Level-dependent bonus to Initiative, Skills and AC - Could it work?

[Lemmy]

Hey there, playgrounders!

I'm currently playing a campaign and DMing another one. Me and my friends always thought it was odd that a fighter who walks around a cleric all day never learned anything about religion, the roggue to spent years travelling with a wizard never learned anything about magic and the sorcerer who is best friends with the ranger never learn anything about tracking...

So I thought about it and houseruled that for every 4 class levels, every character would get a +1 bonus to all skills, although this didn't allow them them to use "trained-only" skills, such as Spellcraft and UMD, they still need ranks for that.

Another thing, how come after years crawling inside cursed dungeons and fighting the fiercest dragons, they never learned how to react faster to danger? So I thought about giving a similar bonus to Initiative checks, but never house-ruled it out of fear of unbalancing encounters.
Possibly monsters could get the same bonus, based on their CR, so it'd be more of a cosmetic feature.
But that would also make easy encounters even easier, and difficult ones even harder.

At last, but not least... How come a 20th level fighter is no better than a 1st level one at blocking and parrying attacks? Barring items and feats, a unarmored fighter will always have the same AC. All those battles and he never learned any defensive technique? Even the wizard, who mostly stays out of melee should have learned something, he did see the paladin defend himself from demons and deveils hundreds of time after all!

So how badly would a BAB dependent bonus to AC affect the game? I thought about something like (BAB+1)/3 (rounded down). Some monsters would probably need a slightly higher BAB (but not so much that it makes the AC bonus moot)

How do you think these ideas would affect the game at low, mid and high levels?

AC bonuses would be something like this:

{table=head]Level | Full BAB | Medium BAB | Poor BAB
1st | +0| +0 | +0
2nd | +1| +0 | +0
3rd | +1|+1 | +0
4th | +1| +1 | +1
5th | +2| +1 | +1
6th | +2| +1 | +1
7th | +2| +2 | +1
8th | +3| +2 | +1
9th | +3| +2 | +1
10th | +3| +2 | +2
11th | +4| +3 | +2
12th | +4| +3 | +2
13th | +4| +3 | +2
14th | +5| +3 | +2
15th | +5| +4 | +2
16th | +5| +4 | +3
17th | +6| +4 | +3
18th | +6| +4 | +3
19th | +6| +5 | +3
20th | +7| +5 | +3
[/table]

[Lemmy]

C'mon, guys.
Noone has any thoughts?

Is the AC bonus too much? Too little?

[Apalala]

Rather than tack on the AC bonus on top of all the existing bonuses, you might be better off replacing a few sources. There are already rules for scaling armor bonuses over here:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/ad...fenseBonus.htm

Personally, I also get rid of Amulet of Natural Armor, Ring of Protection, Shield, Barkskin, and similar effects, and at every even level (2, 4, 6, etc) the PCs gain an AC bonus, one that also boosts either flatfooted or touch AC.

[Lemmy]

Ah, didn't know those variant rules...

That's very close to my goal. But they appear to be made for a complete removal of defensive items. Not exactly what I was aiming for.

I thinking about reducing, but not completely removing, magical item dependency.

Something like "no magic item can grant an AC bonus higher than +3"

I like the idea of characters getting cool items, instead of just about everyone buying a ring of protection, but I fear that just giving the bonus will probably have the contrary effect. Characters will favor even higher AC instead of variety.

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

Well, the average monster has a to-hit bonus of at least 3 + level. At high levels most level-appropriate encounters wouldn't be able to hit the PCs.

Now, you could make this work if you banned all flat-bonus items. Say, "okay, you get utility items that do unique things, and you get flat to-hit, save, and AC bonuses to compensate for no magic weapons and armor".

[Lemmy]

That's exactly what I'm trying to do.

However it would take a considerable effort to calculate the appropriate bonuses to AC/Attack/Damage/Saves, so I'm trying to do it little by little... start with AC, reduce the amount (and power) of AC boosting magic items, then replace it with innate bonuses.

