Should characters even have different combat numbers?

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Omegonthesane
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Post by Omegonthesane »

FrankTrollman wrote:
Shady wrote:If I know the player has made a straight up barbarian and not something like a primalist bloodrager I don't ask him if he can swing an animate dead.
So by your own admission you don't ask the entire table. And you don't do that because stereotyped character abilities is a thing that has value and imparts real information to other people playing the game. Because K and I are right and PhoneLobster is wrong.

Get it?

-Username17
This has absolutely nothing to do with knowing what "a straight up barbarian" can do and everything to do with knowing what the specific "straight up barbarian" on your table can actually do. And that's a really weak example because the primary stereotype of "straight up barbarian" is "has big numbers and no real abilities" so the list of shit you are being told to remember is "the fact that this list of shit is empty". Something like "is a necromancer" is only going to get you "animates the dead and uses Save-or-Die spells" if you've had the sort of time looking at spell lists that would normally be expected of someone actually statting a necromancer.

It might take you several sessions of observation AND some outright "So what did you stat?" questions between games before you assume player X has or doesn't have ability Y.
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Tue Jul 21, 2015 5:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by MGuy »

So is interacting with people at the table to figure out what they have on their character sheets a bad thing now? I don't think that case has been made yet.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

MGuy wrote:So is interacting with people at the table to figure out what they have on their character sheets a bad thing now? I don't think that case has been made yet.
I wouldn't be completely blindsided by an argument that it was time that could be better spent gaming.

I mean, such an argument would almost certainly be wrong, but it would be a way to accidentally reach the wrong conclusions from premises that aren't insane.
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Post by Username17 »

Stereotyping character abilities into conceptual categories that can be easily explained to other players in simple abstract categorical terms is such a fucking obviously good idea that even in completely skill-based games that do not officially support classes or ability packages at all, players invent such terminology for their own use. For fuck's sake, in Champions (a game which is totally open ended and point based and which lacks even a baseline for what numbers people can write on their character sheets at any particular level) you can still describe your character as a Brick or a Martial Artist and have other players know a great deal about your character without actually looking at your character sheet or watching you roll any dice. This is a real thing that has happened.

Because people who say that it isn't useful to have short-hand notation for the general kinds of competencies a character has are completely insane. This is seriously not even a discussion that is worth having. Having packages of abilities that players can potentially grok that other players can take and then impart a great deal of information by listing only the package name is obviously very useful. Like, fucking obviously.

I don't have time to listen to another player tell me every item and skill on their Shadowrun character sheet. I want to know if they are a fucking Face or Rigger or whatever and modulate my expectations of their capabilities to that. And so does everyone else, which is why when such terms do not have intrinsic meaning in various game systems the player base spontaneously generates them anyway.

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Post by PhoneLobster »

Shorter Frank's last post...

"What I REALLY meant when I said you aren't allowed to ask "Anyone got healing?" but you MUST be allowed to ask "Is anyone an Elf?" was actually... exactly that! (obfuscate obfuscate conflate with class, build and role stereotypes more obfuscate)"
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Tue Jul 21, 2015 10:04 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Mask_De_H »

PL, I know it is physically impossible for you to not be a gigantic cock about anything not related to your terrible country, but at least get your shit right. The goalposts have not been shifted, having stereotypical abilities/ways to denote characters quickly has been a thing in the thread for the past several pages. You do ask players what they're running, yes, but they give it to you in shorthand. They don't even tell you what they rock unless they have a specifically neat ability or combo that defines the character. Even then, those tend to get shorthand like "Pornomancer", "Tripstar" or "Dragoon." Marshall Mathers over here does not ask every ability the character can pull, relying on the shorthand.
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Post by Shady314 »

Im going to assume this is honest miscommunication because I do often say things unclearly.
I am not trying to claim I have never in my life made an assumption about what another player's character can do. I am not trying to claim that assumption has never been correct. I am saying there's no meaningful benefit.

In my real world experience by the time I went from newbie that really didn't know a wizard can't cast healing spells to veteran (meaning I knew what all the core classes abilities are mostly off the top of my head) other people's character stopped being level 1 Core only Barbarian and started becoming Barbarian 1/Class I never heard of 2/Class I heard of but never read 2. And once you started adding feats/spells outside the core I wasn't even going to try to keep up.

Usually this didn't matter though because there'd be group creation and or people would introduce their characters and overview relevant shit like "Is this guy a spellcaster?" and "does he dabble in necromancy?" So yes sometimes I have directly asked a player to do something specific because I already knew what they could do.

