So there's been some discussion of racial ability score adjustments that focus on politics. From my view, though, the biggest issue with ability score adjustments is min-maxing.
The key point here is that +X strength for a fighter or +X intelligence for a wizard is worth a lot more than the same bonus in a non-prime stat, like strength for a wizard. The fighter uses strength-based rolls very frequently, while the wizard doesn't - and vice-versa for intelligence. That means that if you have a strength-focused character and are then allowed to choose race, one gets the best bang for the buck by choosing a strength-boosting race like half-orc. That's true regardless of whether you got that high strength by random roll in order, roll and arrange, or point-bought.
This isn't true if one picks race before roll-in-order stats, or if race is based on a random roll. If these are true, then statistically, even with stat mods, 35% of half-orcs will have higher intelligence than strength.
If race is chosen after stats, though, a lot of player will choose half-orc when they already have a high strength score to boost min-max or just because they feel "high strength fits being a half-orc". I think this is failing to represent what the stat mod is claimed to represent - because PCs won't match the distribution, but will be skewed by player psychology.
If there is choice, then I dislike encouraging this sort of min-maxing. In design systems like Fantasy Hero, then if I want to make an 18 Strength character, I pay the same for 18 Strength regardless of whether I'm a strong human like Conan or Imaro, or if I'm a half orc.
Quote from: jhkim on September 26, 2022, 04:43:19 PMFrom my view, though, the biggest issue with ability score adjustments is min-maxing.
If race is chosen after stats ... a lot of player will choose half-orc when they already have a high strength score to boost min-max or just because they feel "high strength fits being a half-orc". I think this is failing to represent what the stat mod is claimed to represent - because PCs won't match the distribution, but will be skewed by player psychology.
If there is choice, then dislike encouraging this sort of min-maxing.
This is a cogent point. Ironically, the biggest argument against it in practice is (I think) traceable to another element of player psychology: one could account for represented distributions by requiring players to roll stats within certain key ranges before they could choose a particular race, in the same way one used to have to roll CHA 17 to play a paladin -- but this then imposes the requirement that anybody who wants to play a member of a particular race may be "forbidden" from doing so on the grounds of his die rolls. Nobody liked this when it limited the classes they could choose, and nobody would like having their PC race choices limited this way either.
A more effective way to do it would be simply to provide unique characteristic generation methods for every single race-class combination available in the game -- so, for example, if you want an elven wizard you are by definition going to have an INT score between 13 and 20, because elven wizards roll 1d8+12 for that score -- but given the volume and design time this would take up, I'm not surprised nobody's taken that approach.
Personally, I'd say the easiest way around this is simply having minimums and/or maximums for a race and/or class that the character wants to play--no bonuses or penalties applied after attributes are determined. Roll up the attributes, assign them as you will, and if you meet the racial/class minimums and don't exceed the maximums, you're ok. No bonuses.
Or you go with a points-based system like GURPS (which I do like)...but that's a different kind of game than D&D.
The way most people play D&D now, point buy is really the best option. And not just point buy of the Ability Scores, but the racial powers as well. So, Darkvision might be two points, same for Thick Skin (armor class bonus) or pay one point for Sharp Claws, etc.
Then they could just have a list of "suggested" powers for each race. For example, if you want to play an elf, they suggest having the Darkvision and Gender Nonbinary powers.
I handled this issue in my system (which starts with scores of 3d6 in order) by:
1. Designing the system to expect ability score boosts over time, and setting up the process to explicitly reward trying to improve a lower score. That is, you may prefer to improve your best score, but you are more likely to get a bigger boost with something heretofore neglected.
2. Related to #1, skewing the mods so that they are not even across the distribution. If every N points of ability gets you a plus, and there is no mechanism to make the higher points of ability cost more, then players will nearly always skew towards the latter. Whereas, with the skew, it takes about 2 points on average to remove a minus but 3 points on average to get another plus (and more once you get past a 17 on a typical 3-18 range).
3. Making racial boosts be a pick from a limited list, and in some cases enforcing the pick to the lowest score. So my dwarves can pick either "Might" or "Will" (at least one of which will be useful to almost any character except a classic D&D wizard/glass cannon), with an option to pick Dexterity instead if its particularly crummy compared to the other two scores. Meanwhile, the elves get to boost Lore, Dexterity, or Perception, whichever is lowest.
From a classic D&D perspective, I'd say a good fix would be to simply have every race boost their worst score from a set list (like I did with elves), with humans getting a boost on either their worst or their second worst. There, you've skewed the distribution by race, but cut out nearly all possibilities for min-maxing.
I have mixed views on this topic because different approaches have different pros and cons, and they all can be valid (or at least viable) in their own way. But I definitely think that some races are simply more inclined towards some areas of development than others. Sometimes this can mean that that race possesses superhuman abilities, but other times it might simply be that they tend to have above human average levels of ability in those areas, without necessarily exceeding human (or system) maximums. Where to draw the line is part of the trick.
In a lot of ways it depends on what you're trying to represent, but balancing issues are also a consideration, as well as the minimum and maximum range of abilities that you're willing to allow in the game.
Ability Score modifiers provide a hard distinction that might allow you to effectively surpass normal score maximums or reduce them. But they're kind of a brute force measure that lends itself to min/maxing and is not always significant unless the modifiers or the scores themselves are already high. A +2 bonus might not mean much when adding it to an average score of 10 or so, for example (a score of 12 is certainly not superhuman, but simply above average), but when added to a score of 18 it brings the total to levels that weren't even possible (for most PCs at least) in earlier editions of D&D (20 is almost godlike, or at least superhuman).
This is sort of a paradox with ability modifiers. On the one hand they allow you to exceed limits and might provide added, potentially significant benefits if they're the actual key ability for your class and you already have a high base score. But on the other hand they mostly provide a pip when working with average base score that barely feel supernatural. Yet if you provide a higher modifier (like +4) in an effort to ensure higher average scores (10+4=14, which is high, but not extreme) for that race through modifiers alone you end up with ridiculous scores at the other end (18+4=22, which is freaking godlike already).
This is part of the reason I sometimes think that setting up minimum/maximum requirements (and perhaps a suggested average score as well) for races might sometimes be a preferable way to handle racial ability ranges, rather than using ability modifiers. Setting up minimum score also provides a way to gate certain races, unless you roll high or are willing to devote extra points in point buy. However, min/max requirements don't adequately account for areas were a race exceeds normal human maximums, unless you're working with some sort of point-buy system. And even then you're stuck in a situation where you have to pay extra to achieve levels of ability that are presumably supposed to be natural to your race. So they're not perfect either, but they're better at handling lower end racial inclinations (where a race simply has above human average, but not necessarily superhuman abilities) than raw modifiers.
Rece-specific generation methods might also be another way to do it, but I'm not a fan of them because I find them kinda clubky and they require you to select your race before hand and can't change it later without starting all over again if you change your mind midway through character creation. But they might be a more direct way to ensure certain minimums and maximums, as well as certain averages for every race. However, they require you to come up with a custom range for every race in the game, and possibly every creature. Though, this is kinda already the case with min/max requirements, only here you'd have to work dice mechanics into it.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on September 26, 2022, 07:17:13 PM
The way most people play D&D now, point buy is really the best option. And not just point buy of the Ability Scores, but the racial powers as well. So, Darkvision might be two points, same for Thick Skin (armor class bonus) or pay one point for Sharp Claws, etc.
Then they could just have a list of "suggested" powers for each race. For example, if you want to play an elf, they suggest having the Darkvision and Gender Nonbinary powers.
Sure. Build-your-own options like kits have been popular variants in D&D for decades, not just with later 5th edition.
Also, a lot of D&D racial abilities are more like skills based on upbringing, rather than inborn powers like Darkvision. For example, elven proficiency in longsword and longbow, dwarven mining abilities, halfling talent with slings, etc. These often vary with which racial variant one is - i.e. tallfellow halfling vs stout halfling, wild elf vs grey elf, etc. So there could be some required racial traits (like Darkvision) and some suggested (like mining talents).
This reduces having to have unique rules for the myriad of racial variants like grey/high/wood/wild/dark/moon/sun elves. It also leaves open options for someone to play a dwarf who didn't grow up underground, or a human raised in a hunting community where everyone used bows.
The solution is don't play with min-maxers. If someone's going to give up the race they want for rp purposes for a stat bonus, which are pretty piddly anyway, that's not who I want to game with. I like racial bonuses - it makes a lot of sense that the ogre (frex) is stronger than the hobbit - and it's never been a problem because the folks I've played with 'cause they care less about bonuses than other aspects of the game.
Quote from: Osman Gazi on September 26, 2022, 06:50:11 PM
Personally, I'd say the easiest way around this is simply having minimums and/or maximums for a race and/or class that the character wants to play--...
This should be the standard. Racial Ability score caps is the most straightforward way t handle things. But instead all people do is go round and round in circles about how to do what bonus where...
If you want to prevent it, just require players to pick their race before rolling attributes.
I agree with jhkim here. Racial stat modifiers often detract from the fun by encouraging some race/class combinations and discouraging others. If orcs get +2 Strength and -2 Intelligence, you're going to see a lot of orc barbarians and very few orc wizards. Of course, you can still be an orc wizard, but you are massively penalized for that choice and it seems odd to harshly condemn any thought of maximization when people who don't want to do it are penalized so very harshly.
Personally, I'm for point buys and non-random distribution. I don't even like rolling. Put your attribute points where you want them unless the GM has some kind of objection. If the GM thinks that your choice is too unrealistic or outlandish, like a halfling with an 18 Strength, then let the GM say no. Also, player character point distribution won't conflict with whatever NPC trends exist in the settings. The Gm can still make orc NPCs strong and dumb even if you have an orc wizard with an Int of 18 and Str of 8.
Quote from: ShieldWife on September 26, 2022, 09:07:29 PMIf orcs get +2 Strength and -2 Intelligence, you're going to see a lot of orc barbarians and very few orc wizards.
For me, that's a benefit: it completely makes sense that different sorts of folk are going to have different strengths and weaknesses, and that will be reflected in their cultures and the sorts of adventurers those peoples produce.
Giving races ability score modifiers, both positive and negative, alongside their various other biological qualia is part of what makes TTRPGs interesting. The sorts of worlds and cultures and such that develop from such things are interesting to look into. Sure, it can be done poorly, but so can everything.
QuoteThe Gm can still make orc NPCs strong and dumb even if you have an orc wizard with an Int of 18 and Str of 8.
Except that anyone who chooses to play a half-orc wizard with their -2 INT penalty is probably doing so because they're either looking for a mechanical challenge, or are interested in the inherent story there. Letting players get away with things that are not sensible in the physics of the setting contributes to setting incoherency.
I'm open to notions like backgrounds or classes affecting ability scores, if you wanted to go that route. But completely undoing the influence of an individual's ancestry feels a bit too far.
Going to racial modifiers was a mistake. The AD&D approach of having minimum and maximum scores via random stat generation was the correct way.
If people don't want racial stat penalties, that's absolutely fine. No problem. But, there shouldn't be any racial stat bonuses either; if that's the case. Just drop all racial modifiers across the board, at that gaming table. Everyone is equal, racially. Then it doesn't matter to the die rolls at all. It will solely be for role play purposes, only.
Now, someone please go play a game.
I think there is a difference between a randomly generated character that might be disposable until the player grows attached to it over time, and a purpose build character designed around a mechanical or narrative feature for a game about how group of adventures accomplished the plot objectives.
The best way to handle different stat distribution for different biology is a per race conversion table. Thus a 10 STR is 10 for a human but 12 for an Orc or 7 for a Halfling, while an 18 might become a 16 for Human, 18 for Orc, and 12 for Halfling or something...
Quote from: Palleon on September 26, 2022, 09:27:26 PM
Going to racial modifiers was a mistake. The AD&D approach of having minimum and maximum scores via random stat generation was the correct way.
How does that work?
Min-maxing exists no matter which method of ability score generation is used.
Nothing stops someone using point-buy to cap out their prime ability. Nothing stops someone putting the highest possible score for the race's maximum. Just like nothing stops someone from using a +2 racial adjustment to push a score beyond normal limits.
When it comes to racial ability score adjustments, that extra +1 (effectively +5%) to rolls that a +2 Ability adjustment provides is mostly negligible. The real issue with ability score adjustments (and I mentioned this in another thread) is that they are a poor way to capture what it actually means to play the race. Forcing a character to take a bonus or penalty on scores is meaningless when the player can put any value they want into that ability. It either incentivizes boosting a prime Ability, or cheapens the feel of playing against type by "sacrificing" high scores.
For example, a player rolls their abilities and they get a couple 14s, with a 16 being their highest roll. They'd put the 16 into INT for a half-orc wizard only to have it reduced to 14. By contrast, if the race instead imposed a maximum of 14 on INT, the player could use one of their rolled 14s and put that 16 somewhere else. PLUS, the maximum score better illustrates exactly where a half-orc falls, intellectually, compared to a human.
Inverse that for positive adjustments / minimum scores.
In summary... min/maxing is not all that game-breaking since the bonuses gained from it are negligible. Min/maxing is not the worst thing about racial ability adjustments.
Quote from: Effete on September 27, 2022, 02:05:30 AM
Min-maxing exists no matter which method of ability score generation is used.
Nothing stops someone using point-buy to cap out their prime ability. Nothing stops someone putting the highest possible score for the race's maximum. Just like nothing stops someone from using a +2 racial adjustment to push a score beyond normal limits.
When it comes to racial ability score adjustments, that extra +1 (effectively +5%) to rolls that a +2 Ability adjustment provides is mostly negligible. The real issue with ability score adjustments (and I mentioned this in another thread) is that they are a poor way to capture what it actually means to play the race. Forcing a character to take a bonus or penalty on scores is meaningless when the player can put any value they want into that ability. It either incentivizes boosting a prime Ability, or cheapens the feel of playing against type by "sacrificing" high scores.
For example, a player rolls their abilities and they get a couple 14s, with a 16 being their highest roll. They'd put the 16 into INT for a half-orc wizard only to have it reduced to 14. By contrast, if the race instead imposed a maximum of 14 on INT, the player could use one of their rolled 14s and put that 16 somewhere else. PLUS, the maximum score better illustrates exactly where a half-orc falls, intellectually, compared to a human.
Inverse that for positive adjustments / minimum scores.
In summary... min/maxing is not all that game-breaking since the bonuses gained from it are negligible. Min/maxing is not the worst thing about racial ability adjustments.
Are they just capped at 14 for life then? Or can they boost it later?
Also wouldn't that mean you'd need to adjust the races in some way because they aren't offering bonuses anymore?
I kind of want to try this.
I think OD&D got it right with level limits to offset the bonus abilities and increase to saving throws for the demi-humans. I also like 3d6 in order and the minimal reliance on ability scores.
My personal play style is to avoid min-max. It was fun when I was younger, but one of my more recent characters took the base 5e fighter and played it as a thief. From background to the selected proficiencies, I was able to be very effective.
Having said all of that, it doesn't bother me to have people want to min-max as long as it isn't crazy extreme. There is a default degree of it that goes with most ability score generation methods, for example, point buy and arrange to taste.
Plus in 5e, they get the option to add another couple points to ability scores every few levels. So I don't see a big deal if they grab elf for that initial bonus. By mid levels, most players have a 20 in an attribute. It goes with the game. I'd use 3d6 in order if it bothered me too much.
Quote from: FingerRod on September 27, 2022, 07:58:15 AM
I think OD&D got it right with level limits to offset the bonus abilities and increase to saving throws for the demi-humans. I also like 3d6 in order and the minimal reliance on ability scores.
Emphasis by me. This. A hundred times, this. Especially the bolded parts.
Now, exactly how you get there doesn't need to be done exactly how OD&D did it. Other options could work towards the same goal. Other games, a different strategy might make more sense, given different goals. The Runequest or Dragon Quest versions are great--for those games, for example. Ability scores bite harder, and mean something within the setting an the game. In all three cases, the method chosen reinforces the feel of the game.
WotC going to the +1 every 2 points was a classic case of Chesterton's Fence. They tore something down that they didn't understand, and replaced it with something ostensibly cleaner--that along with changes in the rest of the system, turned the whole thing into nothing but an illusion over a treadmill.
As for "min-maxing" itself, there's a fine line between outright min-maxing and making meaningful decisions within the context of the game. You can go too far the other way, where everyone plays something bland to avoid the label. Hmm, that seems to be what WotC is encouraging, too.
The idea that 3d6 in order magically stops minmaxing is ludicrous. A minmaxer will just look for the best race/class combo his rolls will allow and run with that.
The only actual difference is whether the players will actually be playing something they actually enjoy or looking for opportunities to "suicide" this thing they don't really want for another roll on the character creation wheel of fortune.
I get that many here feel that's a feature and not a flaw, but when your group only has so many hours in a month you can devote to actual play and we'd rather actually be enjoying ourselves playing what we want than fighting a system that's trying to teach us some sort of lesson we figured out on our own decades ago.
In my own system each species has an array it uses to generate average attributes, but attribute bonuses come entirely from your class. Wanna be fighter? Then you'll logically undergo strength training (among other things) which gives those stats bonuses compared to average members of your species. If you're a fighter you're going to be strong because that's what you've trained yourself to be.
The same for wizards. They're only going accept those with the intellect needed to memorize and reproduce arcane formulas and will help train those abilities in their apprentices.
And so on for the other classes. Basically, those who devote themselves to mastering something will become better at it than those who don't.
Personally, I don't care about min-maxing, and think people tend to bitch about it too much. I tend to min-max quite a bit myself, granted, I also like to take some picks based on how I imagine my character, so it's a mix.
The issue IMO isn't the min-maxing itself, but that racial ability modifiers work in such a way that they incentivize it. And like I explained in my long assed post they do a poor job at representing mid-range racial inclinations and averages, but work better to push the limits at the higher ends, which is where the min-maxing incentive sets in. And when you view your character mechanically and have min-maxing tendencies you can't ignore that kind of details. They just scream "MIN-MAX ME!" and you can't unsee it.
Quote from: Chris24601 on September 27, 2022, 10:00:40 AMThe only actual difference is whether the players will actually be playing something they actually enjoy or looking for opportunities to "suicide" this thing they don't really want for another roll on the character creation wheel of fortune.
You don't even need to suicide a character, just take a few extra risks. Picking up that [obviously magical] shield covered in strange fungus or drinking from the pool of blue liquid. If you get lucky you have an extra magic item, if unlucky you get a reroll on your character's stats.
QuoteIn my own system each species has an array it uses to generate average attributes, but attribute bonuses come entirely from your class. Wanna be fighter? Then you'll logically undergo strength training (among other things) which gives those stats bonuses compared to average members of your species. If you're a fighter you're going to be strong because that's what you've trained yourself to be.
Bushido (FGU 1981) does this explicitly, giving ability score bonuses and penalties for each class.
Quote from: VisionStorm on September 27, 2022, 10:20:53 AM
Personally, I don't care about min-maxing, and think people tend to bitch about it too much. I tend to min-max quite a bit myself, granted, I also like to take some picks based on how I imagine my character, so it's a mix.
The issue IMO isn't the min-maxing itself, but that racial ability modifiers work in such a way that they incentivize it. And like I explained in my long assed post they do a poor job at representing mid-range racial inclinations and averages, but work better to push the limits at the higher ends, which is where the min-maxing incentive sets in. And when you view your character mechanically and have min-maxing tendencies you can't ignore that kind of details. They just scream "MIN-MAX ME!" and you can't unsee it.
This is probably the only good point I've seen made against racial ability scores. Thanks.
Quote from: VisionStorm on September 27, 2022, 10:20:53 AMThe issue IMO isn't the min-maxing itself, but that racial ability modifiers work in such a way that they incentivize it.
One way to minimize min-maxing as it relates to racial modifiers is to adjust each class such that they aren't reliant on a single ability score for everything. For example, if a wizard's success chance was based on INT, his max power based on CHA, and the number of spells castable per day was based on CON, then a bonus to INT wouldn't result in the best possible wizard, just one that focused on a certain part. The same with adjusting STR so it only provides damage bonuses and not to-hit bonuses.
Quote from: Chris24601 on September 27, 2022, 10:00:40 AM
The idea that 3d6 in order magically stops minmaxing is ludicrous. A minmaxer will just look for the best race/class combo his rolls will allow and run with that.
The only actual difference is whether the players will actually be playing something they actually enjoy or looking for opportunities to "suicide" this thing they don't really want for another roll on the character creation wheel of fortune.
I get that many here feel that's a feature and not a flaw, but when your group only has so many hours in a month you can devote to actual play and we'd rather actually be enjoying ourselves playing what we want than fighting a system that's trying to teach us some sort of lesson we figured out on our own decades ago.
In my own system each species has an array it uses to generate average attributes, but attribute bonuses come entirely from your class. Wanna be fighter? Then you'll logically undergo strength training (among other things) which gives those stats bonuses compared to average members of your species. If you're a fighter you're going to be strong because that's what you've trained yourself to be.
The same for wizards. They're only going accept those with the intellect needed to memorize and reproduce arcane formulas and will help train those abilities in their apprentices.
And so on for the other classes. Basically, those who devote themselves to mastering something will become better at it than those who don't.
Pretty much all of this. I also don't get how OD&D racial level caps solve anything, other than to ensure that non-human characters become useless after a certain level—assuming the campaign even gets that far, on which case it does absolutely nothing to address balancing issues from the pitiful extra abilities that OD&D non-humans get.
But when I finally manage to get a group together, I want to play the character I want to play. Not force myself to like the crap character I rolled by rolling 3d6 in order. I do occasionally roll something interesting that way that sparks my imagination when not 100% sure what I want to play. But more often than not I don't like what I roll, and I don't like the massive discrepancies that result from random generation, with some characters being significantly better than others. I prefer to work with arrays or point distribution.
In my games I just give a standard array I set up for the game as a baseline, then let everyone just distribute an equal amount of points however they want. I also like the idea of giving bonuses based on class and background.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on September 27, 2022, 10:35:22 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on September 27, 2022, 10:20:53 AMThe issue IMO isn't the min-maxing itself, but that racial ability modifiers work in such a way that they incentivize it.
One way to minimize min-maxing as it relates to racial modifiers is to adjust each class such that they aren't reliant on a single ability score for everything. For example, if a wizard's success chance was based on INT, his max power based on CHA, and the number of spells castable per day was based on CON, then a bonus to INT wouldn't result in the best possible wizard, just one that focused on a certain part. The same with adjusting STR so it only provides damage bonuses and not to-hit bonuses.
I've considered doing something like this before, but using WIS for max spells per day. Also DEX for physical attacks rolls, STR for damage.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on September 27, 2022, 10:35:22 AM
One way to minimize min-maxing as it relates to racial modifiers is to adjust each class such that they aren't reliant on a single ability score for everything. For example, if a wizard's success chance was based on INT, his max power based on CHA, and the number of spells castable per day was based on CON, then a bonus to INT wouldn't result in the best possible wizard, just one that focused on a certain part. The same with adjusting STR so it only provides damage bonuses and not to-hit bonuses.
Yes. You don't have dump stats if all the stats are meaningful to the characters. Also takes some of the bite out of having a bad stat or two, if you've got compensation elsewhere. This is an area where D&D started out fine (or at least in the ballpark of fine, depending on how you played it) but got slowly, steadily worse. When the mechanics are fairly simple, and the GM takes your, say, Intelligence or Wisdom into account in the plans you have, and convincing people to help you is kind of important too--then it can work well enough. And I get that some people didn't want to play that game. However, you can't change the implementation and the design and cleave to the tradition of the stats and expect it to work. That's how you end up with abominations like mapping Wisdom to perception. It's either one or the other. Implement the design you have, and then play that. Or do a different design, implement that, and then play that.