My fears are:

1- If magical items are available: The PCs become too powerful
2- If magical items are not available, the PCs become too weak or
3- If magical items are not available, the PCs are not too powerful or too weak, but they have very similar stats, reducing party variety. The shield-wielding fighter's AC is not much higher than the 2-handed power-attacking Barbarian.

What if armor and shield magical enhancements are allowed and available, but items that take body slots are not?
PCs would still have some magical protection, but not as much, since rings and amulets are nowhere to be found.
Is the bonus enough to compensate for this difference?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Well, the average monster has a to-hit bonus of at least 3 + level. At high levels most level-appropriate encounters wouldn't be able to hit the PCs.

Not really... let's look at a few random melee monsters:
Dire Lion- CR 5, 2 claws +13 and bite +7
Ettin- CR 6, morningstar +12
T-Rex- CR 8, bite +20
Noble Salamander- CR 10, +3 spear +23 and tail +21
Kraken- CR 12, 2 tentacles +28 and 6 arms and a bite +23
Purple Worm- CR 12, bite +25 and sting +20
Mature Adult Green Dragon- CR 16, attack +30
Marilith- CR 17, 6 longswords +25

I've been running a campaign from 10th level, and let me tell you that high-level monsters hit a lot. Even the party's tanky crusader gets hit more often than not. High hit die give high base attack bonuses, which typically combine with high strengths and/or lots of attacks. Meanwhile, obtaining a higher armor class requires the stacking of many different items, all of which increase in price quite rapidly.

Your numbers look pretty decent, all things considered.

[Apalala]

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/m...rCreation.html

CR+5 at level 5, CR+8 at level 10, CR+10 at 20.

A wizard relying on the defense bonus variant and a +1 AC bonus every two levels would have 28 AC at level 20. So...a monster relying on its attack would have a pretty easy time with its +30 attack.

[Deepbluediver]

Some things should probably scale while leveling; base AC is a good one. In my armor fix, rather than make it entirely dependent on BAB (since low BAB classes will likely already have less Dex and lighter armor) I just had it equal to 5+half your level.

Some things like skill checks, make less sense. I feel that they do scale automatically, somewhat, just by increasing the ability scores that modify them. Also, to me a skill is supposed to be something that you either learn or get better at with practice, so just leveling up wouldn't have much effect on things you don't care about. For example, why would getting better at melee combat make me any better at playing an instrument via the perform skills?

Initiative falls kind of in the middle. Classes that pump their Dex get it to scale better than others, and most monsters get a bonus appropriate for their CR. Their are also feats and even some class features (any maybe magic items) that can help it out. One thing that I've seen it letting Wisdom add to your Initiative bonus as well, under the idea that Dexterity represents physical reaction time but Wisdom is mental awareness.

I think you just need to be careful with flat bonuses, because there are already quite a few tricks for people to buff up almost anything and some of it can get a bit gamebreaking if abused. (i.e. played to the letter of the law rather than the spirit)

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/ad...fenseBonus.htm

This is a set of variant rules from Unearthed Arcana, which goes off of the assumption of "PCs don't wear armor". It's based on the assumption that characters don't wear armor, but it gives them the AC bonus that a character of their level would have (assuming armor proficiencies).

This only applies to AC, and assumes no armor. If you want to assume that the PCs are wearing armor, you could extend it like this:

{TABLE]Level|A|B|C|D
1|+0|+0|+1|+2
2|+0|+0|+1|+2
3|+0|+1|+2|+3
4|+0|+1|+2|+3
5|+0|+1|+2|+3
6|+0|+2|+3|+4
7|+0|+2|+3|+4
8|+0|+2|+3|+4
9|+1|+3|+4|+5
10|+1|+3|+4|+5
11|+1|+3|+4|+5
12|+2|+4|+5|+6
13|+2|+4|+5|+6
14|+2|+4|+5|+6
15|+3|+1|+6|+7
16|+3|+1|+6|+7
17|+3|+1|+6|+7
18|+4|+1|+7|+8
19|+4|+1|+7|+8
20|+4|+1|+7|+8[/TABLE]

Where A is no armor proficiency, B is light proficiency, C is medium proficiency, and D is heavy proficiency. This would likely account for enchanted armor, enchanted shields, Dexterity-boosting items, and AC-boosting items.