Sometimes though I have come to a game blind or wanted to do something almost unheard of like make use of forgery where I didn't already know there was a character capable of doing this. In those cases I did not turn to who I assumed was the most likely candidate. I just threw a question/request/idea/whatever out there and seen what response I got.
FrankTrollman wrote: Asking the table is asking every person at the table. You are asking each person to check their character sheets and give you an answer. It requires you to get the attention of every player and then get an answer from every player. You may accept a certain time of silence as a "No" or whatever, but that does not in any way change what you are doing.
This isn't how real people have a conversation in a group situation in my experience. Even if you direct your question to a specific person youre usually going to do it so loud anyone can hear and anyone can respond anyways. So even if I ask John do you cast healing spells? If he says "no" everyone else doesn't sit around and not mention "hey I do!"

This argument where I ask the table. "Hey can we raise dead?" and every single person has to carefully check their sheet, because they don't know off the top of their head that they don't cast spells is pretty obviously disingenuous.

So I don't see this magical efficiency benefit where maybe you save a couple seconds.
wrote:So by your own admission you don't ask the entire table. And you don't do that because stereotyped character abilities is a thing that has value and imparts real information to other people playing the game. Because K and I are right and PhoneLobster is wrong.
-Username17
I hope I cleared up that I do not always ask the table because I usually know the answer already.

Except it doesn't impart information it imparts expectations which may or may not be accurate.

You mentioned HERO which I am not really familiar with but I do play M&M3e which seems very similar. They have archetypes like Brick and Martial Artist yes but this is because it is human nature to label things. It helps newbies to have a jumping off point. But how much does martial artist really tell you? That they probably fight without manufactured weapons... Probably.

I had one player who likes to play Martial Artists pretty much exclusively. He's made multiple characters with that name. They've all been different. One was an Avatar(cartoon show) copy. One was like Bruce Lee+Superman(who could be called a Brick), a tattooed mystical magic guy and in a low powered game an agent that knew KungFu/Krav Maga etc. The agent was still a good shot with a gun. A Brick is just a super tough fucker. What incredibly valuable and vast, yet helpfully specific, information that imparts to me instantly! Why I clearly need not ask that player anything to find out what they are capable of.
Last edited by Shady314 on Wed Jul 22, 2015 12:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Orion »

Also, "elf" is not anywhere near as informative as "brick" or "necromancer" is in D&D or in any of the heartbreakers we discuss here.
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Post by MGuy »

Mask_De_H wrote:PL, I know it is physically impossible for you to not be a gigantic cock about anything not related to your terrible country, but at least get your shit right. The goalposts have not been shifted, having stereotypical abilities/ways to denote characters quickly has been a thing in the thread for the past several pages. You do ask players what they're running, yes, but they give it to you in shorthand. They don't even tell you what they rock unless they have a specifically neat ability or combo that defines the character. Even then, those tend to get shorthand like "Pornomancer", "Tripstar" or "Dragoon." Marshall Mathers over here does not ask every ability the character can pull, relying on the shorthand.
I don't feel that the 'goalposts' referring to K's/PL's original point about racial expectations have shifted but the conversation certainly seems to be moving away from that discussion to a larger discussion about whether or not expectations should exist for 'stuff'.

PL's point at the beginning of this back and forth was basically that it's fine to have people get stuff that doesn't conform to some stereotype or another.

K's counter was that Race should have a bunch of familiar abilities that don't vary so much so that when someone says 'I'm an elf' that it means anything otherwise having elves is pointless because the label becomes meaningless.

PL's counter to 'that' (as I understand it) is that his idea is limiting and that racial abilities really shouldn't be stuff you can't just 'get' at some point or another (That point for him being presumably 1st level). If racial abilities are just like feats, skills or their equivalent then it doesn't matter if you allow people to just pick them up piece by piece.

This talk about whether or not people should recognize what skills a class has based on saying it is something else. It seemed like Frank 'was' (I don't know if he still is) saying that asking 'the table' whether or not anyone has a specific ability was bad. At least that is what it seems like he was implying based on how he responded. I think that having shorthand descriptors for stuff is fine (and inevitable) but I don't think that interacting with people at the table to find out what they have (even if you were to specify one person) is at all anything to get upset about. Even if he wanted to make the case that people don't because of expectations that are set by what people describe their characters as, it would be an argument that's being made at a wall because no one is arguing the opposite.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

MGuy wrote:I don't feel that the 'goalposts' referring to K's/PL's original point about racial expectations have shifted but the conversation certainly seems to be moving away from that discussion to a larger discussion about whether or not expectations should exist for 'stuff'.
If the goal posts haven't shifted then something around here has certainly been moving.

