When trolls collide, reason fails.

On a lighter note I was thinking about the Vac Suit 6 pilot and realized it would be awesome character. Here is someone who is such a phenomenally bad pilot that he crashes the ship on every single mission and ends up floating in space in his Vac suit. This guy has set all kinds of Vac suit endurance records while waiting to be rescued. You could run a totally badarse Gully Foyle type character hell bent on making just One successful piloting mission!

I love how Traveller char gen can throw out these possibilities.

That isn't to say that those Mongoose tables aren't just a teensy bit broken. As GM, I would have allowed the player to re-roll if they wanted to ;-)

Quote from: Fiasco;514099When trolls collide, reason fails.

On a lighter note I was thinking about the Vac Suit 6 pilot and realized it would be awesome character. Here is someone who is such a phenomenally bad pilot that he crashes the ship on every single mission and ends up floating in space in his Vac suit. This guy has set all kinds of Vac suit endurance records while waiting to be rescued. You could run a totally badarse Gully Foyle type character hell bent on making just One successful piloting mission!

So basically the Rincewind/Guybrush Threepwood of spaceship piloting

Quote from: Rincewind1;514100So basically the Rincewind/Guybrush Threepwood of spaceship piloting

Hell yeah. I find that the weak/weird ( in a good way weird) characters are far more interesting and memorable than Mr. Correct/Optimal build.

Having run a Traveller game with a by-the-book (MGT) strictly randomly-generated Traveller crew, I don't think allowing a small degree of player choice (e.g. roll a 5, choose from which applicable list in your career you get skill #5 from) would "break" the game... any more than 4d6-drop-lowest or 3d6-arrange-to-taste "breaks" D&D.

Which is to say, you do miss out a bit on the fun of randomness, but you get to have a bit of a hand in shaping your character. Which I find satisfactory and even lifelike, since IRL we don't always get to choose how strong or fit or smart we are, but we are mostly responsible for our own professional and intellectual development.

My favorite character generation systems combine player choice with random elements.

Quote from: StormBringer;513975Agree.  As far as I can tell, 'Vacc Suit' has about as much use as 'Business Suit'.  If you are jetting around the galaxy in a spaceship, you really ought to know how to wear one.

Having done some research into this area (http://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit/). A vacc suit or space is a complex piece of a equipment. The advance of technology would miniaturize the components and make maintenance easier. There are certain things then that have to be checked and done to make you are safe in a extremely hostile environment. Similar to how using Scuba gotten easier but still requires a through knowledge of the equipment because the tech can't stop you from violating the requirement to maintain proper dive times.

Now in a space opera game, or science fantasy, then handwaving all this away is perfectly fine. But Traveller has been always about harder science fiction than those genres.

There is a chance for catastrophic failure and in with a Vacc Suit that means death. But most failures are of a more mundane quality that will likely lead to a abort of the activity. That is if the player doesn't decide to try to press it.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;514075I believe you have dragged me into a different argument, sir. I said nothing about widening gaps, implied nothing about widening gaps, my comments had nothing to do with widening gaps.

(Or Frank. Don't know anything about him. Don't have an opinion.)

All I did was post a good suggestion. A reasonable suggestion. A correct suggestion. Based on sensible analysis:

"There are some really shitty rules out there, so don't crunch whore. It's likely to cause problems."

This advice is correct, on every level. It applies to D&D, Rifts, and most other games, it applies to third party d20, Vampire/any other game's splatbooks, equipment books, campaign settings, modules, house rules posted by some Internet guy, whatever.

So keep me out of your arguments, because I said nothing about them and, for the purposes of this thread, care nothing about them. I am not for you, I am not against you.

I had a point to make. It was correct. I made it.

EDIT:

And, for the record, crunch whoring causes a lot of problems. Cutting back on it mitigates them.

There are also problems unrelated to crunch whoring (which problems I didn't discuss). So cutting back on crunch whoring won't affect those problems, and I never said it would. Why attempt to contradict that which I never said?

