It was generally assumed that adventurers were above average to others of their kind.

Quote from: ShieldWife on August 09, 2021, 07:46:57 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on August 09, 2021, 05:03:14 PMThat's an easy one.  Assuming I'm making a human and ability scores are randomly generated, I'd like the str, dex, etc to match up with their real life distribution as much as possible.

Of course, different people have different tastes and it's subjective, but it this strikes me as very strange. I see role playing as emulating genres about heroic characters doing great things: Arthurian knights or Merlin, Gilgamesh, Robin Hood, the Scarlet Pimpernel, vampires, superheroes, James Bond or associated femme fatale, and the list goes on.

I don't really see as much appeal playing a game where not only do I have minimal choice in what my character is like, but where I'm statistically likely to be Jane average peasant, and actually just as likely to be a handicapped imbecile as one of the heroic figures from legend and fiction I mentioned above.

I'm not criticizing that taste in games, but it seems like a more unusual choice than giving males and females different attributes.

This isn't anything unusual, it's just baseline D&D.  I'll use 2E as an example since I happen to have the PHB on my desk atm.  A character who rolls a 3 strength has a maximum press of 10 pounds.  That's not Conan and prolly not even Merlin.  Using the full range of humanity as possible characters has been baked into the game right from the beginning.  If you want to play a great big action hero all the time, that's fine, but I think it's also interesting (and more heroic) to start with an average guy who's brave enough to go out adventuring.

True, but such a weakling, if he had a good intelligence, would be a magic-user. The old rules did allow one to re-roll if he ended up with a hopeless character.


As far as my own game goes, males and females have different attributes. That will not change.

Quote from: Mishihari on August 09, 2021, 10:29:02 PM

Quote from: ShieldWife on August 09, 2021, 07:46:57 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on August 09, 2021, 05:03:14 PMThat's an easy one.  Assuming I'm making a human and ability scores are randomly generated, I'd like the str, dex, etc to match up with their real life distribution as much as possible.

Of course, different people have different tastes and it's subjective, but it this strikes me as very strange. I see role playing as emulating genres about heroic characters doing great things: Arthurian knights or Merlin, Gilgamesh, Robin Hood, the Scarlet Pimpernel, vampires, superheroes, James Bond or associated femme fatale, and the list goes on.

I don't really see as much appeal playing a game where not only do I have minimal choice in what my character is like, but where I'm statistically likely to be Jane average peasant, and actually just as likely to be a handicapped imbecile as one of the heroic figures from legend and fiction I mentioned above.

I'm not criticizing that taste in games, but it seems like a more unusual choice than giving males and females different attributes.

This isn't anything unusual, it's just baseline D&D.  I'll use 2E as an example since I happen to have the PHB on my desk atm.  A character who rolls a 3 strength has a maximum press of 10 pounds.  That's not Conan and prolly not even Merlin.  Using the full range of humanity as possible characters has been baked into the game right from the beginning.  If you want to play a great big action hero all the time, that's fine, but I think it's also interesting (and more heroic) to start with an average guy who's brave enough to go out adventuring.

Just another sign of how RPGs (especially D&D) have changed over the years.  As stats have become more important (conferring more bonuses to more activities, compared to the slight xp bonus many stats gave back then), the super-hero character has become more necessary.  This is even more true as the logistical nature of the game has receded into the background.  Explaining to a player who has never played anything other than 5e why every adventurer should carry a 10' pole gets a reaction equivalent to trying to explain calculus to a puppy.  Just numerically, if you constantly fight battles where you have a 50% of losing, you will lose sooner rather than later.  So the mechanics have changed so that the PCs have a tremendous advantage over the monsters (CR and encounter budgets, anyone?).  There's nothing wrong with this style of play, if you enjoy it.  But it hasn't always been the most common or the most mechanically supported style, either.  The game has changed.

Quote from: Mishihari on August 09, 2021, 10:29:02 PM
A character who rolls a 3 strength has a maximum press of 10 pounds.  That's not Conan and prolly not even Merlin.

But maybe Captain America.

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 09, 2021, 06:54:20 PM
The distributions for women who are going to choose to don armor and wield a blade aren't going to look at all like the distributions of women who choose to stay at home and raise a family (the distributions for military and non-military men will similarly be different).

The woman is typically going to be much more different from the average woman than the man is from the average man. She'll be much more exceptional compared to the average woman. She probably resembles more the average male warrior.

I think the thing people have trouble getting their heads around is that ability is on a bell curve. The male and female physical bell curves overlap; the female right tail crosses the male average (the centre of the bell). But no female reaches the male right tail. IRL practically no woman matches one of SHARK's marine buddies, and no woman at all matches the best of them, or a Navy SEAL, SAS etc.  But in an heroic RPG it's not much fun playing a female PC doomed to mediocrity when the male PCs can be much stronger. So let the Red Sonja/Xena type be blessed by the goddess, have divine ancestry or whatever.

