Quote from: Garnfellow;621913I've been running a Pathfinder Beginner Box game, which has neither AoOs nor iterative attacks, and the results have been revelatory. The fights have been much more fun and dynamic. To say nothing of faster.

My group did the same, but we felt the opposite. Without AOO the characters moved around like the Knight in chess. Beside, blasting past an orc towards a fallen comrade, with the orc just staring in amazement, is both undramatic and unrealistic (the same when the orc slaloms through a whole party to ace the wizard in the rear).

We ended up playing the basic game plus the AOO rules from the main rulebook.

Quote from: Garnfellow;621913I've been running a Pathfinder Beginner Box game, which has neither AoOs nor iterative attacks, and the results have been revelatory. The fights have been much more fun and dynamic. To say nothing of faster.

That does not surprise me, as I think aao and iteritive attacks are huge negatives in a game system. Probly explains much of why I enjoy 1E more than 3X.

Quote from: Reckall;621924My group did the same, but we felt the opposite. Without AOO the characters moved around like the Knight in chess. Beside, blasting past an orc towards a fallen comrade, with the orc just staring in amazement, is both undramatic and unrealistic (the same when the orc slaloms through a whole party to ace the wizard in the rear).

We ended up playing the basic game plus the AOO rules from the main rulebook.

I have played quite a bit with or without aoo.

If I am not using aoo in a particular dnd campaign, and an orc attempts to ignore fighters and go for the wizard, the fighters may interpose themselves if they choose.

The orc might also intercept a cleric rushing to a fallen comrade.

I can see your point though.

Quote from: Kord's Boon;621860I always assumed the generation of iterative attacks where an outgrowth of the 'streamlining' of 3e as a whole. Much like how ability bonuses now tended to apply the same way to all characters regardless of class, which as a consequence made for more straight-forward multicasting. A base-attack-bonus (BAB) increase always meant the same thing to everyone. (Why they did not say for instance "fighters are the only class that gets iterative attacks bases on high BAB" I don't know, perhaps to prevent everyone from taking a single level of fighter, now they just dip two for the feats.)
 
On a side note I recall reading that the simple additive multiclass option was a last minute accident and not foreseen as a consequence or goal of the streamlining.
 
As to why the iterative attacks progressed at a -5, it prevents too big a jump in character power. Going from level 4 with one attack (at +4) to two attacks (at +5) is a big jump for one level. Continuing the trend however was a mistake, a 4th attack at +5 at level 20 might as well not even be there unless you are abusing the system to net an insane to-hit, and the effect starts to get noticeable long before you hit 20.

That's interesting...the multiclassing being a last-minute thing, I mean. That does sound reasonable given that as one of the more complex problems to be tackled (and requiring a nuke-and-rebuild approach to the whole subsystem), it would likely have been resolved last.
 
On the power levels for multiple attacks, true it could be partly to smooth out increases in damage.  I'd also guess that they might have been trying to  keep some combat dice rolls tense for higher level characters - one have one attack that almost-certainly hits then a couple that are iffy - since Tweets' expectation is that attack bonus will outpace AC.

My group and me never had a problem with the math of 3.x and Pathfinder for high levels. Sure, it's a lot, but it just wasn't an issue with us. When Epic Level Handbook came out, there was just something cool of having a monster roll 1d20 + 89. Sure, it made the d20 roll really irrevelant other than to see if you miss on a 1 and crit on a 20, but my players and I got a kick when they confronted an advanced chimera with several templates, I roll 1d20 and ask the player, "Does 108 hit you?" Haha. Then I get to roll oodles of dice for all the damage I'm going to do.

Yeah, I know some players don't like that and don't want to play that way. I get it and that's okay too. I'm just saying our group didn't mind it.

Quote from: beejazz;621919So much this. I've always felt the effects of the widening gap between high and low saves should have been much easier to predict and avoid.
Maybe the gap widened because starting with big bonuses in some classes might have encouraged cherry picking in the multiclassing rules? But then they still have level 1 bonuses that could encourage the same.
I'll have to look over this stuff more when I've got a little more time. Thanks for the links though. I would not have known where to start looking myself.

NP. Part of it may be that all the systems were being re-built at the same time, with new ideas and whatnot changing the mix. Skip Williams somewhere (I think in a profile on monte's site that's gone now) likened the 3E design process to writing on a deck of cards; you revised one thing, revised another thing, and by the end of it the first thing that was changed needed to be re-re-written due the ripples from all the other changes.
For instance if as Kord's Boon suggested multiclassing was revised near the end of the process in 3E that'd explain why that wasn't accounted for so much in 3.0 save DCs (by 3.5 they should have known better)
I'm also wondering if the +1-every-4-levels ability increases (which moved DCs in the caster's favour) were a relatively late part of the design (ability increases for characters were being proposed by readers in Dragon #267 [Jan 2000]).
　

QuoteAnd this is the weirdest bit for me. Partly for the reasons Garnfellow described (either good save characters would always save or low save characters would always fail at some levels and against some effects) but also because players were expected to patch this gap with optional materials.
The designers were building the math on the assumption that people would play a particular way. They assumed that people would recognize their mathematical shortcomings (they tend not to in casual play IME), and then find or buy these math-patchy items. Why not just build the game to play the way they wanted and leave the optional stuff... optional?

