Behind Closed Doors

I have frequently seen Storytellers make what I consider to be a mistake, specifically that if it happens off screen anything can happen.  Established powerful characters can be beaten by established weak characters, master locks can be picked by novice thieves and son on.  This leads to a feeling of an arbitrary universe and a sense of helplessness as the pcs can't be everywhere at once and know that where they aren't any accomplishments they have made can be taken away.  We saved that village and then the dm decided fuck that and destroyed it once we were gone. 

A common reason for this is to fuel story, but with just a little forethought the story is even better if the universe isn't arbitrary.  It is fine to undo a players actions offscreen, but have it make sense and mean something.  If a well fortified town is destroyed the pcs should likely be afraid of anything that can do that.  If a goblin horde destroys Waterdeep playes can't take the game as seriously.  If a legitimate enemy managed to do the same thing it should raise a lot of questions, but as the mystery is unraveled it will be much better than an arbitrary dm's whims. 

The other common reason for this is antagonism.  If this is the case I'm afraid there's next to no worthwhile advice I can give other than don't play with an antagonistic dm and don't be an antagonistic dm.  No good can come of it, the dm can always win and it shouldn't inflate his ego that as the literal master of a universe he can squash some ants in said universe. 

When the world makes sense players will make plans that involve npcs as established facts can be counted on.  In real life we make our choices based on who we can trust and our predictions for how things will work out.  If it was a known fact that places you can't see follow strange and unknowable laws we wouldn't trust anything we weren't currently watching, and just like us neither will the pcs.  By making the world and characters in it consistent you open the door to politics, large scale battles, and the idea that the players are in a real world. 

Dragon Age Pen and Paper

I started looking at the Dragon Age Pen an Paper RPG and while it several regards it isn't perfect it has one thing that I think D&D lacks.  Rolling the dice is fun.  It was something I experienced with Earthdawn, a gimmick to the dice makes every roll more enjoyable.  In DA the system is to roll 3d6 one of which is a different color/size from the other two.  If the dice come up in doubles and equal or surpass the target number the result of the different die determines how many special points can be spent on the action.  This makes every roll exciting and even after the "crit" parallel decisions must be made.  In Earthdawn every die that is rolled at its max you roll again as many times as it happens.  Of course the drawback being that monsters get this too.  In D&D crits are exciting, but rare (I will note that wild sorcerers get a slice of the interesting dice roll pie).  At low enough levels I call every max damage roll a crit as a joke.  Little things like Exploding dice and doubles meaning something make the whole game a bit more fun.

Unique Play

One of the things that I really appreciate about 4th edition D&D is that the classes often play very differently from each other.  I must note that in all of this I am not talking about essentials classes, I am less studied on the essential classes and some of them were built to be simple and thus less unique in play style.  Each defender has a different marking system and a different form of punishment for violation of their mark.  Leaders have some clear similarities in that their base heals all work similarly, but the differences in what they bring to the table can be huge.  Druid's partial melee control game separates them from the rest of the controllers and the control through damage mechanic can be seen in the wizard more clearly than the others.  Strikers on the other hand have some of the least interesting play styles within their ranks.  Not to say that all strikers are boring, just that a couple have boring mechanics.

Ranger and rogue are the worst offenders as far as boring play styles go.  Rangers quarry and then proceed to hit their quarry preferably with frost weapons and the same goes for rogue.  Artful dodgers at least end up being mobile which makes them feel a little different from the rest of the rogues, but all in all they do what every striker does, try and get combat advantage and hit a guy.  Avengers on the other hand try to set up interesting lose lose situations or gain a benefit from specific positioning in combat.  Night stalker assassins only get bonus damage if they segregate their enemies.  Barbarians charge a lot and monks built in movement leads to a very mobile striker.  Warlocks have control elements built in.  Cosmic sorcerers may well change their tactics with their phases, but the rest mostly just aim to AoE the biggest pack of enemies dumb enough to clump up.  At the end of the day sneak attack, sorcerous power and quarry are not interesting mechanically.  Warlock curse while very similar to quarry actually does add to the play of the class as the rewards for a cursed target dying leads to the party choosing attacks differently so that the warlock can benefit from their actions.  Some may mention that the rogue gets preferential treatment for flanking, but once paragon hits and the frost comes out that more or less vanishes. 

