Things Other People Aren't Allowed to Like

[echoVanguard]

Fighters, Constitution, Charisma, and Magical Tea Party - these have repeatedly come up as objects of derision on this board. I'm curious why people have such a hate-on for each of these subjects.

1. Fighters. A lot of folks have made some very detailed arguments that "Fighter" is a terrible idea for a class, because they're exceedingly limited and can only do things other classes can do better. However, it seems to me that most people's real complaints about the Fighter class are its implementation and its name - if the class was capable of contributing evenly to all aspects of gameplay, while still being a melee-focused, armor-wearing class, I would imagine that would address many if not all of the complaints that people have had about it on this board.

Secondly, I've noticed quite a few people who actively like playing fighters, which seems to me that arguments could be made for the class having merit. Sure, you might make the argument that "lots of people like terrible things - they're called idiots", but that's intellectual dishonesty. Fighter-type classes have been a staple of fantasy tropes for as long as fantasy tropes have existed - they obviously fill an appropriate niche. The only real question is how to properly implement them.

2. Constitution and Charisma. People have made some (very poor) arguments about why Constitution and Charisma are boring/worthless stats, but most of these arguments seem to boil down to "I want to put more points into something else". The problem with this sort of thinking is that you end up with stat systems like ProgressQuest, where the only stat is Strength and you put all your points into it. This might sound like Reductio Ad Absurdium, but it really isn't - any time you want two things, but can't have both, that's good design. If there's a stat that measures how hard you hit and how much stuff you can carry, then there should be an equally important stat that measures how hard you diplomacize and how much street cred you can carry, and another that measures how hard you resist poisons and how much blood you have in you. Constitution isn't a "survival tax" any more than Strength is an "effectiveness tax" for Barbarians, or Intelligence is for Wizards.

3. Magical Tea Party. This is probably the most prevalent punching bag on this board, which I find extremely confusing. When you get right down to it, the only real advantage a TTRPG has over any other form of gaming system is its openness - its ability to go in any direction, deal with any input, and simulate any event. Obviously, the better the rules support any particular simulation, the happier we are - but there's a ton of sentiment in a great many threads lately that any time you're having to ad-hoc anything, you're Doin It Wrong. I was under the impression that the object of scorn should be poor ad-hoc rules, not ad-hoc in general, but lately people don't seem to agree with me.

What are some of the real flaws with these ideas, as opposed to the easy targets? It seems like a lot of the driving force behind debate of these subjects is "It's dumb, and anyone who likes these things is dumb", which isn't really a meritorious argument.

echo

[RobbyPants]

2. Constitution and Charisma. People have made some (very poor) arguments about why Constitution and Charisma are boring/worthless stats, but most of these arguments seem to boil down to "I want to put more points into something else". The problem with this sort of thinking is that you end up with stat systems like ProgressQuest, where the only stat is Strength and you put all your points into it. This might sound like Reductio Ad Absurdium, but it really isn't - any time you want two things, but can't have both, that's good design. If there's a stat that measures how hard you hit and how much stuff you can carry, then there should be an equally important stat that measures how hard you diplomacize and how much street cred you can carry, and another that measures how hard you resist poisons and how much blood you have in you. Constitution isn't a "survival tax" any more than Strength is an "effectiveness tax" for Barbarians, or Intelligence is for Wizards.

My understanding of the complaint against Constitution is more that it's a stat that doesn't do anything. It's 100% passive, where as the other stats can be used to leverage/augment actions. Survival tax is just an annoying side-effect.

[sabs]

3. Magical Tea Party.

I actually have this problem right now. I'm playing an Ars Magica game, set in the modern day. The GM has made some changes to account for modern day ness. We're also using an amalgamation of 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th edition rules, based on what the GM thinks is more right (at any given time). Also, he's change the dice rolling so that if you roll a 0, it's always at minimum a failure, and possibly a botch.

So instead of there being a 1% chance of failure. There is a 10% chance of failure. This makes a huge difference. Also, spells, flaws, virtues, etc, all don't necessarily work the way it says in the 5th edition book. And the GM has said, the game has started, lump it you can't change your stats, even though the thing you took doesn't work at all the way you thought it did.

