Xev20 - Class Structure Discussion

[Xeviat]

Xev20 Outline
-Xev20 Start
-Xev20 Class Structure Discussion

This is a thread in my Xev20 series, which starts at Xev20 - Start. It is a project striving to alter the D&D4E character system to something more like D&D3E, or something more classic. It strives to differentiate not just non-casters from casters, but potentially to differentiate casters from different power sources. Here I want to discuss potential mechanics.

The goal is to make it still feel like D&D, to feel like the d20 that many of us came here playing. This means many of my ideas may get set aside for something else, unless they don't really alter the feel. I'm not opposed to turning a sacred cow into a very tasty burger.

So here are my initial thoughts on broad class structure. Some will be questions.

1) First, no daily powers. Daily powers are terrible to manage, they always have been. They require a workday to have a set number of encounters, or possibly a set XP total (so a day of easy fights is longer than a day of hard fights). Healing surges could become per-encounter. With dailies gone, there's room for at least another encounter attack to be thrown into the mix (as a "standard" fight is 8 to 10 rounds, and having 3 to 4 encounters and 1 daily per fight means half-at-wills and half-encounters).

2) Differentiation between casters and noncasters. We talked about this much on other threads, and after much thought I have decided to go for it. I want to try to have casters have weak at-wills (possibly only coming from cantrips and implements) but potent encounters, and to have non-casters have potent at-wills and no/few encounters. Essentials showed how this could be done (though they subbed out dailies).

3) Spell lists. I'd like to look at having spellcasters work from a partially shared list of spells once more. It was pointed out to me, and now I firmly believe in it, that 4E lost something when it gave every single class a separate list of powers/spells. Classes can be differentiated by class abilities, they don't need to be differentiated by powers.

4) Options and Roles. I like roles, they were a great way to tell you what you were going to do most of the time. But I also want players to have the opportunity to play their class as any (almost) role that they choose. A fighter is a person who is a master of combat, and a rogue is a person who fights with tricks. That fighter could be a stout defender of their party, or a longbowman, a pikeman, a charging axeman, or a tactician or inspiring leader. A rogue can be a dashing swashbuckler, a skulking assassin, a perceptive scout ... I think there should be core class abilities, and also role class abilities based on your build. It could be possible to make talent trees, like d20 modern classes.

5) Tiers of Play. I want to keep the tiers of play. They allow for clear delineations of adventure scope, enemies used, and player power. I think paragon paths and epic destinies can remain in some fashion, as analogs to the abilities classes gain in the heroic tier; but I do think there should be some simple paragon paths and epic destinies for those who don't want to fuss too much.

6) Encounters and Utilities. Do we need to silo these still? I'm leaning towards yes.

7) On encounter length: How long should an encounter be? This will determine how much damage players should deal on average, which will in turn determine how many encounter attacks the base wizard should have. After a certain point, I think low level encounters could become at-wills (like starting in paragon level), so that rather than losing knowledge of the first level spells, you master them. That should help cover the need for increased at-will damage. I'm leaning towards 8 to 10 rounds as standard encounter length, since it's a really nice number. I'd also like, again relatedly, for player and monster damage output to be comparable. Monsters have more hp than players because monsters don't have healing surges. Healing surges could also become a per-encounter deal.

-------------

Here is the structure I'm leaning towards for casters:

Heroic Tier
1) Class abilities, Build (role) abilities, Attacks (level 1), Utility (level 1)
2) Attack (level 1)
3) Class feature
4) Attack (level 2)
5) Utility (level 2)
6) Attack (level 2)
7) Class feature
8) Attack (level 3)
9) Utility (level 3)
10) Attack (level 3), Class feature

The other tiers could work similarly. This ends up netting a caster 6 attack spells each combat at level 10; if combat is 10 rounds, this means they have a big spell to cast most of the combat, but, as a heroic caster just starting out, they'll have to fall back on their cantrips and their wand. I can see offensive cantrips having the same oomph as simple one-handed weapons.

As they enter into paragon levels, perhaps lower level encounter spells could become at-wills, replacing their cantrips (though they'll still have their cantrips). This might not be necessary, but I think it would be a fun touch to make someone feel like they have mastered their magic. If utilities are minor and move actions only, they won't infringe upon a caster's ability to do other things. They could be encounter or at-will, perhaps allowing us to bring back longer durations without having to make them dailies. But there needs to be some discussion on that.

Maybe characters could learn more spells to use for these slots. Maybe wizards could learn lots, and still have their spellbooks. Maybe we could go back to old days when divine casters knew all their spells, or maybe not. Spells of a given level should be comparable across the entire level so that multiclassing is fair. Perhaps "spell slots" progress with character level, but the level of spells you can learn progress with class level; we'll need to talk more about how multiclassing should work.

I'll leave this here now and let it percolate.

[LordVreeg]

Xev....I should the other thread first, and I am on percocet...but this discusion of classes makes no mention of how the mechanics willl aid roleplay or roles, just they allow for it.  There is no class mechanics mentioned for anything but combat.  Not to bring any edition wars into it; just that this first post is totally encounter-centric.  SO you are balancing the roles and the rules based on encounters.
If that is what you want; I'll bow out.  But I have known you for a long time and I wanted you to feel no lack of attention.

