More feats, fewer choices

[Sashi]

For example, why do wizards need a charisma of 13 to take "spell focus" (-2 to all saves). That makes no sense fluff-wise.

Because an extremely intelligent wizard can make some of the biggest booms you've ever SEEN. ("Get ready for one heck of a fireball!")

But a charismatic wizard is better at imposing his will on the target ("Down, boy!")

It is the nature of fluff that it describes why crunch works the way it does. Saying that something makes no sense fluff wise is like saying that your favorite color being Blue makes no sense because your favorite color is Red.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

As an example -- there's a character in the Malazan series who is an incredibly potent mage, but who also happens to be something of a simpleton. If I had a player that wanted to build a Wizard inspired by that character, we could spend ages agonising over what Int score to give him. Or, we could just say, "Give him high Int, and play him as a simpleton." An Int of 20 does not in any way impede your ability to play a character one way or another, unless you decide it must.

Unless magic works off of intellect in this series, why make him a wizard? If it were 3e, I'd say go Sorcerer or some other class without int as the main stat.

The problem with saying "Just PRETEND he's a simpleton" is that you're COMPLETELY divorcing the character from the mechanics, at which point you should stop playing D&D and play the far superior Baron Munchhausen, preferably with the most expensive brandy you can find.

Again, I'm not stating that this is a horrible and bad game mechanic. I'm saying that it ruins counterintuitive towards making the game open and easy to new players, who will all, I'm willing to say, try to put as many points into int as they can on first making a wizard. It takes someone who's played the game a lot to want to make a non-optimized character.

 

[hong]

The problem with saying "Just PRETEND he's a simpleton" is that you're COMPLETELY divorcing the character from the mechanics, at which point you should stop playing D&D and play the far superior Baron Munchhausen, preferably with the most expensive brandy you can find.

Nonsense. Cf Rain Man.

Again, I'm not stating that this is a horrible and bad game mechanic. I'm saying that it ruins counterintuitive towards making the game open and easy to new players, who will all, I'm willing to say, try to put as many points into int as they can on first making a wizard.

If it were in fact counterproductive to put lots of points into Int, then you can talk.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

For me, its more that I can see what good a particular supplement will do for my game/character. In the 3e model, every book that came out would have to have a few new base classes, a few new PrCs, new feats, spells, monsters, etc. But the PrC might be one designed for rogues, even though its primarily an arcanist focused book. Or a fighter bonus feat. But it was always hard to justify an entire book for a single spell or feat. So far, the niche designs seem to make it so that if I'm a martial class, I'll never have to worry about stuff in a psionic book. OTOH, I'll probably get a lot of benefit from the martial book. At least, that's how I feel. The organization of the material feels more top down than it did in 3e.

Yes, I agree. Basically, if I look through my 3E supplements, I usually find one or two PrCs, two or three feats and three or four spells per supplement that I will actually consider using. That is not really satisfying to me.

Similar, if I look at the 3E MMs, too many monsters seem like odd-ball creatures I don't really have an idea how to integrate in my campaign. (There are, off course, few good ones, too). The 3E MM1 gave me a lot of monsters I could re-use by adding levels (I actually had to do this if I wanted to create, say, a goblin-themed adventure), but this meant also more work.

So, yes, I am fully believing that the scope of 4E might be narrower, and supplements will be important. But, on the same hand, I also believe that these supplements will be of a lot more use to me then the 3E supplements ever were. And since I bought the 3E supplements despite this, I don't mind having to continue buying supplements for 4E.

 

[SableWyvern]

The problem with saying "Just PRETEND he's a simpleton" is that you're COMPLETELY divorcing the character from the mechanics, at which point you should stop playing D&D and play the far superior Baron Munchhausen, preferably with the most expensive brandy you can find.

Well, no. What I'm doing is letting the effects of the mechanics define the game terms.

What is Int? You're saying it's some hard value that rates how smart someone is. I'm saying it's a measure of your ability to blow stuff up with wizard powers, to reflexively avoid certain incoming attacks, and a very basic grounding in a few skills.

Similarly Str - It's primarily a measure of your ability to hit things reliably and effectively in combat. It could be called Combat Luck instead of Strength, and it's main effects on the game wouldn't need to be changed one bit. Yes, Str does effect other things as well. But, if I want to build a character with tremendous upper-body strength but poor lower body strength, I don't worry about the fact that Str by default covers both. I give him 18 Str, and play him as if he has less lower-body Str than his ability score might indicate.

As to assertions that this one simple reading of the rules is equivalent to playing Baron Munchhausen -- I'm confident most people will recognise that as a self-evidently ludicrous assertion.


Also: why do you keep highlighting the word "Pretend"? I'm assuming everyone here already realises that PCs aren't real. *confused*

 

[med stud]

I'm just here for the "that doesn't have a fluff reason!"

