Siloing: Good or Bad?

[keterys]

Diplomacy skills, charisma, intelligence and wisdom scores, those can all go. Leave the NPC reactions up to the DM. Have a "magic" stat to determine cleric and wizard spells.

TL, DR: Get your rules out of my roleplay! Leave rules for combat and adventuring, no rules for talking.

Which is another form of silo-ing, putting all the social stuff in a non-existent bucket Of course, then the system will receive accusations of being a wargame because it doesn't have social rules.

 

[Sadrik]

4e is forced specialization in combat. That is what they did when they separated out the non-combat powers into rituals.

Some people argue, that is the point. So what if you are forced to specialize in combat you still have the flip side of the coin - rituals. The problem is you don't. Sure the rituals are available to be taken as a feat for every character, but you need skills and decent stats in those skills to make effective use of the rituals. INT is the uber dump stat, remember.

So really the ritual silo is closed in many cases and you are left with all your gems being ~15 "spell" levels of attack powers. Attacking is what 4e is all about, a huge diversity of attack powers: 20+ classes with 50+ attack powers each...

 

[Imaro]

To be honest, I like this approach a lot. I wish things like diplomacy and intimidation were entirely up to the what the player says, with a bit of circumstances thrown in as well.

Diplomacy skills, charisma, intelligence and wisdom scores, those can all go. Leave the NPC reactions up to the DM. Have a "magic" stat to determine cleric and wizard spells.

TL, DR: Get your rules out of my roleplay! Leave rules for combat and adventuring, no rules for talking.

I find this line of thinking interesting, though I admit that I don't necessarily buy into it...

I don't agree with this philosophy because it allows for me to play a character who may be stronger or weaker, slower or quicker or tougher than I am but not a character who is more charming or less charming, smarter or less intelligent or more wise or less wise than I am?

In turn when creating my character, the only options I can actively influence are those that influence in-game combat or in-game physical activities, and since these are the things I can increase and quantify, I will in turn be more apt to bring any encounter down to a physical confrontation since I know what my chances (roughly or more specifically depending on what information I am aware of) are in combat/physical challenges but am ignorant of my chances and aptitude when I choose to approach a challenge from a different angle such as talking or outsmarting a foe.

I'm curious what would be your guidelines for adjudicating what a player says vs. whether it accomplishes what he is trying to do?

 

[Kishin]

To be honest, I like this approach a lot. I wish things like diplomacy and intimidation were entirely up to the what the player says, with a bit of circumstances thrown in as well.

Diplomacy skills, charisma, intelligence and wisdom scores, those can all go. Leave the NPC reactions up to the DM. Have a "magic" stat to determine cleric and wizard spells.

TL, DR: Get your rules out of my roleplay! Leave rules for combat and adventuring, no rules for talking.

Except then the more reticent and/or less eloquent members of your gaming group never meaningfully contribute to social situations in game.

This is a game of make believe. You shouldn't be denied the opportunity to pretend to be a silver-tongued bard or an erudite wizard if you yourself are not particularly silver-tongued or erudite.

 

[Imaro]

The categorization is based on resource management. I can't drop a power in order to have more points to spend in Attributes, etc. Every character has one race, one class, X attribute points, Y feats, and Z class powers, based on level. This is the same no matter what combination of "stuff" you choose.

I disagree here, as a quick example... if I select a human it actually does affect my number of powers and/or my number of feats... Also the wizard class gets access to more powers than other classes do (though admittedly not at the same time), I'm just sayin...

I never meant that items in each silo don't affect items in other silos. Just that the amount of resources you have in each silo remains the same regardless.

This is a HUGE difference over previous editions, where class selection would completely override all other silos.

But the resources in each silo aren't the same no matter what.

... but no Utility power affects the number of feats you have at your disposal, the number of languages you speak, etc. How you decide to spend your resources inside the Utility silo is up to you, of course. I would point out, however, that most Utility powers are situationally useful, as opposed to Dailies and Encounters.

However if I choose a utility based around combat as opposed to one based on out of combat activity... I have in fact sacrificed from one silo to gain a larger advantage in a different silo. A quick example would be a utility power like "Astral Speach" vs. "Sacred Circle"

As explained above, while race selection can certainly yield combinations that work well with abilities in other silos, it still does not affect the number of resources you have to work with in the other silos. For example, race selection gives you +2/+2 in attributes, but all races give the same +2/+2; the only variable is which attributes are affected.

And yet, just by picking human as my race, I have changed the power silo to be different from any character that isn't human. I now have more at-wills than any other non-human character can have.

