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Cha+Background: Blue Steel that fucker.
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Aug 13, 2013 19:34
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Quadratic_Wizard posted:Other powers are better, but still suffer from all the randomness. "Roll a save with a +2 bonus" Great. "But not on that odd roll." ...drat. OR Hack and Slash. "Make an extra attack." Awesome! "But not on that odd roll." Well, still good. "And it's round 3 or later." Okay... "And you need to be engaged with two or more enemies." Fine. The thing that is important to remember about maneuvers is that a fighter has several of them, gets to declare their maneuver after their attack roll, and has several different triggering rolls, if they make clever picks. So it's less "well, I didn't get an even roll, so I'm screwed" and more "Oh! That's a natural odd, so I get to do that thing where my crit range expands!" Basically, the odds that you will be able to do something good with a maneuver on your turn are very good, especially because Fighters have quite a few tricks to let them attack more than once. But say you want more than that, I would like to mention that there is a race that gives you direct control over your natural D20 result once per battle. So if you're banking all your plans on one maneuver, you have an option. Speaking as someone who plays a Fighter fairly often, I never feel limited or starved for choice with my maneuvers. Just Burgs fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Aug 13, 2013 |
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Aug 13, 2013 19:37
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Like I said, I completely agree that ability scores are functionally useless as narrative elements and should be ignored completely. However, the book doesn't encourage anything-goes-all-stats-are-interchangeable improv and in fact offers multiple examples of the GM deciding which ability a task calls for (ie the wizard must use dex plus arcana to walk through some runes). I'm not saying I can't think of bullshit reasons to use my single highest stat+skill combo for everything under the sun, I'm saying I shouldn't have to and that the book doesn't appear to expect me to. EDIT: I think QM has a solid point that, unlike a spellcaster, the fighter can't decide executively that it's time to pull out all the stops and Unleash. They're hope-based.
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Aug 13, 2013 19:40
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Ferrinus posted:Like I said, I completely agree that ability scores are functionally useless as narrative elements and should be ignored completely. However, the book doesn't encourage anything-goes-all-stats-are-interchangeable improv and in fact offers multiple examples of the GM deciding which ability a task calls for (ie the wizard must use dex plus arcana to walk through some runes). But the wizard's only rolling Background+Dex because he described himself as tiptoeing through the trap. Had he just said, "Well I'm gonna summon up my arcane forces and try and destroying the trap" he could have rolled Background+Int. That example is just an example and your shouldn't take it as the only thing possible. The whole idea behind the skill/background checks is that you, the player, describe the action you're trying to do and how it relates to one of your backgrounds and then the DM tells you which Stat to add. Want to use X stat for Y action? Describe it so you'd actually be using X. That's not circumventing the system or coming up with 'bullshit reasons' it's the whole point of Backgrounds. It's what you're supposed to be doing. Obviously it's something that needs to be done in good faith, and your background need to be clear and separate categories because if they overlap so much you might have just spent all your points in the one, but these kind of things are issues in every table top and can be dealt with by 'not being an rear end in a top hat/not playing with assholes'. ZenMasterBullshit fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Aug 13, 2013 |
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Aug 13, 2013 19:45
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Do any of the voices in the 13A sidebars sound like people who'd be okay with "I use Int 5 + Wizard 5 to solve the problem with magic" as an endlessly repeated response to environmental challenges? Because I think you're straight up wrong and that abilities aren't meant to be functionally identical, and that the point of the abilities/backgrounds split is to make the circus strongman functionally different from the circus clown. It's in choosing the background to apply, not choosing the stat to apply, that the book describes players making cases, the gm "buying it", etc. Also, I'm talking about flavor in the first place. I don't want to abstractly overcome doors through ooc fast-talk, I want to punch down doors.
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Aug 13, 2013 19:53
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:But the wizard's only rolling Background+Dex because he described himself as tiptoeing through the trap. Had he just said, "Well I'm gonna summon up my arcane forces and try and destroying the trap" he could have rolled Background+Int. Not really? The example in question comes from a paragraph that's specifically calling out that it's A Good Thing that the GM defines what ability scores affect what (because he can make every ability score matter at some point or another).
