Quote from: Chris24601 on December 26, 2023, 01:10:30 PM

Quote from: Lurkndog on December 26, 2023, 12:03:48 PM
It's not unreasonable for a new player to want to play a character as powerful as Conan or Aragorn, or Kratos from God of War. Their expectations are set by other media, which often work very differently.

They have to learn how RPGs work, and in particular, how the character growth mechanics work.

Why is it required to introduce new players to roleplaying via a system or setting where they can't be a Conan or Aragorn or Kratos (with challenges appropriate to their status)?

Yeah. There's nothing wrong with starting out playing Conan or Aragorn. That's how Marvel Superheroes approaches it, by having players play Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, and so forth.

I suspect making playing Spider-Man into a forbidden fruit only possible after years of play just makes players more eager to do so, and contributes to things like jealousy over stats. If they are allowed to try it, then they find that it isn't such a big deal.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley on December 26, 2023, 10:41:37 AM

Quote from: Domina on December 25, 2023, 10:26:06 PM
I've genuinely never had a player bitch about not having enough points or whatever. Are you guys playing with children or something?

I've had players jealous over what other characters would have as attributes. So yeah, they exist.

wtf lmao

Quote from: Domina on December 26, 2023, 05:06:53 PM
wtf lmao

I've also been in groups in which a player made a literal Nazi to be their character. And honestly? It was the same campaign the jealousy happened in.

Bad players suck the life out of gaming.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley on December 26, 2023, 10:41:37 AM

Quote from: Domina on December 25, 2023, 10:26:06 PM
I've genuinely never had a player bitch about not having enough points or whatever. Are you guys playing with children or something?

I've had players jealous over what other characters would have as attributes. So yeah, they exist.

I've only ever had that happen with random generation. People never really bitch about attributes with point buy, but they might still occasionally run into issues having enough points for minor background skills, such as languages (if they're foreigners, for example, and need to invest in the common language for the region the campaign is set on) and the like. Because point buy systems tend to be very stingy with points, usually giving only enough to make characters competent in a few areas focused on adventuring skills, but not enough to spread out for non-essential stuff that's just for "flavor".

Although people don't normally "bitch" about that strictly speaking. But it can be a show stopper when the game is about to start and they suddenly realize that their Japanese character in a Cyberpunk game can't speak English, for example, when the campaign is supposed to be set in the US. IMO, all games should give spare points or selections of some type for "Background" stuff, similar to 5e Backgrounds.

Quote from: Omega on December 25, 2023, 09:32:38 PM

Quote from: Venka on December 18, 2023, 12:27:29 PM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 17, 2023, 10:03:59 PM

QuoteThere's almost no reason for that to have been in the book, the one merit is that it prevents the strongest woman from being as strong as the strongest man, a piece of realism that all later versions have left out.

Ah, you're one of those guys. Realism in a game about... dungeons and... dragons. Rightyo. Start shaving your neck, mate, and please discard the fedora.

Heres the real kicker with this argument.

The limit is only for STR and only effects Fighters, Rangers and Paladins as those are the only classes that made use of exceptional STR and the limit was not all that big. Women capped at 18/50 I believe.

So its one side bitching about nothing and the other side defending nothing.

"So its one side bitching about nothing and the other side defending nothing." 

This isn't true.
If you have a 50% hit rate as a strength 10 guy and are swinging for 1d8, going to strength 14 doesn't add any damage, but it is the highest for a female halfing.  Strength 15 likewise doesnt add any damage, despite being a legitimately good strength, and is the highest for a female gnome.  Strength 16 entitles you to +1 damage, which will increase your damage in this example by about 20%, and this is the highest for an elfess.  A female dwarf or half elf can get to strength 17, which is +1/+1 and is a 34% boost over the strength 10-15 case.  If you rolled up a strength 18 (itself a +1/+2, a 59% boost over the Strength 14-15 case, and an 18% boost over Strength 17!), and you are NOT a fighter, the only two girls you can pick and not lose strength are female human, and female half orc.

Now, this is arguably very unrealistic; men are much stronger than women in reality, like 50% stronger just among average people with a much greater difference at the top end; if this was done with reality in mind, the difference would be much more stark.
But as written, we've still excluded and penalized most of the available female characters in the PHB.  If you think the figleaf that halflings, gnomes, elves, and dwarves don't exist in our world makes this acceptable in the twisted eyesight of modernity, please head over to reddit and propose such a system in any of the DND subreddits.  "No, this isn't about female HUMANS, just things that are closely based on them!" you'd say, from under a mountain of drooling downvoters.  Ideally not on your main account, should you have one, as you are definitely at risk of banning.

