Quote from: CRKrueger;888836This is the shit that happens whenever people start 3e or 4e threads, unfortunately.  It'll die down.

Or when some loon who apparently never even read the module/game/book/whatever jumps in to make accusations that have been shot down 20 pages prior.

WooHoo!  First Editon PDFs delivered.  Now to start strip-mining for piratey goodness.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;887733It's a fair assumption. Certainly DMs worldwide tend to be suspicious when a new player shows up with his 43rd level drowlesbianstripperninja - "levelled up from 1st, honest!" - and get them to roll up a new character.

Where that didn't used to happen was at gaming Cons.  Which is what Tomb of Horrors was written for.

Well, by the time I got to conventions in the late 80s, there were no more tournaments, so I'll take your word for it. But running games after that I did have plenty of people showing up their silly characters.

But most of the people were trying a new game, so there was no drama, they took it all as it came with no arguments or special snowflake stuff going on.

Maybe it's because you were in Australia, or I might have started a bit earlier than you did.  I remember that at gaming cons or events at stores, it was very common practice to bring your own character to D&D adventures right up until around when I got into college (so the early 90s), though it got rarer as time went by.

Same. In fact one of the big TSR events in the late 90s required us to submit a character. From those the ones invited to the event were chosen.

BYOC was a thing.

A horrible, horrible thing.

Excuse me, but I need to borrow the fainting couch just thinking about all the BYOC nonsense I dealt with back in the day.

Quote from: Lunamancer;888818My first post on this site was adapting my proven system to a procedure that will work with most any RPG to handle in-character social interactions of all kinds. I just may know a thing or two about social interaction.

Link?

Quote from: Spinachcat;891345Link?

Hm, first post I see this.

Quote from: Lunamancer;871296I think this needs picking apart.

If two guys are in a fight, do you think the smaller guy is going to try to win by overpowering the bigger one? Or do you think he's going to rely more on speed?

I'd like to suggest that in an RPG, there are usually many ways to go about solving a problem or "winning" in an encounter. And that the efficacy of a particular character in that situation is NOT going to be looking at all the different options he has then taking the average. All that matters is the option he chooses, and if the player is wise, he will choose the option that gives him the best chance for success.

This should all seem obvious. But the conclusion is that players will tend to play to their strengths. So if the party, by luck of the dice, has several members with very high Charisma, I would expect that fact alone would mean this group will choose to solve more problems using the tools Charisma offers--better reactions from NPCs, more loyal men, higher morale. So "Charisma-based encounters" should become more common. Not because that's what a good and proper GM does. It's simply by virtue of player choice.

Now if the players choose to go hacking and slashing anyway, despite their awesome Charisma, so be it. Charisma had the potential to be the most useful stat in the game, they just opted not to use it.

There ain't no such thing as "equally overall." It does depend on situation. And situation depends in large part on player choice. And player choice depends a lot on what the PCs are good at.

The only D&D cons I've been to were a couple tournaments in about '82-'84. Before the tournament, you submitted a list of three character class/race combos that wanted to run (ie Half-elf Ranger). Then the tournament organizers assigned players to tables, and went through the characters options and chose ones that fit the needs of the table. So you sat down at your assigned table with a pre-made character in front of you who hopefully matched one of your three choices of class/race. But the stats and equipment were all generated by the tournament organisers. I can't even imagine the shit-show of allowing players to bring their own characters to something like that.

There were natural brakes on BYOC in that if you brought a mary sue, it would be upheld for public ridicule.

Quote from: dragoner;891569There were natural brakes on BYOC in that if you brought a mary sue, it would be upheld for public ridicule.

Verily.

Though at one con for an AD&D event I brought in one of my Magic Users and the DM was skeptical at all the low stats I had and that anyone with those stats could have lived to 9th level.
Stats were STR: 7, INT:15, WIS:7, DEX:11, CON:4, and CHA:9
Which aside from the abysmal CON wasnt all that bad really I thought.
HP was a mere 14 (Rolls according to character log were 1, 3, 4, 1, 2, 4, 2, 1, and 1. Survived numerous system shock and raise dead checks. Lots of checks.)

And I survived the con adventure.

For AD&D, Int and Dex look good. I mean, it looks more to be a savvy player than a really bad character. Though a lot of DM's expected one 17 or 18 in the main stat.

Quote from: dragoner;891744For AD&D, Int and Dex look good. I mean, it looks more to be a savvy player than a really bad character. Though a lot of DM's expected one 17 or 18 in the main stat.

I have never met a pre-3e DM expect high stats.

In fact more oft I've seen the DM suspicious of high stats. Usually because they are not common. Expecting a 17 or 18 is absurd. A 17 is a mere 4.16% chance and an 18 is a 1.62% on r4h3.

Eh. Such is. As for the character. To me its pretty average. The 7 STR is just a -1 to hit in melee and less carrying capacity. I preferred darts anyhow so not a problem overall. The 7 WIS is a -1 on saves. The DEX and CHA are neutral no bonus or loss. The biggy was the aforementioned CON of 4 and the following poor HP rolls. Apparently for that character all my luck went into system shock and raise saves.

But still. An odd example of how different DMs look at stats of characters brought in. Which shows in how different our personal encounters vary.

Quote from: Omega;891797In fact more oft I've seen the DM suspicious of high stats. Usually because they are not common. Expecting a 17 or 18 is absurd. A 17 is a mere 4.16% chance and an 18 is a 1.62% on r4h3.

Assuming your percentages are accurate, this gives a 30% chance of one or more 17+ stats in any given set of six rolled legitimately.

Every time I see the name "John Wick", and it isn't about the movie, I get a little annoyed.