It's much easier to go in with an open mind, read about the feat and then come up with a fluff reason.

Does Spell Focus need Cha 13? WTF? OK, there must be some reason for it. The reason is probably that project your force of will through your arcane energies to make them harder to resist. Essentially, the world is bowing to your authority in this (small) instance.

There, an explanation that took five seconds to come up with, which adds to the collective fluff of your game.

Go with the flow. It's a good philosophy for life over-all, but especially for RPGs .

 

[lutecius]

Well, no. What I'm doing is letting the effects of the mechanics define the game terms.

What is Int? You're saying it's some hard value that rates how smart someone is. I'm saying it's a measure of your ability to blow stuff up with wizard powers, to reflexively avoid certain incoming attacks, and a very basic grounding in a few skills.

Similarly Str - It's primarily a measure of your ability to hit things reliably and effectively in combat. It could be called Combat Luck instead of Strength, and it's main effects on the game wouldn't need to be changed one bit. Yes, Str does effect other things as well. But, if I want to build a character with tremendous upper-body strength but poor lower body strength, I don't worry about the fact that Str by default covers both. I give him 18 Str, and play him as if he has less lower-body Str than his ability score might indicate.

Your approach would only work if Int was the measure of a single ability. But it affects several thematically related things (in theory) like languages, knowledge skills and feats, and ability checks. Playing your high-Int simpleton wizard would require either to ignore these bonus or to find some really convoluted explanations.

Unless you're willing to give up your Str bonus for jump checks because "you play your character as if he has less lower body Str", your example only shows a lack of detail/complexity, not a contradiction like the high Int simpleton. If there were such things as Lower body Str and Upper body Str scores, I’d expect them to be consistent.

 

[Jack99]

Really, I think it's the opposite. You now have to put your points into some otherwise seemingly useless stats to get the highest bonus. That seems right down min-max alley.

Someone who wants to make the classical intelligent and unapprochable wizard is now penalized for it. It's the min/maxers that'll pick up on "Ok, I need a 13 in charisma to make my character," while those who aren't min-maxing will be going "Why does my haughty mage need charisma to cast spells?"

Where on earth did you get that unapproachable = low charisma?

 

[SableWyvern]

Your approach would only work if Int was the measure of a single ability. But it affects several thematically related things (in theory) like languages, knowledge skills and feats, and ability checks. Playing your high-Int simpleton wizard would require either to ignore these bonus or to find some really convoluted explanations.

Unless you're willing to give up your Str bonus for jump checks because "you play your character as if he has less lower body Str", your example only shows a lack of detail/complexity, not a contradiction like the high Int simpleton. If there were such things as Lower body Str and Upper body Str scores, I’d expect them to be consistent.

I already alluded to this in the latter part of my Strength example. The problem is that Abilities (game consturct) already cover an unreasonably wide range of abilites (abstract notion).

A high Con means you are resistant to pain, disease and poison, have excellent aerobic and anaerobic fitness etc...

High Int makes you harder to hit with swords and arrows, more likely to notice things in your environment, increases your book-learning and makes your magic more accurate and dangerous. Why should book-learning ever correlate to AC increases in the first place?

I could go on.

If we assume that an ability score is an accurate model of all the things it encompasses, vast swathes of perfectly reasonable concepts are impossible to play. What if I picture my character as a sprinter, with massively built legs and only average upper-body strength? Am I not allowed to describe him thusly? What if he works out his upper body, but has a beer gut? What if he's got a poor pain threshhold, but great fitness, or vice versa? Clearly, we are already disregarding the strict interpretation of ability scores with a large number of concepts. Things only get more muddied when we move onto more abstract notions such as charisma, wisdom and intelligence.

I'm not saying that my suggestion is the best way of treating abilities. However, I don't think it's any less realistic than the whole notion of Ability scores in the first place.

It is a very big step away from they way ability scores are traditionally treated, and I pointed out in my first post on the subject that I expected strong of opposition to the idea. If it doesn't suit your (generic you) preferred method of understanding Abilities, that's fine. Both systems are really quite poor abstractions of reality, when it comes down to it; the one advantage my system has is that it reduces the need for an ability to actually model more abstract notions in the first place. The major disadvantage, of course, is the disconnect between the common understanding of a term like "Strength" and what it actually ends up meaning under my use.

 

[AllisterH]

Basically, every class looks like it needs 3 stats. Two good ones and one at a decent level (since when did a 13 become uber? Isn't 12.5 the average when you do 4d6 drop 1?)

As well, given you get attribute bumps at levels 4 and 8 plus all ability increase at the tier breakpoints, I'm kinda wondering how a 13 is hard to get?