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## "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Murtak
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by Murtak » Sun Jul 24, 2005 9:19 am

Actually he is probably talking about this
Edit: Bah, Frank posted while I searched for this post.
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Alansmithee
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by Alansmithee » Sun Jul 24, 2005 10:10 am

> PhoneLobster at [unixtime wrote:1122167335[/unixtime]]

> > K wrote:People want two things:
> > 1. They want to know what a race/class means when you say it. If I said Halfling Rogue 4, then everyone knows what that class/race combo does and generally knows what you did with your skill points (max Hide, Dex fighter with Finesse or ranged sneaker).
> > 2. They want to make off-color combos. They want Halfling Monks because they've seen too much Mexican wrestling.

> Not on your life buddy.
> 1. People often want to define themselves by MORE than just race and class. They don't want to be a halfling rogue, they want to be a halfling rogue raised by nomadic desert orcs specialising in archery combat while mounted on camel back. An option which by no means prevents anyone else from playing the halfling rogue who gets a lame bonus to throwing weapons and hobbit spin off flavour who put his skill points on the same boring damn skills he always selects.
> 2. This is far more than just a matter of off colour combos due to mexican wrestling (great train of thought justifiying your position there). It stretches from the basic principle of war forged wizards as advertised in flavour text and illustrations actually working to the potential for a system where with minimal effort you suddenly have a much broader range of potentially entertaining character backgrounds.
> 3. People want a lot of things. Sometimes they want thematic campaigns where everyone has the same race. But race is just a bit of background story so it sucks when it means that EVERYONE in the group ends up being a war forged fighter because thats all war forged are good for.
> 4. People want EVEN MORE THINGS (gosh darn those complex folks) They DON'T want a system that screws over any caster character who takes levels of their racial non caster class, as per your second suggested fix.
> 5. People EVEN want variation right down to the physical attributes of a characters starting race. Orc? What about a Runt? Bird Man whose wings were clipped? Dwarf who suffered a wasting disease as a child? etc... These are nice flavourful ideas that rigid systems as proposed essentially eliminate.
> Should writing "Orc" on my character sheet suddenly define utterly every aspect of my character (as suggested by your comments regarding the halfling rogue) or should it just be ONE element in a complex and interesting background that MIGHT be the stereotype you favour, or might not?
> Indeed should writing Orc mean ANYTHING other than that they are, merely technically, and purely in flavour text, an Orc.
> Because if it also suddenly means they are also a fighter with X strength and Y charisma with THAT weapon specialization and THIS many hit points and a bonus against THAT race, that just really really sucks.

What I'm not understanding is why you should expect every little part of backstory to have some numeric effect on your character. You want to play a runt orc? Either take the gnome stats and write orc on your sheet, or just play an orc and tell people you are a runt. You don't need to overhaul the races, just get away from being stuck on labels. Just because the book says it is elves who get +int -con doesn't mean you couldn't just as easily write orc, dwarf, catfolk, godzilla under your race. That's hardly unreasonable.
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PhoneLobster
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by PhoneLobster » Sun Jul 24, 2005 12:01 pm

> Alansmithee wrote:What I'm not understanding is why you should expect every little part of backstory to have some numeric effect on your character.

And why the heck should a little back story detail like race have any numeric effect on your character?
The training to become a wizard or a fighter?
Its all back story. jeesh.

> Alansmithee wrote: You want to play a runt orc? Either take the gnome stats and write orc on your sheet, or just play an orc and tell people you are a runt.

Bam! You just unpinned racial bonuses from the background flavour text of writing the one word race name on your character sheet. Congratulations on implementing in your example a simplified form of precisely what I am advocating here.

> Alansmithee wrote:You don't need to overhaul the races, just get away from being stuck on labels.

Well a total selection of less than ten core race bonus packages which include (once those sticky labels are peeled off) a bunch of sensless combinations of random junk kinda sucks. At the very least the same random junk should be broken into smaller selectable chunks or better yet overhual the damn race system already.
It desperately needs it.

> Alansmithee wrote: Just because the book says it is elves who get +int -con doesn't mean you couldn't just as easily write orc, dwarf, catfolk, godzilla under your race. That's hardly unreasonable.

