Kitchen Sink Roleplaying

[TavishArtair]

What a bunch of pussies.

[Kobajagrande]

lol, good one.

[Username17]

I'm not arguing with you there, I'm saying that being low on HP (more than any other resource, really) really incentivises me to say "I don't care about concessions of the mayor against the Baron. It's not like I own the kingdom, what do I care if we pack up and leave and the mayor's people have to hand over additional concessions and lose the overall war? We'll be off doing something else, somewhere else."

Anytime any events the occur during the mission make the rest of the mission more difficult it is an incentive to give up and start a new mission. It would be counterbalanced by whatever incentives there are to continue the mission and try to complete it, and exacerbated by whatever penalties there are for continuing the mission under more difficult circumstances and failing.

Now, there are a lot of events that can make a mission more difficult. Taking lasting damage, using up limited use abilities, having the enemies sound alarms, whatever. And so if you want people to continue missions from time to time, you're going to have to set the incentives such that they counterbalance the incentives to stop the mission. In D&D proper, this is normally done by having the enemies be set to destroy the entire fucking planet. That is, you tell the PCs outright that you're ending the fucking campaign if they don't press on, so they'd better fucking do it. But obviously, a less heavy handed approach is possible if the game operates on different core assumptions.

Your solution:

2) HP just recharges, and presumably everyone enters every battle at full power, or people have some degree of "X per day badassery" so they enter with less actual power but at full HP. It's probably a psychological "These are my life points" thing but acknowledging that doesn't make me change it - I still heal up that 6 damage from 106,000 HP between battles in Disgaea, and that's a OHKO game.

I seriously think 2) is going to be the easiest solution here

Is basically admitting defeat utterly. You're saying "Well, events that make a mission more difficult just can't and won't happen." Which is in turn saying that enemies cannot sound alarms or work together, and that actions in one battle cannot affect later battles. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? That is the most fucking retarded idea I have ever heard.

-Username17

[Koumei]

That isn't what I'm fucking saying, minion. I even admitted that it's largely a psychological thing specifically about HP. I'm happy for various things to make future battles harder, including "enemies escaping and sounding the alarm", "noise being made in combat which in turn alerts more enemies", "we made half the building collapse so we'll have to make our way through dangerous rubble with hidden foes from here on out" and "we used up a lot of our spells and potions, we need to be pretty conservative from here on out".

More enemies, or better prepared enemies, means the upcoming battle is more likely to happen (harder to sneak past) and more of a struggle/grind, where you'll suffer more gradual damage as you can't race in, curb-stomp them and call it a day. That's fine.

Using up most of your spells and such, again, basically means the next battle is going to be harder, sure, because you can't pull out your big guns, and is more likely to be a bit of a grind.

Being on a handful of HP means the next time anything hits you, bang, you lose. So it's stupid to enter a situation where that "anything hits you" is going to happen. Which means either jacking up your defences to "my AC = your attack bonus plus 25", fucking off and resting, or finding a way to win without letting the enemies even get an attack (3E: one of the "I win, no save" type spells/combos. Or PAOing the entire fortress into solid coal and burning it down from the outside, or whatever.)

Now sure, part of the problem is the current 3E mindset where, if you enter a battle with, say, 10 HP, then as soon as something hits you, you go straight to -35 and actually die. Which needn't even be the case in a theoretical game - it can be "At zero hit points, you lose. What losing means largely depends on what the winner wants it to mean." But even so, it still means that, unless I-Win abilities or RNG-breakers are still available for the players to exploit (which I assume we don't want there to be in this hypothetical game system), entering combat at low health puts the players one random dice roll away from instant defeat, when many dice are expected to be rolled against them per battle.

[ggroy]

[Koumei]

I'm not sure what you mean, possibly because of all the codeine. So I'm going to guess, and answer based on the guess.

In general, it's going to be assumed that you're going to fight some battles (particularly the final boss) but not all. It is unreasonable to expect that you can side-step every encounter. Now, it is reasonable to expect you can side-step some.

But as you get deeper, you tend to cut off more options - especially as you start making noise. Once everyone is on high alert, you can't sneak past as many because more people are actively looking for you, so not only is encounter X actually harder to avoid, but also encounters Y and Z are potentially there, so even if you do sneak past X, you might bump into Y which wouldn't have otherwise been there.