A similar table could be made for to-hit bonuses. Those would probably be based on weapon proficiency instead of armor proficiency, but +8 at 20th level seems fair. Maybe use Column C, Column B for simple (restricted to +0 at 1st level), and Column A for anything less than simple.

Oh, look! The monk gets shafted! Maybe you could work around that by giving the monk a class feature that lets him count as being in the best categories for both attack and defense.

Obviously, saving throws need a boost too. You could probably grant a flat bonus to all saves equal to 1/5th the character's level (rounding down).

I'm throwing out these rules as ideas for what to do in a setting where magic items don't grant any flat bonuses. I think that skill bonuses are specific enough that they wouldn't need be restricted. However, if you do want to give a flat bonus to all skills, I think that 1/4 the character's level would be appropriate (provided you still observe all restrictions on untrained skill use). This is a much less serious issue in Pathfinder, where the you can dip a single skill point into a class skill to get a +4 bonus, and you don't lose half your ranks when investing in cross-class skills. The same bonus could be granted to initiative.

[SpaceBadger]

Level-dependent Defense Bonus to AC is a good idea, but then you need to cut back on standard AC numbers somehow or it gets out of hand. Others have linked to the variant rule on this.

I like the skill and initiative bonus in theory, would need to try them out a bit to decide whether to add them to my houserules.

[Seerow]

Personally I like straight up adding BAB to AC, and harshly limiting bonuses from other sources (ie natural armor and armor no longer stack. Deflection, Luck, Morale, etc bonuses to AC no longer exist. Dodge bonuses are rarer, etc)


As for initiative, it similarly always bugged me that it doesn't scale ever. Part of this ties in with poor attribute scaling (that Fighter probably won't end up with more than 6 higher dex by level 20 than level 1). But I haven't personally run anything messing with it yet. I'd probably add something like BAB into it again (why yes, I do like BAB scaling and think adding it to more things is good, as long as you don't run with monsters who have 2-3x more hd than the players), though maybe that could just be a level based bonus.

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

You could say that they get the full bonuses from the UA armor variant, but let them use an (unenchanted) shield for an additional AC bonus. That's a +2 bonus at best, unless they want the full +4 from using a tower shield (which is acceptable because of its penalties).

If they still want to use armor, you could say that wearing armor only grants a bonus to AC against critical hits, and they must track their encumberance if they wear armor That seems realistic enough, right?

[Just to Browse]

I play with a looser initiative. 1/2 level + Wis/Int/Dex, whichever is highest.

It's a decently large difference. Players seem to enjoy it.

[bobthe6th]

might try geting rid of most generic magic items using Frank and K's magic item rules, then using some vasrient on the UA armor bonus(with armor granting DR and shields adding another place to hang an AC bonus.)

[Nakun]

In theory/ based on fluff, it makes the most sense for other characters to pick up attack bonuses and skill check bonuses from watching their allies over time.

If AC had a BAB like progression (same for Initiative) those things feel like the things that adventurers get better at over time. There are some things that try to fix this (ie, high level rogues are pretty good at knowing when a combat is going down so they get Uncanny Dodge, which, while it doesn't improve Initiative bonuses, stops them from being caught flat footed or flanked.)

[Lemmy]

Not really... let's look at a few random melee monsters:
Dire Lion- CR 5, 2 claws +13 and bite +7
Ettin- CR 6, morningstar +12
T-Rex- CR 8, bite +20
Noble Salamander- CR 10, +3 spear +23 and tail +21
Kraken- CR 12, 2 tentacles +28 and 6 arms and a bite +23
Purple Worm- CR 12, bite +25 and sting +20
Mature Adult Green Dragon- CR 16, attack +30
Marilith- CR 17, 6 longswords +25

I've been running a campaign from 10th level, and let me tell you that high-level monsters hit a lot. Even the party's tanky crusader gets hit more often than not. High hit die give high base attack bonuses, which typically combine with high strengths and/or lots of attacks. Meanwhile, obtaining a higher armor class requires the stacking of many different items, all of which increase in price quite rapidly.