That means you can't plan, you can't know what your character can do. That's why MTP sucks. If your gm is inconsistent, and lets face it, it happens more often than not. Then MTP is horrible. My entire character concept was based on being able to do some layered tricks, that in the RAW system, mean that I have (with the appropriate skills) a 3.5% chance of failing to cast my spell at any given time. But with the way the GM runs the rolls, then my character actually has a 50% chance of failing any given spellcasting sequence. That's a HUGE difference.

also:
The GM's wife has been given you the look for the last few games, cause she thinks your cute. So now, everytime your character tries to do something, he magically fails.
Or maybe the GM is having a bad day, and has decided that what ever action you're trying to have your character do, just won't work today.

MTP can work, with really close friends, and a GM who is smart and consistent. And even then it doesn't always work.

[DragonChild]

3. Magical Tea Party. This is probably the most prevalent punching bag on this board, which I find extremely confusing. When you get right down to it, the only real advantage a TTRPG has over any other form of gaming system is its openness - its ability to go in any direction, deal with any input, and simulate any event. Obviously, the better the rules support any particular simulation, the happier we are - but there's a ton of sentiment in a great many threads lately that any time you're having to ad-hoc anything, you're Doin It Wrong. I was under the impression that the object of scorn should be poor ad-hoc rules, not ad-hoc in general, but lately people don't seem to agree with me.

You are wrong.

Rather, the problem with MTP is when games present rules, especially a LOT of rules, that essentially come down to making it up. If you sell me an RPG system that is worse than or equal to me just making it up, I have been robbed.

[hogarth]

3. Magical Tea Party. This is probably the most prevalent punching bag on this board, which I find extremely confusing.

Despite the somewhat dismissive name, I don't think that anyone uses Magical Tea Party as a "punching bag". The problem is when people say the equivalent of: "There's nothing wrong with Rule X because I totally ignore it. Therefore, it's a good rule and doesn't need to be fixed." (Which is more common than you might think.)

EDIT: Partially ninja'ed by DragonChild.

[Lago PARANOIA]

1. Fighters. A lot of folks have made some very detailed arguments that "Fighter" is a terrible idea for a class, because they're exceedingly limited and can only do things other classes can do better. However, it seems to me that most people's real complaints about the Fighter class are its implementation and its name - if the class was capable of contributing evenly to all aspects of gameplay, while still being a melee-focused, armor-wearing class, I would imagine that would address many if not all of the complaints that people have had about it on this board.

God, this statement is such fucking bullshit. Yes, and if cars could safely teleport to their destination and run for days on a AA battery, that would solve most of the problems people have with them.

You know what, that doesn't even deserve a response. People have made many many threads on why the Fighter and his dumbass friends suck and if you think it just boils down to 'they're implemented poorly' then I don't know what to tell you. Just read one of the goddamn threads again. I'll link you to a few even.

Constitution and Charisma
Constitution is almost completely a meta stat, like Base Defense Bonus or a Reflex Save. It's easy contriving interesting situations where/to tell when someone uses their Strength or their Dexterity or their Intelligence or whatever, but not constitution. Even the situations in which someone could do something with their constitution it kludges way too much with other gameplay mechanics (damage reduction, fortitude save, spell resistance, strength) to tell what it can do by itself; you'd seriously have to look at the gameplay logs to tell whether someone's high constitution affected a situation or not. Even if it should stay in the game it needs to be demoted in some capacity. Like your Critical Hit % stat. It should not be at the level of the other stats, the ones that actually do things.

Charisma sucks for several reasons.