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Aug 13, 2013 19:53
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Quadratic_Wizard posted:I haven't played the game enough yet to know just how often PCs run out of recoveries, but that rarely happened with surges when I played 4e. Keep in mind the optional "Rests happen after so many encounters/when story appropriate, not when the party wants a nap/to recover resources" from 4th is baked into to 13th age. So it should be a bit more common. Also you're comparing the fully supported fighter at the end of 4e's lifespan to base 13th age. I hope this game doesn't get the kinda bloat 4e had, and the fighter was always pretty good, but it wasn't until a few splats in that it became the unkillable destruction machine we've all come to love. I mean I felt kinda miffed seeing the "Here's the list of classes going from simplest to most complex and high skill!" thing basically going martial->magical too, but I think the game is nowhere near the trainwreck Next is shaping up to be or other retroclones have had problems with.
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Aug 13, 2013 19:54
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Coolness Averted posted:
I'll agree with this. The Worst parts of 13A all seem to stem from it trying to be a retroclone and not it's own game.
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Aug 13, 2013 20:05
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Quadratic_Wizard posted:Other powers are better, but still suffer from all the randomness. "Roll a save with a +2 bonus" Great. "But not on that odd roll." ...drat. OR Hack and Slash. "Make an extra attack." Awesome! "But not on that odd roll." Well, still good. "And it's round 3 or later." Okay... "And you need to be engaged with two or more enemies." Fine. The play style of the fighter is supposed to be wading into the enemy ranks and take actions based on how the fight shakes out. Its not a super tactician class. The randomness is kind of the point and part of the fun. Honestly you might want a more hard rule system. Anyway, fighter. -Play Style: A couple of class talents can make your job more complicated, but overall, playing a fighter is simple. You decide who to attack, roll your attack, and then figure out which flexible attack you want to use.- The flavor in 4e was encounter powers mean your fighter can 'find and opening' for an attack. The old grog complaint (Why can I only do x power once a encounter) Nat odd/even lets the battle determine when these are available. Sometimes you dont find openings, sometimes after 3 turns you crit on a 14+! Mechanically, pick some odd activating and even activating attack so theres something for you to do. Even missing activates plenty. If dont like the restrictions on the more powerful ones, well there are weaker ones that activate 50% of the time and give more reliable bonuses. You are making your own risk/reward system for the fighter you create. Quadratic_Wizard posted:
Most feating in 13th Age are used to enhance powers/traits/spell/manuvers. You need to be looking at them. Some are just bonuses but some are really strong. Ex. The barbarian cleave adventure feat, gives it a +2 to hit AND you get a healing recovery. Pretty strong.
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Aug 13, 2013 20:10
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As always, the problem with ability scores is not that they exist, but that they're mechanically tied to your combat effectiveness while also being a key conceptual part of your character through their use in skills. It makes certain character concepts just worse in play than others for no good reason. The principal ways this manifests in 13th Age are through defences and certain stats being more generally useful. Splicer already explained stat imbalances better than I could, so I won't go into that except to say that Con and Dex are both useful mechanically to every class through HP and initiative, while every other stat can be dumped with no consequence by half of them. Now, defences. Most distributions of stats will have your defences use your 2nd/3rd/4th highest stats. Right away you can see that not putting two stats at 8 will hurt you mechanically... well, unless you're dumping two of Str/Con/Dex or Int/Wis/Cha, but that's going to hurt you just as much. Because of the AC calculation, though, characters with their highest scores in Con and Dex use their 2nd/2nd/4th stats. That's a bit odd; it means that classes with a Dex attack will have an inherent advantage if they put their second score in Con. Characters with their highest stats as Str/Int or Str/Cha, though, are using their 3rd/4th/4th stats. That's kind of bad! Not only is it an immediate loss of defences, it means that only one of their defences will benefit from stat increases rather than two. This isn't even necessarily the corner case of buff wizards; most paladins, by default, will be Str/Cha. And heaven help you if your fighter wants to have a low Wisdom, in which case you'll be using your 5th stat somewhere. Now, you might say that these are minor disadvantages, that caring about a couple of points of defences is missing the point of roleplaying, and it's true that it's not necessarily worth getting hung up over it when you're playing. The point of rules, though, is to make the fun course of action the optimal one. If creating the character in your mind is what's important, then the rules should encourage that by making that character as able to influence the world as any other. To do otherwise is a failure; maybe a minor one, but then what's the upside of connecting stats so rigidly to combat? Incidentally, the simplest way to handle the defences problem while preserving the intent of an 18 not always being the best option would probably be to use your 2nd/3rd/4th stats directly in defences, letting the player pick which to use where. Maybe let only physical stats be used for PD and only mental ones for MD, if you feel like it'd be nice to have some nod towards verisimilitude.
