Quote from: Ratman_tf;1091073And many more are created. I dropped this method for a reason. I got tired of players who rolled sub-optimal or downright terrible characters, and they didn't want to go through the obnoxious process of playing the shitty character until their inevitable demise, cut through the gordian knot, and announce "My character commits suicide."

Ah, I see you have boring and uncreative players, rather than players who take whatever they roll up and make the best of it. Or possibly it's just you.

I have had retarded players in the past, too. This is part of why I run an open game table, that way the Brainless Slime can just quietly ooze away rather than our having to have that awkward It's Not You It's Me Actually It Is You conversation. And other players come along who get it and enjoy it.

Character suicide is a player resignation from the campaign. At least do Suicide By Insane Bravery And Not Checking For Traps. I had a player once roll up a 1HP fighter, he declared that since any damage would have killed him, Kagg must never have been hit, therefore Kagg thought he was invincible and was insanely brave. Of course, every foe ended up missing him, he made every saving throw and so on, and his first adventure he got enough xp and treasure to level up. That player was, quite obviously, trying to get his character killed - but he did it in an entertaining and creative way, rather than just "I kill myself," and so he and everyone else had fun - and it turned out to be a viable character anyway.

I rolled up a very average fighter without more than 11 or so Strength - but 17 Charisma. The DM was merciful and said I could swap stats, I said: Fabio, the Most Beautiful Fighter in the Cosmos. His spare starting money went to hiring a man-at-arms, later cash went to hiring multiple. He ended up with 15 who he'd rotate through dungeons, took 5 with him into the dungeon. "Fabio and his Five Fingers - together, we FIST YOU!" He equipped and paid them well (all silver found went to the men-at-arms, any deaths got a lavish burial, etc) and between that his CHA they were slavishly loyal. He made it up to level 5 or so when he failed a saving throw to gaze upon a medusa and was turned to stone. The other players wanted to come back and rescue him, I said, "No, it is only right that the Most Beautiful Fighter in the Cosmos should be preserved forever as a statue."

On one occasion the players came upon mummies in their sarcophagi. They won initiative and sat on one lid, and the MU cast Hold Portal on another. He used a rock drill to make two holes in the lid and then poured oil in and lit it up. What level were they, what were their stats? I can't remember - but you can cast Hold Portal at first level, and there is no level requirement for a rock drill and some oil and a torch. He could have been first level with straight 3s except for 9 INT and done that.

A sensible DM will do things which encourage and reward creativity. A dull and boring DM will just give them high stats and a splatbook to pick special options from, and then stymie all creativity they have. "The goblins sense you only have one hit point and all attack you! The men-at-arms backstab you! The mummies move too fast!"

Roleplaying games are a social creative hobby. Player with uncreative roleplayers is like playing a sport on a team of klutzes - amusing, but not really the point of the thing. Unlike the preponderance of klutzes in the world, though, I find that most players are more creative than DMs give them credit for. They just need the opportunity to do so.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1091113I just accepted that race was an optimization option for D&D (and related). In 5e it's not really such a big thing to me, especially as the (Variant) Human seems to be "optimal" for almost everything.

Yeah in the vast majority of cases variant human is going to be the best race for serious min maxers. "My class needs stat X, I'll take a race that boosts stat X" is such penny ante min maxing that it's really not worth worrying about someone getting a simple +1 over a human.

A whole lot of minmaxers are pretty shitty at it especially if you apply the RAW.

Personally I love minmaxing but mostly to power up my goofball character concepts back up to par, not to be more powerful than others.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1091152Ah, I see you have boring and uncreative players, rather than players who take whatever they roll up and make the best of it. Or possibly it's just you.

I have had retarded players in the past, too. This is part of why I run an open game table, that way the Brainless Slime can just quietly ooze away rather than our having to have that awkward It's Not You It's Me Actually It Is You conversation. And other players come along who get it and enjoy it.

Character suicide is a player resignation from the campaign. At least do Suicide By Insane Bravery And Not Checking For Traps. I had a player once roll up a 1HP fighter, he declared that since any damage would have killed him, Kagg must never have been hit, therefore Kagg thought he was invincible and was insanely brave. Of course, every foe ended up missing him, he made every saving throw and so on, and his first adventure he got enough xp and treasure to level up. That player was, quite obviously, trying to get his character killed - but he did it in an entertaining and creative way, rather than just "I kill myself," and so he and everyone else had fun - and it turned out to be a viable character anyway.