[beejazz]

I don't much like the idea of a set encounter length, but I can see how it would be useful for balance. If you do go with setting an encounter length for that purpose, maybe try and set it deliberately low and let players figure out how to survive. Things to remember if you go this route: turtling can stretch encounter damage, so there's an apples to apples comparison. But transversal and terrain manipulation (both of which can make fights so much more interesting IME) do not get an apples to apples comparison.

One problem I have with the 4e encounter and daily structure is that you aren't choosing between things so much as you are choosing when to spike. I've already talked about why I like mutually exclusive options, and how pulling from the same pool equalizes things' value somewhat. And another way to add variety would be to add circumstances that will change the strategic goal. For example, critical hits and limited healing encourage retreats sometimes, at which point transversal and terrain control have a context in which to balance them.

[Xeviat]

Sorry Vreeg, if I implied that the class abilities were going to be entirely for combat. Class abilities are going to be for things to bring your class to the front. I've always thought that the different aspects of the game could be handled separately.

Again, I was just throwing out a starting point. Combat balance is the most difficult part of the game to balance, so I was focusing on it first. I am more than open to any suggestions, especially beejazz's thought that utilities and attacks don't need to be separated.

I just don't want to have players have to choose whether their character will be combat focused, exploration focused, or social focused, unless the system encourages groups to build characters with a very specific adventure/campaign in mind.

Nothing I have put down is locked in stone.

Encounter length has to be assumed if characters are going to operate differently. If fighters are going to deal X damage with their attacks, and wizards are going to deal Y with some and Z with others, we need to know how much of Y and Z will happen. It could be tweaked if the system requires wizards to alternate, but that would probably be annoying and feel out of place.

[Xathan]

DISCLAIMER: I did not read the rest of this thread other than the first post, since my time is somewhat constrained right now and I want to comment but also want to work on my own projects, so apologies if I am repeating something that someone else mentioned or asking a question that's already been answered. In either case, just quote the post I missed, and I will consider myself informed. :)

Xev20 Outline
-Xev20 Start
-Xev20 Class Structure Discussion

This is a thread in my Xev20 series, which starts at Xev20 - Start. It is a project striving to alter the D&D4E character system to something more like D&D3E, or something more classic. It strives to differentiate not just non-casters from casters, but potentially to differentiate casters from different power sources. Here I want to discuss potential mechanics.

The goal is to make it still feel like D&D, to feel like the d20 that many of us came here playing. This means many of my ideas may get set aside for something else, unless they don't really alter the feel. I'm not opposed to turning a sacred cow into a very tasty burger.

Nobel goals I'm 100% behind, but going to be challenging to implement. Let's see what we can do.

1) First, no daily powers. Daily powers are terrible to manage, they always have been. They require a workday to have a set number of encounters, or possibly a set XP total (so a day of easy fights is longer than a day of hard fights). Healing surges could become per-encounter. With dailies gone, there's room for at least another encounter attack to be thrown into the mix (as a "standard" fight is 8 to 10 rounds, and having 3 to 4 encounters and 1 daily per fight means half-at-wills and half-encounters).

Oh yes, I'm agreed with you. Healing surges as is do not work. The problem with making them per encounter is in the current model that would mean that classes would almost literally never be challenged: either you'd only be able to use 1/encounter, which kind of defeats the purpose behind this idea, or you'd be able to heal yourself from 1 HP to full in a fight. I figure there's two ways to handle this, the latter of which I'm strongly in favor of, but the former of which I feel are best suited for maintaing a DnD feel. (I'm stealing the second one for X20 even if you do use it, because this solves a problem I've been grappling with.)

1) Healing surges fix a variable amount of HP based on the classes hit dice - you get to roll a number of hit dice equal to 1/4 your level of a size equal to your class HD. Using 3.5 hit dice, a barbarian would start being able to roll 1d12 with a healing surge, at level 5 would roll 2d12, at level 10 3d12, etc. It minimizes how powerful healing surges are at higher levels, makes them much more invaluable at lower levels but still useful at higher, and the random factor means that blowing them does not mean "I can stay going for the entire fight."

2) My favorite but less DnD, have Healing surges function like consequences in FATE - you get the Hit Points back, but you also take a penalty of some kind. This could be as simple as fatigue/exhausted (if you wanted a MnM feel), or much more complex (can reduce speed by 10, loose ability to fly, lose use of one arm, take penalties to particular types of rolls) if you want to keep things in a more variable, flexibile, and realistic realm. The amount of HP restored (1/4th your total) would remain unchanged in this model, but players would have to decide if the consequences are worth the hit point restoration.

2) Differentiation between casters and noncasters. We talked about this much on other threads, and after much thought I have decided to go for it. I want to try to have casters have weak at-wills (possibly only coming from cantrips and implements) but potent encounters, and to have non-casters have potent at-wills and no/few encounters. Essentials showed how this could be done (though they subbed out dailies).

I think this is a nice way to solve it, but I'd take it a step further. Instead of the division being casters/non casters, it should be by power sources - something like what we saw with psionics (where casters had a variety of abilities but a low resource pool to draw from to agument them), or ki pools we saw in pathfinder (where the base class had a set of abilities that were at will but could use their ki-pool to augment that.)