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Aug 13, 2013 21:52
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Zandar posted:The point of rules, though, is to make the fun course of action the optimal one. Ferrinus posted:EDIT: I think QM has a solid point that, unlike a spellcaster, the fighter can't decide executively that it's time to pull out all the stops and Unleash. They're hope-based. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Aug 13, 2013 |
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Aug 13, 2013 23:10
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Ferrinus posted:Also, I'm talking about flavor in the first place. I don't want to abstractly overcome doors through ooc fast-talk, I want to punch down doors. 13th Age posted:Knock: This cantrip summons a magical servitor three to four times as big as your closed fist that swarms around the door and punches or pushes it open I realize your example is going cross-expectations, but there's a spell that does exactly what you want to do. 13A does a satisfying job of mitigating the impact of ability scores. If your Wizard was the captain of Mystical SWAT team and busting down doors was SOP, you get that background. If you want to punch down doors how most people expect a wizard to, (ie: using the PUNCH DOWN DOORS SPELL) you get to add your INT bonus. If you want to do it with your meat-fists, then you don't. But ultimately the die roll + background contribute more to your success or failure than whether you have a +0 or a +2 for Strength. This is the path that leads to I DON'T WANT A RANGER I WANT A BOW FIGHTER.
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Aug 13, 2013 23:24
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MadScientistWorking posted:Not really because the sorcerer has to actually spend a round doing squat diddly to pull out all the stops. Its the worst class ability in the entire game. No, a sorcerer can let loose with a daily power straightaway. Empowered casting is better than it looks, because it lets you double your dailies. Also, while you're powering up, the escalation die is increasing - casting Breath of the ___ on turn 3 and then Breath of the ___ on turn 4 has a slightly worse EV than does casting Empowered Breath of the ____ on turn 4 alone. That's completely off topic, though, and it seems like you've misunderstood the issue completely.
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Aug 13, 2013 23:25
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djw175 posted:But if you're quick enough, you can substitute a different ability score if you can justify it. For instance, instead of using Dex to stay stable on a rocking ship, use Int to figure out the right angle to stand at to not fall or Con to just try to ignore the tilting or Str to grab onto something and sink your hand into it. Cha and Wis are the only two I couldn't figure out a justification for and I'm sure someone could if they really really tried. If you can use any ability you want for any check, why use ability scores at all? There's no in or out of character reason to ever use anything other than your highest score for any check. Zandar posted:Incidentally, the simplest way to handle the defences problem while preserving the intent of an 18 not always being the best option would probably be to use your 2nd/3rd/4th stats directly in defences, letting the player pick which to use where. Maybe let only physical stats be used for PD and only mental ones for MD, if you feel like it'd be nice to have some nod towards verisimilitude. This is one of the things I liked about 4th edition. Any ability could be called upon for defenses, but there was enough flexibility to not feel bad about dumping stats.
