Why the hell is this hobby so fucking retarded?

[virgil]

play a human character, but call him an orc. done.

I have had DMs and players who flat-out refuse this option.

[Archmage]

play a human character, but call him an orc. done.

I have had DMs and players who flat-out refuse this option.

I can see why. If anyone who is described as an orc could in fact have the stats of a human, your ability to understand the properties of the world around you theoretically go out the window.

Somebody, right or wrong, thought it was necessary to differentiate the damage dice and secondary properties of the glaive, the ranseur, and the guisarme; throwing a dagger into the game that deals d10 damage because "it's a refluffed bastard sword" utterly wrecks the idea that you can predict anything about anything based on its description, especially if you assume that your character would know a bastard sword is a more damaging weapon than a dagger and that the only way to differentiate the two in-character would be their appearance.

Granted, you probably can't tell from looking that somebody has 2 points of INT on somebody else immediately. But I'm sure "this orc has no darkvision" would be kind of a weird moment, although you could explain it ("it's a vision defect").

Didn't we have a thread about this?

[CatharzGodfoot]

But I'm sure "this orc has no darkvision" would be kind of a weird moment, although you could explain it ("it's a vision defect").

Seems like a great opportunity for a role (not roll) player to rant about all of the adversity her character had to put up with.

[Archmage]

But I'm sure "this orc has no darkvision" would be kind of a weird moment, although you could explain it ("it's a vision defect").

Seems like a great opportunity for a role (not roll) player to rant about all of the adversity her character had to put up with.

An orc with a vision defect might be a cool RP thing, but the whole refluffing thing can become very weird. Pathfinder's summoner class can conjure up a companion that can, per clarifications from the writers and more or less by RAW, look like anything the summoner wants. So it can have a tail...but it only gets "tail" bonuses if you spend points. It can have six heads...but only one of those heads can "do" anything unless you buy extra heads. You can ride it...but it's arbitrarily "ill-suited as a mount" unless you buy the mount advantage. And so on.

Anyway, the real reason "this hobby is retarded" is because no one has released an RPG that has gameplay of a high enough quality that it stands independently from fluff. I would not want to sit down and play a boardgame using any of the D&D rulesets because the mechanics just aren't interesting enough for the most part. Unless you drape flavor text curtains all over the bare mechanics, the game just isn't that interesting. People have sat down to play chess without bothering to spin wild tales about how exactly the knight is advancing to take the queen for centuries, but I'm pretty sure that if you tried to sell the parts of D&D that don't require large DM fiat and adjudication as their own "game" it would fall flat on its face.

Notably, they have released some D&D boardgames in the 4e era, but having played the Castle Ravenloft game I think I'd rather play just about anything else.

[Artless]

I will come out of hiding because this concerns a concept I've long been trying to suss out, and still haven't reached a satisfying conclusion.

In general, I don't think there should be mechanical differences between something like character races or species, at least nothing that penalizes a player for picking one race over another.

Or, even if there are penalties, they shouldn't be something that completely kills a concept. Orc spellcasters are terrible characters not because the core idea is bad in all cases forever, they're terrible characters because the Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma penalties prevent them from getting enough spells to compete with their counterparts among the other races.

The more radical part of me wants to say that all of these racial bonuses and penalties should be done away with. Instead, how the character's narrative is reflected in their stats should be a task left to the players themselves.

The more compromising part of me wants to say that the mechanical differences between races should be not having a particular bonus instead of having a penalty. And even these things should be lower-impact or more fringe-case on the shape and role of the character than what class they are and how the player allocated points.

I don't want to invoke the false dichotomy of "roleplay v. rollplay" but it would be better if picking a race for a character concept were informed by a narrative, not because the stats for this race are better than the other's. I've made plenty of Grey Elf wizards in my time, but in almost all cases it was because I wanted the INT bonus, not because I particularly wanted to play a Grey Elf. In any case, there are more important decisions that a player should be making to define their role in the various minigames of a system during the course of generating a character than "what race am I?" It should be about as mechanically important as their name.

To me, it doesn't make a lot of sense to prevent a player from executing a character concept. When there are character options available that are either so stupid and dysfunctional as to be prohibitive, or, on the other hand, options so far superior as to be obvious, it is stifling the opportunities for the people at the table to play what they want. If anything in a campaign is prohibited, it should be because that's the way the setting works and that's what everyone at the table agreed upon, and not because the default mechanics demand it be that way.

[...You Lost Me]

I once played a drow, although I had no clue what they were about at the time. That was after getting a long list of other choices shot down -- Aasimar, human... It was a bizarre game, and if I remembered it more clearly, I might tell you more about it.

I once played a drow, but then I took an arrow to the knee.

