Blaming the System for Player/GM actions

[buzz]

Fusangite, I agreed with you up to this statement. This statement assumes that a given system will only support a narrow range of play styles. While this is true of some games, I'm not sure if it is fair to say that it is universal. I also disagree that DnD assumes that characters must be min/maxed.

I'll have to disagree with you a bit, Hussar. D&D may not assume that all PCs are min-maxed, but it does assume that they are competent. There is no reward in D&D for actively choosing to make your character weak.

D&D also facilitates certain types of play better than others. Play focused on situation and challenge, with an emphasis on combat and high-risk physical action is well-supported. Play focused on, say, exploration of moral issues is pretty much wholly unsupported; you leave the ruleset behind when you start focusing on that.

Campaigns which feature little combat would be an example where combat min/maxing would not be rewarded.

In other words, in a high intrigue game set in Shelzar in Scarred lands, playing an orc barbarian would not be the optimal choice.

Certainly true. That said, there's really not a whole lot in core D&D that supports a high-intrigue, political game.

Look at a D&D character sheet. Most of the numbers on that sheet have to do with combat. Every class has built into it a BAB progression; it's impossible to advance in level and not get better at fighting. Most of the feats, class abilities, and spells are for combat applications. The primary method of acquring XP is via martial conflict.

These are all big red flags that D&D waves in our faces to let us know what the game is all about. That's not to say there isn't some support for other aspects; every character has a Cha score and can use Diplomacy. But the page count and depth of mechanics for this kind of stuff is much less than what's dedicated to action and fighting. Again, the more you venture into that territory, the more of the ruelset becomes unapplicable.

So... the point of that rambling is: I cannot see how anyone can fault a D&D player for wanting to min-max to some degree. The better the numbers on the sheet, the better able the player is to participate and flourish in gameplay.

Take hit pionts for example. Why do you think max hp at 1st level was a common house-rule that became cannon in 3e? Becasue it's no fun to play a character with 1hp.

The longer you can stay in the fight, the more fights you can have, the more saves you can make, the more spells you can cast... the more you can participate in the game.

 

[fusangite]

Fusangite, I agreed with you up to this statement. This statement assumes that a given system will only support a narrow range of play styles. While this is true of some games, I'm not sure if it is fair to say that it is universal. I also disagree that DnD assumes that characters must be min/maxed. Campaigns which feature little combat would be an example where combat min/maxing would not be rewarded.

These campaigns would also have to be games in which charisma-based skills were hand-waved in favour of RP and where Enchantment magic was kept off the radar for the most part; in other words, they would be campaigns that would spend most of their time avoiding task resolution methods prescribed in the rules. Once you're doing this, you aren't using the rules; you're avoiding them.

 

[buzz]

These campaigns would also have to be games in which charisma-based skills were hand-waved in favour of RP and where Enchantment magic was kept off the radar for the most part; in other words, they would be campaigns that would spend most of their time avoiding task resolution methods prescribed in the rules. Once you're doing this, you aren't using the rules; you're avoiding them.

I agree, but I will offer the caveat that such campiagns don't have to hand-wave the social skills in favor of "talking it out". They could still use the skill checks as-written.

The bigger issue is just that these rules aren't particularly robust, so I can easily see the tendency to forego them in favor of "dinner theater". Were I to play such a game, I'd rather grab an add-on like Dynasties & Demagogues that made debates interesting, or, better yet, grab a game like Burning Wheel. In that system, debate is as fun as combat AND the system is not combat-focused.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm unsure on this. It is obvious from threads here and elsewhere that a lot of players enjoy the rules mastery angle of constructing highly effective builds.

Yes. Sad, isn't it?

I think the problem lies in the level of additional power acheivable and, ultimately, in totally unbalancing combos.

But that is a system design flaw. A well designed system has no master strategy. I'd also disagree on the competitive front, I think D&D is quite clearly (and for the most part, rather well) designed to have a competitive angle to it. It's not the be all and end all, sure, but it's definetely there.

True enough...depends on the particular group of players, I suppose.

Re: discouraging casual players:

This to my mind is one of the biggest problems. It's far too easy in D&D for new players to produce simply underpowered characters by making bad choices long before they could be reasonably expected to understand those choices.

New players is one thing. I'm referring to longer-term casual players who just want to have fun and aren't interested in spending lots of time studying rules and min-max combinations, yet who always end up playing second fiddle to the min-maxers in the group. Soon, all that's left is the min-maxers...

Lanefan

 

[Umbran]

The tools we use do matter and should be blamed when broken.

In the context of this discussion, "broken" is a subjective term. If the rules are "broken" because they don't do what you want them to do, fixing them means that the rules would be "broken" for someone else, who liked them better the other way. Just as you want your playstyle made easy, others want their playstyle kept easy. You speak as if it is, in general, easy to satisfy everyone. That is not the case.

