Shitty character concepts need to die

[Mistborn]

So given that once again this thread like all five million preceding it has gone to shit. So this time I'm going to start a new thread but unlike all the previous threads proceeding it I'm not going to sugesst that people abandon this one. In fact feel free to have as much horrible semantic flailig as possible in this shit hole of a thread.

I on the other hand a going to start a new thread with a lead in that hopefully will not serve as a starting bell for every petulant asshole who posts on this site.

[Previn]

All these new posters, lately. Where did we get linked? Apparently at least one of them is a goon, but some of them are turning up to disagree with the goon, so I'm not sure it's SA.

This thread has been linked on 4chan at least twice. there's a current thread up there on it now. It is interesting to see the directions tgd and 4chan take on the exact same topic.

[Stinktopus]

All these new posters, lately. Where did we get linked? Apparently at least one of them is a goon, but some of them are turning up to disagree with the goon, so I'm not sure it's SA.

I've been lurking a LONG time but avoiding posting because TGD is a collection of the most frustrating and infuriating people on Earth.

I also like reading grognards.txt because it beats having to read every thread on TheRPGSite myself. But, Darwinism decided it was time for an anti-3.5 pogrom and just started filling page after page with Frank quotes when Frank was, admittedly playing against type, not saying anything vaguely controversial or funny. So, since I'm not going to pay $10 to tell Darwinism to go fuck himself over at SA, I popped on here to do it.

I'm going back to lurking now, because I don't think it would improve the community around here to post "Lago, go fuck yourself with a cactus," five times a day.

[Chamomile]

All these new posters, lately. Where did we get linked? Apparently at least one of them is a goon, but some of them are turning up to disagree with the goon, so I'm not sure it's SA.

This thread has been linked on 4chan at least twice. there's a current thread up there on it now. It is interesting to see the directions tgd and 4chan take on the exact same topic.

Really? I hang out there not-infrequently and haven't noticed it. Maybe it's been lost under all the quest threads.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I found the perfect image macro for this thread:

[Whatever]

Sweet, I can never find that one when I try to google it.

[Kaelik]

I don't think it would improve the community around here to post "Lago, go fuck yourself with a cactus," five times a day.

I could hardly think of anything that would improve the forum more.

[Korwin]

Just because the current culture couldn't imagine using "pointy hat" instead of "magic" doesn't make your argument valid it's just the excuse you're using to be ignorant.

so whats your point?
You want to change the current culture to write an game in 20+ years with pointy hat's and scars as power source?

[NineInchNall]

Except that superman is a guy who exists in a world where magic is real and is very specifically not magic. He is so not magic magic is actually one of the few things that really hurts him. I'm not arguing that superman is normal, quite the opposite superman is fantastic he's just not magic.

Bull shit. Superman lives in a universe where the words mean different things, where the word "magic" is actually a technical term. If you want to be intellectually honest, you would have to reword your summary.

Let magic refer to the extension of the real-world word "magic".
Let googly-moogly be refer to the extension of the DC universe word "magic".

Rewording 1: Except that superman is a guy who exists in a world where googly-moogly is real and is very specifically not googly-moogly. He is so not googly-moogly [that] googly-moogly is actually one of the few things that really hurts him. I'm not arguing that superman is normal, quite the opposite superman is fantastic he's just not googly-moogly.

The problem with this is that, while it is valid and true, it is unrelated to the topic, which is about magic.

Rewording 2: Except that superman is a guy who exists in a world where googly-moogly is real and is very specifically not googly-moogly. He is so not googly-moogly [that] googly-moogly is actually one of the few things that really hurts him. I'm not arguing that superman is normal, quite the opposite superman is fantastic he's just not magic.

The problem with this is that for all x, if x is googly-moogly, then x is magic.

[nockermensch]

Petulant assholery

Oh dear.

So I've been thinking about this discussion for this weekend and I couldn't help but to notice some problems with Frank's approach. Somebody suggested replacing magic/phlebotinium for bullshit, and that's a great idea, so lets use this terminology here. The current argument can be divided into two steps:

1) Characters need to do/deal with higher and higher grade bullshit as they level up: This is completely correct.