Ah, the incredibly sucky "it ain't broke because an elf in a funny hat fixes it" D&D race argument. Pull the other one, its got bells on.
It is indeed unreasonable. An extensible customizable system for describing a characters abilities gained from their background would be infinitely better than "I'm a Dwarf So I get like this ass kickin' hole digging bonus, even though I'm a born sea pirate" which is STUPID.
For one we wouldn't have to pull out a new book with a bunch of new barbeque and extra spicy flavoured elves everytime you run a campaign with a fractionally different cultural background story that requires some tribe of elves to wack their racial weapon proficiency on scimitars or halberds.
Look, any one of you who favours these racial stereotypes tell me in what way is restricting dwarf to axe weilding miner or elf to effeminite nancy stereotypes of character abilities in ANY way functionally different from a system that restricted female characters to non physical combat stereotypes?
There are rules designing morons around the world that will sit there and argue with you till they are blue in the face that its important for their demented ideas of realism or flavour or who knows what to enforce some stupid "and female characters are physically weak" "feature" in their system. What the heck is the difference?
As far as that lot is concerned playing a female barbarian is playing "against type" but think of the vast array of potential characters and adventures demanded by RPG players around the world that would be crippled by such a "feature".
Is there ANY difference between the interest in female barbarians as a viable and desirable character background and the interest in war forged wizards, flightless bird men, dwarfs with a wasting disease?
Beyond the blatant misogyny of one of the view points I'm not seeing a difference.
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RandomCasualty
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by RandomCasualty » Sun Jul 24, 2005 4:51 pm

> Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1122192156[/unixtime]]
> Since DnD has any one stat doing multiple jobs, any attack on the stat system is a push to take the entire system and toss it in the trash. Nothing would be salvagable.

Honestly, not really.
The stat system isn't even a big part of D&D, it's a weird attachment of substats that doesn't even need to be there. Remember that in 2nd edition and 1st edition, monsters didn't even have stats. That pretty much tells you how important having ability scores are.
There are only a select few rolls which actually roll against ability scores, like trip checks, and those can easily be changed to something else. For the remainder of things, whether its saves, attack rolls, spell DCs or whatever, ability scores are simply substats. They're nothing more than some crazy modifier which fits in there, and in many cases they do next to nothing. You gain a few more skill points or your will save is slightly higher, or your wizard sucks in melee.
You can run the game perfectly fine by just stripping out ability scores. They tend to counterbalance each other anyway. Damage is counterbalanced by con modifier to hp, attack bonus is counterbalanced by AC bonus, and so on.
Ability scores don't even really feel like an inherent part of the D&D system, they're just some substat that could be there or not be there and you probably wouldn't miss it either way.
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by User3 » Sun Jul 24, 2005 5:15 pm

> Frank wrote:After careful consideration, I don't think that working within the core conceits of D&D is a useful goal to have. 3.5 is garbage. It's garbage that you can play at a moment's notice with people whose play style you don't know, but it's still garbage. Playing D&D is like drinking Coors or Fosters, and no colorful cup or hand made pretzels are going to change that.

Then you shouldn't play any more, or even post about it any more. If you won't try to work with the parts of DnD that people enjoy, then you are basically spending your time making people hate something they love.
And people who spend their time doing something that does nothing of value and only makes other people unhappy.... well, we call them dicks.
There's a reason this board has gone from 10 active thread about DnD to one DnD thread and another about Teen Titans. Constant "Oh, your idea is crap and DnD is crap and my unwritten system in my head is better" drives everyone away.
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Murtak
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by Murtak » Sun Jul 24, 2005 5:58 pm

