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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next The d12 System! [PEACH]



Amechra
2019-08-27, 01:25 PM
This is somewhat of a dumb idea, but it's rooted in wanting there to be a bigger difference between proficiency and non-proficiency. It's actually really simple:


Whenever you would roll a d20, roll a d12 instead.
Subtract 4 from all current DC's and 6 from all current AC values. Spells and features that apply a flat bonus to a check or DC (Shield, Pass Without Trace, etc) only grant 60% of their normal bonus.
Attack rolls score a critical hit on a natural roll of 12.
Critical hits automatically deal maximum damage. This doesn't apply to features like the Barbarian's Brutal Critical - you roll those dice separately.


The core differences:
1) A +1 represents a much bigger jump in competence - for reference, a +3 in d12 is equivalent to a +5 in d20.
2) Your features are going to look much less impressive - a starting spellcaster is looking at having a Spell Save DC of 6+Stat and your Fighter in full Plate only has an AC of 12. Due to reduced variance on the die, this first impression is lies¹.
3) Critical hits are much more common, which is why they "only" deal maximum damage.

¹ As a comparison, let's say Wanda the Wizard (1st level, Int 15) is casting Earth Tremor, and we want to see how often Johnny Average (1st level, +0 Dex Save) can avoid falling over like a schmuck.

In d20, Wanda's DC is a measly 12. Johnny Average beats that on a 12+ on the die, which means he can avoid being knocked down 45% of the time.
In d12, Wanda's DC is a measly 8. Johnny Average beats that on an 8+ on the die... which occurs 41⅔% of the time.

If we bump up Wanda's Intelligence to 16, those probabilities become 40% and 33⅓%.

puctheplayfull
2019-09-23, 07:17 PM
I just had to log in and reply to this. This sounds like an awesome idea!!! It definitely makes the smaller bonuses seem way more impacting. Also the bump to the amount of critical hits should be minimal, about a 3.333% increase for any given attack. That slight increase would make Half-Orcs and Barbarians much more viable, but far from imbalanced.

The only possible risk to game balance is the Champion Fighter subclass, with it's Improved and Superior Critical features. By increasing your crit range, this would increase the total chance of a critical by and additional 6.67% at 3rd level, and about 10% at 15th level with any weapon they wield. That is a huge boost, though limiting criticals to max damage without a racial or class ability should help make up for it.

Have you actually tried this at the table to see how well it works??? I'd be curious hear from someone who's tested it.

SpawnOfMorbo
2019-09-23, 10:45 PM
Neat. I like it and I love the way a d12 rolls (I have 12 sided d4, because of the way they roll).

I want to try this out someday.




I just had to log in and reply to this. This sounds like an awesome idea!!! It definitely makes the smaller bonuses seem way more impacting. Also the bump to the amount of critical hits should be minimal, about a 3.333% increase for any given attack. That slight increase would make Half-Orcs and Barbarians much more viable, but far from imbalanced.

The only possible risk to game balance is the Champion Fighter subclass, with it's Improved and Superior Critical features. By increasing your crit range, this would increase the total chance of a critical by and additional 6.67% at 3rd level, and about 10% at 15th level with any weapon they wield. That is a huge boost, though limiting criticals to max damage without a racial or class ability should help make up for it.

Have you actually tried this at the table to see how well it works??? I'd be curious hear from someone who's tested it.

HP damage is the least broken thing in thr game, so I wouldn't worry about the champion's damage output.

puctheplayfull
2019-09-24, 12:58 AM
HP damage is the least broken thing in thr game, so I wouldn't worry about the champion's damage output.

It's not a big concern, but going from 15% crit chance with d20 to 25% crit chance with d12 at 15th level is a pretty impressive jump. I think changing the damage for crits to max instead of double dice probably makes up for it a lot. I still want to try this, because it sounds awesome.

SpawnOfMorbo
2019-09-24, 01:22 AM
It's not a big concern, but going from 15% crit chance with d20 to 25% crit chance with d12 at 15th level is a pretty impressive jump. I think changing the damage for crits to max instead of double dice probably makes up for it a lot. I still want to try this, because it sounds awesome.

Impressive but irrelevant.

Mitigating HP damage as a DM is basic stuff.

It doesn't matter if the player deals 104746248573 damage or not, there are simple ways of dealing with it.

Cover, concealment, dodge action, spells (can't hit if you can't act), or throw mooks at them.

