Where to Draw the Line?

[Crissa]

I just want the first decisions the player makes not to wreck their first game.

-Crissa

[Elennsar]

And I want to be able to eat soup with my fingers.

As Gelare and Talisman said, in more seriousness.

As much as possible, you should have all the information as clear as possible.

If you refuse to heed it, that is your goddamn problem, just as if you refuse to heed the rules of baseball that's your goddamn problem.

So long as those rules are clear, no one should suck irrepairably.

[Talisman]

And I want to be able to eat soup with my fingers.

My mom makes this awesome potato soup...

But I digress.

[Bigode]

"Because choices made at character creation are permanent and stay with the character." Fine. Allow retraining. I personally think retraining is awesome. Allow that full-on psionic "remake your entire character sheet" jazz, that's fine.

I kinda think there's like, lots of settings where retraining doesn't make lots of sense. And maybe being trigger-happy about retraining's retarded, because people are what they know? Would be saner to just have a big commandment for GMs to stop harassing in any way people who ... make new characters.

[Fuchs]

In our D&D campaigns, we allow redoing your character as long as it's not too drastic - meaning, as long as it stays within the general power level of the party, and the core concept doesn't get changed too much.

The level 16 barbarian changed to a rogue/barbarian without a fuss. Later, the whole party changed their characters retroactively when we introduced ToB into the game.

[Bigode]

In our D&D campaigns, we allow redoing your character as long as it's not too drastic - meaning, as long as it stays within the general power level of the party, and the core concept doesn't get changed too much.

The level 16 barbarian changed to a rogue/barbarian without a fuss. Later, the whole party changed their characters retroactively when we introduced ToB into the game.

Doing that off-screen because a new book was introduced is metagame, fine because - supposedly - the old characters are best represented by the new material. But try to do that frequently, and especially for ... changing race, and I doubt things'll work so well in most settings.

[Koumei]

I once played a character that sucked, and the DM wouldn't let me retrain (I was a Ninja/Ninja - CAdv and Rokugan. I wanted to retrain to a caster, who'd make a better ninja anyway, especially if we assume that all ninjas know crazy spells as seen in Shinobi, Real Ultimate Power and, of course, Karakuri Ninja Girl).

So my character became an hero (well, the character actually died through completely normal means, but I was looking for an opportunity to write her out anyway) and I brought in a Cleric, that Cleric, and things were wonderful ever since. The DM didn't say otherwise so I just assumed that she would have an identical amount of XP. And the circumstances involved the character dying on a different plane to the party, so no gear was even left to be looted.

Moral of the story: If you don't let players retrain, they'll become an hero.

[Hicks]

Am I pandering to ignorance? Am I advocating filing the sharp edges off of the game? 4e has a grand total of, what, 7 - 9 builds? Tops? Does it not have 9,000 options to push you under the RNG unless you know exactly what you're doing? I'm not advocating the removal of level appropriate abilities, I'm advocating the removal of the PHB Monk, or the SR4 Technomancer, or any one of a thousand things in this hobby that trades competence for coolness. Ghoul gauntlet and polar ray only exist to make the caster suffer; One of them actively fvcks with the shtick of any necromancer (Dread, Cleric, or Specialist) who casts it, and the other is a case of a 2nd level spell (scorching ray) outshining an 8th level spell, proving that it should have been a 1st level spell to begin with.

What the hell is Polar Ray doing at 8th level? It's 56 points of damage at 16th level. I don't wipe my ass with 56 points of damage at 16th level!

- FrankTrollman

Hell, I've put in the time and effort to understand what the hell I'm doing (and am about to do) when I sit down at a gaming table, and because of that, I'm the go to man for rules clarifications and application in my social circles. And, I've stated previously how much I hate the convenience over competence nature of pretty much the entire fvcking world.

What I advocate is that it should be convenient to be competent, not SuperBadAssWTFOMGBBQ111!!111!, but competent. Knights, Stab Your Face, Magicin' Skilz, Monks, Earth Bending, Fire Bending, Zigs, Zags, Your Mom, and every concievable ability within the game of a given level should be equivalent at that level of play. And yes, secret power in ability combinations will be there, and you can totally suck if that’s what you wanted: just like casting bestow curse on yourself and voluntarily never getting it removed.