2) Characters need to become magical/supernatural to deal with the higher level bullshit: This is wrong.

This argument is being forced here through hand-wavering worth of creation scienceintelligent-design proponents, probably because mostly everybody sees that the first part is true and so assume the second one must be, too. Frank goes something like this: "At high level, the PCs need to adventure at the City of Brass, or at the bottom of the ocean, they need to deal with insubstantial enemies and so on, and therefore they need to upgrade to something like Storm Lord or Master of Your Mom, or whatever."

Can anybody else see the bullshit in this argument? While a Fire Mage can survive and adventure in the City of Brass, a Storm Lord (electrical powers?) can't. The Death Knight can survive in the bottom of the ocean to adventure there, but the Fire Mage can't. Any D&D class without Wizard tier flexibility can't survive by themselves against all the high level bullshit D&D adventures can pull. They'll need help. So all that talk about how John Carter being unable to jump to the moon is pointless hand-waving, because a set of bullshit enhanced characters also can't. So for those characters, an adventure to the moon will include a "you guys get a ship" stage.

So, while a great amount of shit is talked about mundane characters that "cannot pull their own weight", the truth is that on the actual game, most characters, even the bullshit enhanced ones, will still need more bullshit, external to their character sheets, to survive and adventure on high level. So, even considering the pathetically weak D&D vanilla mundanes, the main trust of the "you have to be bullshit-enhanced to adventure here" argument is false. Having some bullshit will allow you to survive some situations by your own powers. But if your character class doesn't read "wizard" or "cleric", your bullshit will not help you against a large set of high level challenges.


Counter-argument #1: "It's alright if the Fire Mage needs outside help to adventure in the Fuck You plane, because by the the next adventure he can ward the Fuck You Knight when the group goes to the City of Brass."

Answer to the counter-argument: Well duh. You're designing the adventure around the party's abilities already. Go one extra step and design it for the mundane guys too. (the party needs to enter the Dead Magic valley to recover something?)


Counter-argument #2: "Fuck you, I already told you that Batman doesn't work on a TTRPG."

Answer to the counter-argument: Despite what your mom may have told you, your opinions don't necessarily represent reality. And this isn't even about Batman, it's about Hawk-Woman.

[virgil]

I do wonder if there's some level of cultural dissonance going on. If you're breaking stuff from a distance by sheer force of will, it's bullsh&!t unless you give it a bulls&!t reason like telekinesis, or qi, or divinity. But in many examples, especially for such a fantastical setting, those things are synonymous with 'force of will'.

In which case, how much better would people feel if a setting featured more somatic wizards? Just looking at Avatar (especially Korra), many people advocated for bending to be even less magical in setting, where anyone could learn how to punch fire instead of it being a genetic lottery.

[Kaelik]

"At high level, the PCs need to adventure at the City of Brass, or at the bottom of the ocean, they need to deal with insubstantial enemies and so on, and therefore they need to upgrade to something like Storm Lord or Master of Your Mom, or whatever."

Can anybody else see the bullshit in this argument? While a Fire Mage can survive and adventure in the City of Brass, a Storm Lord (electrical powers?) can't. The Death Knight can survive in the bottom of the ocean to adventure there, but the Fire Mage can't.

Well a high level Fire Mage can burn the Oceans off and adventure "under water" but the Fire Mage is famous for not having utility and basically being a stupid mundane fighter that replaces swording with lazers.

The Storm Lord can fly and make it rain in a radius around him, so he can totally just put all the fire out around him and adventure in the City of Brass.

[ishy]

The balance point of I can do certain things but not other things can work for a game. But then you still need to think things through.
In your example the fire mage might not be able to breathe underwater, but will probably be able to attack by superheating it. And will provide party support while the party is on the elemental plane of fire or whatever.
Though yes a fire mage might be too limited at high levels and might need more oomph too.

But your fighter adventure is just, everyone elses power doesn't work here and you are all commoners and can't join me on this adventure.
And if your strong point is, I'm awesome if nobody else can play, you have a shitty character for a ttrpg.