What's the difference between a fighter dealing 20 damage and a barbarian dealing 13 damage when the target is equally hard to hit and has 3 hp? Nothing. Just need to put slightly more work into an encounter as a DM and not just throw out sacks of meat all the time.

Besides, white room scenarios about potential damage forget that a crit by the fighter is just as helpful to the rogue as it is the fighter. When your thing is to be the "crit" guy, then people will love it when you crit.

Besides, the other class that is primary damage focused is rolling 2d12 for attacks. The Barbarian has their own way of boosting damage with reckless attack, range, and other features that the irrelevant boost to the champion won't matter. Other damage classes have other features so complaining about an irrelevant boost is irrelevant.

Yunru
2019-09-24, 03:52 AM
At my table we've tried d10's, d12's, and d16's.
d10's had too little swing to them, d12's were okay but still very predictable, d16's were complicated to roll but seemed to be the sweet spot.

Amechra
2019-09-24, 05:35 PM
I mostly made crits deal maximum damage because it makes the whole process quicker. This is a big boost for crit-fishers, after all (Elven Accuracy + Champion 3 gives you a 27.1% chance of getting a crit whenever you attack with advantage if you're using a d20. It goes up to 42.13% on a d12.) Plus, it makes Half-Orcs and Barbarians that little bit better (guess who really likes Half-Orcs and Barbarians? :smallbiggrin:)

Looking back at this, the DC scaling might be a bit too harsh. A 9th level spellcaster with a 20 in their casting ability score is going to have a DC of 13, which is too high for Joe Average to ever hit. More problematically, it means that anyone who doesn't pick up Resilient is legitimately shooting themselves in the foot, since by 9th level you are very vulnerable to saving throws you aren't proficient in. That's... not good. That's not good at all.

I mean, you could push that back to 17th level by dropping treating save DC's like AC (so they get dropped by 6 instead of 4). And then if you capped everyone at 12th level (because if you're going to have branding, you might as well do it right), it's never a problem.

Actually, rebuilding each class to only have 12 levels would be... interesting.

Dienekes
2019-09-25, 12:09 AM
Don't feel like doing the math myself, but what would happen if everyone got half proficiency in all their saving throws they do not have proficiency in?

I've honestly felt like making such a thing a feat in 5e, simply because the gap between proficient and non-proficient saving throws becomes so wide by later levels. Especially in abilities you aren't focusing in.

notXanathar
2019-09-25, 02:20 PM
I will say that this kind of goes against bounded accuracy, at least in part. While increasing the impact of smaller bonuses is good, as it means that the +6 at the end is big, the real point of BA is that it makes the variation in the D20 count for more. this then allows creatures at low levels to be a threat to higher level parties, and to give low level parties a chance to hit higher level monsters.

HouseRules
2019-09-25, 02:33 PM
How About This?

3d6 drop middle
3d6 drop low if advantage
3d6 drop high if disadvantage

Knaight
2019-09-26, 01:52 AM
I will say that this kind of goes against bounded accuracy, at least in part. While increasing the impact of smaller bonuses is good, as it means that the +6 at the end is big, the real point of BA is that it makes the variation in the D20 count for more. this then allows creatures at low levels to be a threat to higher level parties, and to give low level parties a chance to hit higher level monsters.

That appears to be the point - and dropping to a d12 is a pretty elegant way of doing it, though there's a fair few adjustments to make.

puctheplayfull
2019-09-26, 04:45 PM
Looking back at this, the DC scaling might be a bit too harsh. A 9th level spellcaster with a 20 in their casting ability score is going to have a DC of 13, which is too high for Joe Average to ever hit. More problematically, it means that anyone who doesn't pick up Resilient is legitimately shooting themselves in the foot, since by 9th level you are very vulnerable to saving throws you aren't proficient in. That's... not good. That's not good at all.

I mean, you could push that back to 17th level by dropping treating save DC's like AC (so they get dropped by 6 instead of 4). And then if you capped everyone at 12th level (because if you're going to have branding, you might as well do it right), it's never a problem.

Running through the numbers, using the standard array and races, I got the following.
1st Level Max save +5, Min save -1
Save DC tops at 13 for characters, and 13 is the recommended for CR1 monsters
Rolling a D20 with a +5, succeeds on 8+ or 65% of success, and for a -1, that's a 14+ or 35% of success.
From here I looked at -3, -4, -6, and -8 to DC's, and -3 gets the closest to the 65% success for a +5, at 66.67%. However the -1 save only has a 16.67% chance. -4 give them a slightly better 25% chance, but gives our +5 save a 75% chance of success. This only escalates the proficient save with each increment.