In other news, I'm with virgil and archmage--I know a lot of people who do the whole "if it didn't have the name orc in a book, it's not an orc". Same with fighters--you have no idea how many damn people I've tried to convince to be warblades or swordsages with a different name and heavy armor, just to get shot down by "WABARGL TRAITOR TO MANKIND", etc.

[Gx1080]

Ok, this is a roleplayer vs. rollplayer argument.

EDIT: Thought on a different way to write my argument:

This thread is probably going to descend on "race stat penalties are racist", so, before that, might as well write stuff.

First off, if roleplaying your super special and not Mary Sue at all character concept is so important, then the DM will adjust challenges accordingly.

Second, "lol orc wizard" seems to be a lazy shortcut for not writing an actual personality to your character. Same as all the cliches as "ivory tower wizard" and "fighter trying to become the NUMBER ONE BLADE CHAMPION". They are fine and all, but if a character concept absolutely depends on them, then is a weak one. Claiming the mantle of roleplaying without putting effort is weak.

Third, I really don't think that you can escape the "lil' bit of racism" as long as D&D is based on Modern Medieval Fantasy. Why? Because it started with British authors on the start of the 20th century, aka a period where the rot of the British Empire was starting to really sink in and, instead of ignoring it, the authors just doubled down the hate and the rethoric. Sounds familiar, huh? A sanitized, PC version of a bunch of tribal fights with gunpowder and iron (read: most European history) is just a hack work.

Double EDIT: No fucking wonder that LAGO bets on Urban Fantasy. While the WoD/Twilight crap pile is huge, the concept itself is salvageable. Modern Fantasy, and with it D&D, just isn't as long as people can't unlink it from it's roots.

[Blicero]

I once played a drow, but then I took an arrow to the knee.

In other news, I'm with virgil and archmage--I know a lot of people who do the whole "if it didn't have the name orc in a book, it's not an orc". Same with fighters--you have no idea how many damn people I've tried to convince to be warblades or swordsages with a different name and heavy armor, just to get shot down by "WABARGL TRAITOR TO MANKIND", etc.

Playing a Warblade and calling yourself a Fighter or Warrior is not the same, though.

Especially if a game is implied to have free multiclassing like 3.x theoretically does, there's no reason to expect that classes are anything but a metagame concept in the case of nonspellcasters.

But "orc" and "human" mean something in an ingame context. You can say, "that person is an orc," and the average character is going to understand what you mean. But if you say, "that person is a warblade," that's not necessarily going to happen. You could have a game where you have The Fighters Guild, and the Thieves Guild, but even then you're going to have barbarians and rangers in the Fighters Guild, and assassins and bards in the Thieves Guild.

[Username17]

There's a whiff of "why PCs can't be Mary Sue unique snowflakes?" in here.

In a level based system, player characters are allowed to be a specific level of Mary Sue Special Snowflake relative to the average human. The specific level of Special Snowflake they are allowed is their character level. Ideally, that means that if you are in an 8th level game that you can be 8 levels worth of special compared to a human muck farmer. But if you're playing something that is inherently badass, like a Minotaur or something, then you're still only 8 levels worth of special compared to a human muck farmer. That makes you a lot less special out of the subset of "Minotaurs" because every minotaur is already several levels of special compared to a human muck farmer.

So if you play something which would be expected to be badass, you have to accept a lower amount of specialness compared to that badass type. This goes all the way out to if you are playing a demon or a dragon, your character is actually juvenile, cursed, or in some other way sub-normal for their type. The reverse should logically also be true though. If you're playing something that would be expected to suck, like a Kobold or something, then you should expect to be more special for that type. Because you're still 8 levels worth of special compared to a human muck farmer.

Insisting that Player Characrer orc wizards have to suck for their level is exactly as wrong and for the same reason as the old AD&D DMG advice to allow player characters to play full hit-dice Ogres and Gold Dragons at first level. It's a basic refusal to acknowledge Level as a guiding principle of allowed character power.

-Username17

[Doom]

But orcs get special stuff, too. The Con bonus gives hit points making for a tougher wizard, and don't they get a strength bonus, too? I mean, if some player in my campaign really wanted to be an orc without an Int penalty, I kinda think it'd be sorta-kinda reasonable to give up an orc advantage for it. It also depends to some extent on the system; in AD&D, you would have to perform statistical tests to tell the difference between a wizard with Int of 15 and Int of 13 with any level of confidence.

It seems so goofy to damn an entire hobby (note title thread) just because some GM somewhere won't let some guy's orc in some campaign be indistinguishable from a human.

[Hieronymous Rex]

...the old AD&D DMG advice to allow player characters to play full hit-dice Ogres and Gold Dragons at first level.