• It doesn't scale as sensibly as the other stats. People can totally imagine breakpoints for superhuman stats for Strength and Intelligence without too much difficulty; Charisma is much harder because all of the legendary tales of someone doing something awesome with their charisma... doesn't really require a superhuman level of the stuff. I mean, if a low-level mortal character can convince the God of the Dead to cut him some slack, how much scaling can it really do from there? This should be enough to demote it to a lower-tier stat on its own merits.
• It's an unfair stat. When you give people the choice between boosting their strength or their dexterity it's a fair tradeoff. A High-Str/Low-Dex, Med-Str & Dex, or a Low-Str/High-Dex character get an equal amount of screentime and plot-affectingness. The same cannot be said for Charisma. That is the 'make the plot go more your way' stat, used for seducing royalty, forging treaties, intimidating hordes of mooks, etc..
• Now it's bad enough to give people the choice of 'be effective in combat' and 'be effective in non-combat' stuff but what makes it a really shitty stat is that it's a have-your-cake-and-eat-it too stat, especially in 3E and 4E D&D. Even if the Paladin and the Ranger were perfectly balanced in combat, the paladin would still be a better character.

Now there are games in which charisma can exist without fucking things up, like in Shadowrun, but high-powered ostensibly non-grimdark games like D&D is not one of those games.

Magic Tea Party
There's absolutely nothing wrong with MTP. The reason why it gets so derided in relation to rules is because A) it's used as spackle for holes in the rules and fluff and thus is an excuse not to fix problems B) because MTP is free and extremely accommodating. So if you have a game that excessively leans on it (either explicitly or as to solve problems) it raises the question of why don't we just scrap it and use that instead? MTP is one of the gold standards by which any game is judged and if your game isn't better than me and my friends sitting around and bullshitting over Naruto fanfiction then you done fucked up. Especially if you're asking money for it.

[CatharzGodfoot]

1. Fighters. A lot of folks have made some very detailed arguments that "Fighter" is a terrible idea for a class, because they're exceedingly limited and can only do things other classes can do better. However, it seems to me that most people's real complaints about the Fighter class are its implementation and its name - if the class was capable of contributing evenly to all aspects of gameplay, while still being a melee-focused, armor-wearing class, I would imagine that would address many if not all of the complaints that people have had about it on this board.

Secondly, I've noticed quite a few people who actively like playing fighters, which seems to me that arguments could be made for the class having merit. Sure, you might make the argument that "lots of people like terrible things - they're called idiots", but that's intellectual dishonesty. Fighter-type classes have been a staple of fantasy tropes for as long as fantasy tropes have existed - they obviously fill an appropriate niche. The only real question is how to properly implement them.

No shit. Read any one of the millions of classes designed to fill your 'Fighter trope' to see how it's done.

[tzor]

I just don’t see the hate. I see disappointment, dissolution and a knee jerk response to feelings of apathy. The Den tends to get passionate at times and often good enough is just short of what could be better. We’ve all done things that were “good enough” but really, if they had been better then it would have been even better. And so we quibble, argue, and debate.

Fighters: Fighters suffer from two fundamental problems in most game systems. They are the first to suffer from the “realism” trap. (Realism actually has nothing to do with reality, but that’s a side problem.) Wizards are magically fantastic, clerics are divinely fantastic, but fighters are shackled to notions of realism so they can’t be fantastic. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be fun to play, but all the cool toys goes to everyone else because they can be fantastic but not your character because that’s not realistic.

Second is that they have limited options in most systems; typically “I attack.” The fact that they can virtually do this to infinity and beyond (if you as a DM give the fighter a ring of regeneration, you deserve what you get) causes some people to go insane at the mere mention of “fighter.” Again, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a fighter that’s “good enough.” I know I’ve played a number of fighters that were “plenty good” (if only they could have been better.)

Constitution and Charisma: These are actually two different problems and needs to be addressed separately. Both suffer from revision changes. In first edition, Constitution was the keystone stat. Death and resurrection, even sudden shock from polymorphing, was tied to this stat. As the editions changed this stat also changed (although not as much as wisdom; defined in 1E as “willpower” and in 3E as “observation”). The real problem is when you get to monster building where a number of game rule “steroids” come into play. Do you buff with charisma, or with extra hit dice, or with something else?

Charisma is a touchy problem. A PC can attack another player but it’s generally verboten to directly influence the actions of another player. Charisma is all based on getting someone to do something through sheer force of personality. So it’s verboten to do to a PC and practically magical tea party to do it to an NPC. (SIGH) It’s not like combat where you have easy to identify goals (reduce his hit points to zero) and easy to define rules for how you get there. It’s almost the third rail of gaming, and this stat controls it.

