D&D 5E Characters are not their statistics and abilities

[AaronOfBarbaria]

If you think that there was only 1 power gaming version of DnD then chances are that you have only played 1 version of DnD.

So very true.

Especially when you look at the word count in 2nd edition dedicated to thoughts like (from the DMG of the time) "At the same time, watch out for a tendency in some players to want the most powerful character possible."

Or at how, compared to 2nd edition, 3rd edition can appear to be enabling power-gaming players in how it altered the game (in a whole list of ways, such as getting extra spells per day if you crank one ability score as high as you can, high-level saving throws going from the 2nd edition style of everything having great chances for successful saves to the 3rd edition style of a caster that is power-gamed correctly making the chances of a successful save abysmally low, and spells being left as-is or given slight increases in potency in general).

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I remember when my friend told me that we should get miniatures for our characters. Then I found out how much they cost - I could essentially choose to buy 1 mini or a DnD book. So needless to say that most of my gaming is TotM.

When I first started DMing I didn't have any miniatures, but I quickly bought and painted some from local game store bargain bins. A year or two later I had a decent assortment, and a particular fighter mini with a two-handed sword that I was most proud of and had actually bought at full price... that I dropped on a concrete floor and watched fly into pieces.

That incident broke my heart, and I gave up on miniatures for a long time afterward. But I still ran with a grid, even as my collection of minis dwindled due to damage or loss and I refused to repair or replace, using anything else on hand to represent things: dice, dice cases, coins, pieces from board games, dishes, and so forth.

Then one day about a decade ago I was running a game in a local shop after having just moved here, and an encounter came along that was confusing the players with the varied creatures and terrain involved. When I looked around for supplies to use to solve the confusion, I found things to be lacking... but there were a few boxes of WotC pre-painted minis on the shelf, so I bought them, layed out the blank grid map from the DMG of the time, lined up a few spare pencils as walls and scattered a few tiny dice from a pirate game I can't remember the name of (you bought what were basically trading card packs, punched the ship pieces out of the cards, built them, and would combat other ships, and they came with these tiny d6) to represent terrain of note - and the confusion was gone.

Plus, I was finally over my heartbreak about minis.

Now I have too many, and hundreds of them I keep wishing I'd find time and motivation at the same moment so I can paint, because I've re-found my love for that too.

But I still use whatever is on hand. Usually a mix of minis, dice, "pogs" from late 4e materials, standees from Paizo products, and bits from board games.

 

[iserith]

Because they're not the current edition and...

...you just like to adopt the latest & greatest...

If the greatest isn't also the latest, then go play the greatest (whatever that may be to you).

...you want to actively support the success of D&D, and promoting an out-of-print edition is at cross purposes to that (cf edition war)...

Buy the adventures and convert to the preferred edition.

...you want D&D to be as good as possible, and that means supporting the style you feel is 'best...'

No style is best.

...you primarily participate in organized play and that's 5e AL, now...

It seems doubtful to me a self-proclaimed powergamer would feel all that challenged by any organized play game.

...being told to go play a non-current edition or non-D&D game, when you're a devoted fan of D&D makes you feel excluded...

Stop thinking of it as "current" edition. It's just another edition, no more or less valid than any edition that preceded it. I don't see why a devoted fan of D&D who doesn't play the most recent edition would feel excluded. Loads of people don't play D&D 5e or play some other edition in addition to it. That doesn't make them any less devoted to me.

Yeah, I can find no room for sympathy here. Though I probably have a different perspective than some because I adjust my playstyle to account for the design of the new edition, rather than rail against the game and its creators for not including my "default playstyle" in its design.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Corwin]

Yeah, I can find no room for sympathy here. Though I probably have a different perspective than some because I adjust my playstyle to account for the design of the new edition, rather than rail against the game and its creators for not including my "default playstyle" in its design.

This is the most insightful recommendation, IMO. After all, if you're used to playing D&D, and you try to take most typically popular playstyles into a CoC game, it's not going to work out to well for you, one would have to think.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Tony, either you have me mixed up with someone else, or you're just making things up and pulling them out of your rear. I was not involved in any of those edition wars. I did not go into any 4e forums because they held no interest for me. I would love to see you find quotes of me being heavily involved in the edition wars.

What you'll find, is that even though I joined in 2003, I was a light poster until 5e came out. I have almost no posts during the 4e era

Nice try though.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Tony, either you have me mixed up with someone else

Not impossible, I get you and Shasharak confused all the time, for instance.... ...could even have been a similar name on the WotC boards. Not that you're nearly as bad that way as variations the many variations of Emirikol.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Not really. While I get what you're saying, and I agree that much of roleplaying involves making decisions from your character's perspective, there is also a division between player and character, and there are some decisions that the player makes for the game that aren't from the character's perspective. Most of them would be at character creation...such as what stat to put into Constitution.

As the saying goes, the game is everything that happens after you meet at the tavern. Character creation isn't part of the game; it's the homework you do prior to playing the game.

