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Path: ...!Xl.tags.giganews.com!local-1.nntp.ord.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 07 May 2024 22:48:08 +0000 From: Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd Subject: Capping Buffs / Penalties Date: Tue, 07 May 2024 18:48:06 -0400 Message-ID: <5pal3jprih8ccg51n2fcqr5n5v1g11kr5k@4ax.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 2.0/32.652 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 51 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-4I3Z0HQxYHMnfF256D6g7b7lcyT9CZNDrkS5bVNS+Xgg2g9NpcuHDoCE+jUvWzAVZbcnAnEqCNYoYi4!7rikSt5kAgIojpEEhVksgd3wrNvWIKf3vLWh1ZDR1eNE66CUPthEFzKzgLJJ6rkrR2kSSRY= X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 3384 It's something of a meme, that certain character classes (*cough* bard *cough*)are incredibly over-powered because - with sufficient buffs - their skill set can be combined in ways that give them incredibly high bonuses (buffs) to their die-rolls. For some, this is one of the things that makes D&D a lot of fun, but these are the sort of things that make me look at 'new D&D' as being almost comic-book superhero in style; a far cry from the murder-worlds of classic D&D that were my first (and favorite) experience with the game. Of course, not all players will abuse the system in this way, and not all DMs will be so lenient as to allow a simple dice roll to allow patently impossibly results (there's a difference between letting the players try anything, and letting them do anything just because they've gotten a sufficiently high result on a die-roll.* But maybe one way to avoid the problem is just to cap the bonuses (buffs) you can attach to anyone roll? In our campaigns, we already were sort of doing that, although it still allowed some occasional disturbingly high bonuses. We divided buffs into three categories: natural, magic and situational, and decided that you couldn't apply more than +5 from each category to any single roll. Natural would be anything integral to the character (usually skill or stat buffs, or equipment); magic is anything from spells or items, and situational would be any advantage you might get from the situation you were in (for instance, leaping over a wide chasm when there's an updraft might give you a bonus). Our campaigns were fairly low-powered so we rarely topped out on all three caps (+5 to +7 tended to be the max. I don't think we ever got more than +10). For fairness, it worked in the other direction too, though. Penalties were limited to -15; -5 in each of the three categories. However, DM Fiat allowed the Dungeon Master to just flatly forbid the success of certain actions regardless of dice rolls.** What do you think? Are you fine with RAW and uncapped buffs/penalties? Or do you limit your players to (or are you, as a player fine with) maximum buffs in your game? * I don't care that you just rolled two natural twenties and have a +14 bonus, you can't fly by flapping your arms really fast, Dave! ** I don't have to roll any dice for it, Dave. You can't catch a castle!