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Aug 13, 2013 23:41
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I feel like the point of ability scores is to make you decide what things your character is good or bad at, and then stick with it. When you dump stats you are literally giving your character weaknesses, and it shouldn't be a surprise when those bite you in the rear end. It's part of roleplaying, and honestly it's one of the fun parts. The heavy fighter sliding and skidding around as he tries to follow the rogue along the rooftop, or the reverse if the dice go that way, is more interesting than them both having the exact same likelihood of success because they came up with reasons their backgrounds contribute to it. Similarly your slow soft wizard should maybe have worse defences than your hard fast barbarian. If you don't want him to have those weaknesses, then make him more of an all-rounder. Not every character has to have one max possible stat
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Aug 14, 2013 03:33
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pospysyl posted:If you can use any ability you want for any check, why use ability scores at all? There's no in or out of character reason to ever use anything other than your highest score for any check. This is meant to be a bad thing? If you're good at something, of course you're going to apply it in as many situations as possible; playing to your strengths is the smart thing to do. While some might say in a game it is limiting, but much like in other things it is exactly what encourages creativity and results in interesting things at the table. There is nothing stopping you if you want to play a character who is woefully bad at something and remains undeterred, striving to become better by doing. Purposefully applying the low stat wherever possible (most likely out of combat) can produce interesting scenarios especially if the GM has you fail forward. Neither of these things are new, nor are they the correct and only way to do things, they're just different applications of the same thing. Nothing but failure is miserable, pure success is boring; a mixture of both makes for an interesting story.
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Aug 14, 2013 04:59
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HmmmWhat posted:I feel like the point of ability scores is to make you decide what things your character is good or bad at, and then stick with it. When you dump stats you are literally giving your character weaknesses, and it shouldn't be a surprise when those bite you in the rear end. It's part of roleplaying, and honestly it's one of the fun parts. I'm in favor of characters having weaknesses that occasionally become important. I don't think you should be able to randomly use any stat and any skill to accomplish any task by fLaVoRiNg It and indeed my worry about the backgrounds system is that it's a bit too easy to just use one giant background to do everything you care about. My complaint is that ability scores as implemented are incredibly arbitrary and constraining, and favor certain character concepts over others for basically no reason. For instance, this was the first ability score array I came up with for my sorcerer, who was going to be a golem sort of thing: STR 10, DEX 12, CON 17, INT 09, WIS 08, CHA 19 (yes, I know it isn't very good, I'm using a different one now - I'm pasting it here as an example) Then I realized, wait a minute. If I just made this one change: STR 09, DEX 12, CON 17, INT 10, WIS 08, CHA 19 (swapping STR and INT) ...I'd get +1 MD absolutely for free! The second array's categorically superior to the first! I could feel my system mastery expanding. Of course, now my golem had to be kind of weak and scrawny. This crap's unbecoming of a game released in this, the year of our lord two thousand and thirteen, and there's really no good reason that the vagaries of class attack abilities and defense/initiative calculations should push us to play this kind of game. I look forward to the day when Fourteenth Age just gives you a skill pyramid or something. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 05:05
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Quadratic_Wizard posted:Other powers are better, but still suffer from all the randomness. "Roll a save with a +2 bonus" Great. "But not on that odd roll." ...drat. OR Hack and Slash. "Make an extra attack." Awesome! "But not on that odd roll." Well, still good. "And it's round 3 or later." Okay... "And you need to be engaged with two or more enemies." Fine. Odd trigger powers simulate opportunities and openings your character can capitalize on. Some classes have more of them than others. If you don't like those powers, don't choose one of those classes. If you want all classes to be all things to all people, I don't think a class based RPG is what you're aiming for. Alternatively, play a Half Elf, who's racial ability is to make their own opportunities. Ferrinus posted:This crap's unbecoming of a game released in this, the year of our lord two thousand and thirteen, and there's really no good reason that the vagaries of class attack abilities and defense/initiative calculations should push us to play this kind of game. I look forward to the day when Fourteenth Age just gives you a skill pyramid or something. Yeah yeah, death to ability scores, if we can put a man on the moon why can't we find a cheap way to screen for tooth decay in underprivileged third graders in rural areas. The rest of the system's fine and it plays wonderfully at the actual table, which is better than having ideal theorycrafting, so don't sweat the details. Utility is better than elegance, and thirteenth age has utility. Also I'm sorry your golem's strength is one lower than you wanted it to be.