The defense of racial stereotypes started with "But they have to MEAN something", to which the counter was easily enough "no they don't".

So it retreated, or, ahem, "clarified" to "You need traditional races so stupid players can learn and remember mechanics!", which fell down when it was pointed out that learning/remembering some of the options (the ones at the table) is easier than learning/remembering all the mechanics (the entire list of races and their abilities in the books).

So it almost inevitably HAD to attempt to defend that by claiming "But you can't learn the options at the table, because you can't ask people stuff or interact with other players!". That's not working out great, largely on it's own merits as being a spectacularly stupid claim to make.

And now, like rats fleeing that sinking ship the entire argument is being scuttled in favor of the next position, coming around not for the first time, which is that hey, classes and builds are nice, so races should be classes. Unfortunately simply pointing out that races aren't classes and don't actually work like classes has already been done more than once in this thread. But this time why not, I'll point out that in some games races took the "races should work like classes" position to it's natural conclusion and they literally WERE classes, and boy was THAT stupid when that was the case.

And I don't think that's even a comprehensive break down of the entirely full sequence of attempted and failed defenses of traditional race mechanics, and doesn't really include all the somewhat irrelevant "they just need to be class agnostic traditional race mechanics!" bender that K is (still) on for a start.

In the end it's all a fairly standard rapid fighting retreat into increasing insanity that occurs when someone feels really committed to defending an idea that is in fact kinda stupid, which traditional D&D race mechanics basically are.
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Post by K »

MGuy wrote:I don't feel that the 'goalposts' referring to K's/PL's original point about racial expectations have shifted but the conversation certainly seems to be moving away from that discussion to a larger discussion about whether or not expectations should exist for 'stuff'.
To sum up, there was a camp that wanted open-ended chargen and a camp that tried to discuss ideas for something better than existing designs like flat stat bonuses or open-ended chargen.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

K wrote:...tried to discuss ideas for something better than existing designs...
You think class agnostic abilities are new or different?

What do you think they were trying to do with the race abilities in say, oh, I don't know, 3.x D&D?

I mean, they failed, and their ideas about making all attribute bonuses useful for everyone didn't work out perfectly, or even particularly at all. But have an actual look at the 3.x players handbook races, the greater part of the actual non-attribute bonus abilities lean towards defensive, bullshit, circumstantial crap and utility.

Those are exactly the sort of abilities you would shoot for if you were attempting the class agnostic route. If you think you are trying something new, you haven't been paying attention to what's been tried done.

You don't want to try something new, at best you want to try the same thing and hope to succeed just a tiny bit more this time around.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Wed Jul 22, 2015 1:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by K »

PhoneLobster wrote:
K wrote:...tried to discuss ideas for something better than existing designs...
You think class agnostic abilities are new or different?

What do you think they were trying to do with the race abilities in say, oh, I don't know, 3.x D&D?
Shit, the stat bonuses alone show that 3.X never even tried to go class-agnostic. There was always going to be a right choice for certain classes even before you look at race-specific PrCs, abilities like free martial weapon proficiencies of enhanced armor use, or flavor text.

In a humorous twist, 3.X DnD races even have a feature literally called Favored Class.
Last edited by K on Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

And yet... favored class is explicitly intended to be an optional benefit you don't need to use as an individual, the (failed) intent of 3.x's direction for attributes was to make them all somehow valuable to all classes, and very nearly every damn thing else the races do matches the design profile of an attempt at class agnosticism.

But hey the words "favored class" appeared. I'm sure if you do the exact same thing they did, remove the attribute bonuses and don't say those two words you will TOTALLY be doing something new and different.
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Post by Shady314 »

I just have no idea how you could pull off class agnostic abilities in anything like DnD. You're talking about creating something separate yet equal. For every class.
Something like a BAB increase for one race is right the fuck out. Different SLA's for each race? Good luck achieving spell parity for all classes.
Different races having a different bonuses depending on class would probably drive you insane.

Maybe if the bonuses were all completely situational and tiny.

Im curious what you had in mind K.
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Post by K »

Shady314 wrote:I just have no idea how you could pull off class agnostic abilities in anything like DnD. You're talking about creating something separate yet equal. For every class.
Something like a BAB increase for one race is right the fuck out. Different SLA's for each race? Good luck achieving spell parity for all classes.
Different races having a different bonuses depending on class would probably drive you insane.

