Quote from: TristramEvans;801276...then your game already has problems that have nothing to do with random rolling.

Have you played much 3e? Because hey, if you want to say 'a system that does this is one you shouldn't be playing,' I won't necessarily agree, but I'd defend it as a consistent point of view.

Quote from: Will;801283Have you played much 3e? Because hey, if you want to say 'a system that does this is one you shouldn't be playing,' I won't necessarily agree, but I'd defend it as a consistent point of view.

Indeed, my PoV is....consistent. The glasses help.

Quote from: jibbajibba;801281I don't actually agree with that.
If you are in a game with no feats then all players will be raising their stats at roughly the same rate. You might argue the ones with higher stats will gain XP faster as they can kill more stuff , rest less , steal more treasure, but we will say roughly the same.
The difference over time will become less pronounced as a % but will remain the same the weaker stated player will never catch up.

If feats are used then the weaker stated player can catch up but at the expense of feats.
Feats are either strong enough to make a big difference to the game or weak, if they are weak other players won't choose them and will increase their stats instead.

Yes, but in 5e and some other versions EXP is from a combined pool. Not handed out based on who killed the most. I wouldnt want to play under such rules either. I had enough of that on MMOs and MSOs.

As for feats. Thats down to personal choice. Which is the crux here. Jans picked up 1 feat and has no interest in any others so far. I've got two, one  at the expense of free 4 stat points. Not sure if I'll blow more on feats or not. If I do then Jan will catch up or even exceed me. Neither of us has a chance to catch up to Kefra. Though if Kefra went all out on feats and Jan went all stats then shes allmost catch up.

Jan has zero interest in such fretting and is playing her character as she rolled it. And has molded it since accordingly. What the rest of us has is irrelevant to who we are, what we are playing, how we play and how we RP.

Obviously others apparently can and will feel sad, fret, or even freak out and refuse to play at the extreme end of the scale. That is not the sort of people I'd ever want to RP with. Especially since odds are they wouldn't lift a finger at someone being less than they are.

Personally one reason in 5e I even have come like having lower stats is that with the stat ups, it gives me room to grow if I so desire.

Quote from: Will;801271If you are facing enemies that are tuned for characters of a certain power level, being significantly behind the curve with other characters can make you useless.

Two melee types, one with a +20 to hit, another with a +15. They face an enemy with AC 35. First guy is hitting 30% of the time, the other is hitting 5% of the time.

How is that going to look? How is that going to feel?

Be innovative all you want, when everything is incredibly hard for you to do compared to other folks and you have to play third string, at best?

That is what you call arguing for your own limitations.

Quote from: TristramEvans;801285Indeed, my PoV is....consistent. The glasses help.

Sooooo... is that what you're saying?

Quote from: jeff37923;801299That is what you call arguing for your own limitations.

No, it's called debating the point.

'You can just do X, and be effective/useful!'
"Ok, let's examine this point in detail. What about X case, based on actual results someone just posted?"
'I'm just going to make a quip and avoid engaging.'

Quote from: Will;801306No, it's called debating the point.

'You can just do X, and be effective/useful!'
"Ok, let's examine this point in detail. What about X case, based on actual results someone just posted?"
'I'm just going to make a quip and avoid engaging.'

Then you are being disingenuous.

In your example, you just said AC 35, you did not say whether or not that was base, flat-footed, or without armor. If you are a lower level with a lower to hit bonus in 3.x, you can still grapple an opponent in melee. Hell, in a worst-case scenario you can make an opponent spend an action on you allowing an opening for another PC.

You wanted to argue for your limitations, so you conjured a scenario where you were limited. Congrats.

No quips needed. You just lack imagination.

Quote from: Will;801305Sooooo... is that what you're saying?

I'm saying that at the point one starts a premise of "the monsters have been predetermined and adapted to the level of the player characters", one has already stepped so far from the concept of an rpg that random chargen was designed to support that the argument becomes inconsequential outside of the particularly narrow videogame-esque variation on rpgs described.

Quote from: jeff37923;801309Then you are being disingenuous.

In your example, you just said AC 35, you did not say whether or not that was base, flat-footed, or without armor. If you are a lower level with a lower to hit bonus in 3.x, you can still grapple an opponent in melee. Hell, in a worst-case scenario you can make an opponent spend an action on you allowing an opening for another PC.

You wanted to argue for your limitations, so you conjured a scenario where you were limited. Congrats.

No quips needed. You just lack imagination.

Why do you feel it necessary to insult me about this? Seriously.

I don't lack imagination, but every time I actually try to engage with examples, everyone immediately shuts down.

