TTRPGs should punish people who play DMFs.

[hyzmarca]

There's a difference between can't succeed and won't succeed. Statistically unlikely dice-rolls happen. If you don't account for the possibility that the wizard might crit and kill the balor with a spoon, then why bothing rolling dice at all. Why not just automatically apply the statistically expected result and be done with it? Going diceless certainly makes things a lot faster.

[MGuy]

I've never felt much need to put on the side bumpers for people that decide to be really stupid. Someone asking to play an aristocrat doesn't bother me as a designer because obviously that person wants to be intentionally weaker than normal and if it doesn't work out for them that is fine, I didn't design the NPC class for PCs.I would think it would be much more important to make sure all the legitimate options work. I really don't care if a wizard who hasn't spent any time learning to use their staff effectively can't hit anything level appropriate with it.

[DSMatticus]

It's not really an issue. Any game of sufficient complexity is going to naturally create bad choices as a byproduct, but these bad choices are not usually front and center and going out of your way to excise them is usually just wasted effort.

The actual traps in the system are things that advertise themselves to be supported parts of the game and utterly fall flat. "My players won't stop finding incredibly esoteric ways to make shitty characters," is a lost drop in a bucket of "my players haven't figured out that fighters, monks, and evocation are a waste of everyone's god damn time when played exactly as intended."

[Username17]

How good a wizard's dagger or a knight's unarmed strike should be has 100% to do with how good you want Disarming to be. These "backup" attacks are only used if someone else takes an action to debuff them through a disarm or something. If the backup strike is 70% effective, then the debuff that made you have to use it is something that decreases your output by 30% if it works.

I think it is pretty obvious that as long as your disarm debuff is competing with stunlocks or death spells, that a mere 30% reduction in offensive power is way too weak. Having a wizard's dagger or a knight's kick attack go off at 70% effectiveness vs. a primary attack method is a huge nerf to debuff actions.

-Username17

[K]

It's not really an issue. Any game of sufficient complexity is going to naturally create bad choices as a byproduct, but these bad choices are not usually front and center and going out of your way to excise them is usually just wasted effort.

Considering that about 70% of DnD characters write down several shitty and useless weapon attacks on the first page of their character sheet and roughly in its center, I think that qualifies as "front and center."

On another note, you don't have to go out of your way to excise anything; you just don't write bad things and expect that players with system mastery will avoid them while noobs will take them.

Writing up a simple set of benchmarks not only speeds up design time, but it ensures that things are roughly where you need to be and saves playtesting time. The best part is that you don't even want to be perfectly balanced since that's boring, and so the amount of extra effort is very small.

[MGuy]

It's not really an issue. Any game of sufficient complexity is going to naturally create bad choices as a byproduct, but these bad choices are not usually front and center and going out of your way to excise them is usually just wasted effort.

Considering that about 70% of DnD characters write down several shitty and useless weapon attacks on the first page of their character sheet and roughly in its center, I think that qualifies as "front and center."

I also write a bunch of information like the color of my character's clothing. I don't think that makes it an important issue.

[Whipstitch]

You don't consider it a big issue because you're not fighting the Green Lantern and you don't expect a yellow shirt to come in handy. But newbies at the helm of a DMF may totally expect to defeat the dragon by sword 'n' boarding it and that just ends in tears. In that case it totally behooves designers to ask themselves whether or not the abilities you're about to jot down are worth the ink. And if not, it becomes rather important to find out if the the character has anything at all that is worth bothering with. I don't see how this could be remotely controversial.

[K]

It's not really an issue. Any game of sufficient complexity is going to naturally create bad choices as a byproduct, but these bad choices are not usually front and center and going out of your way to excise them is usually just wasted effort.

Considering that about 70% of DnD characters write down several shitty and useless weapon attacks on the first page of their character sheet and roughly in its center, I think that qualifies as "front and center."

I also write a bunch of information like the color of my character's clothing. I don't think that makes it an important issue.

If the color of your character's clothing isn't important, then why are you writing it down at all?

Do you just obsessively scrawl unimportant details on your character sheet to make it harder to find key aspects of your character?

[MGuy]

Considering that about 70% of DnD characters write down several shitty and useless weapon attacks on the first page of their character sheet and roughly in its center, I think that qualifies as "front and center."

I also write a bunch of information like the color of my character's clothing. I don't think that makes it an important issue.

If the color of your character's clothing isn't important, then why are you writing it down at all?

Do you just obsessively scrawl unimportant details on your character sheet to make it harder to find key aspects of your character?