Your numbers look pretty decent, all things considered.

My biggest worry is about the iterative attacks. Sure, the 1st attack will most likely hit every single time (damn dragons). but the 2nd one, with the -5 penalty, not so much, the 3rd... een less. The AC as it is now does a decent job at protecting against these follow-up attacks, my fear is that the AC bonus makes this protection way to good.

Originally Posted by DeepBlueDiver
Some things like skill checks, make less sense. I feel that they do scale automatically, somewhat, just by increasing the ability scores that modify them. Also, to me a skill is supposed to be something that you either learn or get better at with practice, so just leveling up wouldn't have much effect on things you don't care about. For example, why would getting better at melee combat make me any better at playing an instrument via the perform skills?

Look at that! I'm quoting two great homebrewers in the same post!
Ah, here is the thing... It doesn't allow you to use Perform unless you have a skill rank, it just makes you better in case you have actually have that rank. Its a bonus, not a extra rank.
Let's say a fighter enjoys dancing in his free time, maybe that bonus comes from all those precise combat moves he uses every day. Or maybe he is a poet, so his words are inspired by conversations with strangers from all walks of life (and unlife and whatever else there is in DnD) that he met in his adventuring years. Or maybe his friend bard just gave him a few pointers... That what the bonus represents... IRL you can see people who travel a lot and have some skill who are pretty unrelated to their occupation and hobbies

Originally posted by Thomar_of_Uointer
This is a set of variant rules from Unearthed Arcana, which goes off of the assumption of "PCs don't wear armor". It's based on the assumption that characters don't wear armor, but it gives them the AC bonus that a character of their level would have (assuming armor proficiencies).

Yeah, it's a solid system, but it has 2 things that make me not want to use it:
1- It assumes a complete lack of armor: My goal is to reduce AC boosting magic item dependency, not remove it completely
2- It's based on armor proficiency: Here is the thing, by this system, a cleric has higher ability at defending himself than a barbarian, and is just as good as the fighter. Basing it on BAB means that character who live for battle, such as fighters and barbarians, will be better at it than a character who can do it, but it's not ther main focus, the case of rogues and clerics, and much much better than those who completely avoid physical combat, such as sorcerers and wizards. Sure there are combat-focused classes with medium BAB, but supposedly, they use their secondary abilities to compensate for their not so great fighting prowess.

[Deepbluediver]

Ah, here is the thing... It doesn't allow you to use Perform unless you have a skill rank, it just makes you better in case you have actually have that rank. Its a bonus, not a extra rank.
Let's say a fighter enjoys dancing in his free time, maybe that bonus comes from all those precise combat moves he uses every day. Or maybe he is a poet, so his words are inspired by conversations with strangers from all walks of life (and unlife and whatever else there is in DnD) that he met in his adventuring years. Or maybe his friend bard just gave him a few pointers... That what the bonus represents... IRL you can see people who travel a lot and have some skill who are pretty unrelated to their occupation and hobbies

Hmm.....I get what you mean, and this does seem to be a reasonable sounding outcome. But there are plenty of skills that can be used untrained, and players are likely to milk every available bonus they can out of a system.

Frankly, I'd be perfectly alright with just letting DMs award small roleplay or circumstance bonuses as appropriate, but that puts more responsibility on the shoulders of the DM. I'm trying to figure out some way we can balance roleplay with game mechanics here.

I'd feel better if we limited the number of skills a leveling-bonus could be applied to in some way. Like Flaws or Traits, maybe we can come up with something like a "hobby bonus" that is more restricted, with the cost being paid in time. It wouldn't stop players from trying to max it out, like they do everything else, but it would give DMs some measure of control.

