Quote from: The Shaman;368360But honest, my awakened panda monk/drunken master won't be disruptive at all, I promise!

:rotfl:

Quote from: The Shaman;368360Drohem, the first sentence in your quote above belongs in every player's section of every rpg book.

Fascinating link from an experienced GM here. I'm curious to see how his experiment pans out:

QuoteLastly, my experiences running OSRIC/AD&D have made it clear that the system is no better, or worse, than 4E. It's certainly different, but fundamentally they're very similar in the types of experiences you can get out of them, depending on how the group approaches the game and the playstyle they emphasize. I'm going to write about this in a future article once I've run both AD&D and 4E with the same group, playing the same characters, in the same campaign. At the moment I've played both games side-by-side, but never with the exact same group, so I consider the upcoming change a bit of an experiment-in-waiting.

I might disagree with his final notes re: low-level spellcasters, but I find the discussion of attitudes interesting nonetheless.

Quote from: Doom;368292Let's take a scenario against a monster with a good ac, so that an 'optimized' fighter needs a 12 to hit, 45% chance.  ...

The dwarven fighter will need a 13 to hit, a 40% chance.

In this case, the good fighter doesn't hit 5% more often, he hits 12.5% more often, AND he's going to deal more damage, too. ...

Hitting more often and dealing more damage is almost universally considered a positive thing, especially in a class called 'fighter'.

A typical easy combat entails 20 swings (factoring in burst, opportunities, etc), so that  measly +1 now adds up to one more hit...rather a big deal if it's a big hit, and he's hitting harder than the dwarf, also.

('big hit' is an important detail, by the way...the dwarf isn't just weaker on his at-wills, he's weaker at everything, which means he's more likely to miss with dailies, too)

I've stripped down your post to what I take to contain all the necessary bit of your math. Let's factor in everything you've mentioned.

1. If our non-dwarven fighter (with racial +2 STR) is using a power where the effect (or Hit line) specifies that you get to add your STR-modifer, he deals +1 on each attack that hits. By your admission, we're talking about 20 attack rolls (swings) on average at a fight. Out of these 20, he's got a chance of hitting 45%, so on the 9 attacks that he hits, he each gets +1 on damage, for a grand total of 9 if each and every of his powers he uses factors in the STR-modifier. Point the first: not all do. Also, it doesn't matter in all instances (e.g., you don't really care by how much damage you killed a minion, as long as you hit it).

2. The other guy gets to hit 40%, that's 8 hits. On these hits he causes (at most) 8 points less damage in total. It's missing the 9th hit that separates him from the other guy. So on 20 occasions, he's missing exactly one opportunity to cause damage where the other guy (probably) hits. And that drags down the party? You sure you're not overreacting here?

3. One of your better points was this: what if that 9th hit where our racially non-boosted guy misses is the time when he brought out his daily? That's not just missing an opportunity to cause some standard (or even minor) damage, that's like missing 3[W] plus STR (more if we go to e.g. epic tier). But here's the catch:
- if the daily is reliable, he's effectively missing on a standard occasion, and hasn't expended his chance to score 3[W]+STR
- if he's really going for a daily, he won't do it without first getting his to-hit roll buffed from the leader. So our dwarven fighter will need a 9 to hit, where the racially boosted guy would have done with an 8. So on such occasions we're talking about someone who's race brings down his miss chance on that occasion from 45% to 40%. Before my earlier point kicks in (forget about miss chance - it's reliable anyway and doesn't get wasted if you miss), you really think that reducing the miss chance from 45% to 40% on the 3 occasions you get to expend a daily per day is vital to make the character 'viable' in play?

I do see the differences in play. I'm just scratching my head over your initial point, which was: 'after seeing a guy in our group playing a non-optimized character for three rounds, we scrap his character sheet and build his character for him.' For causing 8 points less damage per combat, and per day being thrice more likely (by a meager 5%) to miss with his daily which is reliable anyway? Strikes me as utterly blown out of proportion.

@other debate: I'm not talking about a guy who refuses to have his cleric heal anyone on every occasion. I'm talking about someone who occasionally doesn't share the WoW'ers POV as to when he ought to heal. Big difference. It's not about opting out of team play altogether, it's just in not prioritizing the team play aspect over anything else in the game all the time.