Have you seen a character sheet for 3.5? Because I don't think you have if you don't think I can find the space to jot down what clothes my character is wearing without cluttering the rest of the sheet.Hair color, height, patron deity (even if I'm not a class that gives a shit about it) all have spaces on the sheet.

[Maj]

I keep track of that stuff. Granted, in real life I have the superpower of organization so that I don't go looking for my attack bonus where the description and picture of my character are. Keeping track of the non-mechanical aspects of my character help me with the roleplaying part of the game.

[DSMatticus]

Considering that about 70% of DnD characters write down several shitty and useless weapon attacks on the first page of their character sheet and roughly in its center, I think that qualifies as "front and center."

I also write a bunch of information like the color of my character's clothing. I don't think that makes it an important issue.

If the color of your character's clothing isn't important, then why are you writing it down at all?

Do you just obsessively scrawl unimportant details on your character sheet to make it harder to find key aspects of your character?

Some people even waste space with sketches and portaits! Egads! You're taking what is at its core a semi-reasonable position and taking it to levels that look like a parody of itself. It is still a role-playing game, not a combat simulator, and some descriptive fluff is not at all out of line.

Considering that about 70% of DnD characters write down several shitty and useless weapon attacks on the first page of their character sheet and roughly in its center, I think that qualifies as "front and center."

I don't think position on character sheet is at all what it means to qualify as for front and center. I haven't really seen many wizards be confused about when they should hit something with a staff, regardless of where those things are positioned. I also don't think D&D 3.5, which I assume is the char sheets you're referring to, is the bastion of design we should aspire to. It's shitty design and separately shitty character sheet layout isn't really a criticism of what anyone here wants.

you don't have to go out of your way to excise anything; you just don't write bad things and expect that players with system mastery will avoid them while noobs will take them.

If your game is not 4e-level simple where every unexpected action translates into "this much damage off a table", options are going to evolve around the outskirts of your system that are suboptimal. It's really not a matter of system mastery. Nobody is saying that you should write bad options and expect them to be avoided by 1337's and taken by sucker n00bs. No, everything you deliberately present to the PC's as a chargen/level up choice should be level appropriate at what it is intended to do. That's absolutely true. But your position... seems even more extreme than that.

People are going to look for interactions between your various subsystems to cause interesting effects, and that should be desirable. And the results should also be interesting, if sometimes imbalanced. And it's basically impossible to balance those sorts of things, because they are inherently environmental and different level characters care about different features of the environment.

You don't need and shouldn't even try to write rules about how kicking a harpy off a cliff fizzles because it's a shitty option. You should just present the rules for pushing people around, and let players go at them. They'll figure out that kicking flying creatures off cliffs is a bad idea on their own, hopefully. And yes, there are times when that will be a drastically suboptimal option and times when it will be a very optimal option and times when it will be useful for pushing people into level appropriate terrain/ability effects, acting like a second usage of them.

[K]

I also write a bunch of information like the color of my character's clothing. I don't think that makes it an important issue.

If the color of your character's clothing isn't important, then why are you writing it down at all?

Do you just obsessively scrawl unimportant details on your character sheet to make it harder to find key aspects of your character?

Have you seen a character sheet for 3.5? Because I don't think you have if you don't think I can find the space to jot down what clothes my character is wearing without cluttering the rest of the sheet.Hair color, height, patron deity (even if I'm not a class that gives a shit about it) all have spaces on the sheet.

So you are saying that you write unimportant details on the front of your character sheet for no reason? Why do it?

I think most people are like Maj and they only write down things that are important to playing, even if those details are only for the RP side.

Do you use your useless weapon attack bonus stat line for RPing?

[K]

Some people even waste space with sketches and portaits! Egads! You're taking what is at its core a semi-reasonable position and taking it to levels that look like a parody of itself. It is still a role-playing game, not a combat simulator, and some descriptive fluff is not at all out of line.

Do you also use your useless weapon stat line for RPing?

What a curious thing.

[Red_Rob]

There appear to be two separate issues here that are being conflated. Yes, it's important that options presented to the player as desirable and level appropriate actually are, y'know, desirable and level appropriate. I don't think anyone is disputing that. But when it comes to some other options there isn't really a good choice other than to make them intentionally worse than that, as long as that's what players expect.

Wizards in D&D are fluffed as frail and usually old. They are called out in the class description as having no combat ability. Therefore, when a wizard player pulls out his dagger and attacks someone the player is fully aware they are using a Hail Mary last ditch option who's most likely result is failure, but that just might (via a lucky crit) do something worthwhile. That is not a surprise to the player and they don't feel slighted when it doesn't work. The only other options are to tell the player he can't pick up a dagger and try to stab things, which conflicts with the players knowledge of reality, or to make everything that a character does level apropriate, which contradicts the class descriptions and stops players feeling like they have a role.