If you are going to change the way the stats map to the mechanics, then name them something appropriate and meaningful for the new mapping. It cuts out a lot of problems from the beginning, not to mention makes the game more accessible.
Quote from: Chris24601 on September 27, 2022, 10:00:40 AM
The idea that 3d6 in order magically stops minmaxing is ludicrous. A minmaxer will just look for the best race/class combo his rolls will allow and run with that.
The only actual difference is whether the players will actually be playing something they actually enjoy or looking for opportunities to "suicide" this thing they don't really want for another roll on the character creation wheel of fortune.
I get that many here feel that's a feature and not a flaw, but when your group only has so many hours in a month you can devote to actual play and we'd rather actually be enjoying ourselves playing what we want than fighting a system that's trying to teach us some sort of lesson we figured out on our own decades ago.
In my own system each species has an array it uses to generate average attributes, but attribute bonuses come entirely from your class. Wanna be fighter? Then you'll logically undergo strength training (among other things) which gives those stats bonuses compared to average members of your species. If you're a fighter you're going to be strong because that's what you've trained yourself to be.
The same for wizards. They're only going accept those with the intellect needed to memorize and reproduce arcane formulas and will help train those abilities in their apprentices.
And so on for the other classes. Basically, those who devote themselves to mastering something will become better at it than those who don't.
It's not quite that all or nothing. I'm not wild about 3d6 in order in a system where attributes matter drastically and never change, for the reasons you listed. However, having fun with what the game gives you as a
starting place is its own kind of fun, too. What leads to suicide of characters is when the character is so wrecked from the beginning that it seems like there is no other way out. Only a few players enjoy that challenge.
In early D&D, Hedge Hobbit's point is correct: The way out in those games is accumulation of a lot of stuff--money, magic items, spells, followers, etc. So take risks in pursuit of the stuff, and you'll get a resolution pretty darn quick.
To the extent that the system aims for a more self-sufficient type of character play, then the mechanics needs to support similar options, such as these examples:
- ability scores improves.
- reroll all your hit points at each level, not just add a die.
- make it so that proficiency/skill take on more and more of the total competency as opposed to ability scores, despite the fact that ability scores improve.
If you want to mess with none of that, then by all means use fixed arrays, fixed hit points, etc. Just realize that some people enjoy the fun of the random part of it, if the random eventually evens out, more or less.
I've always thought it odd that random ability score generation is conflated with random ability score placement. In my experience, players only find a character "unplayable" if the scores are too low overall, and not just because "that 17 is in the wrong place".
Am I the only one here who separates random placement from random generation? In my game, characters wind up with the same number of ability score bonuses, but with an arbitrary distribution of those bonuses. I find this system enjoys the advantages of random generation without the drawbacks that people attribute to it.
Quote from: Zalman on September 27, 2022, 11:34:38 AM
I've always thought it odd that random ability score generation is conflated with random ability score placement. In my experience, players only find a character "unplayable" if the scores are too low overall, and not just because "that 17 is in the wrong place".
Am I the only one here who separates random placement from random generation? In my game, characters wind up with the same number of ability score bonuses, but with an arbitrary distribution of those bonuses. I find this system enjoys the advantages of random generation without the drawbacks that people attribute to it.
I did that for awhile in my D&D 3E campaigns. Works well, when that's what you want. I even skewed it a little, with the random placement done first on the bulk of the points, then an opportunity to bump one score by 2 points or two scores by 1 point each, afterwards.
My preference when the system allows is more along the lines of:
- Ability scores, race, culture, background, etc: You've got limited control to guide the broad strokes of how this plays out, but not every detail. I like some randomness in it.
- Class, template, framework, silos, etc: You pick these, and they set the boundaries on how it is likely to play out as the character engages with the setting. There may be some minor randomness in how it plays out (e.g. hit points gained), but mostly it's the player's choice.
- Proficiency, skills, specific ability options, etc: Players decides, no randomness.
This reinforces my desire to focus players on what happens in play as opposed to the background.
Quote from: Effete on September 27, 2022, 02:05:30 AM
When it comes to racial ability score adjustments, that extra +1 (effectively +5%) to rolls that a +2 Ability adjustment provides is mostly negligible. The real issue with ability score adjustments (and I mentioned this in another thread) is that they are a poor way to capture what it actually means to play the race. Forcing a character to take a bonus or penalty on scores is meaningless when the player can put any value they want into that ability. It either incentivizes boosting a prime Ability, or cheapens the feel of playing against type by "sacrificing" high scores.
Right. I don't know if this was clear from the original post, but it's this incentive that I was trying to talk about. It's not game-breaking, but it does push players to take the race that boosts their highest stat.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on September 27, 2022, 11:13:54 AM
Quote from: hedgehobbit on September 27, 2022, 10:35:22 AM
One way to minimize min-maxing as it relates to racial modifiers is to adjust each class such that they aren't reliant on a single ability score for everything. For example, if a wizard's success chance was based on INT, his max power based on CHA, and the number of spells castable per day was based on CON, then a bonus to INT wouldn't result in the best possible wizard, just one that focused on a certain part. The same with adjusting STR so it only provides damage bonuses and not to-hit bonuses.
Yes. You don't have dump stats if all the stats are meaningful to the characters. Also takes some of the bite out of having a bad stat or two, if you've got compensation elsewhere.
I haven't played with this in D&D, but in other systems, I feel that depending on multiple attributes makes all characters blend together more. Characters seem less differentiated, and I often like the feeling of specialists with strong strengths - like Fezzik and Inigo in The Princess Bride, or tiny hobbits in Tolkien.
Eh... I don't think the PC group should represent "average" dwarves or anything. The average dwarf/orc/etc. is in the MM. If an elf decided to become a mage he might have more intelligence than the average elf, and even the average human.
Drizzt is not an average Drow, Conan is not an average human, Elric is not an average melnibonean. The occasional dwarven mage adds spice to the game IMO.
I don't play with min-maxers, but I'm okay with letting PCs be "special". It fits the genre.
Anyway, here is something I've been experimenting with for my next book:
---
Elves
Requirements: Intelligence 9.
Ability Modifiers: +1 Dexterity, -1 Constitution. In addition, you can take -1 Strength and +1 Intelligence or Wisdom (high elf), -1 Intelligence and +1 Strength or Constitution (wood elf), or -1 Strength and +1 Intelligence or Charisma (drow), if you want.
---
TBH I'm considering even letting the +1 Dexterity, -1 Constitution optional.
Now, the requirements is something I can live without but it does its job well IMO. It means elves are smarter than human ON AVERAGE, but the average elf is probably not as smart as a smart human. OTOH I do'nt see why not allow a sickly dwarf with Con 6. It makes more sense than a fighter with Con 6, and THOSE are allowed.
Also considering this:
---
Ability Modifiers: Choose one or two:
• +1 Dexterity, -1 Constitution (any elf).
• +1 Intelligence or Wisdom-1 Strength (high elf).
• +1 Strength or Constitution, -1 Intelligence (wood elf).
• +1 Intelligence or Charisma, -1 Strength (drow).
Quote from: jhkim on September 27, 2022, 01:13:31 PM
I haven't played with this in D&D, but in other systems, I feel that depending on multiple attributes makes all characters blend together more. Characters seem less differentiated, and I often like the feeling of specialists with strong strengths - like Fezzik and Inigo in The Princess Bride, or tiny hobbits in Tolkien.
Depends. Multiple attributes can all be useful to some degree without all being equally useful to every character. This is true in systems where characters are intended to be more alike, and also true in systems deliberately designed to produce more differences. Of course, the useful boundaries will not be the same.
It can be a narrow line to walk in a design, but I find that I get the most variety of characters when both extremes are avoided. "I'm a wizard, so strength is all but useless to me. So I ignore it." Or, "Chasing that last negative away is the best thing I can do as well all drive our characters towards the same thing." Instead, I want the wizard to value strength enough to feel the lack of it, and maybe do something to take the edge off of the penalty, but not so much that he tries to get rid of the penalty altogether.
This is why it's only a meaningful discussion in the context of the full design. For example, the relative value of some strength is a much different proposition in a system that has encumbrance with teeth.
Edit: BTW, my experience of Fantasy Hero was that it was more prone to blandness than most versions of D&D, with one big exception: D&D characters started bland and got more interesting as they went, whereas FH characters were the opposite. The way to stop this in FH was to set maximums for real and active points, as discussed in various Hero guides, but not to set them too tightly. It is why, for example, running FH as a more powerful game, I found it better to set speeds in the 3 to 5 range instead of 2 to 4. Because the latter meant most people had a 3, with a few getting the 4. Whereas, with 3 to 5, it centered on 4, with an occasional dip into 3 or 5. This worked so well, that in low point FH games, I simply changed the Speed formula to have a +1 SPD built in. In Champions, already typically set in the 5 to 9 range or thereabout, such tweaks were completely unnecessary.
Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 27, 2022, 01:37:27 PM
Eh... I don't think the PC group should represent "average" dwarves or anything. The average dwarf/orc/etc. is in the MM. If an elf decided to become a mage he might have more intelligence than the average elf, and even the average human.
Drizzt is not an average Drow, Conan is not an average human, Elric is not an average melnibonean. The occasional dwarven mage adds spice to the game IMO.
I don't play with min-maxers, but I'm okay with letting PCs be "special". It fits the genre.
Anyway, here is something I've been experimenting with for my next book:
---
Elves
Requirements: Intelligence 9.
Ability Modifiers: +1 Dexterity, -1 Constitution. In addition, you can take -1 Strength and +1 Intelligence or Wisdom (high elf), -1 Intelligence and +1 Strength or Constitution (wood elf), or -1 Strength and +1 Intelligence or Charisma (drow), if you want.
---
TBH I'm considering even letting the +1 Dexterity, -1 Constitution optional.
Now, the requirements is something I can live without but it does its job well IMO. It means elves are smarter than human ON AVERAGE, but the average elf is probably not as smart as a smart human. OTOH I do'nt see why not allow a sickly dwarf with Con 6. It makes more sense than a fighter with Con 6, and THOSE are allowed.
From a mechanical perspective, as I've stated before -- If you have a particular character concept that revolves around an exception to the rule -- A sickly Dwarf whose constitution was destroyed by Necromancy, an Elf that has been blessed with tremendous strength by the Iron Gods of Crossfit -- Why not?
The game's mechanics were
never meant to limit you from doing off-type things, but the rules themselves must define the type so that the exceptions have meaning. The tendency to try to homogenize the races mechanically doesn't actually make it any easier to play an off-type character, it just makes it harder to define what the purpose of having different races is at all.
When you look at a coherent setting like Tolkien, there are clear worldbuilding objectives that the different races have. Whereas with D&D-alikes, what's the purpose of Halflings? What's the purpose of Elves or Dwarves? Once you boil off the mechanics, these are just costumes. A human character can speak with a Scottish brogue as well.
What I want from a game rulebook is not a guideline on how to roleplay, because no game is going to teach that. What I want is a sense for how the mechanical choices will impact the game. If a player comes to me and says, "I want to play the world's smartest inventor. He's a bear." then I want the game to give me how to handle a PC with high intelligence but is also part of a race that is reasonably just
always going to be stronger than a normal humanoid (regardless of number values). Give me the mechanical breakdown for constructing new races and what value you assigned to it, and then I can use my own judgement to figure out how to work it.
Quote from: Zelen on September 27, 2022, 02:41:35 PM
Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 27, 2022, 01:37:27 PM
Eh... I don't think the PC group should represent "average" dwarves or anything. The average dwarf/orc/etc. is in the MM. If an elf decided to become a mage he might have more intelligence than the average elf, and even the average human.
Drizzt is not an average Drow, Conan is not an average human, Elric is not an average melnibonean. The occasional dwarven mage adds spice to the game IMO.
I don't play with min-maxers, but I'm okay with letting PCs be "special". It fits the genre.
Anyway, here is something I've been experimenting with for my next book:
---
Elves
Requirements: Intelligence 9.
Ability Modifiers: +1 Dexterity, -1 Constitution. In addition, you can take -1 Strength and +1 Intelligence or Wisdom (high elf), -1 Intelligence and +1 Strength or Constitution (wood elf), or -1 Strength and +1 Intelligence or Charisma (drow), if you want.
---
TBH I'm considering even letting the +1 Dexterity, -1 Constitution optional.
Now, the requirements is something I can live without but it does its job well IMO. It means elves are smarter than human ON AVERAGE, but the average elf is probably not as smart as a smart human. OTOH I do'nt see why not allow a sickly dwarf with Con 6. It makes more sense than a fighter with Con 6, and THOSE are allowed.
From a mechanical perspective, as I've stated before -- If you have a particular character concept that revolves around an exception to the rule -- A sickly Dwarf whose constitution was destroyed by Necromancy, an Elf that has been blessed with tremendous strength by the Iron Gods of Crossfit -- Why not?
The game's mechanics were never meant to limit you from doing off-type things, but the rules themselves must define the type so that the exceptions have meaning. The tendency to try to homogenize the races mechanically doesn't actually make it any easier to play an off-type character, it just makes it harder to define what the purpose of having different races is at all.
When you look at a coherent setting like Tolkien, there are clear worldbuilding objectives that the different races have. Whereas with D&D-alikes, what's the purpose of Halflings? What's the purpose of Elves or Dwarves? Once you boil off the mechanics, these are just costumes. A human character can speak with a Scottish brogue as well.
What I want from a game rulebook is not a guideline on how to roleplay, because no game is going to teach that. What I want is a sense for how the mechanical choices will impact the game. If a player comes to me and says, "I want to play the world's smartest inventor. He's a bear." then I want the game to give me how to handle a PC with high intelligence but is also part of a race that is reasonably just always going to be stronger than a normal humanoid (regardless of number values). Give me the mechanical breakdown for constructing new races and what value you assigned to it, and then I can use my own judgement to figure out how to work it.
Now, this makes sense. This is why I leave ability modifiers there, even if I allow my players to switch them around as they like: "this is the rule, however the GM is free to make exceptions for players".
Yanno, I kinda feel like it's not necessarily a bad thing for it to not be equally easy for an ogre and a halflings to have the same strength score with equal luck, or to have somewhat different max potentials at start. It differentiates the species in fluff to have modifiers, even if the differences within groups outweighs those between groups if we have weak modifiers and also allow score assignment, that still tells us that on average an ogre has more strength. PCs don't have 10s in all base rolled attributes, so they aren't average by definition, but it still makes sense that even a PC gnome doesn't outwrestle a PC giant equally specialized into strength without some serious circumstances and a reasonable explanation. There I feel attribute modifiers either ought to be strong or point buy/species stat requirements put into place, to help make the mechanics jive with the world and story, which they have very real impacts on as written in most games that are played as intended.
On which note regarding the races create minmax claim, if you like having specialized archetypes and meaningful player choices/builds, ala princess bride, I am happy to say that allows for min-maxing as well. As does non-random stat/class/race assignment, not that I have anything against those. Because any system with meaningful player build choice where specialization can be achieved better in some way through certain choices has min-max potential. Such options can at times through rules bloat and difficulty of monitoring complex interaction lead to weaker balance, but they also give greater creative freedom and weight of choice.
Minmax is mostly a player choice thing that can't be avoided just by getting rid of species ability modifiers. Don't believe me? Tasha's in 5e made humans and half-elves less optimal by making attribute bonuses non species locked but thereby elevated other species in minmax with better species traits. I don't really like the idea of making all species identical faceless blobs or literal human sub races to deal with this, personally. And even if we did, stat assignment, class and subclass choice, and feat selection (which is basically the only thing differentiating one player's class and subclass combination from another besides luck in score rolling potentially, and hence a piece of player choice/identity I really wouldn't want to kill) still make minmax potential a very real thing. Because a weak barbarian with bad DEX and CON and questionable feat selection is usually gonna be suboptimal, go figure.
More to the point, minmax isn't the worst thing out there. What it means is specialization, minimizing weakness attributes to maximize strengths in a particular build direction. I like jack of all trades too, but not everyone can be one and still add the same level of flavor to a campaign. Also, some minmax builds aren't for solo combat. I've seen a lot of support, control, social, and even mental/investigative builds. Even the former if roleplayed well can be great, or even the best story choice in a combat focused campaign that lets them play and roleplay that build.
I dunno, I feel like this topic kinda felt like a bit of a nonsequitur to me, even if it was still a good one and gave me a lot of cool alternative approaches to species in ttrpgs. Hopefully this makes some sense and was roughly on topic.
Quote from: KindaMeh on September 27, 2022, 03:15:07 PM
...
Minmax is mostly a player choice thing that can't be avoided ...
^^THIS^^
A game designer or GM should not be looking to punish or inhibit min-maxing mechanically in the game system.
The goal should be designing a system that
doesn't care if a player decides to min-max.
Quote from: KindaMeh on September 27, 2022, 03:15:07 PMYanno, I kinda feel like it's not necessarily a bad thing for it to not be equally easy for an ogre and a halflings to have the same strength score with equal luck, or to have somewhat different max potentials at start.
Strength is the outlier here because it is obvious to anyone that a larger person will be stronger than a smaller person all other things being equal. For this reason, I decided to make Strength proportional to size with the addition of a Size Die for each race.
For example, Hobbits are d6, Humans are d8, and Ogres are d10. This die is the damage that the race does with a single handed weapon (which ends up close to how it is in AD&D anyway). So, if all three characters have a +3 Strength modifier, the Hobbit will do d6+3 damage, the human d8+3, and the Ogre d10+3. This Size Die is also used in place of the d6 for strength checks such as open doors.
To compensate, smaller characters get a bonus to AC.
Quote from: Chris24601 on September 27, 2022, 10:00:40 AM
The idea that 3d6 in order magically stops minmaxing is ludicrous.
Who said 3d6 magically stops minmaxing? You invented that idea. Nobody said that.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on September 27, 2022, 10:35:22 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on September 27, 2022, 10:20:53 AMThe issue IMO isn't the min-maxing itself, but that racial ability modifiers work in such a way that they incentivize it.
One way to minimize min-maxing as it relates to racial modifiers is to adjust each class such that they aren't reliant on a single ability score for everything. For example, if a wizard's success chance was based on INT, his max power based on CHA, and the number of spells castable per day was based on CON, then a bonus to INT wouldn't result in the best possible wizard, just one that focused on a certain part. The same with adjusting STR so it only provides damage bonuses and not to-hit bonuses.
Savage Worlds does a remarkable job of preventing dump-stats. Each attribute is useful in its own way, and a low stat can be exploited by your enemies. e.g. - a foe can "Test" the character's lowest attribute to cause them to become Distracted (penalty on actions), Vulnerable (easier to harm), or even Shaken (much easier to harm). So the stupid fighter who is armored to the gills can still fall for a simple trick, lowering his guard and opening himself up. It also means you don't need to be a great warrior to contribute meaningfully to a fight; just Test the opponent's weaknesses and make the fight easier for your allies.
Quote from: Zelen on September 27, 2022, 02:41:35 PM
When you look at a coherent setting like Tolkien, there are clear worldbuilding objectives that the different races have. Whereas with D&D-alikes, what's the purpose of Halflings? What's the purpose of Elves or Dwarves? Once you boil off the mechanics, these are just costumes. A human character can speak with a Scottish brogue as well.
What I want from a game rulebook is not a guideline on how to roleplay, because no game is going to teach that. What I want is a sense for how the mechanical choices will impact the game. If a player comes to me and says, "I want to play the world's smartest inventor. He's a bear." then I want the game to give me how to handle a PC with high intelligence but is also part of a race that is reasonably just always going to be stronger than a normal humanoid (regardless of number values). Give me the mechanical breakdown for constructing new races and what value you assigned to it, and then I can use my own judgement to figure out how to work it.
It's interesting. When you say a player comes to you with an inventor bear as a PC concept, I think of character design in universal systems like Fantasy HERO that I've played since the 1980s. For example, I ran a Middle Earth campaign using the Action! System (which is based on the HERO System).
From what you described, the GM is given race construction rules and then the GM works out new rules in advance for every possible PC race.
I don't think I've ever used race creation rules - but what I have often used is universal character creation rules that can handle multiple races. To take your example of the inventor bear PC. Let's say we're playing in the setting of Narnia. There are fauns, dryads, and other fairies - as well as dozens of talking animals. Rather than the GM creating in advance special rules that detail out badgers vs bears vs wolves and all other animals, I would just have general rules for claws, locomotion, and other attributes. That's how rules like the HERO System and the Action! System work. The player can then create a PC that fits with being a reasonable bear, and I as GM can approve it or ask for changes to reflect what I'd want for my campaign.
That's how I did my Middle Earth campaign. I didn't exhaustively create rules for all the race and background options. My players already knew Middle Earth - in some cases better than I did. So I just had them use the universal rules to create characters who were appropriate for the setting, including race. I think this works especially well in a background like Narnia where there are dozens of PC-appropriate races, and balancing them all with custom rules can be difficult. It can also handle cases where PCs may have unusual backgrounds in addition to race.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on September 27, 2022, 10:35:22 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on September 27, 2022, 10:20:53 AMThe issue IMO isn't the min-maxing itself, but that racial ability modifiers work in such a way that they incentivize it.
One way to minimize min-maxing as it relates to racial modifiers is to adjust each class such that they aren't reliant on a single ability score for everything. For example, if a wizard's success chance was based on INT, his max power based on CHA, and the number of spells castable per day was based on CON, then a bonus to INT wouldn't result in the best possible wizard, just one that focused on a certain part. The same with adjusting STR so it only provides damage bonuses and not to-hit bonuses.
Agreed. In my system, Fighters have the choice of using Strength or Reflexes for their primary ability (and every species can get a slightly above average score in one of those) and their choice of Endurance, Intellect, Presence or Wits for their secondary class ability.
These choices offer slightly different benefits (ex. Tactical/Intellect lets you use Aid Allies more easily, Wary/Wits gives you bonuses to notice details and initiative) which add up to every species having good Fighters, but every species also favoring some styles over others.
This extends to the spellcasting classes, which, while each has a specific primary casting attribute, the secondary can be any attribute (with variances like above with the fighter) and those will generally conform to the the metaphysical bent of each species (i.e. the Eldritch are going to be broadly be found more often using primal magic while the Dwarves are slightly favor Mechanist and Arcane magic) and the magic each can do is broadly comparable in the same was that the Str/Int fighter is broadly comparable to the Reflexes/Presence fighter).
Quote from: Chris24601 on September 27, 2022, 09:34:46 PMIn my system, Fighters have the choice of using Strength or Reflexes for their primary ability (and every species can get a slightly above average score in one of those) and their choice of Endurance, Intellect, Presence or Wits for their secondary class ability.
These choices offer slightly different benefits (ex. Tactical/Intellect lets you use Aid Allies more easily, Wary/Wits gives you bonuses to notice details and initiative) which add up to every species having good Fighters, but every species also favoring some styles over others.
This goes to a principle of tactical game design I've always remembered from an article by Brian Gleichman, where he notes that the key to making a tactically interesting system is to provide a variety of meaningfully different options, the challenge of which is to find the optimum combination for a specific opponent/challenge. If a particular "combination of dissimilar assets" (to use the principle's full name) yields a superior advantage against
all possible opponents/situations, it's no longer a tactical challenge because no more effort needs to be expended in selecting the best choice. (Xykon the sorcerer-lich, the villain of the
Order of the Stick webcomic, acknowledges this same principle from what might be called the other side when he says,
"In any battle, there's always a level of force against which no tactics can succeed.")
