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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8117187" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>I am curious how this is achieved, to be honest. Player characters, in general, make many many more rolls than NPCs. When the probability of success on individual actions drops down to the 1-in-2 range instead of the 2-in-3 range,</p><p></p><p><em>Frequent and arbitrary</em> failure. And old-school play is infamous (rightly or wrongly) for such failure. That was my experience (though anecdotes =/= data). Objectively, almost every spell, creature ability, or effect that used to be "make a save or you <em>just die</em>" no longer works that way, for instance. (I want to say <em>all</em>, but I don't know enough to be that certain.)</p><p></p><p>In 4e, characters still die. The one (sadly cut short) 4e long-runner campaign I played saw four character deaths (and one <em>extremely</em> narrow brush) before 5th level. We failed two of the first three SCs--one <em>badly</em>. We retreated at least twice because we <em>couldn't</em> handle an "at-level" encounter. All in my favorite player-side campaign (I still mourn its massively premature loss four years later, tbh).</p><p></p><p>All of this to say: I <em>do not</em> oppose failure. My IRL life has just had way too many setbacks and "50/50 chances" to enjoy that anymore. I don't want the world on a silver platter, nor consequence-free bad decisions. You err in judgment, you take your lumps--and maybe a death follows. (Two of the above deaths were that, one <em>mine</em>. I <em>earned</em> it. The consequences, counting my resurrection, were HUGE and LONG-TERM, and it was GREAT.)</p><p></p><p>"Pure luck" 50/50 gaming leaves me feeling powerless, at the mercy of things I can neither control nor avoid--as with my real life. Gaming gives me the opportunity to get some (admittedly, fictional) success stories. I <em>like</em> it when those stories aren't a smooth road. But if I'm likely to go through ten characters before I get one success story, <em>I'm going to feel like a failure</em>. That <em>hurts</em>. I can't "let go" of the deaths like you can. I'm not going to feel like the one character was awesome and special. I'm going to feel like the one character was a stupid fluke and the rest of it is how all my gaming experiences will ever be: short, disappointing, pointless, and decided by forces entirely outside my control.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I mean, you do you, but a lot of the things you say present things as though this is the way things <em>are</em> done, and then when you're shown that that's not actually what even the old-school books say, you have at least twice said, more or less, "Okay but that's not how <em>I</em> choose to play it." That makes it really hard to discuss with you, because I can't really discuss YOUR game, having never played in it--and when you speak in very general terms or even specifically about how things <em>were</em> done in ye olden dayse, it makes your position sound like it's a lot broader than JUST "Lanefan's specific re-interpretation and revision of early editions." Especially when your suggestions take the shape of stuff like "well X is a bad design choice, and if we used mechanic Y from early editions instead, it would get better and others would be surprised at how well it plays." Because you <em>kinda did</em> say that to me.</p><p></p><p></p><p>That's...a <em>little</em> disingenuous in a thread specifically tagged "5e," where people have been specifically using the phrase "the game" to mean "fifth edition"--such as the OP. If you intend to speak in the generic when everyone else is, explicitly and implicitly, talking about the current state of the art, the onus is on you to specify that.</p><p></p><p></p><p>First: No, it doesn't, because of what I said above. I don't get to see <em>the concept I'm playing</em> evolve. I get to see it die. And then I get to see the next one die. And then I get to see the next one die. And then I get to see the next one die. And then I get to see the next one die. And then I get to see the next one die. And then I get to see the next one die. And then I get to see the next one die. And then I get to see the next one die</p><p></p><p>And then maybe, <em>maybe</em>, if I'm lucky, I get to see <em>one</em> concept survive. Thus I feel like crap, because I've been ground down by failure until success feels like a ridiculous, completely un-earned, completely uncontrollable fluke that <em>will</em> be randomly ripped away from me later anyway.</p><p></p><p>Second: I, like a significant number of players these days, neither have nor <em>wish</em> to have the time to wait for that. Maybe you do. I don't. If I have to wait six tries (or whatever) before I get to see a concept that actually flies...I'm just gonna go play any of the zillions of well-made single-player CRPGs out there. Or replay one of the ones I love and already own (I really need to go replay the original <em>Deus Ex</em>, for instance.) A system that (statistically, of course) <em>requires</em> playing many times before you get to see a concept flower is a system that doesn't actually get played long enough for that flowering to happen.