Should adventurers be "better"?

[green slime]

My favorite take on it, Sean Connery drilling the troops in The Man Who Would Be King :

"You are going to become soldiers! A soldier does not think! He only obeys! Do you really think that if a soldier thought twice he'd give his life for queen and country?! Not bloody likely! He wouldn't go near the battlefield! One look at your foolish faces tells me you're going to be crack troops! Oh, him there, with the 5 1/2 hat size, he has the makings of a bloody hero !"

/gnarlo!

That movie has to be one of my all time favourites!

Great movie.

And back on topic:

What many, many players fail to understand, IMX, is that if you have über stats, über equipment, über magic, then the BBEG just gets tougher.

Sure it is all about the story, and what the characters make do in the world. But the DM's job is to challenge the players. The players want über stats to be better. It hardly matters what the average Joe Blow is. No player ever asks what the average stats for a farmer is.

SO it isn't a problem with the all-over campaign involving semi-intelligent, non-charismatic, bumbling, inbreed weaklings straight of the farm for Heros. The problem is one of player perception, where MORE is better. 14 is a good stat, but 16 is better. They want to play Mozart-cum-Arnold-cum-Einstein and they think they need to in order to survive. +3 magical weapon is good, +4 is better. The whole system is fascinated with incremental improvements that don't REALLY do anything, because the opposition just gets better!

Personally whether the heros are better than the normal farmer or worse, makes no difference, as long as the group (the players) as whole enjoy themselves. If someone sits around and feels that their PC is a hopeless case and playing the game is a complete waste of time, then one has to look at why. Some people are just prone to constantly making bad choices in-game.

 

[idum]

I think that the hero's in D&D is rappresented with the possibility to increase his abilities with experience much better that peasants.
Stat points are only the water and the flour before you prepare a pizza.
Even in real life, abilities or gifts are nothing if one had that "hidden values" that push herself above mediocrity.

One Hero is better because HE CAN improve, because he can go to 2nd or 10th level of his abilites, when the peasants cannot go over a 'normal' level 0 (or 1).

People with great strenght... the world is full of its. You can find lot of people that can breack a door vith a kick. But how many people can convert their strenght in efficacy of efficiency?

People sage... you can find one in every village. But how many of those have reached a clear vision of the life?

Etc Etc Etc.

Idum

 

[mmadsen]

Why should adventurers be better than normal people?

I think you can make a strong case for epic heroes like Beowulf and Achilles who simply are bad-ass (they don't progress toward it), for heroic nobodies like Frodo and Sam who aren't bad-ass and never really become bad-ass (but who "build character" and perform heroic deads), and for gifted nobodies (who don't know they're gifted) like Luke Skywalker who go on a heroic journey and become bad-ass (like a typical D&D character).

 

[Voadam]

From this thread.



Why?

Why should adventurers be better than normal people?

Because the model for D&D is heroic adventure based on characters such as Merlin, Odysseus and Heracles. These heroic characters are smarter, stronger and more cunning than most normal people.

You can play a low point buy less heroic base for PCs, but the default is high fantasy heroics, which generally means heroic stature main characters.

 

[Zogg]

In a word, Yes.

I can't imagine running a PC with "10" in every ability score. Or even some combination of 8, 10 and 12. That's BORING!

 

[Umbran]

Hm, how's this for an agrument...

Imagine that adventuring were something average joes could do successfully. The only barrier to doing so is percieved risk.

Adventuring is profitable, in comparison to farming, or making baskets, or other normal tasks. There are always people willing to take risks for money. Ergo, there will be many adventurers.

This horde of normal-person adventurers goes out, and has all the adventures. They kill all the monsters, save all the maidens, take all the gold. Since it's a profession open to normal folk, there's no stopping them.

And, we quickly find that all the adventure is used up. All the orcs are dead. The treasure troves distributed into the economy, the maidens married off. In other words, if normal folk could be successful adventurers, they would already have become adventurers, and there'd be no adventure left by the time your game actually starts.

 

[Anubis the Doomseer]

It depends on the genre of game you want to play, honestly.

In some games the protagonists are going to be better than everyone else, in others they are simply average people in extraordinary circumstances. One way is no better or worse than another, and both have their support in litterature and other media.

In a way high ability scores was a dodgy and clumsy way of giving PC's script immunity - a sort of "they're the heroes so they don't die as easily as the goblin in the 10x10 room" - that less mechanical/more cinematic rpgs handle (IMO) better (using hero/drama points, mook rules, etc).

 

[Enceladus]

For high level play I think 25 point buy is enough. As the characters progress in levels (3E here) they get stat points to spend, thus they get stronger in the areas that they use. Plus they find or buy items that help to increase their abilities that if played with any higher of point buy they end up as walking gods by 10th level.

If your just playing low level one shots then 32 or better is certainly more fun.

I also think its up to the DM and Players to create an epic, herioc adventure. It has nothing to do with stats IMHO.

 

[Blothar]

Heck even the DMG agrees with the fact that heroes are a head above the rest. (You may allow rerolls if you total ability +´s amount to 0 or less, or if 13 is your highest score) or something to that effect.

 

[Ratama]

How are they examples to the common people?

"Look at us! We won the genetic lottery and now our lives are exponentially better than yours!!!"

It might simulate the obsession of ordinary people for professional athletes, but there are far more shining examples out there than the genetically gifted.

No, that pretty much simulates real life.

For every "shining example" of a genetically ungifted successful person, there are 10 successes who were born with a genetic edge.

Sorry.

"Drake Darklance (don't laugh)" ... "Drake is a skinny, bandy-legged white guy"

This is, ultimately, what the "regular folks can be heroes, too" syndrome boils down to; some bandy-legged kid wants to think that in an alternate universe, he, with his rl body, could have been a physical hero.

Unless you're 6'5", 280 lbs and cat quick with great instincts, the answer is "Hell, no".

Just roleplay a big stud with great stats instead; much safer that way.