Games should be designed so that it is convenient to be competent, so that the actors within it of a given standard are equivalent to each other at that standard.

[Elennsar]

Games should be designed so that it is convenient to be competent, so that the actors within it of a given standard are equivalent to each other at that standard.

Indeed. Making it a choice between cool and useful is stupid beyond measure.

On the other hand, the day that I can't play someone who would spend his last copper on something useless because I need every one of those to be level appropriate needs to stop coming back like Groundhog's Day, too.

[ckafrica]

On the other hand, the day that I can't play someone who would spend his last copper on something useless because I need every one of those to be level appropriate needs to stop coming back like Groundhog's Day, too.

I'm not arguing that this is wrong (though I'd say poorly worded) but how exactly does this have to do with the rest of the conversation? I don't see any relevance to anything anyone else has says.

[Elennsar]

Just commenting that there ought to be room to do something that's a bad idea without it gimping you.

If you HAVE to make smart choices all the time, the fact that smart is easy and simple doesn't help, you're still playing an intensely competitive can't-ever-slip-up game.

That would be obnoxiously unfun in the same way having to max out Int in order to not suck would be.

[Talisman]

Agreed.

One or two silly choices should not cripple a character.

A majority of silly options, or a basic failure to comprehend how to build a given character - those should be a serious setback.

If I want raw, unrestrained silliness, I'll play Toon.

[ckafrica]

Right and if you'd ever bothered to read anything on this board you'd know that pretty much everyone maintains that gold should not be equal to power and that magic items need to be treated in a completely different way. So it's comment that is completely unnecessary to anyone but you.

[Elennsar]

And if you ever bothered to actually try to understand what I meant, you'd recognize that I was giving an example of a choice that as written gimps characters but good design shouldn't gimp.

I'm not saying "unlike how you guys do things."

The "magic items aren't dependent on gold and so on" is a good thing by the people responsible for it because of that...but the game as written doesn't do it that way and I'm noting that things like that are just as obnoxious and obnoxious in the same way as the game demanding the highest possible optimization to not suck.

If I can't ever do something silly or foolish or impractical without DIRE CONSEQUENCES, the game isn't fun.

[Hicks]

...but the game as written

"What game are you talking about?" is the follow-up question that is irrelevent. It has never been specified to which game we are discussing, only that we are discussing game design as it applies to the entierty of recreational roleplaying. Yah, in Origional D+D and 3.x gold is power, and nobody disputes that spending a limited resource on friviolus endevors such as wine, women, and song is a bad idea in the context of that game. But That Game is not the only thing we're working with; so far, we've included examples of concepts implemented in Toon, Shadowrun, all editions of Dungeons and Dragons, the unfinished New Edition, Warhammer Fantasy, and a hypothetical Avatar system that does not even exist.

"Insert Specific Game Here" is not the be all end all of: Our hobby of recreational roleplaying and it's ratio to compotence vs. suck, which is what this thread is all about.

As an aside, I do not believe we will be discussing that ratio for much longer.

[Elennsar]

Right.

So we appear to think that there ought to be a fair amount of room for less-than-optimized and doing just fine and exactly where that is depends on how strict we (individually more than anything else) want to be.

But we appear to all fall in with the same range.

Interesting.

Edit: Okay, only 70%. Still. Far more in either C or D than any of the other choices.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Can we all agree on:

"If the character in question takes character options that makes sense to what the character does, or wants to do and the character has the relevant ability or class levels, the character in question should not be punished, in the form of sub-optimality, for that choice."

In this manner, Fighters are punished for taking +3 to magic, magic users are punished for taking +3 to swordin', and no one is punished for taking +3 to Sneaking, provided they can already sneak around a bit.

Can we agree on that?

[Talisman]

Can we all agree on:

"If the character in question takes character options that makes sense to what the character does, or wants to do and the character has the relevant ability or class levels, the character in question should not be punished, in the form of sub-optimality, for that choice."

Yes.

In this manner, Fighters are punished for taking +3 to magic, magic users are punished for taking +3 to swordin', and no one is punished for taking +3 to Sneaking, provided they can already sneak around a bit.