Now, there's also diplomacy and such. Honestly, when you're in their base, trying to assassinate/capture their leader, and rescue their captive/steal their stuff, chances are you can't make much headway. Your best bet is either lying or intimidation, which can probably get you through a handful of these lesser encounters, but won't help with the boss fight. And even attempting to talk is giving them the opportunity to say "Screw it" and attack you first. D&D has always encouraged the option of "Okay, we're all adults here, we can just talk it o-SNEAK ATTACK!"

So yes, there are other ways of dealing with these encounters, but chances are you're going to be fighting a bunch of them, and as you get in (and potentially cock it up), you're likely to end up having to fight a larger number of these. And basically it's a given that the boss fight (which is objectively the hardest before you factor in the fact that the party is usually at less than full strength) is that - a boss fight.

Also, the higher in level you get, the more options and abilities you get, but at the same time the more the enemy gets, which basically translates to a bigger starting advantage for the players, but as they let the enemies become aware of them and prepare, more player options get shut down and it becomes more and more a case of Fight/Flight.

And that's all realistic and the way things should be. Indeed, it would be crazy to expect that, as the party gets worn down, suddenly more guards decide they can sleep on the job or become more likely to open up in conversation and lead them to where they want to go. So you need to accept that, as it goes on, particularly when the party makes noise, takes too long, fails certain things etc., they are likely to have to fight more foes if they wish to continue, and that means they can't be on "The next hit will take me out of action".

[ggroy]

[Username17]

More guards that do damage is completely logically interchangeable with you having a smaller amount o damage before you drop. Those two states aren't even different tactically.

So you need to accept that, as it goes on, particularly when the party makes noise, takes too long, fails certain things etc., they are likely to have to fight more foes if they wish to continue, and that means they can't be on "The next hit will take me out of action".

No. It does not mean that at all. Your defenses abraiding and their offenses improving are the same thing. They are exactly ad in all ways exactly the same thing. If you're saying that you respond differently to an increase in Damage Supply than to a Decrease in Defensive Demand that both mean that you could lose in one round of bad luck die rolling, you are telling me that you are insane and incapable of behaving rationally in response to mathematical incentives.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

Frank, people are incapable of behaving rationally in response to mathematical incentives.

[Orion]

In fairness frank, that's explicitly what she said: that she has a nonrational response to specifically low HP scores, and that therefore she would prefer a game in which attrition affected class features or something rather than health.

I imagine it's probably not an uncommon bias to have--you should know that humans are risk-averse, that is, will evaluate a system differently whether it's framed as a chance of winning or a chance of losing. So considering whether that cognitive bias needs a workaround is not a crazy thing to do.

[RandomCasualty2]

In fairness frank, that's explicitly what she said: that she has a nonrational response to specifically low HP scores, and that therefore she would prefer a game in which attrition affected class features or something rather than health.

I wouldn't really call it non-rational. Lower HP scores mean you're more likely to die easily. In situations where you die easier, you tend to act more carefully, and take way more precautions as the margin for error is significantly smaller.

That's actually pretty rational thinking.

[Kaelik]

In fairness frank, that's explicitly what she said: that she has a nonrational response to specifically low HP scores, and that therefore she would prefer a game in which attrition affected class features or something rather than health.

I wouldn't really call it non-rational. Lower HP scores mean you're more likely to die easily. In situations where you die easier, you tend to act more carefully, and take way more precautions as the margin for error is significantly smaller.

That's actually pretty rational thinking.

Hey dumbfuck, try reading.

She explicitly said that having 10 HP when enemies do 10 damage per round is something she avoids no matter what, but that having 100HP when enemies do 100 damage a round is okay, because she treats HP differently than increased enemy strength.

Even a five year old can see that those are identical situations, She even agreed they are the same situation. Why can't you see that?

[Koumei]

Hey dumbfuck, try reading.

She explicitly said that having 10 HP when enemies do 10 damage per round is something she avoids no matter what, but that having 100HP when enemies do 100 damage a round is okay, because she treats HP differently than increased enemy strength.