To use an analogy, playing a game is like watching a movie, and making your character is like deciding which movie you want to watch. Regardless of your external choices, they don't have any effect on the quality or integrity of what happens within the story. Or to put that more generally, you can't fault the premise - you can only fault how things are handled from there.

It's not my place, as a player, to tell you that your character needs at least a 12 in Constitution and an AC of at least 15. It's my place to play my own character, and it's my character's place to tell your character when they're doing something that needlessly endangers the lives of everyone involved.

What makes the scimitar weaker than a longsword? In what way is it weaker? And why would a character place importance on that factor more so than on any other factor that may play into the decision?

Imagine every possible metric for comparing the two - speed, weight, ease-of-use, stopping power, whatever. The longsword is equivalent-to or better-than the scimitar along every single metric, with the sole exception that the scimitar is easier to use with such fighting styles as the character has expressed no interest in using. It doesn't matter which factor they are using to make their decision, because they all come out the same way.

Although, stopping power really is the most important metric, when evaluating a weapon; it should at least count as a tie-breaker, if the primary deciding point is inconclusive, like with weight or ease-of-use.

 

[hawkeyefan]

As the saying goes, the game is everything that happens after you meet at the tavern. Character creation isn't part of the game; it's the homework you do prior to playing the game.

To use an analogy, playing a game is like watching a movie, and making your character is like deciding which movie you want to watch. Regardless of your external choices, they don't have any effect on the quality or integrity of what happens within the story. Or to put that more generally, you can't fault the premise - you can only fault how things are handled from there.

That seems like weak reasoning to me. Making your character is part of the game. And since we're talking about character creation, certainly the decisions that go into that are more player-based than character based, which was my point. If we're talking about builds of characters and how the decisions of character creation may be seen as optimal or suboptimal, then we're talking about decisions that are being made by a player to shape his character, rather than on behalf of the character.

It's not my place, as a player, to tell you that your character needs at least a 12 in Constitution and an AC of at least 15. It's my place to play my own character, and it's my character's place to tell your character when they're doing something that needlessly endangers the lives of everyone involved.

This I agree with, sure.

Imagine every possible metric for comparing the two - speed, weight, ease-of-use, stopping power, whatever. The longsword is equivalent-to or better-than the scimitar along every single metric, with the sole exception that the scimitar is easier to use with such fighting styles as the character has expressed no interest in using. It doesn't matter which factor they are using to make their decision, because they all come out the same way.

Although, stopping power really is the most important metric, when evaluating a weapon; it should at least count as a tie-breaker, if the primary deciding point is inconclusive, like with weight or ease-of-use.

Stopping power? I don't know if we really have such a way of measuring that in sword types. It's possible, of course, but I'm not aware of any. I suppose we could go with weight as being a big factor in how damaging a sword would be, at the most basic. So in that case, everyone would be running around with claymores like Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

But then we're really simplifying things. I mean, even assuming that every longsword is equal is a simplification, no? Certainly some sword makers made superior items, and others were inferior.

And as for metrics...I don't agree with you on the longsword being ahead in all. I'm pretty sure that scimitars are better from horseback, at the very least. So if a character is a scout or some kind of light horseman, then would a longsword still be an objectively better choice?

All this is to say that the game simplifies things from the complexities of the real world, and we as players make our choices based on how those things play in the game. And that's fine. Characters in the game can certainly call into question behavior by other characters that is risky for all. I just wouldn't expect such questions to involve things that can only be quantified within the game.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Stopping power? I don't know if we really have such a way of measuring that in sword types. It's possible, of course, but I'm not aware of any. I suppose we could go with weight as being a big factor in how damaging a sword would be, at the most basic. So in that case, everyone would be running around with claymores like Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

You get some dudes, dress them up in leather armor, and then whack at them until they fall down. On average, it will take fewer whacks from a longsword than it will from a scimitar, and while you're even more likely to drop someone with the first hit from a big two-hander, the fact that you need two hands to use it is enough of a reason that someone might prefer the longsword instead.

Or equip an army, and send them out to slaughter some orcs. History is full of that sort of thing happening, and the guys with heavier swords were more effective than the guys who tried to brute force with a lighter blade, after adjusting for outside factors.

Or set up a pile of wood or straw, and whack at it with various swords to see how deep they cut. All signs point in the same direction.

Or even easier, don't do any of those things, because it's immediately obvious to everyone with the tiniest bit of common sense that the bigger weapon has more stopping power!

And as for metrics...I don't agree with you on the longsword being ahead in all. I'm pretty sure that scimitars are better from horseback, at the very least. So if a character is a scout or some kind of light horseman, then would a longsword still be an objectively better choice?

You would be mistaken on that matter, within the game world which the rules reflect. Longswords perform better than scimitars when using a strength-based fighting style, whether you're mounted or on foot.

If your DM thinks the mounted combat rules are insufficient, and changes them so that scimitars actually are better from horseback, then your argument might hold ground. Until then, scouts will prefer scimitars primarily because they use a finesse-based fighting style, which favors the scimitar whether mounted or not.