Favorite actual/wished for fantasy character that wouldn't work well with D&D rules

Let's not start to get snarky, please, or accuse people of not reading posts. Obviously if someone is responding in depth, they've read the post. I'd prefer for this thread to stay helpful.

Not sure if I'm missing something, Celebrim, but I would also like to understand better what you are looking for. For example:

All the speedster, time stop, large numbers of bodies cases fail on the practical grounds that if a PC can take some arbitrarily large number of actions per turn, then the PC's turn takes an arbitrarily large amount of time to resolve while all the other PC's (or NPC's) wait an arbitrarily large amount of time for their turn.
So what you are saying is that in order to be satisfactory in this case there would be a need for a mechanic to address the inordinate length of turn the character would have, so that the other players don't feel like observers?

But, how satisfied with the narrative would you be if all the dialogue for Bob the Joker was simply, "Bob said something funny..." or "Bob snapped a witty remark in reply."? Wouldn't you want to know what Bob said?
Also, are you seriously suggesting that DnD requires a means by which to generate jokes in order for you to roleplay your comedian to a satisfactory degree?
Since you did say in your next post that this is not what you meant - although it sounded like it to me as well - could you please expand on what the "perfect" mechanic in this situation would need to do to be satisfactory to you?

Edit: Personally, I wouldn't necessarily need to know what the character said for the mechanic to be satisfying to me - it would just need to acknowledge the situation (hence the "you fell flat on your face with that one" part of the feat I suggested) - although the player that is able to come up with a witty remark is of course even funnier.
 
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Most of those are not hard to do mechanically. The problem with those is the side effects and game artifacts of those mechanics are generally undesirable.

I, uh, think that right there was kind of the point, guys...
 


So what you are saying is that in order to be satisfactory in this case there would be a need for a mechanic to address the inordinate length of turn the character would have, so that the other players don't feel like observers?

Among other things. I think a class like the Swiftblade is nice for demonstrating another problem here - most games are balanced according to an action economy and for most games that economy is very brittle. None of the Swiftblades abilities actually give them true quickness until 9th level. This is because someone noted that the 3.0 Haste, by breaking the action economy was roughly as powerful and desirable as most 9th level spells. 3.5 haste considerably tones it down, and the Swiftblade simply is a class that provides alot of hoops before you give it back. And even then, it's not 'super quickness', it's just one extra action a turn. It's not even twice as quick, much less orders of magnitudes quicker like common superheroes or even for that matter a sci-fi character like the android Data.

To step out of D&D for example, let's look at a system like Mutants and Masterminds that has to take on this problem head on. An 'average' PL 10 superhero with level 10 Quickness, can do something like 1000 actions per turn. Now to think about the scale of this problem, consider that in an average adventure, your character probably doesn't do more than 1000 specified actions over the course of the whole adventure. Playing this trope straight, the level 10 Quickness character can solve the whole mystery and report back to the party while everyone else is still opening the door to the superhero headquarters. Sadly, said actions don't resolve nearly as fast in real life as they do in game terms. Played straight, they will also take just as much of the session to resolve as it takes to resolve an entire adventure.

So even a game that provides the mechanics for doing it openly advises considerable caution with superquickness, and not only that, it enforces arbitrary limits to the impact of speed on the action economy. For example, regardless of how many actions you can take, you still can take no more than a single attack. I can punch everyone with in 50' simulataneously, but for all practical purposes I'm only allowed to punch each once (though I can flavor it as something else).

So, again, what I'm saying here is that regardless of the system, this is hard. It's easy to say, "Sure, you can take multiple extra actions per turn.", but it turns out that that isn't actually a solution to the problem.

Since you did say in your next post that this is not what you meant - although it sounded like it to me as well - could you please expand on what the "perfect" mechanic in this situation would need to do to be satisfactory to you?

The perfect mechanic would make a person who isn't funny or witty, funny or witty when their actions were narrated. I suggest that such a mechanic is difficult. I also would like to note since for some reason there seems to be some confusion, that I don't think such a mechanic is necessary in order to play a funny or witty character, as all you have to do is be funny and witty in your characterization. What I'm pointing at here is a specific (and I think particularly hard) instance of the general problem, "How do you create mechanics that let the character possess mental attributes that the player doesn't have?"

And as I said, its much easier to create the reverse - mechanics that follow from a witty characterization - than it is to create a witty characterization that follows from mechanics. The best example I can provide of this is Elan's 'Charming Swordsman' prestige class in 'The Order of the Stick'. Elan as a class ability gets bonus damage whenever he makes a unique witty comment as part of his attack. This comment rewards a witty characterization, but in and of itself can't create one. And the narrative of the Order of the Stick provides a good example of why a purely mechanical resolution of a characterization issue like 'wit', 'humor', or 'creativity' would be unsatifisfying. I don't think Rich would get away with saying something like, "Belkar climbs on top the pile of dead hobgoblins and excercises his 'victory cry' ability to make a humerous and oddly stirring declaration", or write a panel in which every few cells he writes, "Elan and Belkar exchange humerous japes." He might get away once with writing, "Elan says something humerous that inflicts 3d6 ego damage, but Belkar protects himself with a cloak of indifference.", but only to mock the trope (and yes, I did steal that joke from someone else).
 


The perfect mechanic would make a person who isn't funny or witty, funny or witty when their actions were narrated. I suggest that such a mechanic is difficult.