Now I've demonstrated that this is not an issue only for fighters and their subclasses (a human female rogue and a human male rogue at strength 18 will perform the same, but this is definitely not the case for an elfess rogue versus the elf rogue), but lets move on to the meaty portion that is related just to the fightery types.

Just how good is 18/50, the female maximum human strength in this version, compared to 18/00?  Well, we go from "+1/+3" to "+3/+6".  You probably don't need me to do the math for you here, but I sure will.  With my baseline assumption in this post (50% accuracy for the strength 10 character), the 18/50 case is 83% better, and the 18/00 case is over 200% better (around triple the damage).  This also means, of course, that 18/00 is about two thirds again more damage than the 18/50 character.

It's a very large difference.

Earlier in the thread I discussed what I considered to be the most important issue; these stats, despite allegedly being very rare, in practice were not that rare.  Their existence made players and DMs assume they were to be used, and used they were, in amounts far exceeding their statistical expectation.  That was the bulk of my post, not the strength difference between sexes.  But even with Gygax's very generous assignment of human females to strength 18/50 as a maximum, it's still enough of a difference because of the rather preposterous scaling of the percentile strengths.

Anyway, the math says it matters enough such that people discussing it are not discussing a non-issue.

Quote from: Venka on December 26, 2023, 06:36:16 PM

Quote from: Omega on December 25, 2023, 09:32:38 PM

Quote from: Venka on December 18, 2023, 12:27:29 PM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 17, 2023, 10:03:59 PM

QuoteThere's almost no reason for that to have been in the book, the one merit is that it prevents the strongest woman from being as strong as the strongest man, a piece of realism that all later versions have left out.

Ah, you're one of those guys. Realism in a game about... dungeons and... dragons. Rightyo. Start shaving your neck, mate, and please discard the fedora.

Heres the real kicker with this argument.

The limit is only for STR and only effects Fighters, Rangers and Paladins as those are the only classes that made use of exceptional STR and the limit was not all that big. Women capped at 18/50 I believe.

So its one side bitching about nothing and the other side defending nothing.

"So its one side bitching about nothing and the other side defending nothing." 

This isn't true.
If you have a 50% hit rate as a strength 10 guy and are swinging for 1d8, going to strength 14 doesn't add any damage, but it is the highest for a female halfing.  Strength 15 likewise doesnt add any damage, despite being a legitimately good strength, and is the highest for a female gnome.  Strength 16 entitles you to +1 damage, which will increase your damage in this example by about 20%, and this is the highest for an elfess.  A female dwarf or half elf can get to strength 17, which is +1/+1 and is a 34% boost over the strength 10-15 case.  If you rolled up a strength 18 (itself a +1/+2, a 59% boost over the Strength 14-15 case, and an 18% boost over Strength 17!), and you are NOT a fighter, the only two girls you can pick and not lose strength are female human, and female half orc.

Now, this is arguably very unrealistic; men are much stronger than women in reality, like 50% stronger just among average people with a much greater difference at the top end; if this was done with reality in mind, the difference would be much more stark.
But as written, we've still excluded and penalized most of the available female characters in the PHB.  If you think the figleaf that halflings, gnomes, elves, and dwarves don't exist in our world makes this acceptable in the twisted eyesight of modernity, please head over to reddit and propose such a system in any of the DND subreddits.  "No, this isn't about female HUMANS, just things that are closely based on them!" you'd say, from under a mountain of drooling downvoters.  Ideally not on your main account, should you have one, as you are definitely at risk of banning.

Now I've demonstrated that this is not an issue only for fighters and their subclasses (a human female rogue and a human male rogue at strength 18 will perform the same, but this is definitely not the case for an elfess rogue versus the elf rogue), but lets move on to the meaty portion that is related just to the fightery types.

Just how good is 18/50, the female maximum human strength in this version, compared to 18/00?  Well, we go from "+1/+3" to "+3/+6".  You probably don't need me to do the math for you here, but I sure will.  With my baseline assumption in this post (50% accuracy for the strength 10 character), the 18/50 case is 83% better, and the 18/00 case is over 200% better (around triple the damage).  This also means, of course, that 18/00 is about two thirds again more damage than the 18/50 character.

It's a very large difference.

Earlier in the thread I discussed what I considered to be the most important issue; these stats, despite allegedly being very rare, in practice were not that rare.  Their existence made players and DMs assume they were to be used, and used they were, in amounts far exceeding their statistical expectation.  That was the bulk of my post, not the strength difference between sexes.  But even with Gygax's very generous assignment of human females to strength 18/50 as a maximum, it's still enough of a difference because of the rather preposterous scaling of the percentile strengths.

Anyway, the math says it matters enough such that people discussing it are not discussing a non-issue.