In any RPG system the characters are going to be good at some things and bad at others. It seems you are arguing that characters either aren't allowed to do the things they are bad at, or they have level appropriate options for everything they ever do. Which makes the Rogue feel like a chump when everyone can sneak, and the Archer feel like a chump when the Knight can shoot just as well.

[K]

I'm not sure why people keep confusing the idea of "minimal competence at tasks you are expected to do" with "making every action of the same effectiveness for every character."

[ModelCitizen]

Wizards write their dagger attacks front and center because that's where the little box is on the character sheet. You could make a separate character sheet for wizards that had weapons on page 2 or something, I can't see anyone seriously objecting to that. What is even being argued here?

[Wrathzog]

Writing up a simple set of benchmarks not only speeds up design time, but it ensures that things are roughly where you need to be and saves playtesting time. The best part is that you don't even want to be perfectly balanced since that's boring, and so the amount of extra effort is very small.

This is smart and logical. I feel the need to point this out.

[sabs]

And after about 5th level or so, the wizard only uses that dagger to pry precious gems out of the eye of the giant statue of Orcus. Never does the wizard think he'll kill anyone with that dagger. Unless he decides tog o slumming and murdering kobolds with a dagger at level 9

[MGuy]

If the color of your character's clothing isn't important, then why are you writing it down at all?

Do you just obsessively scrawl unimportant details on your character sheet to make it harder to find key aspects of your character?

Have you seen a character sheet for 3.5? Because I don't think you have if you don't think I can find the space to jot down what clothes my character is wearing without cluttering the rest of the sheet.Hair color, height, patron deity (even if I'm not a class that gives a shit about it) all have spaces on the sheet.

So you are saying that you write unimportant details on the front of your character sheet for no reason? Why do it?

I think most people are like Maj and they only write down things that are important to playing, even if those details are only for the RP side.

Do you use your useless weapon attack bonus stat line for RPing?

The whole quote line is here so I am confused about why you are asking me this question. Your claim was that 70% of people write down weapon stats for weapons that they are not likely to use so that makes it a concern. I pointed out that on those same character sheets people write down other useless information that they are not likely to use yet those things are not considered important. I've no idea why you're trying to turn this thing I pointed out into something worth arguing over.

[hogarth]

I consider my point proved.

Clearly, Angel wants the nearly worthless attack because he thinks it's awesome when that guy can actually accomplish something worthwhile with his nearly worthless attack.

As I noted before, idiots will always find something idiotic to do, even if it's just standing there doing nothing at all (which I have seen all too frequently in D&D, sadly). I agree that you could make a game where your only options each round are FIGHT, MAGIC, DRINK, ITEM, RUN and maybe that's fine from a "gamist" point of view, but it sucks from a "simulationist" point of view.

And shame on me for being forced to use the verboten terms "gamist" and "simulationist".

[echoVanguard]

There's nothing wrong with those terms, hogarth, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. They represent real concepts in the design space, regardless of what sort of nonsense GNS theory as a whole advances.

echo

[sabs]

Isn't that one of our big complains about 4E? That it's just too gamist. I mean, it also just doesn't work. But Gamist vs Simulationist are valid words to use when talking about TTRPGs

[ModelCitizen]

If you motherfuckers are going to do that, I want to see (1) a definition of Simulationist that can't be contradicted just by quoting Ron Edwards, and (2) at last one game from 2001 or earlier that actually fits that definition (pure S, not a G/S or N/S "hybrid").

[nockermensch]

Isn't that one of our big complains about 4E? That it's just too gamist. I mean, it also just doesn't work. But Gamist vs Simulationist are valid words to use when talking about TTRPGs

The big complaint I have about 4E isn't that a 12th level wizard deals [2w] damage with his melee attacks because he's just that awesome, but that the wizard does nothing actually special.

The "gamism" in 4E that actually detracts from the experience is when the Fighter "marks" or "pulls" a foe and there's no way to explain, in game, what's happening.

[hogarth]

If you motherfuckers are going to do that, I want to see (1) a definition of Simulationist that can't be contradicted just by quoting Ron Edwards, and (2) at last one game from 2001 or earlier that actually fits that definition (pure S, not a G/S or N/S "hybrid").

I have no interest in defending the retarded blather of Ron Edwards (e.g. the idea that there can be a game with no "gamism" is just stupid). Hence my extreme reluctance to use those terms.