Siloing: Good or Bad?

[pauljathome]

There's nothing trivial about building ANY kind of character in GURPS or HERO.

Nonsense. I'll admit that there is a fair learning curve to come up to speed (a statement also true wrt D&D) but once I was up to speed I could go from character concept to fully statted out character in about 5-20 minutes depending on concept.

Now, both Hero and GURPS do suffer from requiring grade 8 arithmetic skills. Something which a great many gamers lack :-(

 

[Gort]

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.

You talk as though it doesn't already get (false, incidentally) accusations of being a wargame already.

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!

Well, generally speaking your dumb barbarian wouldn't have the ritual caster feat if he's thematically not clever enough to do rituals. A fair number of rituals also need certain skills at certain levels to be effective.

 

[Sadrik]

Well, generally speaking your dumb barbarian wouldn't have the ritual caster feat if he's thematically not clever enough to do rituals. A fair number of rituals also need certain skills at certain levels to be effective.

This comment was a reply to the others:
Basically I said, the siloed ritual system is the flip side of the coin to a 4e characters huge diversity of attacks and to make it effective you need a skill and a decent stat so the ritual silo is specialized at best.

He said, you don't need the skill or stat to make rituals work, you just need three feats and a ritual book with a bunch of rituals in it.

I said, even then a mentally lacking character doesn't make sense to do complex arcane rituals.

Point being he said you don't have to worry about your stat or skill access to get access to the ritual silo - I said theme infringement.

 

[billd91]

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?

That is a question I've been wondering about for some time as well.

 

[keterys]

You talk as though it doesn't already get (false, incidentally) accusations of being a wargame already.

Not necessarily referring to any form of D&D, actually. There are a group of people who believe that a game excluding interaction rules means that no interaction takes place, or that the game discourages it, while there is also a group of people who believe that such rules inhibit play.

The same argument comes up for things like hobby and profession skills, as to whether it's important to have them or not to have them.

Just as some who oppose silo-ing claim that being forced to have combat skills makes the game about combat, while a reverse claim might go something like:

Any system which allows a character to sacrifice non-combat ability for improved survival is one that discourages social and other non-combat interactions. Mathematically speaking, the character most likely to survive is one designed for combat and any particular non-combat facet is often handled by some other character, which also encourages one dimensional characters and splintering of play experience by expertise.

Of course, there are flaws in both methods. What _really_ makes people care is the type of game the DM (or adventure writer) sets up - the more that non-combat situations are thrust upon the players, the more they'll respond.

In a non-silo-ed game, people are more likely to be left in the cold in any particular scene, but good character design will often compensate. In some cases, it may even be possible to compensate so much that you can do _anything_ depending on how the game works.

If the game is silo-ed to begin with, then it's just a safer assumption that everyone will be able to participate. For some people, that's not a benefit - for example, some people actually want to punish those who care most about combat by making them horrible at non-combat situations. I'm not entirely sure why, but it's true nonetheless. The biggest potential harm is to realism and freedom of customization for your character, but in truth very few people are so one-dimensional that they can only do one thing, so making people diversify is often a good idea.

Especially in a leveled game, where you're already making different assumptions from point buy, so silo-ing works well.

P.S. 4E is not a very well silo-ed game. Even if it is more so than previous editions.

 

[Derren]

The biggest potential harm is to realism and freedom of customization for your character, but in truth very few people are so one-dimensional that they can only do one thing, so making people diversify is often a good idea.

Well, tell that to the people who make one-trick characters when having the chance.
Why should a system force a player to make a well rounded character? Imo a good roleplayer knows for himself what a good character needs and what a RP a pure combat character delivers.

 

[Turtlejay]

Well, tell that to the people who make one-trick characters when having the chance.
Why should a system force a player to make a well rounded character? Imo a good roleplayer knows for himself what a good character needs and what a RP a pure combat character delivers.

Unfortunately, we can't all play with good roleplayers. Or even people who have a rudimentary grasp of the rules. Siloing protects those of us who care, from those who don't.