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Aug 14, 2013 05:28
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Mystic Mongol posted:Also I'm sorry your golem's strength is one lower than you wanted it to be. Mate, it was actually something like five points lower than I wanted it to be. Because, see, I was thinking that okay, I've got spell fist, and even though Dex provides initiative, Strength provides melee basic attacks and a sorcerer that's already getting engaged a lot is going to want to be able to make an at least decent MBA, right? So, instead of this: STR 10, DEX 14, CON 16, INT 09, WIS 08, CHA 19 I tried this: STR 14, DEX 10, CON 16, INT 09, WIS 08, CHA 19 ...and noticed that I'd lost two points of armor class. Oops! So now I'm just playing a regular scrawny elf mage type because it'd just get depressing asking to use my Constitution to lift boulders all the time and I didn't want to pare myself back to being some kind of floating sentry crystal or something. Also, elves get extra actions. EDIT: While we're on the topic, you know what's really awful? Having to pay feats or talents or whatever just to be able to use your main attack stat for a spell or power you already paid a feat or talent to access in the first place. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 05:48
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Ferrinus posted:Mate, it was actually something like five points lower than I wanted it to be. Because, see, I was thinking that okay, I've got spell fist, and even though Dex provides initiative, Strength provides melee basic attacks and a sorcerer that's already getting engaged a lot is going to want to be able to make an at least decent MBA, right? Then that's what ypu pay to have +4 Strength man. Sorry that you apparently cannot play something that's not what you perceive to be the mechanically best character. Maybe this isn't the game for you.
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Aug 14, 2013 06:19
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Ferrinus posted:Mate, it was actually something like five points lower than I wanted it to be. Because, see, I was thinking that okay, I've got spell fist, and even though Dex provides initiative, Strength provides melee basic attacks and a sorcerer that's already getting engaged a lot is going to want to be able to make an at least decent MBA, right? You're spending way too much time on sperging out about numbers and not enough time doing  poo poo with the abilities you already have.Abloobloobloo I can't have an Ubermensch.
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Aug 14, 2013 06:21
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Ferrinus posted:Mate, it was actually something like five points lower than I wanted it to be. If you just want to say you're a big strong golem man, say you're a big strong golem man and have str 9 on your sheet. Who cares. I just don't understand why you need to have a strength of 14 to realize your character. You do a ton of damage and are tough already, so not having +3 to damage and to hit with your completely garbage melee attack shouldn't ruin your character.
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Aug 14, 2013 06:24
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Mystic Mongol posted:If you just want to say you're a big strong golem man, say you're a big strong golem man and have str 9 on your sheet. Who cares.
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Aug 14, 2013 06:28
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Ferrinus posted:Mate, it was actually something like five points lower than I wanted it to be. Because, see, I was thinking that okay, I've got spell fist, and even though Dex provides initiative, Strength provides melee basic attacks and a sorcerer that's already getting engaged a lot is going to want to be able to make an at least decent MBA, right? And why the hell are you maxing CHA when you're using Spell Fist? You could easily have STR 14, DEX 16 and CON 19 which gives you a better AC, PD AND attacks while fitting your character concept. HomegrownHydra fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 06:45
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Ferrinus, let me get this straight, you don't think people should be able to use whatever ability score they want when making a skill check, but they should be able to use any ability score to determine defenses.
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Aug 14, 2013 06:48
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This is kinda a weird dogpile. I mean Ferrinus now needs to defend reskinning, his refusal to reskin, why stats matter and should reflect character depth, and why they shouldn't. Also stop thinking of fiddly numbers, but here's a better number array. Kinda shifting gears, is there any other weird corner case math I should watch for in getting players new to this but who've played other D&D games, or traps they might fall into in character creation? Or I guess really big concepts that are different from other D&D-alikes that might cause confusion. Like the way my first 4th 1-shot had players using their 5-foot-step.
