deaddmwalking wrote: ↑Fri Oct 22, 2021 2:52 pm
Once again, I think you're conflating two things. Your argument appears to be predicated on an assumption that anyone should be as good as anyone else at anything they choose to do.
Why on earth would you think that?
I just want to remove a clumsy and needless hurdle that obfuscates and prevents players from investing character resources directly in being good at things the player wants their character to be good at to a proportionally appropriate manner.
So Luke can be good at laser-sword fighting, but so can Yoda and so can R2-D2.
You... pick as your example a group of crazy assholes that include at least 2 characters that spend at least 5 movies pretending they cannot fight, spit out fire, deflect lightning, and fly?
Personally, I didn't think sword-fighting Yoda was 'cool' - I liked him better as a wise mystic character, rather than as a duelist.
I... don't respect that opinion. I don't think that opinion should effect games, and I'm going to condemn it not just as narrow minded but ALSO as probably in large part an inability to separate a distaste for a visual effect from a preference about permissible RPG characters.
They relied on underlying physical attributes (which is why old Yoda couldn't do those things anymore - at least without Force augmentation). While that is a point you can assert, the validity of the argument is up for debate.
... up for debate? It's crazy talk is what it is. The closest thing in the star wars universe to base attributes is Midi-chlorians and they are also universally regarded as the worst thing in the star wars universe. Star wars does NOT tell us "Yoda used to have a higher Strength score when he was slightly younger ancient instead of swamp hermit ancient". And if it did... so what? You can get old and weak without base attributes, it happens in the real world after all.
I think that in a game of imagination, stereotypes do have utility.
That does not mean all stereotypes implemented in all ways have utility.
Even a racist orc stereotype DOES have utility in an RPG. If you pull out your orc wizard character and go on an adventure and a fight against racist stereotypes people try to inflict on you that COULD be fun. Creating structure and conflict in your story.
But that only works if the stereotype you are in conflict with is made out of fluff and fiction, a misconception held by other characters.
When the stereotype is
game mechanical you are instead choosing to role play in a world where those anti-orc racists are actually objectively correct and you are trying to defy your very real objective inferiority. And that is, way less cool.
And again, I don't really care if it's an orc wizard or a hutt jedi or the second worst implementation of Sherlock Holmes in recent memory. Game mechanically enforcing inferiority on arbitrary groups of character concepts will always bite you in the ass, you WILL have players who want to "play against type" because that's part of the psychology of wanting their personal player character to be special.
This is why you cannot just present players with a set of types they can play and imagine you have accounted for everything their natural reaction is to take one your types as presented and ask "how can I make this uniquely my own?". Your system must have sufficient give and flexibility to allow that and base attributes are not just a wall but a potential maze full of trap options that prevent that.
Personal tastes matter here, but I don't want a character to be able to put every point into 'ultimate weapon' and no points into anything else
Why would you pretend you can or should do that?
Look I'm more than happy to let you endlessly claim that each and every time your system encounters a mechanically punished viable archetype you somehow customize the rules to account for and support it individually with individual classes and a new set of abilities that do the same thing as other abilities but tied to different base attributes.
But... you want to pull out the most extreme version of the specialization problem, claim your preferred direction is immune to it and tie it to the alternative to use as a straw man?
Similarly, Merxa's post. It wasn't as uncharitable as that, but it is made in large part out of baseless assumptions presented instead as conclusions that naturally follow entirely disjointed points.
In many point-buy systems, they provide some 'archetypes'. They're not actual classes - just examples of how you can spend your points to pull off a given character concept.
Suggestions aren't binding and don't punish you for "doing it wrong".
However I think I can condemn a lot of specific implementations of suggested archetypes for multiple reasons. They undermine the point of going classless, they are often used to try and mask over large mechanical flaws by "suggesting" players avoid them, and honestly a good points buy system shouldn't really need them the available options should intuitively inspire players to build interesting characters with them.
But that is all neither here nor there. Because a suggestion is not a base attribute, and a base attribute is FAR different to a suggestion.
Incidentally, most of them STILL use attributes - and I don't think it is for tradition.
Most of them still use attributes because most systems period still use attributes. Something that would be entirely consistent with my view that attributes are a wide spread tradition.
I would suggest in fact that attributes in points buy systems are fundamentally worse than attributes in other systems (how many times have you seen a point buy system where "the bit that broke the fastest/broke everything else" was base attributes?). I would suggest that even in class based systems when the attributes are themselves points buy they are worse than attributes in other systems (genuinely randomized attributes could almost justify base attributes). And, that again, the only reason they persist even in these cases where they ARE worse than others, is again, tradition.