It would be awesome to play in a game with people who knew what they were doing, and cared, and in that case siloing would be less needed. In fact, it might even be a hindrance. I played in a Shadowrun game with four guys, and we all had some pretty good times since we all were committed. I don't think anyone made a *true* specialist. Our face was our heavy weapons expert, I played an adept with guns skills, and the last player was a patchwork of useful skills that covered our holes. No true mages or technomancers. No riggers. Good times were had because we all kind of knew what we were doing and nobody tried to powergame the hell out of the system.

That rarely happens. I prefer the siloing as a default, because it doesn't usually prevent me from playing a character I want, but it encourages less committed players to play contributing party members. It enhances my fun, usually, and for that I like it.

Jay

 

[Hussar]

The issue of PCs vs NPCs is a separate one, suffice it to say I run everyone by the same rules, which, to me, is the point of having rules.

If I had to break the rules to create a character that isn't a career adventurer and a polymath, I'd rewrite the rules. The siloing concept I agree with others contributes to balanced PCs, I just don't think it's worth the loss of simulation and flexibility.

Just finished the thread and noticed that this wasn't answered.

How is it breaking the rules when the rules specifically tell you that that NPC's are NOT built the same as PC's?

To me, siloing is simply the next step in the class system. In pre-3e, a fighter had no out of combat skills whatsoever. None. He could hit things with lumpy metal objects and that was it. Nothing else was supported by the rules.

In 3e, it got slightly better for the fighter, but, not by much. Want to run a smooth talking fighter? Nope, sorry, can't. At least not without some serious gymnastics (multi-classing, house ruling skill swaps) and even then, with his meager 2 skills/level, he's not going to do anything other than that one thing outside of combat.

The problem with 3e is there wasn't enough siloing. In combat abilities were balanced against out of combat abilities. Stronger characters got less skills. Weaker characters got more. If you wanted to make a character that went against the prescribed archetypes (fighters fight, rogues sneak etc) you were pretty much out of luck.

Then there was the spell system. Combined with easily created single use or multiple use (wands) magic items, a caster could completely dominate out of combat encounters while still being more than equivalent in combat. For a surprisingly small amount of money (perhaps about 10-15% of character wealth) a caster could load up on wands/scrolls and out talk, out fight, out everything every other character.

In a class based system, siloing makes perfect sense. It prevents one class from totally dominating other classes. The fact that, what a year and a half? after the release of 4e, no clear hierarchy of classes exists pretty much, in my mind at least, proves the success of siloing.

 

[Imaro]

In a class based system, siloing makes perfect sense. It prevents one class from totally dominating other classes. The fact that, what a year and a half? after the release of 4e, no clear hierarchy of classes exists pretty much, in my mind at least, proves the success of siloing.

Just wanted to comment on this part of your statement. As far ascombat goes, I kind of agree with you as far as there being no hierarchy... though I've noticed with my players there are classes no one really wants to play. Now as far as non-combat abilities go... there is most definitely a hierarchy.

The top tier is dominated by the Rogue (6 trained skills) as well as the Cleric and Wizard (4 skillls and 3 rituals). Next up is the Ranger ( 5 trained skills) then the Paladin, Warlock and Warlord (4 trained skills)... with the fighter (3 trained skills) continuing to recieve the short end of the stick. As a side note this gets even more divisive when the human race is selected.

For someone concerned with focusing on non-combat activities there's a very definite hierarchy to the classes and what he or she should play in order to be effective outside of combat.

 

[Jhaelen]

Nonsense. I'll admit that there is a fair learning curve to come up to speed (a statement also true wrt D&D) but once I was up to speed I could go from character concept to fully statted out character in about 5-20 minutes depending on concept.

Now, both Hero and GURPS do suffer from requiring grade 8 arithmetic skills. Something which a great many gamers lack :-(

This is exactly the kind of response that would keep me from ever trying to play Hero or GURPS (if I hadn't already).

Imho, GURPS suffers from the 'one size (system) fits all' approach. I prefer systems that are tailored to a setting or genre. And even if you manage to create a GURPS character in a reasonably short amount of time the combat system reminds me too much of wargames for my taste.

Back on topic: Siloing is a good idea. They just didn't take it far enough in 4e. Especially the Utility powers should have been split further down into 'combat utility' and 'general utility'. I've also been noticing several powers lately that break the siloing, like attack powers that are no attacks, etc. There's definitely room for improvement, but the initial idea is sound.