D&D 5E Do you miss attribute minimums/maximums?

[Lylandra]

First of all thank you for your long reply to my rant, and I beg your pardon on my not intended insult that your philosophies are stupid. In fact I see that you have got quite interesting philosophies.

On Vancian casting: I do not like it either. Back in 2e we replaced it with spell slots because the cleric would never have the right spell for every illness and would have felt
helpless not to be able to contribute.

Spellpoints are a very good solution also, in fact the 5 E sorcerer class is imho really powerful just because of this mechanic. (Some people disagree I never understood their arguments)

I do play MMORPGs to, atm my favourite is DDO that one got really cool old school dungeons but also hack and slay scenarios and great riddles. I also enjoy LOTRO and play a bit of SWTOR but rarely.

Sorry to again pick MMORPGs as a comparison but this fits to well: I also tried neverwinter a D&D MMORPG with much more players than DDO but whereas in DDO you got to find a hidden Door in neverwinter a twinkling path always leads you to the direct quest solution.

So that is one thing I enjoy in D&D very much it is riddles. I tend to invent riddles for my players when I DM. In riddles I do not only mean mechanical puzzles but also RP orientared riddles. In one of my last sessions I told one of my players to make a saving throw which he botched and I told him in secret that he is now madly in love with a woman who in reality was a succubus. And he rpd it so perfectly, all the other players were so confused and I had great laughs on the grotesque situation. He did get a big XP boon and an inspiration for that.

I also like it to design combats so that they nearly kill the players but not actually - only with very bad luck. And I do not cheat as a DM because my current group does not want that. So I do all the rolls in the open and work without a screen. And that gives me deeper inner satisfaction when again i designed a group of mobs exactly to the point
The orcs in my current Greyhawk campaigned are modelled as PCs rather than following the monster guidelines, that adds to the challenge.

I like to reflect a certain time period in real history in terms of technology and items available.

For my current campaign its 30 years war just without guns.

I like logic consistency within my games I hate if I have to handwave to much. A bit of it is ok. And maybe therefore I rather restrict in race class available to play since I am a working man and do not want to spend to much time on my design. It simply makes things easier than an anything goes. But if my players wish something to exist I discuss it with them and if possible I integrate it because its their fun and spare time as much has mine.

Your take on alignment is interesting would you eventually in another thread elaborate a bit more about it?

All fine, I'm no native speaker either

I also like riddles, especially in TTRPGs where you can try to solve them even more creatively than in a computer game. Also... PC characters reacting in a, hm, logical way to things they botched or fields they are not good in is great fun as well. I remember having a fighter who just had no sense of direction. She confused left and right and refused to succeed on survival checks when it came to finding the path. She'd get lost in every building with more than 1 storey.

Combat encounters... the challenging ones I build the very same way. I don't use too much unavoidable combat and when I do throw the PCs into combat, it should mean something.

For tech, I'd rather mix and match, but it has to make sense for me. The new 7th Sea had a great section on which technology was developed how far since the previous edition and in contrast to what happened in our RL history. Our Zeitgeist PF campaign is also a mix of early industry and magic without getting too steampunky.

As I said, I ask my players what they'd like to play in a given scenario and why. If they want to play something seemingly exotic, then I either let it be exotic (if they want to) or I integrate it as unusual, or even common. I always follow the credo that the world and universe we play in is ours to decide. It does have to be consistent, have consequences and make sense. But the elements which make up the world can differ hugely from ours.

We can discuss alignment in a different thread, sure

 

[Yaarel]

I'm toying with 'females of all races get -1 strength, +1 wisdom when stats are generated', similarly all races will get +1 in up to 2 stats, with -1 in an equal number of stats. Humans get no racial stat modifiers.

And in order to further push the idea of races favouring certain stats, I like the idea of a 'favoured stat' - at the point of character generation, the player must assign 1 of the highest 3 dice rolls to a favoured stat (or maybe 2 favoured stats, eg Half Orcs must put 1 of the highest 3 into strength, another into constitution)

For what it is worth, females tend to have better manual dexterity.

So, female Dexterity score leans higher. Versus male Strength score leans higher.

However, there are male heroes who are exceptionally dexterous, and female heroes who are exceptionally strong. It is better to avoid a mechanical distinction.

