You've Created A Bad Character. How, why and whose fault is it?

[Thomas Shey]

I thought Skilled play in the Gygaxian mindset was highly valued in these parts???

Of course in their mind skilled play has everything to do with the player and almost nothing to do with the character. I.e. "the answer is not on your sheet".

 

[Thomas Shey]

Or one of my favorite bugbears, how absolutely terrible crossbows were in AD&D (and how bad slings pretty much continue to be). I watched a special talking about how absolutely terrifying Balearic slingers were during the Punic Wars and then I looked at a sling in D&D and was like "maybe someone thinks it's a slingshot?".

It tends to require the mechanics to support it to actually represent the significant benefits of slings. The best you can usually do is not make them worse than a self-bow.

 

[bloodtide]

I mostly go with the players fault. The player makes the character, so it is all on them.

I don't agree with "everyone" when they say "X" is bad or wrong or badwrongfun. And I have endless problems in games where players say stuff like "the internet told me not to take that X". But it goes around in the endless circles. If your a mindless hack and slash type player, then anything non combat is "bad". But it is not universally bad, it just does not work for endless mindless combat.

 

[Emberashh]

Its on the design. It doesn't matter if you want character building to be robust or simple, there is zero reason to practice ivory tower design and let people fall into traps.

I think its better to reward people for expression and creative combinations than it is to build an obscure meta. And better still, a meta should be a spectrum.

That is the sort of philosophy I'm following in how I'm designing Crafting and how I already designed character progression, which are both highly customizable. Equipment comes with endless variety, and you can build any ridiculous combination of classes and subclasses you want, and you'll never actually be "bad".



Not optimal, sure, but not bad. Part of what makes that work is the options themselves, which are rooted in scaling rather than successive upgrades (eg, taking your first Barbarian level, but never touching it again, it will be stronger as you grow) or flat bonuses/abilities that will never not be useful.



Another is how combat works, where raw power only counts for 40% of what it takes to win a challenging fight. And it extends to to how adventuring works, where teamwork and collaboration is highly encouraged.



People often think I'm off my rocker having things like City Building, Warfare, and elaborate Crafting, Taming, and Construction systems, but, they're all there for a reason. Being able to do and be anything, and have the game truly mean it, goes to heart of this exact issue.



The only bad way to play is to not want to play, which we can't design around.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Its on the design. It doesn't matter if you want character building to be robust or simple, there is zero reason to practice ivory tower design and let people fall into traps.

I think its better to reward people for expression and creative combinations than it is to build an obscure meta. And better still, a meta should be a spectrum.

With enough moving parts, two things can happen that are not exactly deliberate:

1. Its functionally impossible to get everything you want done without some potential holes. If you're aware of them, you should spell it out though. Assuming that you don't have...

2. You simply aren't aware of some of the problems yourself. This is particularly likely with a game system that's only been able to have a limited amount of blindtesting.

 

[Emberashh]

With enough moving parts, two things can happen that are not exactly deliberate:

1. Its functionally impossible to get everything you want done without some potential holes. If you're aware of them, you should spell it out though. Assuming that you don't have...

2. You simply aren't aware of some of the problems yourself. This is particularly likely with a game system that's only been able to have a limited amount of blindtesting.

That becomes a design methodology issue.

My personal approach is to design like I'm cooking with garlic; from the heart. Eg, I just do what feels right to sell what I'm designing.

Now what happens when I do that is, I design things are hella wack even for the kind of baseline I'm going for.

Take this as an example:

Barkskin: Martial Goblins can fight in and with anything, but even a Goblin stripped of everything is still a worthy opponent, and the older they are, the harder they are to break. When wearing no Armor, a Goblin may consider their Age as a fixed Defense value, that they may add whenever they attempt to Guard whilst stripped of all Armor. If the Goblin does not have a weapon, they may do the same when rolling Damage as part of a Strike.

One doesn't need to be familiar with my game at all to understand how a 75 year old goblin getting +75 to their two basic things in combat is kookoo bananas.

But, designing this way, I know what I want the ability to feel like. When the time comes to go back through and give this a playability pass and some playtesting to seek out some better values, this is going to get tuned considerably back down, and the end point will be a version that's much more reasonable, but still conveys, mechanically, what the ability represents as a depiction of that particular part of Goblin lore.

So when we come back to the topic at hand, if a player in my game is sold on Goblin lore, and explicitly wants to build a goblin that will grow old and be a cantankerous crusty old tree person, their choice at character generation isn't going become useless past a couple sessions or be a trap for them. It gets better with time and is useful at any stage of the characters development.

This method goes into pretty much every character option available. Design from the heart > playability pass > test it > settle on a desired approach.

The only real shortcoming here is that I struggle sometimes with not inadvertently giving the same benefits over and over. In some cases its good to have some symmetrical design, but especially when were talking something like Races or Classes, having things be too similar goes against what I'm going for. (Also another good reason to have a number of systems; plenty to interact with)

 

[MichaelSomething]

Of course in their mind skilled play has everything to do with the player and almost nothing to do with the character. I.e. "the answer is not on your sheet".

What is the purpose of the sheet then???

 

[MNblockhead]

I'm converting this old AD&D adventure (several of them, actually) for an upcoming 5e game. And one I really want to run basically spells out that:

*Only Good, heroic characters need apply.
*Their motivation should be to help the NPC's and do the right thing.
*They don't lie, cheat, steal, or attempt to barter for a better reward.

Now, that's pretty much how I play- even if I'm not strictly Good-aligned, I generally feel helping communities is important and showing compassion for others. But the whole time I'm writing it, I'm thinking "what if one of my players decides this isn't what they would do?".

Sure, there's the fact that if they don't want to go on the adventure, I don't have a game session for them, and yes, one should generally play characters that want to adventure, but at the same time, it's a roleplaying game, and you shouldn't have to be Dudley Do Right to go on an adventure!

I've had to grin and bear my reservations about situations that seemed hinky to me in the past, because otherwise, we wouldn't be playing at all. Heck, just recently, this NPC we encountered was all "there's an evil that must be dealt with, but I will help you do it", and something about the lack of information he was giving us seemed very suspect. But when I tried to ask questions, he just got annoyed and said "take my help or leave it."

So, frustrated, I said fine, let's do it. Cue the next session: "thank you for helping me achieve my evil goals, you fools!". /sigh

Run the game you want to run. If you are not enjoying running and or playing in groups that are not based on the party being heros, find others to play with.

 

[James Gasik]

Run the game you want to run. If you are not enjoying running and or playing in groups that are not based on the party being heros, find others to play with.

That's not the issue at hand. One can have legitimate concerns about going on an adventure as presented. I've been in that situation. And I don't like the idea that your choices come down to grin and bear it or there is no game. It's not about being a hero, it's about being forced to pick up the idiot ball and setting your reservations aside. Good should not mean being dumb.

 

[GrimCo]

Sometimes, it's systems fault. God knows that 3.x/Pf1 had abundance of subpar classes and feats that look fun or interesting but just don't deliver in game.

Other time it's people fault. As in lack of comunication or bad comunication between DM and players. FE my first character in current campaign was not good fit for theme and setting. It was mechanically sound and fun to play in combat, but lot's of times outside of combat, he was next to useless. When you play class like 5e bard and feel useless outside of combat, you know you messed up with character concept.