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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5892838" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm not puzzled about the content of the desire. I'm puzzled about its rationale.As I've said multiple times, I do get the rationale in a game in which the PC generation system is itself a type of process simulation - of which Classic Traveller and Runequest are the two most well-known examples, I think, but Burning Wheel also gives us a modern version. In this sort of game, it makes sense to ask "What's the lifepath for becoming a troll? An orc warrior who knows Whirlwind Attack? A wealthy magnate or emperor?" Whether or not those lifepaths would then be open to PCs is a further question, of course, that would have to be settled in the same sort of way one sets starting points totals in a points-buy game.What baffles me is that anyone could treat D&D's PC-generation system as some form of process simulation. Or rather - I can almost get in when PC generation starts with roll 3d6 in order, because this simulates the process of receiving one's endowment from biology and the early years of life. And then choosing a profession based on stats becomes something like playing out the teen years of your PC ("What should I do, given that I'm smart and strong but clumsy?"). But even then, choosing a class isn't a process simulation - it's buying a predetermined package of abilities deemed by the designers to be well-balanced for and well-suited to gameplay.Once we are getting to 3E, with its points buy stats, its pressure to select feats etc based on metagame considerations about what prestige classes and feat chains they will open up, etc, how could it possibly be process simulation?And that's before we even get to the development rules, which (whatever XP system one uses) are so obviously a metagame device that it baffles me that anyone could treat them otherwise. Contrast the Rolemaster XP rules, which are a genuine attempt to introduce a type of process simulation on personal development - very roughly speaking, Rolemaster's rules can be seen as expressing a theory that advancement is the result of hard training in the field. Whereas, treated as process simulation, D&D's rules tell us that advancement is the result either of collecting money (in AD&D and B/X) or of defeating monsters (2nd ed and 3E).Let's look at in in points-buy terms.Suppose that Whirlwind Attack is a 4th level ability. So I give my orc 4 x L points, where L is the points-per-level. Then, using those points, I buy Whirlwind Attack. I buy attack bonus, hit points etc to the maximum level that a 3rd level Orc would be permitted under the rules. Then I spend L points on stuff that will never come into play - back in my orc hole, that the PCs will almost certainly never encounter, my Orc has a particularly fine fishing rod. Or - if the system let's me spend points on relationships - I buy my orc a whole lot of friendships and rivalries with some other orcs that the PCs are unlikely ever to meet, or - if they do meet them - to learn are the friends and/or rivals of the orc I'm building.Now I've built an orc who is, as far as the relationship between points spent and actual gameplay - a 3rd level orc with Whirlwind Attack. What was the point of taking the detour through the points again? (And are you really saying that, in this sort of system, the points represent process simulations? What is the process being simulated? An extremely exact karmic metaphysics?)What is your class system going to look like?Rolemaster and HARP are the games that I'm familiar with that try to make classes come close to process simulations, by blending classes with points-buy. Classes are, in effect, packages of costs for developing abilities (plus a few feat-style benefits thrown in). And the unsurprising upshot of this is class proliferation, or various mechanics for tweaking costs within a class ("Can I make my flute-playing cheaper if I lift the cost of sculpting?").But even in these games, monsters aren't built as classed. HARP toys with this slightly, but to the extent that it does it's almost universally regarded as a weakness, because it distorts the playability of the resulting monsters. And this is after HARP gives monsters any number of special abilities (feats, in D&D terms) that aren't available to PCs, in order to make them playable.I don't particularly like hit point attrition combat. Happily, 4e does not play in a particularly hit point attrition fashion (at least by my standards for such things) because of the variety of effects and conditions that are part of its action resolution mechanics.But if you're telling me that, in order to get good pacing out of a "build monsters as PCs" mechanic, I have to drop D&D style combat resolution and go to something like Runequest or Rolemaster (where dodging/parrying is important, and the first hit will tend to win the combat), then aren't you conceding that building monsters as PC constrains play style?What are they, if not reasons of process simulation? And if they are reasons of process simulation, how can D&D PC building be taken seriously in that fashion?</blockquote>

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