A Discussion of Well-Used Mechanics in DnD-based RPGs

[Kydell]

I would like to discuss some 'cornerstones' of RPGs and how they might hinder or help the genre. Also, I would like to bring up some alternatives, or perhaps work on an alternative in this thread.

*DISCLOSURE* I mostly play dungeons and dragons, pathfinder, star wars saga edition and RPG video games. My thoughts directly reflect my experience with those games and do not include systems or games which divorce themselves from these mechanics. That having been said, please direct my attention to systems and games who might do these things better, or do better without them.

Now to business.

Combat

Combat can be fun...can be. Other times it takes hours to resolve one single fight that nets you less experience than you'd have liked. In the vast majority of RPGs I've played, there is a huge separation between combat and literally every other aspect of the game. How come conversations or crafting can't be as nuanced as combat? I'm not saying that every skill should be as complicated as some combat situations are, but I think combat could be simplified, skill use could be beefed up a little and in that, the players could find a variety of complex gameplay instances anywhere you look. Not to mention, you wouldn't have to alienate the players who don't find fighting fun.

Now, I have played dungeons and dragons sessions that rely more on dialogue and intrigue, but I find those to be usually taken care of by the Charisma-based 'face' of the party, and also take much less time than a combat situation.

Classes

This is a big one. Classes are a huge part of many RPGs that really allow the characters to take up a role that is unique from, and supports each other character. However, it is easy to see that most every character of the same class is going to be rather similar. Classes can also just be a way of telling the player how they will approach combat, as this is the main function of games like dungeons and dragons. Looking at the abilities granted by each class, you would be hard-pressed to find something that gives an edge outside of a fighting situation. Another problem I have with classes, is that they only slightly lend themselves to the story being told. If you told me that your character Divrona Bivrodka was an Elf Alchemist, it hardly tells me about who your character is, or what her story is until now.

A possible solution to this is to make the "Class" something that informs the player and the DM about who the character is, and gives them goals outside (or inside) of combat. This new concept would focus more on skills and the way the character makes a living, rather than how they approach combat. My idea is to replace the class with a "Profession" such as Butcher, Baker or Candlestick Maker that gives them unique and fantastic ways of approaching combat (if necessary) and goals like becoming an exotic animal meat salesman, the greatest pastry chef in the land, or a gifted arcane candle artisan.

Classes also limit creativity. If you want to have the sneak attack ability of the rogue and the magic of a wizard, it would take twice the amount of time and grant you many abilities you might not want or need, not to mention being half as strong as either a fully devoted wizard or rogue. While this is so for the sake of balancing, I don't think that you should have to have abilities you don't want or need just to follow the rules of the game. Your character's progression should follow your idea of that character. In short, a modular class system would be welcome.

Skills

Skills are my most favorite part of any roleplaying game, and I always set off to be as skillful as possible. Crafting, Persuasion, Acrobatics, Knowledge--each skill in a roleplaying game serves a purpose to allow for story movement both inside and outside of combat, which gives a lot more depth to your character independent of how well they can swing a sword.

Gaining a level and subsequently leveling up all your skills is momentarily exciting, but it is a paltry replacement for getting better at skills for simply using them. Games like the Elder Scrolls V: Oblivion really made me feel like picking every lock in the game was worth it, if not to just become a master lock-picker. The gameplay loop of Using Skill -> Getting Better at Skill -> Using Skill Is a lot more rewarding to me than doing the same with combat, as it lends more to the storytelling aspect of roleplaying than finding someone to fight.

I would like to see a comprehensive mechanic that allows the natural growth of skills to be a major part of the storytelling experience. The greatest part of a character is finding out how that epic level dashing Rogue became so good at telling lies.

Experience

I have a huge problem with experience points. I think these are why I see a large divide in most RPGs between combat and everything else. Generally, and in most dnd games I have played, combat is almost the only way that you get experience, and subsequently, the only way that you gain levels. This really makes everything that isn't combat seem pointless, and has caused frustration in many campaigns I have taken part in simply because the players felt as though they were wasting their time doing anything outside of fighting. As a player, I have felt this frustration, and as a DM I have attempted to assuage this frustration by generously handing out experience, inevitably making the party much stronger than they ought to be.

I feel that there should be a form of advancement that feels more natural than levels, and that this advancement ought to be focusing on skill growth.

Levels

Levels are a good way to gauge how strong your character is compared to the world around it. They work as a set of miniature goals to further character development, and give the DM clear guidelines on how powerful the NPCs you face must be to give you a good challenge. Now, I love the idea that you can say something as easy as "My character Shadrach is a level 9 Rogue." and the listener will be able to understand roughly what Shadrach's capabilities are. On the other hand, I think that this simplification can hurt the idea of character development and, more often than not, hinders natural, nuanced growth.

Levels are a red herring to the actual advancement of your character. Level nine as opposed to level eight might mean a bit of difference in battle, but what your character did to reach that next step might be obfuscated to focus on adding +1 point to each of your skills, getting a new feat or gaining another ability score point.

I'm having a hard time letting levels go, however, because it can be a nice way to control the advancement of characters and ultimately the flow of the narrative. Although, the idea that you never know how strong you really are is interesting, and could lead to more natural interactions between characters where you might feel apprehensive starting trouble without knowing how skillful the opposing character is.

Critical Hits/ Critical Misses

This gets more into the numbers of the game. Rolling dice in a tabletop RPG is exciting because you have no control over how well you might do, but you can also do much better than you expect. The risk of succeeding or failing by the whim of the dice is pretty exhilarating to begin with, but the odds begin against you and you struggle to add bonuses to minimize the risk. It can be especially infuriating if you "critically fail". Critically failing is usually rolling the lowest number on the dice, which ends in failing the check, of course, but can also have repercussions such as hurting yourself, dropping your weapon, or even worse depending on the ruleset. The dice are cruel, but I honestly think that removing critical failures, and allowing critical hits (critical successes) to be more of an exciting event, that makes the player feel really good. Some tabletop rules force a player who critically succeeds to roll and succeed again in order to gain the benefits. This immediately takes the excitement out of getting that critical hit in the first place.

I would like to find a dice rolling ruleset that keeps the thrill of possible critical successes, without the fear of too much failure.

[MrStabby]

A couple of personal notes:

1) Classes.

i think that in mechanics of character building this adds some complexity and fun. It applies some restrictions and restrictions breed creativity. As long as the game system is diverse and versatile this can be areal strength. Working out how to get the most out of unexpected skills in a class is quite fun. There is a certain hidden pleasure to be found from using skills/abilities you didnt take a class for.

2) Levels

I really like these from a social perspective. If a table levels up at the same time there is a huge sense of achievement and reward. This is shared by the group and they get the collective excitement of exploring the options for their new abilities.

[NichG]

I've been trying to think of a way to have a system where the only way to increase in power is through IC action that is directly causally responsible for the increase. That is to say, there would be no intrinsic power meter inside characters. If this guy is stronger than you, it's because he became a member of a dojo that increases strength, or consumed supernatural steroids, or got possessed by a demon, or ate the soul of a demigod, or whatever - not just because he adventured longer than you.

On discussion with my players, we realized there's a really deep and intrinsic flaw with this. If everyone needs a sidequest to advance, and you have, say, 4 players, it means that every game three of the players are just doing stuff to help the 4th guy to get stronger. In turn, advancement ends up being limited even more by metagame considerations than in the intrinsic system, because there's this OOC negotiation about whose turn it is to advance, etc. Which was exactly the thing that this idea was trying to get away from. Or, alternately, the game has a very high amount of downtime-related load, where in order to actually keep up, players are forced to run downtimes with the DM to get their advancement subplots to go forward without detracting from the time spent during game to follow the main plot. IME, this tends to lead to the game being all about the downtimes, with players being bored and unmotivated during the main sessions, since many players won't care about the main plot but they will care about getting stronger.

[Stubbazubba]

Combat

Combat can be fun...can be. Other times it takes hours to resolve one single fight that nets you less experience than you'd have liked. In the vast majority of RPGs I've played, there is a huge separation between combat and literally every other aspect of the game. How come conversations or crafting can't be as nuanced as combat? I'm not saying that every skill should be as complicated as some combat situations are, but I think combat could be simplified, skill use could be beefed up a little and in that, the players could find a variety of complex gameplay instances anywhere you look. Not to mention, you wouldn't have to alienate the players who don't find fighting fun.

Now, I have played dungeons and dragons sessions that rely more on dialogue and intrigue, but I find those to be usually taken care of by the Charisma-based 'face' of the party, and also take much less time than a combat situation.

The skill system in D&D is very flexible, but there's absolutely zero structure in the books. They tell you how to keep track of skills, but not how to design encounters with them. Skill Challenges were an attempt to address this, but not a very carefully thought out one. The good news is someone has made the skill encounter system you're looking for (http://theangrygm.com/how-to-build-awesome-encounters/). The Angry DM describes how to build a structure for encounters that can run entirely on skill checks that's not arbitrary like SCs are. Some things really do just take one roll, because they're just not that important. Other things, though, deserve a whole set piece devoted to them. In the rulebooks, only combat has the structure to do that (more on combat later), but here Angry provides a skill-based alternative.

Yes, it also works for social (http://theangrygm.com/help-my-players-are-talking-to-things/).

Angry doesn't go into a complicated social example, though, but you obviously could:

For instance, if you were convincing a king to commit forces in a war that does not threaten his lands, you'd want that to be a bit more of an epic exchange than one roll. If you give the king multiple objections/incentives (the risk of the war, the potential for rewards, honor in honoring an alliance or the potential for a new one, and PCs can try to invent new ones) and figure out some kind of threshold that he needs to be convinced on (overall persuaded on more than half of the issues), plus assign a Patience that equates to how many bites at the apple you get, you have a framework for a mini-game. You'd also need to encourage different approaches, so that different skills can be effective, and hopefully these skills are spread out among the party, not concentrated in a single character, so that everyone can participate to some degree. Then it gets more interesting when the king's cowardly adviser is advising him the other way. You need to get and maintain the king's agreement until his patience is over, then he has made up his mind and ends the scene.

And, in fact, there's no reason you couldn't do combat like this (http://theangrygm.com/ask-angry-its-okay-to-have-damage-rolls/), as well. Eliminate HP and damage altogether and just roll to get the effect you're after; a minor baddie falls in one solid hit, a medium in 2 or 3, and a major one requires a minor skill challenge to hit it in its vulnerable spot or whatever. I think moving away from health bars and randomized damage would actually help RPGs a lot.