[Seerow]

With regards to non-combat-related skills (Perform, Profession, Craft, knowledge skills, etc), what I like to do is give int score in skill points to all classes to spend on those skills at level 1. Beyond that, the bonus can be increased from actual skill ranks, from practice/study/training, or from arbitrary DM rewards (ie you just got done with an adventure involving fighting a bunch of undead and a necromantic cult, have some knowledge religion points so you don't seem completely clueless if you run into something similar in the future).

[Lemmy]

Hmm.....I get what you mean, and this does seem to be a reasonable sounding outcome. But there are plenty of skills that can be used untrained, and players are likely to milk every available bonus they can out of a system.

Frankly, I'd be perfectly alright with just letting DMs award small roleplay or circumstance bonuses as appropriate, but that puts more responsibility on the shoulders of the DM. I'm trying to figure out some way we can balance roleplay with game mechanics here.

I'd feel better if we limited the number of skills a leveling-bonus could be applied to in some way. Like Flaws or Traits, maybe we can come up with something like a "hobby bonus" that is more restricted, with the cost being paid in time. It wouldn't stop players from trying to max it out, like they do everything else, but it would give DMs some measure of control.

I see your point. I understand giving a bonus to all skills sound like too much, but it's only a +1 for every 4 levels. Is it that much of a difference? That's a honest question, if it increases the PCs ability too much, I'll have to prepare for that with much more care.

Balancing fluff and a mechanics is perhaps the hardest part of every houserule and homebrew. I like the "+1 for every 4 levels" because of its simplicity. It's pretty easy to keep track of that. And as I said, I don't think it'd be too much of a increase in PC's capabilities, but I admit that I may be wrong about that.

Laslty, the bonuses represent more than hobbies, it's learning through observation and repetition, it also represents adapting your skills.

Let's say 2 clerics want to sneak around and enter the fortress unnoticed, neither of them has any single rank in "move silently" (or stealth, for PF).
However, Bob, the 1st cleric is a rookie, he just left his temple to adventure around, he's level 1. Joe, the 2nd cleric is older and more powerful, he's 4th level.
Save for spells, Joe has no advantage over Bob, the rookie. But he should have! Joe did travel around a lot, and its very likely that he or one of his allies had to sneak around some time, and even more likely that he had to notice someone else trying to sneak around him, like that one time that he was ambushed by orcs.
Joe remember how hard it was to notice those orcs while they walked in a particular manner, or on a particullar ground. So he tries to do the same to walk past the guards. He has a small bonus to this due to his memories of those orcs, even if Joe himself never had to be stealthy.

Joe and Bob want to ride battle horses.
Neither of them is a great rider, they don't even have ranks in ride, but they want to try anyway. So they get on their horses and do their best. Bob depends on his dexterity and luck. Joe, on the other hand, remembers how hsi freind druid once transformed into a horse and later complained about how the arrangement of the load he had to carry gave him pains in his back. Joe uses this knowledge to better position himself in the horse, making it easier for the animal to carry him around.
Joe has a slight advantage over Bob, and that wasn't even related to riding at all.

Sure, my examples are silly, but i just want to ilustrate why I think the bonus to ALL skills make sense.

TL;DR
1- Not all bonuses come from using or even seeing something being done, sometimes it comes from creative thinking (learned through life experience)
2- A single bonus to all skills is simple, therefore, easy to keep track of.
3- Is the +1 for every 4 levels too much? Does it significanly increase the PCs ability?

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

Yeah, it's a solid system, but it has 2 things that make me not want to use it:
1- It assumes a complete lack of armor: My goal is to reduce AC boosting magic item dependency, not remove it completely

Just change armor (but not shields) so that instead of granting an AC bonus it only grants a bonus to AC against checks to confirm critical hits. Now armor is mechanically different and the AC issue is still fixed. Also, rogues and other classes have much less of a compulsion to dump gold into adamantine breastplates and will start considering other, more interesting magic items.

2- It's based on armor proficiency: Here is the thing, by this system, a cleric has higher ability at defending himself than a barbarian, and is just as good as the fighter. Basing it on BAB means that character who live for battle, such as fighters and barbarians, will be better at it than a character who can do it, but it's not ther main focus, the case of rogues and clerics, and much much better than those who completely avoid physical combat, such as sorcerers and wizards. Sure there are combat-focused classes with medium BAB, but supposedly, they use their secondary abilities to compensate for their not so great fighting prowess.