I did not say that you lying cockbag. Increased enemy strength tends to mean "more of them" in these cases - the enemies, having been alerted, don't grab their death cannons they mysteriously weren't going to use otherwise. It means you fight more. And by fighting more enemies, yes, your chances of defeat are greater, but not by as much. Consider:

The party has, sure, 100 HP each, and they do 30 damage per round. Normally they might have to fight guard patrol A, which has 4 foes, each with 60 HP, and who deal 25 damage each. So they get into a fight, and in round one, two guards die, and the other two all gang up on player 1, reducing him to 50 HP. On the next turn, they again shank the last two guards.

Now let's say they fucked up earlier and the alarm is raised. So instead they fight eight guys all at once. They kill two, and split the rest through clever positioning, so that two players are reduced to 25 HP each. Then they kill another two, and again split the foes, shuffle around to protect their team etc., and the other two players are reduced to 50 HP each. They shank two more enemies, then all four party members are on 25 HP each, but it's okay because they win the fight after that.

See, even with earlier events translating to "Now you have to fight twice as many people", they still survive (using this hypothetical, simplistic system), they're just really worse off, and it also took longer.

If, instead, an earlier failure meant that the players all start on 25 HP each, or less, whatever, then the basic 4 guards turns into this:
Round 1: the party defeats two guys. The other two guards defeat a character each.
Round 2: the party now only defeats one guy, and another party member goes down.
Round 3: the survivor, if he doesn't flee or surrender, injures the last guard, who in turn defeats him. And the team loses.

Adding more foes, or more chances of fighting foes, unless you get stupid about it (if instead of 8, they fought 20, then sure, they're looking at getting defeated, obviously), increases the difficulty but is something that can be managed. The chances of success are still within reason - enough so that the party can risk pushing on. Outright keeping their HP low (yes, or granting the enemy damage boosts that also equate to OHKO) means party members start dropping, and once that starts happening it gets even worse for the survivors and defeat is more or less guaranteed. if one hit is all it takes to defeat you, you can't risk that one hit happening.

But Kaelik actively wants to be a cockbag about it, and Frank just does this any time anyone disagrees with him, because he's used to being right.

[Username17]

Koumei, you just compared doubling opposition to quartering total defenses. Also you used additional defensive tactics against the doubled enemies and none against the non-doubled enemies when you had quartered hit points.

Do you not see how completely out of your ass you are talking?

Let's do an actually general case: your team takes out 1 enemy per round, and suffers one attack from each of the enemies per round that they are up. In the case of there being 4 enemies, you suffer 10 enemy attacks before they are all gone (if they fight to subdual). In the case with 8 enemies, you suffer 36 attacks before they are all gone.

So being attacked by two groups of 4 at the same time instead of one group of 4 and another subsequent group of 4 is 1.8 times as dangerous. No shit it's worse than having one quarter the defensive margin remaining! Try comparing the situation o having hit point damage carry over from one encounter to the next versus fighting both groups, you'll ind that damage carry-over is only 55% as dangerous in this situation as fighting both enemy groups together. And that the additional danger of having damage carry over is roughly as dangerous as an alarm bringing both enemy groups together if you start the two battles consecutively with 55 hit points rather than 100.

But bringing in a single, non-equal case where you reduced defenses more than you increased enemy offenses to claim that this shows that reducing player defenses is somehow worse than increasing enemy attack power in a general case is at best stupid. And at worst, deliberately dishonest.

Increasing enemy attack power and decreasing player defenses are by definition the same in terms of increased danger. By definition the same!

-Username17

[Koumei]

I only just noticed I doubled in one case and quartered in another. I'll chalk my recent stupidity (not just in this thread) to all the codeine I'm needing to take this last week, it seems to be clouding my mind. As a doctor-in-training do you happen to know of any non-narcotic painkillers that are as effective as narcotics for treating pain? That or the sleep problems. But yeah, I'll admit that was really stupid. Like, Elenssar stupid, that I should be ashamed of.

So if it was 16 guards, then what happens is in round one, two guards are knocked out and 14 more then deal 350 damage, which means one player is left standing, against 14 enemies, and loses.

