Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6727717" data-attributes="member: 37579">Originally posted by wrecan:While I appreciate the input, Hocus, I'm going to have to vehemently disagree with B. I don't think "more options" for non-combat (at least in the form of non-weapon proficiencies and certain powers) is helpful. While it will force an investment of time in building a social or skillful character, the price of that is, in my opinion, limiting the free-form nature of roleplaying outside combat.Combat powers allow you to do things in combat that are otherwise impossible. But that's because combat is an inherently competitive challenge with a clearlose an a clear winner. Noncombat is not competitive. For skillful encounters, there are generally no opponents -- only obstacles. "Options" in such encounters either prevent you from doing things you should be able to do, or they become free passes around the obstacle, thus obviiating roleplay.An example of the former would be a Mountaineering Skill which forces the DMs to alter encounter difficulties so that only people with the Mountaineering Skill can accomplish the challenges for traveling through the montains. An example of the latter would be a teleport spell, which allows players to entirely avoid the challenge of traveling through the mountains.So, no, I don't think the solution to Combat Investment is to also force players to engage in Skill Investment. I think the solution is to ramp down the amount of investment.Originally posted by wrecan:I think arbitrarily making players spend five hours building characters is a step backwards in character creation. The sad fact is that you don't need to spend hours preparing a character you can roleplay, and forcing people to do make-work only causes resentment.That's why I suggest trying to include in powers some out-of-combat uses. That way the player is not engaging in creating a combat a combatant, but is spending the same amount of time building a well-rounded character.Originally posted by wrecan:Sure, players bring ideas to the table. But, what if those players have never played D&D before? Say a new person sits down to his first 2E game and hears his buddy talking about playing a dwarf. So he asks his friend to describe a dwarf...short guy, stocky, bonus to poisons, makes good fighters, etc. But the friend still hasn't answered the question (to any real degree). To this new player, all he pictures is a short guy with poison resistance that's better at one certain classesmore than others. Not very helpful. So he asks the friend to describe an elf. Slender guy with pointy ears that is good with a bow. For all he knows, the guy asking is now picturing Spock at an archery contest. The 2E books don't really help that much. Sure, they give a couple of paragraphs that expound on what the friend said, but then drops it as quickly as they started. Again, it's the emphasis on crunch and abandonment of fluff. From what I hear, though, they also made some Kits that will improved this immensely. I'm looking forward to reading them.Come on, [redacted]. The 2e PHB has as much (or as little) racial fluff as 4e did. I really didn't expect this level of discussion from you.</blockquote>

Verification