I rolled up a very average fighter without more than 11 or so Strength - but 17 Charisma. The DM was merciful and said I could swap stats, I said: Fabio, the Most Beautiful Fighter in the Cosmos. His spare starting money went to hiring a man-at-arms, later cash went to hiring multiple. He ended up with 15 who he'd rotate through dungeons, took 5 with him into the dungeon. "Fabio and his Five Fingers - together, we FIST YOU!" He equipped and paid them well (all silver found went to the men-at-arms, any deaths got a lavish burial, etc) and between that his CHA they were slavishly loyal. He made it up to level 5 or so when he failed a saving throw to gaze upon a medusa and was turned to stone. The other players wanted to come back and rescue him, I said, "No, it is only right that the Most Beautiful Fighter in the Cosmos should be preserved forever as a statue."

On one occasion the players came upon mummies in their sarcophagi. They won initiative and sat on one lid, and the MU cast Hold Portal on another. He used a rock drill to make two holes in the lid and then poured oil in and lit it up. What level were they, what were their stats? I can't remember - but you can cast Hold Portal at first level, and there is no level requirement for a rock drill and some oil and a torch. He could have been first level with straight 3s except for 9 INT and done that.

A sensible DM will do things which encourage and reward creativity. A dull and boring DM will just give them high stats and a splatbook to pick special options from, and then stymie all creativity they have. "The goblins sense you only have one hit point and all attack you! The men-at-arms backstab you! The mummies move too fast!"

Roleplaying games are a social creative hobby. Player with uncreative roleplayers is like playing a sport on a team of klutzes - amusing, but not really the point of the thing. Unlike the preponderance of klutzes in the world, though, I find that most players are more creative than DMs give them credit for. They just need the opportunity to do so.

I see you don't have much experience with RPGs. We had been through all what you describe multiple times. I even went back to that mentality of "Play what you draw" when running DCC. And it's fun enough.
But we, as a group, also like to play games where the stats aren't so random and flukey. Playing "Fabio the the most Beautiful Fighter" gets old when you've done it a few times, and for every "lucky character", there's a baker's dozen of roll-ups who just die at the first surprise round with a kobold.

This problem was solved decades ago by simply combining race and skill set into the class. Not only does this mean elven wizards and human wizards don't need to be the exact same, but it also means that the DM can adjust each race/skill combo individually for balance reasons. Plus, it's simpler for the player to run and allows DMs more freedom to create truly exotic character types.

Race-as-class FTW.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1091146Do you force everyone to have fun too?

I don't, but the taser behind my GM screen is very insistent! :eek:

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1091186Race-as-class FTW.

Hell yeah!!

For me, if any race is any class, then every race is just humans in a rubber suit. It's race as bonus grab.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1091186Race-as-class FTW.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1091191Hell yeah!!

For me, if any race is any class, then every race is just humans in a rubber suit. It's race as bonus grab.

Now don't tasser me but, there's a way to have any race be any class without it becoming all races a grey mush of sameness.

Let's take the MU: In a world where magic is real and the Gods answer it makes sense every race had a magic user, you just need to find the inworld logic that would make an Elf better or worst at some types of magic, even making that race unable to use some types.

Same with fighters, lets say you have half-orcs in your game as PCs, does it make inworld sense to have the halfling be just as effective as the taller and stronger half-orc? No, therefore a halfling gets half the benefits than the human and the half-orc 1.5 the benefits of the human.

And so on. It's a lot of work and you need to make progression tables by race/class adjusting for the differences between the races. And then there's the cultural stuff:

Some races (for cultural reasons) would eschew certain professions or favor heavily others. Lets say highlanders vs coastal ppl. Some professions would be found among both, others not because the geography makes said profession useless or even because their culture has a taboo against it.

Just like the baked bigotry of some races against others, this differences need to be baked into the system and taken into account if you're to allow any race to have any class (or almost anyway). It's the only way not to end with humans in rubber suits.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1091200Now don't tasser me but, there's a way to have any race be any class without it becoming all races a grey mush of sameness.

If the classes are tailored to the race ("racial classes"), then that works out.

In my OD&D, I've often made druid spells exclusive to Elves, instead of them as pointy eared fighter/mages.

I'd definitely be interested in a D&D variant where C/F/M/T classes were tailored for each race. It would be fun to have Dwarf Warriors have notably different fighting skills than an Elf Ranger or a Halfling Ambusher.

Get good at combat.

After one combat session with me, the player who optimized their Goblin Rogue for stealth-based Sneak Attacks or their Drider Barbarian skilled at Two-Weapon fighting learn that the most dangerous min-maxer at the table is ME.

I let players run whatever they want because I can always find the counter to what they want to do. Min-Maxing is like that; they're very good at a thing but, lacking in other areas. My job as GM is finding their weakness(es) and exploiting them.