The whole point of min-maxing is that you select a character build that makes some of these decisions ahead of time, accomplishing increased effectiveness in a specialty area at the price of flexibility in addressing other areas/situations. Min-maxing becomes counterproductive when it produces characters who are unbeatable in their area of focus but completely useless anywhere else, because the impossibility of failure
and the impossibility of success are equally boring. But if everybody's min-maxing in a different way, the same tactical range is preserved.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on September 27, 2022, 04:57:55 PM
Strength is the outlier here because it is obvious to anyone that a larger person will be stronger than a smaller person all other things being equal. For this reason, I decided to make Strength proportional to size with the addition of a Size Die for each race.
For example, Hobbits are d6, Humans are d8, and Ogres are d10. This die is the damage that the race does with a single handed weapon (which ends up close to how it is in AD&D anyway). So, if all three characters have a +3 Strength modifier, the Hobbit will do d6+3 damage, the human d8+3, and the Ogre d10+3. This Size Die is also used in place of the d6 for strength checks such as open doors.
That's only a 1 point difference (on average) each step. The halfling in this example would deal an average of 6.5 damage, the human a 7.5, and the ogre an 8.5.
The other issue when using this "relative Strength" method is now you need to make separate charts on carrying capacities (and possibly other rules too, like grappling advantages) because a 16 Strength for one character does not equal a 16 Strength for another. Meanwhile, a 16 Intelligence is uniform across all races/sizes, so you've now got different rules governing each attribute.
I find that to be a very sloppy approach. You can achieve the same relative damage output simply by placing caps on racial Strength. A human at peak might have 18 Strength (+3 modifier) while a halfling at peak has 15 Strength (+2 modifier). Conversely, an ogre's peak Strength might be 22 (for potentially a +4 modifier). The numerical value of the attribute itself would maintain a standard (i.e., 16 is the same for everone) so they can all use the same encumbrance rules, etc.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on September 26, 2022, 05:03:19 PM
Nobody liked this when it limited the classes they could choose, and nobody would like having their PC race choices limited this way either.
I'm not really disputing anything in your post. I'm just noticing this particular line. And I do not recall
anyone that I used to play with in the days of AD&D 1E & 2E complaining about this at all. It wasn't until I got in with the newer players joining in during 3.x that I ever heard any sort derision for the design of AD&D at all, and how 3.x or any edition after was so much better.
i'd like to point out that the race adjustments for krynn minotaurs in d20 do not match a monster manual minotaur converted by the normal d20 method for such and thus are not the same creature, MM minotaur also takes up two 5 foot squares and has a 10 foot reach.
Quote from: Dropbear on September 28, 2022, 07:43:04 AM
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on September 26, 2022, 05:03:19 PM
Nobody liked this when it limited the classes they could choose, and nobody would like having their PC race choices limited this way either.
I'm not really disputing anything in your post. I'm just noticing this particular line. And I do not recall anyone that I used to play with in the days of AD&D 1E & 2E complaining about this at all. It wasn't until I got in with the newer players joining in during 3.x that I ever heard any sort derision for the design of AD&D at all, and how much better 3.x or any edition after was so much better.
I may have extrapolated my own experiences too far, but it was definitely understood that in my groups, if you wanted to play a particular class you rolled until you got the stat minimums you needed. Put another way, I don't recall anyone ever putting the stat rolls ahead of their own desires when creating a character unless they were browbeaten into it by the group, and unsurprisingly, that tended to produce players who resented their own PCs and had much less fun in play. That was seldom expressed as an explicit complaint about overall system design, but it was a pervasive attitude, at least in my experience.
My general philosophy is that player preference should be given as much primacy as possible in character design, and that any mechanic which makes exercising that unnecessarily difficult should be avoided. Having to bite the bullet and settle for whatever option the dice allow you is exactly the type of thing we play RPGs not to have to put up with, I think; if you want to do it for the novelty or the challenge, I applaud that, but I don't think the game should impose it.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on September 28, 2022, 08:36:30 AM
I may have extrapolated my own experiences too far, but it was definitely understood that in my groups, if you wanted to play a particular class you rolled until you got the stat minimums you needed. Put another way, I don't recall anyone ever putting the stat rolls ahead of their own desires when creating a character unless they were browbeaten into it by the group, and unsurprisingly, that tended to produce players who resented their own PCs and had much less fun in play. That was seldom expressed as an explicit complaint about overall system design, but it was a pervasive attitude, at least in my experience.
My general philosophy is that player preference should be given as much primacy as possible in character design, and that any mechanic which makes exercising that unnecessarily difficult should be avoided. Having to bite the bullet and settle for whatever option the dice allow you is exactly the type of thing we play RPGs not to have to put up with, I think; if you want to do it for the novelty or the challenge, I applaud that, but I don't think the game should impose it.
My experience is almost directly opposite yours. I've seen roughly half the players exposed to some randomness at the start take to it like ducks to water, and most of the rest come to appreciate it given time in a fun game. There are a few that admit it has it's good points while it is not their first preference. Of the ones that categorically reject it, I've yet to meet one that shared enough in common with my approach to games (and not just on this question, either), where we were compatible for anything other than a one-shot. Not saying the exceptions aren't out there on that last point, but I'm less likely to meet them now than when I started. So kind of a moot point from my perspective.
Now, for that second half of players, it is very much an acquired taste. So like all acquired tastes, there has to be some reason to expect that it will be acquired if the person puts in the effort. Not all games are suitable for that, either in system, setting, tone, or any other parameter you care to name. So in some respects it becomes a self-selection question. If the planned game is going to have parameters X, Y, and Z on purpose, and those don't generally work for randomness in character generation, then trying to use it will suck--even for people that otherwise like it.
Thus, whether a game should impose randomness or not depends on the purpose of the game and its intended audience. Ideally, any game should have some options to move a little towards more or less randomness, though I think there are limits to how far you can reasonably take that approach. Likewise, the game should be clear about what is under the player's control and what is not. I have known a couple of people, for example, that will happily take a random class and/or race but will be quite put out if they can't get certain equipment. I knew one that would tell you that what he wanted to play in AD&D was a halfling thief with a ring of invisibility--but the ring was key to his enjoyment and the rest was negotiable, and even fun as a change of pace. Given some pre-generated characters, he'd grab the elven cleric with the ring before any halfling or thief combination, no matter how otherwise put together.
People are strange. :D
Quote from: Dropbear on September 28, 2022, 07:43:04 AMI'm not really disputing anything in your post. I'm just noticing this particular line. And I do not recall anyone that I used to play with in the days of AD&D 1E & 2E complaining about this at all. It wasn't until I got in with the newer players joining in during 3.x that I ever heard any sort derision for the design of AD&D at all, and how 3.x or any edition after was so much better.
That's been my experience as well. However, I don't really blame D&D 3e. When a game like Champions came along in 1980, it makes sense for a super hero character to be based on a concept and not be randomly rolled (I tried random superheroes with V&V and it didn't really work). But that idea about starting with a character concept moved from Champions to the fantasy genres (with games such as GURPS) and soon the concept-first idea of character creation dominated most RPGs which, in turn, influenced D&D writers.
There is a huge benefit to newbie friendliness with a Roll Then Play style of character generation which is lost when even D&D expects players to have a concept before they even start the process. Personally, my ideal version of D&D would have random-only generation in the PHB and a more detailed character construction system in the DMG for use when players have sufficient knowledge of the game and game world.
Quote from: Effete on September 28, 2022, 04:37:49 AMI find that to be a very sloppy approach. You can achieve the same relative damage output simply by placing caps on racial Strength. A human at peak might have 18 Strength (+3 modifier) while a halfling at peak has 15 Strength (+2 modifier). Conversely, an ogre's peak Strength might be 22 (for potentially a +4 modifier). The numerical value of the attribute itself would maintain a standard (i.e., 16 is the same for everone) so they can all use the same encumbrance rules, etc.
The issue with racial minimum/maximums is how to deal with super human abilities. What is the point of giving Ogres a max Strength of 22 if the highest they can roll is an 18?
As far as encumbrance is concerned, you'll have to deal with that one way or another. Armor that fits a hobbit will weigh less than armor for a human. A hobbit-sized backpack will hold less, and the rations for a two foot tall pixie will be much smaller than a ration for an Ogre. So saying that small characters carry half what the Strength chart says is a trivial problem.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on September 28, 2022, 11:09:31 AM
The issue with racial minimum/maximums is how to deal with super human abilities. What is the point of giving Ogres a max Strength of 22 if the highest they can roll is an 18?
I think the bigger problem is Strength effecting hit probability. A minotaur does not necessarily land hits any better than a pixie, but the ones that land hurt much more. Arguably this could be handled by a scale factor such that an average strength human would have a bonus against a pixies and a penalty against a minotaur in an opposed strength check, which combat might be a case of. Alternatively, modifiers should be non linear and species specific so an 18 on 3d6 for STR is a +1 for pixies, +3 for human, and +7 for minotaur.
"Maximum" scores (or flat penalties) at least have one advantage: they are considerably less fiddly than the alternatives.
Of course, you're either a fighter, and you won't pick a race which limited max Strength*, or you're a mage etc. and max Strength is not really an issue, not even a downside, we wonder why that exists at all.
* So you'd have an entire race without fighters... and we're back to the problem expressed in the OP.
Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 28, 2022, 09:05:12 PM
* So you'd have an entire race without fighters... and we're back to the problem expressed in the OP.
So long as the race can meet the requirements of a class, there would still be members of that class among the race. However, they would not be elite enough to joint a specialist adventuring party. The problem is the desire for equal class distribution among all races and its representation in the adventuring party. Even within one race, some societies will be more militant than others and have a different soldier to civilian ratio. One would not use a retriever to herd livestock if a shepherd breed is available, but not using a halfling as a barbarian given the option of human or orc is apparently some kind of wrongthink-ism.
Quote from: Wisithir on September 28, 2022, 09:19:23 PM
Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 28, 2022, 09:05:12 PM
* So you'd have an entire race without fighters... and we're back to the problem expressed in the OP.
So long as the race can meet the requirements of a class, there would still be members of that class among the race. However, they would not be elite enough to joint a specialist adventuring party. The problem is the desire for equal class distribution among all races and its representation in the adventuring party. Even within one race, some societies will be more militant than others and have a different soldier to civilian ratio. One would not use a retriever to herd livestock if a shepherd breed is available, but not using a halfling as a barbarian given the option of human or orc is apparently some kind of wrongthink-ism.
The analogy doesn't hold. Dog breeds are deliberately bred and put to jobs by humans deliberately, but halfling societies have to function as independent communities.
If a GM wants to reflect the game-world distribution of characters - then they can use random-roll race and roll-in-order attributes. If they do that, though, the class bias will be very small. For example, even with adjustments, 35% of half-orc PCs will still have higher Intelligence than Strength, and more suitable to be wizards than fighters.
In actual play with arranged stats and chosen race, though, players will pick half-orc to boost an already high strength score for the min-max incentive. That's not reflecting the game world. It's just introducing a meta-game artifact into play.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on September 28, 2022, 09:00:42 AMI've seen roughly half the players exposed to some randomness at the start take to it like ducks to water, and most of the rest come to appreciate it given time in a fun game.
No doubt, but there's a difference between the level of randomness that says "your thief doesn't have the DEX 18 you hoped he did" and a level of randomness that says "an exceptionally cool PC option is completely off the table unless you're lucky enough to roll a frustratingly low-probability set of scores". To me that always made about as much sense as
Traveller's classic chance of a character dying during generation before he even enters play -- it feels, to me anyway, like a waste of time and an unnecessary obstacle to player enjoyment.
That said, I agree absolutely that there's a lot of play and entertainment value to being open to random generation and that a game should always offer the option for that where possible -- I don't mean to come down against random generation, just to any extent where it closes off interesting options rather than opening them up.
Quote from: jhkim on September 28, 2022, 09:38:21 PM
Quote from: Wisithir on September 28, 2022, 09:19:23 PM
Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 28, 2022, 09:05:12 PM
* So you'd have an entire race without fighters... and we're back to the problem expressed in the OP.
So long as the race can meet the requirements of a class, there would still be members of that class among the race. However, they would not be elite enough to joint a specialist adventuring party. The problem is the desire for equal class distribution among all races and its representation in the adventuring party. Even within one race, some societies will be more militant than others and have a different soldier to civilian ratio. One would not use a retriever to herd livestock if a shepherd breed is available, but not using a halfling as a barbarian given the option of human or orc is apparently some kind of wrongthink-ism.
The analogy doesn't hold. Dog breeds are deliberately bred and put to jobs by humans deliberately, but halfling societies have to function as independent communities.
If a GM wants to reflect the game-world distribution of characters - then they can use random-roll race and roll-in-order attributes. If they do that, though, the class bias will be very small. For example, even with adjustments, 35% of half-orc PCs will still have higher Intelligence than Strength, and more suitable to be wizards than fighters.
In actual play with arranged stats and chosen race, though, players will pick half-orc to boost an already high strength score for the min-max incentive. That's not reflecting the game world. It's just introducing a meta-game artifact into play.
This seems to assume both that halflings shouldn't have a solidly disadvantaged strength in the lore and game world with mechanics reflective of reasonable fluff for child sized folk... and that PC stat distributions are and should be reflective of NPC stat distributions. Also, even in-world assuming standard lukewarm early 5e garbage that doesn't give them a stat penalty, for top tier adventuring parties you would still potentially want specialized folk, which means some degree of minmax and that between equally trained and specialized halflings and half-orcs the latter still have an edge in both racial traits and ability scores when it comes to being a barbarian, say. And again, some people like minmax and particular race+class archetypes. It's not badwrongfun, and again there are reasons why a system that allows for the possibility of minmax can be preferable, on the basis of allowing meaningful specialization and choices. I'm not a fan of bad balance or having a brainlessly obvious one true build, but to be fair, neither are most minmax theorycrafters in my experience.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on September 28, 2022, 11:09:31 AM
Quote from: Effete on September 28, 2022, 04:37:49 AMI find that to be a very sloppy approach. You can achieve the same relative damage output simply by placing caps on racial Strength. A human at peak might have 18 Strength (+3 modifier) while a halfling at peak has 15 Strength (+2 modifier). Conversely, an ogre's peak Strength might be 22 (for potentially a +4 modifier). The numerical value of the attribute itself would maintain a standard (i.e., 16 is the same for everone) so they can all use the same encumbrance rules, etc.
The issue with racial minimum/maximums is how to deal with super human abilities. What is the point of giving Ogres a max Strength of 22 if the highest they can roll is an 18?
I have to admit, I don't really have a easy answer to this, and it may be one of the instances where racial attribute adjustments would be preferable. A point-buy method could work too, where each race automatically starts at a preset "average." So ogres would start at, say, 13 and can only go up from there.
QuoteAs far as encumbrance is concerned, you'll have to deal with that one way or another. Armor that fits a hobbit will weigh less than armor for a human. A hobbit-sized backpack will hold less, and the rations for a two foot tall pixie will be much smaller than a ration for an Ogre. So saying that small characters carry half what the Strength chart says is a trivial problem.
Right, but that was kinda my point. If you're using "relative Strength," then you need to create additional rules, like "Small characters carry half" and "Large characters carry double." With an "absolute" Strength, there's just one set of weight limits and smaller creatures are just lower on the scale.
For me, the less fiddly the rules are, the less I need to worry about during game.
Quote from: Wisithir on September 28, 2022, 08:49:10 PM
I think the bigger problem is Strength effecting hit probability. A minotaur does not necessarily land hits any better than a pixie, but the ones that land hurt much more. Arguably this could be handled by a scale factor such that an average strength human would have a bonus against a pixies and a penalty against a minotaur in an opposed strength check, which combat might be a case of. Alternatively, modifiers should be non linear and species specific so an 18 on 3d6 for STR is a +1 for pixies, +3 for human, and +7 for minotaur.
Or eliminate attack modifiers from abilities entirely. Turn "melee" and "ranged" into skills, where certain classes get to add their class-level as a bonus, but other classes don't. Strength modifier only applies to damage. So a minotaur with 22 STR isn't that good at fighting unless they take a class that supports it. However, if they DO land a lucky blow, it hurts.
A maximum HP per level could work too.
Think about it: a Halfling or kobold with a dagger can be infinitely dangerous - and attacking two or three times like a high-level fighter is believable. However, he is smaller and should be frailer.
Notice that in B/X strength doesn't even affect encumbrance.
Quote from: KindaMeh on September 28, 2022, 10:24:33 PM
And again, some people like minmax and particular race+class archetypes. It's not badwrongfun, and again there are reasons why a system that allows for the possibility of minmax can be preferable, on the basis of allowing meaningful specialization and choices. I'm not a fan of bad balance or having a brainlessly obvious one true build, but to be fair, neither are most minmax theorycrafters in my experience.
One can have meaningful specialization and choices without having deliberately bad balance.
Obviously, everyone has their own preferences.
I just don't prefer a system to deliberately set up some race-class combos as more powerful than others. I appreciate tactics and system mastery after play begins, but I don't want character design to be a game where some players win and get more powerful characters by selecting the right choices. Perfect balance is impossible, but deliberately unbalancing things to make some options better than others is a bad choice to me.
What some people are claiming in other threads is that not liking racial ability adjustments is destroying the game and makes all races into grey goo - which I don't think is the case, based on years of playing Fantasy HERO and other systems without such mechanics.
Quote from: jhkim on September 29, 2022, 03:36:21 PM
Quote from: KindaMeh on September 28, 2022, 10:24:33 PM
And again, some people like minmax and particular race+class archetypes. It's not badwrongfun, and again there are reasons why a system that allows for the possibility of minmax can be preferable, on the basis of allowing meaningful specialization and choices. I'm not a fan of bad balance or having a brainlessly obvious one true build, but to be fair, neither are most minmax theorycrafters in my experience.
One can have meaningful specialization and choices without having deliberately bad balance.
Obviously, everyone has their own preferences.
I just don't prefer a system to deliberately set up some race-class combos as more powerful than others. I appreciate tactics and system mastery after play begins, but I don't want character design to be a game where some players win and get more powerful characters by selecting the right choices. Perfect balance is impossible, but deliberately unbalancing things to make some options better than others is a bad choice to me.
Agreed. Like I've said before, I don't even have an issue with min-maxing. My issue with racial modifiers is that it promotes the wrong kind of min-maxing, by locking you into specific race-class combinations to achieve optimal builds. And these combinations don't always even help reinforce racial archetypes, cuz in the case of elves, for example, their ability modifiers incentivize Rogues and other Dex-based builds, which doesn't promote making mages, which is the elf's actual favored class.
Quote
What some people are claiming in other threads is that not liking racial ability adjustments is destroying the game and makes all races into grey goo - which I don't think is the case, based on years of playing Fantasy HERO and other systems without such mechanics.
Yeah, I'm at the point where I think people are just making a mount out of an anthill over this. They just see that the rationale for getting rid of racial ability modifiers is political BS (which I agree it is), so they focus on that without looking at the actual impact of this specific change—which is negligible—or look at the rest of the changes, which do still reinforce racial archetypes regardless, just not through ability modifiers specifically.
Quote from: jhkim on September 29, 2022, 03:36:21 PM
Quote from: KindaMeh on September 28, 2022, 10:24:33 PM
And again, some people like minmax and particular race+class archetypes. It's not badwrongfun, and again there are reasons why a system that allows for the possibility of minmax can be preferable, on the basis of allowing meaningful specialization and choices. I'm not a fan of bad balance or having a brainlessly obvious one true build, but to be fair, neither are most minmax theorycrafters in my experience.
One can have meaningful specialization and choices without having deliberately bad balance.
Obviously, everyone has their own preferences.
I just don't prefer a system to deliberately set up some race-class combos as more powerful than others. I appreciate tactics and system mastery after play begins, but I don't want character design to be a game where some players win and get more powerful characters by selecting the right choices. Perfect balance is impossible, but deliberately unbalancing things to make some options better than others is a bad choice to me.
What some people are claiming in other threads is that not liking racial ability adjustments is destroying the game and makes all races into grey goo - which I don't think is the case, based on years of playing Fantasy HERO and other systems without such mechanics.
I would not call the balance for races deliberately bad, since few developers, I feel, would do that unless it was to cater along lines that have very little to do with in-game mechanics and reasonable reasoning. If anything, Tasha's messed it up via devaluing floating ability score points and overemphasizing racial traits relative to racial ability modifiers. I personally feel, and am not alone in calculating, that it threw off balance and messed with a mechanical connection to game fluff and lore. Though as a gamer with simulationist preferences who likes build theorycrafting I may perhaps have been more sensitive to such things. Ability modifiers don't do a whole lot in D&D relative to random chance, but they matter enough to be a decision. I dislike taking away decisionmaking that fits the lore and allows not just specialized archetypes but also rebellions against these archetypes that come at some mechanical trade-off. A gnome barbarian is a more flavorful choice, at least in my perspective, when it is a GNOME barbarian.
Likewise, I think that when all choices and combinations are equally good for all specializations, there are no meaningful build differentiations and choices. Complexity and meaningful choice leads inevitably to the possibility that some combinations won't do a particular thing, or will be specialized better for something else entirely, or more balanced or jack-of-all in distribution. Likewise, minmax and build theorycrafting are not the enemy, nor are they intrinsically incorrect ways to play, especially given the many ways in which a given player might choose to specialize.
I agree though that everyone has their own preferences and it is not wrong to prefer species that do not meaningfully differ in lore and mechanics from humans attribute-wise. Or to like point buy or racial qualifying stats or whatever. Though obviously both sides of the community have a right to extol the virtues of their design recommendations. I just felt that this thread was targeting a bit of hostility at mechanical theorycrafters and minmaxers and predicated on the idea that racial attribute modifications objectively encourage min-max as a disease or something, which admittedly was perhaps not the intent. I apologize if I've had my hackles up a bit throughout these threads as a result.
I think you may be misunderstanding Pundit a bit here too if that last bit is a reference to his video thread and you didn't see the part where some folks really do want to do away with meaningful species differences on spurious racial grounds, admittedly with some political and cultural radicalization of the hobby too. I think many only wish to argue for differentiated species options, which in some instances may indeed relate to differing attributes like an ogre's strength, a dwarf's hardiness (high constitution and strength relative to size), an elf's grace (Dexterity) longevity and beauty (an argument for a CHA or APP boost is real), or a fairy's small size and winged flight. So yes, sometimes traits, but also sometimes best expressed through ability modifiers.
It is for these reasons that I've been attempting to push back a little bit on the thread's basic premises, which while leading to some pretty awesome discussion and creative innovation as regards the representation of species just didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
I appreciate, however, your cordial approach to debate both here and more generally. And appreciate you taking the time to respond to my own stated perspectives among others.
Quote from: Wisithir on September 26, 2022, 11:27:20 PM
I think there is a difference between a randomly generated character that might be disposable until the player grows attached to it over time, and a purpose build character designed around a mechanical or narrative feature for a game about how group of adventures accomplished the plot objectives.
The best way to handle different stat distribution for different biology is a per race conversion table. Thus a 10 STR is 10 for a human but 12 for an Orc or 7 for a Halfling, while an 18 might become a 16 for Human, 18 for Orc, and 12 for Halfling or something...
Regardless of how they are generated, all PCs are disposable.
Quote from: Effete on September 27, 2022, 02:05:30 AM
Min-maxing exists no matter which method of ability score generation is used.
3d6, six times, in order. The way the gods intended.
Quote from: dkabq on September 29, 2022, 08:22:20 PM
Quote from: Effete on September 27, 2022, 02:05:30 AM
Min-maxing exists no matter which method of ability score generation is used.
3d6, six times, in order. The way the gods intended.