After 1st level, I looked at 10th and 20th level. Assuming you cap the ability you have save proficiency in by 10th level, you have a +9 save bonus. With no adjustments, it is still a -1 for your dump state.
Save DC's based on character level could be as high as 17, and monster recommended for CR 10 is 16. I used 17 in my calculations as the higher possible DC.
Rolling a D20 means you still have a 65% chance of success at +9 trying to hit a 17 or higher. The chance with a -1 has dropped to 15%.
-3 to the Save DC for D12 still keeps the 66.67% success chance, but drops the -1 to a 0% chance. -4 to DC's keeps the 75% for the capped ability, but still at 0% for the -1. -6 to DC's gets you on the board with an 8.33% success chance, and -8 gives you a 25% chance. The problem is, at -6 to save DC's our capped save is at a 91.67% success chance instead of keeping around 65%. It's at 100% with a -8 to DC's.

Moving on to 20th level, our capped ability gives us a +11 with no magic. Our dump stat, with no TLC stays at a -1 save. The DC's for this level are 19 for a capped PC and 19 recommended for CR20 creature.
This gives us a 65% chance of success on our capped stat (I wonder if this is by design?) and a 5% chance of success for our dump stat, requiring a natural 20.
Using the -3 to Save DC's keeps a consistent 66.67% success for our capped stat, but anything less than a -8 to save DC's keeps the dump stat at 0%. The -8 gives you an 8.33% chance of success with a -1 bonus.

My conclusion from this, the -3 gives you the closest on the high side to the D20, but none of them line up on the low side. A -7 might be the closest to lining up on the low side, but would keep the high side above 90% at every level. Bear in mind, this is all for a dump stat of 8, with no modifiers applied, and no magic or class abilities granting bonuses.

I'm not sure if there is any way around this if you're dropping the die you roll to a d12. It simply means it's more dangerous to face things that target your lower stats. This seems to be a natural side effect of making the bonuses more palpable, because the penalties are also more severe. Honestly I think this would make the game more interesting, and a bit grittier. You would have to rely more on things like magic or bardic inspiration for lower saves, while your higher saves would still have a pretty even chance of success.

On thing you could do to offset this would be to make a natural 12 an automatic success, but you would then want to make a natural 1 an automatic failure. Another option, something I remember from an old D&D3.5 or Pathfinder variant, you could make rolling a natural 12 give you a +3, and rolling a natural 1 give you a -3. This was a +5/-5 for D20, but working with a smaller die, and the lower #'s of 5e, +/-3 seems more reasonable. This isn't a perfect solution and by 20th level, characters would still need magic to succeed on a save with their lowest DC.


Don't feel like doing the math myself, but what would happen if everyone got half proficiency in all their saving throws they do not have proficiency in?

I've honestly felt like making such a thing a feat in 5e, simply because the gap between proficient and non-proficient saving throws becomes so wide by later levels. Especially in abilities you aren't focusing in.

This might offset the problem a little, and make it feel more like earlier editions where your saves scaled with your level, even if not as well. I would recommend rounding down if you do this, and you will still need help at 20th level for whatever your dump stat is.


Actually, rebuilding each class to only have 12 levels would be... interesting.

I think this might be going a little too far. You could try it, but you would either need to drop a lot of options from the classes, or condense them so some levels you will be getting a lot more. Seems if you are going to go through this much trouble, it would just be better to play something else, like Savage World, or the E6/P6 mod for D&D 3.5/Pathfinder.

Yunru
2019-09-26, 05:52 PM
One big thing I'd like to point out is there's no need to readjust a tonne of numbers, just add +4 to the d12 roll.

Yakk
2019-09-28, 11:36 AM
So, this basically takes bounded accuracy and throws it out the window.

Encounter building will be even less reliable than it is in core 5e, unless you repeat the math yourself and work it out.

SpawnOfMorbo
2019-09-29, 08:58 AM
Actually, rebuilding each class to only have 12 levels would be... interesting.

My groups play 1-10 primarily.

After level 10 it really depends on the campaign but we may gain epic boons, more HP, or feats every so often.

Most high level features in 5e fall into the meh or "low level feature but slightly different".

We run incantation rules from 3e unearthed arcana for cool high level spell effects.

There's really no need for D&D to have a 20 level slot, you could fit way more within the 10 levels than already there and keep the same XP progression.