Which probably shows mostly that a system as simple as this hypothetical one is bad. But still, if odds are ever that low, the players are better off leaving, polymorphing the tower into coal, and then burning the whole thing down, killing the baron and all his guards (then going home and saying the evil, insane baron did it just to avoid capture, sadly the mayor died, very tragic, will of the gods, all that).

So you see, yes, everything needs to have at least halfway realistic consequences, so that players can say "A leads to B. A happened, so prepare for B" as opposed to players going "I don't know, A once led to B, this time it leads to Donkey."

But if events ever get to the point where players can say "I bet you the cost of the pizza that we'll lose this", and have good odds of getting their free pizza, then the players are better off getting out of there and looking for a wide-area genocide tactic. Which goes against the goal of "Let's not have the players be roaming psychotic murderers."

[RandomCasualty2]

The problem with lower hit points versus more enemies is that the lower hit points produce a much more swingy battle, and that's almost always bad for the PCs. The PCs are generally fewer in number and lose more firepower when one of them drops. This means that playing a game of rocket launcher tag is bad for the PCs.

Having more enemies, but full HP is good for the PCs unless the battle didn't favor them to begin with. Of course, that rarely happens anyway, unless your DM is TPK prone.

[Username17]

They exchange rate of extra enemies to reduced hit points is fairly complex, and is in any case not going to be the same when you change variables elsewhere in the system. For example, in 4e I would seriously rather go into a battle with reduced hit points than ace more enemies because I am going to run out of special attacks fairly quickly, and dropping isn't actually a big deal when there are Laser Clerics in the house.

In general, systemic painkillers cause insanity, because they systemically suppress the nervous system. Systemic anti-inflammatories like Ibuprofen can reduce pain without making you crazy because they don't affect the nerves, they reduce pressure on the nerves. And topical pain killers like cocaine lydocaine can cause total numbness in an area without making you go nuts because they have a very topical effect.

Note: Cocaine actually does make you crazy as a totally separate effect - the numbness is incidental to why people usually take it.

Anyway:

---

Role Protection

Perhaps the most important and unfortunately difficult to enforce limitations on a potential character in the game is the idea of treading on the toes of one of the other players. Simply: a player does not have the right to play a character who steals the thunder of another player's character. Doing so is a tremendous slap in the face of the other player, and diminishes the contribution to the story of both players. This cannot be solved by rules alone, because it is entirely possible that two players will bring characters that overlap heavily to the table completely unaware of what the other player was planning on playing. However, the rules can make avoiding overlapping characters easier and it can make it more difficult by how the game is set up. And it does this through mechanical incentives and labeling.

Regardless of how open (or not) the game system is, every character will in some manner be unique. Likely they have a personal name and unique outlook on lie and adventure that will not make them wholly interchangeable with any other character. Further, there is a degree to which all characters are somewhat identical in their goals and abilities – they are all adventurers, after all. And not, for example, farmers who stay at home and plow soil. So it is good to have a formalization built into the game that depicts how and why characters might be considered overlapping in ways that will be noticed and unappreciated during play. And further, it behooves the underlying game mechanics to punish players for running such characters (or rewarding players who play characters that do not step on each others' toes, which is effectively the same thing). Thus, the game benefits by having the players be mechanically rewarded for having characters that do “different” things tactically and thematically. And the game further benefits from marking what things are considered “different” for that purpose. Those things are called “roles” and the degree to which players can expect to not have their toes stepped on or thunder stolen (so long as they remember to select characters marked as being a different role), is called “role protection.”

Tactical and Thematic Roles

A player can have their toes stepped on in two major ways: they can have another character come in who is thematically interchangeable with their character, or they can have another character who is tactically interchangeable with their character. Either one of those things is infuriating, albeit for slightly different reasons. A thematic role incursions means that two players are describing fairly similar things. And while it is certainly possible for two players to deliberately work together on such a project and make a cooperative story that plays on the subtle differences between the two characters' themes and abilities and make a blended tapestry that blah blah blah... the fact is that in most circumstances what actually happens is that the player finds that every time they use their character's abilities it feels a little more stale than it should because someone else has been describing basically the same thing. It's frustrating. Even more frustrating however, is tactical overlapping. And that's where two players have characters that solve basically the same problems, be it healing injuries, picking locks, or breaking curses. When that happens, players have to either flip a coin or play slapjack whenever the opportunity to use their thing comes up – meaning that both players get a chance to use their abilities half as often, which is a poor deal for both players. The goal then, is to make something of a marriage between tactical and thematic potential – thereby making it easy to tell if someone is suggesting making a character that would impinge on your character's projected role. And more importantly still, to produce a nomenclature that allows that information to be