[nockermensch]

The Storm Lord can fly and make it rain in a radius around him, so he can totally just put all the fire out around him and adventure in the City of Brass.

You dirty MTPer.

[Kaelik]

The Storm Lord can fly and make it rain in a radius around him, so he can totally just put all the fire out around him and adventure in the City of Brass.

You dirty MTPer.

Rain Season (Su): The Storm Lord can make it Rain in a 100 mile radius emanation. He can make it keep raining forever. The emanation is always centered on him. He can also stop making it rain.

Rain
Rain reduces visibility ranges by half, resulting in a -4 penalty on Spot and Search checks. It has the same effect on flames, ranged weapon attacks, and Listen checks as severe wind.

Severe Wind
In addition to automatically extinguishing any unprotected flames, winds of this magnitude cause protected flames (such as those of lanterns) to dance wildly and have a 50% chance of extinguishing these lights.

Eat all the dicks.

[nockermensch]

The Storm Lord can fly and make it rain in a radius around him, so he can totally just put all the fire out around him and adventure in the City of Brass.

You dirty MTPer.

Rain Season (Su): The Storm Lord can make it Rain in a 100 mile radius emanation. He can make it keep raining forever. The emanation is always centered on him. He can also stop making it rain.

Rain
Rain reduces visibility ranges by half, resulting in a -4 penalty on Spot and Search checks. It has the same effect on flames, ranged weapon attacks, and Listen checks as severe wind.

Severe Wind
In addition to automatically extinguishing any unprotected flames, winds of this magnitude cause protected flames (such as those of lanterns) to dance wildly and have a 50% chance of extinguishing these lights.

Eat all the dicks.

Of course, MTPer. Because rain will in fact quench the undying flames of the plane of fire. And if it's a +5 bullshit rain that in effect quenches the plane of fire, then the Storm Lord doesn't "adventure" in the city of brass. He "sieges" the city of brass. People there will want the goddamn water to go away so that they can resume burning. But of course, you'll handwave all this, because you're a dirty MTPer that only accepts to MTP for supernatural classes.

Also, indoor places.

[Kaelik]

Of course, MTPer. Because rain will in fact quench the undying flames of the plane of fire.

It would be MTP to violate the rules, which say that they are quenched. It is not MTP to follow the rules that say they are quenched.

And if it's a +5 bullshit rain that in effect quenches the plane of fire, then the Storm Lord doesn't "adventure" in the city of brass. He "sieges" the city of brass. People there will want the goddamn water to go away so that they can resume burning.

He temporarily puts the rain out around him. The fires can come back as soon as he moves away. I'm sure he's not the first person to put out fires in the City of Brass for his temporary stay.

But you are wrong about the +5 part. The rules say that Rain puts out fires. Unless the fires with a pretty name have a game mechanical effect of not being put out, they are extinguished.

Also, indoor places.

Don't matter, because the rain effect is an emanation from the Storm Lord, which means it rains indoors when he is indoors.

[Username17]

2) Characters need to become magical/supernatural to deal with the higher level bullshit: This is wrong.

This argument is being forced here through hand-wavering worth of creation scienceintelligent-design proponents, probably because mostly everybody sees that the first part is true and so assume the second one must be, too. Frank goes something like this: "At high level, the PCs need to adventure at the City of Brass, or at the bottom of the ocean, they need to deal with insubstantial enemies and so on, and therefore they need to upgrade to something like Storm Lord or Master of Your Mom, or whatever."

Can anybody else see the bullshit in this argument? While a Fire Mage can survive and adventure in the City of Brass, a Storm Lord (electrical powers?) can't. The Death Knight can survive in the bottom of the ocean to adventure there, but the Fire Mage can't. Any D&D class without Wizard tier flexibility can't survive by themselves against all the high level bullshit D&D adventures can pull. They'll need help. So all that talk about how John Carter being unable to jump to the moon is pointless hand-waving, because a set of bullshit enhanced characters also can't. So for those characters, an adventure to the moon will include a "you guys get a ship" stage.