What, one person driving everyone else away from a message board? In what world?
Have you ever thought about possible other reasons for fewer DnD threads? Like, maybe, "3rd edition is not new anymore"? I would think that rather more likely than your explanation, especially seeing as the DnD threads that do pop up every now and then seem to get their fair share of attention. Heck, that guy who supposedly hates DnD is actually willing to DM a game.
Myself, I think Frank is sometimes overly blunt, to the point of arrogance. He is also frequently right. I can deal with that. And you know, it is entirely possible (in fact, it has already happened) that I can use some of his reasoning to help me make my personal DnD experience to be better. Just because one person thinks wildshape is a broken concept does not mean you have to forbid everyone from playing druids. You can always just ignore that person, or, if you think he is right, you can just sit down with your druid-to-be and tell him to not abuse wildshape or you will have to scrap it.
How is that bad? You are getting meaningful criticism (and usually some ideas on how to build something better) for free. And you tell us that is not valuable? Bah. If you do not want free (and useful) advice why do you read these boards? Just to hear people agreeing with you?
Well, go ahead and make a post about the things you like about DnD. I am sure you will get some replies to it, possibly even from the dreaded Frank. Until then maybe you should learn to profit from criticism. Disagreement and discussion is a good thing and ultimately healthy for the game.
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User3
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by User3 » Sun Jul 24, 2005 6:04 pm

> Murtak wrote:What, one person driving everyone else away from a message board? In what world?

No, like 5-6 of the regulars have gone to "dnd is crap."
And there hasn't been a new idea on this board in like 6 months. Do a search.
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Username17
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by Username17 » Sun Jul 24, 2005 6:46 pm

OK, after a very quick search:
18:55:24
Tue Jul 19 2005
Buffs transformed into curses that target enemies and give penalties inverse to the bonuses they now give.
It's a simple new idea that makes D&D work vastly better and all but eliminates the potential game breakingness of Cleric Archers. It's easy to implement, good for a D&D game (or any game), and it's less than a week old.
The real reason that discussion has gone down is that volume has gone up. Hasbro makes two or more D&D books a month, and that's more than people can keep up with. I haven't read through Sandstorm or Lost Empires of Your Mom, and a lot of people are in the same boat. We can't keep up with the publication volume, and therefore we can't be on the same page.
Back when Magic of Feyrun was the place that spells came from that wasn't the core books, Defenders of the Faith or Skip Hates Sorcerers, it was reasonable to expect that everyone had read (or could go look at) any particular spell you wanted to talk about. Now I can break Nar Fiend Binding, but I've never actually read the spell. And I don't think that I'm in the minority on that.
Hasbro writes stuff faster than it can edit it. That also means that stuff is coming out faster than we can buy it, and it means that it's coming ou faster than we can form opinions about it. There was a time that I would go through a new book like Savage Species and pull out all the cool concepts and try to run with them. Now adays I wait for them to come out on KaZaA, and even then only if I still remember them by the time someone scans them in.
Balancing material is a lot of work. Balancing uneditted material is even more work. The amount of work required to balance the simple volume that is coming out is significantly greater than the amount of work to write a whole new game system. Is it any wonder that people are moving in that direction? Currently, in face to face I run a Shadowrun game (slated to end just before 4th edition comes out), and a SAME game (Disgaea based, the PCs just hit Rank 3).
I'm still willing to play d20, and I'm still willing to run it. But the fact is that at this point the primary advantage of d20 (everyone knows the rules) is gone. Everyone plays with a few 3rd edition rules, and some of the 3.5 bonus material, and not some of the other 3.5 source material, and so on and so on. Just getting people to agree on what the rules are is a discussion so long that I could just remake Rag Doll, Absence, or Patriot Crab and go play Champions with less effort.
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User3
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by User3 » Sun Jul 24, 2005 9:08 pm

Here is a link
from 7 months ago where you talk about debuffs being better and more balanced than buffs if done in the way you are talking about.
This new idea is a little more fleshed out, bu its conceptually the same.
Unfortunately, the board only saves a year's worth of stuff, or I could go back further.
--------------
More books should create more discussion. There are more combos, more needed tweaks and fixes, more new rules to discuss..... basically everything a board needs to thrive.
Instead of that, we get "and I don't even like DnD 3.5 and every mechanic is awful and the idea I think about at night is perfect, even though its never been playtested or even written down....."
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Maj
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by Maj » Sun Jul 24, 2005 11:17 pm

> K wrote:

> > Frank wrote:After careful consideration, I don't think that working within the core conceits of D&D is a useful goal to have. 3.5 is garbage. It's garbage that you can play at a moment's notice with people whose play style you don't know, but it's still garbage. Playing D&D is like drinking Coors or Fosters, and no colorful cup or hand made pretzels are going to change that.

