K wrote:echoVanguard wrote:
Stubbazubba wrote:Isn't this K's soapbox? Is he renting it out?
I lol'd. To be fair, though, I think nockermensch is presenting his argument a lot more effectively than K typically does.
Now you made me laugh.
Nockermensch and I only share a premise: that DMs sandbag encounters. The fact that we have opposite arguments derived from that premise was perhaps not made entirely clear.
He wants to justify bad design because "It's just an RPG and it doesn't matter," and I am pointing it out as an example of things that people do to correct bad design that ruins the play experience.
I'm actually surprised that Nockmensch hasn't already reached the "but the DM can give the fighter an artifact sword" response. It's the next step in this argument (and I know this because I've been had and seen this argument play itself out for over a decade... there really is nothing new in this thread).
Since I personally hate the over-reliance on items that characterizes D&D above the very low levels, you can just keep waiting. I tried a couple of different approaches to magic items so far and I found what you guys wrote a good enough solution (there's a "magic sword". the bonus on it depends on the wielder's level)
One thing that may not be clear right now is that I also hate the Fighting classes as they appear in 3.X D&D. In fact, I started following the Den after noticing that you guys had wrote Races of War and such. (As an aside, I started here due to that and to the loose moderation used here, I cannot withstand forums like GitP or EN World where everybody is falsely polite. My experience on RPG forums went from r.g.f.d to nothing to /tg/, which was the only other place I bothered to post until I learned about the Den. I cannot belong to a place that can't tell me to fuck off and die.)
So, again, I think we should define things better: I'm against mechanically weak classes that require help to do their thing. This is straight up disempowering to the player that likes the concept the class represents and wants to play the game fully.
But I'm for people playing up to the point they feel confortable (which can mean a character that doesn't contribute out of the combat minigame) and I'm for more people coming to the realization that a tabletop RPG isn't an objective combat game, it only roleplays being one (so that everybody isn't forced to pull the same amount of weight).
Regarding the interest level every player brings to the table, ideally you'd want a table full of players interested all the time, but this is not an ideal world, so deal with it. It's pretty much the same thing regarding everybody pulling their weight (Frank used a moocher metaphor, but aimed at the DMFs) it's even more utopic to expect everybody contributing equally. Different people simply aren't equally creative, proactive and such. Some people actually arrive at the restaurant to eat without money, and if you're already their friend, they do in fact eat for free because you enjoy their company.
In a perfect world, D&D should come out of the box with character classes that were all more or less equivalent in power and flexibility, changing only things like flavor, recharging mechanics, whatever. They all should have ways to be awesome in combat and solve problems. People could then use the game as the platform both for a war game (objective difficulty, kill or be killed mode) and for the world-building, shared storytelling game (like OotS, people will have equal spotlight time no matter if they're optimized or no). I won't even say these games modes exist in opposition to each other, because you need the diablo-like substrate to create the expectations you'll play with when telling a story.
What we have instead is a game that starts failing on delivering the balanced classes system, and people have to do their best with the shitty available tools.
So, to be 100% clear, people advocating cheap fixes like giving the artifact sword to the fighter (ie: having classes running on DM pity alone) need help. A mechanically sound and balanced game as proposed by the Den is the next best thing, because at least here we have a coherent ruleset to infer the game worlds. Having this bare minimum, each group should then decide how confortable they are with stuff like people only caring for combat, people not pulling their weight and such (the druid sniffling flowers is a silly extreme of the later. For the actual version, if we sort all the druid's possible actions from the most to the least efficient, my bet is that everybody here will have a different personal limit below which they'll call bullshit to whatever the druid is doing. That right there will cause strife in a group if everybody isn't on the same page).
Some groups will decide that their tolerance to these antics is very close to zero and then they'll play the game pretty as written. If everybody is happy with that, MORE POWER TO THEM. Other groups will be confortable with a lot of zaniness, which includes things like "Fighters at a 15th party". If everybody is happy with that, MORE POWER TO THEM.
To wit, there's a difference between a group that doesn't know what's happening when the fighter is sucking monster cock during the fight and then the MC in despair has the guy find the Sword of Kas so that everybody can go back to the monster kicking ... and a group that knows exactly what a fighter represents (a liability) and then works with it. I think the first group needs help, because they seem ignorant about a lot of factors at work in a game. The second group seems fine and can have a great time, despite the Den standing outside their door, barrel of cocks at hand.