Quote from: S'mon on August 10, 2021, 03:31:46 AM
But in an heroic RPG it's not much fun playing a female PC doomed to mediocrity when the male PCs can be much stronger. So let the Red Sonja/Xena type be blessed by the goddess, have divine ancestry or whatever.

Does a 9th level fighter need divine ancestry or the blessing of a goddess to have more hp than an elephant?

Simplest is to just ignore it. A lot of things work better if you don't overthink it.

Luke Skywalker was a peasant dirt farmer. I'm sure the story of his adventures wouldn't interest anyone.

Quote from: mightybrain on August 10, 2021, 06:56:04 AM
Luke Skywalker was a peasant dirt farmer. I'm sure the story of his adventures wouldn't interest anyone.

Certainly not Rian J...

Quote from: Pat on August 10, 2021, 06:52:39 AM
Does a 9th level fighter need divine ancestry or the blessing of a goddess to have more hp than an elephant?

These are the kind of explanations Gygax posits, yes. Or you can just say "It's the genre" - like Black Widow having a couple hundred hp in her film.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on August 09, 2021, 11:09:43 PM
So the mechanics have changed so that the PCs have a tremendous advantage over the monsters (CR and encounter budgets, anyone?).

I think you misunderstand the purpose of CR and encounter budgets. They aren't walls the GM slams into, they're speed limit signs so the GM knows "yeah, your party can handle this" or "you are probably going to have a TPK if the party fights that."

What it really takes away is the ability for the newbie GM accidentally or the killer GM deliberately to throw a killer encounter at the party and afterwards say "Wow, I thought you guys could handle that."

Incidentally, this is one of my gripes with 5e; it's CR system isn't that great at measuring threats so the GM can evaluate them.

Heck, even the original editions had a CR system even if it wasn't called that; it's why you had one or more *'s after a monster's HD to denote special abilities that made them tougher than their HD indicated. Because while the GM had to figure out the ratios for his particular party,  HD + *'s was a reasonable guage of a fight's difficulty and a typical party could handle threats whose total of HD+*'s equaled the total of all their levels.

What's different now is the systems take the time to discuss these matters instead of just leaving it to new GMs to figure out on their own.

As to the scale up in attributes; I think the point about elements of ability being shifted more to attributes than to raw HD means they don't mean the same things they used to.

A Fighter in 5e still hits things with weapons a LOT better than a wizard; but instead of HD compared to a table telling us that, it's because the Fighter's STR is probably 12 points higher (8 vs. 20) and that translates to +6 to hit and damage relative to the wizard.

Basically, your Strength and the ability to improve it as you level up (plus the scaling proficiency bonus) BECOMES the Base Attack Bonus/THAC0 calculation.

Basically, the 10 is still human average, but when's the last time you saw a soldier with average strength relative to the human population. They're always going to be in upper brackets for strength because they train to be so.

Which is why skewed rolls or just arrays/point-buy have become the norm. Because those higher stats represent not just an xp boost, but baseline capability in the class.

And you see it in the monster design as well. Orcs don't just have a Str 11 (10 w. a +1 racial modifier) they have 16's because they are strong warrior types.

This leaks over into my system in that the default array for any random NPC that actually needs stats is 2, 2, 1, 0, 0, -1. The laborers probably have those 2's in STR and END and the -1 in one of the mental stats (most likely INT as most checks related to it are essentially book learning sorts of knowledge). The alchemist probably has his 2's in Intellect and Reflexes with the -1 in Wits (because he keeps mixing dangerous chemicals) or Endurance (because he's breathed in too many caustic fumes).

Because while there IS an average, very few people are average at everything. Most are above average at something. One has to remember that averages are only useful in context.

Extremely Silly Example of why averages don't mean much... if you throw one laborer (2 STR) and two weaklings (-1 STR) into a room and used the average, you'd think a door that needs a STR 1 or better to break down would hold them because the average of 2, -1, -1 is 0. Only when you return you find the door was easily forced open because one person in the group had STR 2.

I think way too much weight is given to the mythical average when almost no one pursues any path they're only average at.

Quote from: mightybrain on August 10, 2021, 06:56:04 AM
Luke Skywalker was a peasant dirt farmer. I'm sure the story of his adventures wouldn't interest anyone.

And Luke was a 0 level with amazing stats in the first film (key among them being that 18 Force Ability and above average Dex in a setting that favored piloting and ranged combat).

Luke would have died in his first combat encounter if a high level multiclass fighter/wizard hadn't shown up to save him. He also was totally outmatched in a bar fight with a couple of toughs and again needed the fighter/wizard to save him.