You're retarded. While I freely admit that actual characters in D&D (of any class) often don't have powers they would need to handle specific high level adventures, that is because D&D specifically lacks a framework by which to evaluate high level adventures and when you could logically expect them to show up.

The underwater minigame in particular, despite having lots of content written up for it, doesn't see much of any use in play because the water access abilities are so poor and short duration. But that's not what's being discussed here. This is not the over nine thousandth time we've shaken our fists in the air and shouted "D&D has poor challenge guidelines!" That shit is over. We made that point in 2001, and while it was still "controversial" in 2006, I sincerely doubt it's particularly controversial now.

This discussion is about characters being conceptually able to deal with high level challenges at the levels you assign them. If you decided that there was a specific level where people should be able to adventure under the sea, there would be nothing in the Fire Mage's or Storm Lord's concept that prevented you from writing an ability at that level which allowed them to do so. Either one of them could get "Elemental Blood" that rendered them not needing to breathe. They happen to not have that, because in 3rd edition the underwater minigame is "content you probably won't use", but if it was normalized into the game, it wouldn't be a problem for characters with those concepts to interact with it.

I mean think about it: more than one fucking person has brought up the idea that Beowulf held his breath for kind of a long time as an example of how he should be able to join that adventure. But as has been repeatedly pointed out: holding your breath for "like an hour or something, man" is woefully, laughably insufficient to actually do a seabottom adventure. That any concept based on just holding your breath for an epically superhuman amount of time is going to fall comically short of what is needed. But a character whose contribution is "they have magic powers" can simply happen to have a magic power that switches this problem off like a lightswitch.

If you set up a set of high level challenges at actual levels instead of having the high level game collapse into insanity and arguments, then of course you're going to need to set up the classes so that they have ways to deal with the higher level challenges as they come online. And there is no conceptual problem with fitting any magical character to whatever challenges you happen to decide should be standard. While as has been repeatedly noted, annotated, and explained at length even using the actual examples of the people who are trying to disagree, a mundane concept of any kind is going to be woefully incapable of hitting any but the most bullshit 4e-style definitions of a "high level challenge".

-Username17

[...You Lost Me]

The Storm Lord can fly and make it rain in a radius around him, so he can totally just put all the fire out around him and adventure in the City of Brass.

You dirty MTPer.

Rain Season (Su): The Storm Lord can make it Rain in a 100 mile radius emanation. He can make it keep raining forever. The emanation is always centered on him. He can also stop making it rain.

Rain
Rain reduces visibility ranges by half, resulting in a -4 penalty on Spot and Search checks. It has the same effect on flames, ranged weapon attacks, and Listen checks as severe wind.

Severe Wind
In addition to automatically extinguishing any unprotected flames, winds of this magnitude cause protected flames (such as those of lanterns) to dance wildly and have a 50% chance of extinguishing these lights.

Eat all the dicks.

This was actually brilliant.

[Verisimilitudinous]

I mean think about it: more than one fucking person has brought up the idea that Beowulf held his breath for kind of a long time as an example of how he should be able to join that adventure. But as has been repeatedly pointed out: holding your breath for "like an hour or something, man" is woefully, laughably insufficient to actually do a seabottom adventure.

Have you forgotten that you, yourself insisted that Beowulf is a pretty low-level character? Also Beowulf held his breath for one hell of a lot longer than an hour; they started tracking Grendel's mother during the night, found her lair, Beowulf dived in and didn't come back until three in the afternoon. Unless tracking the monster took almost a day he held his breath for an insane amount of time.

You can't even be internally consistent in your criticism of non-magical supernatural prowess. Dude's level 10 tops and can hold his breath for anywhere from half a day to forever(since there was no sense of urgency in him coming back, really), and yet no way a martial character could be thematically appropriate in an aquatic campaign!

And there is no conceptual problem with fitting any magical character to whatever challenges you happen to decide should be standard.

