WotC says, "Baby, come back! You know I didn't mean it!"

[Brian]

Winning move:

D&D5 can also be d20 compatible, so you can import Pathfinder stuff.

[Merc]

Where'd it say it would be d20 compatible, out of curiosity?

[Brian]

I'm not sure.  I don't see it in the thread.

Or did you think I was making a definitive statement, instead of just a supposition?

[Anastasia]

Winning move:

D&D5 can also be d20 compatible, so you can import Pathfinder stuff.

That would be a fascinating gambit for them to pull, if nothing else. Try and co-opt Pathfinder's backwards compatibility claims, eh?

[Carthrat]

It might corner the market, but... I don't think I'd like it, at least. d20's been done to death. A system that's close enough to the current iterations to be easily₁ backwards compatible doesn't seem like it'd be different or innvoative enough to be actually worth buying.

1: this is important, because it's one thing to port stuff over (e.g. converting certain 2e things to 3e, like say the wild mage table or certain magic item tropes) and another thing to just reprint the same set of rules.

[Dracos]

Backwards compatibility is a mess.  Technically Pathfinder and 3.5 are backwards compatible but that's generally a bad idea and I'm pretty sure everyone here has encountered at least one reason why.  There are a lot of nasty problems in 3.x, 3.5 and also probably still in pathfinder.

Pathfinder's strength isn't it's backwards compatibility.  It's the fact that the system is 95 percent a system people already know and like.  So even though I don't think most people go into pathfinder with a 'let's pull in this splat from D&D that I like' they instead have 'hey, I already almost know the rules, so even if I'm wrong on some fine details, I can start playing!'

It'd be a plus certainly (It's nice sometimes), but what would be a real coup is a mechanical setup that is familiar, easy to learn, with good world-side association and limitations that leave everyone in good shape for long haul dungeon crawling without "Okay, going Supernova here."

[Carthrat]

Let me think of a couple things I'd like to see...

>logarithmic power curve. As levels get higher, the difference between them should get smaller; to me this means a very deliberately slowing of some of the fundamentals, like HP growth/saves/attack bonus/etc. At the top end, there should be less in terms of raw power gains and more in terms of breadth of skill.

>someone paying attention to the action economy. The best way to approach breaking this game (any almost any game!) is to figure out how to take more actions than the other guy. I swear this is true in almost every RPG I've played. Remember old Haste? Or, say, Celerity, to WW guys out there? Yeah. Design guidelines need to think about this. (And do fun things with it instead of have a really rigid 'act once, only!' ethos.)

>mechanics+abilities reflect world. Some abstraction is always necessary, but ideally, I should be able to look at most actions/abilities, see the mechanics, and infer what's actually happening from that.

>Less class, more feat. I'd rather have a small set of classes and a large set of feats (or feat-like things; I'd count skills as a feat-like thing, or perks/merits/whatever.) I think when you have lots of both, the interactions between them get very unwieldy. Feats are compact, easier to design and deploy. And I am okay with class-specific feats!

>attn. to the marvel vs. capcom 2 school of balance: It's better for everything to be broken than everything to be boring. (But easy on the viper beams.)

[Dracos]

That is an excellent post, Sirrah Carth.  *claps*

[Dracos]

I will say "Categories" beat "Specific".

One of the better choices of 3rd ed was saying 'Hey, here are these magical bonus categories.  Things should end up in one of them and they don't stack with each other'.  It meant every time something new got made, it generally fit into that framework.

"Requires Fighter level 4" = BOO.  "Requires Martial Class level 4" = Yay.  Why?  Because the moment they publish a splatbook revealing a Swashbuckling Pirate, Raging Samurai, or other type, it can just be dubbed 'hey this is a martial class.  All those feats labeled martial?  They can be bought'.

Pathfinder's typed base class (You are a Monk, which is one of these seventeen classes that share 50 percent or more of their design) is a pretty good route for this as well, but I prefer type tagging really as it is more flexible and clear.  Pick a few simple types and let them get slapped onto classes to grant access to feat categories (Iron Heroes played around with this kind of notion but buried it under giant trees).

[Corwin]

I'd like to see a few of the things that I think Pathfinder and 4e did well.

-Incentives to staying with the base classes. I really like the idea of the paladin, but I don't think there's anyone on this board who would consider a build with more than 5-6 paladin levels to be worthwhile. Even in gestalt. Just what does it say about the coolness of your base class if no one wants it after a few basic levels?

Pathfinder does this by giving you bonuses. 3.5 basically punished you via an XP penalty if you deviated from your favored class, no one liked it and people tend to ignore it. Pathfinder rewards you for sticking with it by giving you +hp or +skills or +spells known and a variety of other thematic bonuses you can pick from your class/race/general list.

4e gives you an incentive as well by having your powers grow with your level. Having dynamic powers is a lot more fun, and it gives you something to look forward to.

-More versatility. I think Drac's onto this with the whole requirements part in the post above, and I remember Rat going about how he wished regular melee classes got the ability to rededicate their fighting feats (say weapon focus: lance) like ToB allows. Casters have more vesatile options than melee types, and there's only so many ways you can hit a dude with your sword.