Quote from: Windjammer;368376I do see the differences in play. I'm just scratching my head over your initial point, which was: 'after seeing a guy in our group playing a non-optimized character for three rounds, we scrap his character sheet and build his character for him.' For causing 8 points less damage per combat, and per day being thrice more likely (by a meager 5%) to miss with his daily which is reliable anyway? Strikes me as utterly blown out of proportion.

Yeah. It's the whole argument that a character somewhat underpowered would make it "ZOMG! Unplayable!" that strikes me as an excluded middle, here. If some guys are fine playing the math behind the game all the time and optimizing everything, I honestly don't see anything inherently wrong with it (everyone's having fun? Fine), but if you start taking the sheet of another player, making a lecture to him on how his character "sucks" and "he's UNPLAYABLE!" for these kinds of details, and redoing HIS character for HIM... man, take a breather, for God's sakes.

Quote from: Benoist;368335Man, I must be very lucky. I mean, seriously, while playing or running AD&D games, I've seen guys playing Assassins of course, including the classic Assassin actually trying to kill other people in the PCs group, I've seen a halfling thief pretending to be a Cleric (mimicking spells with sleight of hands and potions) and actually pull it off session after session for months (!), a Chaotic Neutral MU being the archenemy of another PC, a Paladin, with every adventure consisting of incessant insults and snide remarks between the two and culminating in a duel to the death (with each time, later on, a return of the killed character), and I've actually never seen someone take it badly. It was all the fun of the game.

I mean, these players generally collaborated to solve whatever problem the adventure presented, but in-between and after its resolution, the shit was hitting the fan between PCs constantly, and that was fun! The players weren't constantly at war with each other in the real world, though. Everyone had fun and had stories to tell after the game. Laughs were had, "Got-yas" and so on.

I don't know. Like I said, I must have been lucky.

Yes.  I think I have decades of the same lucky.  I Had one player that was in my Igbar and Miston groups at the same time, and he had his characters in both groups offed by the other PCs within the same month.

I mean, I get a few real goody goodies, but I get as many self interested assassins as knights in most groups.

Quote from: Windjammer;368376I do see the differences in play. I'm just scratching my head over your initial point, which was: 'after seeing a guy in our group playing a non-optimized character for three rounds, we scrap his character sheet and build his character for him.' For causing 8 points less damage per combat, and per day being thrice more likely (by a meager 5%) to miss with his daily which is reliable anyway? Strikes me as utterly blown out of proportion.

izing the team play aspect over anything else in the game all the time.

You're really missing how being "a little" behind, every fight, every round, every swing, really adds up. You're not just screwing over the rest of the party one fight, you're doing it every fight, every time.

Rebuild the character? I wouldn't go that far, but you need to see missing a single +1 isn't bad for one level, but the kind of player that makes such an obvious mistake tends to make other mistakes, too...bring it to -3 and now the character is hitting about half as often as the other characters.

I don't know if 'not viable' is quite the word for not picking an attribute-friendly class..."really foolish", perhaps? Right from the get-go, you're guaranteeing that your character will be at a 2 level penalty (to hit, and a non-level-adjustable penalty for damage) for the rest of the campaign, a penalty that will never be removed, forever and ever and ever.

Consider how the +1 from Expertise is considered a feat tax, so good that you gotta have it right? Well, having the right attribute must be pretty much a free feat, equivalent to a must-have, with a damage bonus, too.

If 'better than a critical feat every player must have, but you can get it for free if you're not foolish', doesn't convince you, nothing will.

 Of course, with a feat, if you don't get it right off, you can get it later, so even if you don't start with expertise, you'll get it later. But the attribute? Never. No matter what you do, your character will be 2 levels behind the characters that pick a 'golden' race for the class. It's not just a small penalty that you could have easily avoided, it's a permanent penalty.

So now throw in "better than a must-have feat, able to get it for free, but if you don't do it right off you can never, ever, get it".

Next time you sit down to play, ask if anyone is willing to exchange "-1 to hit and damage, forever" in exchange for "speed reduced to 5, can second wind as a minor", and see how many hands go up.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;368329But
As far as minions go! I dunno, I like  minions

Think of it this way:

4 minions = 1 monster.
Therefore
Using minions is a bit like using a monster that has 4 attacks per round and will require at least 4 separate attack rolls to kill. Not only that, but it is unaffected by critical hits or extra damage (from curses or quarry or whatever) or even extra damage beyond 1W. And you can split it into separate entities.