Magical abilities could do anything, and if you sum all stories told then they pretty much actually do. Nevertheless, there is more room thematically at any particular table for different mundane ability sets (or “mundane-like” ones such as those of Wonder Woman from DC Comics). This is because world we come from is mundane and there are therefore a lot more words to describe mundane activities than magical ones. The amount of description possible in reference to something like “swashbuckling” is many times more than the amount of description available for “lightning magic” – even though of course the things that lightning magic could plausibly do is a higher order of infinity than what swashbuckling could do. Lightning magic could be teleporting around like an electron, controlling the weather like a thunderstorm, levitating objects like an electro magnet, transforming substances like an electrolysis circuit, scrambling peoples' minds like a tazer, or heating things like a resistance coil. And any of those aspects could very reasonably be taken as the sole core property of “lightning magic” and entire characters made with a full suite of abilities taken from that core conception. And yet, each of those characters is still going to be intruding on the thematics of any of the others because there are only so many ways you can describing lightning magic in a language like English that was created wholly without any actual access to real lightning magic that needed to be described. Meanwhile, there is ample room for a deadly assassin, a jaunty duelist, and an explorer scoundrel to stand side by side even though they are all basically mundane finesse warriors. What this means is that even within the Kitchen Sink, it pretty much has to be nailed down what it is that Lightning Magic does, and then lightning magic as a whole is going to be set into a protected role while martial artistry can go ahead and get several roles assigned to it.

So what that means is that while you can certainly justify using electrical powers to levitate things (magnetism for the win), you can't actually do that. Levitating things comes from Telekinesis, which is a separate mystical discipline altogether. Here are some examples:

Necromancers Necromancy does not play well together with other necromancy. That is, even though there are substantially more undead beings than cultures that have ever existed in the history of the world to draw upon, and thus an essentially limitless number of things that a necromancer could plausibly do, the fact remains that whether you're raising an army of zombies or creating a powerful spectral warrior or just shooting black energy at peoples' souls, it all pretty much feels about the same. You set the dial all the way to “creepy” and you describe the action as much like Vincent Price as you possibly can. Thus, no matter how many Necromancy disciplines you ever write or how many options the Necromancer class eventually gets, you're ultimately going to still lump it all into the same role, and try to ensure that the players have no more than one at the table at a time.

Psions Psychic powers could really do anything at all, much like any other power source that isn't real. However, psionics naturally divides into two sets that can feel very different: Telekinesis and Telepathy. Those two things feel distinct enough that they can each get their own writeup and thus the Psion class can select two different roles: that of a Telekinetic Psion and that of a Telepathic Psion. When first written there will probably be two paths in one role and one in the other, and later on additional paths can be written to even it out.

Rogues Roguishness actually plays extremely well with itself. Ocean's Eleven is a pretty functional movie about eleven rogues (although in fairness, a couple of them are not fully realized characters and two of them are clearly played by the same player). You could very simply and plausibly make as many Rogue roles as you wanted. Meaning that when you make the Rogue class, you ca assign a different role to every branch of Roguing that you write up. So when you first write it, you might have a Scoundrel, Duelist, and Assassin path, and all of them could be a different role. If you write up more Rogue paths later on (rather than or in addition to writing up new Rogue-like classes like the Ninja or the Corsair), they can jolly well be different roles too.

[Username17]

Categories of Role Protection

Role protection exists so that one person doesn't end up stepping on the toes of another person by playing a character who does basically the same thing. Thus, there need to be at least as many roles as there are expected to be players. Frankly, for the game to have replayability it should probably have substantially more protected roles to choose from than there are players at any given table. This is in no small part because being told that you “have to play XXX” on the grounds that it's the only role left is extremely frustrating, and makes for uninspiring roleplay. Remember, the roles are not there to make sure that everything that can be done in the game is being done, the roles are there to make sure that everyone is doing something that is special and that they feel special. After all, if everything that could be done, could be done within a single game – there wouldn't be much purpose in having a second campaign.

