Unpopular opinions go here

[Micah Sweet]

It wasn't sharp enough to do that at any point in its publication history, so good luck there.

There have been versions of the game not made by the IP holder that have been capable of what I want, and the TSR stuff is better suited to it than the WotC stuff anyway.

 

[billd91]

I don't remember what I was watching, but they were interviewing a restaurant chef and asked him why everything seemed to taste better when you're out than what you make at home. He said it was butter. They use butter on everything.

Anthony Bourdain on Oprah:

 

[Thomas Shey]

There have been versions of the game not made by the IP holder that have been capable of what I want, and the TSR stuff is better suited to it than the WotC stuff anyway.

Neither of those changes my point about the attributes, which is the topic at hand. TSR wasn't better here, and third party publishers who did D&D add ons and knockoffs didn't really do any better either; they're more likely to reduce the attributes than expand them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Neither of those changes my point about the attributes, which is the topic at hand. TSR wasn't better here, and third party publishers who did D&D add ons and knockoffs didn't really do any better either; they're more likely to reduce the attributes than expand them.

There seem to be a lot of folks around here that, subtly or not-so-subtly, would like those of us who want more granularity to give up and or go away.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There seem to be a lot of folks around here that, subtly or not-so-subtly, would like those of us who want more granularity to give up and or go away.

If that's in response to my actual post, if you make a claim about prior art supporting something better, then you should expect to be called on it when there's no sign it did.

Claiming earlier versions of the game support more granularity in how attributes are handled is simply counterfactual. There are all kinds of games that do, but no version of D&D proper is one of them (unless you want to count "Comeliness") and if there's any third party products that for D&D and offshoots do, they're thin on the ground.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Count me in the camp that thinks the language thing would likely be more of a drag than fun, especially after the second or third scenario where the inability to communicate was a hassle. I am not saying it couldn't be done well, but it would take a lot of work by the GM and buy in from the players.

I think it depends entirely upon scenario. Once again, the (D&D) system as-is made the most sense in oD&D with initial intended playstyles and often has not course-corrected as the game and playstyles have expanded.

• At low levels, knowing a given language when you met a group of _______s in mega-dungeon X or hex-crawl location Y offered you an opportunity for simpler communication and negotiation and was a reward for being prepared (and the consequences of failure was mostly lost opportunity or maybe am otherwise avoidable fight).
• At higher levels, you might more reasonably expect to want to do some form of purpose-formed travel and need to speak the language of land or plane Z, but by that point you have the advantage of magic and hirelings and other avenues of filling in missing skillsets (to say nothing of adding languages as you level).

In these instances, knowing a language is like making a Open Locks check -- it removes and obstacle, can be superseded by the use of a (if available) precious spell slot, and usually has an output in reward or lessoning of otherwise extant challenge for a reward.

Where language gaps as a challenge seem like they break down is in situations where the party wants to do expansive language-gated escapades (more than simple negotiations between potentially hostile skirmish-sized groups), well before the point where the magic becomes resource-cheap enough as to be trivial. Things like:

• The low-mid level party finds themselves in the land of Oz, where everyone speaks Ozman and no one speaks common, excepting wizards who can solve the problem with a spell (and if the party doesn't have a wizard who knows the spell, well there's a charlatan one who doesn't actually know magic but can speak the language, and you can reach them at the end of the yellow brick railroad). Also, do they trust their translator (and the DM) or not?
• The mercantile-minded party is starting a shipping route and wants their ships to transit the isles of Lilliput and Blefuscu (each with their own language), and now have to negotiate with multiple entities* and with multiple languages. *perhaps multiple factions within each language, if we want big- and little-endian Lilliputians, to round out the reference

In these cases, the specifics of D&D languages conspire to make them less interesting. Languages are either known or not, so they are just gates to communication rather than interesting in themselves. Likewise, you only learn them through long-term investment (generally having to gain multiple levels to gain a new one), so the only real player-skill question at hand is if you foresaw which languages to pick up ahead of time. Once you do find yourself in a scenario where you don't know the language (and the party wizard can't end-run around the situation by re-preparing spells), it can be interesting again -- to the level that any hireling scenario is or isn't. Can the party find a translator? How much will it cost them? Can they trust them? Can they get them across deadly terrain to do their job? Once they get there do they realize that their translator is a fraud or in over their head or has bad relations with the people with whom you want them to interpret? All of these things are interesting once in a while... when done well.

Constitution (and all alternate namings thereof) is a pointless stat that should never have been in the game.

In 3d6-down-the-line or equivalent games, Constitution has a point -- it's another bit of character capability which is random and can conspire to mute other lucky rolls or offer a consolation prize for an otherwise bad character or reinforce existing luck.

Once the game moved (partly or in full) to arranged stats, along with it providing bonuses and penalties to HD rolls, it did become kinda pointless. It did so in that it simply became the place where almost everyone places their second-highest attribute. You certainly don't see many people put their low-roll into it -- excepting joke characters, extreme RP, or other situations where they're saying 'to heck with the actual mechanical consequences of this.' IIRC, even Raistlin, the character canonically sickly and weak, is usually given a fair to midland Con score.

Huh. Constitution is the only one of the six that can actually sort of be mapped to something that exists in the real world, IMO. People do in fact have different degrees of physical resilience to disease, etc.

Strength and Dex are both too broad to be useful and should just be combined into "Prowess" given what they actually impact in play.
Intelligence isn't a thing, at least the way the game defines it.
Wisdom and Charisma are all over the map and need to be merged, mixed, and separated into something like Willpower, Guile and Perception.

I think this speaks to differing ideas about what attributes ought to be (something games in general and D&D in particular over its' history have had different ideas). I think the poster you are responding to imagines them as informing what an individual tends to do. There certainly aren't a lot of Con-based skills. From that perspective, Con seems more like the saving throw another attribute (like Strength or Prowess) might give a bonus to. Since I don't see a lot of consistency overall, I don't have a strong opinion. What I do wish is that, whenever there's an actual edition change and they are willing to rip it up to the studs and framing, they think about what they actually want attributes to be and to do and then build from there.

 

[Faolyn]

Huh. Constitution is the only one of the six that can actually sort of be mapped to something that exists in the real world, IMO. People do in fact have different degrees of physical resilience to disease, etc.

Strength and Dex are both too broad to be useful and should just be combined into "Prowess" given what they actually impact in play.
Intelligence isn't a thing, at least the way the game defines it.
Wisdom and Charisma are all over the map and need to be merged, mixed, and separated into something like Willpower, Guile and Perception.

Get rid of all stats; just have skills.

 

[Reynard]

Get rid of all stats; just have skills.

You could never create an expansive enough skill list. Just use descriptive terminology -- "aspects" and the like -- and adjudicate.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You could never create an expansive enough skill list. Just use descriptive terminology -- "aspects" and the like -- and adjudicate.

I want FATE as far away from D&D as possible please.

 

[Lanefan]

Unpopular Opinion AND a hill I will die on: running a pre-written adventure, especially an adventure path or campaign length adventure, is significantly more work that homebrewing. Adventures don't save time or work and a 10 page campaign overview would be of more use than a 200 page adventure.

Having done a few homebrew adventure paths, I'll just say homebrewing them is every bit as much work if not more; only it's a different type of work and probably more enjoyable overall.