Unless you also randomize class, race, background, and class progression+feat selection, I don't think so, lol. Have played with 3d6 in order and if anything the low stats in some things and high-ish in others just pushed most folk to have to play a certain class. (Though it could be partly an edition thing.)
Even with all that, I suspect some minmax would emerge just in actual play following creation as folks would naturally seek out gear, minions, wealth and connections that grant their characters a greater chance of success in their endeavors.
Quote from: Chris24601 on September 27, 2022, 10:00:40 AM
The idea that 3d6 in order magically stops minmaxing is ludicrous. A minmaxer will just look for the best race/class combo his rolls will allow and run with that.
It will to some extent in DCC -- no race bonuses. As for picking the class that is maximally benefited by your stats, that feels more going with your strengths (e.g., there is a reason I'm an engineer and not a pro athlete), which I am fine with -- YMMV. That said, in my campaign there have been times when I have told a player what class they are rolling up a PC for (e.g., I will be running an all-cleric adventure in 2023; one of my players did not have a cleric PC; they do now). But then my players have multiple PCs, so it's not like they are stuck playing that one class.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on September 28, 2022, 11:09:31 AM
saying that small characters carry half what the Strength chart says is a trivial problem.
The 5e PHB so nearly did that and then blew it.
QuoteSize and Strength. Larger creatures can bear more weight, whereas Tiny creatures can carry less. For each size category above Medium, double the creature's carrying capacity and the amount it can push, drag, or lift. For a Tiny creature, halve these weights.
All they needed to do was say for each size category below Medium halve the weight. (Tiny is two sizes below medium in their rules.)
However, this is still not too close to our intuitive understanding of size and strength. It's better to relate weight to strength. As a rough rule of thumb, weight and strength vary 1:1 or x:x, whereas height and strength vary x:x
3.
For example, your average 5e human is 5'7" tall and can carry about 158lbs (15 x STR.) The average 5e halfling is 3' tall. Judging only by height the average halfling could carry about 1/6th as much. However, halflings aren't typically 1/6th the weight of a human. Using weights, the average human is 165lbs and the average halfling 40lbs, so the average halfling would be carrying about 1/4 the weight of the human. This would lead to a racial STR modifier of about -8 for the halfling. (Even if small creature carrying capacity were halved, it would still imply a -5 STR modifier for the halfling.) For completeness, based on av. weight:
race | av. carry | ~STR mod | dice*** |
human | 158 | 0 | 3d6 |
dwarf, hill | 143 | -1 | 2d6+1d4 |
dwarf, mountain | 158 | 0 | 3d6 |
elf, high | 113 | -3 | 3d4 |
elf, wood | 123 | -2 | 1d6+2d4 |
elf, drow | 96 | -4 | 1d4+1d3+1d2 |
halfling* | 38 | -5 | 2d3+1d2 |
dragonborn | 227 | +5 | 2d10+1d8 |
gnome* | 38 | -5 | 2d3+1d2 |
half-elf | 148 | -1 | 2d6+1d4 |
half-orc | 208 | +3 | 3d8 |
tiefling | 165 | +1 | 1d8+2d6 |
ogre** | 954 | +21 | 1d20+1d12+1d8 |
* assuming half carrying capacity
** assuming double carrying capacity
*** since some of the modifiers might go out of range it might be better to roll different dice combinations instead
You can see how quickly these numbers go out of range as size / weight change.
I've been hesitating jumping in on this because I actually think it's a crazy easy to answer the concerns expressed in the original post if I understand them correctly. Don't want high STR to funnel players into automatically playing an orc? Then just make sure there are other viable options. Don't want someone playing an orc for the sole reason of squeezing out those extra points of STR? Then make choice of race a package deal of other characteristics that are substantial enough to make sure the player is actually fully invested in playing that race, and not simply interested in just one of its advantages.
And there are already existing, well-known RPGs that do this that a few people here have already alluded to.
And there are also holes that need poking into the original premise. Because if your highest ability is STR and therefore you end up playing a fighter, playing to your strengths actually does not necessarily mean going around doing a lot of strengthing. It means going around doing a lot of fighting. And DEX and CON are undeniably important when it comes to fighting. So it's actually never a given in the first place that *the* way to min-max your fighter means playing an orc to squeeze out some extra strength. Playing a dwarf to squeeze out some extra CON also works from a purely strategic perspective.
But it's the following that I really couldn't let go without comment:
Quote from: jhkim on September 29, 2022, 03:36:21 PM
I just don't prefer a system to deliberately set up some race-class combos as more powerful than others. I appreciate tactics and system mastery after play begins, but I don't want character design to be a game where some players win and get more powerful characters by selecting the right choices. Perfect balance is impossible, but deliberately unbalancing things to make some options better than others is a bad choice to me.
Two things here:
1)
The words "perfect balance" raises flags to me. Sure, you could count beans to make sure the see-saw remains perfectly horizontal. The problem is a gust of wind that blows off one of those beans, of a butterfly that comes to rest on one side or the other can throw off the balance. In other words, this view of balance will never survive contact with actual play.
On the other hand, you can have something like a tri-pod, which stands pretty well, balances pretty well. And the legs don't necessarily be equal. They can be off by a good amount before the balance is compromised. That's a much stronger version of balance. One that can survive contact with actual play. Here, "perfect" is neither necessary (the legs don't need to be the same length) nor sufficient (even if the legs are all exactly equal, if they are all in a co-linear position, it won't yield balance). So whenever "perfect" is uttered, even if to say you'll settle for less, it's not clear to me that the concept of "balance" is even properly understood
2)
Yeah. Maybe you actually do want to intentionally unbalance things. Now that's not necessarily the best way to say it. I am not a fan of the notion of a designer (who I imagine to be picking his nose, and face it, it will be a "he" if this is happening) while saying, "Well, we have 6 attributes, and 6 playable races. That means we can have one race that is the best at each of the 6 attributes." No. On this point, I agree with the original post. I don't want a game where you say, "Oh, your best stat is STR? You should be a half-orc. Oh, your best stat is CHR? It's half-elf for you." I'd say a better way to think about intentional imbalance is that you need to put some stank on it.
By the way, I think this is also the biggest mistake you can make when running a sandbox. When you are so dead set at honoring "player agency" or whatever wanker RPG theory you subscribe to that you obsess at making sure to make all options equally viable, I'd argue you're actually robbing the player of meaningful choice. Most people recognize for choice to have meaning it has to have consequences. But it's also the case that the player must have reason to believe one choice is actually better (however the player views "better") than another. Otherwise, you may as well just flip a coin. And that's not a meaningful choice.
So you do need, in character creation, for there to be paths and advantages and disadvantages that will nudge the player a little here and there. It can't be some elegant balance or symmetry. It needs some stank on it. A game without stank, gamers may jerk off to it all day long, because it may seem so great in theory. It's not going to create the magic in actual play.
In a good RPG, I frequently create cross-type characters. If I'm playing AD&D 1E--and this is certainly the epitome of an RPG with some stank--I'll do a cleric whose highest stat is in STR. Who will take advantage of that awesome armor the class allows and take up a lot of the fighting. Hey, as long as I'm fighting, I'm not blowing my spell slots. So they get saved for when they are most important. But, if I'm playing the class that is only second-rate at fighting, I'm going to need all my min-maxing might to be able to hold my own shoulder-to-shoulder with the fighters in the party. Maybe I do the half-orc cleric/fighter. Automatically begin in mature age category, which is good for +1 to STR and +1 CON on top of the +1 STR and +1 CON for a half orc. That's going to make me start and a friggin awesome fighter. Yeah, the yumans will catch up over time. But by the time that happens, I can always hit them with a hold person if they get to uppity. 110% viable character. Not cookie-cutter at all. Another player might do something else with the same dice rolls. In fact, almost none will do what I described.
QuoteWhat some people are claiming in other threads is that not liking racial ability adjustments is destroying the game and makes all races into grey goo - which I don't think is the case, based on years of playing Fantasy HERO and other systems without such mechanics.
I don't think that's true. I think this lacks context. It's got nothing to do with racial ability adjustments. It has to do with a fatwa against any and all differentiation. You're allowed to have pointy ears. Unless they might be exoticized or some shit. Then you have to be allowed to be a fat, blue-haired elf with an undercut and small, round ears. You know. Because not all elfs. If that's what you're arguing against, racial ability adjustments is a symbol for differentiation that doesn't sound so generic and lifeless and meaningless.
"Stank"?
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 04, 2022, 10:05:18 PM
"Stank"?
Putting some stank on it means not delivering something clean, tidy, and neat, but rather it's about risk-taking and flair. Mess it up. Make it unique. Give it life. Give it soul. Reality isn't so perfect. So make it real.
It's assinine to quantify character stats and then get upset when player min-max. If you're rolling damage, do you want a +1 or a +2? Do you want to sink the party because you chose to "role play" a dumb wizard?
If a game has obviously better choices then a lot of players are going to make those choices. I have gone against "type" before, for RP sake. (Usually to make a character more amusing than effective) but I try not to be obnoxious or drag the party down too far doing it.
I've never cared about min-maxing once I got my big-boy GM pants on. Just like I chuckle at power-gamers and all the other categories of players out there.
Stats and gear will not cure stupid. People that need to min-max will only leave themselves open in sandbox games for the things that they're not qualified to deal with due to hyperspecialization. Of course if you only run modules and such faire then you might have issues.
Ability scores matter only insofar as the GM feeds those actions. All that should happen is contextualizing what those stats mean in the setting and play accordingly. You can't smash all problems to death with a battle-axe, but feel free to try. If you're running a game where you CAN do those things... then the problem isn't with the player, it's with the GM that incentivizes that kind of play.
Quote from: Lunamancer on September 30, 2022, 12:16:27 AM
Maybe you actually do want to intentionally unbalance things. Now that's not necessarily the best way to say it. I am not a fan of the notion of a designer (who I imagine to be picking his nose, and face it, it will be a "he" if this is happening) while saying, "Well, we have 6 attributes, and 6 playable races. That means we can have one race that is the best at each of the 6 attributes." No. On this point, I agree with the original post. I don't want a game where you say, "Oh, your best stat is STR? You should be a half-orc. Oh, your best stat is CHR? It's half-elf for you." I'd say a better way to think about intentional imbalance is that you need to put some stank on it.
By the way, I think this is also the biggest mistake you can make when running a sandbox. When you are so dead set at honoring "player agency" or whatever wanker RPG theory you subscribe to that you obsess at making sure to make all options equally viable, I'd argue you're actually robbing the player of meaningful choice. Most people recognize for choice to have meaning it has to have consequences. But it's also the case that the player must have reason to believe one choice is actually better (however the player views "better") than another. Otherwise, you may as well just flip a coin. And that's not a meaningful choice.
I think this is the core of difference. I absolutely want a game where players succeed or fail based on their in-game choices, and there are unique consequences to those choices. I want combat to be engaging and tactical. I want players thinking about the best in-game strategies to maximize their gains. So when I run a sandbox, I also want player choices to be meaningful and contribute to success or failure.
However, I don't want
character creation to be a tactical game that players win or lose in. Character creation to me is a metagame step prior to when the game itself starts. I generally run character creation as a cooperative stage, and I try to make sure all players start out on an equal footing. I don't want players approaching character creation tactically, thinking about how they will get the best build to maximize their power.
For example, if during the game, a player comes up with a clever in-game strategy that will shortcut their opposition to win, I will applaud them and let it work. However, if someone comes up with a cleverly extra-powerful character creation build, I will tell them no and make a ruling so that their character is roughly balanced with the others.
Quote from: Lunamancer on September 30, 2022, 12:16:27 AM
In a good RPG, I frequently create cross-type characters. If I'm playing AD&D 1E--and this is certainly the epitome of an RPG with some stank--I'll do a cleric whose highest stat is in STR. Who will take advantage of that awesome armor the class allows and take up a lot of the fighting. Hey, as long as I'm fighting, I'm not blowing my spell slots. So they get saved for when they are most important. But, if I'm playing the class that is only second-rate at fighting, I'm going to need all my min-maxing might to be able to hold my own shoulder-to-shoulder with the fighters in the party. Maybe I do the half-orc cleric/fighter. Automatically begin in mature age category, which is good for +1 to STR and +1 CON on top of the +1 STR and +1 CON for a half orc. That's going to make me start and a friggin awesome fighter. Yeah, the yumans will catch up over time. But by the time that happens, I can always hit them with a hold person if they get to uppity. 110% viable character. Not cookie-cutter at all. Another player might do something else with the same dice rolls. In fact, almost none will do what I described.
I agree the half-orc cleric/fighter isn't cookie-cutter, though long-term it has the problem that half-orc is capped at Cleric level 4. Still, it sounds like approaching character creation tactically based on optimizing bonuses. The problem I was expressing in the beginning isn't that all optimized characters are cookie-cutter. In the modern D&D community, there are all sorts of people coming up with creatively optimized builds.
Using your terms, AD&D1 as well as modern D&D editions have loads of stank. That's still true even if one removes racial attribute modifiers. Becoming stankless isn't a problem. The attribute modifiers create very obvious race/class optimizations that don't seem interesting to me, and only serve to funnel and encourage thinking in terms of optimized builds.
Quote from: tenbones on October 05, 2022, 11:38:40 AM
I've never cared about min-maxing once I got my big-boy GM pants on. Just like I chuckle at power-gamers and all the other categories of players out there.
Stats and gear will not cure stupid. People that need to min-max will only leave themselves open in sandbox games for the things that they're not qualified to deal with due to hyperspecialization. Of course if you only run modules and such faire then you might have issues.
Ability scores matter only insofar as the GM feeds those actions. All that should happen is contextualizing what those stats mean in the setting and play accordingly. You can't smash all problems to death with a battle-axe, but feel free to try. If you're running a game where you CAN do those things... then the problem isn't with the player, it's with the GM that incentivizes that kind of play.
Agreed, and I wish I had said that.
When I prep a game, whether writing my own material or tweaking a published module, I try to optimize for fun by presenting various levels of challenge. If the players have invested in some ability, sure, give them an opportunity to roll over some otherwise challenging monster by doing their schtick. That's fun. There will also be easy encounters, interesting challenges, and really tough encounters. It doesn't much matter how much they optimize their PC's, I'm still going to adjust the game to give that kind of variety, because in my experience that's what makes for the most fun.
The only time it really causes a problem is when you have a mix of player types. A non optimizer among an optimizing group will have a weaker character, and that's not much fun for him. An optimizer in a nonoptimizing group will hog the spotlight, and that's no fun for everyone else. The important thing is to get everyone on the same page. You can do this by making sure that the rules ensure that everyone is equally powerfully, but that comes at a cost. Such rules are tough to design, and are in my experience bland and flavorless. The better option is to be aware of the issue and have agreement of the group as to how you're going to approach things. If you do that it won't much matter that there are broken or OP builds.
Quote from: Mishihari on October 05, 2022, 05:26:19 PM
The only time it really causes a problem is when you have a mix of player types. A non optimizer among an optimizing group will have a weaker character, and that's not much fun for him. An optimizer in a nonoptimizing group will hog the spotlight, and that's no fun for everyone else. The important thing is to get everyone on the same page. You can do this by making sure that the rules ensure that everyone is equally powerfully, but that comes at a cost. Such rules are tough to design, and are in my experience bland and flavorless. The better option is to be aware of the issue and have agreement of the group as to how you're going to approach things. If you do that it won't much matter that there are broken or OP builds.
In D&D I have a blast with that particular problem. I make
explicit to the players that magic items they find will be a mix of random and specially placed things that I find interesting and hope they do too. The things I find the most interesting are the items that pull characters out of their shell and allow them to participate. Power gamers then have two choices: They can get less "cool" equipment than the other characters, or they can put their skills to work making sure the party is roughly equal in that respect--without stamping on other toes or telling people how to build their characters. Which means that all power gamers that want to run wild have to turn into player diplomats.
Of course, like tenbones said, they are going to pick their challenges in the sandbox anyway. So more power just means more opportunities to push it.
In any case, "power gamer" is one of those terms that is on a sliding scale at every table. It takes on negative or positive connotations exactly to the degree that the other players think the accused is diverging from the norm too much. All I really do is try to fix it so that the players have to come to a consensus on what is desired, allowed, or excessive amongst themselves, because I ain't got time to police that nonsense during the game. If I can do something with the game selection, nudges, house rules, etc. to discourage obvious problem, well I enjoy that kind of tinkering for its own sake.
Quote from: jhkim on October 05, 2022, 03:22:48 PM
I think this is the core of difference. I absolutely want a game where players succeed or fail based on their in-game choices [. . .] However, I don't want character creation to be a tactical game that players win or lose in.
No, that's definitely not it. I was speaking about the very nature of what it means to choose at all. All choices are made with the end result in mind. If the end results are all equally appeasing, then the choice itself has no meaning. Appeasing doesn't have to mean mechanical advantage. The player just has to want one thing more than the other.
If the player wants to play a Knight more than a Magician, that gives him good reason to choose the Fighter class over the Magic-User class, even if they are mechanically balanced and "equal" in some sense. All things being equal, he might also want to choose to play a human or an elf rather than a half-orc or a dwarf under the presumption that the former races have a more courtly vibe than the latter. I think we both agree that this part is all well and good.
But maybe the choice isn't so obvious if the player is deciding whether to play a Cleric, a Fighter, or a Paladin. And that's where I think taking a look at what you rolled for stats and how they mix and match with the different options can actually help guide the player along the process. Yeah. Sometimes this means some kind of mechanical advantage is going to be the bait. I'd rather that be the case than the player having no investment in this decision. And maybe that's where we differ.
I get that sometimes this extra concern of mine may not be an issue. Some players come to the table with fully formed character concepts and do not need that guidance. They just need the system to stay out of the way, and hopefully not make their idea suck. I'm not sure that's always realistically possible. So while I acknowledge that some gamers do indeed like the concept-first approach as a matter simple preference, it's not a preference I'd wish on my worst enemy. Sometimes it works. But I think it can also set you up for major disappointment.
QuoteCharacter creation to me is a metagame step prior to when the game itself starts.
I don't know that this is material to what we're talking about here, but I do think of character creation as part of the game insofar as, as part of the game, I expect, even demand it be fun. I want to feel engaged at this stage, and I want my players to feel engaged as early on as possible as well. This is especially on my mind as my group is playing Dangerous Journeys this coming weekend, and coming to the table with ready-to-go Heroic Personas is our homework for the week. I will bet anything one player shows up without a completed character. The process is a lot of work and not always all that fun.
QuoteI generally run character creation as a cooperative stage, and I try to make sure all players start out on an equal footing. I don't want players approaching character creation tactically, thinking about how they will get the best build to maximize their power.
For example, if during the game, a player comes up with a clever in-game strategy that will shortcut their opposition to win, I will applaud them and let it work. However, if someone comes up with a cleverly extra-powerful character creation build, I will tell them no and make a ruling so that their character is roughly balanced with the others.
So here's the problem I have with this. Say I tell each player to go out and get any one food and any one drink. Much in the same way D&D has you choose a class and a race. And I have a menu to choose from, much like D&D provides you with a list of classes and races.
Am I really supposed to think it's a bad thing if someone comes back with cookies and milk?
How much would I have to stale their cookies and sour their milk to make their snack combo equal to gouda cheese and orange juice?
Would doing so really add to the value of the snack table? Or would it only take away?
Do I really even want to encourage gouda and OJ by dignifying it with equal respect? I feel this is how we get halfling paladins and pineapple pizza.
QuoteI agree the half-orc cleric/fighter isn't cookie-cutter, though long-term it has the problem that half-orc is capped at Cleric level 4. Still, it sounds like approaching character creation tactically based on optimizing bonuses. The problem I was expressing in the beginning isn't that all optimized characters are cookie-cutter. In the modern D&D community, there are all sorts of people coming up with creatively optimized builds.
We began with the premise that racial adjustments encourage min-maxing, that whatever your highest stat is, it practically chooses a race for you because it's optimal. But you agree that there are all sorts of creative builds that are just as good. That doesn't seem like the original choice is all that optimal to me. It sounds like players have a lot of choice in the matter.
If my half-orc cleric/fighter is created so tactically and is so optimal, why is it that almost no one ever plays such a character? I don't know that I've done anything tactical at all. Although I may have exercised tact. As in, if I want to go with a cheese & juice combo, that maybe I should exercise some tact and pivot to grape juice rather than stick with OJ. If that's what the allure of min-maxing racial characteristics encourages, then yeah, I'm 100% all for it. It's a good thing.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 05, 2022, 07:55:24 PM
Quote from: jhkim on October 05, 2022, 03:22:48 PM
I think this is the core of difference. I absolutely want a game where players succeed or fail based on their in-game choices [. . .] However, I don't want character creation to be a tactical game that players win or lose in.
No, that's definitely not it. I was speaking about the very nature of what it means to choose at all. All choices are made with the end result in mind.
If I got the difference wrong, then sorry. I suspect examples will work better than a philosophical approach about what a choice is, though.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 05, 2022, 07:55:24 PM
Quote from: jhkim on October 05, 2022, 03:22:48 PM
For example, if during the game, a player comes up with a clever in-game strategy that will shortcut their opposition to win, I will applaud them and let it work. However, if someone comes up with a cleverly extra-powerful character creation build, I will tell them no and make a ruling so that their character is roughly balanced with the others.
So here's the problem I have with this. Say I tell each player to go out and get any one food and any one drink. Much in the same way D&D has you choose a class and a race. And I have a menu to choose from, much like D&D provides you with a list of classes and races.
Am I really supposed to think it's a bad thing if someone comes back with cookies and milk?
How much would I have to stale their cookies and sour their milk to make their snack combo equal to gouda cheese and orange juice?
Would doing so really add to the value of the snack table? Or would it only take away?
Do I really even want to encourage gouda and OJ by dignifying it with equal respect? I feel this is how we get halfling paladins and pineapple pizza.
It sounds like you're saying that halfling paladins are objectively bad for the game. Can you elaborate on why? For example, in the last GURPS Fantasy campaign I played in, I played a halfling airship captain - I guess the closest equivalent in D&D would be a Fighter - Battle Master. I felt he was a great character to play and contributed well to the campaign. He was very commanding and militaristic, and was known for speaking about things like a door being "normal sized" or "giant sized".
Likewise, I don't see anything wrong with a halflng paladin - taking inspiration from the legend of Bullroarer Took in Tolkien, for example. I can easily picture a halfling paladin as a great PC. There are a lot of games without racial attribute modifiers, like Fantasy Hero, Star Wars D6, and others. I've played games like those a lot over the years - and had a lot of outside-norm characters like halfling paladins. I've also had them in D&D despite attribute modifiers. The last character I played (rather than DMed) was a 5E one-shot this spring where I played a half-orc wizard.
1) Based on my experience, I don't have any problem with a halfling paladin or other race-class combinations outside the norm. Of course, these are also playable in D&D, particularly since 3rd edition after level limits were taken out.
2) In terms of choices, the choice for a wizard between +2 Strength and +2 Intelligence isn't an interesting or colorful trade-off. It's blatantly imbalanced and obvious.
3) Without attribute modifiers, D&D in every edition still has plenty of colorful choices between options. If a given elf character has a 16 Dexterity instead of 18 Dexterity, how much does that really change? If the 16 Dex elf is completely flat flavorless and identical to human, I assert that it doesn't suddenly because flavorful and interesting with 18 Dex.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on October 05, 2022, 06:35:18 PM
Quote from: Mishihari on October 05, 2022, 05:26:19 PM
The only time it really causes a problem is when you have a mix of player types. A non optimizer among an optimizing group will have a weaker character, and that's not much fun for him. An optimizer in a nonoptimizing group will hog the spotlight, and that's no fun for everyone else. The important thing is to get everyone on the same page. You can do this by making sure that the rules ensure that everyone is equally powerfully, but that comes at a cost. Such rules are tough to design, and are in my experience bland and flavorless. The better option is to be aware of the issue and have agreement of the group as to how you're going to approach things. If you do that it won't much matter that there are broken or OP builds.