> Then you shouldn't play any more, or even post about it any more. If you won't try to work with the parts of DnD that people enjoy, then you are basically spending your time making people hate something they love.
> And people who spend their time doing something that does nothing of value and only makes other people unhappy.... well, we call them dicks.
> There's a reason this board has gone from 10 active thread about DnD to one DnD thread and another about Teen Titans. Constant "Oh, your idea is crap and DnD is crap and my unwritten system in my head is better" drives everyone away.

And that's part of the reason that I've stopped posting. Everytime I want to pick up this game and try to make it better, I realize that really... Your one-stat system is the only way to guarantee 100% equality.
It sucks.

> Frank wrote:The real reason that discussion has gone down is that volume has gone up. Hasbro makes two or more D&D books a month, and that's more than people can keep up with. I haven't read through Sandstorm or Lost Empires of Your Mom, and a lot of people are in the same boat. We can't keep up with the publication volume, and therefore we can't be on the same page.

Publication volume? Seriously... Why the hell would I want to even start to read a new WotC book? They are largely too specific to really be useful, and the ideas in them are largely not worth paying for (If there's an exception, someone let me know).
At some point, the CBA of buying the books turned away from new publications and towards my own imagination and totally crappy ability to write mechanics. And when I think that my ability to write mechanics is better than the designers at WotC, you know there's a problem.
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Username17
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by Username17 » Sun Jul 24, 2005 11:35 pm

> K wrote:from 7 months ago where you talk about debuffs being better and more balanced than buffs if done in the way you are talking about.
> This new idea is a little more fleshed out, bu its conceptually the same.

If you take that idea as being the same as the recent discussion, then there's really only been one discussion ever:
Person A: If we make more rules, we can make the game more of a simulation and also make the game more objective.
Person B: If we make the rules simpler, the game will move faster and small discrepencies won't really matter in the simulation because we'll get more storytelling in.
Person C: If we make the rules more fair, the game will stand alone better as a game. Then we can layer as much storytelling on the back of that as we want and we'll be good because we'll have started from a position of having a good game already.
Person D: If we cram more stuff into the game it will be more likely to have the stuff that any particular person is looking for.
----
So yes, since that initial discussion, there has been no new progress in gaming discussion ever. On any board. By any person.
And once you recognize that fact, then you can start making a qualified approach to what these games actually are. They are a grounding board from which to tell cooperative storytelling games and a framework with which to resolve disputes and maintain excitement and mystery within those cooperative stories.
That's it. And there's no reason that that needs to prevent someone from playing a Svartalf or the Niebelungen while encouraging people to act out the part of Gimli.

> Maj wrote:Your one-stat system is the only way to guarantee 100% equality.
> It sucks.

No. It isn't. There are lots of ways to guaranty 100% equality. Any point distribution between binary choices or check mark selection of RPS systems is balanced. You can layer as many of those together as you want and maintain balance.
But it is time that we remember that the D&D attribute scores were created in order to make some characters better than others. That was the goal, and it worked. If balance is a goal, those attributes have to go. It's not that all attributes have to go, it's just that we can't use those ones if over all balance is something that we're even attempting to have.
We now discourage XP favoritism. We got rid of separate XP tracks for different classes. Let's get rid of XP altogether. XP were created for the express purpose of rewarding players in a subjective fashion by having their characters gain levels at different times. Now that fairness is a goal, that entire plan is extremely suspect.
Ranting and waving your fists just because people are questioning sacred cows is the opposite of helping anything.
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by Maj » Sun Jul 24, 2005 11:56 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote:

> > Maj wrote:Your one-stat system is the only way to guarantee 100% equality.
> > It sucks.

> No. It isn't. There are lots of ways to guaranty 100% equality. Any point distribution between binary choices or check mark selection of RPS systems is balanced. You can layer as many of those together as you want and maintain balance.