Thanks for correcting my impression of the thread. I might have lost count of who exactly said what when, and was going from more general recall. I also loosely remember early on that Rob Conley said that the Diplomacy problem is due to allowing too many splats (iirc he quoted the sources used, and then wrote 'This is your problem right there'), and so wanted to respond to that way of dismissing the problem. Sorry if this resulted in some misattributions to (among others) you.

Quote from: Windjammer;514128Thanks for correcting my impression of the thread.

Thanks for being polite about it. I appreciate that.

Quote from: Windjammer;514128I might have lost count of who exactly said what when, and was going from more general recall.

No problem, it's happened to me. I just didn't want to be dragged into an argument I had no part of.

I get into enough on my own.

Quote from: estar;514116Having done some research into this area (http://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit/). A vacc suit or space is a complex piece of a equipment. The advance of technology would miniaturize the components and make maintenance easier. There are certain things then that have to be checked and done to make you are safe in a extremely hostile environment. Similar to how using Scuba gotten easier but still requires a through knowledge of the equipment because the tech can't stop you from violating the requirement to maintain proper dive times.

Now in a space opera game, or science fantasy, then handwaving all this away is perfectly fine. But Traveller has been always about harder science fiction than those genres.

There is a chance for catastrophic failure and in with a Vacc Suit that means death. But most failures are of a more mundane quality that will likely lead to a abort of the activity. That is if the player doesn't decide to try to press it.

.... but that would suggest that using an iPad to find who played third ewok from the left in Jedi would be much more complex that using an AS400 to do it and well that simply ain't the case.

Traveller is a 1970s version of Hard SciFi a far more likely version from where we sit now would be an Iain M Banks Culture-verse and in the Culture a Vacc suit would have an AI that could not only govern all the features of the suit but also play scrabble with you whilst it communicated to a remote drone in Ancient Greek using a 10Gb encryption key.
So the alternate to Vacc Suit - 6 would be buy a Vacc suit with Tech level 13 or higher ....

...just saying (although irrelevent to the thrust of the conversation I will concede)...

Re: Diplomacy

The 3.0 and 3.5 Diplomacy skill description is conceptually flawed. I was going to suggest a different option, but a quick check of Pathfinder showed they had already implemented it. (And a slower check of my 3e house rules from 2002 showed I had done substantially the same thing.)

Permanent change of NPC attitude is a bad idea. Pathfinder allows Diplomacy to do two things: 1. Temporarily change the target's attitude, and 2. ask for a favor. Different uses, requiring different checks.

They also add restrictions, such as needing time, the target having a minimal Intelligence, being willing to listen, being able to understand, and combat not occurring.

Other than adjusting their DC's, that's how Diplomacy should work.

My Personal Diplomacy DC's

The Base DC of a Diplomacy check is the Level or HD of the target. This DC is modified by their Wisdom modifier. It is also modified by their current attitude towards the character attempting a Diplomacy check.

Hostile +15
Unfriendly +5
Indifferent +0
Friendly: -5
Helpful: -10

(I would have broken the skill up into two separate uses, each explicitly dealing with only one of those functions, but that's just a personal preference.)

Also, truly implacable characters should have the extraordinary ability I suggested earlier.

Which raises the question in my mind: if there was a good fix already available, why hasn't anyone mentioned it? It would have been terribly easy:

"3E Diplomacy sucks balls. Pathfinder did it much better."

Has this all just been edition wars, by proxy? An OSR/3e battle where no one cares about solutions, only arguing first principles? A waste of time, if so. IMNSHO.

(Also, Fred proves nothing about anything being broken, other than Internet debates. You know, the kind where people use the most ridiculous, extreme examples and claim they're a typical case, and extrapolate even worse consequences from them, then claim they prove the game is broken. That's the very definition of a "Spherical Cow". 3e Diplomacy is done incorrectly, but Fred is irrelevant to real play under real GM's.)

Everyone should check out After Sundown by Trollman.

It really does tell you all you need to know about the guy; totally devoid of any original ideas yet still adamant about being seen as a game designer. He's like the kid that wanted to be an astronaut growing up so badly and still insists that because he plays with model rockets that he's an astronaut.