Another problem I have with classes, is that they only slightly lend themselves to the story being told. If you told me that your character Divrona Bivrodka was an Elf Alchemist, it hardly tells me about who your character is, or what her story is until now.

Another way to look at that, of course, is to say that a class doesn't straight-jacket you into telling a certain story. You might like the combat mechanics or the special features of Class Y, but want to keep your backstory and goals and such to yourself. It cuts both ways.


Classes also limit creativity. If you want to have the sneak attack ability of the rogue and the magic of a wizard, it would take twice the amount of time and grant you many abilities you might not want or need, not to mention being half as strong as either a fully devoted wizard or rogue. While this is so for the sake of balancing, I don't think that you should have to have abilities you don't want or need just to follow the rules of the game. Your character's progression should follow your idea of that character. In short, a modular class system would be welcome.

The more isolated classes are from each other, the easier they are to balance because the fewer combinations you have to test. If classes are modular, the potential combinations explodes, and it becomes logistically unrealistic to do more than cursorily review each combination. The best way to avoid that bullet would be to keep different aspects of the game (such as the more recently-minted trinity of combat, social, and exploration) separate and have different classes for each aspect. So I might be a Beggar, Sentry, and Rogue, or a Scholar, Navigator, and Wizard, for instance. But at that point you start to dilute your classes' thematic cohesiveness and have to ask yourself where the balance really is. I could see it, though.


Gaining a level and subsequently leveling up all your skills is momentarily exciting, but it is a paltry replacement for getting better at skills for simply using them. Games like the Elder Scrolls V: Oblivion really made me feel like picking every lock in the game was worth it, if not to just become a master lock-picker. The gameplay loop of Using Skill -> Getting Better at Skill -> Using Skill Is a lot more rewarding to me than doing the same with combat, as it lends more to the storytelling aspect of roleplaying than finding someone to fight.

I would like to see a comprehensive mechanic that allows the natural growth of skills to be a major part of the storytelling experience. The greatest part of a character is finding out how that epic level dashing Rogue became so good at telling lies.

Many games do this, but I'm not sure it's that desirable. In a table-top RPG, there's nothing stopping you from just running around spamming your skills on things to get better at them, or better yet, just saying "I spend the next couple of days climbing things." It's not all that exciting. People will do whatever the game rewards, so you want to reward doing relevant, story- or action-driving stuff. If you want to tie skill XP or XP in general to skill use, you want to make sure you constrain it so it's going to come up while actually playing the game, not just while taking the time to use the skill out of nowhere. I'm not entirely sure how you avoid that.


I have a huge problem with experience points. I think these are why I see a large divide in most RPGs between combat and everything else. Generally, and in most dnd games I have played, combat is almost the only way that you get experience, and subsequently, the only way that you gain levels. This really makes everything that isn't combat seem pointless, and has caused frustration in many campaigns I have taken part in simply because the players felt as though they were wasting their time doing anything outside of fighting. As a player, I have felt this frustration, and as a DM I have attempted to assuage this frustration by generously handing out experience, inevitably making the party much stronger than they ought to be.

I feel that there should be a form of advancement that feels more natural than levels, and that this advancement ought to be focusing on skill growth.

Skill growth isn't the core of the game. Interacting with the world, completing quests, vanquishing foes, and amassing wealth and/or power usually is. Often, systems will award XP for character goals or party goals, story milestones, etc. That's another good avenue. Simply using skills again and again is not interesting, it needs to be tied into the fabric of the game, which is questing (assuming traditional D&D flavor game).


Levels

Yeah, that's the gist of it. There are two ways to capture character power: levels or skill points. Levels bump up everything (or most everything) in a predictable manner. They keep the party on roughly the same page, and keep them roughly appropriate for monsters of certain levels. That's extremely useful. Point buy, OTOH, is more flexible, natural, and some would say, realistic. It is more intuitive that you only improve in the areas that you decide to focus on. But it has no ability to maintain balance, either as compared to other characters or to enemies, so the GM has to really understand the game and his players' characters to make appropriate challenges.


Although, the idea that you never know how strong you really are is interesting, and could lead to more natural interactions between characters where you might feel apprehensive starting trouble without knowing how skillful the opposing character is.

This should be happening anyway; your players shouldn't know what level every monster is before they've tested them. It's important to sometimes change it up and throw something outside of their level range at them, whether above or below, just so they know that not every enemy is meant to be leaped into combat with.


I would like to find a dice rolling ruleset that keeps the thrill of possible critical successes, without the fear of too much failure.

Yes, always remove critical failure, it is an annoyance, not a tactical consideration. And voila, you have it, right?


Stuff

Yeah, it's like the quote about democracy, "[Level-based] is the worst system of [advancement], aside from all the others." I see its flaws, but I have yet to find anything that's truly better.

[Arbane]

I would seriously recommend checking out some less D&D-based games. Off the top of my head: FATE for just about everything, Call of Cthulhu for a learn-by-doing skill system and levelless characters, Exalted for a structured version of 'social combat', and Dungeon World.

[The Glyphstone]

Burning Wheel is another learn-by-doing system, with the extra tweak of requiring skill checks/tests of specific difficulties in addition to volume; you can't just pick 20 locks to improve your Lockpicking, 8 of those locks have to be Very Difficult locks relative to your current Lockpicking skill.

[Knaight]

I would like to discuss some 'cornerstones' of RPGs and how they might hinder or help the genre. Also, I would like to bring up some alternatives, or perhaps work on an alternative in this thread.

*DISCLOSURE* I mostly play dungeons and dragons, pathfinder, star wars saga edition and RPG video games. My thoughts directly reflect my experience with those games and do not include systems or games which divorce themselves from these mechanics. That having been said, please direct my attention to systems and games who might do these things better, or do better without them.
Put bluntly, you're making several assumptions that are less a matter of RPGs as a whole and more the effect of D&D quirks. All of these are broken simultaneously by some of the more esoteric games, but even if you stick to a task oriented GM and players model, the bulk of the genre breaks at least some of these. Going through these one by one, trimming the quotes where it works better:



Combat

Combat can be fun...can be. Other times it takes hours to resolve one single fight that nets you less experience than you'd have liked. In the vast majority of RPGs I've played, there is a huge separation between combat and literally every other aspect of the game. How come conversations or crafting can't be as nuanced as combat? I'm not saying that every skill should be as complicated as some combat situations are, but I think combat could be simplified, skill use could be beefed up a little and in that, the players could find a variety of complex gameplay instances anywhere you look. Not to mention, you wouldn't have to alienate the players who don't find fighting fun.

Now, I have played dungeons and dragons sessions that rely more on dialogue and intrigue, but I find those to be usually taken care of by the Charisma-based 'face' of the party, and also take much less time than a combat situation.
This is, sadly, ubiquitous. D&D combat rules are on the rules heavy side for sure, but combat being a focus point is all over the place, and exceptions are comparatively rare, particularly given the above restrictions. Every so often you'll get something that also does well with a social focus (e.g. Burning Wheel), but things like chases are often handled really poorly. The one game I'd recommend looking into most for this is Chronica Feudalis. It has baseline skill usage, but then it also has areas which are given a bit more focus and get a subsystem. All the subsystems are similar enough to pick up on quickly, meaningfully distinct where it counts, and do a very good job incorporating a variety of skills, tool use, etc. So, if you need combat, chases, subterfuge (a.k.a stealth) or parley (a.k.a some social situations), the game supports you about equally well.


Classes

This is a big one. Classes are a huge part of many RPGs that really allow the characters to take up a role that is unique from, and supports each other character. However, it is easy to see that most every character of the same class is going to be rather similar.
Classes are pretty much a D&D quirk. That's not to say they are nowhere else, particularly if that is expanded to general character types with big distinctions between them, in which case all of WoD, L5R, Shadowrun, etc. fits just fine. Still, even with a fairly broad definition there are a huge number of games that aren't class based. I'd think of this less as a well-used mechanic in RPGs and more as a design choice that crops up every once in a while.


Skills

Skills are my most favorite part of any roleplaying game, and I always set off to be as skillful as possible. Crafting, Persuasion, Acrobatics, Knowledge--each skill in a roleplaying game serves a purpose to allow for story movement both inside and outside of combat, which gives a lot more depth to your character independent of how well they can swing a sword.

...

I would like to see a comprehensive mechanic that allows the natural growth of skills to be a major part of the storytelling experience. The greatest part of a character is finding out how that epic level dashing Rogue became so good at telling lies.
You mention levels here (in the cut paragraph), but generally the systems that really emphasize skills are the ones that don't use levels. Part of that is that levels are extremely rare outside of D&D, retroclones, and deliberate homages to D&D such as Torchbearer. More often, skills are picked up directly, and combat abilities are frequently rolled into skills with everything else. As for skills improving through use, take a look at Burning Wheel. It's an interesting game for a lot of reasons, and while it can be a bit overly heavy with crunch, the individual aspects of the crunch are often really interesting, and it's just the sheer weight of so many that bogs the game down until you've sunk enough time into it to know it well.


Experience

I have a huge problem with experience points. I think these are why I see a large divide in most RPGs between combat and everything else. Generally, and in most dnd games I have played, combat is almost the only way that you get experience, and subsequently, the only way that you gain levels. This really makes everything that isn't combat seem pointless, and has caused frustration in many campaigns I have taken part in simply because the players felt as though they were wasting their time doing anything outside of fighting. As a player, I have felt this frustration, and as a DM I have attempted to assuage this frustration by generously handing out experience, inevitably making the party much stronger than they ought to be.

I feel that there should be a form of advancement that feels more natural than levels, and that this advancement ought to be focusing on skill growth.
Again, levels are a D&D quirk. Also a D&D quirk is the direct experience from combat model; there are a few other models elsewhere that are vastly more common. The biggest is just experience per session, which might vary a bit by session length, amount accomplished, etc. Then there are the direct, use based changes, systems where you have specific character flaws which you get experience for roleplaying (when they cause problems for you), etc. Heck, even D&D doesn't always use the combat experience system, earlier editions focused more on cash acquisitions.


Levels

Levels are a good way to gauge how strong your character is compared to the world around it. They work as a set of miniature goals to further character development, and give the DM clear guidelines on how powerful the NPCs you face must be to give you a good challenge. Now, I love the idea that you can say something as easy as "My character Shadrach is a level 9 Rogue." and the listener will be able to understand roughly what Shadrach's capabilities are. On the other hand, I think that this simplification can hurt the idea of character development and, more often than not, hinders natural, nuanced growth.
The rough capabilities part honestly comes more from classes than levels, and even most class based games don't use them anymore. It's also worth understanding that most games have a more compressed power curve than D&D, and D&D is on the crunchy side. The character-world strength gauge becomes pretty pointless, the miniature goals aspect often comes out in other mechanics, and the rest of the industry has dropped these for a pretty good reason. With that said, for a very specific zero to hero style centered around character power growth, levels are pretty solid.