SO the real trick with minions is the players gamble: is it a waste to use my good attacks, my curse damage, my quarry on the minion? Well, it depends on whether or not you can absorb 4 attacks a round that do a consistent 4 or 5 damage each. And maybe the curse sucks for damage on a minion, but it lets a player use his curse boon pretty quickly.

Minions will take a character down quickly- especially if you let them have ranged attacks. If you have minions that simply can't hit.. then swarm them up on someone and have them use 'aid another' in order to boost up the to-hit for just a few of them.

Against a controller, though, they also die quickly. What then? Then you only have a few come out at a time, and be careful not to have them get to close together until they're almost on top of someone.

Good lord, man, do you really play the game? This is the stuff the devs were saying when it first came out, it takes little effort to see how untrue that is.

Minions are woefully under-damaging for their level, RAW...'take a character down quickly' is just patently absurd. You honestly are still unaware how warlocks LOVE putting curses on minions?

Minions become nearly completely worthless after a few levels. Almost every class gets at least one 'burst' or blast encounter power (and a daily is quite reasonable to expect if you're hitting 5+ monsters), and many classes have auto-damage capability...five of those going off (one for each character) will wipe out most all minions in a typical, or even tough, encounter. Controllers are completely unnecessary if the GM is playing anywhere near RAW.

The arguments you present are invalid past level 3 or so.

That was the one 'massively over leveled' encounter I gave my players....100 grimlock minions, dealing double damage, attacking from all four sides, spread out as much as possible, supported by 6 'normal' monsters. Didn't even knock a character to zero, and no controller (har) in the level 13ish party.

If "level +20" means nothing when it's mostly minions, then, yeah, minions are broken, too.

Quote from: Benoist;368386Yeah. It's the whole argument that a character somewhat underpowered would make it "ZOMG! Unplayable!" that strikes me as an excluded middle, here. If some guys are fine playing the math behind the game all the time and optimizing everything, I honestly don't see anything inherently wrong with it (everyone's having fun? Fine), but if you start taking the sheet of another player, making a lecture to him on how his character "sucks" and "he's UNPLAYABLE!" for these kinds of details, and redoing HIS character for HIM... man, take a breather, for God's sakes.

We're also talking about 4e, which is unashamedly a game through-and-through, chucking sim to the side, and puts most (not all) of its emphasis on one thing.  Any sort of truths about charop and 4e usually fall through the floor with any other game.

Good point, though, and (on-topic!) chalk that up as a cultural difference between old-school and new.  3e and later (although I guess you could argue 2e skills and options as well) put more emphasis on options to increase your character's performance.  Although I'm not sure if it's old-school vs new, so much as new school D&D/d20 vs everything else (you could make an argument for Exalted, but it's text puts more emphasis on rules-as-a-tool for drama rather than hard-and-fast numbers).

I have just read a load of posts where everyone (apart from Benoist) basically agrees that all D&D characters have got to be cooperative team players ... um really? bit limited isn't it?

There are as many reasons for a party to stick together despite different world views as there are games to play. The only game where the party would all have to cooperate woudl really be one where you were all adventures that met in a tavern....

Even in that case the dwarf who isn't quite as good at combat as he could be should be replaced by the party in the game, 'Look Thorin, when we brought you in we thought you would be able to pull your weight but you suck so sorry this is where we part ways. Have you met Ragnar?' You can't rebuilt he cos he is an entity and to reengineer him to to screw with immersion.

So I have played some excellent games where party members were at each others throats. I mean a reason to be together is standard in all our games

i) Players were escaped convicts initially chained together in pairs; held together by um... well chains really and then being chased and hunted
ii) Players were all hired by one PC to 'do a job'; held together by professionalism.
iii) Players had all been enscorcelled by the same arch-mage: held together by revenge
iv) Players were all members of the same thieves' guild:  held together by professionalism but more by fear of the guild
v) Players were all brothers: held together by family
etc etc etc ...

I mean you guys do read fantasy novels? I actually find it much harder to think of one where the "party" are all super team players than one where they are not (LotR - Boromir, and the initial bitching between Gimli and Legolas; the Blade itself with both the Northman party and the other quest group; I mean really etc etc)
You all always have to be super optimised, team focused, good but not worried about killing things and taking their stuff for no reason other than they happen to live in this cave, tactically aware, hardarse motherfuckers?
If so why are you even worried about the veneer of roleplaying just accept the rules as a tactical skirmish game and get on with it. It strikes me that there is a fuck of a lot more roleplaying in AM's Drow game than most of these dungeoncrawls.

