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General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Character Options versus System Options
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<blockquote data-quote="ExploderWizard" data-source="post: 5126705" data-attributes="member: 66434"><p>Meaningful choices are indeed fundamental to meaningful play but these choices may or may not have anything to do with the character building by resource allocation minigame. </p><p> </p><p>If the game you are playing features more or less random character generation there is still plenty of meaningful choice left in actual play.</p><p> </p><p>IMHO the more finely grained and involved the character building process is, the more choices tend to default towards favoring chosen strengths. When these options are combined with a rules system that is balanced to provide challenge for these specialists then a character built to be generally competent in a number of things suddenly isn't because the goalposts have been moved to challenge the specialists. </p><p> </p><p>Character building as a means to obtain meaningful mechanical options is more of an illusion than anything else. </p><p> </p><p>You have a big strong fighter whose player put an 18 in STR, and specialized to the nines using his two handed sword. The rest of his party is similarly roided up at whatever thing they chose to pump thier resources into. </p><p> </p><p>Given a meaningful decision point, what is the liklihood of any of these adventurers choosing to do something that doesn't involve using an uber specialty because the mechanical success chance of such an action is abysmal in comparison. </p><p> </p><p>Now the actual in-play meaningful decision remains the same, choose to fight, rescue the captive, make a bold attempt to grab the mcguffin, etc. </p><p> </p><p>The mechanical part of these decisions (how the objective is achieved) which these builds are supposed to help make meaningful, instead become very predictable unless the party wishes to fail. </p><p> </p><p>The real meaningful decisions can be made equally by characters that were rolled up in 5 minutes or the tweaked min/maxed characters that were days in the making. The quickgen characters actually have <em>more</em> viable meaningful choices open to them with regard to mechanical resolution. There is no huge asset dump prompting them to approach the decision from a narrow pidgeonhole.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="ExploderWizard, post: 5126705, member: 66434"] Meaningful choices are indeed fundamental to meaningful play but these choices may or may not have anything to do with the character building by resource allocation minigame. If the game you are playing features more or less random character generation there is still plenty of meaningful choice left in actual play. IMHO the more finely grained and involved the character building process is, the more choices tend to default towards favoring chosen strengths. When these options are combined with a rules system that is balanced to provide challenge for these specialists then a character built to be generally competent in a number of things suddenly isn't because the goalposts have been moved to challenge the specialists. Character building as a means to obtain meaningful mechanical options is more of an illusion than anything else. You have a big strong fighter whose player put an 18 in STR, and specialized to the nines using his two handed sword. The rest of his party is similarly roided up at whatever thing they chose to pump thier resources into. Given a meaningful decision point, what is the liklihood of any of these adventurers choosing to do something that doesn't involve using an uber specialty because the mechanical success chance of such an action is abysmal in comparison. Now the actual in-play meaningful decision remains the same, choose to fight, rescue the captive, make a bold attempt to grab the mcguffin, etc. The mechanical part of these decisions (how the objective is achieved) which these builds are supposed to help make meaningful, instead become very predictable unless the party wishes to fail. The real meaningful decisions can be made equally by characters that were rolled up in 5 minutes or the tweaked min/maxed characters that were days in the making. The quickgen characters actually have [I]more[/I] viable meaningful choices open to them with regard to mechanical resolution. There is no huge asset dump prompting them to approach the decision from a narrow pidgeonhole. [/QUOTE]
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