The only thing I recall the 1e DMG saying about monster PCs was "I hate them, they are objectively bad" (pg21). That page also tacitly assumes that monster characters start at 1st level in power.

[CapnTthePirateG]

It seems so goofy to damn an entire hobby (note title thread) just because some GM somewhere won't let some guy's orc in some campaign be indistinguishable from a human.

That's really not what I meant, but I have a tendency to get rambly on the Internet.

My main thing is, why the hell is "one man makes the decisions for six dudes" the default? If we have six guys (or women), shouldn't they all get a say?

[TheFlatline]

It seems so goofy to damn an entire hobby (note title thread) just because some GM somewhere won't let some guy's orc in some campaign be indistinguishable from a human.

That's really not what I meant, but I have a tendency to get rambly on the Internet.

My main thing is, why the hell is "one man makes the decisions for six dudes" the default? If we have six guys (or women), shouldn't they all get a say?

When one person makes the decisions, things get done. When you open it up to the committee, surprisingly often nothing fucking happens. Period.

I mean, you're talking about a hobby where it's almost impossible to get some players to bathe within a day or two of the game occurring. A game where decision paralysis is a very real and common thing.

Finally, what's in it for the DM if you take the world-building out of the equation for them? The DM does multiple times the amount of work that the players do (usually), and has a far bigger burden. Where's the DM's fun factor? I'm not saying the DM gets to have fun by saying "no" to the players, that's bullshit. I am saying though that in exchange for taking a larger workload on, he gets to exercise his creativity almost unrestricted.

Besides, ever notice how there's only ever one or two DMs in a gaming group? If people wanted that responsibility and creative charge, they'd take it more often. I really suspect giving creative power over to the PCs evenly distributed will end up either becoming a disaster, or most players pass on their power unless they want something in particular that would complicate the DM's life.

Edit: Let's do a real life example. Several years ago I started a Shadowrun game focusing on a simsense star. This was a zero combat game. Myself and the two initial players wanted to explore other aspects of Shadowrun's setting, so we made for a social game. The game ran wonderfully for the first couple "adventures", and some friends heard about it and wanted in. I sat them down and explained to them, repeatedly and crystal clear, that this was a zero combat game. Taking combat skills would be a waste of time because I wasn't going to run *any* combat.

Both players nodded and yeah-yeah'd me to death. I got a combat mage and a street ganger as high society social characters. I said no and got into a giant pissing and moaning fight similar to your overall point. So in that situation what do I do? Fuck the original two players over who were backing me up because they *enjoyed* the game we were running? Let the players in and let them bitch at me more because they're useless from investing everything into combat? Let them in and totally fuck the original two players by introducing enough combat to make the combat monkeys feel relevant? Or continue saying no and be the bad guy because I'm being draconian?

By your argument, there is something fundamentally wrong and "retarded" with me saying "these characters are going to break the game that's already in progress".

[NineInchNall]

But orcs get special stuff, too. The Con bonus gives hit points making for a tougher wizard, and don't they get a strength bonus, too?

If the Con bonus and Strength bonus make the level eight orc wizard roughly the same amount more awesometwoallbeefpattiesspecialsauceetc than a human muck farmer as the level eight elf wizard, the level eight human wizard, and indeed the level eight anyone anything, then that's fine[/i].

But if the Int penalty is such a handicap that said level eight orc wizard isn't roughly the same amount more awesometwoallbeefpattiesspecialsauceetc than a human muck farmer as the level eight elf wizard, the level eight human wizard, and indeed the level eight anyone anything, then that's bad and you should feel bad.

The fact is that the second antecedent is true.

[Judging__Eagle]

In my ideal H<3breaker game system, people would pick species; and then pick up power.

A "minotaur shaman" could be a really frail person, because they didn't spend 8 Tiers in "Mass" or whatever str/bulk type stat the system uses; and that's fine. If, they additionally are "as big and strong as any other minotaur", that would also be fine.

Species would be almost entirely "fluff" in terms of what the norm is; along with a "baseline" for their statistics of "adult" members of the species.

Something like how After Sundown has pre-stated monsters, that can be used for multiple purposes (Ogre, Chimera).

[Username17]

...the old AD&D DMG advice to allow player characters to play full hit-dice Ogres and Gold Dragons at first level.

The only thing I recall the 1e DMG saying about monster PCs was "I hate them, they are objectively bad" (pg21). That page also tacitly assumes that monster characters start at 1st level in power.

A gold dragon can assume human shape, so that is a common choice for monster characters. If alignment is stressed, this might discourage would-be gold dragons. It it is also pointed out that he or she must begin at the lowest possible value, and only time and the accumulation and retention or great masses of wealth will allow any increase in level (age), the idea should be properly squelched.