In D&D I have a blast with that particular problem. I make explicit to the players that magic items they find will be a mix of random and specially placed things that I find interesting and hope they do too. The things I find the most interesting are the items that pull characters out of their shell and allow them to participate. Power gamers then have two choices: They can get less "cool" equipment than the other characters, or they can put their skills to work making sure the party is roughly equal in that respect--without stamping on other toes or telling people how to build their characters. Which means that all power gamers that want to run wild have to turn into player diplomats.
Of course, like tenbones said, they are going to pick their challenges in the sandbox anyway. So more power just means more opportunities to push it.
In any case, "power gamer" is one of those terms that is on a sliding scale at every table. It takes on negative or positive connotations exactly to the degree that the other players think the accused is diverging from the norm too much. All I really do is try to fix it so that the players have to come to a consensus on what is desired, allowed, or excessive amongst themselves, because I ain't got time to police that nonsense during the game. If I can do something with the game selection, nudges, house rules, etc. to discourage obvious problem, well I enjoy that kind of tinkering for its own sake.
What do you mean by the characters getting pulled out of their shells and participating? Can you elaborate on that and the player diplomat thing?
Quote from: jhkim on October 06, 2022, 01:09:56 AM
If I got the difference wrong, then sorry. I suspect examples will work better than a philosophical approach about what a choice is, though.
Maybe in general, but I did initially did use an example, and that led you to think I was talking about something tactical. I'm talking about the nature of choice itself. As in literally all choices. Fundamentally, that involves using scarce means to achieve ends. If you only get to choose one race for your character, that's scarce. The ends part is a lot harder to label, because different players might have different reasons for choosing a particular race, and some of those reasons might not even have anything to do with game mechanics.
Also, as with any choice, it's possible to choose foolishly. I remember there being an old dragon magazine article retooling the monk for the umpteenth time where it was said something like choosing a monk thinking you were getting David Carradine only to be disappointed. That would be an example of a foolish choice. While it may be true that the monk is perhaps the closest choice you have to David Carradine, a lot of players might legitimately hold the view that, while they would rather play David Carradine than play Shrek, they would much rather play Shrek than something that is only 80% Carradine.
All this complicates the task of identifying the ends. But they're always there. In any choice, there's always going to be some looking ahead involved. And all choice has the potential for disappointment. Depending how loosey goosey you want to get with definitions, it's plenty easy to be able justify any example of choice as being tactical and resulting in unequal outcomes. Choice can always appear that way. That doesn't mean it is tactical, if we're using the word tactical in a way that makes meaningful distinctions.
QuoteIt sounds like you're saying that halfling paladins are objectively bad for the game. Can you elaborate on why?
I haven't said that at all. I likened it to pineapple pizza. What could possibly be more a matter of taste than what people want on their pizza? For that matter, this idea that cookies & milk is somehow a better combination than gouda & OJ is also a matter of opinion.
But I confess, I did bait you on that. Because while we understand it's subjective, we also understand that so many people have such strong negative feelings about pineapple pizza that it's gotten to be something of a cultural meme of what not to do. As was the halfling paladin for a time.
And it's not entirely without justification. If I'm throwing a party and I want to have 6 pizzas waiting for when the guests arrive, and I don't necessarily know who exactly is going to show up or what exactly they'll be in the mood for, pineapple pizza is probably not going to be one of my go-to's. I probably am going to avoid anchovies as well. At least one of them will be plain, for sure. Probably one pepperoni and one house special just because those are classic pizza options. One vegetarian option.
Maybe one will be my favorite. Host privilege. And if I want pineapple and anchovies, so be it. What's the worse that can happen? No one else touches it? I have left-overs. It's fine. But if I don't like it, it's a silly thing to order. Even though it's technically possible there will be enough guests who will enjoy it that it won't go to waste, it's not where the smart money goes.
So when I called for tact in terms of tweaking orange juice to grape juice to go with the gouda, that might be analogous to playing a halfling who wants to be a paladin rather than playing a halfling paladin. Which I actually think is a much more interesting character, who comes to the table with motives. But the point is, it's not just about what that one player wants to play. It's about compromise and playing well with others in cooperative creation of a shared fantasy.
Quote2) In terms of choices, the choice for a wizard between +2 Strength and +2 Intelligence isn't an interesting or colorful trade-off. It's blatantly imbalanced and obvious.
I don't necessarily agree. Which I think is sufficient to strike "blatant" and "obvious." I think you're objectively incorrect on those counts. But if I also happen to be correct in my assessment, it removes it from the "imbalanced" category as well.
To a degree, it's edition specific. If you're playing a version of the game that allows the wizard to fire limitless cantrips out their butthole and the potency of those spells is linked to INT in one way or another, yeah, you might have a point. But certainly in old school, where Intelligence usually does not affect the potency of the spells, and where spells are scarce, such that a wizard will have to a lot of non-wizard stuff through the course of an actual adventure, that undermines the point. I've played a magic-user with 18 STR. It was a frickin' awesome build. The pew-pew power of tossing 3 darts per round, all with that strength bonus applied? I didn't need magic missile. And that freed up slots for other more varied spells.
But there is also an asymmetry at work on a system-agnostic level. Going back to the premise in your original post, we were assuming that characters will tend to play to their strengths. The thing is, when fighters play to their strengths, they do a lot of fighting. Which is a lot more dangerous than sitting back casting spells (short of conjuring powerful beings). Right off the bat, they're not equal activities. No matter how much assume they are or like to pretend they are. No matter how much we think GMs can control it by what proportions of what they're including in the campaign. Some activities are more dangerous than others, and when it comes to danger, the chain is going to break at the weakest link. So there's every incentive in the world to strengthen that link given the choice.
Quote3) Without attribute modifiers, D&D in every edition still has plenty of colorful choices between options. If a given elf character has a 16 Dexterity instead of 18 Dexterity, how much does that really change? If the 16 Dex elf is completely flat flavorless and identical to human, I assert that it doesn't suddenly because flavorful and interesting with 18 Dex.
It's hard to see clear why Elfs seeing in the dark is fine but a bonus to DEX is a bridge too far. Is a bonus when using bows and swords also a problem? Hey, if I'm going to be a fighter and specialize in longbow, I may as well play and elf an stack up another +1 to hit on top of that.
I don't experience this issue because I randomly roll for race.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 06, 2022, 01:28:51 AMWhat do you mean by the characters getting pulled out of their shells and participating? Can you elaborate on that and the player diplomat thing?
I always have some process in the game that rewards the more boisterous, aggressive, system guru, etc. types trying to include the other players as much as possible. The exact process varies by system, but usually in a D&D-like game, I gear it to magic (items, spells, etc.). In some cases, I'll use cachet, favor, reputation, etc. in a similar way. It varies a little by group, because the point is that it something that the aggressive players want and are trying to get.
It's just something that I started doing a long time ago when I realized that my games had changed. When I started, it was everyone was aggressively pushing what the group and the individuals wanted. Simple party dynamics took care of it. Now, I'll have 2/3 to 3/4 of my players will be somewhat reserved to shy. If let untouched, the aggressive ones will all sit right next to me and drown out the rest. I have gone as far as to do arranged seating, but since it's exactly the opposite of what everyone is trying to do naturally, it doesn't go well. So the next best thing is an incentive for the aggressive players to be spread amongst the rest by their own choice, so that they can steer the shy players towards a similar party dynamic that an all aggressive group has.
If you like non-standard magic items a little on the strange side, then it's easy to harness that towards the same goals. Strangely enough, I find mild curses on an otherwise good item to be excellent for this. The aggressive character is always trying to eradicate every last negative. The shy character is perversely proud that his magic sword causes goblins to want to kill him on sight. Then the aggressive characters see how much fun that is, and they want their own quirky thing.
It's about thinking about what your players want, why they want it, how they go about getting it--and then determining what you can throw in the way of situation or stuff or villain to get them to use that same energy going after something you want for the good of the group as a whole. In the context of the original topic, you can't really stop a power gamer from power gaming, at least not without fighting them over it. It's a lot less stressful and much more rewarding to instead channel the power gaming into something that helps you.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 06, 2022, 11:40:56 AM
Quote from: jhkim on October 06, 2022, 01:09:56 AM
Without attribute modifiers, D&D in every edition still has plenty of colorful choices between options. If a given elf character has a 16 Dexterity instead of 18 Dexterity, how much does that really change? If the 16 Dex elf is completely flat flavorless and identical to human, I assert that it doesn't suddenly because flavorful and interesting with 18 Dex.
It's hard to see clear why Elfs seeing in the dark is fine but a bonus to DEX is a bridge too far. Is a bonus when using bows and swords also a problem? Hey, if I'm going to be a fighter and specialize in longbow, I may as well play and elf an stack up another +1 to hit on top of that.
It seems like you're inferring that I like everything about D&D except racial attribute modifiers, which I hate. But from my view, I mildly dislike racial attribute modifiers, and I've considered them just one among many minor annoyances with D&D rules (as with any system). In other threads, posters were saying that racial attribute modifiers were essential, and that removing them is horrible (like Pundit's "Grey Goo" thread) - which implies that games like Hero System and Star Wars D6 somehow reduced all races to grey goo.
To answer your questions - the criteria I have is that I prefer for character creation options to be roughly balanced, rather than certain builds being superior to other builds. So I dislike rules that create more search for superior builds.
For example, the elf bonus to bows and swords in AD&D was changed in 3rd ed D&D to automatic proficiency instead. I like that change, precisely because it removes the preference to always make bow specialists into elves. Infravision is broadly useful to all classes, so it doesn't particularly change the balance.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 06, 2022, 11:40:56 AM
Quote from: jhkim on October 06, 2022, 01:09:56 AM
It sounds like you're saying that halfling paladins are objectively bad for the game. Can you elaborate on why?
I haven't said that at all. I likened it to pineapple pizza. What could possibly be more a matter of taste than what people want on their pizza? For that matter, this idea that cookies & milk is somehow a better combination than gouda & OJ is also a matter of opinion.
But I confess, I did bait you on that. Because while we understand it's subjective, we also understand that so many people have such strong negative feelings about pineapple pizza that it's gotten to be something of a cultural meme of what not to do. As was the halfling paladin for a time.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 06, 2022, 11:40:56 AM
So when I called for tact in terms of tweaking orange juice to grape juice to go with the gouda, that might be analogous to playing a halfling who wants to be a paladin rather than playing a halfling paladin. Which I actually think is a much more interesting character, who comes to the table with motives. But the point is, it's not just about what that one player wants to play. It's about compromise and playing well with others in cooperative creation of a shared fantasy.
To paraphrase what I understand from this, you're saying that a halfling paladin isn't bad in itself, but that other people could have strong negative feelings about it - so it's best to compromise and not play a halfling paladin in order to play well with them.
But that just begs the question. Why do these people have such negative feelings about other people playing halfling paladins that should be respected?
From my side, since the 1980s playing Fantasy Hero and many other games with open character creation, I've seen a lot of characters like halfling paladins, and they haven't seemed like a problem to me.
Quote from: jhkim on October 06, 2022, 07:34:24 PM
But that just begs the question. Why do these people have such negative feelings about other people playing halfling paladins that should be respected?
From my side, since the 1980s playing Fantasy Hero and many other games with open character creation, I've seen a lot of characters like halfling paladins, and they haven't seemed like a problem to me.
I suppose it depends on who you're playing with. Personally, I care quite a lot about the genre and tone of my campaigns, and it is always dispiriting when a player rocks up with a character that flies in the face of the tone I'm trying to achieve. Now, I will fully concede that is mostly on the GM's choice of ruleset, setting, and house rules. If you don't want halflings to be Paladins, you should probably pick a game that does not allow it, or state it out front in the campaign rules. At the same time, players will always find something you didn't expressly ban, but which flies in the face of the intended tone, and as the GM, no one want to be the guy that vetoes character concepts on no stronger basis than that he just doesn't like them.
Furthermore, there are certain character types which very reliably produce annoying PCs (e.g. the tiefling bard being a horny show-boater, the gnome tinkerer being a "quirky" clown, etc.). You could argue that the solution is to just find less annoying players, but I fully understand someone who gets so tired of them that he juts bans the character type entirely. Personally I've played with so many irritating gnomes that I've started to dread whenever someone joins a game I'm in and wants to play one.
As to the halfling paladin in specific. There's always going to be something faintly silly about a pint-size PC playing a tanky front-line warrior. There's myriad solutions to the problem, from unique character concepts to different interpretations of the race and class. In Dark Sun, for example, a halfling paladin might be an oddity, but a halfling Barbarian fits the world perfectly. Problem is that there's a high chance that a player who chooses the halfling paladin is doing it precisely because they think the concept is funny. If that's how you play, then no worries, but it can be an irritant to players who prefer their game a bit more straight-faced.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on October 06, 2022, 06:06:17 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 06, 2022, 01:28:51 AMWhat do you mean by the characters getting pulled out of their shells and participating? Can you elaborate on that and the player diplomat thing?
I always have some process in the game that rewards the more boisterous, aggressive, system guru, etc. types trying to include the other players as much as possible. The exact process varies by system, but usually in a D&D-like game, I gear it to magic (items, spells, etc.). In some cases, I'll use cachet, favor, reputation, etc. in a similar way. It varies a little by group, because the point is that it something that the aggressive players want and are trying to get.
It's just something that I started doing a long time ago when I realized that my games had changed. When I started, it was everyone was aggressively pushing what the group and the individuals wanted. Simple party dynamics took care of it. Now, I'll have 2/3 to 3/4 of my players will be somewhat reserved to shy. If let untouched, the aggressive ones will all sit right next to me and drown out the rest. I have gone as far as to do arranged seating, but since it's exactly the opposite of what everyone is trying to do naturally, it doesn't go well. So the next best thing is an incentive for the aggressive players to be spread amongst the rest by their own choice, so that they can steer the shy players towards a similar party dynamic that an all aggressive group has.
If you like non-standard magic items a little on the strange side, then it's easy to harness that towards the same goals. Strangely enough, I find mild curses on an otherwise good item to be excellent for this. The aggressive character is always trying to eradicate every last negative. The shy character is perversely proud that his magic sword causes goblins to want to kill him on sight. Then the aggressive characters see how much fun that is, and they want their own quirky thing.
It's about thinking about what your players want, why they want it, how they go about getting it--and then determining what you can throw in the way of situation or stuff or villain to get them to use that same energy going after something you want for the good of the group as a whole. In the context of the original topic, you can't really stop a power gamer from power gaming, at least not without fighting them over it. It's a lot less stressful and much more rewarding to instead channel the power gaming into something that helps you.
I see, interesting! So stuff like magic items, and other in-game rewards, help steer those players. Can you give an example of a magic item that might steer the party dynamic and how that would do it? I'm kind of curious to try this myself, but magic items on their own never work out -- you place a magic item for the monk and then the party gives it to the wizard instead.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 07, 2022, 01:02:41 AMI see, interesting! So stuff like magic items, and other in-game rewards, help steer those players. Can you give an example of a magic item that might steer the party dynamic and how that would do it? I'm kind of curious to try this myself, but magic items on their own never work out -- you place a magic item for the monk and then the party gives it to the wizard instead.
You have to make it explicit. First, I tell the players this before the game starts. I'm going to hand out stuff that is clearly meant for certain characters. It's there to give those characters a way to participate a little more if I see the situation, rules, drift of play, etc. are starting to exclude them. This is something you can teach a group over time. It's so ingrained in one of my groups now that they consider this when they find any magic. One of the first questions in their minds is who is going to run with this and cause a lot of fun for the group? The same dynamic also makes them more likely to move items around if they think they can get a better result by doing so. Sometimes, they come up with a better arrangement than I envisioned, but it's in the same spirit.
Likewise, don't give items that appeal (solely) to power of a generic type. I can't tell you an item that a monk and wizard could both theoretically use that won't end up in the unintended hands. Give me a particular monk and wizard in a game, then it can be done. And the monk will take the item most of the time, even if it isn't all that powerful.
Magic items work for me in a D&D-like game, because I play versions that are heavy on niche protection. Closer to B/X than WotC versions. Even when I ran 5E, I heavily limited the classes and races available--and paid attention to who was proficient in what. In a Fantasy Hero game, I did a lot of items where the magic was keyed to certain races. If there are only 2 elves in the group, and only one of them is capable of wearing a heavier set of armor, guess who is going to end up with that elven armor? Now, I prefer it with lots of limits, in part because i don't care for "kitchen sink" settings, and I find that everyone is a unique snowflake, the targeted items seem to targeted. But if you don't mind that, then that's one of the few advantages a kitchen sink setting has.
There are of course other ways. Don't give the item as treasure. Instead, an NPC gives the item as a reward--to the exact character that should have it. Yeah, it's a little ham-handed sometimes, but not always. In my current game, I've put some extra emphasis on sizes of armor. Dwarves, elves, and humans can't wear the same armor without refitting, which costs, in a game where money is scarce. (Within reason, shields translate, and a slight, shorter human might wear elven armor better then typical human armor. Point being, every character has explicit size and it matters.) If the players are serious enough about moving something to another character, they can, but it costs. In practice, this means that they don't. I've got lots of items geared to language and even literacy, in a setting where there are about 12 common languages and a few more exotic ones, and no one is literate for free. It means that people putting effort into language and literacy have access to more and different specific magic than if they don't--literally "literally". :D
Find the points of difference in the game and setting that you want to use and drive those hard.
Examples are tricky, because what works for my system choices, my setting choices, might be useless elsewhere. Here's a fun one to try sometime: Run a setting where every race is keyed to an "element", but the dividing lines are not player versus monster. It helps to get creative with your elements. Dwarves are rock, elves are wood, humans are earth, for example. Then maybe goblins and trolls are wood, orcs are earth, and kobolds are rock. Or however makes sense to you. Then have have specific items that are keyed on that. There is an axe, human-made long ago, bane of wood, too big for a dwarf to use, deadly to all creatures of the wood--in a party that includes elves. Instant tension. Throw a few things like that into the game, don't be surprised if the party decides to destroy some of them. :)
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on October 07, 2022, 07:59:55 AM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 07, 2022, 01:02:41 AMI see, interesting! So stuff like magic items, and other in-game rewards, help steer those players. Can you give an example of a magic item that might steer the party dynamic and how that would do it? I'm kind of curious to try this myself, but magic items on their own never work out -- you place a magic item for the monk and then the party gives it to the wizard instead.
You have to make it explicit. First, I tell the players this before the game starts. I'm going to hand out stuff that is clearly meant for certain characters. It's there to give those characters a way to participate a little more if I see the situation, rules, drift of play, etc. are starting to exclude them. This is something you can teach a group over time. It's so ingrained in one of my groups now that they consider this when they find any magic. One of the first questions in their minds is who is going to run with this and cause a lot of fun for the group? The same dynamic also makes them more likely to move items around if they think they can get a better result by doing so. Sometimes, they come up with a better arrangement than I envisioned, but it's in the same spirit.
Likewise, don't give items that appeal (solely) to power of a generic type. I can't tell you an item that a monk and wizard could both theoretically use that won't end up in the unintended hands. Give me a particular monk and wizard in a game, then it can be done. And the monk will take the item most of the time, even if it isn't all that powerful.
Magic items work for me in a D&D-like game, because I play versions that are heavy on niche protection. Closer to B/X than WotC versions. Even when I ran 5E, I heavily limited the classes and races available--and paid attention to who was proficient in what. In a Fantasy Hero game, I did a lot of items where the magic was keyed to certain races. If there are only 2 elves in the group, and only one of them is capable of wearing a heavier set of armor, guess who is going to end up with that elven armor? Now, I prefer it with lots of limits, in part because i don't care for "kitchen sink" settings, and I find that everyone is a unique snowflake, the targeted items seem to targeted. But if you don't mind that, then that's one of the few advantages a kitchen sink setting has.
There are of course other ways. Don't give the item as treasure. Instead, an NPC gives the item as a reward--to the exact character that should have it. Yeah, it's a little ham-handed sometimes, but not always. In my current game, I've put some extra emphasis on sizes of armor. Dwarves, elves, and humans can't wear the same armor without refitting, which costs, in a game where money is scarce. (Within reason, shields translate, and a slight, shorter human might wear elven armor better then typical human armor. Point being, every character has explicit size and it matters.) If the players are serious enough about moving something to another character, they can, but it costs. In practice, this means that they don't. I've got lots of items geared to language and even literacy, in a setting where there are about 12 common languages and a few more exotic ones, and no one is literate for free. It means that people putting effort into language and literacy have access to more and different specific magic than if they don't--literally "literally". :D
Find the points of difference in the game and setting that you want to use and drive those hard.
Examples are tricky, because what works for my system choices, my setting choices, might be useless elsewhere. Here's a fun one to try sometime: Run a setting where every race is keyed to an "element", but the dividing lines are not player versus monster. It helps to get creative with your elements. Dwarves are rock, elves are wood, humans are earth, for example. Then maybe goblins and trolls are wood, orcs are earth, and kobolds are rock. Or however makes sense to you. Then have have specific items that are keyed on that. There is an axe, human-made long ago, bane of wood, too big for a dwarf to use, deadly to all creatures of the wood--in a party that includes elves. Instant tension. Throw a few things like that into the game, don't be surprised if the party decides to destroy some of them. :)
So if I understand this right: you give out the items with very strict requirements, then leave it to the players to suss out who actually would qualify for it. Which is one or two people because you set the requirements so it is basically only for them.
Quote from: jhkim on October 06, 2022, 07:34:24 PM
It seems like you're inferring that I like everything about D&D except racial attribute modifiers, which I hate. But from my view, I mildly dislike racial attribute modifiers, and I've considered them just one among many minor annoyances with D&D rules (as with any system). In other threads, posters were saying that racial attribute modifiers were essential, and that removing them is horrible (like Pundit's "Grey Goo" thread) - which implies that games like Hero System and Star Wars D6 somehow reduced all races to grey goo.
I strongly disagree. I don't think that's implied at all. And I've got three reasons.
First is context. The rationale being given for the removal of these attribute adjustments is not at all for the same reasons you express. Their reasons are couched in a weird parody version of biological essentialism. And that logic followed to its fruition means ultimately eliminating all differentiation. It's a slippery slope into grey goo. Don't buy that? Okay. Forget logic. Try empathy instead. Pundit's position, near as I can tell, is and always has been that these people will never be satisfied and they will never stop. Correct or not, that is the perspective he's coming from, and it should color how you take what he says, what he means, and his implications. And I don't think those match the implications you raise here.
Second is technical. I don't know Hero System. I do know Star Wars D6. You don't even roll for your stats in d6. Even if there were adjustments, they would be fungible. If I were to implement a point-buy system in D&D, I might just say, okay, you get all 3's and can allocate 50 points anywhere, provided no stat goes over 18. And then apply racial adjustments. Or I could save a step and apply the adjustments in advance to the mins and maxes, and then let you spend the 50 points. It's the equivalent thing. It's as good as adjusting the final scores. And that's pretty much how d6 works. Wookies have a higher min and max STR than humans. It has an equivalent thing and it uses it to differentiate races.
Third is personal. I've been using the term myself for a long time. Actually, my version is "mushy grayness." And I can say I apply it to a broad array of things. But the one that's probably most common is when it comes to Alignment. And alignment doesn't have as much mechanical ramifications as racial attribute adjustments. But most RPGs don't even have an alignment system. I can say with certainty it would be an error to imply that therefore I'm calling all these other RPGs mushy grayness. So I'm going to tend to be skeptical when I see someone making a similar claim about others saying similar things.
