Neither do I, but if he thinks it is, then his own statement isnt any different
D&D 5E You can't necessarily go back
- Thread starter thecasualoblivion
- Start date
Argyle King
Legend
What I'm trying to say is that those numbers quite literally don't exist in some systems. The numbers don't just continue to get bigger and bigger. Even in some of the games I'm thinking of where it might be possible, the character -while being the God of music- would probably be unable to function in everyday life because of having no skill in much of anything else and/or having some very serious drawbacks to be able to get the points to pull something like that off.
renau1g
First Post
Good point - talent trees would be something I'd love to see from video games. I like feats that build off each other, like the Whirlwind feat from 3.5.
Especially if they're not just mechanical benefits, like the spring attack or whirlwind providing more options to a fighter (or whoever, just a lot of feats for a non-fighter) than just weapon focus.
It's a trade-off. Video game-style (and d20 Modern / Star Wars Saga style) talent trees are in a lot of ways kind of nifty, but if they get too deeply nested (talent X requires talent Y with requires talent Z) then you're forcing long-term build planning which is probably not a great idea.
slobster
Hero
And as game designers realized that issue was annoying people, they began to move towards systems where you could "respec", i.e. reallocate your skills/feats/ability points whatever to train away from one tree you've grown tired with and to another one you want to try out.
Some people have trouble rationalizing this in game fiction terms, which is understandable. How does your fighter forget how to run around and whirlwind attack, while conveniently becoming a world champion wrestler, while you guys are resting in town? It's a mystery!
I think that there is some room for this kind of thing, though, with magical and magic-like characters, because you get to make up the rules. It's slightly more aesthetically pleasing to let the artificer ditch his set of trinkets that makes him tanky, and trade them in for a set of stuff that makes him a bomb-throwing cc dude - even though that's the same sort of situation that made you scratch your head when you did it with the fighter.
With creativity, I believe there are a lot of things in video game RPGs that tabletops could draw inspiration from.
Steely_Dan
First Post
Wow, so you do it here too...
...just stop, STOP, with your bizarre anti-pre-4th Ed crusade, it's weird at this point...
...just stop, STOP, with your bizarre anti-pre-4th Ed crusade, it's weird at this point...
Dannager
First Post
I am finding it kind of appalling that there is more than one person who actually continues to believe that video games have nothing to offer tabletop RPGs in terms of mechanical inspiration despite the provided, demonstrable evidence to the contrary.
It says a lot about the sort of person who believes that.
Mod Note: See my post below, please. ~Umbran
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Dannager
First Post
And so inspiration must be tempered with solid design sensibilities. It doesn't matter what the source is, you need to have a keen eye for whether it belongs, and how it can be adapted to the goals of your system. The medium is relatively unimportant, and in this respect, video games are no different.
What is important about video games is the pace of their development. Video games are a multi-billion dollar industry, despite the entire industry being less than half a century old. It's an incredibly diverse, incredibly competitive market, and this has spurred truly insane levels of innovation as each developer or hardware manufacturer struggles to come up with a new hook. Meanwhile, tabletop RPGs have innovated at a snails pace, with new mechanics introduced either very rarely, or very shallowly. Mechanical refinement has not been a priority until recently. Heck, for some gamers (including many we've seen in this thread), the very idea that mechanics should be innovative is anathema; they don't want to see the game changed in meaningful ways. Where innovation and novel gameplay is embraced in the hardcore video gaming community, it is often rejected in the tabletop RPG community.
That depends on playstyle. Lots of people love the char creation minigame. They love to build characters, often only in theorycraft, and that's fine too. Others hate it, and that's fine too. Here comes 5th edition, which allows you to choose how much detail you want in char generation (something that they took from videogames too: several videogames RPG have the option to be played as "action" or "arcade", where you just play the game and do not "waste" time with builds. Mass Effect 3 comes to mind, where you have "normal", "action" and "story" modes
And what I'm trying to say, is that it doesn't really matter. Rock, scissors, paper doesn't have any numbers on it, yet there is an optimal way to play it, and a lot of suboptimal decisions you can make.
Whatever game you have, there's a course of action that is optimal, and a lot that there isn't.
If being the God of Music make that character unable to play in everyday life, then that's a suboptimal character. In minmaxing, the "min" part is so important as the "max" part. It's maximum benefit, for minimum cost. A god of music unable to tie his shoes is not minmaxed. A demigod of music which is fairly competent in everything else, is minmaxed.
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