3) Spell lists. I'd like to look at having spellcasters work from a partially shared list of spells once more. It was pointed out to me, and now I firmly believe in it, that 4E lost something when it gave every single class a separate list of powers/spells. Classes can be differentiated by class abilities, they don't need to be differentiated by powers.

Not much of a comment here, other than I'm glad to hear about this - I agree with this decision, ESPECIALLY because, from a design standpoint, it makes homebrewing classes 100s of times easier.

4) Options and Roles. I like roles, they were a great way to tell you what you were going to do most of the time. But I also want players to have the opportunity to play their class as any (almost) role that they choose. A fighter is a person who is a master of combat, and a rogue is a person who fights with tricks. That fighter could be a stout defender of their party, or a longbowman, a pikeman, a charging axeman, or a tactician or inspiring leader. A rogue can be a dashing swashbuckler, a skulking assassin, a perceptive scout ... I think there should be core class abilities, and also role class abilities based on your build. It could be possible to make talent trees, like d20 modern classes.

I can't comment about how Essentials handled this, since by the time it came out I had lost pretty much all interest in 4e related products, but one of the great ways I've seen this handled is (again) pathfinder's variant classes. It allows you to replace existing class abilities with ones that fill a new but related role to the archetype of the core class.

5) Tiers of Play. I want to keep the tiers of play. They allow for clear delineations of adventure scope, enemies used, and player power. I think paragon paths and epic destinies can remain in some fashion, as analogs to the abilities classes gain in the heroic tier; but I do think there should be some simple paragon paths and epic destinies for those who don't want to fuss too much.

Tiers was one of the very, very few things 4e added that I liked and support. As for paragon paths and epic destines, I think a hybridization of how those worked and how prestige classes worked would be ideal - prestige classes are much more flexible and broad, but your core class would still advance. This would also (since you intend on 3.5 style multiclassing) paragon paths that aid in this hybridization without being overpowered.

6) Encounters and Utilities. Do we need to silo these still? I'm leaning towards yes.

If by silo you mean stick in a hole in the ground and make go away, then yes. If not, please elaborate. :)

7) On encounter length: How long should an encounter be? This will determine how much damage players should deal on average, which will in turn determine how many encounter attacks the base wizard should have. After a certain point, I think low level encounters could become at-wills (like starting in paragon level), so that rather than losing knowledge of the first level spells, you master them. That should help cover the need for increased at-will damage. I'm leaning towards 8 to 10 rounds as standard encounter length, since it's a really nice number. I'd also like, again relatedly, for player and monster damage output to be comparable. Monsters have more hp than players because monsters don't have healing surges. Healing surges could also become a per-encounter deal.

Obviously that answers my last question, in that you do plan on keeping encounter powers around - a decision I don't agree with, but that's more from a personal taste than a "it's bad design" standpoint. I am behind the idea of lower level powers becoming at will, and 10 rounds is a good average for an encounter, partially because it is long enough to be interesting but not too long to drag on, and partially because it represents a full minute in real time - and outside of epic battles and hollywood, fights in the real world rarely last that long.

The comment about healing surges seems to contradict an earlier point - if you get one healing surge per encounter, then why not a set number you can use each day? Or did you mean something else?

Here is the structure I'm leaning towards for casters:

Heroic Tier
1) Class abilities, Build (role) abilities, Attacks (level 1), Utility (level 1)
2) Attack (level 1)
3) Class feature
4) Attack (level 2)
5) Utility (level 2)
6) Attack (level 2)
7) Class feature
8) Attack (level 3)
9) Utility (level 3)
10) Attack (level 3), Class feature

And this is where we get to the point where I strongly, strongly disagree with design. I hate the division between utility and attack spells - it makes the system much more combat focused and forces people to pick spells that deal damage. The Summoner I'm planning for Steerpike's Fimbulvinter game has only one damaging spell, and that's a cantrip. A friend of mine played a pure illusionist/buffer in a game I played in, and one of my favorite characters was a sorcerer that focused entirely on self-buffing to become a melee powerhouse and filled the fighter role despite having d4 HP, never wearing armor, and only using simple weapons. 

Under this system, none of those characters would be even close to possible, because every other level they have no choice to pick up an attack spell, and would only have 3 utility spells. In addition, that model only means the caster gains a grand total of 4 class features, unless the level 1 class ability and "Build" abilities contain more than I'm assuming. This needs to be expanded upon, and honestly I'd toss out the spell progression entirely and try something more flexible, because right now it means every caster would pretty much play the same.

The other tiers could work similarly. This ends up netting a caster 6 attack spells each combat at level 10; if combat is 10 rounds, this means they have a big spell to cast most of the combat, but, as a heroic caster just starting out, they'll have to fall back on their cantrips and their wand. I can see offensive cantrips having the same oomph as simple one-handed weapons.

I like the idea of low level casters needing to rely on cantrips and wands and cantrips having damage similar to one-handed weapons - my only objection here is outlined in the above paragrap. 

As they enter into paragon levels, perhaps lower level encounter spells could become at-wills, replacing their cantrips (though they'll still have their cantrips). This might not be necessary, but I think it would be a fun touch to make someone feel like they have mastered their magic. If utilities are minor and move actions only, they won't infringe upon a caster's ability to do other things. They could be encounter or at-will, perhaps allowing us to bring back longer durations without having to make them dailies. But there needs to be some discussion on that.