Magical Tea Party: There is nothing wrong with it (really all problems with MTP is based on bad players / bad DM and practically speaking no good rule is going to save that problem) but it sort of begs the problem. We discuss rules here and MTP is the opposite of rules. MTP can also be: inconsistent, non institutive to the players, completely dependent on the mood of the DM, and a good way to have the game come to a screeching halt while people think about the problem.

[sabs]

The problem isn't with Melee Combatants.

It's with Plain Vanilla Combatants, who aren't allowed to have nice things, because then they aren't plain vanilla combatants. People seriously want to be able to play a knight from 1100 AD, in a world where there are Wizards who can cast 20-30 fireballs a day, and can turn themselves into dragons. And then they complain because their 'Fighter' isn't as good. But they throw a hissy fit if you try to give the Fighter magic items, or supernatural/exceptional powers.

Also, they throw a hissy fit if said 'Fighter' can do anything other than fight. But they get upset when their guy can't be part of solving problems in the higher levels. And their solution is to make everyone else as horribly bad as them.

It's not that Fighters suck, it's that certain people have a view of Fighters that is incompatible with NOT SUCKING.

[echoVanguard]

...the problem with MTP is when games present rules, especially a LOT of rules, that essentially come down to making it up. If you sell me an RPG system that is worse than or equal to me just making it up, I have been robbed.

That's what I, too, thought that the central argument against it was, but lately I've seen a lot of posts that just bash MTP wherever it is found. However, your statement raises an interesting question - how do you know whether the rules are better or worse than "just making it up"? In other words, what kind of metrics define quality when discussing an ad-hoc system? More importantly, how can these metrics be viewer-neutral? If I come up with a "universal resolution system" of "Whenever there's a question about who wins, both sides roll a d20 - players get +10, NPCs get +5. Highest roll wins.", then is that a good ad-hoc system, or a bad one? Based on whose opinion? Simulationist players will hate it, gamist players will love it, and in general you will have widespread disagreement over not only whether it is good or bad, but how good or bad it is. There needs to be some kind of fundamental minimum level of ad-hoc, even if it's just Jan-Ken-Pon, that we can use as the baseline when determining whether rules are better or worse than no rules at all.

echo

[echoVanguard]

Fighters: Fighters suffer from two fundamental problems in most game systems. ... Realism... [and] ...Limited Options (and infinite attacking).

So, in other words, if Fighters had class abilities that let them contribute in all aspects of gameplay without being "fantastical", and had the same sort of resource system as other classes, they would be perfectly viable, correct? Assuming that the aspects of gameplay are the tactical combat minigame, the large-scale combat minigame, the social encounter, the environmental encounter, and the economic encounter?

Constitution and Charisma: These are actually two different problems and needs to be addressed separately. ... game rule “steroids” [and] ... the third rail of gaming.

There are plenty of ways to tweak various stats and bonuses without having to muck about with constitution. The question, however, is whether a character with "Constitution as a defining stat" is viable. You can't just merge 'survivability' into Strength, but people make a very good argument that "I'm tough!" isn't exactly an active attribute. The problem is that more toughness is always better, just like more Charisma is always better - but more of ANY stat is always better. The only classes that can truly say they don't care about a stat are spellcasters (because they can just use Magic to solve everything), and that's more of a problem with the spellcasting system than it is with Constitution or Charisma.

Magical Tea Party: There is nothing wrong with it (really all problems with MTP is based on bad players / bad DM and practically speaking no good rule is going to save that problem) but it sort of begs the problem. We discuss rules here and MTP is the opposite of rules. MTP can also be: inconsistent, non institutive to the players, completely dependent on the mood of the DM, and a good way to have the game come to a screeching halt while people think about the problem.

Normally I'd agree, but there are obviously a lot of folks on this board (and out in the wild) that hold the opposite viewpoint - that the level of MTP incorporated into your rules is a direct measure of how much your rules suck. And quite frankly, that opinion is valid and worthy of investigation, particularly as a means towards a goal of making rules suck less.

echo

edit - fixed broken quote tag.