We're getting into swordmage/gish territory here...but presupposing "fighter" and "magic-user" are mutually exclusive for purposes of this...

...then yes.

[Hicks]

...are punished for taking

I agree with everything you said except this. At no time should a player be allowed to select a limited resource (in this case, an ability) that activly punishes them for using it; the opportunity cost for selecting any given ability of a particular level must be equivalent for another ability at that level. If you had said "The Fighter may select fireball and the Wizard may select fearful warcry, because both abilities are equivalent at the level they are selected," I could have gotten behind that.

I am not saying that, if I had designed 3.x, a Wizard can't wield a magic sword. A magic sword can be dropped, thrown, switched out, and upgraded in to an artifact of power.

I am saying that, if I had designed 3.x, a Wizard can't spend one of his 6-7 Feats on Weapon Focus (club). A Feat slot is non-extendable, unremovable, and the availability of which is severly limited accross the entire use of a character from levels 1 through 20 to a maximum of 6, barring bonus feats from race and class.

[Ice9]

Mooning seems to be picking up support!
(In regards to Hicks, "mooning" can be any possible yet totally useless option. For instance, moving across the room, then back, in a situation where that accomplishes nothing.).

I've noticed a some sentiment for "character creation shouldn't have any impact, only choices during play". However, to some extent they are the same thing. A player who misunderstands the rules enough to make something like a Wizard with 8 Int and profiency with every exotic weapon is also likely to be making bad choices during gameplay. If the rules are forgiving enough that a player who understands the basic rules can make a decent character using common sense, that's good enough for me.

The space between 3 and 4 seems to be where the action is. Perhaps I should make a "closeup" poll for that area, but I'm not really sure how to quantify "optimization amount" that precisely - even the broad examples here are a bit variable in interpretation.

[Elennsar]

The space between 3 and 4 seems to be where the action is. Perhaps I should make a "closeup" poll for that area, but I'm not really sure how to quantify "optimization amount" that precisely - even the broad examples here are a bit variable in interpretation.

My suggestions, and they're only suggestions.

Bob plays a Wizard; His Int isn't that high, and he picks about half combat feats which compliment his other abilities (since he has other things than Int)
Bob plays a Wizard; His Int isn't that high, and he spent about half his feats on combat feats that could be better suited to him, but which aren't bad.
Bob plays a Wizard; His Int isn't that high, and he spent about half his feats on combat feats that he draws little benefit from.
Bob plays a Wizard; His Int isn't that high, and he appears to have picked about half his feats randomly, the other half are fine.
Bob plays a Wizard; His Int isn't that high, and he appears to have picked his feats/powers randomly.

That ought to be enough to narrow things down.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Alright, here's my take on random character generation:

[*]Synergy should not be actively avoided (If it was, you would have is RC's 'if you fly, archery costs more' system).
[*]Synergy should not be actively created (no ability x should specifically make you better at ability y).
[*]A character generated by active adversarial (minimization) process will be weaker than a randomly generated character. Hopefully not game breakingly so. The likely reasons for being weaker: too many similar abilities (overspecialization) and a lack of synergy between abilities.
[*]A character generated by maximization will be minimally more powerful than a randomly generated ('RP-based') character.
[*]In the end, even a maximized character will play no more powerful than a random or minimized character if synergy is not exploited (this is directly counter to D&D, where a maximized character just has better numbers).

[Hicks]

*stuff*

There is no fail within that post.

At Ice9: yah... I kinda figured that was what everyone else was thinking. I picked that choice because it didn't involve the Wizard's relationship to his intelligence score, only his actions in play, which I, incorrectly, assumed were supported by that partictular gaming system.

[Draco_Argentum]

"A character generated by maximization will be minimally more powerful than a randomly generated ('RP-based') character. "

I wouldn't say RP-based there. If I play a knight and take abilities that say there are about knighting then I should be better than random. People should be able to pick abilities that sound like they fit a concept and have that be so.

[Elennsar]

Indeed. And assuming the game supports that concept for adventurers in deadly peril existing, then it should survive said deadly peril.

If "guy who goes around in heavy armor" sucks, making it something people feel it is a legitimate role is assery.