Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5732024" data-attributes="member: 2067">Yeah, I don't disagree. I think the crux is where player skill is applied. I'm not particularly interested in evaluating Frank's persuasive capacity or Julie's deductive prowess or ADD Roger's ability to pay attention to NPC names. If Frank is shy and Julie is a ditz and Roger zones in and out, I don't want to pass judgement on them or to require them to be different people in order to enjoy my game. I also don't want to limit my game: there should be no reason I can't run an enjoyable mystery adventure despite Julie's ditziness.The way I see it, via the rules, the player has tools for how their character interacts with the world. To accomplish something, they can use the rules. Player skill then comes in with how creatively and resourcefully they can use the tools at their disposal, along with the rest of the party, to overcome the small and large obstacles they face as a group.So it's player choice which character abilities to use, to gain, and to focus on, but the way they advance their character's goals is through those character abilities -- their own skill matters in how they use the abilities. If the party comes up against a fire dragon with nothing but fire damage, it is up to them to use their tools creatively to -- at least -- get away from the thing long enough to gain some non-fire attacks. That's why, above, I was talking about 4e's defined effects vs. other e's general tools. Fireball as a defined damage power vs. fireball as a big ball of fire. The latter is more useful as a prop, with properties that may be useful in a variety of circumstances. The former is only really useful for one purpose. Yeah, it would be more about giving the players knowledge and letting them make the choice. But their knowledge comes via their characters: if the characters had knowledge of the Wand of Orcus or the Medusae, via character skills (such has having fought both cultists of Orcus and Medusae in the past). Then they'd make the decision based on their abilities. If they all have great Stealth-y powers, maybe stealing the Wand of Orcus isn't all that far-fetched? But, anyway, it's a player decision based on information their characters have. Detect Magic, Zone of Truth, Suggestion, Charm Person, Sending, Scrying, and other discovery and social powers (and their equivalents with non-magical characters, too!) have prominent roles in my games, and I wouldn't want to disregard them. These are tools for finding the truth or swaying opinion, and I prefer them to be useful. Those are character abilities, used for mysteries and politics. Of course, it's still within player choice when and how to apply these tools. If they're chasing down a red herring, Zone of Truth isn't going to help. If their political rival doesn't value friendship, making them your friend with Charm Person isn't very useful. But I'm not going to worry about Frank, Julie, and Roger actually being great mystery solvers or great politicians. They just need to be smart D&D players.</blockquote>

Verification