Monday, July 28, 2014

The Numbers Game

I've always felt there's just way too much math and calculations in pen-and-paper games. The world of mobile and casual video game development and pen-and-paper games is about as far apart as I have ever seen them.

One one side, we have pen-and-paper, where calculating a basic to-hit can send you down a rabbit-hole of modifiers, situational considerations, character feats interrupting your train of thought, AC considerations, special defenses for monsters, and a whole lot of other "no wait!" thought-process stoppages before we can all agree on the number that needs to be thrown. Seriously, it makes me wish for a non-AC non-feat based system where that character has a flat chance to hit anything, and then when we hit we figure things out.

Feats are a huge problem. I love them, but they are used way too much to interrupt combat's mental flow. If I have "enhanced shield use" I get a +2 bonus to AC versus flanking opponents type stuff. It get maddening for high level play, and feat bloat and the rising complexity of the mental process needed to run high level characters is the number one reason my group dislikes high-level play in both D&D 4 and Pathfinder. I can't understand why no one has seen this and address this through design, it's the multi-feat elephant in the room, and when you get monsters with special defenses and feat-like abilities involved, the whole system just grinds to a halt for our group at high levels.

Let's go back to mobile and casual games. They almost purposefully hide numbers from you, and there are times when I wish I could see the math. It's an extreme comparison, but it's a good one. If casual games are getting rid of math to streamline games, I feel it's a valid consideration for pen-and-paper.

Let's examine the true purpose of a to-hit. It does two things, it reduces character DPS, and creates uncertainty when an attack is made. Assume another game says "characters always hit" unless a monster purposefully activates a special defense (dodge) and makes a special save, or some other external force is applied to the attack. This is just one example, there are probably plenty of other ways to do this.

It feels like a legacy of not asking questions why, and accepting further complexity as the answer for everything. It feels like one of the weaknesses of 3.x D&D, a system built upon a thousand interactions of factors X and Y, and that only gets more complicated as more books are added. I feel this is one area where D&D 5 may also fall to, as the base system is simple, as the calls for more flexibility rise, the inevitable (but welcome) add-ons will make the system the same heavy complex behemoth as previous editions.

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