Note: not 1st level, but merely the lowest level of gold fucking dragon. I'm not sure how starting as a Wyrmling Gold Dragon would squelch the idea of playing a dragon, or of how being Lawful Good would squelch it either - but that's a Gygax tirade for you.

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

...the old AD&D DMG advice to allow player characters to play full hit-dice Ogres and Gold Dragons at first level.

The only thing I recall the 1e DMG saying about monster PCs was "I hate them, they are objectively bad" (pg21). That page also tacitly assumes that monster characters start at 1st level in power.

A gold dragon can assume human shape, so that is a common choice for monster characters. If alignment is stressed, this might discourage would-be gold dragons. It it is also pointed out that he or she must begin at the lowest possible value, and only time and the accumulation and retention or great masses of wealth will allow any increase in level (age), the idea should be properly squelched.

Note: not 1st level, but merely the lowest level of gold fucking dragon. I'm not sure how starting as a Wyrmling Gold Dragon would squelch the idea of playing a dragon, or of how being Lawful Good would squelch it either - but that's a Gygax tirade for you.

-Username17

Actually, the idea that I'd have to accumulate and sit on increasingly large amounts of treasure in order to level up would be what kills the game for me.

"No! You can't spend that money goddamn it, I need it to level up!"

[Maj]

Actually, the idea that I'd have to accumulate and sit on increasingly large amounts of treasure in order to level up would be what kills the game for me.

"No! You can't spend that money goddamn it, I need it to level up!"

Last week's MLP totally covers that one {My Little Pony, Spike, Dragons, Presents}.

[Username17]

Actually, the idea that I'd have to accumulate and sit on increasingly large amounts of treasure in order to level up would be what kills the game for me.

"No! You can't spend that money goddamn it, I need it to level up!"

This was from an era when training costs were considered normal and OK. So everyone needed gold to level up. Dragons just needed more gold and less XP. And started at higher level. How this was supposed to be a setup that would dissuade a power gamer is beyond me.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Didn't he say that the DM should make the challenges based on challenging the strongest party member, so basically any fight ever is "Everyone who isn't the Gold Dragon dies" until everyone gives the monster-player shitty looks and he "gets the message" and plays an elf like he's supposed to?

[Murtak]

Also, if the -2 to int is really a problem there is an easy fix

play a human character, but call him an orc. done.

"This is no problem because you can just houserule it." - where have I heard this before ....

That aside, it's not about a -2 penalty as such. It is about another character being strictly better than the orc wizard. Int is such an important stat for wizards that it is not even debatable whether there is any sort of wizard build for which the orc advantages sort of make up for the int penalty. Humans are better wizards than orcs. As are elvces. And halflings. And dwarves. Not by much, mind you. But just plain better all the same.

It's like telling one player that his character will get a -1 to all rolls because he wants to have green skin. Is that a big penalty? No, it is barely noticeable in normal play. But it is insulting for the penalty to even exist. When you choose your race and class there should actually be meaningful choices. And when you choose wizard, "orc" is not a choice. As you just said yourself, as far as wizards are concerned orcs are humans, except worse. There is no tradeoff, no upside, no decision and thus no meaningful choice. And that sucks.

By the way, this is a lesser versions of the old "fighters suck" problem. As soon as you can simply spend a part of the cleric's spells to get everything the fighter has and have anything at all left over - well at that point fighters have been eliminated as a logical class choice. "Fighters suck" is obviously a much bigger issue than "orcs can't be wizards", simply because an entire class is affected and to a larger degree than orc wizards are. But the principle is the same.

Any choice that is strictly inferior to another might as well not exist. And any such choice should be eliminated from the game whereever possible, either by offering a real choice instead or by removing the option in question.

[ishy]

So would that mean that you'd prefer an orcs can't be wizard line over you gain stats that aren't as good for wizards as what other races give you?

[Doom]

I think Ishy has touched on the core problem. There's no way a player could figure out for himself means that "-2 intelligence" means that orcs are less intelligent, so this is a trap option, and needs to be removed, or just make it impossible for orcs to be wizards.

[Dominicius]

Because most people in this hobby are not game designers. They don't understand how the game rules positively or negatively affect player satisfaction. Even though I think that it is just as important as telling a good story.

[Chamomile]

If I were trying to just fudge the text a bit to get people to avoid trap options, I'd just put in a chart that lists the best race options for different classes (i.e. "Wizard: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling etc. etc.) and then mention that you can take a race class combination not on this chart, but it will make your character slightly less effective than otherwise, which may become irksome over time.

Really, though, races generally need to have bonuses that are more than just attribute adjustments, otherwise they're always going to cluster to certain races being the best for certain classes, no questions asked. Humans getting an extra feat is actually a good example of this, as I'd totally be willing to pass up a +2 STR for an extra feat on a martial class.