Then he spends the middle chunk of the movie sneaking around in stolen armor after the high level fighter/thief and his barbarian companion kill the guards. He gets pwned by a sewer monster until it retreats because someone turned on the wall trap and only quick thinking by the high level golem thief disables it.

Then he runs around some more and hits a few Stormtroopers (who have been ordered to let them escape so they'll lead them to the Rebel base) on the way out. He tags one TIE Fighter in the escape while the fighter/thief nails the rest.

Having finally earned enough xp to gain a PC class he goes fighter for the mission to destroy the Death Star, gets given the best starfighter in the game as starting equipment and still manages to get it hit repeatedly and has two wingman blown away covering him and the golem thief gets ganked by the bad guy too (fortunately his race is easy to use raise dead on).

Luke is absolutely going to die until the fighter/thief and barbarian come riding to the rescue and the ghost of the fighter/wizard tells him how to actually leverage that 18 in Force Ability to boost his crappy 1st level THAC0.

Then he earns millions of XP by blowing up a moon sized station full of mooks and can basically level up for the rest of the films as quickly as he can find trainers for the levels he wants.

As you can see... my point stands. Luke was a zero-level with insanely high stats until after he completed his first dungeon crawl.

Quote from: Pat on August 10, 2021, 06:52:39 AM

Quote from: S'mon on August 10, 2021, 03:31:46 AM
But in an heroic RPG it's not much fun playing a female PC doomed to mediocrity when the male PCs can be much stronger. So let the Red Sonja/Xena type be blessed by the goddess, have divine ancestry or whatever.

Does a 9th level fighter need divine ancestry or the blessing of a goddess to have more hp than an elephant?

Simplest is to just ignore it. A lot of things work better if you don't overthink it.

No kidding.  It bothers me a lot more, for example, that the game often devolves into characters fighting with a backpack on.  Sure, you can fantasize a quick release option and just assume that the characters use that every time.  Then what happens if they run?  Because I'm visualizing the packs coming off in a hurry then being left while the players retreat, but they are visualizing their characters where the pack pops in and out of the frame as needed.  Meanwhile, I'm just getting some slightly closer to realistic (i.e. not really realistic) load times for crossbows and weapon switching and getting them to go with that and actually think about it. 

This whole thing has made me really appreciate the nuances of the 1 minute combat round.  That might be a little too much, the 6 second, 10 second options have their own problem.  I'm wondering if 15 or 20 seconds is a good compromise, run with some of the same abstraction as the 1 minute round.  Maybe I need to start a new topic ...

Compared to that, overly strong females is way down the list.  It's on the list, but its in the region where I know that I'm never going to get to it, like cleaning that dirty attic that you never use.

Quote from: S'mon on August 10, 2021, 07:47:23 AM

Quote from: Pat on August 10, 2021, 06:52:39 AM
Does a 9th level fighter need divine ancestry or the blessing of a goddess to have more hp than an elephant?

These are the kind of explanations Gygax posits, yes. Or you can just say "It's the genre" - like Black Widow having a couple hundred hp in her film.

Buried deep in the DMG, which players weren't supposed to read, and which was published half a dozen after years D&D was first published.

It's like midi-chlorians. Some things are better without an explanation.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on August 10, 2021, 08:18:53 AM

Quote from: Pat on August 10, 2021, 06:52:39 AM

Quote from: S'mon on August 10, 2021, 03:31:46 AM
But in an heroic RPG it's not much fun playing a female PC doomed to mediocrity when the male PCs can be much stronger. So let the Red Sonja/Xena type be blessed by the goddess, have divine ancestry or whatever.

Does a 9th level fighter need divine ancestry or the blessing of a goddess to have more hp than an elephant?

Simplest is to just ignore it. A lot of things work better if you don't overthink it.

No kidding.  It bothers me a lot more, for example, that the game often devolves into characters fighting with a backpack on.  Sure, you can fantasize a quick release option and just assume that the characters use that every time.  Then what happens if they run?  Because I'm visualizing the packs coming off in a hurry then being left while the players retreat, but they are visualizing their characters where the pack pops in and out of the frame as needed.  Meanwhile, I'm just getting some slightly closer to realistic (i.e. not really realistic) load times for crossbows and weapon switching and getting them to go with that and actually think about it. 

This whole thing has made me really appreciate the nuances of the 1 minute combat round.  That might be a little too much, the 6 second, 10 second options have their own problem.  I'm wondering if 15 or 20 seconds is a good compromise, run with some of the same abstraction as the 1 minute round.  Maybe I need to start a new topic ...

Compared to that, overly strong females is way down the list.  It's on the list, but its in the region where I know that I'm never going to get to it, like cleaning that dirty attic that you never use.

Great point about fighting with packs on, especially in 5e where even the weakest PC (Str 8 types) is totally unenencumbered so long as carrying < 120 lbs.

