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After the discussion of the Skill mechanics and a discussion IRL (those do still happen) I thought maybe we could branch out a bit to mechanics we do not care for.

I, for one, hate the 'confirming critical hits' mechanic in 3.5/Pathfinder. I think it is silly to roll a 20 then to have to roll another d20 to see if you actually rolled a 20. It is a superfluous roll, and just takes up time and seems more designed to take the wind out of the players sails then anything else.

What do you dislike?

That was one bit that was better in 4th. Roll a 20? Crit! And max damage rather than calculating. Made things a lot easier to manager and less silly. Also, less crit range modifiers.

My least favorite? Hit Point inflation for bad guys. If the only thing you have going for you is that it will take 10 turns for my party to burn you down, you're not a very good monster.

 pretre wrote:
That was one bit that was better in 4th. Roll a 20? Crit! And max damage rather than calculating. Made things a lot easier to manager and less silly. Also, less crit range modifiers.

My least favorite? Hit Point inflation for bad guys. If the only thing you have going for you is that it will take 10 turns for my party to burn you down, you're not a very good monster.

Hadn't seen that mechanic, re: D&D 4, but that sounds good

Agreed, re: hit point inflation. I also always felt that it really didn't do much, and made ranged characters progressively weaker (at least in 3.5), as their attacks had a way lower power curve than melee or magic, so they kind of get relegated to plinking at range until they get bored.

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
Hadn't seen that mechanic, re: D&D 4, but that sounds good

Yeah, the max damage thing made crits so much easier. Don't get me wrong, I had a couple 14-20 crit characters in 3.5, but there was a lot of book keeping.

Agreed, re: hit point inflation. I also always felt that it really didn't do much, and made ranged characters progressively weaker (at least in 3.5), as their attacks had a way lower power curve than melee or magic, so they kind of get relegated to plinking at range until they get bored.

That part is worse in 4.0, the inflation bit not the ranged bit, monsters scale to crazy high hit point totals.

Confirming crits is truly a nefarious torment. You manage to roll a really rare result only to get your hopes up for something awesome, but then fail the confirmation. Ugh.

It's right up there with my latent dislike for attack rolls having no effect on damage rolls. I don't care if this is how 90% of all P&Ps do it, it still feels wrong that your accuracy does not affect how much a hit hurts.

As far as hit point inflation is concerned, I would expand this to the entire concept of having NPCs and enemies of the same type possess wildly different stats when they scale to the player characters. The gap between low- and high level enemies of the same type must not be too large, and it should exist almost exclusively as a difference in expertise and equipment, but not physical stats.

In 4E Monster Manual 1 & 2 were pretty bad about the HP inflation, but buy MM3 and Monster Vault they had finally fixed it. Monsters hit harder, but had less hit points, which worked out a lot better then being a grind fest where the monsters couldn't hit often but had all the hit points in the world.

The whole HP thing is difficult to balance. I think 4e's very firm 'balance' efforts may have made this issue more noticeable, but it's existed in some form in nearly every version of D&D.

Do you prefer a monster with a high defense (AC) so attacks miss a lot, or a mess of HP (So you have to chip away at it)?

Skill points in 3.0/3.5 were annoying to me as the order of operations with leveling made them fiddly. A multiclass fighter/wizard had to keep track of which skills were class skills for each class and spend points separately for each.

I don't know, my experience running 4e is "find a cool monster, it gets killed in one round before it gets a chance to use half of its abilities."

Of course my party is 4 strikers and a leader...

 Balance wrote:
Skill points in 3.0/3.5 were annoying to me as the order of operations with leveling made them fiddly. A multiclass fighter/wizard had to keep track of which skills were class skills for each class and spend points separately for each.

Oh my, I had forgotten about that. I gave up at some point in trying to keep track and just made a big pool when I leveled high level NPCs/PCS.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dementedwombat wrote:
I don't know, my experience running 4e is "find a cool monster, it gets killed in one round before it gets a chance to use half of its abilities."

Of course my party is 4 strikers and a leader...

Depends on level too. It becomes much more pronounced at some levels.

If you like the 4E critical solution, you might want to check out 13th Age. It takes some of the best from 3.5 and 4E and combines them, while leaving out much of the worse stuff.

I like how Savage Worlds does it's attacks and damage. There are no critical hits, but the better your attack roll gives you bonuses on your damage roll. The basic "critical" level of what you roll over what you need to hit a guy, for instance, can add what could potentially be +50%(or more!) to your damage roll with something like a longsword, for instance. Gotta love open-ended dice rolls, where if you roll the highest value on a die, you roll it again.

Also, you only ever have to wound bad guys three times to kill them, no matter what. How nasty of a bad guy they are, however, changes how easy it's going to be to get those three wounds onto them.

 pretre wrote:

 Balance wrote:
Skill points in 3.0/3.5 were annoying to me as the order of operations with leveling made them fiddly. A multiclass fighter/wizard had to keep track of which skills were class skills for each class and spend points separately for each.

Oh my, I had forgotten about that. I gave up at some point in trying to keep track and just made a big pool when I leveled high level NPCs/PCS.

That's always been an issue to me with d20 games and some others. If I'm the GM and there's a "system" that covers bad guys in detail, I feel compelled to use it... But how often do I care if Mook #7 has a bonus to drive a car?

With other systems (Savage Worlds, Deadlands Classic, and some others) I'm much more comfortable stating out major NPCs by their relevant skills and maybe making a note about general proficiency... I.E. "Assume these minions have a d6 at any other skill that they are assigned as part of their job."

Yeah, I've gotten much more into the habit of winging it when DM'ing. I generate anything that is absolutely necessary and then wing the rest.

I'm a fledgling GM for Savage Worlds, and I like to make NPC reference cards that are basically playing card-sized characters sheets, because I can quickly read a character sheet much better than the wall of bland text that bestiary's usually list NPCs with.

I simply leave off anything I can't imagine I'll use, and if for some reason if comes up, I wing it. If the PC's are fighting a main bad guy and his troops in their military camp, why do I have to remember if he has a D8 in Riding? He's never going to be on a horse for that scene. *Ignore*.