There comes a point where one must admit that the rules are not broken, they are simply not the rules you should be using. A screwdriver is not "broken" because it does a poor job of driving nails.

It's not just about difficult to achieve; it's about which direction the rules encourage. People are going to build characters that the rules encourage; in D&D, that's physically and magically powerful characters.

My point is that this is only part of the story. In full: people are going to build characters that the campaign encourages. The rules are only one factor - the DM and other players also matter.

It is true that, on the large scale, you should expect humans to follow the path of least resistance. But that is only an argument for change if you are sure that those people are unhappy with that path, and unable to find a way out of it. The rules are not broken if they allow most folks to play the way they want to play.

 

[The Shaman]

Most of the problems that are blamed on the system are actually conflicts in playing styles. The hardest thing to do in this hobby is get a group of people together that are all on the same page with regard to playing style. If you have that then the rules set really doesn't matter because you will have fun with just about anything....All that being said, the rules system certainly can influence playing styles.

Quoted in order to save me the time of saying the same thing, only less eloquently.

 

[Seeten]

Despite my partial agreement with the opinion earlier, I feel it is infinitely more rude to expect the GM to bow to the rules a player wants to use because he has the disposable income to spend on a splat book. Well, at least I can thank you for letting me know you are people whose posts I can safely ignore.

BadWrongFun!

You will not have your BadWrongFun in my group Sir!

Good Day!

 

[Seeten]

What I'm suggesting is that, when you say that min-maxing is "not a desirable result" and D&D "is not supposed to be a competitive game," you're only expressing your own personal preference. I.e., just because you consider these things undesirable, does not mean that everyone does, nor that they're "bad roleplaying."

I also don't believe that min-maxing inherrently means that the players are competing against each other. It's more that they're competing against the system itself.

I've been hearing this, "D&D is not a competition" for years. Man is it ever old. I think you guys miss the forest for the trees. I've been in a dozen campaigns where the DM brings up CR appropriate challenges for the party. Most DM's have no real concept of balance. To wit: My current Scarred Lands DM(Not Nightfall, thats my other SL DM) has given out no treasure whatsoever, so the PC's have 0 wealth and no magic items to speak of. We're all level 7 or 8, and we routinely fight monsters that the DMG and MM claim are challenging for a CR8 group. A few fun facts: DM needed to fudge an encounter with a grappling mob, to avoid a TPK. Party had no way to hurt tree do to lack of magic, and wizard had spells that werent appropriate/were mostly used. Plus, he isnt optimized and keeps finding useless spells. We were destroyed in battle by a chain demon/undead/monster whatever it was. The barbarian(my last character) died in the fight(I was the only one capable of dealing dmg) and the rest of the party cut a deal to be able to flee. Party was virtually TPK'd by a demon, as only Barbarian had a magic weapon at the time(via magic weapon spell) and I dropped the demon while I was at 7 hp and the rest of party was unconscious.

If not for fudged dice rolls, we'd have had 5 TPK's or more by now, and the reason is: Our PC's are not optimized, but our challenges are. The barbarian(my PC) was the ONLY optimized PC in the group, and I generally finished combats on my own, which A) I felt guilty about, and B) is the only thing that prevented 10 more TPK's. So I would go you all 1 step further and state if a DM has no sense of balance, and is stingy like you all like to brag about about, and a RBDM, etc, then its up to the players to optimize the hell out of their characters to make up for the fact that the MM and DMG assume I can defeat a cr 6 creature at cr 8. If I cannot, well, thats my fault, or the DM's fault, or someones fault, but the DM is told by the MM that CR 6, 7 and 8 creatures are perfectly safe to use against me. Woe be to the PC who is up against the DR 10/Magic Undead as a Rogue with a shortsword and 10 str.

So the competition is between the PC's and the Monsters. Its a fight I cannot afford to lose, because I dont enjoy making new characters, I enjoy playing my existing characters. I love to roleplay, but I dont love TPK's, and I dont expect the DM to be a balance genius, when in practice, I am far better about balance than most DM's I know. If I think the party needs me to hit for 30 a round or we lose, I set about finding a way to hit for 30 a round.

A lot of DM's around here talk a big game. "I'm the arbiter of balance and I always challenge everyone perfectly, and everything is wonderful" but I don't see it in my local groups. I see a whole lot of standard monsters from the MM up against our woefully non-optimized groups, so your arguments fall very flat on my ears.

 

[Crothian]

I've been hearing this, "D&D is not a competition" for years. Man is it ever old.

D&D is old so it makes sense that statements about it would be as well. D&D is not designed to be a competition. There is no win condition in the books. That doesn't mean DMs and players are not going to be competitive with each other. But it is the people adding the competition not the game.

 

[Seeten]

Re-read my post again, Crothian.

It is a competition. Its win or die in almost every fight.