I am a big fan of this one - it will help casters scale nicely without leading to god mode syndrome compared to other classes. 

Maybe characters could learn more spells to use for these slots. Maybe wizards could learn lots, and still have their spellbooks. Maybe we could go back to old days when divine casters knew all their spells, or maybe not. Spells of a given level should be comparable across the entire level so that multiclassing is fair. Perhaps "spell slots" progress with character level, but the level of spells you can learn progress with class level; we'll need to talk more about how multiclassing should work.

I see potential here, and am very much in favor of spell slots vs. spells usable - while it's a very vancian system, it's still a system that's been proven to work and feels very comfortable and workable. It does need the multiclassing to be hammered out more - what are your thoughts on that so far?

[Xeviat]

Big post Xathan, I'll go piece by piece as we're apt to do:

Oh yes, I'm agreed with you. Healing surges as is do not work. The problem with making them per encounter is in the current model that would mean that classes would almost literally never be challenged: either you'd only be able to use 1/encounter, which kind of defeats the purpose behind this idea, or you'd be able to heal yourself from 1 HP to full in a fight. I figure there's two ways to handle this, the latter of which I'm strongly in favor of, but the former of which I feel are best suited for maintaing a DnD feel. (I'm stealing the second one for X20 even if you do use it, because this solves a problem I've been grappling with.)

....

2) My favorite but less DnD, have Healing surges function like consequences in FATE - you get the Hit Points back, but you also take a penalty of some kind. This could be as simple as fatigue/exhausted (if you wanted a MnM feel), or much more complex (can reduce speed by 10, loose ability to fly, lose use of one arm, take penalties to particular types of rolls) if you want to keep things in a more variable, flexibile, and realistic realm. The amount of HP restored (1/4th your total) would remain unchanged in this model, but players would have to decide if the consequences are worth the hit point restoration.

If healing surges were 1/fight (like second wind), defenders got an extra 1/fight, and leader heals were balanced against damage dealt, it might be possible to balance them. As is, here's the number of surges that the PHB1 classes had based on typical con scores (assuming, after racials, 18, 16, 14, 13, 10, 8 as a typical ability spread, and assuming that most characters will put their 14 into Con 9 times out of 10):

Cleric: 7+Con mod; 9
Fighter: 9+Con mod; 11 or 12
Paladin: 10+Con mod; 12
Ranger: 6+Con mod; 8
Rogue: 6+Con mod; 8
Warlock: 6+Con mod; 8 or 10
Warlord: 7+Con mod; 9
Wizard: 6+Con mod; 8 or 9

The point of this is that dividing by 4 (since 4E assumes 3 to 5 combats per day) gets you 2 surges per fight for most of the classes (with an extra 1 per fight or so for the defenders). If we were going off a 4E base, 2/fight would be fairly appropriate (and closes the difference between player and monster HP past the early levels, interestingly enough). We can talk about this more later; I don't want a Healing vs. Damage disparity to exist in the leaders, as that slows down combat and some groups end up resenting that.

#2, though, is a very interesting system. Like you say, it's less D&D, but I like how it can allow you to translate HP into injuries at a player's discretion. I really need to check out FATE.

I think this is a nice way to solve it, but I'd take it a step further. Instead of the division being casters/non casters, it should be by power sources - something like what we saw with psionics (where casters had a variety of abilities but a low resource pool to draw from to agument them), or ki pools we saw in pathfinder (where the base class had a set of abilities that were at will but could use their ki-pool to augment that.)

I'd LOVE to differentiate all the power sources. It is harder to balance, but it would be very cool.

Not much of a comment here, other than I'm glad to hear about this - I agree with this decision, ESPECIALLY because, from a design standpoint, it makes homebrewing classes 100s of times easier.

Precisely. The other advantage of it is it allows the spells to be iconic once more; powers in 4E stopped being iconic because they were limited to one class and they started prescribing "flavor is mutable" as a core feature, which further muddies the water.

I can't comment about how Essentials handled this, since by the time it came out I had lost pretty much all interest in 4e related products, but one of the great ways I've seen this handled is (again) pathfinder's variant classes. It allows you to replace existing class abilities with ones that fill a new but related role to the archetype of the core class.

Essentials made a striker Fighter (no mark, add Dex to damage), a striker Paladin (no mark, add Cha to damage), and a controller Ranger (no hunter's quarry, but very spiffy at-wills). I believe this is a good direction to explore, as I believe a class should tell you about your place in the world, and your background (just like race). If I want to play an longbowman who grew up in the military, Fighter seems like a better choice to me; I'm not a woodsman, I'm not a scout, I'm not a hunter. It will also allow classes to not have to work doubletime for things that they aren't for; I missed the Ranger being associated with the Druid; if knights get to be divine, then hunters should be primal (this is a big debate among gamers, though).

Tiers was one of the very, very few things 4e added that I liked and support. As for paragon paths and epic destines, I think a hybridization of how those worked and how prestige classes worked would be ideal - prestige classes are much more flexible and broad, but your core class would still advance. This would also (since you intend on 3.5 style multiclassing) paragon paths that aid in this hybridization without being overpowered.