QuoteTo paraphrase what I understand from this, you're saying that a halfling paladin isn't bad in itself, but that other people could have strong negative feelings about it - so it's best to compromise and not play a halfling paladin in order to play well with them.
But that just begs the question. Why do these people have such negative feelings about other people playing halfling paladins that should be respected?
I have to admit that I am glad you asked me about halfling paladins. If you had instead asked me about the why's of pineapple pizza, you would have had me stumped. But this one's easy.
It's a violation of canon. To me, the greatest offender was dwarf mages. Mind you, I play other fantasy RPGs where you can play spell-slinging dwarfs. I don't have a problem with the concept at all. But 3E tied the rules to setting, and made the default setting World of Greyhawk, which is one of the settings out there that is near and dear to me. Even if you were doing magic-using dwarfs in your homebrew all along, Greyhawk had it's own canon. Dwarfs not being magic-users was part of that.
And it's not as if we didn't already have examples of how to deviate from the class/race restrictions in a way that's respectful to the canon. Dragonlance and Dark Sun were a couple of great examples. The 1E Lankhmar supplement opened up multi-classing to humans. Mystara had a whole different set of rules as featured in BECMI.
Even within Greyhawk / 1E BtB, dwarfs can be thieves. And beginning at 10th level, thieves are able to cast from scrolls any spells other than cleric spells. But they can also be clerics and cast cleric spells that way. So there is really no spell in the game dwarfs cannot cast. If a player wanted to, they actually could play a spell-slinging dwarf. It just takes a different path.
At the end of the day, no one was telling players what they had to play. No one was telling DMs how they had to run their games. There was never a good reason to re-write the canon.
And that's just my answer. I'm sure a lot of different people could give a lot of different answers.
QuoteFrom my side, since the 1980s playing Fantasy Hero and many other games with open character creation, I've seen a lot of characters like halfling paladins, and they haven't seemed like a problem to me.
I seem to remember there being an RPG where you would get a bonus die to your action if you described your action in a way that involved the scenery. Maybe another bonus die if your description incorporated some other element, and so on.
I have some admiration for the idea of the thing. Making your actions specific to the circumstance and all. I think it's a good thing. Main reason why I was never sold on it is because the bonus was generic. A die, or a plus. It seems to me if you want to go all in on the idea, the "bonus" should be a specific effect rather than something that just feeds into the generalized core mechanic. But I digress.
The point is, if you did something similar, without question the description of things the halfling would be doing and how the human would be described performing the same act in a game mechanics sense (I attack) would be completely different. Presumably, halflings would find a way to use their smaller size to their advantage, which isn't going to look like standing toe to toe facing their opponent head on. To some that could make the halfling appear to lack courage. However, if the halfling just ignored their size advantage, to some that could make the halfling appear to be stupid or unclever. And the paladin is expected to embody all the virtues. Not just pick and choose some.
I'm not saying it's impossible for a halfling to live up to that. I'm just saying I'd have to see it first.
Magic items for me are not gifts to the players. They're items for me to use to kill them or further the machinations of the NPC's. If the PC's *kill* the NPC's/Monsters and take them... what they do with them.
I recognize people walk into games with different styles and agendas. Good GMing is incentivizing the play you want at the player/PC level. Recognize the players who want more social interaction and built their PC's to facilitate that need - FEED THEM. Recognize the Power Gamers that want to crack skulls and pillage gold with their Int 6 Fighter with 20+ Str. FEED THEM.
And then it's further your GM job to make your setting react with utmost fidelity to those actions to represent itself to the party. And the consequences of their choices should matter at all times. Reward/punish them accordingly.
Small anecdote: I just started a new campaign. The players wanted to be thief, fighter, cleric (well, druid/shaman). One player chose a tabaxi... and the others decided they would be brothers.
+1 dex for everybody (plus darkvision, +4 to climb, 1d4 claws).
No one complained or reconsidered. They most want to play PCs they consider to "look cool".
My only concern is that they get attached to these PCs ... it is a deadly campaign and they are level 1 (which I already regret, should have gone with the standard "start on level 3" since we're playing Dark Fantasy Basic).
Also, here is how to fix this: minimum requirements.
Dwarves must have STR 9, period. So they are ON AVERAGE stronger than humans, but nobody is picking a dwarf to get extra strength.
Quote from: tenbones on October 10, 2022, 12:08:47 PM
Magic items for me are not gifts to the players. They're items for me to use to kill them or further the machinations of the NPC's. If the PC's *kill* the NPC's/Monsters and take them... what they do with them.
I recognize people walk into games with different styles and agendas. Good GMing is incentivizing the play you want at the player/PC level. Recognize the players who want more social interaction and built their PC's to facilitate that need - FEED THEM. Recognize the Power Gamers that want to crack skulls and pillage gold with their Int 6 Fighter with 20+ Str. FEED THEM.
And then it's further your GM job to make your setting react with utmost fidelity to those actions to represent itself to the party. And the consequences of their choices should matter at all times. Reward/punish them accordingly.
How do you feed both when they're opposing desires though? Or if it's the type of player that just wants to show up and "be" there? Do you have a way to draw those in?
Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 10, 2022, 03:34:49 PM
Also, here is how to fix this: minimum requirements.
Dwarves must have STR 9, period. So they are ON AVERAGE stronger than humans, but nobody is picking a dwarf to get extra strength.
That is true, but nobody really ever minmaxes a race just to get a bonus -- it's to max out the bonus they're already high in. So chances are anyone picking a dwarf is already going to have very high Strength, for instance, and just wants to top it off with more Strength. Someone with low Strength would not pick a dwarf but pick a race that boosts some other attribute like Dexterity that they're already high in.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 10, 2022, 07:14:51 PM
Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 10, 2022, 03:34:49 PM
Also, here is how to fix this: minimum requirements.
Dwarves must have STR 9, period. So they are ON AVERAGE stronger than humans, but nobody is picking a dwarf to get extra strength.
That is true, but nobody really ever minmaxes a race just to get a bonus -- it's to max out the bonus they're already high in. So chances are anyone picking a dwarf is already going to have very high Strength, for instance, and just wants to top it off with more Strength. Someone with low Strength would not pick a dwarf but pick a race that boosts some other attribute like Dexterity that they're already high in.
As I understand it, that's the point of this fix. By having racial minimums but not modifiers, it avoids players trying to optimize their characters by boosting their highest stat by choice of race. Mininums and maximums is what Star Wars D6 does, for example. Fantasy Hero has race-based maximums but not minimums.
I think it's a better approach precisely because it avoids picking race just to boost your highest stat.
As a critique, though, from the view of in-game-world logic, it's harder to justify minimums compared to maximums. Logically, for any race, there will be individuals with abilities going down towards effectively zero. Weak dwarves might be less common than weak humans, but they should still exist. There are lots of reasons for low ability - youth, old age, malnutrition, debilitating disease, congenital disability, accidents, etc.
How does using minimums affect race selection in Star Wars? I feel like you would end up with lots of unorthodox combinations instead of thematic ones.
Quote from: jhkim on October 10, 2022, 07:20:45 PM
As I understand it, that's the point of this fix. By having racial minimums but not modifiers, it avoids players trying to optimize their characters by boosting their highest stat by choice of race. Mininums and maximums is what Star Wars D6 does, for example. Fantasy Hero has race-based maximums but not minimums.
I think it's a better approach precisely because it avoids picking race just to boost your highest stat.
Woah, woah, woah, woah. Back up the truck. Is it any better if instead it encourages you to set your highest stat according to race?
Granted, I never played or ran Star Wars each and every week for 10 years straight or anything like that. And I never ran for a party of wookies. But every time I have played or run the game and someone played a wookie, they maxed out Strength. Every time. It seems that having that higher min--or rather the higher max--did in fact incentivize players to putting as many points as possible into that stat.
Likewise, in 1E, the other races differ in not just minimums, but also maximums. A dwarf gets +1 to CON and is allowed to have 19 CON. So if you roll an 18, pick a dwarf, you get that 19 CON which humans can't get. If I translate it to a point-buy system where there are no racial adjustments, instead I just increase Dwarf's min CON by one and allow that 19 for max, then I think players will be just as encouraged to buy their CON up to 19 as they would be to choose a Dwarf after rolling a CON of 18.
I think it's simply incorrect to take the position that this solves anything.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 10, 2022, 07:59:01 PM
How does using minimums affect race selection in Star Wars? I feel like you would end up with lots of unorthodox combinations instead of thematic ones.
First of all, I think I know what you're getting at by opposing "unorthodox" with "thematic", but I think it's telling. (I'll talk more about it below as I reply to Lunamancer about halfling paladins.) The opposite of "unorthodox" is "orthodox". To my mind, a halfling mounted warrior character patterned after Bullroarer Took would be very thematic, and in keeping with Tolkien who originated halflings. However, it is also thematic. But going back to the point about Star Wars --
I've only played short adventures of Star Wars D6 rather than any extended campaigns. It worked fine for me, but I prefer for theme and orthodoxy to be primarily handled by the GM and the group, rather than by character creation mechanics. I'll run games with pretty different themes under the same mechanics, and overall I think trying to handle both orthodoxy and game balance in the same mechanic makes both worse.
1) If an RPG makes character creation such that orthodox standards are more powerful, then players have a choice "make a stronger character or a more unorthodox one". A simple example would be some interpretations of GURPS' "Unusual Background" advantage, where the player has to pay more based on how rare the background is rather than how powerful.
2) The trade-off of power vs unorthodoxy has different effect on different players. If I run it, I could get all-orthodox parties where the players all care about optimization, or all-unorthodox if the players aren't optimizing, or a mix where the non-optimized players walk by in the shadow of the more powerful optimized players. I don't prefer how that trade-off works.
3) Personally, as a GM, if I don't really like how unorthodox the PCs are, I'm not going to say "OK, you can play those but only if you're a little less powerful." I'm going to ask the players to change their concepts to fit together better either with each other or with the game world. To me, that is a different question than making the characters balanced.
4) Even in the same game world, campaigns can vary in theme a lot. There can be dark gritty Star Wars, and there can be light-hearted kidsy Star Wars, and many variations thereof.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 08, 2022, 12:05:56 AM
I have to admit that I am glad you asked me about halfling paladins. If you had instead asked me about the why's of pineapple pizza, you would have had me stumped. But this one's easy.
It's a violation of canon. To me, the greatest offender was dwarf mages. Mind you, I play other fantasy RPGs where you can play spell-slinging dwarfs. I don't have a problem with the concept at all. But 3E tied the rules to setting, and made the default setting World of Greyhawk, which is one of the settings out there that is near and dear to me. Even if you were doing magic-using dwarfs in your homebrew all along, Greyhawk had it's own canon. Dwarfs not being magic-users was part of that.
1) I asked you about halfling paladins in general - and you replied about specific to the World of Greyhawk. It sounds like you were annoyed that 3rd edition changed canon about the World of Greyhawk, but I think the point about unorthodox characters is wider than that.
2) If certain character types don't exist in a game-world, then they shouldn't be an option at all. The rule should be that in that setting, the option isn't available. That's very different from how to balance ability adjustments. Unorthodox characters are ones that don't fit a stereotype and might be rare in the game-world, but are still possible.
3) A better example of an unorthodox character might be gnome cleric. This isn't allowed in AD&D, but exists in the game-world.
4) As an aside, I always felt the 1E rule of human-only for paladin and monk seemed like a meta-game hack. The paladin and the monk aren't from Tolkien - they're from European myth and Hong Kong movies. So there aren't demi-humans in their source material. But logically in a setting like Greyhawk, there isn't an overarching lawful good Christian god who prefers humans over demi-humans. There are polytheistic pantheons and non-human deities are equal to human deities. So why should lawful good and human be the only possible choice of god-touched warrior? Dragon magazine had a bunch of variant paladins and anti-paladins to address this, but they weren't canon, of course.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 08, 2022, 12:05:56 AM
The point is, if you did something similar, without question the description of things the halfling would be doing and how the human would be described performing the same act in a game mechanics sense (I attack) would be completely different. Presumably, halflings would find a way to use their smaller size to their advantage, which isn't going to look like standing toe to toe facing their opponent head on. To some that could make the halfling appear to lack courage. However, if the halfling just ignored their size advantage, to some that could make the halfling appear to be stupid or unclever. And the paladin is expected to embody all the virtues. Not just pick and choose some.
I'm not saying it's impossible for a halfling to live up to that. I'm just saying I'd have to see it first.
At least in my D&D games, I've had human paladins who would face giants head on, and would look courageous doing so. Given this, it seems consistent that halfling paladins would still face human-size opponents head-on. I rationalize it that size isn't as important in the fantasy world as it is in real life. Otherwise dragons would simply be unstoppable.
How would a human paladin fight a giant in your games? Would they avoid going head-on because they were smaller?
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 11, 2022, 12:09:46 AM
Quote from: jhkim on October 10, 2022, 07:20:45 PM
As I understand it, that's the point of this fix. By having racial minimums but not modifiers, it avoids players trying to optimize their characters by boosting their highest stat by choice of race. Mininums and maximums is what Star Wars D6 does, for example. Fantasy Hero has race-based maximums but not minimums.
I think it's a better approach precisely because it avoids picking race just to boost your highest stat.
Woah, woah, woah, woah. Back up the truck. Is it any better if instead it encourages you to set your highest stat according to race?
Granted, I never played or ran Star Wars each and every week for 10 years straight or anything like that. And I never ran for a party of wookies. But every time I have played or run the game and someone played a wookie, they maxed out Strength. Every time. It seems that having that higher min--or rather the higher max--did in fact incentivize players to putting as many points as possible into that stat.
OK, that's a fair point. I have a lot more experience with Fantasy Hero than with Star Wars D6. In Fantasy Hero, maxing out prime attributes isn't as important as in D&D. I've seen a fair number of mid-strength fighters, because other talents and abilities can be almost as good as strength.
It's possible that maxing out attributes is overly powerful in Star Wars D6 character generation. If so, then they should fix attribute cost. I've only played in short adventures, and a number of those had premade PCs.
In modern point-buy D&D, though, stats don't have linear cost -- which is good, because they shouldn't if 16->18 is worth more than 10->12. In principle, the point cost of a high stat should reflect its utility.
Quote from: jhkim on October 11, 2022, 01:07:43 AM
1) I asked you about halfling paladins in general - and you replied about specific to the World of Greyhawk. It sounds like you were annoyed that 3rd edition changed canon about the World of Greyhawk, but I think the point about unorthodox characters is wider than that.
Well, I think the issue of canon as such is much wider than a single instance of canon being violated. And I'm not sure there's a way to jettison it in the discussion and just speak in the generic tense.
It's one of the things that drive me crazy when people say the old school class/level limits were about game balance. They can even pull a Gygax quote and squeal, "he said it!" And it's like, you gotta use some common sense. You don't go through the trouble of differentiating races in all these ways--different abilities, different class choices, different ways to combine classes, different level limits, different sizes, appearances, predilections, different attribute mins and maxes, and yes, different attribute adjustments--just to arrive at game balance. Game balance could have been much more easily achieved by making them all the same, or at least more similar. Grey goo is peak balance.
No. There's a specific vision driving these things, and that vision is given higher priority than game balance is given. If different DMs have their own vision they want to follow, that's great. Order that pineapple and anchovies pizza. But you don't call up the pizza place and say, "Yes, I would like topping." Going in with no vision at all and just allowing players to mix and match things all willy nilly isn't just another separate and equal version of "muh preferences." It's just generic.
Quote2) If certain character types don't exist in a game-world, then they shouldn't be an option at all. The rule should be that in that setting, the option isn't available. That's very different from how to balance ability adjustments. Unorthodox characters are ones that don't fit a stereotype and might be rare in the game-world, but are still possible.
Yeah, that definitely worked in the AD&D days. You've got Dragonlance and Dark Sun as fine examples of completely different game worlds with difference races, classes, and race/class combos. They allow things that aren't allowed in the Greyhawk setting. But they also disallow things that are allowed in Greyhawk. And we didn't bicker and argue about it. The premise was clear. Different worlds, different rules.
But once you hit 3E and the floodgates were opened, this becomes easier said than done. It can be like trying to get the toothpaste back into the tube. They even said at the time, "If you like the old class/level limits, no one's stopping you from imposing them." Sounds well in good on a message board in theory. It goes over a little differently when players show up excited to try out their new character idea of Tiefling Paladin/Assassin.
Quote3) A better example of an unorthodox character might be gnome cleric. This isn't allowed in AD&D, but exists in the game-world.
It is a feature of the world that certain spiritual leaders do not adventure. Nothing's stopping you from playing non-adventurers. You could run a game where PCs play things like the friendly neighborhood blacksmith. I'm not sure that would be fun for most people. There's no need to green light this in the rules. That's something for the esoteric DM to hash out. I'd done some homebrew stuff for doing that sort of thing myself. Never really had any takers on it. But you can still find remnants in my campaign. Instances where upon reaching a certain (generally low) level, or accomplishing some deed, PCs would be offered an NPC post. Can't really go adventuring anymore after that point. You've got too many duties at home. It's just not for most players.
Quote4) As an aside, I always felt the 1E rule of human-only for paladin and monk seemed like a meta-game hack. The paladin and the monk aren't from Tolkien - they're from European myth and Hong Kong movies. So there aren't demi-humans in their source material.
Well, I really don't think any of it came from Tolkien. When Gary was asked why he stole dwarfs from Tolkien, he responded, "I didn't. I stole them from Norse mythology. Same place Tolkien stole them from." D&D's elfs, however, are very different from Tolkien's elfs, and Gary had once mentioned they were inspired by French myths. The Ranger class was just an elite version of the medieval Forester profession. (Forester is listed as a secondary skill in the 1E DMG, btw.) We didn't have non-humans in real life. But lo and behold, he does allow for half-elf rangers. And then later in UA elfs got the ranger class which I was not happy about. But that's a whole separate side bar.
QuoteBut logically in a setting like Greyhawk, there isn't an overarching lawful good Christian god who prefers humans over demi-humans. There are polytheistic pantheons and non-human deities are equal to human deities. So why should lawful good and human be the only possible choice of god-touched warrior? Dragon magazine had a bunch of variant paladins and anti-paladins to address this, but they weren't canon, of course.
Cue weeping warrior being asked where on this doll God touched him. I don't think god-touched warrior is the correct abstraction for what the Paladin is. Rather the point is that it's some paragon of virtue. And virtue is not just some thing that can be placed in the generic tense and put on the alignment wheel as if to say, "Well, we have good virtues, and we have evil virtues.." No. That's not how alignment worked in 1E. The defining difference between good and evil is good upheld the three enumerated "human" rights whereas for evil, purpose is determinant--you'd step on your own grandmother to get what you were after.
And so Good characters faced more restrictions than Evil characters. Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction. And there's a lot of truth to that. In almost everything, it's easier to do something wrong than to do something right. It's usually easier to lose at a game than to win. Easier to write a bad story than it is a good story. Easier to sing badly than sing well. Easier to be a bad friend than a good one. But this is, I guess you could say "balanced" by 1E's loyalty system, which had bonuses for being lawful, and bonuses for being good, and they did stack. And the opposite for Chaotic and Evil. And it makes sense. It's a lot harder to trust someone whose ethos is that it's okay to kill you in your sleep.
Here's the upshot. If you're playing a Paladin, and you have to be lawful good, there's two loyalty bonuses right there. And then you're only allowed to associate on the regular with other good characters. There's another bonus for alignment similarity. Another big loyalty bonus for having at least a 17 Charisma. There's a loyalty bonus if at any time you heal one of your men. Paladins got that daily lay on hands. Easy bonus to grab right there. And a bonus for treating your men well and fairly. There are also racial preference modifiers. And humans get the most favorable overall preference ratings on the race preference table.
It all stacks, and it adds up to the fact that a 1E Paladin can very quickly gain henchmen and retainers who are fanatically loyal, and will even remain fanatically loyal--their morale having no chance of breaking--even after they witness the Paladin himself die in combat. They remain fanatically loyal well beyond the grave.
You don't get that when you allow Paladins of all alignments. You don't get that when you allow paladins of all races. You don't get that when you swap out the good guy heal power for the bad guy hurt power. You don't get that from a Paladin who is mean because he was touched by the god of meanie-heads. You don't get that from an evil paladin who's allowed to hang out with good-aligned characters because they're schmucks that can be taken advantage of. So it's not just a philosophical take. There are existing BtB game mechanics reinforcing the very narrow path the Paladin must follow.
Just how touched by their God could these other mock paladins really be if they can't inspire the same fanaticism as the real deal? I mean, when God kissed them, was it just a peck on the cheek or was it full on, open mouth, with tongue. Have the alternative Paladins all been friend-zoned?
QuoteAt least in my D&D games, I've had human paladins who would face giants head on, and would look courageous doing so. Given this, it seems consistent that halfling paladins would still face human-size opponents head-on. I rationalize it that size isn't as important in the fantasy world as it is in real life. Otherwise dragons would simply be unstoppable.
How would a human paladin fight a giant in your games? Would they avoid going head-on because they were smaller?
David faced Goliath head on and delivered a precision strike between the eyes. Interesting that the original meaning of the word "sin" was to miss the mark. David fought the giant without sin, that's for sure. He also didn't try to run between Goliath's legs and Super Mario punch him in the junk. Just bear in mind that by teh rulez, dwarfs, gnomes, and halflings get defensive bonuses against giants because it's assumed they are doing those types of hijinks.
So what about halflings? Well, halfings are really good with slings. So we're off to a good start. If a player playing a halfling wanted to step forward and say, "Hey, I forego the defense bonus I get versus giants. I want to face that giant forthrightly," and with his 4th-6th level cap as a fighter and no chance for exceptional strength managed to triumph, I'd be impressed. And if he was LG, played the character very paladinly up to that point, and otherwise had the stat requirements, I'd let him be a Paladin if that's what he wanted. As I said, I'm not 100% opposed to the idea. It just needs to be proven to me first.
Quote from: jhkim on October 11, 2022, 01:15:23 AM
OK, that's a fair point. I have a lot more experience with Fantasy Hero than with Star Wars D6. In Fantasy Hero, maxing out prime attributes isn't as important as in D&D. I've seen a fair number of mid-strength fighters, because other talents and abilities can be almost as good as strength.
It's possible that maxing out attributes is overly powerful in Star Wars D6 character generation. If so, then they should fix attribute cost. I've only played in short adventures, and a number of those had premade PCs.
In modern point-buy D&D, though, stats don't have linear cost -- which is good, because they shouldn't if 16->18 is worth more than 10->12. In principle, the point cost of a high stat should reflect its utility.
In Star Wars, I don't think the problem is generically one of maxing out your best stat is the key to victory. It's because Strength is used as the stat to resist damage. For the most part it works fine. Damage resistance systems tend to work well in the mid and even low ranges. The problem is when it gets high enough to a certain point, it goes hyperbolic and the character becomes nigh invulnerable. The upper end of the starting Wookie strength range seems to do that while the lower end is just tough but within the range of normal.
But it's still a good example of a game to have on the table. Because in AD&D, most of the benefits for high stats are stacked on the high upper ends, whereas in general the difference between having a 7 and having a 14 is minimal. And of course there's exceptional strength. Those bonuses dwarf the bonuses in the non-exceptional range. So STR kind of does go hyperbolic in AD&D as well.
WotC D&D on the other hand, the benefits are evenly distributed. Every two points. Like clockwork. It's not clear that 16->18 is intrinsically worth more than 10->12 the way it is in AD&D.