Pathfinder helps fix this by streamlining the 'special attack options' mess and adding new ones (I actually think the new ones are boring, but it's a step in the right direction). If looking up the goddamn grapple rules doesn't pause the game for half an hour, it's now a viable option! And since Pathfinder reduces size bonuses and introduces a variety of item-boosted bonuses (like say deflection to your defense against these maneuvers), everyone can now do this! ...except they can't. Because while, unlike 3.5, you no longer need a specialized build with a zillion to your roll to beat the other guy, you still get hit with AoOs. Still, if there is a change so that an AoO doesn't disrupt your attempted maneuver and you only take damage, it really will become viable.

4e does this by immediate interrupts. I think those make the game more interesting, once you get used to them. Rat was talking about how extra actions make breaking the game easy. I suppose it's possible to abuse this as well. But if you have a reserve of finite blocks or dodges that you can deploy at the last moment as a base mechanic instead of, say, a Devotion feat or a spell or an item, I think it would enhance the gaming experience.

-Let's make hero points or whichever they're called a core mechanic, because they're fun. No need to have any feats or abilities tied to them. Those distract from the innate coolness of these dignity points.

-More basic versatility for casters. Yes, this. I'm not talking about being able to teleport twice as much per day, but geez, how are you an epic wizard if you can only use Mage Hand five times a day? Were you dropped on your head as a child? You can reshape natural order more than that in a day. Also, wizards with crossbow, plinking away uselessly at the lower levels after they run out of their spells. That's boring, so just give them their poor cantrips for free.

-More feats. In fact, I'd split feats into mechanically-useful feats and into flavor feats, and just give people a lot of the latter. If you need to choose between Power Attack and Arcane Strike or that feat that gives you better diplomacy with elves, which one will you pick as one of your seven? ...yeah. Let's change that, be decent at what we do AND have our rich fun cultural background! It's dumb to make you choose between being able to SPOT DANGER and representing your old profession as a farmer. The game is supposed to be fun, I don't see how choosing to be true to your backstory and, inadvertantly, worse mechanically as a result is any sort of fun. 2e had two pools to draw skills from, so something like that is a good start?

[Brian]

4e does this by immediate interrupts. I think those make the game more interesting, once you get used to them. Rat was talking about how extra actions make breaking the game easy. I suppose it's possible to abuse this as well. But if you have a reserve of finite blocks or dodges that you can deploy at the last moment as a base mechanic instead of, say, a Devotion feat or a spell or an item, I think it would enhance the gaming experience.

I think the point wasn't 'breaking the game' as much as, "'I do this' guy gets 50 actions while you only get one.  Who's playing more?"  Game breaking is an afterthought to the 'well, this isn't fun,' aspect.

-Let's make hero points or whichever they're called a core mechanic, because they're fun. No need to have any feats or abilities tied to them. Those distract from the innate coolness of these dignity points.

All the cool GMs houserule it anyway, so yeah -- this makes a great deal of sense to me.  Hero points are fun!

-More feats. In fact, I'd split feats into mechanically-useful feats and into flavor feats, and just give people a lot of the latter. If you need to choose between Power Attack and Arcane Strike or that feat that gives you better diplomacy with elves, which one will you pick as one of your seven? ...yeah. Let's change that, be decent at what we do AND have our rich fun cultural background! It's dumb to make you choose between being able to SPOT DANGER and representing your old profession as a farmer. The game is supposed to be fun, I don't see how choosing to be true to your backstory and, inadvertantly, worse mechanically as a result is any sort of fun. 2e had two pools to draw skills from, so something like that is a good start?

What?  Second edition had proficiences--  Oh, I see.  Weapon Proficiencies and Non-Weapong Proficiencies.

So you'd like to see feats split into, 'Combat Feats,' and 'Non-Combat Feats'?  I do like the idea--  I can see several issues with it, but they almost all boil down to 'dungeon crawlers will argue to trade their NCFs for CFs.'  The second one is, 'what about feats that can legitimately apply to both?'  (I don't feel those are insurmountable.)  I think that idea is a solid one for (at the very least) an optional rule.  I'd use it, absolutely!

In your example above, if you get 7 feats, you're probably going to dump them all in +to combat.  But if the GM says, 'pick 5 combat feats and 2 non-combat feats', then it's a different ballgame.

Strongly agree. :)

[Merc]

-Let's make hero points or whichever they're called a core mechanic, because they're fun. No need to have any feats or abilities tied to them. Those distract from the innate coolness of these dignity points.

All the cool GMs houserule it anyway

Dune doesn't! Are you saying he isn't cool? ;p

I do like hero points also, as an aside.

[Brian]

Dune doesn't! Are you saying he isn't cool? ;p

I do like hero points also, as an aside.

As much as I like Dune, we have nearly diametrically opposed views on some aspects of gaming.  Plus, I'm not sure you really need hero points if you're already going gestalt. >_>;

[Merc]

Plus, I'm not sure you really need hero points if you're already going gestalt. >_>;

Blasphemy. When dealing with Hatbot, one ALWAYS needs hero points.

[VySaika]

I use both! It works out fairly well. But usual disclaimer about my games largely being solo games and thus not really counting.