</p><p></p><p>So, again: your method doesn't actually permit me to have fun. I get crushed under the weight of so many completely unavoidable, uncontrollable failures, which ruins the joy of any success I might stumble into (because they aren't earned--nothing gained by pure chance is earned). And I'm not all that likely to stick around to <em>get</em> that joy in the first place. You can, quite easily, add lethality and utter randomness of success to a game compatible with my interests. As far as I'm aware, it's not possible to remove the randomness from the kind of game you're asking for without doing the very thing you had accused me of, unmitigated success. (Perhaps that's where the idea came from?)</p><p></p><p></p><p>The party should totally also evolve, though I don't think "losing members" is all that interesting a form of change. Death is the least interesting stake as far as I'm concerned, because it completely cuts my investment. I have to invent something else and re-invest, and I can only do that so many times before I just don't have any more emotional capital to invest.</p><p></p><p></p><p>See above: I'm not actually sure this is the case. How do you <em>remove</em> the "your life is purely controlled by luck" from a game built on it? That seems to do as you've described, dismissing failure as a meaningful consideration.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Whereas for me those things are utterly soul-crushing. They make me legitimately despair, that morality is dead. <em>That's how bad it is for me</em>. You can quite easily add those things to a game that doesn't have them. It is, in my experience, <em>much</em> harder to remove them from a game where they are the expectation--at least, without making it a really boring or one-note experience. Cynicism is easy to add to an overall optimistic experience. Optimism added to a fundamentally cynical experience just looks dumb.</p><p></p><p></p><p>You specifically said that characters with excessively high stats--such as the ones that are generated today, e.g. through point buy--make it impossible for you to take them seriously. The exact phrase was, "For me it's simply when all characters are special, be it via their stats or the rules they use or whatever: bang goes belief." With racial stat modifiers and all the rest (in 5e), you can't do better than a 17 in almost all cases, and typically 16 since (as you said before) odd stats aren't as worthwhile an investment as even ones when you have a choice. That's a +3 in your best stat. By comparison, you are specifically saying you don't mind players specifically re-rolling to ensure they get at least a +2 in their highest stat. Why does the difference of <em>a single point of modifier</em> take you from "you can totally expect that" to "bang goes belief"?</p><p></p><p></p><p>And that's my problem. You are cutting off "you have control" at "do you take risk A, or risk B?" And after that point you'd better well pray to <em>somebody</em>, because that's about as likely to help you as anything else you do. I'm talking about things where control over risk continues <em>after</em> you've chosen what risk to take. Where you have the resources to recover from a mistake or two--unless you make a really serious error of judgment, in which case, the consequences are on you. Exactly the way 4e plays.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Why? I'm genuinely curious. What benefit is to be had by such symmetry? No one will see it except the DM in the vast majority of cases.</p><p></p><p></p><p>There are no such things. "Level 0" doesn't mean anything in 4e, and stuff entirely orthogonal to adventuring is left purely to DM discretion, because if you need one of those things, the designers trusted you as DM to know what you need better than they could ever know.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm sure the discalculic and/or ADD players are just <em>thrilled</em> by your gatekeeping. Hell, <em>I'm</em> totally thrilled by your gatekeeping! It's so good to know that having passed differential equations with flying colors doesn't qualify me for your game because I do, in fact, get confused by "you <em>subtract</em> your +N weapon bonus from your THAC0" or "breaking out of <em>Bigby's crushing hand</em>, a 20 is awesome, but breaking out of mundane ropes, a 20 is terrible."</p><p></p><p></p><p>Except that it's not an edition-agnostic topic. It's specifically the expectations of 5e. As explicitly flagged in the title, with the little yellow box with the text "5E" in it. You <em>can</em> talk about other things as well (thread drift is a real and totally valid thing), but again, <em>the onus is on you to say you're doing that</em>. Especially if you're going to retreat to the motte of "well I mean how I choose to play <Edition X> at my table" any time someone challenges your bailey of sweeping assertions regarding how tabletop gaming should be played. Acting as though your unqualified assertions about gameplay in the generic, when the conversation is and has been explicitly about 5e and has accordingly used generic terms under that umbrella, does you no favors.