Critical Hits/ Critical Misses

This gets more into the numbers of the game. Rolling dice in a tabletop RPG is exciting because you have no control over how well you might do, but you can also do much better than you expect. The risk of succeeding or failing by the whim of the dice is pretty exhilarating to begin with, but the odds begin against you and you struggle to add bonuses to minimize the risk. It can be especially infuriating if you "critically fail".
...
I would like to find a dice rolling ruleset that keeps the thrill of possible critical successes, without the fear of too much failure.
Whether the odds begin against you varies a lot, both on the system and the GM. With that said, for the specific thing you're looking for, consider Legend of the Five Rings. It has a mechanic called Raises, where you have a task of a particular difficulty, and you can deliberately increase that difficulty in exchange for getting to succeed better. So, the possible critical is there when you raise, but you don't have to raise past the point where you're too worried about failure.

[goto124]

I still don't understand how other systems avoid DnD quirks and still manage to do well. For example, levels. What exactly do the other levelless system do in place of levels, and how exactly does it manage to do well considering how levels do have advantages e.g. not having to grind for skills, not having to do all sorts of stuff to keep everyone to the same degree of ability?

[Arbane]

I still don't understand how other systems avoid DnD quirks and still manage to do well. For example, levels. What exactly do the other levelless system do in place of levels, and how exactly does it manage to do well considering how levels do have advantages e.g. not having to grind for skills, not having to do all sorts of stuff to keep everyone to the same degree of ability?

Maybe you should read (and play!) a few and see.
Seriously, there's no substitute for actual play.

I'd argue a no-class-and-level game can do a BETTER job of keep PCs roughly even than most versions of D&D do. (Try to convince me that 20 levels of Rogue is 'even' with 20 levels of Wizard. I could use the laugh.) In some games, everyone is going to be basically equal to an arrow through the skull.
Grinding for skills (which I think is mainly a MMO thing) isn't any more tedious than grinding for XP in D&D - it's only a chore if the game is dull.

[barnmaddo]

Combat:
It's a common thing in RPG's, so it makes sense it gets a lot of attention. Probably tough to make a game that has both a fun skill system and a fun combat system, just making one of those fun enough to compete with other games requires quite a bit of luck.

Classes:
This doesn't bother me too much. It makes it easier for the devs to balance and prevents new players from having really poorly optimized builds.

Skills:
Leveling up skills by using them would add a bunch of extra stuff to track in a pen and paper game. I also liked Stubbazubba's point about it becoming busy work.

I do wish skills could be a bit more tactical.

Experience:
I've had some DM's only give experience for killing monsters, and that's kinda boring. I like getting XP for completing skill challenges or driving off monsters without having to kill them.

Levels:
For combat to be fun, you need a decent idea of how strong your opponent is. Otherwise your characters just die a bunch (or have some lame excuse why the enemies keep sparing them). Realistic combat just wouldn't be fun in a game.

My biggest problem with levels is how monsters are all grouped by level in different zones, or that whatever monster you're currently fighting always happens to be your level.

Crits:
They probably do help keep combat interesting. The semi-random reward mechanic is probably one of the bigger reasons people like most games. Probably important to have a curve of common small rewards up to the big rare rewards.

[Knaight]

I still don't understand how other systems avoid DnD quirks and still manage to do well. For example, levels. What exactly do the other levelless system do in place of levels, and how exactly does it manage to do well considering how levels do have advantages e.g. not having to grind for skills, not having to do all sorts of stuff to keep everyone to the same degree of ability?

There are a few major things that crop up with some frequency to prevent these issues - though I would say that needing to grind is more a matter of the experience system than what it goes to, and that if anything it's D&D style that is more likely to have it. With that said, it's generally not something I worry about, as nobody actually likes grinding and if doing other things is interesting (which it will be, with a competent GM), people will choose that even if they could hypothetically grind monsters for XP. That leaves finding the other big things that class based systems can theoretically do well, which is niche protection and approximate balance. So, the major methods:

1) Point buy. You have some total number of points, which are then distributed through a character. In very rules light systems you often have fairly few, distributed into relatively few broad skills, in crunchier ones you often have a few different places to put them. Everyone generally starts with and acquires about the same amount, and increases are often progressively more expensive, so even if a gap does form it shrinks. There are also point buy systems where you start with multiple pools of points, which are spent on different things.

2) Priorities. There are multiple distinct parts of a character, usually about 5ish, which are cleanly seperated. What this is varies - Shadowrun uses something like skills, attributes, race*, gear, something; Riddle of Steel uses skills, attributes, proficiencies (combat abilities), rank (from serf to noble), gifts/faults. You then rank these based on what the character focuses in, and apply each of them individually.

3) Lifepath. There are a number of delineated lifepaths, and your character passes through some number of them, picking things up on the way that depend on said life paths. This tends to focus on tying the characters to the setting and making sure they have history, but it also works quite well at compartmentalizing choices instead of giving a huge stack of points and a blank sheet, which is one of the advantages of a class system for some people.

There are others, and the occasional hybridization of these, and so on and so forth, but these are some of the big examples of options that aren't classes that can work just fine.

*In the sense of human, troll, elf, not the typical sense.

[goto124]

How are life paths different from classes?

Also, aren't human/troll/elf/etc the typical meaning of 'race' in a fantasy setting? :smalltongue:

[Kydell]

Incredible responses! Thank you so much for giving me your opinions on this subject.

@MrStabby I agree that leveling as a party is rewarding AND gives a great sense of achievement for the whole table. Do you think learn-by-doing systems take away from this feeling, or necessarily unbalance the party?

@NichG I understand where you're coming from. Integrating downtime with main quest or side quest story line to ensure everyone gets equal time to improve their characters is a difficult thing to balance. There have been only too few times in which I have played a game that I thought everyone had major stakes in the main story line, with major set pieces devoted to their character growth. Care needs to be taken by the DM to ensure this happens. Are there any games that integrate this into the way the game plays?

@Stubbazubba First of all, thank you for pointing me to the Angry DM's articles, they have been incredible (and incredibly helpful) so far. I also have used skill challenges in my campaigns before, but I have a hard time finding something for everyone to do. It ends up that the character with no skills makes an untrained skill check for the skill that no one has specialized in, or that a more skilled character rolls for a skill they have less ranks in so everyone has something to do. I quite enjoy your king example. I've always wanted a more complex social system in my RPGs.

-I agree that we ought to move away from health bars and randomized damage. Too often have I seen a player despair because they are looking at the numbers.

-I had the same idea of compartmentalizing the sections of play (combat-social-exploration) for the sake of allowing players to have something to do no matter where they are in the story.

-I could see players taking advantage of the skill growth gameplay, but it would ultimately be up to the DM to hold them back from doing so, or as you pointed out, to incentivize other story related aspects of the playtime. My idea was more that the characters would use their skills in a more fleshed-out way which would practically be their own story, lending to more character development and possible plot hooks. Rather than saying "I fish for three hours", have the player find a fishing area, find out what the local laws are for fishing, what types of fish are local to the region, and then play out an evening of fishing. Obviously eschewing some details for the sake of moving along. I think that you could find a middle ground in between rolling once and playing out every time the player casts a line, which would be less likely to be farmed for skill experience and more likely to give them more tangible ways to interact with the towns and areas they explore.



Thank you again everyone for your responses. I have to go to bed now, since I have to work at seven AM tomorrow, but I will respond to the rest of you tomorrow. Also thank you all for your recommendations of different tabletop roleplaying systems. Allow me to be the first to say that my experience is rather limited.

[Knaight]

How are life paths different from classes?

Also, aren't human/troll/elf/etc the typical meaning of 'race' in a fantasy setting? :smalltongue:

Basically, lifepaths aren't things you gradually progress along, they are one time package grabs you use only in character creation, with a different system used for later advancement. If you're familiar with 5e, picture character generation where you pick a series of backgrounds, with different backgrounds available at different points. If the fantasy staple of the farm kid turned hero was used, you might have a lifepath chain along these lines:

Peasant Child -> Militia -> Soldier -> Rebel.

In a class based system, you'd instead see something like level X Fighter. Then, when advancing in the class based system, you keep adding fighter levels, with the lifepath system it's more likely to advance via skills, traits, etc.

As for the typical meaning of race, on the one hand yes, on the other hand Shadowrun isn't your typical fantasy setting, it's fantasy-cyberpunk.

[Satinavian]

*DISCLOSURE* I mostly play dungeons and dragons, pathfinder, star wars saga edition and RPG video games.So pretty much D&D. Most RPGs don't follow all these formulas and that is not only true for small indie games but also for the other big well-known systems of the last decades like Shadowrun, WoD (various versions), GURPS, WH FRPG, TDE, Earthdawn, SW d6 and so on. New indie games tend to go even further away from the traditional D&D formula than those other dinosaurs. So... it's really just D&D, D&D clones (including pathfinder) and D&D ports (like SW SAGA).

Combat

There are a lot systems with less emphasis on combat. Many tend to include combat skills in other skills, many don't require every PC to be able to fight, many don't give XP for fighting and so on.

But all systems have the bulk of the rules where the important things for the system happen. A combat game will have lot's of combat rules. An intrigue game will have lots of rules about social interactions, etiquette, social status and so on. A system where you explore feelings of PCs or morality might have rules for behavioral quirks, honor codices, emotional hardship, traumata, humanity and so on.

As long as you use the right tool for the right job, all is well. Generic systems want to be able to do all, but are either very big and crunchy or not very detailed.

Classes

Classes are hardly used anymore outside of retro clones. Many systems have advantages and properties that can only be accessed at character creation, but that alone is not really a class system. Without classes you will get more hybrid characters and some game designers really don't like those. It is said that classes make it easier for beginners and make it easier to have nieche protection and balanced groups but that doesn't seem to be that convincing as you can achieve the same with archetypes in classless systems.

My idea is to replace the class with a "Profession" such as Butcher, Baker or Candlestick Maker that gives them unique and fantastic ways of approaching combat (if necessary) and goals like becoming an exotic animal meat salesman, the greatest pastry chef in the land, or a gifted arcane candle artisan.Many systems try this, but it doesn't really work. How many things can a candleworker do in a fight that don't seem utterly contrieved ? How many interesting adventures can you come up with that revolve around candles ? Many systems allow to play one, but how to make it an interesting and rewarding experience for more than an one shot is an unsolved problem.

