Recent content by Thomas Shey

I think part of it is that those really powerful elders exist in small numbers. The heirarchy of the groups is not heavily toploaded with the capable, its just a small subset of long-lived ones, and then the power level flattens out a lot more. So you don't have the traditional "Prince of the...

It should be noted the quality of older hardware is often superior to modern in a number of ways; that's partly a consequence of a focus on making things cheaper. But I notice some of the hand tools I inherited from my father are better than ones I've bought, even though they're usually...

But again, that only matters if they see it that way.

I suspect in most cases its just a desire not to be redundent, and its perceived that's liable to happen with the same class, even with different specific build decisions. Its not only class games where you see some of that.

Yes and no. There are a lot more specific non-combat mechanics (including feats that influence them) than D&D 4e had in that. Skill challenges were supposed to do most of the lifting there, which made 4e arguably more flexible in that regard than PF2e, but also less reliable (in the sense that...

That's why I suggest thumb-on-the-scale options rather than take-control options.

Yup. This is miles away from a new argument. Its one reason I've had a very long time to decide the very precise position I hold in the discussion.

Its a profound split in the hobby, but it doesn't have anything to do with age, since I'd be willing to put a bet I'm older than you.

The same reason I don't tell people playing a fencer that I just get to have my NPCs fight effectively, and the fact they don't know anything about it means they don't. I don't expect there to be no weight from knowledge in an area, but if all the weight is in that area, you've effectively told...

I'm going to stick to my opinion here: whatever personality you lay over it, if a character can do nothing better (or worse) than you can, that's avatar play with a mask on it. It narrows the range of possible characters to an unacceptable degree.

Then you misunderstood. I was talking about the dice roll, about why the randomizer was there at all.

Its a gotcha response likely evoked by someone who thought the player should have known better. Even in those cases I don't much like gotchas.

That's why I mentioned avatar as an alternative. With token play you're just doing whatever suits you with the "character" (and yes, the scare quotes are deliberate) without being concerned about their actual properties at all; with avatar play you're effectively playing yourself since your...

Eh. You can't be expected to establish every bit of out-of-context business in sessions zero. They probably should have told them up-front when they started trying to do it, though.

I've argued there's an intrinsically perverse incentive when the priority is stockholder value rather than ongoing health of a company.