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Aug 14, 2013 08:04
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HomegrownHydra posted:Ferrinus, let me get this straight, you don't think people should be able to use whatever ability score they want when making a skill check, but they should be able to use any ability score to determine defenses. I don't think Ferrinus has said that specifically, but I have, so let me clarify. The problem is not one or the other, it's both in combination. You could decouple ability scores from skill checks and it'd solve the problem just as much. The only reason I'd prefer to decouple them somewhat from defences is that I think the "ability scores as broad approaches/backgrounds as areas of experience" thing works pretty well. Also, if you restrict PD to using the physical stats and MD to using the mental ones, the only difference in what stat might be used is with AC. I would say that AC, being the ability to stop people with swords from taking your HP away, is much more abstract than any given problem that could be solved through backgrounds. Can you really say that you couldn't use Str for AC by knocking blows away with your weapon or shield, or Cha by feinting to misdirect their attacks? More generally, I'm not sure why something that was recognised as a genuine problem in 4E is suddenly getting blown off with "oh, well, there are plenty of ways to work around it" when it comes to 13th Age, a game where nearly all the same arguments apply. A background has a maximum of +5, same as a trained skill in 4E, and the difference between having to dump a stat and having it be one of your strengths could well be around +4. Even if you devote more than half your background points to being strong, that'll give you a total of +4 on your strength rolls as opposed to being able to apply a more general background to a high Str and get +8. That's the difference between failing a normal check at 1st level half the time and a quarter of the time; it's not insignificant. It's the "untrained wizards beat trained clerics at Religion" problem, except you can maybe get around it by claiming to use sheer willpower to recall facts.
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Aug 14, 2013 08:43
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I do think that the magic/martial thing is a bit problematic in 13A. Casters are still the guys who get all the cool utility stuff, including the ritual option which is just "do anything you can talk your DM into, and if it's too outrageous then the rest of the party has to help you prepare for it somehow" which is the whole narrative/spotlight control problem in spades. If you look at their FAQ on the Pelgrane Press website, there's a really terrible answer that I genuinely can't understand Heinsoo & Tweet coming out with: quote:How does 13th Age handle the Linear Fighter Quadratic Wizard problem?
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Aug 14, 2013 09:14
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Zandar posted:It's the "untrained wizards beat trained clerics at Religion" problem, except you can maybe get around it by claiming to use sheer willpower to recall facts. This is A Thing in 13th Age? 
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Aug 14, 2013 10:10
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P.d0t posted:This is A Thing in 13th Age? Nah, it's a thing in D&D Next. In 13A, if you have a relevant background you've invested at all heavily in, you're pretty likely to beat a wizard on an Int+(Religion knowledge background) check. And you're almost certain to beat them in a Cha+Religion check, a Wis+Religion check, or a Con+Religion check (e.g. the end of The Last Crusade  )
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Aug 14, 2013 10:22
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So what is a tranche? I don't understand how this finance term applies to the bestiary because the world of finance is like Saturn to me.
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Aug 14, 2013 11:21
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My Lovely Horse posted:Background: Stronger than he looks +5 would do more for you than the 5 ability score points ever will. This is a legit wonderful idea. I'm glad something good came from reading this argument.
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Aug 14, 2013 12:32
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HomegrownHydra posted:Why do you care about melee attacks when you have at will spells? And melee attacks don't benefit from Gather Power. I answered this in the post. A strength score lets you make opportunity attacks, which a melee sorcerer could benefit from since they're built to get engaged in combat. Not GREAT OAs, sure - it's not a fighter - but it's like the one case in which Str might be as useful as Dex, even though Dex is more useful generally. I couldn't dump charisma since sorcerers still attack with it, spell fist just means they use con for damage, which is a straight-up drawback but on the other hand you get 2 ac. I'm cackling aloud with gusto here at the reflexive "boo hoo you're not an ubermensch" bullshit this is drawing. I should've remembered how unpopularuscle wizards were here on the SA forums! Who did I think I was, making a sorcerer who was clumsy instead of scrawny! Completely cancelling out my spell fist bonus was no better than I deserved for trying to play against type. I was gonna take "big ole golem" as a background, but there's a difference between rolling that at -1 and rolling it at +2.
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Aug 14, 2013 14:24
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Ferrinus posted:I answered this in the post. A strength score lets you make opportunity attacks, which a melee sorcerer could benefit from since they're built to get engaged in combat. Not GREAT OAs, sure - it's not a fighter - but it's like the one case in which Str might be as useful as Dex, even though Dex is more useful generally. I couldn't dump charisma since sorcerers still attack with it, spell fist just means they use con for damage, which is a straight-up drawback but on the other hand you get 2 ac. Dude, you want your Elfgame man to be great at spells but also fast to dodge, but totally gets to be strong too to hit stuff near him! Its almost as though you have to choose less things to be awesome at  Laugh all you want at uberelf comments, you are whining you can't be good at everything.