[Username17]

So, in other words, if Fighters had class abilities that let them contribute in all aspects of gameplay without being "fantastical", and had the same sort of resource system as other classes, they would be perfectly viable, correct?

Probably not. Because in addition to whatever the rules let you do, you're also doing magical teaparty stuff. Open ended gaming. And the Fighter concept is limited in what it can do in open ended roleplaying sessions. Even if they were able to carry their weight in every aspect of the defined game space, they'd still be inferior because they definitionally have a weaker presence in the undefined game space.

It's easy to make a balanced "mundane" warrior in Golden Axe or Diablo. But in an actual open ended RPG it is almost impossible.

-Username17

[Prak]

I actually just quit a game because it was turning into magical tea party. Now, granted, Werewolf has a terrible ruleset, and I'm fine with house rules, but I want to know what the rules are by which we're playing. Ahead of time. I don't want to be told "yeah, we're just going to treat your were-hyena as a werewolf." Because it means you didn't really give me a choice of what to play, I just stated out a weird looking normal character. I also want people to listen to me when I'm telling them what the actual rules are, whether they like them or not, rather than just making up whatever rules sound good to them in the middle of play. I'm fine with adjudication, and I'm fine with house rules, but there comes a point where you should just make your own system. Preferably not one where a crotch shot wins you the battle because the victim is stunned for a number of rounds (yes, the gm actually made a system like that)

[Lago PARANOIA]

So, in other words, if Fighters had class abilities that let them contribute in all aspects of gameplay without being "fantastical", and had the same sort of resource system as other classes, they would be perfectly viable, correct?

A) No, because D&D requires you to do fantastical things at a certain level of play. It doesn't matter how good you are at nonfantastical things, you will never climb over that hurdle unless you can say 'I can do fantastical things'. The only other solution is to magic-up the fighter (they turn into Chuck Norris jokes or get kited to the gills with magical items) or to limit the range of gameplay.

B) Even if you solved this problem by keeping caveat A in mind the new 'Fighter' would look absolutely nothing like any of the archetypical 'Fighters' or 'Warriors' or 'Vanilla Nonfantastical Action Heroes' we've seen in TTRPGs, video games, or even fiction. Just by calling this new class a 'Fighter' you make your product suspect by comparing it to that useless bitch and you confuse/anger newbies and grognards. It's best to just abandon that name entirely.

The question, however, is whether a character with "Constitution as a defining stat" is viable.

Not at all, because it's totally and also trivially possible to represent a character that does all of the things that constitution is supposed to do while having a constitution score in the single digits or even nonexistent. 3E Undead for example. There's really no way you can fake super-strength short of some ultra-convoluted method like always-on tactile telekinesis by contrast.

If constitution is to remain in the game, it needs to either be demoted or promoted in importance (probably demoted because of all of the constitution-substitution effects), it can't remain at the same level of importance as the other stats. Funneling points from your strength stat to your wisdom stat doesn't make you less interesting (at least in a game that fetishizes violence and melee combat as much as D&D) of a character, but doing it from your strength stat to your constitution stat does.

Charisma is pretty much the same deal. In a game like Shadowrun it's relatively balanced with all of the other stats because you're an unimportant cog in the machine that revolves around relatively low-key antics. While faces are important you get much less bang for your buck in that game than in D&D. A dicepool of 14 for charisma in Shadowrun lets you have a modestly less crazy time than the protagonist in Ferris Bueller's Day Off did and that's about high as it generally gets anyway. A 24 charisma in D&D gets princesses trying to tear your clothes off, dukes offering their fiefdoms, orc warbands deciding to sit down with you for a drink, assassins deciding to desert their master instead of killing you while you sleep, etc.

Having all of that stuff is important, mind you, but asking people to sacrifice their combat effectiveness in order to do that is unfair. It's especially unfair when there are some classes who get to live large AND be just as good in combat as their non-Charisma buddies.

[hogarth]

So, in other words, if Fighters had class abilities that let them contribute in all aspects of gameplay without being "fantastical", and had the same sort of resource system as other classes, they would be perfectly viable, correct?