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8117187, member: 6790260"] I am curious how this is achieved, to be honest. Player characters, in general, make many many more rolls than NPCs. When the probability of success on individual actions drops down to the 1-in-2 range instead of the 2-in-3 range, [I]Frequent and arbitrary[/I] failure. And old-school play is infamous (rightly or wrongly) for such failure. That was my experience (though anecdotes =/= data). Objectively, almost every spell, creature ability, or effect that used to be "make a save or you [I]just die[/I]" no longer works that way, for instance. (I want to say [I]all[/I], but I don't know enough to be that certain.) In 4e, characters still die. The one (sadly cut short) 4e long-runner campaign I played saw four character deaths (and one [I]extremely[/I] narrow brush) before 5th level. We failed two of the first three SCs--one [I]badly[/I]. We retreated at least twice because we [I]couldn't[/I] handle an "at-level" encounter. All in my favorite player-side campaign (I still mourn its massively premature loss four years later, tbh). All of this to say: I [I]do not[/I] oppose failure. My IRL life has just had way too many setbacks and "50/50 chances" to enjoy that anymore. I don't want the world on a silver platter, nor consequence-free bad decisions. You err in judgment, you take your lumps--and maybe a death follows. (Two of the above deaths were that, one [I]mine[/I]. I [I]earned[/I] it. The consequences, counting my resurrection, were HUGE and LONG-TERM, and it was GREAT.) "Pure luck" 50/50 gaming leaves me feeling powerless, at the mercy of things I can neither control nor avoid--as with my real life. Gaming gives me the opportunity to get some (admittedly, fictional) success stories. I [I]like[/I] it when those stories aren't a smooth road. But if I'm likely to go through ten characters before I get one success story, [I]I'm going to feel like a failure[/I]. That [I]hurts[/I]. I can't "let go" of the deaths like you can. I'm not going to feel like the one character was awesome and special. I'm going to feel like the one character was a stupid fluke and the rest of it is how all my gaming experiences will ever be: short, disappointing, pointless, and decided by forces entirely outside my control. I mean, you do you, but a lot of the things you say present things as though this is the way things [I]are[/I] done, and then when you're shown that that's not actually what even the old-school books say, you have at least twice said, more or less, "Okay but that's not how [I]I[/I] choose to play it." That makes it really hard to discuss with you, because I can't really discuss YOUR game, having never played in it--and when you speak in very general terms or even specifically about how things [I]were[/I] done in ye olden dayse, it makes your position sound like it's a lot broader than JUST "Lanefan's specific re-interpretation and revision of early editions." Especially when your suggestions take the shape of stuff like "well X is a bad design choice, and if we used mechanic Y from early editions instead, it would get better and others would be surprised at how well it plays." Because you [I]kinda did[/I] say that to me. That's...a [I]little[/I] disingenuous in a thread specifically tagged "5e," where people have been specifically using the phrase "the game" to mean "fifth edition"--such as the OP. If you intend to speak in the generic when everyone else is, explicitly and implicitly, talking about the current state of the art, the onus is on you to specify that. First: No, it doesn't, because of what I said above. I don't get to see [I]the concept I'm playing[/I] evolve. I get to see it die. And then I get to see the next one die. And then I get to see the next one die. And then I get to see the next one die. And then I get to see the next one die. And then I get to see the next one die. And then I get to see the next one die. And then I get to see the next one die. And then I get to see the next one die And then maybe, [I]maybe[/I], if I'm lucky, I get to see [I]one[/I] concept survive. Thus I feel like crap, because I've been ground down by failure until success feels like a ridiculous, completely un-earned, completely uncontrollable fluke that [I]will[/I] be randomly ripped away from me later anyway. Second: I, like a significant number of players these days, neither have nor [I]wish[/I] to have the time to wait for that. Maybe you do. I don't. If I have to wait six tries (or whatever) before I get to see a concept that actually flies...I'm just gonna go play any of the zillions of well-made single-player CRPGs out there. Or replay one of the ones I love and already own (I really need to go replay the original [I]Deus Ex[/I], for instance.) A system that (statistically, of