Quote from: jibbajibba;368477I have just read a load of posts where everyone (apart from Benoist) basically agrees that all D&D characters have got to be cooperative team players ... um really? bit limited isn't it?

I don't get it either -- even for 4e. Yes, 4e may enable this style for players who are treating it as mainly as a tactical battle game and generally ignore the roleplaying aspects, but if you are treating it as a roleplaying game with a combat system that just happens to be a tactical battle game, you'd think characters would be developed for their roleplaying potential instead of being required to be optimized combat monsters who must work together like a well-oiled machine at all times. I get the impression that those who want to require all players to have optimized combat PCs who are perfect cogs in the team are really only interested in 4e as a tactical skirmish game. Sadly, most of the 4e players I run into in real life seem to fall into this category.

Quote from: RandallS;368480I don't get it either -- even for 4e. Yes, 4e may enable this style for players who are treating it as mainly as a tactical battle game and generally ignore the roleplaying aspects, but if you are treating it as a roleplaying game with a combat system that just happens to be a tactical battle game, you'd think characters would be developed for their roleplaying potential instead of being required to be optimized combat monsters who must work together like a well-oiled machine at all times. I get the impression that those who want to require all players to have optimized combat PCs who are perfect cogs in the team are really only interested in 4e as a tactical skirmish game. Sadly, most of the 4e players I run into in real life seem to fall into this category.

I think this nicely ties the knot in the original OP.  

I'm reading Doom's post about optimizing...and remembering some of the most fun we had was dealing with the misfit earlier D&D characters that had mediocre stats, that chose an armor type based on what his character would wear, or later, took a mediocre weapon because it fit his idea of the character, or the mage who always memorized 'comp languages' because it fit the Players idea of his MU being a scholar...Optimized?  Rarely.  
I get less optimized now, honestly, when I play skill-based.  Idiosyncratic, role-play friendly?  THAT I get in spades.

Quote from: RandallS;368480I don't get it either -- even for 4e. Yes, 4e may enable this style for players who are treating it as mainly as a tactical battle game and generally ignore the roleplaying aspects, but if you are treating it as a roleplaying game with a combat system that just happens to be a tactical battle game, you'd think characters would be developed for their roleplaying potential instead of being required to be optimized combat monsters who must work together like a well-oiled machine at all times. I get the impression that those who want to require all players to have optimized combat PCs who are perfect cogs in the team are really only interested in 4e as a tactical skirmish game. Sadly, most of the 4e players I run into in real life seem to fall into this category.

If you follow Doom's argument to its logical conclusion, he'd pick any of the following races over ye olde dwarf in a heartbeat if they gave him a measly +1 on his attack roll at level 1. Because anything else is "really foolish", unquote.

QuoteThe same friend who leaked me a copy of Tome & Blood way back in 2001 has gotten me an early playtest document of the PHB4. A lot of it's tentative, but there is some awesome stuff on the way.

I don't have much time now, so I'll post more as I read through the document. Hopefully WotC won't shut me down first.

First off, new races.

    * Bullywugs. Nuff said.
    * Bunny Folk (officially called Moonkin). Folks who say 4e caters to WoW players can now gnash their teeth about catering to Final Fantasy Tactics 2 players. Their origin is tied to the moon, which fits Japanese myths that see not a man in the moon, but a rabbit. Seems to tie in closely to the next race.
    * Critterin. Who hasn't longed to play a Watership Down campaign? Now 4e finally has rules for animals as PCs. You can even use alternate rules to play tiny creatures, by converting to 2.5-ft. squares. Racial powers are diverse, including Cat's Grace, March Hare, Bunnicula, Rikki Tikki Takedown, and Wag the Dog. Finally, my friend and I can run our buddy adventuring team inspired by Caligula and Incitatus.
    * Flumph. Oh, they don't call them flumphs; they're "elder spawn." Tentacled flying horrors from the far realm. But since they're designed for PCs, they're kinda small, and you're supposedly a noble rebel. They even have an immediate interrupt power that distorts reality, which can be used to stop a creature's motion, including "making a creature take no damage from falling."
      Looks like the WotC designers read Order of the Stick.
    * Horta. This elemental earth race has no limbs or sensory organs, but has an encounter power to burrow with caustic acid, and can wield gear telekinetically.
    * Seelie. Play a full on faerie, with wings and everything. Racial power options let you mislead a target (dominating it for a round), or fly short distances, or frighten foes if you're an unseelie fey.
    * Velociraptor. Hyperintelligent dinosaurs. Have complex racial traits where they trade weapon proficiencies for enhanced melee attack options.