A couple classes are actually made to be a different experience even when played multiple times.  To be clear I mean from a mechanics standpoint, of course from a role-playing standpoint no class dictates that you must play each character the same way.  I could play at least two clerics with almost no feeling of overlap mechanically.  I could play several warlords.  I could not play more than one rogue.  Most defenders were built to be able to reach striker or near striker level damage so each defender has at least two viable options for multiple characters.  Barbarian at least in stat line up offers three playable characters (even if whirling has some mechanical mistakes).  Which brings me to another point, Barbarian has 4 options and 3 stat line ups warden and sorcerer have 4 options and 2 stat line ups.  I feel that a different stat line up can lead to drastically different builds and thus more available replay value for the class.  Each time a stat lineup copy is made I lament for those stat lineups that could have been.  Maybe str dex or str int warden would have some neat tricks.  I can't imagine it would harm balance greatly for such a thing to exist.  That said I can see that by blah blah power 2 every stat combo would be represented (assuming two paths per book) and that perhaps some stat combos should be rare (for instance con is a very strong secondary stat).  I know I have seen players puzzle over what to play not because of a bounty of options, but rather a feeling that they have, "been there" and, "done that" and see this as a way to open up replay of classes to these people.

Unified Systems

For the record the majority of this will be written in regards to 4th edition D&D even though I feel it applies equally to all gaming systems that hold a high regard for game balance.

In 3rd ed there was a chart in the DMG suggesting the amount of damage that a spell of any given level could deal given its area/range.  Things like this help make the game more reasonable.  For instance it can be concluded that lvl 1 encounters should never do more than 3(W) damage and when they do they come at a cost as can be seen in Paladin's Heedless Fury (why does a defender get such a move?) or the Barbarian's Avalanche Strike.

If games were built with these guidelines it would be better for the game as a whole.  Power creep would be easier to spot, knowing that powers tend to be of approximately the same power would be nice especially for new players, and best of all players/dms could make new powers with far less concern that they are breaking the game.

Damage is of course the easiest thing to balance as utility is very hard to place in a balance spectrum.  For instance flight seems better than climbing, but they become very similar in areas with low ceilings.  How good a -2 or +2 to hit is extremely variable based on the current encounter.  Adding a healing surge at the cost of damage is a complicated trade.

So while I believe these unified systems are superior I admit that it is difficult to achieve, specifically in regard to feats.  That said the utter absence of a unified system is clearly bad for the game.  It leads to powers, feats, class features, and magic items that far outstrip other options.  In my perfect (and somewhat unrealistic) world optimization boards would be largely unnecessary.  Each option should be a good option so that playing even the same race/class combo multiple times can be a fulfilling option.  I feel few game designers share my dream.  In several cases simple arithmetic can tell that powers are unbalanced.  I've never been sure how things like these get on to anything other than scratch paper let alone published books.

Racial feat design

One of my favorite racial feats in the game right now is Hellfire Blood.  By itself it isn't all that special, but what it does to the game is what I think several racial feats should do.  It makes Tiefling worth a second look for any class regardless of whether they have the proper racial stats for it or not.  Maybe they end up terrible anyways, but the fact that the entire class roster is open to them despite their pure mental stat layout is far more interesting than the majority of racial feats out there.

I understand that as a game designer you don't want to spend forever making a feat that only a limited number of players will ever use.  That said 90% of racial feats are frankly not worth a feat slot.  To add to that I understand that overpowered racial feats draw away from other options so undershooting does less damage than overshooting.  There is a Tiefling feat that could go several sessions without ever seeing its relatively marginal benefits come up once called Cunning Ambusher.

On the balance level Hellfire Blood only works with fire attacks, which a flaming weapon deals with quickly.  But using a flaming weapon removes the option of the dreaded frost weapon or even the lesser powered (without building/party building) lightsaber (radiant weapon).  What it does do is very closely emulate a +2 to an accuracy stat.  If other races had feats of similar scope to Hellfire Blood 4th edition almost certainly would be a more interesting game.  Copy and paste with necrotic for revenants/shadar would work just as well.

On the other hand I feel sometimes that Draconic Arrogance and Elemental Empowerment do too much.  Any wizard who wants to pretend he is a striker is better off as a Genasi than any other race by a long shot.  Several classes (fighter in particular) would rather be a Dragonborn than any other race because of a single feat.  These make the game less interesting.  In stead of opening options they close off options by outdistancing alternatives by so much that they seem useless.  People may feel that they are limited enough in their use that they don't break the game and I understand the argument, but I can't help but feel that I never consider any race other than Genasi for wizard (in my powerbuilding thought experiments) and the Dragonborn Iron Vanguard is a beast defensively and offensively.