A number also have deflection bonuses from various special abilities, or sometimes other bonus types. Concrete example A: Elder Air Elemental, CR 11, +8 natural armor. B: Nymph, CR 7, +Cha deflection.

Oh. Guns in my setting bypass all armor, magical or otherwise save the highest quality plate (exorbitantly expensive for anyone not funded by a government). And they're considered simple weapons. And they do much more damage than Core. Natural armor is similarly bypassed regardless of source. I really do like the idea of industrialization and the resultant firearms basically putting humans on par with The Fair Folk.

Although any monster with a high Dex would still be tough.

[Ashtagon]

You'd also need to reduce monster BAB, as those are boosted by their HD (essentially, monster types are a weird kind of "virtual class" that grants BAB and stuff).

Monster AC should be reduced to balance too, but there's no convenient way to figure how much.

[Zombimode]

Basically, if you want to use any monsters at all, you have to rework them.

Also, your firearms bypass any natural armor?
Then they are significantly better than any modern real-world firearms :smallbiggrin:


The short of it is that spellcasters are capped at 6th level spells (I believe that was true of older editions)

Nitpick: thats not true. Until 3e, there were 9 levels of arcane spells and 7 levels of divine spells.

[TuggyNE]

Oh. Guns in my setting bypass all armor, magical or otherwise save the highest quality plate (exorbitantly expensive for anyone not funded by a government). And they're considered simple weapons. And they do much more damage than Core. Natural armor is similarly bypassed regardless of source. I really do like the idea of industrialization and the resultant firearms basically putting humans on par with The Fair Folk.

Although any monster with a high Dex would still be tough.

... Deflection is not armor. :smallconfused: It's a magical force that, well, deflects attacks of any sort. You're of course free to set up guns to somehow bypass that, but note that in stock 3.5 it's not a bonus that can be ignored by any type of attack: a flat-footed ranged touch attack with a brilliant energy dagger from superior invisibility on a paralyzed, dazed, stunned, blinded, deafened, and nauseated target would still have to deal with deflection bonuses the same as absolutely anything else. And yes, that includes any spell that makes an attack roll.

Of course, knocking out natural armor does balance the majority of monsters, at least roughly, since it's probably the most common way to ensure a monster has about the right AC. It's not entirely unreasonable, either, to bypass moderate amounts of NA. It only gets weird if you're up against something with very high NA like the Tarrasque (in which case you usually have to deal with DR as well).

[NichG]

Somehow this doesn't feel like its angling to be a setting with omnipresent supernatural/monstrous elements, so the Tarrasque is probably less of an issue than, say, an elephant...

I'd actually suggest using d20 Modern and adding stuff here, rather than using D&D and removing. Perhaps combine with the 'armor as DR' variant rules, and have that DR be pierced by firearms. Then, if you want to remove BAB, its probably more or less okay (though you'd also want to remove the Defense Bonus stuff from classes, or limit it to the best of whatever the first level of each class gives, which is either +1 or +3 to AC). The result would be that various modifiers to AC become very important, since you have so little innate variance in your AC or your attack rolls - cover, height, going prone, etc will matter a lot more, which could be interesting.

[Andreaz]

Oh. Guns in my setting bypass all armor, magical or otherwise save the highest quality plate (exorbitantly expensive for anyone not funded by a government).Hmm.
There's 4 or 5 ways this makes very little sense, unless your guns are relativistic and your governments can make enough money out of nothing that they can rule their world through the sheer individual might of the rulers themselves.


But whatever. Removing BAB or iteratives tips the balance in favor of casters. BAB can be denied as early as first level spells anyway.

[rockdeworld]

As others have said, melee characters would sit down and cry, because they can't hurt anything after level 6 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/hydra.htm) or so. Bypassing NA makes it easier to hurt some creatures (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/purpleWorm.htm), but not others (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/nymph.htm). And an Allip (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/allip.htm) will still slaughter an equal-CR party. As noted, chargers rely on BAB for Power Attack as well as to-hit.

The barbarian would suck, because it can't use bullets, ergo not get past armor.
The bard would kick ***, because it boosts party members ability with song and spell, and it can use ranged weapons.
The cleric, wizard, and sorcerer would get even better, suffering only from Touch-Attack-based spells.
The druid would get marvelously better with the ability to turn into a high-strength beast.
The fighter would suck, unless optimized around guns (and even then wouldn't do great in an optimized environment)
The monk would still suck.
The paladin would be much worse, since it's geared toward melee like the barbarian.
The ranger would get better, and...
The rogue would get better, since they can both use guns efficiently (ranger moreso than rogue). Edit: Rogues are more SAD, so will probably hit better.

It sounds interesting to try, though, so go for it.

[Thespianus]

So I figured I'd remove BAB so that there wouldn't be auto-hitting at higher levels. Since magic is getting severely cut-down, adventurers can't rely on that to make up the loss of AC. Did I not think this through all the way, do you think?
Well, maybe there are other solutions to reach the same goal.

The reason that you get auto-hitting at higher levels isn't as much because of BAB, but rather because all the different enchantments people get on their weapons and boosts and increases to strength, Inspire Courage-bonuses, etc.

BAB is linear after all.

What if you cap any attack bonus to +2? Or say that "You can't have more than a +2 bonus in total to your attack bonus, excluding your Strength bonus"

So a BAB 11 Fighter with strength 22 and a +2 longsword would get, at maximum, a 11+6(Str bonus)+2 = +19, which means that he wouldn't be auto-hitting anything with an AC of 21 or higher.

This way, while very crude, you encourage Strength among melee characters, but you get rid of some of the more ridiculous bonuses players get at higher levels.

Then again, most of those bonuses might come from super-pumped Strength scores, so I might be going out on a limb here.

The main point is: Keep BAB, put a cap on the amount of bonuses players can get to their attack roll.

[Urpriest]

Just curious, what made you reject this variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm)? It's basically the default for low armor, swashbuckly games.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Just curious, what made you reject this variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm)? It's basically the default for low armor, swashbuckly games.

Um. :eek: Wow. All I can say is, I completely missed that while I was looking through the hypertext. That would actually work really well in my setting. I kind of feel bad starting up a whole thread now.

Thanks.

[Twilightwyrm]

If I may, why not use the Defense Bonus system (found here: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm) increased as needed? Since it is a unnamed bonus (that just happens not to stack with armor), it would still apply to touch AC, giving people a reasonable defense against firearms, and can be increased or decreased as needed for the campaign. It is also suggested that it is coupled with the Armor as DR system, which would make sense if your analysis is that armor is being outdated by guns: the armor provides no help in blocking the bonus, and the DR it provided by all but the heaviest armors is rather useless in reducing the damage from bullets. (Gunslingers using Dead Shot, in particular, would laugh in the face of even Full Plate's 4/- DR)