A) No, because D&D requires you to do fantastical things at a certain level of play.

Not 4E D&D.

[tzor]

Fighters: Fighters suffer from two fundamental problems in most game systems. ... Realism... [and] ...Limited Options (and infinite attacking).

So, in other words, if Fighters had class abilities that let them contribute in all aspects of gameplay without being "fantastical", and had the same sort of resource system as other classes, they would be perfectly viable, correct? Assuming that the aspects of gameplay are the tactical combat minigame, the large-scale combat minigame, the social encounter, the environmental encounter, and the economic encounter?

I would say it slightly differently because I believe that "fantasy" is a key element of a fantasy role playing game. The key is knowing what a fantastial fighter would do that's fantastic. It's not impossible, although it's not always obvious. Baron Munchowsen has a party composed almost entirely of fighters each massively fantastic, but that is only a inkling of the type of fantastic that is needed.

(By the way the biggest problem for the classical D&D fighter is that he is not just a fighter; armor use is so ingraned into the benefits of the class that he is an armored fighter. A whole series of fighting styles basically becomes armored fighter without his armor, causing a major negative to the character from 1st level.)

Constitution and Charisma: These are actually two different problems and needs to be addressed separately. ... game rule “steroids” [and] ... the third rail of gaming.

There are plenty of ways to tweak various stats and bonuses without having to muck about with constitution. The question, however, is whether a character with "Constitution as a defining stat" is viable. You can't just merge 'survivability' into Strength, but people make a very good argument that "I'm tough!" isn't exactly an active attribute. The problem is that more toughness is always better, just like more Charisma is always better - but more of ANY stat is always better. The only classes that can truly say they don't care about a stat are spellcasters (because they can just use Magic to solve everything), and that's more of a problem with the spellcasting system than it is with Constitution or Charisma.

I think the biggest problem with Consitution is that the entire system evolved to obfuscate the stat. Almost everything goes through hit points, and Con only marginally impacts hit points. The basic problem for all stats is that if you want them to be meaningful you need to give them real in game meaning, and that is more than just "I add +X to Y."

Magical Tea Party: There is nothing wrong with it (really all problems with MTP is based on bad players / bad DM and practically speaking no good rule is going to save that problem) but it sort of begs the problem. We discuss rules here and MTP is the opposite of rules. MTP can also be: inconsistent, non institutive to the players, completely dependent on the mood of the DM, and a good way to have the game come to a screeching halt while people think about the problem.

Normally I'd agree, but there are obviously a lot of folks on this board (and out in the wild) that hold the opposite viewpoint - that the level of MTP incorporated into your rules is a direct measure of how much your rules suck. And quite frankly, that opinion is valid and worthy of investigation, particularly as a means towards a goal of making rules suck less.

But the question of the rules of a game and playing a game are completely different. MTP occurs because of two reasons; a blank space in the rules (the rules are just a skeleton; that's why it's so damn cheap; a good philosophy for the OD&D books) or because the rules are seriously broken (and I don't like to pay for broken rules). The argument is that MTP is no excuse for rules designers. Ideally the best solution for designing the unknown is not MTP but a general guideline to make a reasonable, predictable and consistant free form decision making. THis is actually superior to MTP because of the consistancy.

[Koumei]

I actually just quit a game because it was turning into magical tea party. Now, granted, Werewolf has a terrible ruleset, and I'm fine with house rules, but I want to know what the rules are by which we're playing. Ahead of time.

There's a guy who lives around here who used to do enough DMing for it to be a full-time job, and he always did that.

"We're playing X"
Followed very quickly by blending other games into it, changing the way things worked, and about four sessions in, generally turning the whole thing into MTP.

[echoVanguard]

It sounds an awful lot like people don't actually have complaints about the basic concepts of Constitution and Charisma, but rather how they're implemented in D&D (especially 3E). I agree that having a "not die" statistic is poor design, but I don't agree that there isn't conceptual space for a "fitness" statistic. By the same token, there shouldn't be any stat that lets you dictate the actions of an NPC, but having a stat that affects certain types interpersonal interactions is perfectly logical.

echo

[Username17]

It sounds an awful lot like people don't actually have complaints about the basic concepts of Constitution and Charisma, but rather how they're implemented in D&D (especially 3E).