Quote from: SHARK on August 09, 2021, 07:27:19 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 09, 2021, 06:54:20 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on August 09, 2021, 05:03:14 PM

Quote from: ShieldWife on August 09, 2021, 01:08:16 PM
I'm not sure how character generation can be simulationist. Would that mean that the same percentage of PC are wizards who are wizards in the general population? If only 1 out of 1000 medieval peasants can lift a certain rock, then only 1 out of 1000 PCs can lift that rock? It seems rather odd.

I would think that character creation is the time when you are deciding what to simulate, once that is done, then the rules could be used to simulate the fictional people within the shared fictional reality of the setting. Hopefully not with D&D rules because they are highly unrealistic in numerous regards.

That's an easy one.  Assuming I'm making a human and ability scores are randomly generated, I'd like the str, dex, etc to match up with their real life distribution as much as possible.

Okay, but the real life distribution of what exactly? The total population of Earth? The armed forces in general? Only the Military Special Forces?

Because the distributions of those are going to be quite different, and I'll keep making this point, adventurers are NOT John and Jane Average. They are exceptional people who are choosing to risk life and limb doing what they do.

The distributions for women who are going to choose to don armor and wield a blade aren't going to look at all like the distributions of women who choose to stay at home and raise a family (the distributions for military and non-military men will similarly be different).

Unless you're going to require the person rolling up a female PC to either play Jane Average the Housewife or keep rolling until they achieve a result that allows them to actually be an adventurer.

Saying "I want a realistic distribution" without qualifying the population is just word salad.

ETA: As an example of what I mean, in my game system the assumption is that any PC adventurer is either in the top 10% of several attributes or in the top 1% of at least one attribute.

That is the realistic distribution for anyone who's even thinking about trekking into the monster-haunted wilds in search of fame and fortune. If you can't hit that benchmark good luck finding anyone to actually train you in the skills you'd need to have an adventuring class.

Greetings!

Good points, Chris!

On the one hand--I hate the whole "Superhero" mentality.

On the other hand, there's this strong base of support for having player characters be ordinary, mud-covered farmers.

I can perhaps be criticized for expecting player characters to be genuinely *exceptional*. My own Marine Corps bias, no doubt! In the Marines, *everyone in the squad* was exceptional. Each and every member had less than 6% body-fat, could run and hike for miles and miles, and were all trained killers and beasts. All were highly skilled in hand-to-hand combat, and well-versed in many weapons. All were hardened, rugged professionals that could perform lethally and with great skill in any climate, any terrain, against any opponent. THEN, even amongst that group, you had standouts--the amazing sniper; the Marine from Louisiana who was an expert with knife-fighting; The Marine from California who was an expert in two kinds of Martial Arts; A guy from Florida that was fluent in 5 different languages. A very diverse bunch, with sometimes surprising specialties--but all though were ruthlessly trained to excel as Marine Infantry.

I sometimes think that all of these average, mud-covered farmers wouldn't last long in an adventuring environment.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

  I would say the marines are a product of training, and less of some genetic outliers.  Largely infantry marines are recruited from high school tier athletes and many who fall below that tier on natural physical ability.   I would also say the enlisted marines are EXACTLY the same tier of people in society who in a fantasy world would be the peasants/mud farmers.  They just got trained to operate at a level closer to maximizing their potential.   Most everything marines do, any healthy male 18-25 is completely capable of being trained to that standard.  So I would say comparing people who receive specialized training to people with zero training is not exactly a fair comparison.  As mentioned, the first level fighter is NOT a mud farmer.  Maybe he grew up on a farm (to which I would say EVERY dude I know who grew up on a farm is NOT average at all with regard to physical standing, they were all above to exceptional physically) but now he has received a good bit of specialized training to do a job.   

   Marines are exceptional with regards to fitness and hand to hand combat only when compared to people with zero training.  I do think as a baseline they have the highest fitness standards, and do more to maintain them (especially compared to the air force and Navy of my day, where casual exercise on your own was enough to do well on the PRT), but are not exceptional compared to other people to devote time and effort to fitness or hand to hand combat (and to be fair, a marine has a lot more to work on being proficient at than just hand to hand combat).   My point being, the difference between a mud farmer and the corporal in the marines ending a 4 year tour is about the difference between the fantasy mud farmer and the 1st level fighter.   

   This is not to run down marines (no idea about modern day standards, in my day they were the leaders in fitness and combat readiness in the military for their baseline members), it is just to sort of point out exceptional is relative to the crowd around them.   Attributes in rpgs often reflect genetic potential as much as training (since in D&D they can be increased over time in modern iterations, before they were almost 100 percent genetic potential), and marines are not typically cut from super exceptional genetic cloth.  They are molded and trained to the upper tier of whatever potential they may have, but the baseline of training and expectations is not that of genetic freak, but of a typical healthy, active, young male.