The prime example is the player who designs a complete non-combatant, which is very possible in most character-point generation systems. Another example often pointed to is Shadowrun and the matrix, where only Decker characters can participate at all.

Your first example seems to be more of a failure of communication between the DM and players. A DM should definitely be guiding the PC's (even if it's just a campaign blurb) in designing appropriate characters. Honestly, I just don't find it necessary for the game to prevent me from making a non-combatant when I as DM can guide my players as to what are appropriate characters for my campaign. There is also the reverse where the players make upthe PC's they want and I use their decisions to create the appropriate challenges for my campaign. nWoD is a point buy system and I've never ran into the inappropriate character problem with it.

As far as the minigames go, again if your featuring netrunning as a major component in your games... let your players know this ahead of time... if it's not a major recurring part of every game then so what if one player gets a little spotlight time every so often. The thing is I don't necessarily want a game that forces everyone to be a competent netrunner in the game (regardless of their character concept), because now your setting default parameters and assumptions for my campaign that I may have to work against if I don't want everyone and their mother being competent netrunners..

 

[Sadrik]

Your first example seems to be more of a failure of communication between the DM and players. A DM should definitely be guiding the PC's (even if it's just a campaign blurb) in designing appropriate characters. Honestly, I just don't find it necessary for the game to prevent me from making a non-combatant when I as DM can guide my players as to what are appropriate characters for my campaign. There is also the reverse where the players make upthe PC's they want and I use their decisions to create the appropriate challenges for my campaign. nWoD is a point buy system and I've never ran into the inappropriate character problem with it.

I have also done this: players all make hardened warriors I give them that style of challenge, characters make more utility, investigative types I challenge them in that way, sneaky stealth etc. I have also run the opposite where I said you are all drow elves, you are all in a thieves guild, so up front they knew what their challenges would be and designed there characters to tackle the obvious.

As far as the minigames go, again if your featuring netrunning as a major component in your games... let your players know this ahead of time... if it's not a major recurring part of every game then so what if one player gets a little spotlight time every so often. The thing is I don't necessarily want a game that forces everyone to be a competent netrunner in the game (regardless of their character concept), because now your setting default parameters and assumptions for my campaign that I may have to work against if I don't want everyone and their mother being competent netrunners..

Excellent why should everyone be siloed into netrunning. It makes no sense, and it also makes little sense that people are siloed into uber attack status without an option to not be that way. 4e siloing is inflexible in that regard. The ritual system could easily have been left in the power system.

 

[Imaro]

Excellent why should everyone be siloed into netrunning. It makes no sense, and it also makes little sense that people are siloed into uber attack status without an option to not be that way. 4e siloing is inflexible in that regard. The ritual system could easily have been left in the power system.

To go a little further, I have yet to understand the design methodology for non-combat abilities. The unequal amounts of skills the classes are awarded ( Rogue's 6 vs. Fighter's 3)... or even the fact that the Wizard and Cleric not only get 4 trained skills but also 3 rituals to start with, yet the Fighter still only gets 3 skills total to begin with... how is this considered balanced or well siloed?

 

[AllisterH]

Some people argue, that is the point. So what if you are forced to specialize in combat you still have the flip side of the coin - rituals. The problem is you don't. Sure the rituals are available to be taken as a feat for every character, but you need skills and decent stats in those skills to make effective use of the rituals. INT is the uber dump stat, remember.

Given that it is usually an arcane roll - and you CAN simply get Trained and Focused in it and that LEVEL actually adds a lot to your roll, you don't actually need an INT higher than your starting INT I find to make most effective use of rituals.

 

[Imaro]

Given that it is usually an arcane roll - and you CAN simply get Trained and Focused in it and that LEVEL actually adds a lot to your roll, you don't actually need an INT higher than your starting INT I find to make most effective use of rituals.

All you did was use a feat (for skill focus) in order to make up for a low ability score. If anything this is another example of why I think that 4e isn't really siloed very well... you can still lower your combat effectiveness to be better at non-combat abilities. I mean that's three feats to be able to use rituals (forget the fact that at this point you don't actually have any rituals to cast) that could have been spent on the numerous feats that do enhance a character in combat... I just don't get how this is a siloed system.

 

[Sadrik]

Fair, 3 feats (ritual casting, skill training and skill focus) and then buy a bunch of rituals for your ritual book. Better off to just have had that system incorporated with the power system, imho.

Also thematically you are saying a dumb barbarians or any other thematically "not the sharpest tool in the shed" can go out and do rituals that have very powerful effects without a hitch. That doesn't seem right too!