It is the responsibility of the game designers to make sure that the roles actually generate the incentives that they are supposed to (namely that players be encouraged to make an ensemble cast where every player has a different role). And contrasted with some of the other tasks of the game designer (such as making presented options “balanced” and making the game follow expectations), this is surprisingly easy to accomplish. Ultimately, all that is needed is to make sure that all characters who are labeled as being members of the same role have limitations on their synergy with characters who are also labeled with the same role. So you could give members of a defined role access to the creation or abolition of a binary state (such as a curse or buff) that was beneficial to the team, but not beneficial to the team when used twice. This is often called a “non stacking” ability. An important and easy thing to remember is that a character is always the same role as themselves, so a good way to start is by making sure that characters provide more external synergy than self synergy. And that doesn't mean “providing a bonus to all allies other than themselves” that means that a character doing whatever it is that they do should be benefiting people who are doing something else, not just being someone else.

And yet, what constitutes a role? A role doesn't necessarily correspond to what kind of weapon the character uses – it is indeed easy to imagine two wildly different characters who both use swords or both use bows. Just as it is easy to imagine one character who happens to use a sword and a bow depending upon circumstances – and I don't much respect a role playing game that does not allow for such a possibility (and neither does Robin Hood or Conan). A role is really about what specific “super” abilities a character has, which you can think of as being what kinds of stuff happens when the character uses a limit break. So in that schema a Thor-like warrior really is stealing the thunder (in this case literally) of a storm witch – because they both pull out the lightning bolts for the big guns – even though our Thor clone beats on people with a hammer and our storm witch shoots little lightning bolts for the little stuff.

It is thus very conceivable that different classes will have options that put them into the same role, just as it is entirely possible for one class to have options that push it into different roles. But in any case, the role is always going to be magical in a magic world. Even characters who officially aren't using any magic (such as Artificers) are going to be assigned an arbitrary magical classification based on what kind of magic their actions mimic functionally. Sort of like how Lucca in Chronotrigger is labeled “Fire” even when she doesn't know any magic.

• Chiromancy
• Chronomancy
• Divination
• Enchantment
• Geomancy
• Goetia
• Hydromancy
• Illusion
• Necromancy
• Numerology
• Pyromancy
• Scapulomancy
• Telekinesis
• Telepathy
• Thaumaturgy

[NoDot]

Sort of like how Lucca in Chronotrigger is labeled “Fire” even when she doesn't know any magic.

Lucca does learn magic. You're thinking of Robo (Shadow).

[RandomCasualty2]

I'm really not sure role protection is a great idea. Role protection issues sort themselves out if the game has a good amount of ability choices which are unique and balanced.

For kitchen sink roleplaying you don't want to have heavily typed characters, as that sort of defeats the entire purpose. There aren't X amount of character types in Kitchen sink, there are tons of them. In fact, you probably never meet a wizard or monk quite like yourself. You want to have scorpion, Cyrax and Qui Chang Caine. You also want to be able to fit time mages, elemenetalists as well as generalists like Elminster.

And its really impossible to create a role protection among a broad group without excluding concepts, which isn't what kitchen sink roleplaying is about.

Now, what you do have is a finite amount of ability slots. Whether those slots happen to be class levels, feats or GURPS character points is irrelevant. The point is that you use them to buy different abilities and you eventually run out of them.

The concepts of protected roles only tend to come up with a certain role ability is super good and everyone wants to take it. But this is another way of saying that a given role is unbalanced. If you balance your abilities right, then everyone won't be running to get the same ability and infringe on other people's schticks.

Now you'll never be able to prevent two people who both have the same character concept from creating similar characters. Two people both basing their characters off of Conan just aren't going to end up different.

You're also going to have some overlap when you get to more generalist characters. If your game is going to include the human torch, a pyromancer and Elminster, then you're gonna deal with a degree of overlap, and that's actually desireable.