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Aug 14, 2013 14:31
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Danoss posted:This is meant to be a bad thing? But ability scores are an obstacle to having these strengths and weaknesses. Every character has to have decent Dex and Con, or they'll be screwed. Not only that, but if you want to apply your strengths through the medium of ability scores, you have to justify using your imagination for a chance of actually succeeding. Ability scores are presented as a spread of equal categories of activities your character is good at, but being bad at Dexterity is fundamentally worse than being bad at Charisma, no matter what class you're playing. I'm all for providing interesting tradeoffs, but it's not interesting to create a charismatic fighter who fails at, you know, fighting. The "some character builds are just going to fail all the time and that's fine, in fact that's what makes it a good game" argument is super groggy. Why am I rolling for something with the express purpose of failing at it? There are no optional minuses, after all. Everything is written in the context of adding numbers so that your total roll is higher than a goal. It's kind of the point of the game. Failing forward is great, but it's not in the rules and it's not an expectation a player has. Bombadilillo posted:Dude, you want your Elfgame man to be great at spells but also fast to dodge, but totally gets to be strong too to hit stuff near him! Like I said, tradeoffs are part of the fun, but Ferrinus wants to be able to choose between being scrawny or being clumsy. Being clumsy, though, is the unambiguously worse choice, so he can't choose that. When some ability scores are more important than other, it limits the meaningful choices you can make. pospysyl fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 14:41
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Bombadilillo posted:Dude, you want your Elfgame man to be great at spells but also fast to dodge, but totally gets to be strong too to hit stuff near him! Dude, that's what I did. I chose to be strong instead of quick. Then it turned out that being quick was categorically superior than being strong because 13A has the disease that makes you assume the attribute named "dexterity" should do everything at once.
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Aug 14, 2013 14:52
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pospysyl posted:Ability scores are presented as a spread of equal categories of activities your character is good at, but being bad at Dexterity is fundamentally worse than being bad at Charisma, no matter what class you're playing.
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Aug 14, 2013 14:53
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MadScientistWorking posted:Its not really though. As I said before I was really amazed being able to go first is why it supposedly is a better. Have you actually been reading any posts in this discussion? I don't think you haaaave!
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Aug 14, 2013 14:59
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Maybe you should start over? What is the end state you want for your character. We'll help you get there!
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Aug 14, 2013 15:07
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pospysyl posted:you have to justify using your imagination for a chance of actually succeeding Isn't that the point of this particular use of the OGL? It's a game system designed to free players up for roleplaying. Min maxing suggests you should probably play a game where your carefully assigned dexterity counts for your ability to scale a wall but not your ability to run quickly. I understand the complaint, except with dex - as far as I can tell the only thing dex and dex alone seems to determine is initiative - so what does dex do for your ultra fast strong wizard? Why not just dump that? How do you pick stats? I've always rolled, and will continue to (though I guarantee everyone one 18 where they want it). Do you just say 'oh my guy is just the best, gets all 6's on all the dice so I can have a 24'? What's so bad about explaining what's going on to your DM? All you need to do is say I'm going to use my background in being the best at everything in order to open this door with my fist, and that's if you don't know your DM very well. It doesn't slow down play to roll with your background modifier anyway and simply describe what's happening - 'I use my wizard muscle to open the door'. If you're super concerned about AC/PD/MD, mod in a bit of cross class stuff - take a fighter manoeuvre, or bards song or battle cry. Does it matter? The idea is that the game is malleable - it's said a thousand times throughout the book. Additional, it's funny and good for the group if something your character does repeatedly, he constantly fails at. Infact, it's hilarious and, especially if you're playing in a new group playing it up a bit will really help group cohesion. I've got a game set up where our wizard is a really good role player - good enough to realise that his spells are a bit OP at times and can really steal spotlight. His one unique thing is, like his player, he's dyslexic. So his way of playing that is he gets his spells mixed up. Sure that nerfs the wizard class and produces some weird poo poo where some things become impossible, but its really helped create a story - and that's the point.
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Aug 14, 2013 15:14
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