The dude's also hilarious for decrying the whole 'Rule 0 Fallacy' while existing on a board that is devoted to houseruling 3E until it doesn't suck. (Hint: it fails)

Oh, and the Bane Guard, a class he meant to demonstrate that 4E classes were so easy to build that it could be done in 15 minutes. Note that the class has gone through multiple revisions, is still completely non-functional, and even if it were made functional it's hilariously overpowered in so many ways that display that Frank knows fuck-all about design.

Our hero, once thought lost in the void of the Internet, steps out of the shadows to sneer once again.

Quote from: Darwinism;514178Everyone should check out After Sundown by Trollman.

It really does tell you all you need to know about the guy; totally devoid of any original ideas yet still adamant about being seen as a game designer. He's like the kid that wanted to be an astronaut growing up so badly and still insists that because he plays with model rockets that he's an astronaut.

Go into more detail, please.  Perhaps you could make an "After Sundown sucks" thread instead of returning this thread into a "hate on Trollman thread."

QuoteThe dude's also hilarious for decrying the whole 'Rule 0 Fallacy' while existing on a board that is devoted to houseruling 3E until it doesn't suck. (Hint: it fails)

I think we both know you're smarter than that.  Creating house rules for 3e isn't the same thing as the Rule 0 Fallacy, and you know it.  (The quality of those house rules, on the other hand, is up for debate.)

QuoteOh, and the Bane Guard, a class he meant to demonstrate that 4E classes were so easy to build that it could be done in 15 minutes. Note that the class has gone through multiple revisions, is still completely non-functional, and even if it were made functional it's hilariously overpowered in so many ways that display that Frank knows fuck-all about design.

QuoteWhen you shift at least one square or damage an opponent with an attack, you may Mark an opponent you can reach. This mark lasts until ended by a saving throw. When an enemy fails a saving throw to end your Mark, they suffer damage equal to your Charisma modifier if they are within your Melee reach. When an enemy marked by this power inflicts damage, their damage is reduced by your Dexterity modifier.

Quote1[W] + Charisma modifier damage. The target is pushed one square and you may shift one square towards them.
Increase to 2[W] + Dexterity modifier damage at 21st level.

Quote1[W] + Constitution modifier damage.
Increase to 2[W] + Dexterity modifier damage at 21st level.

Quote1[W] modifier necrotic damage. If the target is damaged, it becomes Immobilized until the end of your next turn.

QuoteEffect: Mark one opponent within range. All attacks have Combat Advantage against the target until the end of your next turn.

QuoteEffect: When you are in any kind of civilization ('especially' savage civilization), you can gather the services of minions who follow you around. You can have up to two minions at a time in this way, and both of them must be lower level than you.

Holy lol.

*shrug* There are 30 levels of that class, and those errors could easily just be sloppiness (hardly unusual for a wiki).

At best, it shows how much effort WotC was putting into 4e class creation: as much as one unpaid laborer would do in his spare time.

I should put my war-warrior in there.

Quote from: Spike;513960Actually I think it rather reinforces MY point.

Yes, math nerd-sperging identifies a problem which hasn't or doesn't regularly crop up in games, to whit: Diplomancy.

However, from that we can move into a reasonable discussion of infinite bonuses chasing infinite difficulties vs a limited randomizer, which illustrates a problem...

tl;dr: As I've said, the value of looking at the Diplomancer 'problem' is not looking for solutions for a problem that doesn't exist, its in seeing the problems that lead to diplomancer style issues in the first place clearly.

I do agree with your point. Having people who excel in one discipline look with scrutiny upon a piece of work and offer criticism is useful (in a broad sense). Understanding how any discipline works in practice is good. Through this we can avoid pitfalls in Creation Design or Table Adjudication.

I'm sure we could have linguists harp on how having Common understood as a complete separate language, instead of a pidgin of roughly mutually guessable gestures and sounds, absolutely wreaks havoc upon a world. Also, such linguists could point out how throwing unnecessary amounts of hyphens and apostrophes starts to ruin their meaning and look more random. Also noting how naming conventions become painfully formulaic when structured as "(Noun) of the (Adjective)(Juxtaposing Adjective)(Noun)." Such criticism is important.