No. I have a huge problem with Constitution over and above the poor handling in D&D. It doesn't do anything. You cannot take or describe a Constitution-related action. Toughness is not a sufficiently action-oriented adjective to warrant being an attribute. That is why it is a shitty attribute in every game. Even in games where it is the most powerful attribute.

There is nothing you could possibly do with "Constitution" that wouldn't be better in Strength or Agility. It's just an empty fucking concept.

-Username17

[echoVanguard]

There is nothing you could possibly do with "Constitution" that wouldn't be better in Strength or Agility. It's just an empty fucking concept.

-Username17

What about:

- resisting diseases?
- resisting poisons?
- extended running?
- extended swimming?
- holding your breath?
- any other action involving cardiovascular fitness as its primary determinant?

Strength, Dexterity, and Agility in no way measure your ability to do these sorts of things. "Fitness" is a valid attribute - you can have strong and/or quick people who nevertheless have poor cardiovascular fitness.

echo

[sabs]

How would you simulate John McClean?
Or most any hero played by Bruce Willis? Their tag seems to always be, "can take a rediculous amount of pounding and keep on going."

How do you differentiate from Cameron and Raistlin. One is big and beefy, the other is frail and sickly.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The idea that Bruce Willis is able to to take a ridiculous pounding and keep on trucking is a perfect example of the kludging of game effects that makes constitution so pointless.

He could be continually burning Edge points. He could have some kind of heroic 'fast healing' ability. He could have some built-in damage reduction, either by strict fiat or some vague mewling about martial arts techniques and bone structure. He could be keeping himself going by sheer force of will. And that's just nonfantastical ways. You can't say that the reason he does that is because of his constitution, because there are a ton of systems that allow him to accomplish the same general thing while having a rock-bottom constitution score. 3rd and 4th Edition D&D for example.

[Koumei]

What about:

- resisting diseases?

That isn't something you do, it's something that happens to you. Do you know how often I've said "Oh hey, the flu is going around, I had better actively resist! HYAAA!"?

It's just a Fort Save, which can be class/level based with some features or a feat giving a bonus.

- resisting poisons?

See above, with the possible exception of drinking contests. And if that's an important action in your games... not sure if want.

- extended running?

Running isn't something you roll for. This is just "resist something bad when you do another, size/Dex-related action, for a long time."

So you still just call it a Fort save and move on.

- extended swimming?

Swimming is Strength-based in D&D, and strength/agility can work just fine. If anyone cares about how long, you roll it into the check or make it that Fort Save.

- holding your breath?

You frequently have breath-holding contests in your games? If someone strangles you, that's a Fort save and you're not *doing* anything.

Listing ten different "resist X" is just like saying "strength is the most important because you can:" and listing a hundred different types of object to lift.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Bruce Willis's characters also get 'really strong' as a tag, so he probably isn't a great example.

Caramon was "the strongest of the Heroes of the Lance", so clearly he isn't a great example of why not to fold Constitution into Strength.

The purpose of attributes is to combine certain numbers so that they rise and fall together. The divisions are somewhat arbitrary, and what works best varies from game to game. When things get split to finely, every character can seem like an unnatural combination of unrelated numbers. When they are too generalized, everyone seems the same. This can be remedied by having multiple attributes affecting every number used in the game, but the degree of complexity introduced can be obnoxious.

In D&D-genre high fantasy stories, fit characters are generally strong and vice-versa. D&D archetypes such as the wizard who dumps Strength and maximizes Constitution can feel contrived. In such a game, strong but sickly characters are probably best represented by mostly flavor flaws with names like 'unhealthy'.

[echoVanguard]

Koumei - that's a pretty good argument. However, let's say I'm creating a character, and want to make a character who's strong and quick, but also fat and out of shape. Under a system that has no flaws or constitution score, how would I go about doing so?

echo

edit - ninja'd by Catharz. That's a great summation.