Horse shit. The only way you can ensure that people actually have equal and balanced characters is to make sure they don't have the ability to make a choice about how their character turns out. You have to make sure that they don't ever choose bad tactics with the numbers they are given. And you have to ensure that - as the DM - the options for using a character's abilities come up equally for all the characters present.
The aspiration of a 100% guaranteed equal system doesn't exist because humanity errs, has awful judgment, and often doesn't want what's best for themselves. You can make some kind of mathematically pretty system, and it will surely be pretty... But the only way to make people be balanced equally is to give them the exact same numbers and let them dress up the numbers in whatever way they want to. And that is not a game.

> Frank wrote:Ranting and waving your fists just because people are questioning sacred cows is the opposite of helping anything.

There is no system, has never been a system, and will never be a system without flaws.
Period.
You cannot remove the fact that we are people and we screw up the core system of a roleplaying game.
It is laudable to attempt to get things as equal as possible before allowing people to bring the system to its knees, and I stand behind anyone attempting to do that. Seeing as how I have no desire to start from the ground up, however, I prefer to work with a broken system than to start over... And my favorite system is not D&D.
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by RandomCasualty » Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:25 am

> Maj at [unixtime wrote:1122249400[/unixtime]]
> Horse shit. The only way you can ensure that people actually have equal and balanced characters is to make sure they don't have the ability to make a choice about how their character turns out. You have to make sure that they don't ever choose bad tactics with the numbers they are given. And you have to ensure that - as the DM - the options for using a character's abilities come up equally for all the characters present.

Actually bad tactics are the reason SAME has 4 attributes instead of one. The application of more attributes can actually create more bad choices tactically, while keeping the game balanced.
The idea is to have a right and wrong choice in any given battle, but not having right or wrong choices at character creation. Combat should be a tactical exercise, character creation shouldn't be. The goal is to have a system where you can play a given concept and not have to worry about the system sticking it to you.
Allowing people to screw up a combat and pick suboptimal tactics makes up the game, allowing screwing people at character creation is the equivalent to playing a chess game with someone and having them start without any knights.
Character creation should not be a min/maxing exercise.
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by Username17 » Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:33 am

RC said it better than I could.
Chess is a balanced game. Not because you can't screw everythign up and lose your queen without accomplishing anything, but because everyone starts with the same position.
It is possible to design a game in which everyone starts with a position of equal value which is nonetheless different. You can still screw that up and lose a battle through your own mistakes - that's what makes it game. And the random element menas that you can still lose even though you never did anything wrong at all.
But at no time did your character conception make you start with less pieces or worse pieces over all. That's really all you can (or want to) ask out of a game, and that's actually deliverable within the constraints of a playable and comprehensible system.
Really. And it's not like there's only one, there's lots of ways to do it in virtually any genre or player power scale you can imagine.
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Alansmithee
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by Alansmithee » Mon Jul 25, 2005 6:58 am

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1122251596[/unixtime]]Chess is a balanced game. Not because you can't screw everythign up and lose your queen without accomplishing anything, but because everyone starts with the same position.

Actually, that's wrong. White is always assumed to have the advantage, because they get the first move and hence initiative. So even in chess "character creation" ensures that one side is suboptimal (the side that gets black).
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by Crissa » Mon Jul 25, 2005 9:04 pm

Well, I think Frank has a good point - the system needs an overhaul - and I think K has a point - we're more moaning about D&D than playing it - and Frank has a good point - classes are not inherently balanced - but K has a good point - classes are easy to use.
What I would like is a point-buy system, with balanced stats - six is fine, or whatever, three, I don't care - but that system is then provided with classes and races already bounght and balanced.
No more arguing about the balance, because the points are there - if you want to tweak, the small chunks are there to be tweaked. The power level of a wing-clipped birdman is known, not just flailed about hopefully.
Why can't we remake it in an easu to use, and yet familiar form?
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Count Arioch the 28th
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by Count Arioch the 28th » Mon Jul 25, 2005 10:48 pm

> Alansmithee at [unixtime wrote:1122274704[/unixtime]]
> Actually, that's wrong. White is always assumed to have the advantage, because they get the first move and hence initiative. So even in chess "character creation" ensures that one side is suboptimal (the side that gets black).