I don't know, though perhaps in early 3.0 its less unreasonable that fighters will be wanting to take Iron Will say; there's not that many feats in the 3.0 PHB. Cloaks of resistance maybe almost a legacy item, although the AD&D versions provide both save bonuses and AC increases.
There's some obvious problems here though with the idea of HP increase balancing worsening saves since many spell's damage scale up at the same rate as HPs - 1 dice/level ...not to mention saves vs. death or being taken out of the fight that HP won't help with..
　

QuoteAnd from what I understand, this doesn't sound like the way the game was played before either (the always/never save problem, or the assumption that people needed particular stuff to fix it).
Personally I prefer something kind of opposite (high level characters slay living with impunity against a world full of peasants, but use their bread and butter inflict spells on equal foes). I can see the logic in either option though. Which was it more like before 3?

Saves get better as levels increase in 2nd/1st, though I never played much at higher levels (my high school games never went higher than about 5th level)...in AD&D the save isn't modified by spell level, although, spells have lots of specific caveats and some individual spells will impose penalties, or not have a save, or be resisted entirely differently. Note 'Save vs. Death' is actually a different category than 'Spell', and is generally easier to pass IIRC.
Toward the end of 2E Skip's 'High Level Campaigns' book had optional rules where high-level wizards imposed a penalty to saving throws, but these were applied based on caster level and only started at about level 13 (each 3 caster levels beyond 10th applied a -1 save penalty). I don't think this was so much to ensure any sort of balanced progression as it was to represent the idea that a higher-level wizards' spells should be harder to save against.

Having given the thread some time to develop, I do think it fits better in the Design forum.

RPGPundit

So you want to know how and why the math is full of fuck in 3e Well

So the short version is.

The end result of the edition shift is everyone who deals damage got shafted by HP inflation and everyone who fought in melee got double shafted since the only things that did get a damage boost was the big scary monsters full attack.


The long version is this. Pre-3e monsters worked in a fundamentally diffrent way. The didn't have all the ability scores or interact with many of the PC chacter construction rules. Natural attacks usually didn't add Str so it was totally fine for monsters to have 3-6 attacks and without a Con bonus to add to their HD it was totally fine for monsters to get big piles of them.

In 3e though the monster are constructed in the same way PCs are. They have all six ability scores, feats, skills and even their own pseudo class levels in the form of racial hit dice. The monsters retained all of their pre-3e advantages on top of this and the new natural attack rules were all up-side as well. Most importantly though HP values became practially quadradic as higher level monsters pulled further ahead in both Con and HD yet fighters are still 1-2dX+str and Wizards are still 1d6/level(save for half).

Alot of people don't understand but this is the source of almost all of the things people have come to associate with 3e. Pre-3e the Fighter had his pile of numbers and he could smash the monsters genrally lower numbers as long as they were vaugely level apropriate because they were opperating on diffent systems. Not so in 3e. Why is the 3e so fighter weak? The Fighter still has his pile of mostly blank levels, Str score, and sword but now the monsters have a bigger pile of mostly blank levels a larger Str score and natural attack that are better than his sword. Why are wizards so crazy? The Wizard rather than play fair with Fireballs and have that work have to innovate and you get the various "god"/"Batman"/"etc" wizard build that try to bypass the hp system as much as possible. Why was the CharOp culture of 3e so pervasive? It's becuase not CharOp builds always fell behind in the arms race with the monsters.

Quote from: Touhoufriend;624185So you want to know how and why the math is full of fuck in 3e Well

So the short version is.

Hi, Lord Mistborn.

Sockpuppets are not allowed on the site, especially for users who have been previously banned.

Intriguing. I had a vague feeling he was ProfessorCirno. Oh well.

Just leaving link to this rpgnet discussion there here too. First few pages are vaguely interesting, although it goes downhill toward the end.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?643122-How-did-3-0-end-up-so-out-of-whack

In particular, someone posted this on save progressions which may be interesting (despite original source being something awful).

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?643122-How-did-3-0-end-up-so-out-of-whack&p=15817982#post15817982

Thanks for the links. This stuff is interesting reading.

Glad to be of service

About the save progressions:

1) I never knew the saves were listed in order of priority. Neat.
2) Did they not scale on both sides (that is to say: by having both scaling DCs and scaling saves)? I guess part of my curiosity now extends to the history of the save mechanic itself.

If you mean in older D&D, no there was no scaling on the attacker's side - if a 1st level fighter was hit by a charm person spell they would need to roll a 17 or better to save (vs. spell) regardless of whether it was cast by a 1st-level apprentice wizard or an 18th level lich with supra-genius intelligence.
 
Occasionally powerful spells would add an additional penalty, not usually more than about a -3 or so.
 
On the other hand, it probably was more common for attacks to just not have saves in AD&D - sleep has no saving throw (but still has its HD cap), or Command only allows a save if the target is 5th level or more, and/or has an Intelligence of 13 or higher.
 
Included scan of the table below if it helps (this is the 2E version I think - 1E is more or less identical IIRC); a look at some of the retro-clones might give some idea. I've written on the class group names again (Warrior = fighter, paladin, ranger; rogue = thief, bard, priest = cleric, druid) since scan is a bit crummy.
Number or higher is what is needed to save - you consult the matrix to get the target number, instead of adding a bonus to the d20 roll.
 

 
I don't know much about how the saving throw tables were put together pre-1E, sorry.