GMing Principle: No More Minor Rubbish

One of the things that drives me fairly mental about a lot of math-heavy RPGs (notably D&D 3e, and d20-derived games in general) is the intensity granularity of both the rolls and the modifiers. That is, the system is absolutely heaving with minor modifiers that switch out (and so have to be recalculated) pretty frequently, and with difficulty class values that could be anything, so that those +1 modifiers can be quite important.

But it's rubbish. What that granularity does is that it encourages players to go hunting around for every possible minor modifier they can possibly get, because that +1 might be the difference between a hit for huge damage or a miss for no damage.

(My bête noire in this field is the Dodge feat, which gives a +1 bonus to AC against a single opponent. The player is, of course, supposed to declare which opponent this applies against on his turn every round.)

Now, in fairness there's not a lot I can do about all the minor spells and feats that are built into the game. Short of a full rewrite, they're here to stay.

But there are three things I can do:

• When evaluating a new game (and, 5e, I'm looking at you), I can keep an eye out for this sort of minor rubbish clogging up the game. Bonuses should be fairly rare, but they should also be fairly meaty so that they're actually meaningful. (5e's "Advantage" mechanic is a good example of this - it shouldn't happen often, but it does make a difference when it does.)
• When providing bonuses in-game, they should likewise matter when granted. No "+1 to hit for higher ground" - it's a +4 or nothing! (And if it's not worth a +4, it's not worth bothering with.)
• When constructing elements to appear in the game, be they new feats, powers, weapons, or whatever, the bonuses should be suitably big. For example, I'm considering pegging weapon damage to one of three damage codes: d4, d8, or d12. Those two interim values, the d6 and the d10, might seem beneficial, but really they're a matter of +1 on average above the next-lower die type. Is that really worth the hassle?

The big benefit of taking this approach is that it causes a whole lot of stuff to drop out of the game. Instead of dozens of modifiers for piddly little things, the game drops down to a handful of significant modifiers. Instead of 1,000 feats for this, that, and the next thing, we get the 20 or so for those elements of the character that can really be changed. And so on, and so forth.

(As for Dodge, it can be improved with a very simple fix, that is also one of the most common house rules: it just gives +1 AC, period.)