Well-Poisoning Creator's Bias Thread

[Lago PARANOIA]

This thread is used to dig up all of the dirt we can find on the architects of 3rd and 4th Edition and use that as circumstantial evidence that their personal biases impacted the rules for the worse.

For example, Andy Collins' dwarf fighter/barbarian. Dwarf fighters get way too many goodies in 4th Edition.

Or David Noonan thinking that weapon ranges were unrealistic so the battlemap suddenly shrank. So on.

[Roy]

Would the 3.0 and 3.5 design team thinking stuff like half orc barbarians and blaster sorcerers are the high end of power as the reason why 4.0 is all about bland, unoriginal low damage blasting qualify or is that too big a leap?

[Elennsar]

Define "impacted the rules for the worse". Dwarves being better fighters than halflings is not necessarily unbalanced.

Dwarven fighters being better overall than say, Elven Rangers...now we have a problem to be recorded.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Would the 3.0 and 3.5 design team thinking stuff like half orc barbarians and blaster sorcerers are the high end of power as the reason why 4.0 is all about bland, unoriginal low damage blasting qualify or is that too big a leap?

If you can find specific examples, that would be awesome.

[Talisman]

You're not supposed to play ugly races. That's why every ugly race (even the half-orc, a frikkin PC RACE) sucks mechanically.

Double this if you're trying to play a monster that's not a human in bad makeup.

I have only circumstantial evidence, but it's pretty damning. I am compiling it into a book, which I shall title Savage Species.

I shall then go back in time and publish it in February 2003, under a variety of pseudonyms.

[Elennsar]

Do tieflings count as an ugly race? They seem like they're an example of the same principle compared to aasimars.

[Roy]

Enemies and Allies is a great start. The Wizard was a Toughness elf focusing on the two weakest schools, that is to say Evocation and Enchantment. The Druid was meleeing in human form for 1d6+1 or something at level 15 instead of casting spells. Krusk was a half orc Barbarian. None of them really figured out the point of magic since Mialee has fucking Cone of Cold prepared.

The Druid had no Natural Spell despite it being the only Druid specific feat in the book and therefore taken by complete newbies by pure happenstance. None of the casters had save or sucks/dies that I can recall, or if they did it was like 1, or 2 beside a bunch of piddly little blasting spells.

On the melee end the most solid character in there was the Rogue, even when you consider optimization within the scope of core only. The half orc barb found PAing with a greataxe obviously. The two Fighter builds were basic weapon spec tree focused melee and ranged types. He was smart enough to use a two hander, but not smart enough to get reach or do more than auto attack, except his auto attack routine sucks so that build failed. The other Fighter was SAB, and thus an automatic fail.

The Ranger was TWFing with no real bonus damage (even if against his favored enemies, that's not real bonus damage). So yeah, Epic Fail all around.

The later books illustrated the designers finally starting to get a clue about what works, as evidenced first by them not whining anymore about arcanes and armor, later by more limited caster classes, and still later by more versatile melee classes. The last two bits refer to classes like the Beguiler and Tome of Battle respectively. This is evidenced in many aspects of these books, including feats beginning to suck less.

When 4.0 came around it's likely they decided to prove their original claims right instead of continue adjusting their delusional beliefs. So you get a version that plays much like the game they thought they were playing all along.

[Bigode]

Dwarves being better fighters than halflings is not necessarily unbalanced.

Yes, it is. Halfling fighters are allowed by the rules and get no compensation.

I have only circumstantial evidence, but it's pretty damning. I am compiling it into a book, which I shall title Savage Species.

I shall then go back in time and publish it in February 2003, under a variety of pseudonyms.

EPIC FUCKING WIN.

[Roy]

I'm going back in time to add EPIC FUCKING in the appropriate place to the post above mine.

[Elennsar]

Bigode: So? They could be say, better rogues. Assuming both classes are equally good, then its just a matter of "Waaa, I want to play a halfling fighter but halflings are (surprise!) too weak and small to be good fighters."

Now, the fact that the game doesn't do that is an example of designing things so that some things suck for no good reason and there's no way out of that suck.

Doesn't mean that all races must be equally good at all classes.

[Bigode]

Roy: going back in time's reserved for the other thread.

Elennsar: halfling fighters are unbalanced.

[Roy]

Roy: going back in time's reserved for the other thread.

Lies! I hotwired Talisman's time machine.

[Koumei]

I hate dwarfs. I want to go back in time and slap all the Norse with a stick until they agree not to use dorfs in their mythology. That way, Tolkien wouldn't use them and as a result, D&D wouldn't. Granted, the Discworld would be very different, but I'm sure they could pick another race of miners.

