Quote from: Nexus;831756And none of that changes my opinion on how the OP should proceed. That's what I stated.

 You seem abruptly hostile for no reason.

Bobloblah been off his meds recently apparently. Its not just you.

Quote from: Batman;831681I'd probably slap the DM for quibbling over minutia. But lets say that the Player doesn't know how the DM decides these things. After it happens and the DM decides that it doesn't blow up the party instantly but he requires saving throws for both characters and items (success means you are singed, but you're overall fine in regards to clothing and items. Failure means you take significant damage and your items are mostly destroyed, find a new suit). The player, assuming he survives, would then know from that point on how a Fireball will most likely be addressed in a similar circumstance. If not and the DM does something completely different the next time, that's a DM problem and not a game/rules/player one.

The player would just as easily be able to determine how their somersault over a table to attack an orc works on the second try with the same GM, wouldn't they?
Is there really a sizeably different level of agency there?  

QuoteI've never personally picked a lock before but I have a 1st level Rogue character with a +7 (+9 with lock picking tools) in Disable Device and Open Lock. Should I still be required to go into detail how I open the lock with picks and files? Because we'd be there a while as I slowly search Wikipedia on the subject as my turn continues on and on. Or what if I were terribly uncoordinated and lacked any physical attributes in real life, would I have to perform or describe with specific detail how my Goliath Fighter chopped one in half with a fancy sword-wielding maneuver?

The thing is most people don't know how to search for traps in real-life, or fight with dual-scimitars, or recite complex rituals off-the-cuff, or swoon a fancy Lady of the State with words of love via diplomacy, or even pick a simple dead-bolt. By making the player find out how to do all this stuff is unreasonable and taking away widgets to accomplish these abilities you might as well not bother playing in the first place. What happens is: "well I'm terrible at talking to pretty girls IRL so I might as well scrap this poetic bard character even though I wanted to play one because deep down the idea is intriguing. But imagination and wanting to play someone your not be damned if I can't back it up in role-play."

Well what if I'm bad at min/maxing, should I be forced to describe what combination of powers from my Goliath Fighter is needed to chop an orc in half?
Seriously though, I get where you're coming from, I wouldn't personally make players search Wikipedia for answers to mundane problems (nor do I want to dress up in an orc costume and get sworded to death five times a session).
I do think engagement with the game world beyond just rolling the dice is important though, and that can be sacrificed because either you have some cool ability which automatically activates (and makes any description of what's going on purely window-dressing), or because someone else has the cool ability and you don't and it wouldn't be fair you get a try.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;831743The stop interacting with game world through mechanics and start exploring the game world through the act of playing a character. There is so much shit that is a problem because some players aren't interacting with the game world at all they instead interact with the mechanics.

Such players engage the game as a series of numbers puzzles and everything else is meaningless backdrop. There is a lot more to exploring a fictional world than DC's and bonuses but some players just can't get past them. When presented with something in the game world the first questions are; which widget do I need to use? and what's the DC?  That is interacting with the mechanics instead of the game world.

But, this fine person is trying to find the right way to change your mind. If you're recptive to it.

Quote from: Batman;831681What happens is: "well I'm terrible at talking to pretty girls IRL so I might as well scrap this poetic bard character even though I wanted to play one because deep down the idea is intriguing. But imagination and wanting to play someone your not be damned if I can't back it up in role-play."

RPGs are a group activity. If that guy playing the Poetic Bard and always going "I seduce the princess... Diplomacy roll 36" is going to make me miserable as GM or fellow player (and IME it often will make me miserable - and I've seen much much worse than that at the table from can't-roleplay types) then I'd rather he didn't play the Poetic Bard anywhere in my presence.

But the vast vast majority of shy players are perfectly capable of playing charismatic PCs, with the support & encouragement of the GM. It's only a very small minority with serious psychological problems who need to stay clear of such characters for the benefit of everyone else.

Quote from: Sommerjon;831701The rulebook and character sheet is what the player uses to make the character unique.

I've read multiple accounts from various people who have (usually at con games) handed out identical character sheets to all the players at the table and then watched as each player played their characters in completely different ways.

If the rulebooks and character sheets for each character were identical, yet the characters were unique, then it was clearly not the rulebooks or character sheets which made them unique.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;831733Then why would it matter if everyone brings a fully-optimized cookie-cutter build? If the uniqueness of a character comes from the player and not the rules used to make the character, the mechanics a player uses should be largely irrelevant, except those that impact how the player plays the character.

In general, I agree that it's not a problem for the characters to be mechanically identical, as the players can (and will!) still make them unique in play.

However, in this specific case of fully-optimized cookie-cutter builds, I would be against it because "optimized builds" (and, indeed, "builds" in general) imply that the player is approaching the game as a mathematical problem to be optimized and I prefer not to play in that manner, regardless of whether the characters are mechanically identical to each other or not.

Quote from: Nexus;831756You seem abruptly hostile for no reason.

You're right. I felt like you were ragging on the OP for something that had long since been explained, but I must've been in a bad mood when I replied. My apologies for coming across in such a hostile fashion.

Quote from: Omega;831771Bobloblah been off his meds recently apparently. Its not just you.

Oh, no. With you or was quite intentional. You were being a master of bad-faith argumentation in that other thread.

Quote from: nDervish;831859

Quote from: Sommerjon;831701

Quote from: Exploderwizard;831647Spin it however you like, the simple truth is that the only unique things about a character to make it special come from the player, not a rulebook or the character sheet.

:rolleyes::rolleyes:

The rulebook and character sheet is what the player uses to make the character unique.

I've read multiple accounts from various people who have (usually at con games) handed out identical character sheets to all the players at the table and then watched as each player played their characters in completely different ways.

If the rulebooks and character sheets for each character were identical, yet the characters were unique, then it was clearly not the rulebooks or character sheets which made them unique.

If the Edgar Suit makes'em unique and the rules books and character sheet are not used, then why do we have them?

The kewl powerz + the Edgar Suit makes'em unique.

Quote from: Bobloblah;831908Oh, no. With you or was quite intentional. You were being a master of bad-faith argumentation in that other thread.

Or you were being the master of loony bin arguments. Keep going though. You have plenty of backers over on RPGG.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;830866I've mentioned in several threads at this point that most of my players love gaining distinct mechanical abilities through leveling up. They are the ones that WotC are thinking of when they fret about "dead levels" where no mechanical benefits are gained.

Now, a lot of folks on this forum know deep down that many/most mechanical wiz-bangs are actually pointless circuitousness. They can even hamper the sort of improvisation that is supposed to be one of tabletop's advantages over computers by declaring, "You can't do this awesome thing unless you have 4 levels in X".

But my players can't see this. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy running games with such mechanics in them, I had great unironic fun with 4e. The problem is that my players balk at any game that doesn't offer "kool powerz", games that work more off of character skills, player skills, and a few strategically placed special abilities. I feel that this is a real shame for them and for me.

What are the best approaches to weaning players off of the craving for constant mechanical gain?
Should they be weaned off?
Is this a generational problem with no going back?

I think the trick is getting them to try an old-school style to begin with; if they try, then after a while they should start to see the value of it, and how it creates an intense and sometimes more challenging style of gaming.

But there's also variants of old-school games that walk something of a middle-path in this, where you can get something at every level.  So I guess that would be a weaning off.