More when I get a chance.

'Leaked' on Enworld.

Edit. Forgot to add the flumph's racial abilities:

QuoteFlumph racial abilities:

What the ...

Whenever you hit with an attack power, you miss. Whenever you miss with an attack power, you hit but deal minimum damage. You cannot score criticals.

Whenever another creature within 20 squares of you takes falling damage, you must teleport to the same square, and you take all falling damage instead of that creature. You also fall prone.

Quote from: RandallS;368480you'd think characters would be developed for their roleplaying potential instead of being required to be optimized combat monsters who must work together like a well-oiled machine at all times. I get the impression that those who want to require all players to have optimized combat PCs who are perfect cogs in the team are really only interested in 4e as a tactical skirmish game.

Saying people should more or less understand and work within the party dynamic in D&D (and not be dicks) is absolutely nothing like what you are saying here.

Quote from: jibbajibba;368477I have just read a load of posts where everyone (apart from Benoist) basically agrees that all D&D characters have got to be cooperative team players ... um really? bit limited isn't it?

There are as many reasons for a party to stick together despite different world views as there are games to play. The only game where the party would all have to cooperate woudl really be one where you were all adventures that met in a tavern....

Even in that case the dwarf who isn't quite as good at combat as he could be should be replaced by the party in the game, 'Look Thorin, when we brought you in we thought you would be able to pull your weight but you suck so sorry this is where we part ways. Have you met Ragnar?' You can't rebuilt he cos he is an entity and to reengineer him to to screw with immersion.

So I have played some excellent games where party members were at each others throats. I mean a reason to be together is standard in all our games

i) Players were escaped convicts initially chained together in pairs; held together by um... well chains really and then being chased and hunted
ii) Players were all hired by one PC to 'do a job'; held together by professionalism.
iii) Players had all been enscorcelled by the same arch-mage: held together by revenge
iv) Players were all members of the same thieves' guild:  held together by professionalism but more by fear of the guild
v) Players were all brothers: held together by family
etc etc etc ...

I mean you guys do read fantasy novels? I actually find it much harder to think of one where the "party" are all super team players than one where they are not (LotR - Boromir, and the initial bitching between Gimli and Legolas; the Blade itself with both the Northman party and the other quest group; I mean really etc etc)
You all always have to be super optimised, team focused, good but not worried about killing things and taking their stuff for no reason other than they happen to live in this cave, tactically aware, hardarse motherfuckers?
If so why are you even worried about the veneer of roleplaying just accept the rules as a tactical skirmish game and get on with it. It strikes me that there is a fuck of a lot more roleplaying in AM's Drow game than most of these dungeoncrawls.

The problem is, PC groups quite often do get together in taverns. Plus, what happens when the chains are removed? The one job they were hired for is done? The spell is broken? I never said that PCs couldn't have differences, but if the fighter's going to go running off to leave the rest of the party to face a rust monster, or the rogue keeps stealing from all his fellow adventurers, etc really what would motivate the rest to keep traveling with that person? If it were you, and you knew you would be able to find another fighter, one who might not run away, and still continue adventuring, wouldn't you? Now, at least from my perspective, this does not include "non-optimized" characters, only characters that, in-game, do unreasonable things to put the rest of the team in jeopardy.

I'll just put it in a single sentence for Jibba and Randall:

Being part of a team doesn't preclude roleplaying. Not in any way. And it doesn't actually have anything to do with combat optimization, either.

And to expand on that, I mean, this is the case even in the less harmonius sort of roleplaying that comes from intra-party rivalries and minor conflicts. These happen all the time. To go back to my armor stripping old testament-ish invoker for a second, there's another party member in that group that plays a primal shaman. We have a conflict of religious ideals (complicated by the fact that my invoker was "originally" a primal spirit worshipping wild elf, and was 'saved' to become the divine style invoker that she is now).

For the course of four levels we've sort of been at each others throats, from petty disagreements all the way to a hair-pulling catfight (hot!) and we've just now become friends (sort of...) after metaphysically "dying" together during a sort of dream-battle that took place on this quest we're on.