course) [I]requires[/I] playing many times before you get to see a concept flower is a system that doesn't actually get played long enough for that flowering to happen. So, again: your method doesn't actually permit me to have fun. I get crushed under the weight of so many completely unavoidable, uncontrollable failures, which ruins the joy of any success I might stumble into (because they aren't earned--nothing gained by pure chance is earned). And I'm not all that likely to stick around to [I]get[/I] that joy in the first place. You can, quite easily, add lethality and utter randomness of success to a game compatible with my interests. As far as I'm aware, it's not possible to remove the randomness from the kind of game you're asking for without doing the very thing you had accused me of, unmitigated success. (Perhaps that's where the idea came from?) The party should totally also evolve, though I don't think "losing members" is all that interesting a form of change. Death is the least interesting stake as far as I'm concerned, because it completely cuts my investment. I have to invent something else and re-invest, and I can only do that so many times before I just don't have any more emotional capital to invest. See above: I'm not actually sure this is the case. How do you [I]remove[/I] the "your life is purely controlled by luck" from a game built on it? That seems to do as you've described, dismissing failure as a meaningful consideration. Whereas for me those things are utterly soul-crushing. They make me legitimately despair, that morality is dead. [I]That's how bad it is for me[/I]. You can quite easily add those things to a game that doesn't have them. It is, in my experience, [I]much[/I] harder to remove them from a game where they are the expectation--at least, without making it a really boring or one-note experience. Cynicism is easy to add to an overall optimistic experience. Optimism added to a fundamentally cynical experience just looks dumb. You specifically said that characters with excessively high stats--such as the ones that are generated today, e.g. through point buy--make it impossible for you to take them seriously. The exact phrase was, "For me it's simply when all characters are special, be it via their stats or the rules they use or whatever: bang goes belief." With racial stat modifiers and all the rest (in 5e), you can't do better than a 17 in almost all cases, and typically 16 since (as you said before) odd stats aren't as worthwhile an investment as even ones when you have a choice. That's a +3 in your best stat. By comparison, you are specifically saying you don't mind players specifically re-rolling to ensure they get at least a +2 in their highest stat. Why does the difference of [I]a single point of modifier[/I] take you from "you can totally expect that" to "bang goes belief"? And that's my problem. You are cutting off "you have control" at "do you take risk A, or risk B?" And after that point you'd better well pray to [I]somebody[/I], because that's about as likely to help you as anything else you do. I'm talking about things where control over risk continues [I]after[/I] you've chosen what risk to take. Where you have the resources to recover from a mistake or two--unless you make a really serious error of judgment, in which case, the consequences are on you. Exactly the way 4e plays. Why? I'm genuinely curious. What benefit is to be had by such symmetry? No one will see it except the DM in the vast majority of cases. There are no such things. "Level 0" doesn't mean anything in 4e, and stuff entirely orthogonal to adventuring is left purely to DM discretion, because if you need one of those things, the designers trusted you as DM to know what you need better than they could ever know. I'm sure the discalculic and/or ADD players are just [I]thrilled[/I] by your gatekeeping. Hell, [I]I'm[/I] totally thrilled by your gatekeeping! It's so good to know that having passed differential equations with flying colors doesn't qualify me for your game because I do, in fact, get confused by "you [I]subtract[/I] your +N weapon bonus from your THAC0" or "breaking out of [I]Bigby's crushing hand[/I], a 20 is awesome, but breaking out of mundane ropes, a 20 is terrible." Except that it's not an edition-agnostic topic. It's specifically the expectations of 5e. As explicitly flagged in the title, with the little yellow box with the text "5E" in it. You [I]can[/I] talk about other things as well (thread drift is a real and totally valid thing), but again, [I]the onus is on you to say you're doing that[/I]. Especially if you're going to retreat to the motte of "well I mean how I choose to play <Edition X> at my table" any time someone challenges your bailey of sweeping assertions regarding how tabletop gaming should be played. Acting as though your unqualified assertions about gameplay in the generic, when the conversation is and has been explicitly about 5e and has accordingly used generic terms under that umbrella, does you no favors. [/QUOTE]
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