Definitely. I want there to be a clear "nothing special" paragon path and epic destiny for those who just want to be their class. Paragon paths are a great place to supplement multiclassing, and to allow further specialization without taxing feats or making them more than they are.

6) Encounters and Utilities. Do we need to silo these still? I'm leaning towards yes.

If by silo you mean stick in a hole in the ground and make go away, then yes. If not, please elaborate. :)

Haha! Siloing specifically means separating attacks from utilities (more on this later). I like it because it means you don't weaken your character by focusing on utilities.

7) On encounter length: How long should an encounter be? This will determine how much damage players should deal on average, which will in turn determine how many encounter attacks the base wizard should have. After a certain point, I think low level encounters could become at-wills (like starting in paragon level), so that rather than losing knowledge of the first level spells, you master them. That should help cover the need for increased at-will damage. I'm leaning towards 8 to 10 rounds as standard encounter length, since it's a really nice number. I'd also like, again relatedly, for player and monster damage output to be comparable. Monsters have more hp than players because monsters don't have healing surges. Healing surges could also become a per-encounter deal.

Obviously that answers my last question, in that you do plan on keeping encounter powers around - a decision I don't agree with, but that's more from a personal taste than a "it's bad design" standpoint. I am behind the idea of lower level powers becoming at will, and 10 rounds is a good average for an encounter, partially because it is long enough to be interesting but not too long to drag on, and partially because it represents a full minute in real time - and outside of epic battles and hollywood, fights in the real world rarely last that long.

The comment about healing surges seems to contradict an earlier point - if you get one healing surge per encounter, then why not a set number you can use each day? Or did you mean something else?

I don't want daily anything. I'm looking at setting spells as at-will or per encounter (perhaps by spell or spell level), because then the rules aren't dictating how long the day has to be to remain balanced. If spells were daily again, then 1 fight per day makes the casters god, and 10 fights in a day makes the casters next to useless. I'd rather balance casters and noncasters between short and long fights, because that's far easier to control. I'd like a game to be able to run 10 encounters in the day if that's what the story dictates.

But I am looking at all the different structures I can. I'd prefer to leave them d20 esque, which means at least psudo-vancian, but that's fine. Kinda.

And this is where we get to the point where I strongly, strongly disagree with design. I hate the division between utility and attack spells - it makes the system much more combat focused and forces people to pick spells that deal damage. The Summoner I'm planning for Steerpike's Fimbulvinter game has only one damaging spell, and that's a cantrip. A friend of mine played a pure illusionist/buffer in a game I played in, and one of my favorite characters was a sorcerer that focused entirely on self-buffing to become a melee powerhouse and filled the fighter role despite having d4 HP, never wearing armor, and only using simple weapons.

Under this system, none of those characters would be even close to possible, because every other level they have no choice to pick up an attack spell, and would only have 3 utility spells. In addition, that model only means the caster gains a grand total of 4 class features, unless the level 1 class ability and "Build" abilities contain more than I'm assuming. This needs to be expanded upon, and honestly I'd toss out the spell progression entirely and try something more flexible, because right now it means every caster would pretty much play the same.

Not quite true. Summons are "attacks". Debuffs are "attacks". I'd even go as far as to say combative buffs should be in the "attack silo". I disagreed with 4E making the utilities bounce between combative utilities and social utilities (movement type utilities were useful both in and out of combat, though, which is good). But if my partners are firmly against siloing, and can convince me of a way to avoid it, then I'm perfectly fine with getting rid of it. Also, I'm more than happy to consider making those power entries "slots", and allowing characters to learn more than 1 thing for each slot (operating sort of like a sorcerer, picking what of what level they want to use). I would like to remain close to d20 and not go for mp for everyone unless we find that's the best way to create the feel and balance we're going for.

And yes, the level 1 "class ability" and "build ability" entries would include more than one thing. "Class abilities" are supposed to support the theme of the class, while the "build ability" would be a strongly role-centric ability to ensure that your Leader Wizard gets to feel like a leader (again, I'd like to allow for any class to do any role if that's what they want to do, at least where it makes sense).

I like the idea of low level casters needing to rely on cantrips and wands and cantrips having damage similar to one-handed weapons - my only objection here is outlined in the above paragraph.

This idea is really growing on me. It would let heroic casters feel suitably limited and also let their actual spells be big enough to feel magical, and by having their level 1 spells become at will at 11th level they would then feel super special. And really, back in 3E, at 9th level when you get your 5th level spells and you're sitting on like 8 1st level spell slots as a sorcerer, you really do start to feel like those magic missiles are endless (as long as you're using your 5th, 4th, and 3rd level slots for your big offensive powers).

I see potential here, and am very much in favor of spell slots vs. spells usable - while it's a very vancian system, it's still a system that's been proven to work and feels very comfortable and workable. It does need the multiclassing to be hammered out more - what are your thoughts on that so far?

Probably need to think of multiclassing as things go.