The classes are intended to be built that way. Clerics are supposed to have a higher AC than barbarians. I don't see any reason that's wrong.

[Lemmy]

Just change armor (but not shields) so that instead of granting an AC bonus it only grants a bonus to AC against checks to confirm critical hits. Now armor is mechanically different and the AC issue is still fixed. Also, rogues and other classes have much less of a compulsion to dump gold into adamantine breastplates and will start considering other, more interesting magic items.

As I said, it's a solid system, and I thank you for pointing it out, it's just not exactly what I'm looking for.
It completely replaces armor, that's not my intention, that's why my bonuses are considerably smaller than the one from that system, they are meant to replace a ring of protection, not a enchanted full plate. However, Your idea about anti-critical AC is good, and I might make use of something like that.

The classes are intended to be built that way. Clerics are supposed to have a higher AC than barbarians. I don't see any reason that's wrong.

I'm not saying it's wrong. It is my personal opinion that clerics shouldn't have heavy armor proficiency, but that's not my point.

The bonuses I was thinking about are a way of reflecting the character's growing combat abilities.
Someone who is always fighting, always at the center of every battle would learn to defend her/himself better than someone else who stands on the sidelines casting spells, only entering close combat now and then.

Besides, it's not like the game would be unbalaced if a barbarian had a slightly higher AC than a Cleric.

[Chaos_Laicosin]

Just some notes:

AC does sort of coincide with level in a general sense: if you put all your ability bonuses into Dex then you are actively increasing your dodge bonus; if you are putting all your bonuses into Str then you are increasing your muscles (which actually would make it harder to dodge because of size and swiftness)...

I do like the idea of getting a dodge bonus against enemies you have fought before though. If you spent 30 years defending a settlement against gryffons, you would have a pretty good sense of a gryffon's range of motion and how it attacks. But if a dragon came along you would only have your physical abilities (Dex) to rely on because you don't know what to expect.

In terms of skill bonuses, I agree that a character should be able passively to pick up on them from his allies, but I also don't believe in having full access to class skills at any time. For example, a barbarian (with 10 Int) puts max ranks into Climb, Swim, Listen, and Survival at first level and keeps putting a rank into each at every level. Then off a whim at 7th level he puts 4 ranks into handle animal. He hasn't used this skill up to now, nor has he had any practice at it, but the rules say its a class skill so he is intrinsically good at it if he wants to be. I think the skills you put at least one point into at first level should determine the range of skills you can add to at later level-ups. Any other skill you want would require some sort of training (as from a party member or skill trainer).

I would say reaction time is really the sensory skills which do level up with you. Do a listen or spot and it is easier at higher levels with better skill training. Being surprised by enemies you have to rely on your physical abilities (dex) which level up with you sort of anyway.

[Ernir]

Honestly, the best way I have seen to accomplish decreased magic item reliance when it comes to straight numbers is ericgrau's Balanced Low Magic Item System.
Its greatest strength is that it doesn't interfere (much) with the mechanical numbers game. With a system like this, you don't have to go through the (friggin' enormous) task of rescaling the numbers to make sure things still work. Of course, if that is the task you really want to do...

Just an alternate approach to keep in mind.

[DiBastet]

Just my cents, for your question.

I use class defense bonus and armor as DR. It works really wonders just as it is.

As level dependent benefits, I give all the static bonuses from magic items directly as level-dependent (ac (in this case, increase to armor DR), deflection, nat armor, attack and damage, and saves), while removing such items from the game. It is a matter of personal taste, really, but it works wonders for our group.

At the very least, like this a high-level char is as good defending itself without his armor as with his armor. The difference is when he can't quite defend himself. At this time, having armor really makes a difference.

I wouldn't extend the bonuses to initiative, however. I guess improved initiative is there for those who want it, but YMMV.