Skills

There are a lot of systems with improve-skills-by-use rules. And i really really hate it. It has two nasty results :

- People do things not because it is a good idea but because they want to learn or improve a skill. Be it doing useless stuff in downtime, using abilities guaranteed to fail during adventures or refusing to use a good solution becaus they don't want to learn the related skill.
And that doesn't change if you require the skill use to be meaningfull. Then you require the whole group to liesten to a one person subplot whenever one player wants to train a skill the rest is not interested in. Also that goes boring fast, as players tend to want to improve the very same skill several times in a campaign and it is not easy to come up with like 10 interesting subplots of pottery during your topple-the-king arc. Considering you have to do this for every one of your players and sometimes for several skils per character... time consuming and pretty fast boring.

- As a group tends to to things together, they will naturally aquire a similar skillset. That is bad as it makes spotlight distribution very difficult if everone can do the same things (and obviously there will stil be the one with the highest stat in the group). Also a player with a concept less suited for a certain advanture will not only be less usefull in the advanture, he can't even improve anything of importance to him and get's only skills that the rest of the party probably knows better and are useful in other adventures where his char is ill suited.

Experience

XP are fine. you can have XP without levels though (most point buy systems do this). Also you can have XP for other things than combat (most systems do this)

Levels

Levels solve one certain problem :

On the sliding scale of specialist vs generalist a PC in a free point buy system can be anywhere. There is literally no way of estimating his abilities and stats without looking at the sheet. It makes challange design diffucult as the DM not only does not know how good a PC is in his best stats or strong points, he is also completely unsure how high or low weak points or tertiary skills or secondary abilities might be.

A level system ties it all together. It implies a cap based on level for skills and assumes, everyone will be at the cap for his defining characteristic. It ties secondary stuff like (in D&D) saves, defenses, hitpoints, attributes to the general experience level with could be otherwise arbitrary numbers.

But of course "better knowing what stats a PC of a certain level and a cerain archetype might have" comes with "less freedom to build a character of a certain level and certain archetype"


Critical Hits/ Critical Misses

Some people like them, some don't Most systems have them. Often the chance is consoderably lower than with D&D. One percent and below is pretty common.

Those confirming rules in D&D are important to make sure that a certain number of hits are critical instead of a certain number of attacks. Otherwise you get situations where yo need to get a 18 for a hit because you are unskilled or your opponent is very good but miraculously one third of your hits are suddenly extra hard or crippling.

[Arbane]

-I could see players taking advantage of the skill growth gameplay, but it would ultimately be up to the DM to hold them back from doing so, or as you pointed out, to incentivize other story related aspects of the playtime. My idea was more that the characters would use their skills in a more fleshed-out way which would practically be their own story, lending to more character development and possible plot hooks. Rather than saying "I fish for three hours", have the player find a fishing area, find out what the local laws are for fishing, what types of fish are local to the region, and then play out an evening of fishing. Obviously eschewing some details for the sake of moving along. I think that you could find a middle ground in between rolling once and playing out every time the player casts a line, which would be less likely to be farmed for skill experience and more likely to give them more tangible ways to interact with the towns and areas they explore.


Who would want to do this? I'm all for getting involved in the background of the game, but this sounds like a lot of detail for very little result.

[Stubbazubba]

I'm with Arbane. Even if that is technically engaging with the setting, that sounds like a waste of precious playtime. And even if it didn't seem like a waste to that player (and GM), it almost certainly will be a waste to everyone else. They don't want to sit around and watch you fish.

If exploring and interacting with the game world aren't inherently worthwhile, doling out skill XP for it isn't going to fix the problem. Character development and plot hooks are their own reward, you don't need to incentivize them.

I'm of the opinion that XP systems work best when they impact your decision-making *least*. In fact, if I could remove all XP and funnel all character power growth into "training" (during downtime) and "equipment," I would. Fighting monsters is *fun*, saving princesses or the whole kingdom is *fun*, overthrowing the elected government is *fun*, reminding this god who is boss is *fun*. You don't need to give me an arbitrary success number to convince me to do it. The promise of in-game rewards like magic items, titles of nobility, or access to new areas, power, or story content should be enough.

Admittedly, part of this is just because I like to be as immersed in the game world as possible and don't want to be taken out of that. I don't like meta-game mechanics like action points or such that my character would not be cognizant of because it impacts the decisions I make in ways that wouldn't necessarily make sense for my character. Sometimes, XP can be used to reinforce character traits, but even then it can cut against organic character growth at times. It's just very difficult to say ahead of time what you should encourage PCs to do.

I award XP for completing story milestones or for individual and group accomplishments. This keeps everyone more or less on the same page and doesn't encourage much of anything except "do stuff." If players want, I will dole out XP for each combat (it's an artificial feedback loop, but it's a feedback loop nonetheless), but it's not my preference to have an "after-combat screen" so to speak.

[Quertus]

There is a lot of synergy between these cornerstones. Levels are nice, especially if the whole party levels at the same time, to increase the feel of cooperation in a team game, that you lose when you move away from a leveling system. Point-buys tend to lend themselves to "look at this shiny new toy I got", to a more competitive feel, or to the feel of everyone playing as a support character to the person with system mastery.

Let's say we move to a skill use system. We travel between towns. I spend every second of every day (I'm something that doesn't need to sleep) picking the rest of the party's pockets. In D&D, I use this skill... 14,400 times per day. The party uses their perception skill 14,400 times per day to notice... perhaps only something like 8-10 thousand times per day if they need to sleep. In whatever adventure the DM has planned, there's no way he's included thousands of skill rolls, especially not for the same skill, so what I did during the travel time between towns is much more significant than the DM's planned adventure.

By the time we reach the next town, I have +NI to pick pockets, the party has +NI to spot.

But I'm not alone.

One of the party members spends every waking moment trying to hit me. By the time we get to the next town, they have +NI to attack, and I have +NI to defense.

Another of the party members tries to hit on me... two engage in intellectual/philosophical debate... etc.

This is part of why many systems only give XP for combat. Or otherwise try to make the part that you're spending your finite play time paying attention to the part that is most rewarding to the character.

Which in turn helps explain why the world isn't populated by peasants with +NI to everything. Which in turn helps make the PCs special.


I would like to discuss some 'cornerstones' of RPGs and how they might hinder or help the genre. Also, I would like to bring up some alternatives, or perhaps work on an alternative in this thread.

*DISCLOSURE* I mostly play dungeons and dragons, pathfinder, star wars saga edition and RPG video games. My thoughts directly reflect my experience with those games and do not include systems or games which divorce themselves from these mechanics. That having been said, please direct my attention to systems and games who might do these things better, or do better without them.

Now to business.

Combat

Combat can be fun...can be. Other times it takes hours to resolve one single fight that nets you less experience than you'd have liked. In the vast majority of RPGs I've played, there is a huge separation between combat and literally every other aspect of the game. How come conversations or crafting can't be as nuanced as combat? I'm not saying that every skill should be as complicated as some combat situations are, but I think combat could be simplified, skill use could be beefed up a little and in that, the players could find a variety of complex gameplay instances anywhere you look. Not to mention, you wouldn't have to alienate the players who don't find fighting fun.

Now, I have played dungeons and dragons sessions that rely more on dialogue and intrigue, but I find those to be usually taken care of by the Charisma-based 'face' of the party, and also take much less time than a combat situation.

The fact that there are times that only a limited sub-set of the party really participates can be viewed as a bug or a feature. I view it as a bug. YMMV.

I may not always have the best combatant in the party, but I expect to at least be able to participate in combat, in some usually slightly meaningful way. One time, that was "We outnumber our foes, so I grapple one foe, increasing our numerical superiority, until the rest of the party finishes the encounter and comes to save me (from the grapple I was losing)". I was perfectly happy with this tactical contribution from an otherwise numerically-insignificant character in this encounter. My usual contribution to combat with that character was to deal noticeably less damage than those who were dedicated to dealing damage (probably in the 10%-50% range)... still enough to feel I was contributing. And sometimes I got to deal it in very meaningful ways: sometimes I got the killing blow, sometimes I dealt with more important targets, sometimes I took out some useful cog in the machine (say, the person who was running ammo to several much stronger combatants), etc.

But some things, in some games, are solo adventures where the rest of the party watches. Being party face is often one of those. Hacking and Driving are almost always solo adventures. These are things I do not enjoy in a game. OK, a one-off, by a highly-skilled, descriptive, entertaining player... is OK, I guess. A 30-second "What's the DC? I make a roll, hack the system, and we're in" is generally ideal, IMO.


Classes

This is a big one. Classes are a huge part of many RPGs that really allow the characters to take up a role that is unique from, and supports each other character. However, it is easy to see that most every character of the same class is going to be rather similar. Classes can also just be a way of telling the player how they will approach combat, as this is the main function of games like dungeons and dragons. Looking at the abilities granted by each class, you would be hard-pressed to find something that gives an edge outside of a fighting situation. Another problem I have with classes, is that they only slightly lend themselves to the story being told. If you told me that your character Divrona Bivrodka was an Elf Alchemist, it hardly tells me about who your character is, or what her story is until now.

A possible solution to this is to make the "Class" something that informs the player and the DM about who the character is, and gives them goals outside (or inside) of combat. This new concept would focus more on skills and the way the character makes a living, rather than how they approach combat. My idea is to replace the class with a "Profession" such as Butcher, Baker or Candlestick Maker that gives them unique and fantastic ways of approaching combat (if necessary) and goals like becoming an exotic animal meat salesman, the greatest pastry chef in the land, or a gifted arcane candle artisan.

Classes also limit creativity. If you want to have the sneak attack ability of the rogue and the magic of a wizard, it would take twice the amount of time and grant you many abilities you might not want or need, not to mention being half as strong as either a fully devoted wizard or rogue. While this is so for the sake of balancing, I don't think that you should have to have abilities you don't want or need just to follow the rules of the game. Your character's progression should follow your idea of that character. In short, a modular class system would be welcome.

It would be difficult for me to disagree more, I think. "Classes do not define who the character" is a feature, not a bug. I can play Hercules, the unarmed hero; Sir Robin, the cowardly knight; or Guido, mob enforcer... and still be playing a Fighter. The versatility of the classes in terms of motivation is a good thing.

If you want to add something to the game to define the character's goals, past, and livelihood, go right ahead - just don't try to badmouth classes not forcing people into a box in the process.

