Foundation Maths

Probably the first time the mathematical elegance of 3e was shown to be problematic in use came the first time a PC cast Bull's Strength. It seems such a simple spell, with a nice, clear function - it gives the character a bonus to his Strength score.

(This spell was one of the ones changed in 3.5e. In 3e, it gives a 1d4+1 enhancement bonus to Str for hours; in 3.5e and PF it gives a +4 enhancement bonus for minutes.)

The problem is that applying a bonus to the character's Strength score generally applies a smaller bonus to the character's Strength modifier, which then cascades across the character sheet - several skills are affected, as are attack rolls, and damage rolls (but not all attack or damage rolls). Played by the book, Bull's Strength is really quite nasty.

(Of course, the spell also hits the problem I mentioned previously with the 'stacking' rules - if the character is also wearing gauntlets of ogre power, the calculations just became that bit harder.)

Given the hassles of handling things "by the book", most groups instead eyeball it - they work out what the change in modifier is, and then apply it to rolls on the fly. This tends to be kinda-sorta okay - occasionally the bonus might be applied incorrectly or forgotten, but it's a pretty minor loss.

But try doing the same with ray of enfeeblement, which applies a Strength penalty to characters. It should work just the same, right? Except that, being a penalty rather than a bonus, players have no incentive to obsessively track it. They may not even be consciously be cheating, but it is by no means uncommon for them to forget (or 'forget') to apply a penalty as they go.

As far as I can see, the root of the problem lies with applying the modifier to the character's Strength score. See, some elements of the character exist in the game purely (or mostly) as 'partial sum' values - they're the foundational elements that are then totalled up to give the final modifier.

(That is, a character's attack bonus is BAB + Str mod + Feat bonus + item bonus + ... The items I've just listed would be the foundational elements, while the total is the key value that matters in-play.)

In order to speed up play, then, values that change in-play should never be applied to these foundational elements, as doing so will cause a cascade of changes across the character sheet (which is fine if you're using an electronic character sheet, but not if the game can't assume you will). Instead, they should only ever apply to the 'top level' bonuses that matter in play. And, moreover, the in-play modifiers should always stack with the total bonus listed on the character sheet, regardless of what combination of foundations have been added to it.

For example:

Bull's Strength: This spell grants the character a +2 bonus on Strength checks, Althetics skill checks, and melee damage rolls. It lasts for 1 minute.

And Another Thing...

One thing I didn't list amongst my 'cascade' of changes due to bull's strength was encumbrance. This is another area where the maths of the system seem nice and simple, but in play they turn into a bit of a nightmare:

In theory, all you do is total up the weight of everything you're carrying, compare it against some Str-based thresholds, and you're done.

The problem is that the game (all pre-4e editions; not sure about 4e) counts encumbrance down to 0.1 pounds, an extremely small amount. The effect of this is that every time your character stops for a meal, every time he fires his bow, and every time he picks up even a single coin, his encumbrance value changes slightly. And, of course, any time his Strength changes, all the thresholds change.

Again, most groups handle this by handwaving it, allowing characters to carry "a reasonable amount", or simply ignoring encumbrance altogether. (Where "a reasonable amount" is almost invariably way more than the RAW allows, and so amounts to ignoring it altogether.)

(It's also worth noting, also, that encumbrance rules, the tracking of ammunition, and the tracking of rations all go together. If you track enc but not the others, players will just 'forget' to have their characters carry food. If you track ammo but not enc, they'll carry an effectively limitless store of ammo.)

Fortunately, there's a nice easy solution to this one. Rather than tracking encumbrance down to 0.1 pounds, and requiring constant recalculation, a better solution is to divide items up into three categories: Major, Minor, and Conditional.

Major items are, as the name implies, big bulky items: weapons, armour, a tent, 3-days of food, etc. I recommend also that a quiver counts as a major item, and can carry a number of arrows, but that the arrows themselves be minor.

Minor items are, likewise, obvious - they're the small, light items that don't really matter: a coin, an arrow, a potion...

Conditional items are things like clothing; if these are worn then they are considered minor items, but if they're just carried then they count as major items.

When calculating encumbrance, then, ignore the minor items, and count up only the major ones. And allow characters to carry a number of major items equal to their Strength score, or some similar threshold, without penalty - then another 3 items at each threshold beyond that, up to their max load.

The benefits of this are three-fold. Firstly, it's much simpler, which means it may well actually get used in play. Secondly, it allows easy recalculation - changes only occur when the character gains or loses a major item... and the 'major' designation provides a neat clue that it's important! Thirdly, it means that the game can meaningfully include tough decisions about encumbrance, rations, and ammunition, and tough decisions are often the meat of a satisfying game. Do you take an extra day's rations, or do you take an extra 10 arrows, if you can't take both?

(There is one other consequence to this, however - you will need to "bundle up" some of the treasure items. Otherwise, a character who finds a hoard of 3,000 coins will be able to carry these without any difficulty, since each coin is a minor item! But turn those 3,000 coins into "a pile of good coins", being a single major item, and it all more-or-less fits. Even better, it's more realistic than the current situation, where characters will often find carefully-sorted piles of exactly 3,000 gold pieces, and nothing else - instead, "a pile of good coins" would be about 3,000 coins, and would be mostly gold, with some silver and some platinum mixed in. When the party get back to town and get to count it all up and sort it through, the pile is actually valued at 3,000 gold. And this abstracts the specific currency in use, which is good because a world with a single decimalised currency is... unlikely to say the least.)