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RPG Evolution: Playing Your PC Poorly
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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8586522" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>I find delightful irony in you giving a direct example of what I was talking about while I was writing the above post.</p><p></p><p>This is exactly what I mean. Weakness, and in particular intentionally hobbling oneself purely to hobble oneself, is not a virtue in roleplay. But playing out the reasonable consequences of certain characteristics, making believable and human responses to events? Those things are absolutely virtuous in roleplay. You avoided making your characters low intelligence a burden on the party, but still played through the reasonable consequences of being not terribly bright. You avoided both being ridiculous (over-the-top idiotic) and being dull (inhibiting the group), and thus developed a grounded character who displayed enough of the fantastic to be interesting and enough of the mundane to be relatable.</p><p></p><p>That is a perfect demonstration of the actual virtue being sought by this article, for which mere weakness has been mistaken.</p><p></p><p></p><p>If one chooses to ignore 4e (as many people do nowadays), I would agree, though it's fair if you yourself just haven't played it (because...same thing, many people never played it, whether or not they criticized it). I would 100% say 5e is less forgiving though. 4e was significantly more forgiving in terms of health, especially at early levels, and the difference between "just taking what sounds cool, not really bothered by power" and "bleeding hedge optimization" was...usually not much more than doing about 50% more damage or having 2-3 points higher defense. (Note that I am not comparing to actively anti-optimized characters that are trying their best to suck.) The half-level bonus actually worked in its favor here, since it meant all characters would get stronger even in their weak areas, unlike 5e where a weak save never gets better and thus becomes a greater and greater liability as CR rises. </p><p></p><p>The one area that 4e was less flaw friendly was ability scores, but it was also much more generous with those than 5e is (+1 point to any two stats at 4th, 8th, 14th, 18th, 24th, and 28th level; +1 to all stats at level 11 and 21; many Epic Destinies, taken at level 21, also granted +2 to a stat.) The high degree of transparency in its rules also made it very clear what you were getting or giving up by choosing certain stats, so while it did require attention to them, this was not an onerous burden.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8586522, member: 6790260"] I find delightful irony in you giving a direct example of what I was talking about while I was writing the above post. This is exactly what I mean. Weakness, and in particular intentionally hobbling oneself purely to hobble oneself, is not a virtue in roleplay. But playing out the reasonable consequences of certain characteristics, making believable and human responses to events? Those things are absolutely virtuous in roleplay. You avoided making your characters low intelligence a burden on the party, but still played through the reasonable consequences of being not terribly bright. You avoided both being ridiculous (over-the-top idiotic) and being dull (inhibiting the group), and thus developed a grounded character who displayed enough of the fantastic to be interesting and enough of the mundane to be relatable. That is a perfect demonstration of the actual virtue being sought by this article, for which mere weakness has been mistaken. If one chooses to ignore 4e (as many people do nowadays), I would agree, though it's fair if you yourself just haven't played it (because...same thing, many people never played it, whether or not they criticized it). I would 100% say 5e is less forgiving though. 4e was significantly more forgiving in terms of health, especially at early levels, and the difference between "just taking what sounds cool, not really bothered by power" and "bleeding hedge optimization" was...usually not much more than doing about 50% more damage or having 2-3 points higher defense. (Note that I am not comparing to actively anti-optimized characters that are trying their best to suck.) The half-level bonus actually worked in its favor here, since it meant all characters would get stronger even in their weak areas, unlike 5e where a weak save never gets better and thus becomes a greater and greater liability as CR rises. The one area that 4e was less flaw friendly was ability scores, but it was also much more generous with those than 5e is (+1 point to any two stats at 4th, 8th, 14th, 18th, 24th, and 28th level; +1 to all stats at level 11 and 21; many Epic Destinies, taken at level 21, also granted +2 to a stat.) The high degree of transparency in its rules also made it very clear what you were getting or giving up by choosing certain stats, so while it did require attention to them, this was not an onerous burden. [/QUOTE]
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