As to the lack of modularity of classes... in your specific example, I'm pretty sure there's a prestige class (or several) that advance sneak attack and wizard spellcasting. And maybe even a few base classes that get both. To paraphrase, "there's a class for that".

If you can't find a class that does what you are looking for, work with your GM to create a custom class or custom prestige class to fulfill the role you desire.

But... to be honest, I'd personally rather that modular classes were built into the system than having to create a custom class, in part because I'm accustomed to running characters under multiple DMs, and so the headache of getting 20 DMs to approve every custom class/item/spell/skill/feat/etc just isn't a fun experience, even in the (extremely unlikely) event that they all eventually agree to every aspect of the character.


Skills

Skills are my most favorite part of any roleplaying game, and I always set off to be as skillful as possible. Crafting, Persuasion, Acrobatics, Knowledge--each skill in a roleplaying game serves a purpose to allow for story movement both inside and outside of combat, which gives a lot more depth to your character independent of how well they can swing a sword.

Gaining a level and subsequently leveling up all your skills is momentarily exciting, but it is a paltry replacement for getting better at skills for simply using them. Games like the Elder Scrolls V: Oblivion really made me feel like picking every lock in the game was worth it, if not to just become a master lock-picker. The gameplay loop of Using Skill -> Getting Better at Skill -> Using Skill Is a lot more rewarding to me than doing the same with combat, as it lends more to the storytelling aspect of roleplaying than finding someone to fight.

I would like to see a comprehensive mechanic that allows the natural growth of skills to be a major part of the storytelling experience. The greatest part of a character is finding out how that epic level dashing Rogue became so good at telling lies.

Experience

I have a huge problem with experience points. I think these are why I see a large divide in most RPGs between combat and everything else. Generally, and in most dnd games I have played, combat is almost the only way that you get experience, and subsequently, the only way that you gain levels. This really makes everything that isn't combat seem pointless, and has caused frustration in many campaigns I have taken part in simply because the players felt as though they were wasting their time doing anything outside of fighting. As a player, I have felt this frustration, and as a DM I have attempted to assuage this frustration by generously handing out experience, inevitably making the party much stronger than they ought to be.

I feel that there should be a form of advancement that feels more natural than levels, and that this advancement ought to be focusing on skill growth.

For point-buy systems, I like when I get to set flags by skills when I use them well - or, better yet, when I fail them miserably. I like the idea of getting a free XP, once per skill, up to X skills, to be spent only on that skill, because of foo reason (critical success, critical failure, creative use, just plain old "rolled the skill", whatever). However... I believe this will lead to a lot of metagaming, poor roleplaying, etc, just to try to get to use whatever skills the players want to level. YMMV.

Similar with "needing an excuse to level a skill". Heck, I don't even like the feel of games / how they "degenerate" when someone has to kill someone to become an assassin, or has to talk to someone to become a tainted spellcaster. I want all that to happen off-screen, if at all.

However, I do like the feel of the game when a beloved NPC hireling dies of hypothermia/gout/whatever out in the wilderness because no one in the party had survival, medicine, or spot - no one even noticed that they were in trouble until they woke up dead. Then the PCs have a motivation to learn a skill. I like the roleplaying aspect of being able to say that my character started learning a skill because of X motivation. But I don't want to derail the game for 5 sessions hunting down a wise woman to teach me that first rank in survival (unless the NPC was so beloved that all the PCs/players agree, and that becomes the game).


Levels

Levels are a good way to gauge how strong your character is compared to the world around it. They work as a set of miniature goals to further character development, and give the DM clear guidelines on how powerful the NPCs you face must be to give you a good challenge. Now, I love the idea that you can say something as easy as "My character Shadrach is a level 9 Rogue." and the listener will be able to understand roughly what Shadrach's capabilities are. On the other hand, I think that this simplification can hurt the idea of character development and, more often than not, hinders natural, nuanced growth.

Levels are a red herring to the actual advancement of your character. Level nine as opposed to level eight might mean a bit of difference in battle, but what your character did to reach that next step might be obfuscated to focus on adding +1 point to each of your skills, getting a new feat or gaining another ability score point.

I'm having a hard time letting levels go, however, because it can be a nice way to control the advancement of characters and ultimately the flow of the narrative. Although, the idea that you never know how strong you really are is interesting, and could lead to more natural interactions between characters where you might feel apprehensive starting trouble without knowing how skillful the opposing character is.

This is in part a "how important is game balance?" issue. As my background involves things like a) game balance only being about nerfing the strong, not about uplifting the weak, which 1) still leads to horrible game balance and 2) really hurts those without system mastery; b) DMs ranting about game balance, and then TPKing the party first encounter... I'm not a fan. I've had great fun playing the 1st level character in the 7th-level party, and, later, with the same character, having 1st-level characters join when I was ~14th level or so. IME, balance is unimportant so long as everyone has a role to play.

BUT, for those who can't manage such a game, level is, theoretically, a good tool to help with game balance. 3e has rules for what CR creatures are, and what CR worth of creatures is a "fair fight" for PCs of what level, and how many total CR worth of creatures before you've likely exhausted the party's resources and killed them all.

In practice, different characters from different tiers (D&D) with different levels of optimization can play completely differently at the same level, so balance is actually worse in 3e than in 2e... but at least it's a more codified idea. Ah, accuracy vs. precision.


Critical Hits/ Critical Misses

This gets more into the numbers of the game. Rolling dice in a tabletop RPG is exciting because you have no control over how well you might do, but you can also do much better than you expect. The risk of succeeding or failing by the whim of the dice is pretty exhilarating to begin with, but the odds begin against you and you struggle to add bonuses to minimize the risk. It can be especially infuriating if you "critically fail". Critically failing is usually rolling the lowest number on the dice, which ends in failing the check, of course, but can also have repercussions such as hurting yourself, dropping your weapon, or even worse depending on the ruleset. The dice are cruel, but I honestly think that removing critical failures, and allowing critical hits (critical successes) to be more of an exciting event, that makes the player feel really good. Some tabletop rules force a player who critically succeeds to roll and succeed again in order to gain the benefits. This immediately takes the excitement out of getting that critical hit in the first place.

I would like to find a dice rolling ruleset that keeps the thrill of possible critical successes, without the fear of too much failure.

There's so much I could say here...

In brief, I always hated fumbles in 2e D&D, where supposedly skilled warriors would drop their weapon or stab themselves or kill their hirelings every 20th swing. 3e does a much better job of making the characters feel... skilled. I love that I've never seen anyone play with fumbles in 3e. I love that 3e removes the auto-fail (and auto-succeed) from skill checks. I love that 3e removes the auto-crit the otherwise impossible to hit creature on every 20th swing. On that last one, we differ. I enjoy the anticipation of the second die roll, and hated the miss-or-crit system in 2e.

[LnGrrrR]

Not sure if anyone brought it up, but lack of classes can sometimes lead to more min-maxing. If any person can take any skill, there's a greater chance that some skills won't be taken at all. (Look at some of the feats in 5E for instance.) When combined with the greater effort it takes to maximize a character, it can lead to just looking up the "best" template for what one wants to do. (Thinking of MnM powers as an example.)

I guess I'm different from most in that I enjoy the auto crit/fail roles. I usually make my players come up with the positive/negative effects, so I get enjoyment from that. Frankly, you shouldn't be rolling for a mundane task. (If he's an expert locksmith, and he's not under any pressure and has the right tools, just let him figure out the lock.)

But people who are under pressure sometimes make mistakes. It happens, even to those who are highly skilled. It can elevate the stakes and make something more dramatic. It can also be used for comic relief. Roll a 1 on a perception check? Hey, you noticed that your fingernails are really dirty! Stuff like that.

[Morty]

I'll echo what Knaight said. Apart from combat being significantly more rules-heavy than other challenges, those are all restricted to D&D and its derivatives. Categories that resemble classes also crop up from time to time, but they're never as defining for your character as D&D classes are. If I play a Mekhet in Vampire: the Requiem, I get one clan weakness, one unique discipline and two disciplines that I develop more easily than others. Everything else is up to me.

Levels aren't really found anywhere outside D&D, and for a good reason - since they're a really stupid way of character advancement and one of the balls-and-chains that make D&D such an awkward, restrictive mess.

[The Glyphstone]

For another counter-example, the Fantasy Flight Warhammer 40K games (most of them, at least), take the 'level' system and sort of neatly invert it. You are still a Rank X Trader or Warrior or Priest or whatever, which sounds on the surface like a level-based system, but in these games your rank/level is determined by how much XP you have earned-and-spent. You don't hit a certain threshold of XP and 'level up' to gain new abilities; instead, your 'level' reflects that you have already gained a certain quantity of new abilities or improvements. Advancement is incremental instead of lump-sum, basically.

[Talakeal]

I am going to be responding directly to the OP, so many of my points have probably already been made by someone else.

Also, yeah, your criticisms are for the most part very D&D specific rather than applying to RPGs as a whole.


Combat:

I don't know why combat is so prevalent in RPGs, but I imagine is has to do with the hobby being an outgrowth of war gaming. It isn't just RPGs though, most media has a lot of combat, its the focus of the majority of video games and almost all of the top grossing movies are action movies with multiple drawn out fight scenes. I know that most players get bored to tears if they go more than a couple of hours without combat when I run an RPG.

Aside from this focus, I imagine the rules are more in depth because it is A: opposed, and B: something anyone can understand. If you are trying to pick a lock it is not actively resisting you and trying to pick you in return, and it isn't going to take an attack of opportunity if you turn your back on it. Likewise, everyone has an intuitive understanding of the basic concepts of a combat even if they have never done it and don't know the finer points, but if we tried to have an in depth model of say, repairing an engine, anyone who is not already a mechanic or mechanical enthusiast is going to be completely lost and / or bored.

Classes:

IMO classes suck. They are a useful set of training wheels for new players who find a full host of options and can (in theory, rarely in practice) provide an internal balancing mechanic, but this is a poor tradeoff for their downsides. They make it very hard to play the character you want, and people are often left standing around doing nothing when the party is engaging in an activity that their class doesn't have any meaningful ability to participate in. They also actively punish people who play against type.


Skills and Experience:

I really liked the Elder Scrolls concept of gaining skills through practice and tried to port it to RPGs, but it just doesn't work. Players will go out of their way to do whatever they need to do to advance, and will spend all their time grubbing for an excuse to use their skills. Also, the players need to come up with clearly defined roles and stick to them; if you have a thief guy who gains XP for picking locks he is going to want to pick every lock, meaning no one else will ever have any skill at picking locks and a second thief is out of the question as they would be taking a 50% cut of the original thief's advancement.