 

[JonnyP71]

It all comes down to which real life traits you want to model, if any. There will still be exceptionally strong heroes, as with no ASIs, and greatly reduced racial bonuses, a score of 18 will now be 'exceptionally strong', and unachievable at 1st level for many race/gender combinations.

-1/+1 mods are pretty small, and the idea to shift a balance only slightly. I'm not planning any hard caps on racial max/min scores, and characters can develop, but the starting point will just be slightly altered.

(note also, no point buy, just 4d6 method)

 

[Maxperson]

If you'd want to, you can houserule differences into your genders, sure. But unless you balance the two out and just say "okay men get +2 STR and +2 STR max because realism" and give the other gender nothing equivalent in return, then your model blatantly says "men are better then women". And that is meta-sexism. I guess this is what was meant...

Wait, you're arguing that men are better than women in real life, because we are stronger? I disagree with that. If you aren't arguing that men are better than women in real life due to us being stronger, then it is not sexist in D&D to only give men the strength bonus. It's not sexist to model fact.

That said, you could give women a con bonus. Women deal with pain better, survive longer without water, etc.

 

[billd91]

There is no trade-off. The fluff and crunch fail to match and that's a simple fact. They didn't trade one for the other since it would have taken a small handful of words to fix the problem.

Of course there's a trade-off. They're trading off the simulation you desire with easier playability plus player control. That's a game design trade-off.

 

[jasper]

Wait, you're arguing that men are better than women in real life, because we are stronger? I disagree with that. If you aren't arguing that men are better than women in real life due to us being stronger, then it is not sexist in D&D to only give men the strength bonus. It's not sexist to model fact.

That said, you could give women a con bonus. Women deal with pain better, survive longer without water, etc.

THIS! Is one of the reasons I don't miss Mins and max.
the fact the 87 pds kid sister of my dm gave me a wedgie when I was 17 does not matter. and she spit in my cola!
They made a little sense at first glance but started too many bs arguments about what is correct in a fantasy world.
Today I just say. "EEWWWWWW MOM MOM MOM um DM DM DM DM Maxperson (etc) is getting science all over my fantasy ! Whine whimper whine!"

 

[Yaarel]

Brute strength is not divorced from athleticism. It's not possible by RAW for a halfling to be good at one and not the other.

That is a significant problem with the six abilities

 

[Maxperson]

Of course there's a trade-off. They're trading off the simulation you desire with easier playability plus player control. That's a game design trade-off.

Simulation has nothing to do with what I'm saying. Try again. There is no trade-off.

 

[Obryn]

And that is fine, but it might not be everyone's cup of tea. I still don't think a poster should be calling out other posters racists and/or sexists because of others in-game preferences in an attempt to simulate reality. I think you're forgetting about that line.

Sure they can. I don't know where people got the idea that saying sexist or racist crap is okay, but calling out racist or sexist behavior is beyond the pale. It's absurd and juvenile.

A game is not reality. An RPG is a set of decisions about how to model a reality. Any decisions made about that model are conscious ones - you've decided that this is worth the time and effort to implement into your game-world. "I'm just simulating reality" doesn't cut it, because you're picking this specific thing to simulate and giving a pass to so very many others (particularly in a game like D&D). So it's natural to ask why human sexual dimorphism is so damn important that it gets a write-up in your house-rules, just as it's natural to ask what kinds of effects it will have on the players and the game.

Talking to badgers requires magic, the other issue doesn't. Similar to why many feel halflings should be inherently weaker than half-orcs.

Nah, it's like the existence of giants (not physically possible with human-style frames), dragons (really couldn't fly), unearthly metals (love to see them on the periodic table), and the like. It's a part of the game world that you've decided to cordon off behind a wall called 'suspension of disbelief.'

 

[Maxperson]

Nah, it's like the existence of giants (not physically possible with human-style frames), dragons (really couldn't fly), unearthly metals (love to see them on the periodic table), and the like. It's a part of the game world that you've decided to cordon off behind a wall called 'suspension of disbelief.'

More of this failed False Equivalence? When will you guys learn that not all things are equally unrealistic. The metals and dragons are explained by in game lore, so they are not at all unrealistic in the fantasy setting. Giants I'll give you. They aren't explained any more than halflings are.