Now, what made multiclassers weak in 3E? It was purely spell slots, correct? If you were a 5/5 Fighter/Wizard, your 5d6 fireball was kind of worthless at 10th level, and you had to give up an attack to do it. If you could attack and use a 10th level slot in one round, you'd be acting like a 5th level fighter and a 5th level wizard at once, which the CR system says is a 7th level threat ... not balanced against 10th level threats, clearly. But if your caster level was determined by your character level, not class level, then the 5/5 fighter/wizard would have a 10d6 fireball, which would be just fine. By not having BAB, the 5/5 Fighter/Wizard would still attack like a 10th level Fighter; he'd just have a few less class abilities (so he'd probably not deal as much damage per attack), but he'd have spells to fall back on too.

By having the casters and noncasters operate under different principals, though (like having noncasters deal always Y damage and casters deal sometimes X or Z, where X < Y < Z), we might have a harder time balancing things. This was one advantage to 4E's "an attack is an attack" philosophy, but we all know that such precise balance left a bad taste in our mouth.

Now, if an at-caster-level 3rd level spell is as damaging as a 5th level spell, just that the 5th level spell is bigger and better, then it might be okay. Also, if the 5/5 fighter/wizard's fighter basic attacks can be weaker than the 10 fighter's suitably enough to be countered by his fewer wizard spells than the 10th level wizard, we could be in business with some semblance of balance.

---------

A PS on utilities: I think utilities should be purely defensive, movement, social, or otherwise non-combative. A utility that gives your allies +1 to hit and damage isn't a utility, that's a combat buff and should really be an attack. The game can be balanced on action economy, and thus utilities could primarily be move or minor actions; this way in the middle of combat, they don't get in the way of your attacks, and you don't feel bad for giving up an attack (the reason that core heals became minor actions in 4E). A buffing "attack" spell could be a minor action too, if the total benefit it would probably give in an encounter is approximately the difference between a spell and a cantrip ...

Similarly, magic items (far off in design, but we can think about them as they're related to this), could grant options when it comes to attacks, and not have to deal with x/day. A flaming sword, for example, could be balanced against a normal magic sword if it gave the wielder a new basic attack to do with it, rather than making basic attacks better. Like my references to M&M, options are significantly less powerful than separate abilities.

And a big thanks to everyone for their thoughts. Please don't think that I'll shoot down criticism of my ideas; if I wanted to work in a vacuum, I'd just make it myself. I just want to be convinced to change my opinions, and not just do so willy nilly.  :P

[Xathan]

Will do a longer piece by piece review later on, my minds kind of all over the place right now, but i wanted to respond to this bit:

A PS on utilities: I think utilities should be purely defensive, movement, social, or otherwise non-combative. A utility that gives your allies +1 to hit and damage isn't a utility, that's a combat buff and should really be an attack. The game can be balanced on action economy, and thus utilities could primarily be move or minor actions; this way in the middle of combat, they don't get in the way of your attacks, and you don't feel bad for giving up an attack (the reason that core heals became minor actions in 4E). A buffing "attack" spell could be a minor action too, if the total benefit it would probably give in an encounter is approximately the difference between a spell and a cantrip ...

If you put defensive abilities under "Attack" spells (renamed to combat spells), then I'd agree with your definitions.

However, my fundamental problem with it is simple: as it stands right now as a caster you HAVE to pick up combat abilities at certain levels, and CANNOT at other levels. In short, you are forced to have your class partially combat, partially not (or if we put defensive and movement under utility, then you could in theory make a class that's entirely combat, but not the other way around.) While it's rare to see someone build a caster that has almost no combat ability, it's something that's possible in 3.5, and I think giving players that option, even if it's rarely taken, is important - if the DM lets everyone know the game is going to be 90% court intrigue, why would you take a caster when you're forced to take a number of spells you'll almost never use? If you can pick up any spell at the new spell levels, then you can rely on your cantrips for that 10% of the time when combat does happen, and use the rest of your library for non-combat spells - or pick up a couple combat spells if you're worried about that 10% and focus mainly on utilities, or if you have multiple slots pick up just one attack spell and multiple non-attack spells...in short, what it does is expand character options and flexibility, and that's something that seems to be a design goal of Xev20.

Just my 2cp. :P Like you, I'm very opened to having my opinion changed, but right now I'm just not convinced that the split is the best way to go.

[Humabout]

I wish I had something to add here, but this all sounds like a matter of mechanics, and I don't know 4e at all.  :(

[Xeviat]

Doesn't matter if you know 4E; I'm looking at adapting 4E, and I think I can cram anything into d20 in one way or another. If there's a good idea that fits the feel, toss it out.

[Humabout]

1)  With you there! I dislike the per diem powers.  I can best wrap my brain around at-will powers or paying for powers from a pool of points.  Per encounter still feels artificial.

2)  Differentiation between all classes is good.  I use to enjoy different and interesting mechanical varients between classes.  I loved using invocations, spells, at-will/x-per-day powers, and feats to augment and differentiate different classes.  It gave each one its own character.  I'd strongly recommend digging up Tome of Magic and rifling through some of its experimental systems, too.  Also, for magic, look up Invocations from UA (it's also SRD); that fits your idea of rituals as opposed to spells nicely.

3)  Dunno how that worked in 4e, but a massive spell list is always awesome.  If you want more flexibility in your spell list, check out Arcana Evolved.  It's magic system is d20-based and freaking awesome.  Lots of flexibility, still vancian but not quite as mind-bending, and easily flavored.  Once a friend made me look at it, I never went back to standard spells again.

