Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Silly designers - how dare they have the gumption to assume DMs would actually enforce the rules they wrote.Totally disagree. Reroll mechanics have a very strong place in the game and are, IMO, an excellent design. It might be something you don't like, but, that doesn't make it poor design. The evolution of fudging mechanics in RPG's is pretty clear. We started with most of it being hidden behind the DM's screen and it has now moved into the open and can be planned for.
Think about it this way. The developers couldn't know that most groups were going to fudge their character creation. Paladins were rare because you needed high rolls to get one. But, if people are just fudging the rolls, then paladins stop being rare. Same with rangers and druids and monks. All that gating of group power behind die rolls during chargen goes straight out the window as soon as the rubber meets the road.
If you enforce the RAW in this case it in fact does kind of work as intended.
I rolled up a new character last weekend - first one in years. Highest roll was 16, but - and this is quite unusual for me - the low was 12, so solid across the board. Done on a VTT so all above-board and DM-verifiable; and with the rolls I got that character could have been anything except a Paladin. (of course, as fate would have it all I was after this time was a simple Thief as that's the idea I was going in with)So, you can easily wind up with a group of six PC's that include a ranger, a paladin and a druid/thief/MU.Which in turn means that other limitations and whatnot stop working. Those level limited demi-humans? Well, it says right there if I've got an 18 Int, my elven MU can now go up to 15th level (or whatever the numbers are) so, poof, my elven MU is always going to have an 18 or 19 int.
Unfortunately that incorporation into design decisions in some parts of the game only serves to passively endorse it in others, leading IMO to a poorer play experience overall.When fudging is purely ad hoc DM fiat, there's no way to design around it. When it's player facing and defined, then you can start to incorporate it into your design decisions.