I would argue that going first puts you at a disadvantage, and going second puts you at an advantage.
Then again, I suck at chess, so take that how you will.
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by Lago_AM3P » Tue Jul 26, 2005 12:09 am

In defense of Chess and game theory in general, going first does not always or even usually guarantees an advantage if the sides are equally matched. This is seen in sports like boxing and conflicts like World War I.
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by Josh_Kablack » Tue Jul 26, 2005 12:55 am

On Chess: my favorite quote has always been: "When I play WHITE, I win because I move first. When I play BLACK, I win because I am Bogolubov." - Efim Bogolubov.
On posting less:
1. Financially, I really can't even afford to stay behind in new WotC material at the moment, plus I don't give 2 craps about FR or Ebberon supplements. Nor do I ever want to carry more than 5-7 hardback D&D books to a game, so for me to adopt a new book it has to make the short list of best and most useful book for the campaign I am running right now.
2. I have a largely workable set of houserules which I and my primary group are pretty happy with (they're only about 85% complete, but they work well enough to patch everything that comes up often in my group). Most of these houserules have been posted here and/or on Nifty when I wanted feedback on them, and currently I don't give a crap what you think about them, seeing as they are not being edited currently and none of you is in either of my gaming groups.
3. It's summer: Time for free films in the park, training for the Great Race, playing catch in the backyard (with my new medicene ball ), hosting BBQs and taking in all the summer blockbusters at the movies. Not time for spending 3-4 hours a day ranting on message boards to sharpen my understanding and opinion of underlying principles for an indoor hobby.
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by User3 » Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:59 pm

To get back to the 'race' issue...
What do you think of 'racial ability bloat'?
From my limited perspective of creating the most bitch-ass character, I want the most possible racial gew-gaws, thingamawhozits, and chotchkes.
More a more logical/objective perspective, I feel that (3.5 especially) has made something which could be very simple incredibly complex. I honestly don't care about all of the little circumstance bonuses I'll get from being a lamp-post gnome, or shite elf.
With that in mind, back to the basics. I would consider three traits actually important: Size, Nurture, and Nature.
Size is pretty obvious. At best, it should be a zero-sum as far as power goes: The 'small' guys' advantages vs. the 'tall' guys' vs. the 'medium guys' should all be situational.
This lets you have creatures which generally look like humans, halflings, and ogres.
Then you have your 'nuture' abilities. These would be regional feats (a regional feat per character). There would be a 'racial default' (which would probably resemble the current norm), and infinite selectability room. This would allow for 'raised by dwarves,' 'raised by pirates,' 'raised by your mom,' etc.
Then you have your naure abilities. These would also fall into the realm of what is currently a "regional feat," but would be exclusively things like 'Darkvision,' 'Low-light vision,' 'Stout,' 'Swift,' etc.
This allows for the basic racial distinctions (dwarves see in the dark), which would not vary within a distinct 'race.' It would also allow for individual distinctions like 'heavyweight,' 'albino,' 'dropped on the magic as a kid,' and so forth.
I'm thinking of simplifying this by allowing for two feats and a flaw. The two feats could even be stuff like 'Flight' and Improved flight.' A character doesn't have to take a flaw, but the flaw allows for an extra feat.
So in the end, a racial stat block looks like this:
Size: [S/M/L]
Feat 1 (Culture):
Feat 2 (Nature 1):
Feat 3 (Nature 2):
[Flaw:]
[Feat 4:]
The actual number of possible feats could be as large or small as desired, allowing for ease of play or massive Splat-book profits.
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PhoneLobster
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by PhoneLobster » Wed Jul 27, 2005 12:10 am

> Catharz wrote:So in the end, a racial stat block looks like this:
> Size: [S/M/L]
> Feat 1 (Culture):
> Feat 2 (Nature 1):
> Feat 3 (Nature 2):
> [Flaw:]
> [Feat 4:]
> The actual number of possible feats could be as large or small as desired, allowing for ease of play or massive Splat-book profits.