4)  I hate railroading.  That's all I'm going to say about this.  You can draw your own conclusions about my thoughts on anything regarding this subject from that statement alone.

5)  Why not just make a 20+ level class and offer lots of prestige classes?  Tiers can be built into the classes themselves.  Again, check out AE sometime.  It used a 25-level class where the last 5 levels really blasted a class into the Epic Level Handbook range without a lot of the oddities of that book.

6)  What are these?

7)  Um, I'm kind of brutal and old-school here.  I tend to just chuck whatever seems fitting for the location at the PCs and it's up to them to decide how to handle it.  Running away counts as "handling it," and a situation may require that for survival.  Players are get fair warning in my games, but death is always a possibility, as is TPK.  Encounters generally last as long as it takes to either run away or kill everything.  In Gurps, that can vary greatly; I've heard 4e was extremely engineered.  In 3e, I never really checked how long they lasted.

[Xeviat]

If you put defensive abilities under "Attack" spells (renamed to combat spells), then I'd agree with your definitions.

However, my fundamental problem with it is simple: as it stands right now as a caster you HAVE to pick up combat abilities at certain levels, and CANNOT at other levels. In short, you are forced to have your class partially combat, partially not (or if we put defensive and movement under utility, then you could in theory make a class that's entirely combat, but not the other way around.) While it's rare to see someone build a caster that has almost no combat ability, it's something that's possible in 3.5, and I think giving players that option, even if it's rarely taken, is important - if the DM lets everyone know the game is going to be 90% court intrigue, why would you take a caster when you're forced to take a number of spells you'll almost never use? If you can pick up any spell at the new spell levels, then you can rely on your cantrips for that 10% of the time when combat does happen, and use the rest of your library for non-combat spells - or pick up a couple combat spells if you're worried about that 10% and focus mainly on utilities, or if you have multiple slots pick up just one attack spell and multiple non-attack spells...in short, what it does is expand character options and flexibility, and that's something that seems to be a design goal of Xev20.

Just my 2cp. :P Like you, I'm very opened to having my opinion changed, but right now I'm just not convinced that the split is the best way to go.

See, I guess I just don't consider D&D a good system for a 90% court intrigue game. I mean what is the fighter going to do there? I've always thought that skills would be the best place to work non-combat in; give the fighter every opportunity to have some skills that could prove useful, such as intimidate (I'm a big scary fighter who knows how to throw it around), history (I'm a military scholar, your idea is stupid, they tried that with the Marzipan Gambit and it failed), or even stretching things for stuff like insight (I'm a warrior true and true, and I can see by his stance that he doesn't mean his threats) or perception (this is clearly a set up, guys).

All of the fighter's combative abilities are going to mean squat in a social game, so why should some classes get to trade in their combat for social? Why not have everyone have equal combat, and give everyone equal out of combat? If everyone gets the same number of discretionary skills (either points or trained, whichever works best), and if we keep something like rituals or martial ... ugh those cool things for physical skills ... then the out of combat game can be just as detailed.

Now, if we were to abandon the idea of having different "rates" for non-casters and caster damage in combat, we could explore having utilities be weighted the same as combat. It would be about opportunity cost in a fight: do you want to move into a better position, or just make an inefficient attack now? If both casters and non-casters were using some sort of resource pool (endurance and mana), then many noncasters could have utility in exploration (athletic fighter is good at climbing and such). Really, as long as each has a basic at-will type attack (cantrip or standard weapon smack) and something limited to do big (a mastered spell or a power strike), then filling out the rest of someone's options with utility would be fine; you can build M&M characters just like this.

Doing anything vancian, especially if fighters deal 10 damage on average and wizards deal 5 sometimes and 15 other times, will make it very difficult to balance a system where a wizard could "intentionally hose" himself by taking nothing but social utility spells before walking into a dungeon. Mana may be the way to go.

-------------

Humabout, I'm not familiar with the Invocations from UA (odd, as I read them), and I"d like to go back and relook at Arcana Evolved (I wasn't aware it had a "simplified" magic system).

To your 6 question, utilities were non-attack powers that were set aside for some of the reasons I've discussed here. As for "per encounter" feeling artificial, it can be described as short hand for an mp system when the pool is simple (like 4) and each power costs 1 and can only be used once (like old vancian spells). Counting points isn't hard, especially as we're counting HP the whole time, though.

Tiers are built into the classes themselves. Mostly, they're story constructs, but they also establish when characters gain things that would have been out of place or game breaking at lower levels (4E doesn't give out more than 1 round of flight until the mid paragon level, as they're worried of it's balance before melee creatures get really big).

[Xeviat]

Haven't had a reply for a bit. I'm having a hard time thinking of how to balance attacks in a system where they aren't separated from utilities. It seems like standard actions will need to be equal across classes, and have utilities largely restricted to move and minor actions. Most of the utilities a fighter or a rogue would use would be exploration (move) or social, and social actions that could be used in combat (like bluff) are comparable to attacks (even if they don't deal damage).