In those cases, attributes avoid a divide by zero error. If you don't have a relevant skill or ability, the system defaults to an attribute check because that's the fundamental level of the system. Knowing that you can't possibly predict all attempted actions, you end up with a kludge. Maybe you ask the GM to look at what skills the character has, decide which one is closest, then roll at a penalty based on how different it is. That doesn't seem more transparent to me than just saying 'roll an attribute check'.
The start of that acts like you can't revert to a default without base attributes (you can) then you present one of the alternatives to base attributes for a default, one that IS even used in base attributes systems and in fact would be unintuitive to avoid using even in a base attribute system and then complain that you don't like it as much.
You can't account for all actions. A base attribute system is NOT a magic safety net that accounts for all unnaccounted for actions. In theory trying to use it as such, and arbitrarily declaring all other character values should not be used as such, is bad not just because that is kinda dumb but because the already damaging hiving off of accounted for abilities into base attribute stereotypes now adds on the utterly unbalanced and unaccounted for variation in "every other action you might imagine" now hiving off unpredictably at the last moment into base attribute stereotypes as well.
But, then who cares? We all know the sorts of "unnaccounted" for actions you are talking about and it's a by the vast majority a pile of trivial nonsense we can (and would still have to, and already do) deal with however we feel like really. It has nothing one jot to do with base attributes.
Recognizing failures in specific implementations still does not generalize it to a base failure in the system. But I agree that making attributes important for a critical function for a class can make a character less effective if they don't invest in that attribute. Where I'm not sold is where that fails to support 'explicitly intended viable stereotypes'. And I have an example we can use to discuss this in more detail!
I think you might have some sort of problem with drawing the worst possible examples from modern fiction, I don't mean worst for your case, just worst.
Anyway.
You know that base attributes routinely are the failing point of classes, character builds, and various specific options or combinations of options.
One of your primary solutions to support character builds despite having base attributes limit them is to just present more and more classes, characters builds and combinations of options.
To some extent more content to support more content IS a tautological requirement.
But, when you allow an underlying weakness to remain in the system, one that routinely unintentionally sabotages such content every single time you add those types of content that are susceptible to that underlying weakness you risk creating a monk or a bard.
It's a design methodology thing. If you identify a flaw that is prone to creating other flaws, if you can fix or remove it, you do that rather than just cross your fingers and hope you will forever in future manage to account for it without error. You do not move forward with a design that requires you to get a perfect result every time in a field full of examples of every other designer ever failing to do that.
Also, your downy junior punch wizard looked a bit like a unconvincingly bad matching kludge. I'm not going to hold it against your argument, because with minimal effort you should have been able to present something far better as an example if you wanted to.
It's just odd you spent that much time to present something that poorly matched based on such a horrendous piece of fiction. At this rate I look forward to the representation of the Will (fucking dumb ass) Ferrel Holmes with 3 pieces of straw and a whoopee cushion. Though really, that WOULD represent Will (ew its him again) Ferrel pretty well.
Again, matter of preference. When I play a rogue, I want to try different things - I don't want them to be cookie-cutter, even though they have the same class abilities. One of them I might play as a sniper; another as a two-weapon fighting duelist. I don't like 3.5 classplosion where so many abilities are exclusively the domain of a particular class and I particularly don't like the magical/mundane divide; I think most classes benefit from the ability to incorporate a small amount of magic at higher levels. I like attributes as a quick way to describe someone; an easy way to mechanically differentiate similar classes, and I like a lot of customization within a class. Having different pools of abilities (attributes/skills/feats/class abilities, etc) give you a variety of tools to customize a particular concept. I certainly think that having a class that is Sherlock the Boxer, a completely different class that is Sugar Ray Leonard the boxer (Boxer-Puncher), and a third completely different class that is Ivan Drago the boxer (Slugger) is poor use of design space.
I think you need to think very hard about virtually every sentence of that text there and consider what it is you really want out of your game and what game mechanics you actually need to have.
Because almost all of it reads like you are presenting contradictory goals and methods.
You do not seem to like classes or grouped stereotypes of options at all. You very much seem to be describing things you want which would be massively better supported without classes or base attributes.
You also seem to be entirely pleased by arbitrarily tying multiple unrelated roles together in "Rogue" like Sniper and Two Weapon duelist (why on earth would you put those in the same class as separate build paths in a same system?) but then seem to think that it is exclusively base attributes that mean you can have three subtypes of guy who punches people in a guy who punches people class.
This whole section stands out from your other text as not belonging to someone who knows what they want or how to get it.