In my mind that, or something very close is a great starting point (or even a good end point), at least for fitting into the current system, or something very like the current system.
I don't see any reason to call the 3 abilities there feats unless they are selectable with normal feats (or visa versa) but then I don't see why that would be a huge problem if they were, in fact it might be a good idea if they were.
Enough race abilities in feats in one book and you pretty much would never need another splat book for that part of the games material, or alternately few enough and you could stretch race publication out to the stupid scattering amongst dozens of tomes we have now.
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Username17
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by Username17 » Wed Jul 27, 2005 12:45 am

"Make it feats" is often bandied about as a solution to every problem. Unfrotunately, as currently constituted it isn't the solution to any problems.
One feat is "Weapon Focus: Skin Flute". Another feat is "Combat Reflexes", and still another feat is "Elusive Target". One feat gives +1 to a single die roll that itself isn't actually all that important in the long run. Another allows you to defend yourself from crazy attack manuvers even while flatfooted and can sometimes give you three extra attacks a round. And finally, one feat gives you bonus attacks in bizzare circumstances and allows you to force your opponent to automatically misss you on occassion.
Unless and until a meaningful feat power standard comes in, we're no better off by making things into feats than by not doing so.
Personally, I think the Elf and the Dwarf do too much crap, and I would like to see more races along the lines of the Hobgoblin. Two simple and general bonuses and the ability to see in the dark. People can wrap their minds around that one.
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PhoneLobster
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by PhoneLobster » Wed Jul 27, 2005 1:28 am

> wrote:Unless and until a meaningful feat power standard comes in, we're no better off by making things into feats than by not doing so.

In this situation its choice vs no choice. And as such its better.
With feats as they are its far from best, but within the current system its pretty close to as good a solution as I would expect.
Without coming up with something entirely new or throwing all existing feats out the window is there a better way to do customizable race/background abilities than that?
Well, barring the terror of making the GM just make it up entirely as he goes along, which I continue to be uncomfortable with.
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RandomCasualty
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by RandomCasualty » Wed Jul 27, 2005 4:34 am

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1122425111[/unixtime]]
> Personally, I think the Elf and the Dwarf do too much crap, and I would like to see more races along the lines of the Hobgoblin. Two simple and general bonuses and the ability to see in the dark. People can wrap their minds around that one.

I'm actually just the opposite, I hate races that are nothing more than a set of bonuses with no unique abilities. While a lot of the elf and dwarf is probably extraneous, Racial abilities should really be the forefront of being part of a race, as opposed to stat mods. People should be a mind flayer because they want to beable to suck people's brains out, not because they want a crazy +8 bonus to int.
If ability scores are kept, basically I'd rather have races be a set of minimum and maximum starting values and the basic starting ability score range be extended. So having a certain score which is below or above the min/max ability score range will restrict your race choice. Races themselves should have no modifiers. If you want to have a dextrous elf, you should just build him with lots of dexterity. If you don't want clumsy elves running around, you just set the racial minimum dex to 12, or 14 or whatever you feel like. And if people want to ignore the racial min/max they can without having any problems.
The easiest thing is just to eliminate the old sacred cow that everyone has to start with 3-18 in ability scores. Let people start wtih 3-30 or however high you want things to go, and don't have racial modifiers, just say something like "all hill giants need at least 20 strength" and similar stuff. It's time the old '3-18 + modifiers' sacred cow went to the slaughterhouse.
Or you could just remove ability scores altogether, but that'd take a little bit of work to balance races. Though overall I think you'd end up with a much better game by just taking out ability scores.
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erik
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### Re: "Party Composition and Social Skills"

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Post by erik » Wed Jul 27, 2005 4:44 am

> Alansmithee at [unixtime wrote:1122274704[/unixtime]]White is always assumed to have the advantage, because they get the first move and hence initiative. So even in chess "character creation" ensures that one side is suboptimal (the side that gets black).

This is so absurd that my mind is boggled.
I played chess competitively for nearly a dozen years (haven't really played seriously or often for about the past 7 or 8 years tho), won state championships, and placed nationally as well. In all that time, about the only people I ever heard gripe about having to play black were the little kids who just learned how to play.
I'm lazy and I like to play black and let the other player put on their plan. It's fun to give them all the rope they need to hang themselves. I have every confidence that when a computer simulation finally gives an exhaustive analysis of chess, the short answer will be that every perfectly played game should end in a draw.
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