I'm at a loss as to why you believe so strongly that mid-strength fighters don't work in D&D.
3d6 in AD&D places 80% of stats in the 7-14 range. I think that helps players get used to normal.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 10, 2022, 07:13:58 PMHow do you feed both when they're opposing desires though? Or if it's the type of player that just wants to show up and "be" there? Do you have a way to draw those in?
Ohhh Lordy... I could regale you with *hours and hours* of me dealing with pathologically passive players. I used to think that you could draw any player into the game, even the most passive players. I've done it... but I now realize that some people are just not meant to play certain kinds of games. I also believe now that there are people that are not meant to play TTRPG's. They're there for other reasons...
Let me caveat this (with tacit understanding some people reading this will *not* take this kindly, often on purpose) - *I* don't run simple games. While it may seem that way in moments, my games are not meant for those that just want to show up and throw dice and socialize. This doesn't mean that we're not doing that, but it means that my games have complexity and challenge that **demands** players make choices for themselves and the party that will reveal the PC to the Player in ways they probably never conceived of.
So when players that are passive, show up to my games, sit in the background thinking they're just going to be "the support guy" without any personality beyond the bewildered player when I put the spotlight on them, it can get weird. My goal is always to have the player have that realization of "who their PC actually is in play" vs. what they think the PC is on paper. Words, Actions, Deeds - those things will define your character in my games. But it stuns me how little players connect to their characters conceptually, that when put in the crucible of my settings, how they realize little they thought shit through. Which is *fine* the issue becomes how you adapt to that circumstance.
I have passive players that totally *lock the fuck up*. And I realize, they're simply not built to play my games. It's not them - it's both of us. I'm running MLB Major League games, they're T-Ball Little-League players that have zero intention to ever rise above that. And THAT IS OKAY - I'm just not the GM for them because unless I'm shifting my gears downward I'm not running games for them. I have a close friend that enjoys games I've run for my 12-year old nephews and nieces and simply *cannot* play games with my regular group which consists of his closest friends. It's too much pressure for him.
So if you have those players you need to recognize that, and ask yourself: do I need to be burning energy investing in these people at my table? It sounds harsh, but I cannot cannot cannot (three times!) stress to you as a GM - cut them from your group, or you need to change your game to their level. It's that simple. But you need to be able to recognize those players that can rise to your game and those that can't - and it might not be apparent even after many games and campaigns. And yes, it can get personal.
You have to curate your group for players that really want to play what you're serving up, or you will just be banging your head against the wall for those players and frankly, friendships aside, they're not worth it. Now... all that said, some people equate TTRPG's to being their "social outlet" and they find this idea that casting their friends out of their group to be mean or whatever. Again... *I* am different in that matter. My weekly games are my bowling league - I'm playing for the love of the game, not the love of my friends. I can easily segregate the two and I have. I have close friends that have gotten *really* upset when after years of being the passive player that have dragged games repeatedly get extremely upset when I didn't invite them to the next campaign and replaced them with someone new. And I want to be clear (this might be worthy of another thread!) I don't simply just cut them from the group - I have talks with them constantly outside of the game, emails, DM's etc. I do my due diligence to try and get them to raise their game - but for various reasons they simply don't.
But I insist my friendship with people is *not* contingent on them playing in my TTRPG group. I still invite them over for get-togethers, grilling or whatever, but my TTRPG weekly is my sport and I'm playing to have big games that go for months and years with high-octane fare. It is entirely different than most people's TTRPG experiences, and I do recognize that. Only you as a GM can set the standard of your table when it comes to pathologically passive players.
OKAY... ALL THAT SAID...
When it comes to players that are good for your game that want to do more social stuff than your good players that want to go on Monster Safari... ALL of this has to be handled in "the setup". If you know that you have players that lean hard on doing social activities more than combat, when you set your game up, are you prepared to have intrigue for your game that deals with lots of social interaction? If not... then you need to explain to that player what the gist of the starting point of your game is. Because I run big sandboxes this is not really a problem for me because Murderhoboism isn't really a thing in my games per se. Because I enforce *some* general assumptions of civilization(tm). This doesn't mean I don't have players that make PC's that are Absolute Units of killing mayhem, it means my players understand (through years of gaming with me) that unless they plan on living like a wildman in the woods, the PC's will be living in some socially ordered place where dealing with authorities and other people that aren't adventuring types will be normal. Of course this is a general statement.
And my games *will* have social interaction being a big part of the game, though it might come only between big adventuring spurts, when the PC's make it back for R&R, you better bet your ass I will turn up the social intrigue and players that have PC's built for it, will get it coming to them in spades, ready or not.
Edit: When it comes to drawing players in my routine is the same for all player types: what is their PC built for? What exists in the game I'm about to run that will feed that need? If I'm running some bog-standard fantasy game and one player is PC that wants to be the Social guy, I always do the setup for their characters with them so they have *clear* backgrounds on what function they serve at the point where the game starts. A Bard that is newly graduated and serves as a local entertainer in a frontier town looking for adventures to write new songs and ballads. A Cleric who is newly released novitiate might already have connections (albeit highly dependent on the characters social class/background) in the location where the campaign starts. Their "job" will always be first and foremost to further the aims of their creed and religion. In other words: no player makes contact with the campaign at the start without having "hooks" into the game from the outset. This will all be established at Session Zero. When Session One has started, I'll have paved the road for that character based on the things discussed and negotiated in Session Zero with Chargen. I do this for *everyone*.
So this is an issue of scale - and I recognize not all GM's have the bandwidth for it, especially if you're running dungeon-crawls, or modules etc. The only way to reasonable deal with this dichotomy of player style is to run a sandbox that can encompass all these modes of play. Otherwise you're always going to have dissatisfied players. It's a lot to ask for, I know, but if the GM isn't happy, no one is happy. And I am pretty firm that the GM has to set the tone for the games they want to run and any GM that is skimping on themselves to run games for others is doing everyone a disservice (and let's be real - who *really* enjoys doing something half-assed?).
TL/DR So you either gotta raise your game, or lower it to the level of your players that you can tolerate. And you gotta curate your group.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 10, 2022, 07:13:58 PM
Quote from: tenbones on October 10, 2022, 12:08:47 PM
Magic items for me are not gifts to the players. They're items for me to use to kill them or further the machinations of the NPC's. If the PC's *kill* the NPC's/Monsters and take them... what they do with them.
I recognize people walk into games with different styles and agendas. Good GMing is incentivizing the play you want at the player/PC level. Recognize the players who want more social interaction and built their PC's to facilitate that need - FEED THEM. Recognize the Power Gamers that want to crack skulls and pillage gold with their Int 6 Fighter with 20+ Str. FEED THEM.
And then it's further your GM job to make your setting react with utmost fidelity to those actions to represent itself to the party. And the consequences of their choices should matter at all times. Reward/punish them accordingly.
How do you feed both when they're opposing desires though? Or if it's the type of player that just wants to show up and "be" there? Do you have a way to draw those in?
I've got an answer somewhat different than tenbones. It's not because I disagree with anything he said, either. Rather, my goals are different, so the actions I need to take to satisfy them are different. Overall, I'd say that on the continuum of "run your game for anyone that wants to do that game" versus "run a game your friends like", I'm closer to the latter than he is, but probably still closer to the former than most people are. Which means I'm wiling to make compromises and even cater to casual players--but only up to a point.
A big way that I do so is to set up a game that deliberately allows for casual play and larger parties. Heck, sometimes a player may be controlling multiple characters. For most players, an ally (mostly) under your control is going to be slightly more casual than your main PC. So if some of the players are doing the same thing with their PCs, it isn't a killer, usually. On the other hand, in any game, you only get out of it what you put into it. In a sandbox that's even more true. In a game where casual play is tolerated, it's also more true. So in a mostly sandbox that tolerates casual play up to a point, you can do the math.
Second, tolerating casual play in some aspects is not necessarily tolerating casual play in all aspects. The GM has to find their non-negotiable lines, and enforce those. A line pulled back a ways from hardcore is still a line. In some ways, it's a harder line to navigate, because players can think binary on such questions--either anything goes or nothing does. It is difficult to explain to a new player that, "You can screw around this much and get away with it, but you screw around a tiny bit more, sooner or later you are going to get bit." Worse, most casual players are also even worse than the average person at risk assessment in games, both at understanding the odds and putting them into some kind of context. So they will take incorrect lessons from both crazy stuff that shouldn't have worked but does and also wild failures that usually would have worked.
If I have a really oddball quirk in this respect, it's that I don't particularly enjoy holding the hands of casual players outside my non-negotiable lines, but I am willing to build an environment with some guard rails and training wheels where they can learn, as long as the more serious players are willing to cheerfully and enthusiastically do most of the day to day lifting on that. That is, I don't mind at all "training" an experienced player in how to do what I want in that respect, and then seeing that they get something they want out of the process. All the casual players have to accept is that they may get yanked around some due to not paying attention. You run your tricycle out past the guard rails into traffic, the world is going to happen the way it would for any other person that did that. But then, I enjoy the kind of game where a band of misfits somehow triumph despite screwing up a lot.
All of that probably sounds worse to most serious gamers than it is in practice. People do get better over time. It's just slow compared to people who are dedicated. To extend tenbones bowling league analogy, it doesn't produce topnotch amateur teams where everyone has to stay north of 250 on a score to even stay on the team, and everyone on it is aiming higher than that. It does get people doing considerably better than the 150-180 that you might get from a moderately coordinated person just messing around. The big difference is that no one on our team is ever going to even sniff a perfect 300, but we might enjoy hitting some peaks approaching 250. As it happens, this analogy really suits me, because I was that in-between bowler--capable of sniffing the bottom of the dedicated amateur range when I hung out with those kind of players but not dedicated enough to quite stay in their lanes. I guess there wasn't a league for me then--too good for the true mucking around, not good enough for the dedicated bowlers, and some of that has translated to what I enjoy in other games.
I can get down with this, Steven.
Somewhere on this forum, years ago, I put a not-kidding-but-amusing analogy of player-types that I still believe very much in.
You can see it HERE (https://www.therpgsite.com/the-rpgpundit-s-own-forum/leaders-and-the-real-social-dynamics-of-gaming-groups/msg792056/?topicseen#msg792056)
Where I define player-types based on Classic Star Trek bridge crew as archetypes (with Jayne Cobb tossed in there as a sub-class of a Scotty, combat specialist)...
The problem is you can get different variations of power-gamer, social-gamer, PvPer, or whatever in any of these archetypes... but the passive player, the person that isn't *really* there to play, but for ulterior reasons... (and in many cases they themselves are not even aware of it) are the ones I'm *really* talking about. These are the Chekovs.
I can handle casual players - by casual I mean people that show up, aren't obtrusive, do the bare minimum of engagement required (and yes my standards are probably a little higher - but I do my damnedest to get those casuals to par for my course.) These are the Sulus of my gaming groups. The up-and-comers wanting to learn how to play deeper, but simply lack the experience and/or the GM that will let them.
Until I formed this group here where I live in TX, I'd never encountered this type of player: the ones recently identified by scientists that have NO CAPACITY to put themselves or imagine another persons circumstance. I shit you not. It's called Aphantasia, and I ended up with a couple of good friends that played with me, but it was like playing with two mannequins when it came to roleplaying.
Sure they knew the mechanics of a system, and they would roll dice etc. But whenever I tried to engage with them in terms of their characters, *no one* else in the group ever believed that was just Mike and John playing themselves. No matter how hard we tried. And it took *years* of me trying and trying different methods to pull them in - long discussions before the campaign, long discussions between sessions. Nothing worked.
It wasn't until I came upon this condition that I was like HOLY FUCK... that's THEM! Since then both of them have left my group - one I'm still really good friends with. But Jumping Galactus on a Pogo Stick, did they hold our campaigns down. It was like having the Justice League... and Bob from Accounting and Jim from Janitorial Services.
My games are the way they are because of my personal experiences and I'm pushing myself as a GM, it has *nothing* to do with the players per se. So I *fully* expect when I get new players (I have two now) to have eyebrows raised and be hopefully delighted at the freedom I allow, but the consequences can get steep when they walk in with the modern DnD mindset of how things go down. New players I get these days are minefield - they have odd videogame-like conceptions of in-game reality (like there is always a GM intention to anything that comes up in game, almost as if their own agency is invisible to them) Or that all NPC's have motives contrary to the party, or are morons or are to act in ways counter to what their PC's normally would react - because there is a gap between Player and PC engagement. Or they pretend that if they try to metagame I wouldn't notice... etc.
So it's a player experience issue - and I'm trying to give anyone that sits at my table "the next tier" experience, but I definitely moderate it based on what I perceive they can handle. So you're not incorrect in your assessment, we're probably a LOT closer than you might think.
Powergames? Murderhoboes? Passive gamers? Social-gamers. Min-Maxers? Bring them on. I'm a long-hauler, outside of passive players with real issues that have no business at my TTRPG table, I'll happily take them all and I'll make better gamers out of them (ideally) and we'll all have better games. For GM's that have issues with these particular types of powergamers and stat-maxers... I simply advise to try and extend the scope of your games where those proclivities do not give them any advantage and play deeply there AS WELL as in combat where they shine.
Hey, I remember that list!
I know a few people that you described who basically play themselves. Honestly I prefer it because the attempt to play other things end up painful and it's pretty funny half the time when they are themselves.
What about these "casual" players though? The ones you describe as Sulus. To me those are the ones that are there to play the game, but only want to put the bare minimum of investment to engage -- how do you make THEM engage more? I've tried a variety of tactics and strategies and they actively resist me, as if they literally come to play but don't want to play. All I can end up doing in the end is just playing "around" them, investing in the other players and letting them engage as much as they want while the rest of us get on with the game.
Nothing is more bland to a rpg or game when everyone is equal. No one wants to play a game where an average halfling can beat an average orc at arm wrestling 50% of the time. Having demi-humans having different stats than humans for instance, helps to break up munchkinism. If a species gets a certain bonus that is useful but would be a bit broken for a class and they have bad stats for said class, it helps to work as a counter. I personally like asymmetric races.
The other thing to think of, this whole stink about stats for species came about by people who would look you square in the eye and tell you that you are a bigot for stating the Homo Sapiens were more intelligent while Neanderthals were stronger. Those same nimrods does the exact same thing for D&D "races" because TSR removed the term demihumans and used race. Race is not the proper term for the species in D&D. If someone looks you in the eye and tells you a Tortle and a human are the same Species, please get them tested for Alzheimer's.
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on October 12, 2022, 01:20:14 AM
Nothing is more bland to a rpg or game when everyone is equal. No one wants to play a game where an average halfling can beat an average orc at arm wrestling 50% of the time. Having demi-humans having different stats than humans for instance, helps to break up munchkinism. If a species gets a certain bonus that is useful but would be a bit broken for a class and they have bad stats for said class, it helps to work as a counter. I personally like asymmetric races.
The other thing to think of, this whole stink about stats for species came about by people who would look you square in the eye and tell you that you are a bigot for stating the Homo Sapiens were more intelligent while Neanderthals were stronger. Those same nimrods does the exact same thing for D&D "races" because TSR removed the term demihumans and used race. Race is not the proper term for the species in D&D. If someone looks you in the eye and tells you a Tortle and a human are the same Species, please get them tested for Alzheimer's.
There isn't anything human about a tortle though, demi or otherwise.
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on October 12, 2022, 01:20:14 AM
Nothing is more bland to a rpg or game when everyone is equal. No one wants to play a game where an average halfling can beat an average orc at arm wrestling 50% of the time. Having demi-humans having different stats than humans for instance, helps to break up munchkinism. If a species gets a certain bonus that is useful but would be a bit broken for a class and they have bad stats for said class, it helps to work as a counter. I personally like asymmetric races.
I'm not following your explanation here about it breaking munchkinism. Can you give an example?
My premise from the original post is that racial attribute bonuses in D&D tend to encourage power optimization. If I've got a high Strength and am planning on making a fighter, then I'm highly motivated to take a race with +2 Strength rather than a race with +2 Intelligence.
If I'm playing in a game where there is random-roll race and random-roll attributes in order, then 30% of half-orcs will have a higher Intelligence than Strength. However, because of power optimization, this tends to be much more rare in player choice. Players choose half-orc to boost an already-high Strength. That's my observation from experience, as well as from sources like the D&D Beyond data.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 11, 2022, 09:49:18 AM
Quote from: jhkim on October 11, 2022, 01:07:43 AM
In modern point-buy D&D, though, stats don't have linear cost -- which is good, because they shouldn't if 16->18 is worth more than 10->12. In principle, the point cost of a high stat should reflect its utility.
WotC D&D on the other hand, the benefits are evenly distributed. Every two points. Like clockwork. It's not clear that 16->18 is intrinsically worth more than 10->12 the way it is in AD&D.
I'm at a loss as to why you believe so strongly that mid-strength fighters don't work in D&D.
I never said that mid-strength fighters don't work. I've repeatedly said that they *do* work.
However, I disagree to say that 16->18 isn't worth more, to the point that it seems disingenuous. Ask anyone who has a 16 Strength, 10 Intelligence fighter which one they'd take -- +2 Strength or +2 Intelligence? Can you really honestly say that you think most players would say that there's no difference?!?
The issue is that one's prime stat is rolled far more frequently for much greater consequences than a tertiary stat. A wizard will constantly roll with Int bonus, and a fighter will constantly roll with Str bonus. The extra +1 isn't game-breaking, but the optimal choice is extremely obvious to almost all players, in my experience.
Correct, an extra +1 in a stat you're barely going to use is basically worthless compared to a +1 in a stat you use all the time.
And another aside about halfling paladins.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 11, 2022, 09:49:18 AM
Here's the upshot. If you're playing a Paladin, and you have to be lawful good, there's two loyalty bonuses right there. And then you're only allowed to associate on the regular with other good characters. There's another bonus for alignment similarity. Another big loyalty bonus for having at least a 17 Charisma. There's a loyalty bonus if at any time you heal one of your men. Paladins got that daily lay on hands. Easy bonus to grab right there. And a bonus for treating your men well and fairly. There are also racial preference modifiers. And humans get the most favorable overall preference ratings on the race preference table.
It all stacks, and it adds up to the fact that a 1E Paladin can very quickly gain henchmen and retainers who are fanatically loyal, and will even remain fanatically loyal--their morale having no chance of breaking--even after they witness the Paladin himself die in combat. They remain fanatically loyal well beyond the grave.
You don't get that when you allow Paladins of all alignments. You don't get that when you allow paladins of all races. You don't get that when you swap out the good guy heal power for the bad guy hurt power. You don't get that from a Paladin who is mean because he was touched by the god of meanie-heads.
1) Evil leaders do have fanatically loyal followers who are loyal to death and beyond, both in fantasy fiction (Thulsa Doom) and sadly also in real life (Jim Jones).
2) Chaotic good can also be truly virtuous and attract fanatically loyal followers (Robin Hood), and pursue virtue just as whole-heartedly in the face of tyranny.
3) In the D&D cosmology, there's nothing unique about Lawful Good compared to the other alignments. The good gods are often Neutral Good or Chaotic Good, with no superiority shown to Lawful Good. D&D is not Judeo-Christian. In a Judeo-Christian cosmology game like Ars Magica, then I think some of these paladin qualities would make more sense. But in a pagan game-world with gods of mixed alignment, it doesn't fit.
4) You claim that humans get the most favorable racial preference rating, which is simply false. In the AD&D table, halflings have equal or better relations in the race table than humans with all the other races. The other races have different mixes, with poorer relations with half-orcs but often better relations with the others. Better racial relations with half-orcs seems like an odd requirement for a paladin.
None of this seems to get to the essence. Non-humans can be virtuous, pious, brave, and charismatic - and have fanatically loyal followers. There is nothing described about humans as described that they are more capable in any of these qualities. If other-race paladins were allowed, they could rack up those loyalty bonuses just as easily.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 12, 2022, 01:44:04 AM
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on October 12, 2022, 01:20:14 AM
Nothing is more bland to a rpg or game when everyone is equal. No one wants to play a game where an average halfling can beat an average orc at arm wrestling 50% of the time. Having demi-humans having different stats than humans for instance, helps to break up munchkinism. If a species gets a certain bonus that is useful but would be a bit broken for a class and they have bad stats for said class, it helps to work as a counter. I personally like asymmetric races.
The other thing to think of, this whole stink about stats for species came about by people who would look you square in the eye and tell you that you are a bigot for stating the Homo Sapiens were more intelligent while Neanderthals were stronger. Those same nimrods does the exact same thing for D&D "races" because TSR removed the term demihumans and used race. Race is not the proper term for the species in D&D. If someone looks you in the eye and tells you a Tortle and a human are the same Species, please get them tested for Alzheimer's.
There isn't anything human about a tortle though, demi or otherwise.
WotC twitter editors would call you racist if you said that though. We are looking at losing Half-Orc and Half-Elf with how they are doing the new race rules for D&D One. I guarantee you the twitter editors will get WotC to admit that yes half-tortles do exist and here is art for them and boy are they super special, if they so chose to display their power over WotC. It doesn't impact core game mechanics, so far that is what WotC will cede ground to with any outcry.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 12, 2022, 12:40:32 AM
Hey, I remember that list!
I know a few people that you described who basically play themselves. Honestly I prefer it because the attempt to play other things end up painful and it's pretty funny half the time when they are themselves.
What about these "casual" players though? The ones you describe as Sulus. To me those are the ones that are there to play the game, but only want to put the bare minimum of investment to engage -- how do you make THEM engage more? I've tried a variety of tactics and strategies and they actively resist me, as if they literally come to play but don't want to play. All I can end up doing in the end is just playing "around" them, investing in the other players and letting them engage as much as they want while the rest of us get on with the game.
You can't make those players (or any player) do anything. Lead a horse to water ... What you can do, is think about what they want, then see that they get more of it when they do something useful to the dynamics of the table, and less of it when they don't. Be careful that this doesn't lead to being pushy or outright manipulation, though. You give them opportunities, that they can either take or not. If they don't, then better luck next time.
If they never take opportunities and things out of the desired behavior don't work--well, usually I find that person gets bored and stops showing up. That works with out of control power gamers that just want to burn the game down for their own giggles, but it also works for people who aren't contributing at all and aren't trying, too. Occasionally, you'll get a person that is bored but sticks around for the social aspects. Keep trying. Sooner or later, you'll hit on something that causes them to dip their toe in the water. Just accept that the person is probably never going off the high dive, but if you stay with it they will eventually be in the game some of the time.
I suspect you keep asking for tricks that you can blindly do that will solve these issues, but there aren't any. Instead, you have techniques that you can apply by thinking about each person as an individual, try the techniques, see what happens, refine, and so on.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 12, 2022, 12:40:32 AM
What about these "casual" players though? The ones you describe as Sulus. To me those are the ones that are there to play the game, but only want to put the bare minimum of investment to engage -- how do you make THEM engage more? I've tried a variety of tactics and strategies and they actively resist me, as if they literally come to play but don't want to play. All I can end up doing in the end is just playing "around" them, investing in the other players and letting them engage as much as they want while the rest of us get on with the game.
Engagement comes from communication. You as the GM have to know what you're after. And even that may be the "starting ceiling" that can rise to higher stakes as a campaign progresses. The question is are your players driven to those levels of play. And you simply can't tell until you get there. This is why at Session Zero I tell everyone the What, Where, Why, When, How of the starting location (usually I write up a primer) but I DEFINITELY talk with the group to set some starting expectations.