[IGTN]

Sort of like how Lucca in Chronotrigger is labeled “Fire” even when she doesn't know any magic.

Lucca does learn magic. You're thinking of Robo (Shadow).

Even when =/= even though.

[Ganbare Gincun]

I'm really not sure role protection is a great idea. Role protection issues sort themselves out if the game has a good amount of ability choices which are unique and balanced.

I don't know if this holds true for other RPGs, but I sure haven't seen this play out in D&D 3.X. You basically end up with a bunch of spellcasters running around that can fill the roles of non-casters just as well (or in some cases, better then) martial characters. The fact that they have tons of raw power and the ability to spam their abilities like crazy without diminishing returns doesn't alleviate the situation much. And members of the same class don't *feel* very different from one another.

For kitchen sink roleplaying you don't want to have heavily typed characters, as that sort of defeats the entire purpose. There aren't X amount of character types in Kitchen sink, there are tons of them. In fact, you probably never meet a wizard or monk quite like yourself. You want to have scorpion, Cyrax and Qui Chang Caine.

Keep in mind that Frank's proposal does not mean that you're going to have a bunch of clones running around. Within each class, you'll have a number of builds and abilities to choose from, a subclass that grants you additional abilities, and active racial abilities that give you some additional options in tactical combat and during Skill Challenges. And Frank hasn't even really talked about Prestige Classes yet. A Kitchen Sink Monk is probably going to be less of a "cookie-cutter" character then a 3.X Monk, honestly.

And hey - monster classes that don't suck! I'm down with that.

You also want to be able to fit time mages, elemenetalists as well as generalists like Elminster.

I suspect there's room for all of these characters. But the generalist wizard is going to be a lot more like Wizards from Earthdawn and a lot less like that fucking cockbag self-insert Marty Sue motherfucker Elminster.

And its really impossible to create a role protection among a broad group without excluding concepts, which isn't what kitchen sink roleplaying is about.

If a concept is distinct enough to stand on its own, you would determine the role that best fits the concept and then write up a new class/subclass accordingly. You end up with Duskblades and Dread Necromancers - classes that are "fluffy", yet potent and balanced.

Now, what you do have is a finite amount of ability slots. Whether those slots happen to be class levels, feats or GURPS character points is irrelevant. The point is that you use them to buy different abilities and you eventually run out of them.

Using build points to create characters isn't an illegitimate game concept by any means, but it doesn't allow players to deal with classes in nice conceptualized chunks. You can probably build a Necromancer in GURPS or a Rogue in SR4 easily enough, but they're not so much members of a "class" as they are characters with a jumble of powers with a label slapped on them (much like D&D Wizards). There's no sense of identity or a underlying unified concept. Say what you will about Final Fantasy XI or World of Warcraft, but whenever you talk about a "Dragoon" or a "Warlock" in those games, everyone has a very well-defined communal idea of what those classes "mean".

The concepts of protected roles only tend to come up with a certain role ability is super good and everyone wants to take it. But this is another way of saying that a given role is unbalanced. If you balance your abilities right, then everyone won't be running to get the same ability and infringe on other people's schticks.

Protected Roles don't so much prevent players from taking singular uber-abilities (which shouldn't really be in the game to begin with no matter what), but it does prevent them from combining disparate, independently balanced powers together like Voltron to obtain uber-effects, which is one of the weaknesses of GURPS and Champions.

You're also going to have some overlap when you get to more generalist characters. If your game is going to include the human torch, a pyromancer and Elminster, then you're gonna deal with a degree of overlap, and that's actually desireable.

The human torch and the pyromancer may both play with fire, but they'll need to do different, distinct things with fire, or else they won't be able to play with each other in a party very well. And fuck Elminster.

[RandomCasualty2]

Protected Roles don't so much prevent players from taking singular uber-abilities (which shouldn't really be in the game to begin with no matter what), but it does prevent them from combining disparate, independently balanced powers together like Voltron to obtain uber-effects, which is one of the weaknesses of GURPS and Champions.

In kitchen sink roleplaying though, there's no such thing as disparate effects, because there are no standards. Remember that any number of characters may have effects that let them move in a blur of speed. Any number of characters may have flight effects, and so on. The entire point of kitchen sink is that you're throwing everything in there and that means that your game can't be strongly typed. It's not just Conan or just Harry Potter, it's everything, plus whatever your players can think up.

