Character ability v. player volition: INT, WIS, CHA

[Celebrim]

Resolving "bang I hit you" is to provide an adjudication, not to make some people good at some things and bad at others.

Why do you think 'balance' is held up as such a high standard in game design by so many different players?

 

[Ariosto]

I'm not a fan of Harrison Bergeron d20...

Bingo!

Why do you think 'balance' is held up as such a high standard in game design by so many different players?

If this is what you mean by "balance", then maybe because they're lazy, unskilled players?

 

[Ariosto]

Well, your halfling rogue is going to have a Str of at least 12! Does that mean your halfling is a little Arnold?

It would in C&S, T&T or RQ. It's sort of funny if 3e did not follow suit. (I thought of playing a Halfling Barbarian, but never did.)

Or you can invent some clever excuse for how are why your Barbarian got around the problem, in which case its both good gaming and good roleplaying.

That's story telling, not role playing; still good, though!

 

[billd91]

No it isn't. If a stupid character is stuck as the sole person who is supposed to work on something that is defined as being beyond him, he's supposed to lose. Pulling a Eureka Maru whenever you are railroaded is like saying "Oh, I missed? Actually, the bullet bounced off a wall and hit that rope holding that piano over your head."

It's not a question of "he's supposed to lose". It may also be a question of finding some other way to get past the problem other than just thinking a little, applying lots of smarts, and coming up with the answer. A player doing a good job of role-playing a character's lower intelligence, when faced with a puzzle that requires a lot of smarts, may have the character pull out a piece of chalk and start writing down possible solutions - arriving at the right one by methods of brute force rather than insight or cleverness.

 

[Voadam]

Also, I favor players getting involved in the action --at least in terms of planning, puzzle-solving, and in-character speech-- over players maintaining fidelity to their original role or concept.

I'm in favor of all players getting involved in thinking things through and in character interacting.

I'm not an aesthetic fan of having just the bard and sorcerer be the leaders and do the talking and the wizard do the planning because they have the highest charisma and int stats while everyone else tries to actively play mediocre second fiddle or background to them in these areas.

 

[Oni]

Faced with a skill challenge of an int based skill, the player has one of two options:

He can either ask for a skill check, and if he passes the check the DM will tell him the answer. Then the player can animate his character to act on this discovered knowledge.

OR...

He can not ask for a skill check and animate his character in such a way that he either discovers the knowledge without passing the skill check or else relies on his knowledge as a player to fill in the missing details. A character can search a room using a skill check. A player can also search a room by describing what his character does, eventually reaching a point where its unreasonable that the hidden article would not be found and catching the DM in a contridiction.

I have to be honest I much prefer the latter. Reducing problem solving to simple die rolls and removing player skill just doesn't seem very exciting. If we want to talk about what's best for the game and story what do you think is more evocative?

I roll to search the room. *Rolls dice* What did I find?

I go around knocking on the walls, to see if any of the paneling sound off, like it might be hiding something. *DM checks his notes to see if there are any false panels on the wall*

In the former example the smarter character might come up with (be handed) the solution more often than the dumber chracter, but the latter type of play seems to me like it creates a much more lived in imaginary space. Personally I feel that what is gained in the depth of the imaginary space is greater than what might be lost to any jarring that might result from Bob's 5 int fighter being played intelligently. Especially if you consider the contents of his character sheet to not really be any of my business anyway, then instead of any preconception of what they ought be like I simply have the personality that is created at the intersection of player input and in game results, mechanical or otherwise.

 

[Akaiku]

It's not a question of "he's supposed to lose". It may also be a question of finding some other way to get past the problem other than just thinking a little, applying lots of smarts, and coming up with the answer. A player doing a good job of role-playing a character's lower intelligence, when faced with a puzzle that requires a lot of smarts, may have the character pull out a piece of chalk and start writing down possible solutions - arriving at the right one by methods of brute force rather than insight or cleverness.

To a player, that's more or less the exact same action. You have stupid person A run into a puzzle, you figure it out ooc , then your character does IC.

Heck, if you really want puzzles, make a puzzle, if the player figures it out, have Krunk the barbarian smash the puzzle with his axe to solve it. The puzzle was SOLVED ooc, just resolve it IC and call it good.

 

[Voadam]

Why do you think 'balance' is held up as such a high standard in game design by so many different players?

I'm huge in favor of combat balance between PCs.

Not for balancing out of combat against combat power though.

 

[Celebrim]

To a player, that's more or less the exact same action.

It is most certainly not the same action. It might have the same outcome, but it is not the same action. The 'more or less' you brush aside is hugely important.

And even if you don't agree, from the perspective of the observer, it is not at all the same action.

Heck, if you really want puzzles, make a puzzle, if the player figures it out, have Krunk the barbarian smash the puzzle with his axe to solve it. The puzzle was SOLVED ooc, just resolve it IC and call it good.

Except it wasn't 'solved' in game. The action doesn't solve the puzzle. Depending on the puzzle breaking it might overcome the difficulty, but that's not the same thing.

 

[Celebrim]

I have to be honest I much prefer the latter.

This takes the conversation in a direction it hasn't gone in a while.

I was just setting out to prove that the skill roll could in fact be avoided. I wasn't trying to suggest which was a better style of play.

In point of fact, I lean toward 'player skill' over 'character skill' as well, however, its not as if leaning toward 'player skill' gets us out of all difficulties. Again, as just the most obvious problem, if we do nothing with character skill, then no one can play a character smarter, wiser, or more charismatic than themselves. And that, is more limiting than we are probably going to be happy with.

Reducing problem solving to simple die rolls and removing player skill just doesn't seem very exciting.

It's not. And one of the subthemes of what I've been talking about is that mental based skills don't fully inform character ability unless we render the game so mechanistic as to be 'unfun' (where 'unfun' means, unfun for most people).

If we want to talk about what's best for the game and story what do you think is more evocative?

I've been talking in great detail about what I think si more evocative. I've done very little but talk about how to make the game more evocative and what role and responcibility the player has in doing exactly that.

I roll to search the room. *Rolls dice* What did I find?

I go around knocking on the walls, to see if any of the paneling sound off, like it might be hiding something. *DM checks his notes to see if there are any false panels on the wall*

Both are acceptable propositions in most game systems (consider searching for secret doors in 1st edition). The trick is to recognize how the two propositions interact and be able to adjudicate them both fairly.

Personally I feel that what is gained in the depth of the imaginary space is greater than what might be lost to any jarring that might result from Bob's 5 int fighter being played intelligently.

I don't consider these to be separatable things. When Bob play's his int 5 fighter 'intelligently' (and we are going to need to define that better to understand each other), it is precisely because we lose depth in the imaginary space that it is a problem.

Especially if you consider the contents of his character sheet to not really be any of my business anyway, then instead of any preconception of what they ought be like I simply have the personality that is created at the intersection of player input and in game results, mechanical or otherwise.

It's the refusal to create a deep and interesting personality through characterization that is very much the heart of the problem I have here. I've gone on at I think great length explaining how an intelligent player playing a dumb character can contribute to party success and interact in a way that is both under the surface success-oriented and in character.

Again, I can't help but think that there is a double standard. All I'm advocating is that the player do the sort of things to bring his PC to life in interesting and entertaining ways, that the players expect the DM to do to bring to life interesting and entertaining NPC's. I see no reason why this should make people squirm the way they have. What is hard to understand about, "Roleplay your character."? I'm certainly not advocating half the things I've been accused of here.