But there is also something to be said about keeping such criticism within its relevant spheres. There is no one discipline to rule them all, and that's where you correctly identify where TGD goes to unproductive excess. I'm sure there's quite a bit of frustration being vented here resulting from attributing too much importance upon such myopic fixations.

I still would like to see a "Diplomancer "explaining his point of view to a pack of dire wolves, though.

Quote from: Windjammer;513878I agree. I wonder though why elements which are part of the rules of Monopoly are likened to elements which (according to you) aren't part of the rules of an RPG - namely (in your dichotomy) (a) the scenario and (b) GM adjudications outside the rules.

Because RPGs aren't boardgames.

Is this really coming as a huge surprise to you?

If boardgames were designed like RPGs, then Monopoly would give you rules for moving around the board and buying properties, but then it would say to the GM: "Here are some tips for how you can design your game boards." (Actually, if it were like a lot of RPGs, it would skip the tips and just assume the GM can figure it out.)

But boardgames aren't RPGs. And RPGs aren't boardgames.

QuoteOn my reading, Benoist reacted negatively to Trollman's analysis because that analysis
(D) exploits conditions which never came up at Benoist's game table

That's certainly possible. I can't answer for what's inside Benoist's head.

As a note: I'm not commenting on Trollman's Iron Heroes analysis. I've read Iron Heroes and I've stolen some stuff from Iron Heroes; but I haven't done an in-depth analysis and I've never played it. Some of Trollman's stuff looks pretty devastating; a lot of it looks sensationalistic and exaggerated. But I couldn't really tell you which is which without spending a lot of time digging into Iron Heroes, and I don't really have the time or interest in that right now.

Quote from: Spike;513966What I can't do is have sneaky monsters that reasonably challenge more than one segment of the party at a time. Either they OWN every other player to challenge one, or the one can essentially ignore the fact that they are sneaky.

Capping modifiers/DCs is one way of solving this problem. But this does open up a discussion of a wider philosophy in how the world works.

In order for challenges to be meaningful/reasonable for every member in the party, the total range of modifiers can't be more than 10 or thereabouts. (Assuming a d20.) In other words, if your low end has a +0 then your top end can't exceed +9. (Which means that when the top end has a 75% chance of success, the lower end has a 25% chance of success. Those being the commonly understood boundaries on "not yet a sure thing" and "not yet an unlikely long-shot".)

Now, assuming that we're talking about D&D, we toss in, say, a maximum +5 bonus from magic items. (This, it should be noted, is incredibly small compared to every edition of D&D ever published.) This leaves you with a 5 point range for describing the totality of human skill.

This small range of variance is, by itself, somewhat problematic because it means you're crushing a lot into those 5 points. But it's also problematic because it means that the total difference between Tiger Woods and a guy who's picking up a golf club for the first time is that Tiger Woods is 25% more likely to sink his putt.

On the other end of this capping discussion, we've got DCs. Given the +0 to +9 range we're talking about, you need to cap your DCs at 29. (Anything beyond that is, obviously, impossible by definition.)

But it's pretty easy to set-up some gedanken that suggest that there's a problem: Define lifting a given stone as DC 29. Now, double the size of the stone. It must still be DC 29, right? After all, you've capped it.

This is hypothetical, of course, but it'll crop up in practice at the table. You've design a system in which the limit heads to infinity, but then you've pinned it down to a whole number. Eventually the DM will find that they've defined themselves into a corner.

The other option, of course, is the "Doc Savage" solution: Here, all the characters level up their abilities in unison. They maintain a 10 point spread between the lowest and highest abilities, but DCs can be uncapped so that more challenging tasks become possible (while less challenging tasks become automatic).

The "Doc Savage" solution still has the same problem of limiting differentiation between PCs, but has less weirdness in how the PCs interact with the world around them.

Personally, I prefer to limit the "Doc Savage" stuff to the abilities which are actually crucial for challenges that target entire groups: Attack rolls, armor, and saving throws. You could probably make a case for Perception/Stealth if that's a major component of your game.

(IOW, I'm okay with one guy in the group being able to do stuff with Balance that the other guys can't.)