Maybe if the bonuses were all completely situational and tiny.

Im curious what you had in mind K.
Sure, I'll bite.

Ok, the first step is to figure out what abilities will never be class agnostic.

Take the 3.5 DnD dwarf. He's mostly a hodgepog of class-specific benefits for fighting guys and rogues. He gets bonuses to Rogue skills that will only be useful to a Rogue-type because after a few levels a non-Rogue PC will have non-functional levels of skills regardless of the bonus. He gets AC and to-hit bonuses that don't add much at all to squishy spellcasters. He gets the ability to move in heavy armor, something useful for fighters and clerics. He gets Stonecunning which is only useful to classes with Search and enough skill points (so Rogues). He gets free Exotic Weapon Proficiencies if he has Martial profs, so fighting guys there. His Favored Class is Fighter. He gets a Con Bonus and a Cha penalty, and that means Sorcerers and Bards are right out and every other class is pretty meh about it.

What's left?

Well, he gets Darkvision. That's a great class-agnostic ability. Sorcerer dwarves are going to benefit from this as much as Fighters or any other class. (Now, you might make an argument that Darkvision helps Rogues more because they scout ahead in the dark, but my time with DnD has taught me that Solo Scouts quickly transform into Scout Corpses That Sometimes We Can't Retrieve.)

He gets bonuses vs spells and poisons. Guess who gets spells cast at them? Everyone! Who runs into poisons? Everyone!

And that's how you figure out how to make class-agnostic abilities. You basically look at potential abilities and compare them against the things you do in adventures. If that kind of analysis is beyond you, then you don't have the necessary skill to design class-agnostic abilities and you should do something else.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

K wrote:Take the 3.5 DnD dwarf.
Wow. The spin you put on that is way hard. Essentially free AC bonuses aren't any good for characters with low ACs? Negligible circumstantial awareness bonuses aren't any good for anyone without maxed out awareness, and only one class is allowed to have maxed out awareness?

But after spinning that hard on parts of it, you softball others, darkvision? Good for everyone, explicitly just declared by you to be NOT extra good for someone, say, specialized in hiding in the dark. A thing now ONLY done on solo suicide missions so as to justify the position.

And circumstantial saving throw bonuses? Good for everyone! I mean SURE you dismissed circumstantial AC bonuses as worthless for low AC characters, but I guess low Fort save characters get a free pass on "equally benefiting" from circumstantial anti-poison bonuses to things they are weak on.

I get it you want to pretend the dwarf doesn't about 80% consist of attempted class agnostic abilities, and you want to pretend that a tiny minority of those abilities weren't in some way partial failures at that like the rest of them. But the stark reality is they were pretty much ALL clearly intended to be class agnostic, and actually they are ALL at least partial failures, and all in the same way, while potentially useful to everyone, ALL of them, in some small way always are MORE useful to someone. Which is the problem you plan will never surmount, and certainly didn't back when you produced your minotaur example.

And clearly the class agnosticism or "no synergy" thing you are going for will always be an arbitrary line and some amount of synergy will always sneak through, but that isn't how you depict it, and the only thing defining where you currently draw the line is that you place it where it is most convenient for the argument of the moment.
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Post by codeGlaze »

Y'know... for a page or two this thread was doing pretty well.
But the shit-spiral seems to have taken it over completely.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Shady314 wrote:I just have no idea how you could pull off class agnostic abilities in anything like DnD.
Increasing defenses (AC, Saves, mind, poison, etc.), increasing senses (low light, scent, etc.), increasing movement (climb, swim, run faster, etc.). I figure D&D characters tend to focus on delivering certain modes of attack but it always helps for any of them to have the means to defend themselves against any given mode of attack.
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Post by K »

OgreBattle wrote:
Shady314 wrote:I just have no idea how you could pull off class agnostic abilities in anything like DnD.
Increasing defenses (AC, Saves, mind, poison, etc.), increasing senses (low light, scent, etc.), increasing movement (climb, swim, run faster, etc.). I figure D&D characters tend to focus on delivering certain modes of attack but it always helps for any of them to have the means to defend themselves against any given mode of attack.
AC in 3.X is not necessarily useful to all classes. Everyone boosts saves with items and multiclassing and PRCing and spells because DCs tend to remain relatively on a small range and all increases are meaningful, but AC is the province of people with enough AC to actually avoid attacks by things like giants that make the range very big. Classes like Wizards and Sorcerers invest in other kinds of defenses like Blink because they don't play the AC game and increases in AC are often completely useless.