Elennsar: We get it, you don't want balanced races and you want people to be able to select "I suck balls" at character creation. I now cast Power Word: Shut It.

[Bigode]

I'm going back in time to add EPIC FUCKING in the appropriate place to the post above mine.

Fvck you, it worked. Proof: it's not written with "v".

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Bigode: So? They could be say, better rogues. Assuming both classes are equally good, then its just a matter of "Waaa, I want to play a halfling fighter but halflings are (surprise!) too weak and small to be good fighters."

Now, the fact that the game doesn't do that is an example of designing things so that some things suck for no good reason and there's no way out of that suck.

Doesn't mean that all races must be equally good at all classes.

Elennsar, you seem to be a hardcore roleplaying guy. So could you please explain why characters should be gimped for coming up with a fully-developed character with a great backstory who just happens not to fit a racial stereotype?

And your example is flawed. A halfling could be a fighter who concentrates on ranged weapons. Of course, for the sake of this argument I'm assuming a hypothetical D&D-like system where fighters work..

[Talisman]

Dammit, who moved my time machine?! And left burger wrappers all over the back seat!

[Gelare]

So? They could be say, better rogues. Assuming both classes are equally good, then its just a matter of "Waaa, I want to play a halfling fighter but halflings are (surprise!) too weak and small to be good fighters."

So could you please explain why characters should be gimped for coming up with a fully-developed character with a great backstory who just happens not to fit a racial stereotype?

These both strike me as good points. On the one hand, it doesn't seem like we want to punish people for not playing into a racial stereotype which we've each, by now, seen enough of to make us sick. On the other hand, if you have this one thing called "race" and this other thing called "class", and they're both supposed to mean what we're assuming they mean, then one race is going to have to be better at something than some other race, or else they're just flavor text - which might be fine for some systems, but I'm under the impression, and correct me if I'm wrong here, that we all think that race in this model should have some game mechanical implications.

Frank has often made the point around here that there's really only one archetype in D&D, the "adventurer" archetype, and if you look at it like that, the various races could (hypothetically) be equally as good at playing the archetype because they each excel in one variant of the archetype - one's better at stabbing, one's better at casting, whatever. But in the traditional race-class system, if you want race to be anything more than flavor text (and I'm by no means suggesting that you should want race to be more than flavor text), one should probably be better at something than another, which means yeah, dwarven fighters are going to better than halfling fighters and halfling rogues are going to be better than dwarven rogues. (Although dwarven "adventurers" and halfling "adventurers" could, if we were using this hypothetical balanced system, come out roughly equal.)

[Bigode]

No 2 things are ever going to be perfectly equal/balanced. But you ought to make 2 equally-offered choices as close to that as possible, not allow halfling fighters to freely suck. How to make race more than flavor text? Presumably, each class would benefit from more than 1 kind of change - how about handing 1 to each race, duh?

[PhoneLobster]

yeah, dwarven fighters are going to better than halfling fighters and halfling rogues are going to be better than dwarven rogues.

So then clearly you don't want there to ever be a dwarf who was raised on the wrong side of the tracks and developed cat like agility and pilfering hands.

Instead every dwarf thief is a tough stone mason loud mouthed stereotype who was too stupid to select axe swinger as a class.

Remind me again

why characters should be gimped for coming up with a fully-developed character with a great backstory who just happens not to fit a racial stereotype?

No really I mean it sounds a lot like "Dhur, dwarfs should all be blocky and strong and tough and axe wielding, ale swigging, Scottish sounding, miners, Dhur"

If that's what you want go play some GW with the other kids. Better yet go back to basic box sets where Dwarf was a class which would match your apparent preferences nicely.

and correct me if I'm wrong here, that we all think that race in this model should have some game mechanical implications.

You are wrong.

[Elennsar]

Elennsar, you seem to be a hardcore roleplaying guy. So could you please explain why characters should be gimped for coming up with a fully-developed character with a great backstory who just happens not to fit a racial stereotype?

And your example is flawed. A halfling could be a fighter who concentrates on ranged weapons. Of course, for the sake of this argument I'm assuming a hypothetical D&D-like system where fighters work..

"Racial stereotype" has nothing to do with it. If you're from a race that's (one or more of ) slower, weaker, and frailer than the baseline, you're not going to be good at things that involve being those things.

Could a halfling do a decent ranged weapon fighter? Maybe. Smaller weapons tend to be less effective in that regard, though the difference between throwing daggers from a halfling and a human (other than the muscle behind them) isn't very much.

