KaeYoss said:
I beg your pardon? I don't think d20M offers better reasons to raise your saves than D&D.
There are a couple of guidelines (stereotypes, if you will): fighters have low will saves, rogues have low fort saves, clerics have low ref saves. Smart persons usually exploit that. Any obvious fighter can expect to be the prime target of mind affecting spells or harm. So every warrior that doesn't try to increase his will save will be possessed, held, or dominated half the time when fighting against a spellcaster worth his salt. Iron Will is a must for them, especially for fighters.
There will be fighters who disagree that the attempt is worth their while.
Meeting up with an enchanter is much rarer than taking damage.
The worlds best isn't twice as good as #2. But he's twice as good (and better, far better) than an amateur - except in a 'gritty' game obviously, where the outcome of the great match FC Bayern München versus Quetschemembacher Hobby Soccer Team (who hardly get 11 people together, and have substitutes only if they all can get the day off for the match) is uncertain. Excuse me, but that's just rediculous. I prefer to take the "staged combats" where the party fights someone with their powers (and, often enough, much weaker foes, that are just a diversity - or, sometimes, an adversary they better run away from).
How's that ridiculous? If you think it's a sure thing, the GM says "I'm not going to bother rolling for that". You know, just like in d20?
It was just a analogy. I know that there were games where the sure favorites lost - but you forget that in RPG's, we ain't talking about a friendly match, where the champions won't give 100%, but against a real threat with weapons that cann well kill them. They have adrenaline pumping through their veins and won't pull their punches.
And of course they should play even they know they can't win. It's an experience for them, and losing won't make them lose the face (while the pros will face some humiliation if they lose). It's no fight to the death...
So - the pro's are facing humiliation, but still don't try, while the amateurs have nothing to gain or lose, and yet...
What ARE you trying to say here?
The real world is not cut-and-dry. There ARE upsets. The underdog DOES win. It's less likely, but it does happen.
The vets do have more experience. They do have a better BAB (so they can shoot better), they have a better will save bonus (which is usually used for morale checks if they do come up). So I think it's in there.
Is this in real life? Because it sure sounds like you're simply talking about d20, where it's impossible to have a good save without also being able to shoot straight.
The example above shows that those players are quite reckless. I don't think that it's the norm. If one of those "bulletproof" characters just because of one or two unlucky rolls, they will be cured of that.
I think it's a result of the system. You need unlucky rolls to die. That's significantly different from SR. That's part of being a heroic game system. That's good for the sort of game that I'm running with d20m. It's bad for a system where avoiding combat should really be your first choice.
They can very easily be adapted. You don't get spoon-fed everything.
See? Here's my point. You just don't get the fact that introducing ELH stuff is going to change a setting. It changes a D&D game, and D&D is significantly higher powered than even d20m. Where were these epic-level guards when the party started their career? Where were the epic-level runners? Why should the party be hitting the epic-guarded facilities when they can walk all over the easy stuff?
Shadowrunning is not supposed to get easy. Under d20m, it would.
I know, lottery is really a tax on people who are bad at maths.
He won't. It was just an example. It could also be making a strength check to remain on your feet if a dam breaks in front of you.
And, just like the meteor example, the DM can potentially rule that such a thing is "impossible". Changing it from a meteor to a dam to whatever doesn't change a thing.
It's in the rules that some things are impossible and therefore you don't get a roll (or one that you can't beat at all, like DC 50 for a 1st-level character's jump check or something). On the other hand, it was said about SR let you roll everything, even if there is only an astronimically small chance of success.
And? You're proving quite bad at working out vanishingly small probabilities yourself here. We're talking about (even if you let the guy roll) lotto-win probabilities here. Just because 1/20 is the smallest chance you can have in d20 doesn't mean that anything smaller than that is flat-out impossible.
Players LIKE pulling off that 1/1000 shot. Why not let them try. Unless, of course, you're playing d20 and it suddenly becomes a 1/20 shot.
Then screw the fighter. The cleric you envision is a fighter with spells as a plus.
I have played some D&D now, including fights against otherworldly enemies, and the situations where the fighter can't contribute are rare to the extreme. Same goes for other classes or character types. Of course, sometimes they have less impact than usual (and at other times, they really shine).
You're getting less and less coherent. I'd suggest you take a break, calm down and come back when you're a little more up to typing. This isn't an insult, or a bring-down, merely a suggestion.
I believe I was talking about the wizard, not the cleric. Furthermore, my point is that I'd much rather have the wizard's magic as low-key stuff, rather than "makes X irrelevant" sort of stuff.
To recompense, he'd get a bit more non-spellcasting ability. I much prefer generalists to specialists. It means that everyone can keep playing the game, rather than one person being in the spotlight all the time.
As for playing a fighter: What does he do when there isn't a fight going on? I noticed that you said that he was useful when fighting creatures - what about when you're not? Do any of his class abilities apply to non-combat situations? No. They don't. My experience has been that, unless the fighter ends up being the leader of the group, the fighter just sits back and waits for the next fight to start. There's basically nothing else he can do. It takes a huge amount of effort to make a fighter which can do more than that, and such a fighter gives up a lot of his primary ability to do so, while most classes get non-combat ability handed to them on a plate.
I play a cleric. And it's fun as hell. People who think clerics are dull still have the AD&D-version in mind, it seems. 3e clerics are a very versatile lot (as a whole and as individuals) and, as I said, can be quite a lot fun. It's far more than just casting healing spells.
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Yup. I know. Wouldn't it be wonderful if every class could have that much variety?
Besides that, the original quote was talking about players who take everything they percieve as best, and end up churning out a procession of near-identical characters, which help noone but themselves. The idea was that a class-based system somehow prevents that.
My counterpoint was that clerics are still quite unpopular, which shows that unless you allocate character classes to each of your players, you can't guarantee that all the bases will be filled, nor can you guarantee that you won't end up with a bunch of self-serving one-dimensional characters.