This is only actually true if your baseline assumption amounts to, "Magic rules! Nonmagic drools!" Magic only does what the system asks it to do. There is absolutely nothing that prevents other power sources from being as incredible! Except, of course, your insistence that it just can't happen never ever! Which is your problem. You are the one letting yourself be limited to a single definition of magic as an unstoppable ever-growing powersource and everything else as limited to your flawed impression of real life.

While as has been repeatedly noted, annotated, and explained at length even using the actual examples of the people who are trying to disagree, a mundane concept of any kind is going to be woefully incapable of hitting any but the most bullshit 4e-style definitions of a "high level challenge".

-Username17

Except it's never been actually explained except as, "Nuh-uh," or, "But that example totally doesn't count but this one involving some bullshit Slavic monster that's described as using magic sorta totally counts as a wizard even though he's just a dude who does bad things and then gets slaughtered by a guy whose only magical implement is a horse!"

You base your whole argument on the presumption that what you are saying is automatically correct. If you don't get why this makes you an idiot I can't save you.

[Omegonthesane]

...I started posting this before remembering who I'm replying to.

Have you forgotten that you, yourself insisted that Beowulf is a pretty low-level character? Also Beowulf held his breath for one hell of a lot longer than an hour; they started tracking Grendel's mother during the night, found her lair, Beowulf dived in and didn't come back until three in the afternoon. Unless tracking the monster took almost a day he held his breath for an insane amount of time.

You can't even be internally consistent in your criticism of non-magical supernatural prowess. Dude's level 10 tops and can hold his breath for anywhere from half a day to forever(since there was no sense of urgency in him coming back, really), and yet no way a martial character could be thematically appropriate in an aquatic campaign!

Even if Beowulf can hold his breath "forever", he can't speak underwater without having the ability to not actually need to breathe.

herp derp

For the record, Ivan Tsarevitch's equipment list included at least two wizards capable of shape-changing and raising him from the dead, and he needs a magical horse from Baba Yaga to catch up with Koschei's horse.

[Username17]

Dammit. Stop quoting Darwinism and his herp derp.



Grendel's Mother lives in a cave that is "protected from the water". As in: a fucking underwater air filled cave. Going there and then coming back doesn't require any special feats of breath holding. For fuck's sake. It's not even Charles Atlas level bullshit, it's just swimming to the bottom of a lake and finding an air filled cave there.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

Grendel's Mother lives in a cave that is "protected from the water". As in: a fucking underwater air filled cave. Going there and then coming back doesn't require any special feats of breath holding. For fuck's sake. It's not even Charles Atlas level bullshit, it's just swimming to the bottom of a lake and finding an air filled cave there.

-Username17

Details of what the legend actually required aside, would the ability "can hold his breath literally forever and a day, so long as he doesn't exhale" be enough to let Beowulf adventure underwater? Why or why not?

[Crimlock]

@veri
So Beowulf is a low lvl character that can hold his breath indefintiely, and? Even if we include it as a flavor of phebotium, How does holding ur breath really long tier up? Holding it longer than longer? If it can tier up, could it even tier up in a way that you and others with your mindset would accept it as non-magic phlebotium?
Sure you can communicate through sign or carving or whatever creative element you implement, however when we expand upon the idea of getting to exotic locales safely, efficiently and in a way that allows you to participate with npcs, your acceptable non-magic phlebotium will be lacking in comparison to other flavors of phlebotium.
However, if your argument is that you will accept non-magic phlebotium... Then there isn't a problem here, it may be hard for some to understand but magic in this thread is being used at least 2 different ways. 1. Spellcasting 2. As a catch all for anything above mundane
Hope that solves your issues, if it doesn't then your just being difficult.

[Username17]

Details of what the legend actually required aside, would the ability "can hold his breath literally forever and a day, so long as he doesn't exhale" be enough to let Beowulf adventure underwater? Why or why not?

If your "adventure" required no sleeping or talking, even with your fellow party members, then yes. However, since we already know mute characters suck all the dicks, I contemptuously reject such a character even if our adventure was shitty and one dimensional enough that you could theoretically complete it without talking to anyone.

-Username17