It's real easy to come up with backstory that ties together all manner of abilities, it's just a matter of flavoring. Fuck just the generic "He's a creation of an insane wizard's ritual" or "he has psionic powers." is enough to explain even the craziest of ability combinations.

Now, you may think it's a bad idea to include everything, but this is about kitchen sink roleplaying, where that's actually a design goal. Limiting what powers can combo with others probably isn't a good idea. At most you can charge people synergy penalties, where you've got to pay more points for flight if you also have a ranged attack or something weird like that.

[Username17]

Ultimately the abilities that characters in the game have access to must be sharply limited in a game where the players have any degree of freedom and authorial control. If the abilities that characters could possibly have are subjected to the same "write as you go" logic as the culture and government of the Nezumi then you're going to have a huge problem whenever you have the player characters with some change in their pockets and access to a big city. At no time do you ever want the players to say:

This seems like an... onion... related problem. Let's go hire a first level Shallotmancer to find the villain and teleport us to him.

And yet, with truly open ended abilities that is inevitable. All problems become one not of using the characters' abilities, but of finding an NPC who has the specific powerful but limited ability that solves the exact problem you happen to have and paying him five gold coins.

The players need to be able to have a grip on what things can be done so that they can make tactical decisions and the DM needs to be able to have a grip on what things can be done so that they can design adventures. Unlike the cast of rogues, the condition list is simply not extensible - every curse from fatigue and paper cuts up to disintegration and petrification is essentially a "big question" that must be answered as completely and finally as death and resurrection itself.

And the simple fact that the difficulty of adding and removing these conditions must be answered with finality means that you can't just add whatever you want whenever you want. Even if your list of possible character archetypes is very long, it's still going to be finite and specific. It has to be, because if it isn't then you're constantly going to be hit by Gygaxian DNS attacks that you have no counter for, because the attack and the counter weren't even invented until after your character was finalized.

And "do anything" characters like Elminster can and should die in a fire. That's not even up for discussion.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

And yet, with truly open ended abilities that is inevitable. All problems become one not of using the characters' abilities, but of finding an NPC who has the specific powerful but limited ability that solves the exact problem you happen to have and paying him five gold coins.

Well, actually not really. Kitchen Sink gaming doesn't have to mean that every possible NPC combination exists, only that the PCs can make any character. While the PC can make a cyber-minotaur steam mage, there's no actual requirement that there are any other cyber-minotaurs or steam mages in the setting. He could be unique. In fact, in a lot of kitchen sink settings, they are unique or damn near close to it.

The players need to be able to have a grip on what things can be done so that they can make tactical decisions and the DM needs to be able to have a grip on what things can be done so that they can design adventures.

But for a kitchen sink setting, you're not going to be able to easily design adventures for a generic group, because there seriously is no generic group. you can throw in different kinds of challenges, but you can't account for everything.

Now the one thing you actually can't have in a kitchen sink setting is too many moves that have to be countered specifically, unless those counters are readily available. You can't count on every group being able to remove a curse or dispel a golem.

And the simple fact that the difficulty of adding and removing these conditions must be answered with finality means that you can't just add whatever you want whenever you want. Even if your list of possible character archetypes is very long, it's still going to be finite and specific.

Well no, while your abilities are finite, your actual archetypes are going to be near infinite, because of combinations. You can have pure time mages, time mage knights, time mage pirates, time mage priests, knight priests, knight elementalists, whatever have you. And often times you're going to have to deal with powers being reflavored. A golem with a flame thrower and a firemage may pretty much use the same "cone of fire" ability, but the archetype is completely different.

And you have to accept that some people may make dedicated characters with a specialty, like the human Torch, you have to also accept that some people are going to create characters with a wide variety of seemingly unrelated abilities, like Superman. And your game seriously has to handle both.

No one is arguing that you should have infinite abilities, but those abilities just can't be protected such that you can't mix X and Y in the same character, because that defeats the entire purpose of kitchen sink gaming. The moment you say "Time mages can't be ninjas", you're no longer playing in a kitchen sink game.