Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7752751" data-attributes="member: 996">The Cult of RAW, yeah.&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />&nbsp; That's not so much an artifact of build systems, in general, as the 3.x approach to it still being so very... well Core-D&amp;D-experience-like, actually.&nbsp; In older versions of D&amp;D, you had no real direct/voluntary control over how your character developed after choosign race/class, the DM might decide that the magic pool you drank from turned your skin purple, or you might get a magic item that made you superhumanly strong, or swapped your assigned sex.&nbsp; While, in 3e, you had a tremendous lattitude to customize your character with MCing and with make/buy items, you still had this dependence on the items and options being arbitrarily spelled out - by designers in a published book rather than by the DM, but you still needed exactly the right option to be published to be able to use it.&nbsp; You couldn't customize to a deeper level (or granularity) like you could in the ground-breaking build systems from the early 80s.&nbsp; It was still very much a compromise between a player-mediated build system and an arbitrary, DM mediated path of character development (with da rulez stepping on the DM's toes a bit).&nbsp; The magnitude of that issue is directly related to the complexity &amp; balance of the build system.&nbsp; It was a very serious issue for 3.x/PF because the swings in effectiveness of a build could be so extreme, but even in that case, the DM could limit the problem - but only by limiting options (restricting everyone to Tier 3 classes, for instance).&nbsp; Of course, the GM could 'take back control,' and alievate this second issue, as well, by auditing &amp; approving builds, by doing pre-built 'packages' or even doing all the builds, himself (still to player concepts, so some of the advantage of a build system could be retained).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7752751, member: 996"] The Cult of RAW, yeah. ;) That's not so much an artifact of build systems, in general, as the 3.x approach to it still being so very... well Core-D&D-experience-like, actually. In older versions of D&D, you had no real direct/voluntary control over how your character developed after choosign race/class, the DM might decide that the magic pool you drank from turned your skin purple, or you might get a magic item that made you superhumanly strong, or swapped your assigned sex. While, in 3e, you had a tremendous lattitude to customize your character with MCing and with make/buy items, you still had this dependence on the items and options being arbitrarily spelled out - by designers in a published book rather than by the DM, but you still needed exactly the right option to be published to be able to use it. You couldn't customize to a deeper level (or granularity) like you could in the ground-breaking build systems from the early 80s. It was still very much a compromise between a player-mediated build system and an arbitrary, DM mediated path of character development (with da rulez stepping on the DM's toes a bit). The magnitude of that issue is directly related to the complexity & balance of the build system. It was a very serious issue for 3.x/PF because the swings in effectiveness of a build could be so extreme, but even in that case, the DM could limit the problem - but only by limiting options (restricting everyone to Tier 3 classes, for instance). Of course, the GM could 'take back control,' and alievate this second issue, as well, by auditing & approving builds, by doing pre-built 'packages' or even doing all the builds, himself (still to player concepts, so some of the advantage of a build system could be retained). [/QUOTE]

Verification