And as for 'conjured a scenario,' what do you think it MEANS when your max bonus is 5 less than someone else? I just rolled 5 4d6 drop lowest stats, one guy had a max of 13, another had an 18.

Checking some real monsters, it seems at CR 10ish, a more common AC is 29, so it's more like 60% chance to hit vs. 30% chance to hit, which isn't quite as stark. Although with the 5 point difference, the second character is hitting half as often and going to lack much ability to hit with second attacks.

Now, thank you for actually using imagination to come up with an example to work with.
The problem with grapple, though, is that if you are doing it as an alternative to attacking because your Strength is too low to hit as much... you're not going to do very well. The enemy likely has a better grapple score AND strength, so can avoid the grapple or happily use it and kill you.

Quote from: TristramEvans;801312I'm saying that at the point one starts a premise of "the monsters have been predetermined and adapted to the level of the player characters", one has already stepped so far from the concept of an rpg that random chargen was designed to support that the argument becomes inconsequential outside of the particularly narrow videogame-esque variation on rpgs described.

You are still not answering me about 3e. I assume the answer is 'little/none'?

3e has random chargen; 4d6, drop lowest, assign as needed.
3e has encounter design that is totally about predetermining monsters and balancing them around the level of the player characters.

So for 13 years, the published version of D&D, the biggest, most influential roleplaying game in the world was exactly what you are saying is inconsequential.

Quote from: Will;801317Why do you feel it necessary to insult me about this? Seriously.

Seriously?

Because every time I hear one of these spherical cow arguments I think that the originator is deliberately trying to suck the fun out of gaming by trying to discourage actual adventuring because it has wobbly math.

Fuck that. And the attitude that goes with it.

So what if my character can't fight toe-to-toe with the Big Bad Evil Guy? I just won't fight fair then. Whether or not a PC can cause damage to a BBEG should not so much depend on character stats as it should depend on what the Player does with that character. Creativity, ingenuity, skullduggery, and plain old fashioned cussedness in a Player will determine what effects their PC will have in a game. Not just stats.

It's not spherical cow. It comes from ~10 years of playing 3e.

I'm not trying to suck the fun out, I'm pointing out stuff to avoid that sucks the fun out of the game.

I've been in games where I've had concerns about how a character would play, people said 'oh, don't worry, it'll work out.' And then it hilariously doesn't and I (or others) get frustrated when, surprise surprise, the concerns translate to actual problems.

Never mind my elf, this thread is making the baby Jesus cry.

Who fucking cares. Some people have low thresholds for being a little baby, while others just play their character. We all have some form of little baby threshold, but most people's isn't on either the low or high end but in the middle.

I say middle baby is a little baby, but hey i have a high threshold.

Oh, i forgot in all the excitement, this thread has fuck all to do with gaming and more to do with being bored at work. My mistake. :rolleyes:

Quote from: One Horse Town;801329Never mind my elf, this thread is making the baby Jesus cry.

Who fucking cares. Some people have low thresholds for being a little baby, while others just play their character. We all have some form of little baby threshold, but most people's isn't on either the low or high end but in the middle.

I say middle baby is a little baby, but hey i have a high threshold.

  Do I have to kill all your characters again?

   (Minus the obnoxious language, you've got a point. Power disparity can be a problem for almost anyone if taken far enough, but the point that's 'far enough' can differ wildly.)

Quote from: Sacrosanct;800798So honest question for those who have made those arguments.  If you don't know what stats another PC has, how does that ruin your fun?  Because from what I can see, it really doesn't impact the actual game play of your PC if you don't know how many +'s they have.  When you're rolling a random result between a 1 and 20, and extra +1 or +2 won't even be noticeable unless you're really paying attention and doing the math in your head, and why would you?  It's not your PC.

I don't care (as a player or as a GM) what a character's stats are so long as the player rolled them with fair dice in front of the GM. If another player manages to roll 18-18-18-18-18, good for him. If stats make that big a difference in the system, that character will give the party a huge boost -- and will not detract from my fun at all (at least not in any game system I'd be willing to actually play more than a session or two). Note, however, that I only play old school where solutions to game situations are not limited to what is written on the character sheet.

As I GM, my games feature random stat rolls, XP requirements to level that differ by class, PC sin the party that may be at level 1 or 2 while others are higher levels (sometimes much higher levels), "random" encounters (that is, encounters are not designed around the character sheet abilities of the PC at their current level), and all sorts of other things that would likely drive players who would be bothered by stats differences crazy. Such players are free to not play in my games.