In 5e, AC and attacks on are a small range and it'd work there.

There are a lot of other abilities that are class agnostic. Everyone gets use out of divinations, so a Gnome's Speak with Animals is equally useful. DnD 5e gives the dragonborn an almost level-appropriate AoE fire attack, and that's useful to everyone since adding that tactical niche to a PC's attacks works for everyone and clearing lots of tiny mobs is very useful in 5e, even for people who already have similar attacks (because those are limited).

Really, the list of possible class-agnostic abilties is huge. The trick is to get out of the mind-set of making abilities that are designed to just improve an existing ability that is pretty iconic to DnD 3e and later editions.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

K wrote:AC in 3.X is not necessarily useful to all classes.
While very possibly true in practice you would I think have a bit of an uphill battle to fight to claim that was the actual intent of the edition, pitting things like the AC independent defense options given to casters... against the AC based options also given to casters.

I know it's mostly pretty shitty, but casters were actually fairly clearly meant to be running around with mage armor and shield and bracers of armor and caring about their actual ACs.

But it's a stupid argument to have because you flat out admit that it's just a matter of arbitrary degree on where you are drawing the line on how useful it is to everyone and conceptually it's exactly the design direction your class agnostic options would go in.

Presumably you just don't accidentally make entire character archetypes not care about AC when you clearly intended for them to do so. You get the benefit of the doubt on that one, you don't have to hedge it.
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Post by Shady314 »

K wrote: Really, the list of possible class-agnostic abilties is huge. The trick is to get out of the mind-set of making abilities that are designed to just improve an existing ability that is pretty iconic to DnD 3e and later editions.
I never saw the biggest problem as finding abilities anyone would want. My first thought when I was thinking about it went to the Halfling save bonus.

I think the problem is when you try to give X number of these class agnostic abilities to 6? different races. That's where the difficulty is going to come up.

If the goal is to make every race unique you can only give out so many save vs. X bonuses and splitting them like the dwarf does also causes problems. I'd take a save vs. spell over poison anyday. Movement speed is an interesting idea I had not considered (thank you OgreBattle) but I could buy an animal to ride and not every class cares about movement the same way. A fly speed is awesome for anybody but obviously better for archers and spellcasters. So you need abilities not just class-agnostic but not easily replicated via ingame means like magic/class features/equipment and you have to make each one feel unique and you have to make sure every class you ever produce doesn't produce too awesome a combination or make that ability redundant.
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Post by Username17 »

Several of the 3e Dwarf's abilities are only useful to Fighters and Rogues because of specific idiosyncrasies of how 3e works. In 4th edition, every character makes attack rolls and every character is targeted by AC-targeting attacks. But in 3rd edition a caster can go not only whole battles or whole adventures, but literally gain several levels without ever making an attack roll. Similarly, in 3e fights are faster, area control more effective, and battlefields are bigger - and all of that adds up to the cloth wearers being more eager and able to avoid getting attacked by AC-targeting attacks altogether.

If you were playing a different game with different assumptions, a bonus to defense against a class of enemy could be a class agnostic mother-may-I ability. But the specific way 3e actually works, if a Wizard ever triggered their +4 AC vs. Giants it would imply that the party had already lost and it didn't much matter what abilities the characters had or didn't have.

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Post by K »

Shady314 wrote: A fly speed is awesome for anybody but obviously better for archers and spellcasters. So you need abilities not just class-agnostic but not easily replicated via ingame means like magic/class features/equipment and you have to make each one feel unique and you have to make sure every class you ever produce doesn't produce too awesome a combination or make that ability redundant.
Well, it depends on how your game handles flight. 5e DnD lets all characters split up each increment of movement and each action in any combination they want on their turn, so flight can be used by a melee guy to advance, then attack with all attacks, then fly away in the same turn, replicating the advantage that spellcasters and archers had in previous editions of DnD. This makes flight a lot more agnostic than it was in previous editions.

There is no reason to not design flight to be even better for melee guys (in fact, fun and playable flight should be on the list of any fantasy heartbreaker that hopes to outshine DnD).

That being said, I don't see a reason to ONLY make unique abilities for races. A birdman race is not a good enough reason to remove flying boots and spells, but it is a good enough reason for a few unique abilities like special Air elemental summons or something.
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Yes.
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