Even in video games it becomes a pointless grind with the character being good at everything if they spend enough time doing repetitive tasks. Games can alleviate this by making you need to actually explore and search out chances to train, but then you are just playing the game normally and advancing as the DM / programmer dictates.

This is still a problem when killing monsters for XP. Players will go around picking fights when they don't need to because that is what they are rewarded for. If you give XP for bypassing encounters this can get even worse, as you will have players simply ignoring large threats and then demanding boatloads of XP for them.

Now I just give XP for completing objectives, either one's I have come up with as part of the adventure or long term goals which the players set for themselves. And you know what, normally this works itself out as the players use the skills they want to improve, after all, why would a player purchase a skill they don't intend to use in play?


Levels:

Levels are kind of lame, but a lot of players love them because they need them to motivate themselves to play. I don't quite understand it, but a lot of players generally seem to not actually enjoy the game, but think of it is a chore they need to perform until they hit the next level up, which they are conditioned to think of as the greatest thing ever. Really bizarre, but I have met a lot of players who refuse to play any game where they don't level up regularly, and these people will actually drop out of a long running campaign when they hit level cap rather than finishing off the plot because leveling is the only thing that interests them, they wanted to acquire all those levels but are just bored now that they have them and all those powers they worked so hard to acquire weren't actually an end unto themselves.

Personally, the only use I see in levels is as a relative gauge of player power, both between one another and the encounters they face. I personally prefer more organic character advancement systems, although I still keep a tally of total XP / Character Points earned as a general gauge of how competent the party is.

Another problem is over specialization. Many people will simply max out their area of expertise and ignore everything else, which leaves a huge disparity between a specialized and non specialized character. You could have a character who utterly dominates combats that would wipe the floor with the other PCs, but then be totally helpless in a trivially easy social encounter. This is the only real weakness of a level-less system, and most have some sort of soft level system to balance this out; for example in Werewolf you have a rank which limits the gifts you can purchase, in Mage you have an Arete score which caps all your spheres and can only be improved by going on an IC vision quest called a seeking, and Mutants and Masterminds has a Power Level system which places limits on how high many of your scores can go. These aren't perfect fixes, but I find them way preferable to a hard level system.


Criticals and Fumbles:

This is a big one.

First off, fumbles have been an optional rule in every edition of D&D, and until 3E criticals were optional to. If you don't like them don't use them.

In AD&D fumbles and critical hits were mathematically balanced. A natural 20 gave you a bonus attack (which could have been a hit or a miss, or even another critical / fumble) while a natural one made you lose an attack (which could have been a hit or a miss, or even another critical / fumble). They didn't serve much a point, but they made combat a little more swingy and exciting. I imagine the original logic behind them was to make the world seem more realistic and dangerous, as any idiot with a knife could, in theory, take out even the strongest enemy with a single lucky swing.


Now, in 3.X they made critical hits a part of the core rules while leaving fumbles as an option in the DMG. Personally, I find them kind of pointless. The upside is that they feel cool and exciting (except when an orc 1-shots your low level PC). The downside is the confirmation roll takes extra time and can be disappointed as you have pointed out.

Now, the confirmation roll is a mathematical necessity to preserve the ratio of hits to crits. If every nat 20 was a crit you would have weird situations where someone who needed a 19 to hit would have a 50% crit rate. Mathematically you could do the same thing by having a separate die that was rolled alongside the main die and if it rolled a natural 20 it would turn any success into a critical (or if you were playing with fumbles any failure into a fumble). It would be mathematically identical, although it would alleviate the feeling of disappointment when you roll a 20 and don't get a crit, it would also mean you have to roll an extra dice that is pointless more often than not.

Here is the big thing about D&D crits though: They are redundant. You already roll a damage dice after hitting. All of the upsides and downsides of the critical system can also be applied to the damage dice. A high roll does double the usual amount of damage, and a roll of a one still feels like a massive disappointment after a solid hit. The damage dice is already kind of an oddity in the otherwise fairly streamlined d20 system, I really think damage and critical hits should be unified into one roll.


4-5E have, I think, realized the criticals don't make much sense in the broader context of D&D. They are simply a little bit of excitement in there to help the players feel excited and happy, a sort of artificial fun boost like a prize in your cereal. With this goal in mind they have thrown out fumbles and the confirmation roll, they know it is mathematically lopsided, but they don't care, the goal isn't to make a solid balanced game mechanic, it is to give the players a little endorphin rush periodically to keep them at the table and entertained.



Now, as for the broader point about disappointment, fumbles, and auto success-failure, I think these are all important aspects of a well designed RPG. One thing that D&D has always been lacking is degree of success, it is a binary system, and in this binary system it does feel a bit tacked on. But if the system is built with degrees of success in mind it can make a game which is far more interesting. There is always an incentive to roll the dice, there is always a small chance one will fail or succeed beyond their wildest dreams, there is always a bit of risk to rolling the dice.

In 3.X skills are, past a certain point, a foregone conclusion. Your modifier gets way bigger than the d20 roll, and so it is often just a binary "You must be this tall to ride" system, if your skill is 20 points higher than the DC you win, if it is 20 points lower you lose. Imagine if, instead, you had a system where the roll was always interesting because while you were very likely to simply succeed (or fail if you had a low skill) there was still a small chance that you could fail, but an equally high chance you could get a critical success to balance it out. Likewise if you had a really low skill you would likely fail, but there was always that chance you could pull through, but is it worth the risk of an equally likely potential fumble?


In short, degrees of success are cool. But D&D is not built to handle them and trying to tack them on is pretty lame.

[LnGrrrR]

I would argue that 3.5E isn't really well built for "degrees of success" but 5E isn't too bad. I will occasionally do degrees of success if a player failed by one or made it by one. I also will sometimes use the "cost at success" rules from other RPGs, especially if failure may provide a somewhat boring outcome.

[Kydell]

More great responses. I have read all of them, and am now reading through the associated material. I'm going to try to get together another post (not another thread) summarizing some of the good and bad things about each subject. Thank you all for taking time to educate me about some of these things which I could be flat-out wrong about. I may not respond to you all specifically, but I will still try.

@Arbane Thanks for the recommendations!

@Arbane, Stubbazubba I can understand how one character sitting and fishing definitely sounds boring. It is certainly a work in progress, but I think it could be worthwhile to explore how to incorporate things like this into the gameplay to enhance the player's understanding of the world in a way that could lead to interesting plot hooks and possible acquaintances with similar interests. The time spent on these activities shouldn't be long enough to detract from anyone else's time at the table, however.

@The Glyphstone There definitely needs to be restrictions on the skill leveling. Using your skills to further the story is fun, grinding for skill growth can be boring for the majority of the table.

@Knaight Looking through the mentioned reading now. I'll respond a bit later on these.

@barnmaddo On classes--I think the optimizations for beginners is an interesting topic. There have been plenty of times that I have had a group of players stuck, where one of them forgot that they had an ability they could use (or could have used) which just wouldn't have happened if the character were a real individual. So it becomes that the player might get frustrated that the DM keeps reminding them to use the abilities they have, or that they spend the majority of the game remembering all the various abilities they didn't even care about just to be able to use them when the time comes. This can be pretty distracting from the roleplaying aspect.

@Satinavian Your thoughts on improve-by-use skills is important, and I'll take it into consideration.

@Talakeal I think a possible fix would be to lessen the bonus a critical hit grants, and maybe allow it to stack. For example: Torken the warrior swings with his axe and rolls a natural 20. Instead of doubling damage, he just adds another damage die to his damage, or a flat bonus (+2, +5). Then, depending on how exciting you'd like criticals to feel, you could allow them to gamble the bonus in order to roll again, (or just allow them to roll again if you're nice). This time, if they land another critical, it stacks. Not entirely sure how this would play out, but I would be interested to see.

[The Glyphstone]

That's another interesting thing about BW's approach, in that not only are skills improved by use under certain conditions, you're not allowed to make a check in the first place unless success or failure would be narratively interesting. So it doesn't matter how many locks you grind during downtime, you'll only get a check towards advancement when you try to pick the lock on the king's treasury. That, combined with the difficulty grade gating, makes it the best advance-via-use system I'm familiar with.

[goto124]

The improve-skill-by-use system looks rather... troubling. If you can't go on tangents to practice your skills (which will also bore the other players), you're rather stuck with your own skills at their current skill levels. It's made worse by "must be narratively interesting" and "difficulty grade gating". Improving your skills or gaining new ones is near impossible, and there's very little progress made in those terms.

One could argue progress is to be made in other areas such as politics and social areas. It's not to everyone's taste - as we have seen, there're plenty of people who're almost exclusively focused on improving their characters to have a sense of acomplishment. I suspect the reasons for these include having a structured system of improvement, where you know (at least roughly) where you're going and how you're going about it, while for narrative-based achievements pretty much anything could happen and there's so much uncertainity that some revel in but others do not enjoy in large quantities. Made worse if the player's social skills aren't that high ("What did you do [rude thing] for?" "How was I supposed to know [rude thing] was rude?" "How do you NOT know [rude thing] is rude?" etc).

[Arbane]

Well, you could use the system RuneQuest used:

If you use a non-scholarly skill in a stressful situation, put a check mark next to it.
After the adventure's over, all checked skills get _one_ improvement roll each.
You can also study or train between adventures.

(This does lead to minor abuse nicknamed 'golf bagging' - since every weapon attack/parry is a different skill, dedicated munchkins COULD carry around a golf-bag full of weapons to use once each in a fight. I'd argue such behavior is its own punishment.)

[Knaight]

The improve-skill-by-use system looks rather... troubling. If you can't go on tangents to practice your skills (which will also bore the other players), you're rather stuck with your own skills at their current skill levels. It's made worse by "must be narratively interesting" and "difficulty grade gating". Improving your skills or gaining new ones is near impossible, and there's very little progress made in those terms.

In practice, a lot of the skills routinely come up. It's just that you can't grind them via repetitive actions, and instead have to wait for them to actually be relevant. While player decisions obviously do come into this, if they aren't trying to grind skills the improvements tend to come up organically. I've seen improve by use systems in practice and not just in theory, and they consistently work pretty well if the skills themselves are well designed.