Things like - 'This is the frontier, everyone is armed with at least a dagger. If you get into a fight in town and draw a weapon it's assumed you're trying to kill your opponent. And murder is murder, so you better have a good reason.' Or 'Certain colors of clothing are reserved for certain people in this culture' blah blah blah. And you contextualize as much as possible to establish the social order. Which obviously can change if the PC's move from place to place. That's part of the game. Just like I make players who are city-dwellers and correctly didn't put any points into Survival (or whatever floats as such in the game) to be ****MISERABLE**** when doing overland travel if they're not on a conveyance.
This is why having Power-gamers and Min-Maxers are not a bad thing. Those are players that DO stuff because they're driven to "win" - that provides immediate tension for you to play off. Sure they may be engaging in single-minded shallow manners - but it's easy to deepen your game by putting in consequences to their actions to curtail the behavior to bring them into line with the setting conceits.
In other words if you have that brutal player that loves killing the shit out of people - suddenly murders someone in a friendly bar, and I give them every opportunity to kill their way out - or get captured. But I also consider based on their circumstances, that not necessarily every situation is cut-and-dry. And what if they're in the dungeon awaiting trial (are their trials here?) and the local Thieves Guild recruits him and ferries him out, and has some dupe replace him for the corrupt Magistrate to hang in his stead? Deeper. Now, yes, you're feeding the beast, but there is a psychological reality that will wear down even the hardest of murderhobos as they suddenly realize they're creating a legacy for their character beyond "bash the thing take the loot." Yes they might have AWESOME RIDCONCULOUS stats, and *someone* in-game will put that to use for their own ends.
Conversely... the deeper down that road they go... *someone* will see them for the monster they are and try to kill them eventually... *unless* the player reigns it in.
Sulus are a journeymen players that are not committed necessarily to anything but appear to "want" to be. Again, I call these casual players for my games. But they might be considered more than that for others. You simply never know with a Sulu. If a Sulu gets passed my Session Zero... I usually sit with them privately during the week to talk about simple stuff, fleshing out what they want with their backgrounds, or contextualizing things like friends/family/contacts and grounding them into the game so they feel "connected" from the start. Giving them detail (but not too much) is important. When the game starts I use all the ideas we established to draw them into the game and have them make decisions. Even simple interactions that determine what their gear-layout for a journey can be useful.
My goal for Sulus is have them establish their Modus Operandi for as much as possible. And where such things exist in the context of the setting, I give them guidance on what their character would know, based on their background and skills, what they would know that the player may not, so the player may make an informed choice (even if it's incorrect). And I'm always trying to get my Sulus to move on their own accord to make decisions with and for the party. I call it "Paving the Road" for the PC's. If I have a player that into Pit Fighting - I will create opportunities for him to engage with that (especially in places where it might be illegal). I'm blessed with good improvisational instincts in play (but that's probably because I've been doing this for a long time) - between sessions I'm always considering different angles to feed my players. ESPECIALLY my Sulus, because they're works in progress.
It's time and pressure. I provide the pressure aplenty. They have to just stick it out and provide the time. If we do it right, we get diamonds. That murderhobo becomes a more thoughtful, though still aggressive party leader. That social player comes to enjoy not only social interplay, but becomes deadly at weaving political traps by drawing in NPC allies to commit to helping them in places other PC's would have to fight their way out of. I'm always thinking of interesting in-game scenarios that would be of interest and contextualizing it in play. Sulus are a bit of a crapshoot until you can get them moving of their own accord, in order to do that you have to feed them, and knock them around in game with choices and scenarios (not necessarily lethal ones - but challenging things), until they figure out they're the captains of their own ship.
Less experienced GM's can spend some time each week considering and notating their PC's and the current situation and where it can go based on your in-game possibilities. It makes your games run much smoother because you're taking those notes and putting them into action. They can be totally open-ended - and let your PC's react and do their thing. And you then react accordingly. Letting your PC's get away with shennigans is GOOD. But tuck that all away in case in can become a plot-point for another adventure later.
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2022, 02:11:15 AM
The issue is that one's prime stat is rolled far more frequently for much greater consequences than a tertiary stat. A wizard will constantly roll with Int bonus, and a fighter will constantly roll with Str bonus. The extra +1 isn't game-breaking, but the optimal choice is extremely obvious to almost all players, in my experience.
I would say you've hit the nail on the head there. As I see it, the race-modifier question is just a symptom of the fact that the core design of D&D encourages min-maxing. The issue is present to varying degrees in the different editions, but as far as I've seen, a specialist PC is far more effective than a generalist in every version of D&D.
Small distinction, but I think your point would be better phrased as "racial modifiers provide one more avenue for min-maxing in a system that already encourages it".
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on October 12, 2022, 08:55:55 AM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 12, 2022, 12:40:32 AM
Hey, I remember that list!
I know a few people that you described who basically play themselves. Honestly I prefer it because the attempt to play other things end up painful and it's pretty funny half the time when they are themselves.
What about these "casual" players though? The ones you describe as Sulus. To me those are the ones that are there to play the game, but only want to put the bare minimum of investment to engage -- how do you make THEM engage more? I've tried a variety of tactics and strategies and they actively resist me, as if they literally come to play but don't want to play. All I can end up doing in the end is just playing "around" them, investing in the other players and letting them engage as much as they want while the rest of us get on with the game.
You can't make those players (or any player) do anything. Lead a horse to water ... What you can do, is think about what they want, then see that they get more of it when they do something useful to the dynamics of the table, and less of it when they don't. Be careful that this doesn't lead to being pushy or outright manipulation, though. You give them opportunities, that they can either take or not. If they don't, then better luck next time.
If they never take opportunities and things out of the desired behavior don't work--well, usually I find that person gets bored and stops showing up. That works with out of control power gamers that just want to burn the game down for their own giggles, but it also works for people who aren't contributing at all and aren't trying, too. Occasionally, you'll get a person that is bored but sticks around for the social aspects. Keep trying. Sooner or later, you'll hit on something that causes them to dip their toe in the water. Just accept that the person is probably never going off the high dive, but if you stay with it they will eventually be in the game some of the time.
I suspect you keep asking for tricks that you can blindly do that will solve these issues, but there aren't any. Instead, you have techniques that you can apply by thinking about each person as an individual, try the techniques, see what happens, refine, and so on.
... annnnnnd Steven says it in one tenth of the words I used...
Quote from: ForgottenF on October 12, 2022, 11:37:42 AM
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2022, 02:11:15 AM
The issue is that one's prime stat is rolled far more frequently for much greater consequences than a tertiary stat. A wizard will constantly roll with Int bonus, and a fighter will constantly roll with Str bonus. The extra +1 isn't game-breaking, but the optimal choice is extremely obvious to almost all players, in my experience.
I would say you've hit the nail on the head there. As I see it, the race-modifier question is just a symptom of the fact that the core design of D&D encourages min-maxing. The issue is present to varying degrees in the different editions, but as far as I've seen, a specialist PC is far more effective than a generalist in every version of D&D.
Small distinction, but I think your point would be better phrased as "racial modifiers provide one more avenue for min-maxing in a system that already encourages it".
Thanks. I'd agree with that phrasing, with the caveat that in my opinion, most other RPGs also encourage min-maxing, so it isn't a distinctive issue of D&D. That doesn't mean I like it - just that it's a common problem to struggle with in many systems.
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2022, 03:58:13 PM
Quote from: ForgottenF on October 12, 2022, 11:37:42 AM
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2022, 02:11:15 AM
The issue is that one's prime stat is rolled far more frequently for much greater consequences than a tertiary stat. A wizard will constantly roll with Int bonus, and a fighter will constantly roll with Str bonus. The extra +1 isn't game-breaking, but the optimal choice is extremely obvious to almost all players, in my experience.
I would say you've hit the nail on the head there. As I see it, the race-modifier question is just a symptom of the fact that the core design of D&D encourages min-maxing. The issue is present to varying degrees in the different editions, but as far as I've seen, a specialist PC is far more effective than a generalist in every version of D&D.
Small distinction, but I think your point would be better phrased as "racial modifiers provide one more avenue for min-maxing in a system that already encourages it".
Thanks. I'd agree with that phrasing, with the caveat that in my opinion, most other RPGs also encourage min-maxing, so it isn't a distinctive issue of D&D. That doesn't mean I like it - just that it's a common problem to struggle with in many systems.
I'd go yet another step and say that it is impossible to avoid the possibility of min/max in a system that has any degree of complexity to it at all. Heck, Toon has the possibility to min/max, and it's got 4 attributes, a handful of skills, everything is useful, and no one can die. If it can happen in Toon, it can happen anywhere.
Where the differences lie between systems is where the min/max is encouraged, allowed, etc., and not just from the mechanics perspective. Take, for example, the idea of spotting people trying to ambush you. That's something that many players care about, even the ones that aren't prone to min/max merely for the sake of min/max. That is, it's a concern that a player with a character could legitimately have even if their motivations and means were totally in the mindset of the character concept.
A. In D&D 3E, spotting an ambush is a mix of high Wisdom attribute, the Perception skill, maybe some feats (depending on your slant on it), picking the right race and/or class to get those. You can chunk skill points in Perception right up to the max all you want, as along as they last. There's really no good reason not to.
B. In Dragon Quest 3E, spotting an ambush is a mix of the Perception attribute, race bonuses to it as a package of other extreme up and down changes, buying the attribute up with big chunks of experience, having a skilled Ranger (profession) in the party who gets better at ambush on a fixed schedule based on his profession rank. There's a ton of opportunity costs to everything that boosts spotting an ambush, and you
will feel those costs often during play.
DQ has chosen to put heavy incentives to not min/max Perception. D&D 3E encourages you to do so. On the other hand, if you want to play a mix of a arcane type caster and a warrior there are limited options in D&D 3E with their own costs, whereas in DQ it's practically given to you for free for many concepts (though not all). So the tables have flipped as soon as she switch the question of what and how much.
Quote from: tenbones on October 12, 2022, 11:37:14 AMConversely... the deeper down that road they go... *someone* will see them for the monster they are and try to kill them eventually... *unless* the player reigns it in.
Sulus are a journeymen players that are not committed necessarily to anything but appear to "want" to be. Again, I call these casual players for my games. But they might be considered more than that for others. You simply never know with a Sulu. If a Sulu gets passed my Session Zero... I usually sit with them privately during the week to talk about simple stuff, fleshing out what they want with their backgrounds, or contextualizing things like friends/family/contacts and grounding them into the game so they feel "connected" from the start. Giving them detail (but not too much) is important. When the game starts I use all the ideas we established to draw them into the game and have them make decisions. Even simple interactions that determine what their gear-layout for a journey can be useful.
My goal for Sulus is have them establish their Modus Operandi for as much as possible. And where such things exist in the context of the setting, I give them guidance on what their character would know, based on their background and skills, what they would know that the player may not, so the player may make an informed choice (even if it's incorrect). And I'm always trying to get my Sulus to move on their own accord to make decisions with and for the party. I call it "Paving the Road" for the PC's. If I have a player that into Pit Fighting - I will create opportunities for him to engage with that (especially in places where it might be illegal). I'm blessed with good improvisational instincts in play (but that's probably because I've been doing this for a long time) - between sessions I'm always considering different angles to feed my players. ESPECIALLY my Sulus, because they're works in progress.
It's time and pressure. I provide the pressure aplenty. They have to just stick it out and provide the time. If we do it right, we get diamonds. That murderhobo becomes a more thoughtful, though still aggressive party leader. That social player comes to enjoy not only social interplay, but becomes deadly at weaving political traps by drawing in NPC allies to commit to helping them in places other PC's would have to fight their way out of. I'm always thinking of interesting in-game scenarios that would be of interest and contextualizing it in play. Sulus are a bit of a crapshoot until you can get them moving of their own accord, in order to do that you have to feed them, and knock them around in game with choices and scenarios (not necessarily lethal ones - but challenging things), until they figure out they're the captains of their own ship.
Less experienced GM's can spend some time each week considering and notating their PC's and the current situation and where it can go based on your in-game possibilities. It makes your games run much smoother because you're taking those notes and putting them into action. They can be totally open-ended - and let your PC's react and do their thing. And you then react accordingly. Letting your PC's get away with shennigans is GOOD. But tuck that all away in case in can become a plot-point for another adventure later.
This is what I do, and it usually ends up backfiring -- because the player ends up not wanting to be involved in this much effort and inevitably drops out or says they will if everything isn't scaled back, at which point all of that game tied up around them is wasted.
If we were going to quantify it at some arbitrary number, some players only want to try, say, 20% effort, and nothing will shake that and if they ever have to go over it they are dipping out.
Have you ever had those players still get sucked in and go beyond that with your efforts?
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 12, 2022, 06:05:52 PM
This is what I do, and it usually ends up backfiring -- because the player ends up not wanting to be involved in this much effort and inevitably drops out or says they will if everything isn't scaled back, at which point all of that game tied up around them is wasted.
If we were going to quantify it at some arbitrary number, some players only want to try, say, 20% effort, and nothing will shake that and if they ever have to go over it they are dipping out.
Have you ever had those players still get sucked in and go beyond that with your efforts?
What exactly are you doing that is "game tied up around them" and why is that "wasted"?
My result is that no one tries an ultimatum on me. For some people it just isn't there thing, and they go. Whatever I was putting out there that they were experiencing to find out if they wanted to continue was being enjoyed by the rest of the group. At worst, I'm out helping them make a character and maybe a little slowdown in the game getting them going.
Are you tying "plots" to these characters?
Yes. I'll bring in parts of their backstory and make the current quest about them in some way, that sort of thing.
Or I'll make it easier to handle a lot of the mechanical stuff, but get excuses about why it's too much even though I'm now handling it for them so it doesn't even make sense.
I've tried offering in-game rewards (more XP, etc) for getting more involved and had them dig in their heels and practically go out of their way to not seek it.
Often they will SAY they want to be in the game, that they feel unengaged and there isn't anything really grabbing them, but they will resist every step of the way trying to get them more engaged. I will offer to let them drop but they will say they want to stay in the game. But they'll stay and then refuse to do the rest.
Some just have very clear desires and know what they want; like one player that just says they want D&D to just be the time they show up and turn their brain off, hang out, and leave. And he resists attempts to make it more than that. At least he's conscious of it though. Others, go through the song and dance I described above. I just don't see any chance of any of these types to "evolve", but if you guys somehow did it I want to know.
I think we need a whole new topic on dealing with passive players. I'm a little pressed at the moment, but I'll start one up in a day or two if someone doesn't beat me to it.
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2022, 02:11:15 AM
However, I disagree to say that 16->18 isn't worth more, to the point that it seems disingenuous.
Well, if you think disagreeing on this point seems disingenuous, that seems like an admission that you can't even fathom an opposing position. Which suggests you aren't aware of information to the contrary. So if it turns out that there is in fact information to the contrary, it would make it seem like you never had any idea what you're talking about to begin with. I am not saying that is the case. I am not calling you clueless. But I am about to present said information. So carefully consider where you want to go with this. The degree to which you stand by the disingenuous remark is the degree to which you are outing yourself as not knowing the subject matter.
QuoteAsk anyone who has a 16 Strength, 10 Intelligence fighter which one they'd take -- +2 Strength or +2 Intelligence? Can you really honestly say that you think most players would say that there's no difference?!?
To quickly address the latter question first. A few posts back I was talking about the nature of choice, and you might recall I said something about it being necessary for one option be perceived as better than the others. So it's either a very badly worded question or else an entirely irrelevant one.
So on to the first one. I volunteer to answer.
When will I ever use STR? Maybe kicking in doors? But do I really need to min-max that? I mean if I fail, the door just kind of stands there waiting for me to kick it again. So what we're really talking about is fighting.
Fighting sounds dangerous. Do I have a high DEX to get hit somewhat less and CON to be able to better take a hit? If so, sign me up for STR. The high DEX especially will mean I'll do well at two-weapon fighting meaning I can double-dip on the STR. That would clearly make it disproportionately advantageous and Strength wins hands down.
But if not, if I don't have good Dex and Con scores, I'm not 100% sold on making fighting my go to solution. Don't get me wrong. As a last resort, I'm still happy to be a fighter and really good at fighting. Because this is the thing that might stand between me and death, I don't regret for one second being a fighter. I'm just not sure I want to be the poster child for He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. So let me at least explore my other options.
What's my charisma? If I have very high Charisma, negotiation seems like a good, healthy go to solution. Or even if it's just moderately high, getting on the track to command fighting men rather than having to fight everything myself seems like a good idea given my Dex and Con aren't as high as I'd like them to be. In either case, having a 12 INT instead of a 10 INT means knowing an extra language. That's one additional race or creature I am able to negotiate or command with in their native language. I'd love to have some dwarfs in my army. Apart from their obvious rep as stalwart fighters, having a dwarf blacksmith would more efficiently maintain my men's equipment. Dwarf sapper/miners are more effective than humans.
By the way, is this a high magic or a low magic world? Because if it's a low magic world, that extra +1 to hit/+1 damage from having the extra Strength, that's highly appealing since I can't count on just finding ye olde magick sworde that will do it for me.
But if it's a high magic world and magic swords grow on trees, then that +1 to hit/+1 damage is not so big a deal. I can find better combat bonuses on the side of the road. On the other hand, I have to worry about those intelligent swords trying to control me with their egos. The +2 to Intelligence is like being 2 levels higher. Nay, it's better. Because +2 Int holds up better than +2 levels when I'm losing hp.
Next question. Are we doing skills or proficiencies or anything like that? How does that work? Like do I get my Int bonus in extra skill points each and every level where I can use those points for whatever skills. Like including that one Str-based skill I really want. Such that after 2 levels, I'm already outpacing what I would have had if I went with Str instead? Because that seems like some sweet ass min-maxing potential. Or does it only make me better at Int-based proficiencies. Like craft skills. Maybe be better at creating my own weapons of exceptional quality.
Is this going to be one of those campaigns where the main bad guy is always scrying on us and sending invisible spies? Because the extra INT will make me better at detecting that stuff.
QuoteThe issue is that one's prime stat is rolled far more frequently for much greater consequences than a tertiary stat.
I think that's an assertion. I've acknowledged it long ago. I understand your reasons for concluding that. But it's also an extremely generic theoretical statement that is not at all self-evident once the details start trickling in.
QuoteA wizard will constantly roll with Int bonus,
Ironically, in 1E, where the benefits are legit stacked on the extreme ends, and so there actually is blatant prima facie favoritism towards upping your best score, this statement doesn't hold.
Quoteand a fighter will constantly roll with Str bonus. The extra +1 isn't game-breaking, but the optimal choice is extremely obvious to almost all players, in my experience.
What's that? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of my trebuchet.
Quote from: jhkim on October 12, 2022, 03:05:57 AM
1) Evil leaders do have fanatically loyal followers who are loyal to death and beyond, both in fantasy fiction (Thulsa Doom) and sadly also in real life (Jim Jones).
2) Chaotic good can also be truly virtuous and attract fanatically loyal followers (Robin Hood), and pursue virtue just as whole-heartedly in the face of tyranny.
I never said otherwise. Loyalty increases over a long period of time. Especially in the face of success, sharing wealth with your underlings, saving their lives, and so on. What I said is a Paladin can hit those insanely high levels of loyalty in almost no time flat. That every one of their restrictions serve to stack these bonuses, and if you compromise on race, alignment, powers, etc you're always going to lag behind. And I think that undermines the "god touched" interpretation of Paladins and the Paladins of all alignment motif.
Incidentally, Thulsa Doom was a supernatural being. In the book version, he was supernatural undead. And it's not clear bands of fanatics joined him while he was living and remained with him after he "died." The movie version of Thulsa Doom, right after Conan used his head to pick up the 7-10 split, every one of his fanatical followers one by one extinguished their torches and abandoned his cult. Understand what I am saying. A wet behind the ears first level Paladin can have people a LOT more loyal than that, and it doesn't take a thousand years to build up to that.
As for Jim Jones, I legit don't know the answer to this. Is there anyone who followed him fanatically, did not die on that day, and remained fanatically loyal afterwards? If no, then you're citing Bush league second rate icons that do not measure up to the thing I'm describing as far as what comes with all those Paladin restrictions.
Quote3) In the D&D cosmology, there's nothing unique about Lawful Good compared to the other alignments. The good gods are often Neutral Good or Chaotic Good, with no superiority shown to Lawful Good.
I pointed out that alignments are not just arbitrary team jerseys. There's a behavioral component to them. And that good and evil are not simply mirror images of each other. Good upholds human rights. That doesn't mean evil goes out of their way to violate them. Evil goes out of their way for their purpose, which sometimes can even be a noble one. The key is that they are indifferent to human rights. Not necessarily contrary to them. This is not me. This is what the book says.
I thought it was worth noting that there are differences that are not arbitrary and introduce asymmetries. I don't think that was the same thing as saying there's something unique about Lawful Good. But if you think it does mean that, well, again, what I'm saying comes straight from the book, so you're going to have to re-evaluate your claim that this isn't built into the cosmology. Because I am not speaking out of turn on this.
QuoteD&D is not Judeo-Christian. In a Judeo-Christian cosmology game like Ars Magica, then I think some of these paladin qualities would make more sense. But in a pagan game-world with gods of mixed alignment, it doesn't fit.
You can say all you want "but non Christian", the fact is, if I buy your god-touched interpretation and Paladins of all flavors, the game mechanics I was citing regarding loyalty and fanaticism suggest that every other alignment has second-rate gods. Which is a hell of a lot closer to one true Lawful Good god than anything I'm saying.
Quote4) You claim that humans get the most favorable racial preference rating, which is simply false. In the AD&D table, halflings have equal or better relations in the race table than humans with all the other races. The other races have different mixes, with poorer relations with half-orcs but often better relations with the others. Better racial relations with half-orcs seems like an odd requirement for a paladin.
Yeah, I see a lot of positives about Halflings on this front. As I've been saying repeatedly, I am not 100% opposed to the idea of halfling paladins. Humans and Halflings are the only races without negative (Antipathy/Hatred) ratings for any of the races. I think those negative ratings knock the other races out of the running. Keep in mind, there's more racial preference data in the core books than just what appears in the PHB table. Lizardmen, for instance, will serve a human master out of either fear or religious awe. That's in the DMG. Flipping an enemy to something that has serves you out of religious awe is pretty big. But hands down the biggest advantage humans have is the P-rating for other humans, which are the most numerous race and the most likely to be encountered.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 12, 2022, 07:11:02 PM
Yes. I'll bring in parts of their backstory and make the current quest about them in some way, that sort of thing.
Or I'll make it easier to handle a lot of the mechanical stuff, but get excuses about why it's too much even though I'm now handling it for them so it doesn't even make sense.
I've tried offering in-game rewards (more XP, etc) for getting more involved and had them dig in their heels and practically go out of their way to not seek it.
Often they will SAY they want to be in the game, that they feel unengaged and there isn't anything really grabbing them, but they will resist every step of the way trying to get them more engaged. I will offer to let them drop but they will say they want to stay in the game. But they'll stay and then refuse to do the rest.
Some just have very clear desires and know what they want; like one player that just says they want D&D to just be the time they show up and turn their brain off, hang out, and leave. And he resists attempts to make it more than that. At least he's conscious of it though. Others, go through the song and dance I described above. I just don't see any chance of any of these types to "evolve", but if you guys somehow did it I want to know.
Passive Aggressive whiners and Beer 'n Pretzels hangers-on are just part of the territory. You do your best, stop listening to their chatter until they show they really mean it, and carry on. You are the emcee, MC, master of ceremonies, your job is to keep the show going without drama dragging it into a ditch.
And here's the funny part: sometimes this lack of spotlight, casual acceptance near dismissal, does the trick. Sometimes 'a watched pot never boils'. Like the quiet ones in a classroom who are really listening but show it rarely -- they need their space to surprise you as you are busy elsewhere.