Halfling was hypothetical, by the way, just to make things clear. Point is, if high Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity are important for fighters, a race with bonuses to two or all three of those will be better at being a fighter than a race with a penalty to one or more.

So, to use 3.5 base classes, a dwarf (in my proposed good/average/poor) could do a really good fighter, paladin, barbarian, and maybe ranger. He could do a perfectly decent cleric or wizard. He'd probably be a bad bard, rogue, or monk.

Coming up with an awesome roleplaying concept should not mean that you get to do mechanically well.

I agree fully that a race should not be forced to be a stereotype and that's it, but there's a reason everyone assumes (for instance) that elves are archers. Most elves are because elves are good at that, so they naturally go to what they do well rather than what they do poorly.

Some races might just plain suck. Hobbits in LotR don't have the stuff that generally makes for good adventurers. Guess what, almost none are.

But those races would be called out as "weaker" and be on a seperate list from the standard race list the same way that better-in-almost-all-ways elves would be on a seperate list for being stronger.

Insisting that a minotaur and a kobold be balanced with each other is missing the fact that kobolds are small and weak and minotaurs are big, tough, strong, and scary.

Naturally, in any game based on weak-but-cool wouldn't be about gaining more and more power and getting to kill increasingly potent things, so being a weaker character would not hurt your ability to play in the game. You'd just play at a different difficulty setting with a different style of adventure.

I'm not sure how much this answered your question, but I hope it did.

[PhoneLobster]

Insisting that a minotaur and a kobold be balanced with each other is missing the fact that kobolds are small and weak and minotaurs are big, tough, strong, and scary.

Because apparently you can't imagine there is such a thing as a small weak runt of a minotaur or a big strong brute among kobolds.

And if both are playable races they had damn well better be balanced. Anything less is utterly unacceptable and suggesting otherwise deserves a slap in the face for making RPGs everywhere worse.

But back to my first point, individuals vary, within the human race we have the physical stature and strength ranges of tiny people, giant people, stocky short people and graceful skinny people and more. We have cultures that raise people to be proficient with various weapons, or various skills and within those cultures some individuals learn DIFFERENT skills and proficiencies.

You are suggesting a shallow world lacking depth, realism and role play potential where there are no such things as human midgets or humans who differ from the very precise racial norm in any significant way. Where all midgets are gnomes, and all gnomes are midgets, and everyone who dedicated their youth to botanical study and veterinary practice is an elf and EVERY DAMN ELF dedicates their youth to botanical study and veterinary practice!

A world with NO smart orcs and NO frail dwarves, no dwarven archers and no elven axe men. A world, which frankly, isn't just stupid and racist but also unpleasant and boring to play in.

What on earth is good about that?

[Elennsar]

No one said that you had to have kobolds able to outwrestle humans (let alone kobolds) for them to be playable at all. A kobold just needs kobold scale challenges.

As for the racial norm: No, I'm suggesting that you're likely to find that a race that is "stronger than" humanity will do well at classes relying on Strength, one that is less good with logic and reason will probably do less well with things requiring Intelligence.

A world with race having no meaningful impact on whether you are smart, frail, good with bows, talented with illusion spells, or any other trait should stick to humanity, where all modifiers are cultural and individual.

There are human midgets. The overwhelming majority of humans are between 5'-6"-something, however. So "things humans are good at" are based on that, not on the fringe exceptions.

A race should have more things that it does at about an average level tha things it is either talented at or poor at, but if the overwhelming majority of elves have good hand eye coordination, they will do things taking advantage of that most of the time when all things are otherwise equal. Since there are times when that ability isn't relevant, they learn different things as well.

[PhoneLobster]

You know fuck it, why are you having this argument on three threads at once Elen? Maybe it should move strictly to the actual race thread?

[Elennsar]

Because people have decided "hey we disagree with a statement of opinion and are going to argue with it instead of noting it and staying on topic."

Regarding said topic, one thing that I think is a sign of designer failure...

Having magical chainmail, despite the fact that by the time you can afford magical armor there's no reason to buy the slightly cheaper chainmail over a breastplate (given superior stats for no good reason).

I'm not sure if that's a bias or just idiocy, however.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Going along with the "ugly races should be screwed" mentality, I've always had a suspicion that WotC balances by flavor text. I figure that's why all the Eberron races suck. It's like they said "Warforged are living constructs playable by PCs. That sounds so cool we have to make any munchkin who wants to play such a thing suffer."