[NichG]

If I try to abstract the improve-skill-by-use thing, the issue looks like:

- Design parameters: improvement is contingent on what happens during game
- Player desire: I want to control my own improvement
- The usual consequence in computer games is that the player proactively seeks opportunities for skill use - e.g. grinding.
- But in tabletops, each action takes orders of magnitude longer to resolve than in a computer game, so repetitive/meaningless things are pushed to the margins
- Result: Player cannot satisfy their desire to control their own improvement and still satisfy the design parameters

So even if the goal is to increase immersion, I think there needs to be some kind of meta layer to enable to players to fulfill what they want. The question is then, what type of meta mechanic is the least disruptive or intrusive for the desired gameplay experience?

I could see this working if e.g. the players were choosing between a bunch of missions every session, each mission had a certain set of roles, and the players got to know the reward for choosing a particular role. E.g. this job has use of a demolitions expert, an infiltrator, a con artist, and a mastermind. The demolitions expert will gain one point in a skill of their choice with the Anarchy tag, etc. That's extremely constraining compared to something where you just go freeform and there isn't a hard-coded mission/role framework. So that's a disadvantage of that approach.

I could also see something where the players earn a fixed amount of skill-ups per session, but they must submit a list of the desired skill-ups to the DM before the start of the session. The DM must then create an opportunity to use the skill in a difficult, important way during the session, or else it's presumed the character did something awesome with the skill during downtime and the player gets to specify it along with some additional story consequences. So its more like the DM gets first dibs on the story consequences, but if they fail to make use of it, the player gets to just say what happens. That gets into dramatic editing territory though, which can almost be the polar opposite of the motivation for having advancement tied to in-game action. So that's a disadvantage there.

Anyhow, its tricky...

[goto124]

In practice, a lot of the skills routinely come up. It's just that you can't grind them via repetitive actions, and instead have to wait for them to actually be relevant. While player decisions obviously do come into this, if they aren't trying to grind skills the improvements tend to come up organically. I've seen improve by use systems in practice and not just in theory, and they consistently work pretty well if the skills themselves are well designed.

Wouldn't it fall on the GM to design the plot/areas/etc to use all the skills consistently and equally spread out? Wouldn't it also make the players try to come up witn convulted ways to use the skills to improve them?

[Knaight]

Wouldn't it fall on the GM to design the plot/areas/etc to use all the skills consistently and equally spread out? Wouldn't it also make the players try to come up witn convulted ways to use the skills to improve them?

It only makes the players do that if they deliberately go out of their way to break the system. Plus, there's no need to design things to use all the skills consistently and equally spread out; it's not like the skills advancing in a different fashion is somehow satisfactory. If there's an extended session where the party is on a boat island hopping, there's a good chance that sailing skills, navigation skills, crew-leadership skills, etc. will be what improvement is focused on. If they then dock, go way inland, and get involved in court intrigue, it's a different set of social skills, certain combat skills, certain performing skills, and all things stealth that are likely to improve. That works out fine, that makes sense, and unless people picked an organic skill growth system wanting a game where the characters didn't change, it works.

[hifidelity2]

Well, you could use the system RuneQuest used:

If you use a non-scholarly skill in a stressful situation, put a check mark next to it.
After the adventure's over, all checked skills get _one_ improvement roll each.
You can also study or train between adventures.

(This does lead to minor abuse nicknamed 'golf bagging' - since every weapon attack/parry is a different skill, dedicated munchkins COULD carry around a golf-bag full of weapons to use once each in a fight. I'd argue such behavior is its own punishment.)

and it also leads to the whole party wanting to do 1st aid on each other to get a skill increase

Fumbles

While I have no issue with fumbles it can be interesting if you look at the mathimatically for a large battle rather than 1:1 for PC's

Take a situation where a fumble is 5% ( so a 1 on a D20)
If one assume that 20% of these fumbles kills / incapacitates the player or a friend (esp if the person is a low level)
1 round is 6 seconds
then..... if you have an army of 10,000 1st level fighters / peasants
After 1 min tof battle he army have killed 1000 of their own men
After 10 mins of battle the army is down to only 3500 men and not 1 has been killed by the opposition

of course the opposition have the same problem

[Necroticplague]

Combat can be fun...can be. Other times it takes hours to resolve one single fight that nets you less experience than you'd have liked. In the vast majority of RPGs I've played, there is a huge separation between combat and literally every other aspect of the game. How come conversations or crafting can't be as nuanced as combat? I'm not saying that every skill should be as complicated as some combat situations are, but I think combat could be simplified, skill use could be beefed up a little and in that, the players could find a variety of complex gameplay instances anywhere you look. Not to mention, you wouldn't have to alienate the players who don't find fighting fun.

Now, I have played dungeons and dragons sessions that rely more on dialogue and intrigue, but I find those to be usually taken care of by the Charisma-based 'face' of the party, and also take much less time than a combat situation.

Honestly, I always had half a mind to go in the other direction: Use the intricate fighting mechanics to represent things that aren't fighting. People have will you can wear down like HP, oratory abilities like attacks, ability to ignore what you say like armor. Exalted kinda has this with Social Combat, save that it's crap and still runs into the 'the face does it all' problem.

[goto124]

Which system has the "she's beginning to sound convincing, let's start stabbing her!" thing with the social system going on again?

[NichG]

Which system has the "she's beginning to sound convincing, let's start stabbing her!" thing with the social system going on again?

D&D run as per RAW has that for NPCs effectively. For an NPC, you've got about a minute to figure out that the PC is Diplomancing you and escalate hostilities to at the least give them something like a -40 to their check (between having to do it in combat time, starting from Hostile, etc).

[LnGrrrR]

and it also leads to the whole party wanting to do 1st aid on each other to get a skill increase

Fumbles

While I have no issue with fumbles it can be interesting if you look at the mathimatically for a large battle rather than 1:1 for PC's

Take a situation where a fumble is 5% ( so a 1 on a D20)
If one assume that 20% of these fumbles kills / incapacitates the player or a friend (esp if the person is a low level)
1 round is 6 seconds
then..... if you have an army of 10,000 1st level fighters / peasants
After 1 min tof battle he army have killed 1000 of their own men
After 10 mins of battle the army is down to only 3500 men and not 1 has been killed by the opposition

of course the opposition have the same problem

This is why I really dislike the "6 second round" thing in DnD and most other RPGs. Rounds in my mind should be roughly 15-30 seconds long, with each attack representing feinting, looking for an opening, a few swings, etc etc. Most DnD battles are over by round 5, meaning even the most epic fights tend to be about 30 seconds, which doesn't really fit my vision of epic. (I know my version only stretches it out to 3 minutes, but you get my point.)

[Stubbazubba]

It only makes the players do that if they deliberately go out of their way to break the system. Plus, there's no need to design things to use all the skills consistently and equally spread out; it's not like the skills advancing in a different fashion is somehow satisfactory. If there's an extended session where the party is on a boat island hopping, there's a good chance that sailing skills, navigation skills, crew-leadership skills, etc. will be what improvement is focused on. If they then dock, go way inland, and get involved in court intrigue, it's a different set of social skills, certain combat skills, certain performing skills, and all things stealth that are likely to improve. That works out fine, that makes sense, and unless people picked an organic skill growth system wanting a game where the characters didn't change, it works.

This sounds like you improve your skills right after you would have liked to have them, then, unless you're in that environment for an extended period of time (greater than 1 session). Or at the very least, there's simply no way to "prepare" for something you know is coming up. If you only improve on the skills that the GM throws at you, doesn't that kind of remove player input in character growth? That's not the end of the world, I realize, but it might be something people want in their system.

[Necroticplague]

Which system has the "she's beginning to sound convincing, let's start stabbing her!" thing with the social system going on again?


D&D run as per RAW has that for NPCs effectively. For an NPC, you've got about a minute to figure out that the PC is Diplomancing you and escalate hostilities to at the least give them something like a -40 to their check (between having to do it in combat time, starting from Hostile, etc).

So does exalted, for pretty much the same reason (talking takes much longer than combat).

[Talakeal]

and it also leads to the whole party wanting to do 1st aid on each other to get a skill increase

Fumbles

While I have no issue with fumbles it can be interesting if you look at the mathimatically for a large battle rather than 1:1 for PC's

Take a situation where a fumble is 5% ( so a 1 on a D20)
If one assume that 20% of these fumbles kills / incapacitates the player or a friend (esp if the person is a low level)
1 round is 6 seconds
then..... if you have an army of 10,000 1st level fighters / peasants
After 1 min tof battle he army have killed 1000 of their own men
After 10 mins of battle the army is down to only 3500 men and not 1 has been killed by the opposition

of course the opposition have the same problem

As I usually say in the "I hate fumbles" threads that pop up every six months or so:

Dont use fumbles without confirmation.

No edition of D&D has fumbles that actually deal damage afaik.

20 percent is a really high estimate for incapacitating hits.

Dont roll dice for massive NPC on NPC combat, it is tedious and the system wasnt designed for it.

Likewise only roll for tests where the result is in question and dramatically interesting, dont bother checking for a fumble each and every time someone does something routine and mundane.

And finally, a d20 is not a good model of reality. It is fast, easy, and exciting to model a roll with one dice, but reality tends to be far more bell shaped. People are generally a lot more consistent in success / failure rates (let alone crit / fumbles) than 1d20 can allow for and it wont accurately model reality, which becomes readilly apparent if you use it for something like rolling every attack across a massive battlefield.

[JeenLeen]

So does exalted, for pretty much the same reason (talking takes much longer than combat).

Pretty much explicitly Exalted, at least in 2nd edition (or whichever one is before the one that just came out.)
Anytime someone is in social combat, they can take a Join Battle action to change from social combat to normal combat, thereby ending the social combat. Since there are a lot of social Charms ('spells') that let you have a lot of control over someone, it's rather reasonable to attack someone who is trying to persuade you to do something, since otherwise you might find yourself swearing your undying loyalty to them or something like that.

The social combat is a bit buggy and harder (at least to me) to wrap my mind around than the physical combat, but it's a good idea. I think I've heard of some other games that have health (HP) but also something like social health and mental/spiritual health, and dropping to 0 in any of them is bad.

[daremetoidareyo]

Experience points that you spend to directly raise stats like in the old white wolf systems or L5R roleplay are actually really good for growth. These characters don't have "classes", so the direction of your character building is much more customizable. As a DM in these sorts of games I would often distribute experience points that were specifically tied to raising a skill or attribute. If the session saw the PCs on horses for most of the time, I'd give out an experience point that could only be spent on horsemanship. If they had zero horsemanship, this fixed that problem for the future. If one PC was using a ton of intelligence based rolls during the session, they got experience points dedicated to upping intelligence. This system was greatly enjoyed by the players, who felt rewarded for their specific actions. My system was you get one xp for showing up, another xp for surviving the night, 1-2 xp for good and great roleplay, 1-2 xp for concluding an adventure arc, and then 1-3 (typically) xp that were keyed specific to the PCs skill and attribute use. So, on a given session, a PC might reasonably expect 3-5 xp, and really clever and dynamic players could earn more.