You have to have players stats roll at the table- or else there will be a mysteriously high level of 18/00's.  I am currently DMing an AD&D Greyhawk Campaign.  One of my players is playing a 3rd level Fighter with 12 Strength.  Another player is playing a 4th level Ranger with 18/40 Strength.    The Ranger out-performs him in battle.  Clearly!  He's 1 level higher, has a higher strength, and uses two-weapon fighting.  But the Fighter isn't useless.  He has a better AC with better armor and shield, though sometimes uses a Polearm weapon.  (Both warriors currently outperform the poor Monk in battle, though the Monk should get better with time). 

And if there ever is a strength enhancing item to be found (Gauntlets of Ogre Power or Girdle of Giant Strength) guess who will get it.  As DM, I'm not going to put such an item in there on purpose, but... some of these old modules I use have stuff like this in there.

Both players are happy with their characters.  (The Fighter plays his PC as a scrappy farm boy who is learning the ropes and succeeding despite the odds, while the Ranger is more a steryotypical 'bad ass')

Anyway, how stats translate to the table isn't always obvious.  That's why I always tend to use real examples from games I play in or run. 

Btw, "elfess?"

Quote from: VisionStorm on December 26, 2023, 06:14:57 PM

Quote from: Darrin Kelley on December 26, 2023, 10:41:37 AM

Quote from: Domina on December 25, 2023, 10:26:06 PM
I've genuinely never had a player bitch about not having enough points or whatever. Are you guys playing with children or something?

I've had players jealous over what other characters would have as attributes. So yeah, they exist.

I've only ever had that happen with random generation. People never really bitch about attributes with point buy, but they might still occasionally run into issues having enough points for minor background skills, such as languages (if they're foreigners, for example, and need to invest in the common language for the region the campaign is set on) and the like. Because point buy systems tend to be very stingy with points, usually giving only enough to make characters competent in a few areas focused on adventuring skills, but not enough to spread out for non-essential stuff that's just for "flavor".

Although people don't normally "bitch" about that strictly speaking. But it can be a show stopper when the game is about to start and they suddenly realize that their Japanese character in a Cyberpunk game can't speak English, for example, when the campaign is supposed to be set in the US. IMO, all games should give spare points or selections of some type for "Background" stuff, similar to 5e Backgrounds.

I usually solve the language issue with what I like to call the "Lingua Franca Rule": every player chooses one language that everybody in the party can speak.  Then if it happens to be their native language, or if they normally can't speak that language due to low int, etc. then every larty membergets a free language (with at least one of their languages being the Lingua Franca).

LANGUAGES
Self • Default Rank • 1 Hero Point
All characters can speak one or two languages, but you speak a number of extra languages equal to your Intellect. You can select these languages ahead of time or during play.

So even with the base level 2 ranks in intellect that everyone gets, you can speak three or four languages. One hero point in a standard level game is less than 1% of your budget - it's such a small cost that it doesn't even really compare to attribute point buy, it's more like spending five copper on a bag of potato chips with your starting gold. Also sidesteps the problem of picking irrelevant languages since you can leave slots open. If it turns out during play the the power was a waste, do a retcon between sessions and spend the point on something else.

In Ascendant, languages are similarly cheap. You pay notably less than 1% your total for the first extra even as a peak human type build, then it doubles the benefits for every level further you buy, capped at basically the intelligence stat for how many times you can buy it. You can know literally every language on earth at a reasonable cost.

But I get what folks are saying. If you forget to allocate spend to that and other cheap but vision-critical background traits, it will leave you bummed out as you have to weaken a pricier power to make it work. User error and frustration can come into play, to some extent. Not because the system overcharges per se, but because with any point system it typically takes at least a little bit to figure out how to best realize your character concept with the points available. Most folks can't hold all the point costs and such in their head all at once, and have to do some adjustment and trial/error.

Quote from: KindaMeh on December 29, 2023, 12:16:15 PM
But I get what folks are saying. If you forget to allocate spend to that and other cheap but vision-critical background traits, it will leave you bummed out as you have to weaken a pricier power to make it work. User error and frustration can come into play, to some extent. Not because the system overcharges per se, but because with any point system it typically takes at least a little bit to figure out how to best realize your character concept with the points available. Most folks can't hold all the point costs and such in their head all at once, and have to do some adjustment and trial/error.

When I was introducing lots of new people to Hero System, this aspect got so pronounced that I deliberately kept back 5 points from the original total, just to use to buy cheap but missed things as they were discovered.  Also stole "quirks" from GURPS, and let people develop up to 5 in play, each one allowing another 1 point of cheap flavor things.  You'd think that the normal point gain from adventuring would take care of that, but I found that the new players always had something more substantial that they wanted to save for, whereas having essentially 10 points set aside for "missing stuff" worked fine.