It's a necessary degree of Gamemaster education. I've read so many forum posts about GMs struggling with optimized PCs. Seen it via PbP in-game. GMs who can't exploit surprise, terrain, lighting, weather, position, numbers. You can overwhelm any group of PCs with a CR-level group of skeletons. I almost brought sessions of Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous to a quick end by exploiting numbers-based Challenge Rating. If the PCs are outnumbered at least 2-1, it makes things "tricky".

If you use CR and players ask you how they nearly got 86ed - you're doing it right. Overwhelming them with low-CR monsters/NPCs is all the advantage you need. A pack of wolves. Skeletons. Goblins. Insects. Let them be 1 HD or less and the swarm of adversity can be a lethal problem.

Learn your game. A GM who can't kill a party within the context of the rules isn't educated and thus, easily beaten. You will bore your players during combat.

Considering how CR sets weaksauce challenges, GMs have to break out all the tricks to make any fight even remotely a challenge. I do not enjoy the baked in CR concept of "expending 1/5th of your resources". Makes games too predictable.

In 4e, I only used the "hard" CR chart as the world's baseline and let the players know that upfront. Then I'd use a +/- randomizer so 1/4 of encounters were easier and 1/4 of encounters were...worth more XP. Then on top of that, I approach 4e combat as a competitive skirmish boardgame so the monsters are played to the hilt so whatever splatbook char-optimization they bring to the table isn't my concern. I'm gonna bloody them and their PCs.
 
In OD&D, I'm all about 75% randomized encounters. But in OD&D, we don't worry about optimization.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1091205If the classes are tailored to the race ("racial classes"), then that works out.

In my OD&D, I've often made druid spells exclusive to Elves, instead of them as pointy eared fighter/mages.

I'd definitely be interested in a D&D variant where C/F/M/T classes were tailored for each race. It would be fun to have Dwarf Warriors have notably different fighting skills than an Elf Ranger or a Halfling Ambusher.

Yeah it's something I figure many would be, but like I said it's a ton of work, to tailor each class for each race. Also you'd need to limit PC races to about 7 tops or you end up with a 1000+ page book filled to the brim with progression charts with all the special snowflake races ppl like to play now.

Even with 7 races and just 4 classes you end up describing 28 classes plus their progression tables. Not counting the different spells you'd need to create for what? 7 or 14 different magic users? And forget about multiclassing.

In my Low Fantasy Sandbox I'm trying to do something like this, but then again it's humans only. The difference is in culture not on race (here used correctly) or the species of High Fantasy games.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1091218Yeah it's something I figure many would be, but like I said it's a ton of work, to tailor each class for each race. Also you'd need to limit PC races to about 7 tops or you end up with a 1000+ page book filled to the brim with progression charts with all the special snowflake races ppl like to play now.

If you were going to publish a game, you'd have that problem. But I just include the basic classes and only add new classes if a player requests it. This way the players aren't shopping for the most powerful class and since each class only has one character playing it, it greatly limits any potential problems with balance.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1091309If you were going to publish a game, you'd have that problem. But I just include the basic classes and only add new classes if a player requests it. This way the players aren't shopping for the most powerful class and since each class only has one character playing it, it greatly limits any potential problems with balance.

4 Races times 4 classes it's 16 different entries, still plenty of work, even if it's just for your table.

I like when each race suggests a canonically "best" class, but I also like to keep a human-centric game. Rather than revamping the entire system, I find that adding a simple stat bonus for humans has more than normalized character race selection in this regard. (I don't play 5e, so I don't know exactly what would be an appropriately balancing number, probably +2 total points to any ability scores). Over the course of the last 5 years playing this way, our adventuring parties have been approximately 80% human. Before that change, they were 80% non-human on average.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1091035How many Scottish dwarves, effeminate elven archers, sneaky thieving halflings and angry half-orc fighters do we really need to see to realise that the counterintuitive fact is that restricting choices actually enhances creativity?

So very true, and I have often intentionally played characters counter to racial stereotype with great success and much enjoyment (Dwarven Thieves are awesome!). For better or worse though, I have also found that generating interest from new players is much more difficult when they are essentially assigned a character to play. I think this approach works best with experienced players looking to take their creativity to the next level.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;10913204 Races times 4 classes it's 16 different entries, still plenty of work, even if it's just for your table.

I've done way more than that. It wasn't much work as I just didn't do them all at the same time. Like I said, unless you are publishing the game, you don't need to write-up all the classes before hand. And, even when writing them up, you don't need to write-up more than three levels until a player actually picks that class and starts to level up.

"Just in time game design" is what I call it. I started with the seven classes from B/X and started adding from there. First the goblin sneak, then the house pixie, then ogre pit fighter, then the vampire, etc, etc,