Should PCs Be Exceptional?

[Thomas Shey]

So, was the shadow...

That was my point. "Exceptional" doesn't have to translate into outright superpowers, and when some people talk about "superheroes" in fantasy games, they're often talking about things no more extreme than the theoretically-just-highly-trained types among superheroes do. So I think you need to tease those cases apart a bit.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Except the characters in the data came in at a wide variety of levels; they didn't all start at raw 1st.

Also, the results are fairly similar across low- and high-hit point classes (with some outliers in rarely-played classes due to insufficient data). Were hit points the main determinant, I'd expect mage-types and maybe Thieves to have a noticeably lower chance of survival than Fighters, but the results don't back that up.

I don't know what to say about the thieves, but I should note mages also get a pretty strong power boost at 3rd level, now having access to 2nd level spells which includes some much more likely to keep them out of trouble.

 

[Distracted DM]

I periodically do a rant about how arranging stories in order of internal chronology leads to greatly distorting impressions, and it’s seldom truer than with swords & sorcery. The first time readers met Conan, he was an experienced king. The second time readers read a novel’s worth of Elric, he destroyed the entire world. It is not a small genre.

Good point. How would you define Sword & Sorcery?

 

[Autumnal]

A blend of history and myth for the ambience of the setting, protagonists and antagonists driven by epic passions that may or may not be in any way moral, magic as dangerous, tempting, and inevitably personally costly, a high baseline of general weirdness independent of any grand cosmology or sweeping big picture, protagonists often tragic but tragedy not obligatory, adventures highly ironic and irony is obligatory…I’lll probably think of more when I try to do something else.

I explicitly don’t include any particular power level as definitive, and even less so any focus on a single species. This is because imprinted on Grimjack at a vulnerable time in my life.

 

[Reynard]

I periodically do a rant about how arranging stories in order of internal chronology leads to greatly distorting impressions, and it’s seldom truer than with swords & sorcery. The first time readers met Conan, he was an experienced king. The second time readers read a novel’s worth of Elric, he destroyed the entire world. It is not a small genre.

Edited to add: game systems that both allow for some significant advancement and can handle non-linear presentations like Howard, Leiber, and Moorcock? Now there’s a design challenge.

I think they key might to build a system where you define characters by what their core elements are, and make those translate across "power levels" so that you never have to worry about "xp." It might be interesting to allow previous sessions experiences to impact play, even if they are out of sequence. Like, if in a Old Man Fighter story you cut the head off a weird demon cockatrice thing, in a follow up adventure taking place much earlier you could use a feat or aspect or experience or whatever to call it foreshadowing and gain a bonus on some similar adversary.

 

[Reynard]

That was my point. "Exceptional" doesn't have to translate into outright superpowers, and when some people talk about "superheroes" in fantasy games, they're often talking about things no more extreme than the theoretically-just-highly-trained types among superheroes do. So I think you need to tease those cases apart a bit.

The Shadow had superpowers. That is why I brought it up.

 

[Minigiant]

I go with this.

After a certain point of adventuring, all the normal people die, retire, or run support in the background.

Once the stakes are very high, the normals slowly widdle away and only the exceptional remain.

 

[Autumnal]

I think they key might to build a system where you define characters by what their core elements are, and make those translate across "power levels" so that you never have to worry about "xp." It might be interesting to allow previous sessions experiences to impact play, even if they are out of sequence. Like, if in a Old Man Fighter story you cut the head off a weird demon cockatrice thing, in a follow up adventure taking place much earlier you could use a feat or aspect or experience or whatever to call it foreshadowing and gain a bonus on some similar adversary.

Those both sound very promising. If someone builds this out, I’ll kitbash it into QuestWorlds or Fate or something.

 

[aramis erak]

I know, every campaign is different.

Far more important - even a single campaign can change from one to anther level of exceptional.

In Classic/Mega/TNE Traveller, PC's are only exceptional in motivation... NPCs, or at least significant ones, are explicitly to be generated by normal character gen. In fact, one of Marc's comments notes that characters dying in CharGen should be used as NPCs... But in campaign, while they won't gain much in skill, they can gain in fiscal, political and social capital and become rather exceptional... sometimes impacting way above their apparent means at campaign start.

Star Wars likewise... but the games for it really do encourage going from comparable to the average Template Rival, to becoming as potent as many storyline characters from the movies are written.

Meanwhile, In TSR-D&D, low level characters are pretty humble, but are, in fact, exceptional in a small way, since most NPCs have no class nor level; only clergy and guards are likely to be classed characters... but my mid to high levels, are supposed to be superbly exceptional ("Super-Hero")... Somehow, it fails to feel that way for me.

And in most supers games, exceptional is an understatement...

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think they key might to build a system where you define characters by what their core elements are, and make those translate across "power levels" so that you never have to worry about "xp." It might be interesting to allow previous sessions experiences to impact play, even if they are out of sequence. Like, if in a Old Man Fighter story you cut the head off a weird demon cockatrice thing, in a follow up adventure taking place much earlier you could use a feat or aspect or experience or whatever to call it foreshadowing and gain a bonus on some similar adversary.

Storypath Scale kind of works like that; you can impose it on any underlaying set of stats but turning up Scale will have a dramatic effect on what those stats mean.