More to the point, do you believe it's possible? Do you believe any game system ever has done it, or will do it, better than D&D does? It strikes me that this is completely beyond the scope of what game mechanics can achieve. It's like expecting the rules of a foot race to turn its participants into good athletes.

I had assumed that was your whole point - to highlight the fact that most of the concepts people are coming up with couldn't be done well in any system - but your recent replies are making me wonder what you're really driving at.
 

More to the point, do you believe it's possible?

Hmmm... I hate suggest that anything is impossible because those sort of claims have a way of making one look foolish, but I do believe that it is very very difficult.

Do you believe any game system ever has done it, or will do it, better than D&D does?

No, I don't believe that any game system has ever done it. I don't anticipate it being accomplished any time soon either.

I had assumed that was your whole point - to highlight the fact that most of the concepts people are coming up with couldn't be done well in any system - but your recent replies are making me wonder what you're really driving at.

All though I've been wandering around it abit, I think that your original understanding of my 'whole point' is correct. Most concepts that D&D can't do, also can't be done by any fantasy RPG. D&D does some concepts better than other systems, and some concepts not as well. It's easy to complain about the D&D system, but when you start looking into concrete alternatives you start finding that they aren't perfect either. Obviously, I think the base D&D system could be made better (and obviously, I think I've done so, or I'd be playing base D&D) at least in the sense of greater built in flexibility, and I think there are particular things other systems might do a little bit better, but as far as 'wished for fantasy characters' these tend to be things no system can do well and 'does a little bit worse than some other conceivable system' is not the same thing as 'doesn't do it at all' or even 'doesn't work well'. Alot of the problems I see with people getting D&D to work for them has more to do with preconceptions of what a solution looks like than mechanical problems with D&D itself.

And even when there are mechanical problems, many of these problems can be solved with simple tweaks to the system which IMO are no more complex than the sort of tweaks and additions to the system you'd use to customize GURPS or some other generic system to a particular setting. Some of these I'd like to see become standardized, but any hope of that was lost when D&D abandoned its heritage and its system and became a wholly new product with new strengths and new problems.

In short, my intention is to make a variaty of cautionary notes to the OP, suggesting that while her goal is quite laudable, an actual solution is likely to prove elusive. The goal of producing a truly universal, flexible, and generic system dominated a thread of RPG design for problem 15 years, and while alot of interesting products were produced my personal feeling is that the upshot of most of those designs is the lesson to take on less ambitious goals in your RPG design.
 

We're in agreement, then, as I thought. Your posts always seem insightful, Celebrim, though I think I'd enjoy them more if you weren't so focused on making yourself look clever at other people's expense. Ah well, that's all off-topic and none of my business I guess.
 

Since I'm being straight foward and speaking my mind, let me also suggest to the OP and anyone else thinking along those lines how they might profitably change the focus of their questions to achieve what they want.

Instead of asking for wished for fantasy characters that don't work well within the D&D rules, its probably more profitable to ask:

a) Under what situations do the D&D rules breakdown?

and

b) What specific mechanics do I want to add to my campaign to facilitate particular types of characters?

So, as an example of 'a', D&D notoriously breaks down as a simulation under a variaty of cases.

Ordinary human vs. house cat
Simulation of the dangers of falling 60'
Simulation of the dangers of starvation
Simulation of sleep deprivation
Simulation of chases or of atheletic competition where one player 'gaurds' another, or indeed in a lesser way any melee where the combatants move together as they fight.

I'd add to that some other specific cases that are less well known but that always bugged me.

Simulation of labor and costs of ordinary craftmanship
Attempting to use the spot/hide rules as a universal simulation of perception, for example, to determine when things first become visible.

As examples of 'b', I felt the need to add the following to the rules:

a) Simulation of mental trauma (I'm using the fear/horror/madness rules from Ravenloft).
b) Mechanics for non-spellcasters to create potions.
c) Mechanics for increasing base movement rate genericly.
d) Ways to gain the beneficial options provided by PrCs while dropping the need for those PrCs
e) Mechanics for generic 'Paladins' that weren't LG.
f) Mechanics for generic 'beserk' fighters that weren't primitive chaotic tribesmen.
g) An advantage/disadvantage system allowing for a tighter connection between unusual backgrounds/concepts and mechanics.

And alot of other things.

I'm also working on.

a) Detailed mechanics for spell failure.
b) Mechanics for wizards casting spells normally beyond there ability.
c) Mechanics for non-spellcasters calling down curses and blessings.
d) Mechanics for non-spellcasters entering the ethereal plane.
e) Mechanics to standardize divine intervention.

None of these things actually make my system more generic or necessarily more capable of handling an artibrary fantasy concept that someone comes up with ('technomancer/artificer' as a starting concept comes to mind). They make my system more specialized in that it better handles the specific fantasy setting I envision.
 

I think I'd enjoy them more if you weren't so focused on making yourself look clever at other people's expense. Ah well, that's all off-topic and none of my business I guess.

I'll just say that if people wouldn't act as of pointing out the existance of Alter Self, Polymorph Self, and Shapechange was a particularly clever response when I said that 'Shapechanging is difficult for any system', things probably wouldn't get confrontational. I wasn't the first person to get annoyed when they felt someone else was being obvious to the point of being patronizing, and I'd like to think that when I was being overly obvious in my comments it involved more original thinking than a straight listing of mechanical options with various snide asides to the effect of how ignorant people were for not thinking of these things.
 

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