[Knaight]

This sounds like you improve your skills right after you would have liked to have them, then, unless you're in that environment for an extended period of time (greater than 1 session). Or at the very least, there's simply no way to "prepare" for something you know is coming up. If you only improve on the skills that the GM throws at you, doesn't that kind of remove player input in character growth? That's not the end of the world, I realize, but it might be something people want in their system.
If you're in a railroad, sure. If the players have any influence on the direction of the game as a whole though - and the games with this sort of skill system tend to really emphasize that - then they also have input into character growth.


Which system has the "she's beginning to sound convincing, let's start stabbing her!" thing with the social system going on again?
Dogs in the Vineyard has this, although it's more like "she's beginning to sound convincing, lets start punching her!", which then transitions to "we're losing this fist fight, time to pull out a gun". It's also a game where accepting your losses and not escalating is often the better move.

[Arbane]

This sounds like you improve your skills right after you would have liked to have them, then, unless you're in that environment for an extended period of time (greater than 1 session). Or at the very least, there's simply no way to "prepare" for something you know is coming up. If you only improve on the skills that the GM throws at you, doesn't that kind of remove player input in character growth? That's not the end of the world, I realize, but it might be something people want in their system.

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.'


Experience points that you spend to directly raise stats like in the old white wolf systems or L5R roleplay are actually really good for growth. These characters don't have "classes", so the direction of your character building is much more customizable.

For the OP, this is how a lot (most?) RPGs that aren't trying to emulate D&D do it these days.

[Bruno Carvalho]

My recommendation for the OP is:

Go play more games. All your RPG gaming experience seems to be D&D and D&D-derived games. They're great games, but they're not all kinds of RPGs. There is a HUGE amount of RPGs with different design ideas ready for you to experiment and toy with, and by playing them you'll surely get a better grasp of mechanics and storytelling.

Lastly, about the "increase skills while doing" thing, try this RPG system:


Say what you do and roll a number of d6s.
If the sum of your roll is higher than the opposing roll (either another player or the DM), the thing you wanted to happen, happens.
The number of the d6s you roll is determined by the level of skill you have.
At start, you have only one skill: Do anything 1.
If you roll all sixes on your roll, you can get new skill one level higher than the one you used for the action. The skill must be a subset of what happened to you in the action (Say, Athletics 2 if you were climbing a wall, or Teeth of Biting 2 if you were eating a cake).
For every roll you fail, you get 1 XP.
XP can be used to change a die into a 6 for advancement purposes but not for success purposes.

[veti]

I'm a fan of experience as handled in some point-buy systems, like GURPS and Hero System.

Instead of "collect experience points, eventually gain a level, and the level allows you to advance skills and powers" - the system cuts out "levels" entirely. You go "collect experience points, then spend them on skills and powers anytime you like".

So when the GM gives you XP at the end of a session, you can choose whether to spend that on buying a new skill, spell or item, improving existing skills, increasing stats, increasing HP, or - whatever. Or just sit on it for a while, until you think of something that would be really nice to have. (Of course the GM might get stroppy if you try doing that when a particular challenge comes up in mid-session. But hey, it's always open to negotiation.)

[AMFV]

I would look into Mutants and Masterminds, it's still D20 so it's not a far move from what you're used to, but it fixes some of the things that you have issue with. I would definitely suggest broadening out to more games if those things are bothering you, since they are integral to D&D but not all systems (or probably even most, although I don't have the numbers to back that up).

[Kydell]

These are some really good responses. I particularly enjoy the experience points earned during play that the player can spend to increase skills, HP or abilities. This mechanic allows the players to control the character advancement, while simultaneously allows the DM to drip-feed and control more thoroughly the growth in power of each of the characters as well. By awarding these during play for quests, good roleplaying, dramatic moments or just showing up to the game night, the DM can incentivize simply playing the game.

I also really enjoy levels as a descriptive element. Where your advancement is fluid, and the 'level' you are changes to describe your expertise.

I have written down the books I need to get a hold of, and am working to find copies of each of them. Thank you for your suggestions!

[hifidelity2]

I'm a fan of experience as handled in some point-buy systems, like GURPS and Hero System.

Instead of "collect experience points, eventually gain a level, and the level allows you to advance skills and powers" - the system cuts out "levels" entirely. You go "collect experience points, then spend them on skills and powers anytime you like".

So when the GM gives you XP at the end of a session, you can choose whether to spend that on buying a new skill, spell or item, improving existing skills, increasing stats, increasing HP, or - whatever. Or just sit on it for a while, until you think of something that would be really nice to have. (Of course the GM might get stroppy if you try doing that when a particular challenge comes up in mid-session. But hey, it's always open to negotiation.)
This si why we play quite a lot of GURPs, and recently some d6 Start wars where you need to spend you XP during them gate so its a balancing act

[Jay R]

and it also leads to the whole party wanting to do 1st aid on each other to get a skill increase

Fumbles

While I have no issue with fumbles it can be interesting if you look at the mathimatically for a large battle rather than 1:1 for PC's

Take a situation where a fumble is 5% ( so a 1 on a D20)
If one assume that 20% of these fumbles kills / incapacitates the player or a friend (esp if the person is a low level)
1 round is 6 seconds
then..... if you have an army of 10,000 1st level fighters / peasants
After 1 min tof battle he army have killed 1000 of their own men
After 10 mins of battle the army is down to only 3500 men and not 1 has been killed by the opposition

of course the opposition have the same problem

The problem here is the really bad fumble rules. 5% of all hits is a fumble is absurd. We use 5% of all misses - not the same thing at all.

20% incapacitation rate is also ridiculous. The majority of fumbles should be simple with little effect or a quickly ended effect:
Make a Dex check to avoid dropping your weapon
Jostle opponent. He loses his next attack.
Weapon slips in hand; you lose the rest of your attacks this round.
Make a Fortitude check or dazed for one round.
Shield hand gets cramps. -4 AC for one round.
Lose footing. Move 5 feet in a random direction.

Fumbles should modify combat, not dominate it.

[LnGrrrR]

Yeah, I'd be pretty pissed if I hurt myself on a fumble. Fumbles only enhance gameplay if they make things more interesting. You dropped your weapon, or accidentally set the room on fire, or somehow made it harder to escape. It shouldn't be un-fun.

[Kydell]

The DnD group I grew up with insisted on using fumbles and confirming critical hits. Even in 3.5 and Pathfinder. Whenever someone rolled a 1 on an attack, you'd reroll the d20 and if you got past your own AC, then you hurt yourself. Honestly it was infuriating and would sour the entire night of play.

[Jay R]

Yeah, I'd be pretty pissed if I hurt myself on a fumble. Fumbles only enhance gameplay if they make things more interesting. You dropped your weapon, or accidentally set the room on fire, or somehow made it harder to escape. It shouldn't be un-fun.

"...accidentally set the room on fire"? I love it! I have to use this one. And it's in the historical documents. Errol Flynn accidentally starts a fire in the climax of The Sea Hawk, and one of the Cardinal's Guards does in The Four Musketeers from 1974.

A good fumble should be interesting in its effect. The best one I ever had as a DM wasn't even a combat fumble. The game was Flashing Blades, a musketeer game. The rogue in the party had decided to learn the Etiquette skill, which takes three months. He'd spent two weeks on it. To make a successful role, you have to roll your Charm or less on a d20.

The party went to a high-status hunting party, and at one point, the rogue decided that he was going to go talk to the duke's daughter, who was surrounded by noble suitors. They tried to tell him that he cannot go introduce himself to her; he needs a proper introduction. But he decided that since he was learning Etiquette, he could do it anyway.

So he barged through a collection of high-level nobles and introduced himself to her, and said, "I want to make an Etiquette roll to impress her."

So, he is attempting to use a cross-class skill he has not in fact learned, in direct competition with several masters of the skill, having already misbehaved, in a high-stress environment, and had to roll an 8 or less (if he had the skill at all).

He rolled a 20. He backed it up. Critical fumble.

I said, "You compliment her beauty, look soulfully into her eyes, take her hand gently, bend over it, raise it to your lips, ... and f*rt."

[Talakeal]

I must say, setting the room on fire is actually a really good example of a fumble that I haven't considered before. Not all the time mind you, but once or twice coild make for a really cinematic game. Lots of movies have the building accidently set on fire during the climactic battle to really amp up the atmosphere and tension.

[Arbane]

I must tsay, setting the room on fire is actually a really good example of a fumble that I haven't considered before. Not all the time mind you, butmonce or twice coild make for a really cinematic game. Lots of movies have the building accidently set on fire during the climactic battle to really amp up the atmosphere and tension.

I've mentioned it before, but I'll say again that I like the way Legends of the Wulin handles crits/fumbles - they call them 'Interesting Times', and the way it works is that when you roll any result ending in a zero the GM can offer to make it Interesting. If the player accepts, they get one Joss (luck point), and the situation gets more complicated. Your sword breaks, you knock over a lamp and the room catches on fire, an onlooker is so impressed they fall in love with you, you cut a guard in half along with the support pillar he was backed up against....

[goto124]

Also, take out a blank sheet of paper and set it on fire with a lighter IRL!

Remember to make sure it's blank - don't want to raze players' character sheets or your own DMing notes after all.

[Cluedrew]

You know I am not really sure what to say about this thread because... well the topic is far too big. I once started a thread just on classes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?411296-Classes-and-Character-Creation) and that went on for 6 pages as I recall. I myself and not sure what to say as... I could probably do a good sized post on any one of those headings. Also I agree that you might want to go play more non-D&D / d20 games.


Say what you do and roll a number of d6s.
If the sum of your roll is higher than the opposing roll (either another player or the DM), the thing you wanted to happen, happens.
The number of the d6s you roll is determined by the level of skill you have.
At start, you have only one skill: Do anything 1.
If you roll all sixes on your roll, you can get new skill one level higher than the one you used for the action. The skill must be a subset of what happened to you in the action (Say, Athletics 2 if you were climbing a wall, or Teeth of Biting 2 if you were eating a cake).
For every roll you fail, you get 1 XP.
XP can be used to change a die into a 6 for advancement purposes but not for success purposes.I have finally found another human being who has heard of Role for Shoes! Outside of looking for Role for Shoes.