I'd really like to be talked out of this, though. If combat averages 10 rounds, then a limited attack that deals 10 damage would be comparable to +1 damage per attack, so a differentiation could be built between fighters and wizards. But if a wizard chooses to take utilities with their spells instead of attacks, we'd end up with the fighter now dealing more damage; and the fighter really doesn't have the option to take utilities instead of attacks.

Also, being able to choose utilities instead of attacks means combat will take longer.

Again, I want to be talked out of the attack/utility split, but I'm having a hard time seeing a way to do it.

[sparkletwist]

I want to be talked out of the attack/utility split, but I'm having a hard time seeing a way to do it.

My suggestion to remove the attack/utility split is simply to not have one. I know that sounds kind of stupid, but what I mean is, give the Wizard a lot of incantations that are good for buffing, crowd control, or the like in battle, and also have utilitarian function. Things like Prestidigitation, Grease, Fly... the list goes on and on. Summoning like Summon Monster can also be useful both for having a meatshield in battle and for having a lackey outside of battle. It seems like there's only a strong "attack/utility split" if we assume that Wizards have to be blasters, and there's nothing saying they do-- indeed, most of the really optimized Wizards (at least in 3e/PF) don't blast at all.

To be honest, I think you're thinking of wizards in an overly combat-oriented way that contributed to a lot of the "blandness" of 4e. If you want to assume that a Fighter is the guy who hits someone for N damage every round for R rounds, and the Wizard is the guy that can blow off a spell that does N*R damage once, that's one way of looking at it, but that assumes the Wizard is going to be a straight blaster and have essentially the same role as a fighter-- straight up hurting people. On the other hand, if we assume the Wizard is the guy with lots of handy spells, some of which just happen to be good for combat as well, then it both removes a lot of the split between attacks and utilities. It also solves the problem of having to balance everything out mathematically, because the Wizard have a couple of blasts for maybe two or three times the Fighter's usual damage per round or so, assuming that during the other rounds the Wizard will be doing something utilitarian instead.

[Xeviat]

If every spell could have combative and utilitarian value, that would be nice, but when I look at the 3E spell list, I don't think this is possible.

But I don't think the wizard would spend their standard actions for utility if given the option to spend every slot on attacks; whether or not these attacks are blasts, debuffs, or area control is up to the individual leader. I think combat and out of combat should be addressed separately, but this could be a divide between us. I don't want the Fighter to be 100% combat either, but I want everyone to be comparable within combat. I also want everyone to feel useful out of combat, though there's more room for variety there (as someone can be good when dealing with social situations, where as others are better at dealing with the environment).

My idea on how to remove the attack/utility split would be to make sure everyone has something they can do at-will for X (cantrips, basic weapon attacks) and something they can do in a limited fashion for 1.5X (like spells or endurance costing maneuvers). Like M&M characters, wizards could learn new attack spells as alternates to their other spells. Utility effects, whether they be spells or a fighter's specials, could be detached from these slots. Would these casters feel like D&D without having ever growing spell lists?

I'm just thinking form my experience. In 3E, the party sorcerer was the caster we had for the bulk of our experience. He used the vast majority of his spells for offense (though we often joked that his 2nd level slots were purely defensive, like blur and mirror image). When people weren't pulling their weight in combat, the group felt it as a whole. We had a ranger in the party who was largely ineffective initially (Str 10, Dex 20, weapon finesse, twfing), and only found a place in the game when he began to focus on Disarms and Trips (and later when we changed some feats so he could deal reasonable damage); on the other hand, we had a barbarian in the party who ruled over combat without having to try.

My games are going to have a good amount of combat. I want combat to balance against non-combat. I want to figure out how to balance combat before I balance the rest. Is that the wrong path? Am I losing you all with that goal?

---------

I spent some time recently staring at the 3E wizard. We were fine with the wizard not getting class abilities; their class abilities were their spells, after all.

One of the things I have distilled from the complaints about the attack/utility split is that it doesn't allow too many utilities for wizards, who often rely upon them for problem solving and other effects.

What if the heroic wizard looked more like this:

Levels   Ability
1          Class Abilities, Build Abilities, Attack Spell (lvl 1), Utility Spell (lvl 1)
2          Attack Spell (lvl 1)
3          Utility Spell (lvl 1)
4          Attack Spell (lvl 2)
5          Utility Spell (lvl 2)
6          Attack Spell (lvl 2)
7          Utility Spell (lvl 2)
8          Attack Spell (lvl 3)
9          Utility Spell (lvl 3)
10        Attack Spell (lvl 3), Utility Spell (lvl 3)

Other casters may end up giving up some of those utility slots for locked in class abilities. Maybe different wizard builds would select their spells from different lists, or there could be some requirement to choose half your powers from your build's list (like specialist wizards).

This seems fairly comparable to 3E wizards; they gained at least 1 new spell slot every level (though the odd levels were more important). I could squeeze an ability or two in there, like the Wizard's bonus feats, to ensure that they continue to gain new flavor.

Rituals still stand outside of this, allowing wizards to tackle many other non-encounter based effects (lumping combat, social, and exploration scenes into encounters). Perhaps wizards should gain a number of free rituals each day, so they can feel especially wizardy.

[Xeviat]

Again, this is all still up in the air at this point. I'm only here because I want to be swayed. I apologize that I get very entrenched in my opinions.