Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't care about numbers...

[Agamon]

I get that some folks like talking the numbers, and that's great. But I'm with the OP. I quickly scan past posts that try to crunch the math, I'm just not interested in that.

I'm also of a mind that the designers are designers because it's their job, not mine.

 

[Minigiant]

A friend once said "The numbers only matter when the game doesn't play the way you expected it to. And then there are stat nerds.."

That is where most of it came from. The game plays in an unexpected way and THEN people analyze. And then they never stop. And then there are stat lovers.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I want to address this here, just as an example, and perhaps something of an explanation for why I don't "care" about the numbers. The way I view the game and milieu, there is no requirement for "a" fighter to be the best at fighting. See, the definition of the fighter is not "the best at fighting" but rather "the guy who straps on steel to face down monsters and magic for fortune and glory." There is no requirement for him to be the best at fighting so long as he fulfills his descriptive or "fluff" role. more to the point, the player is choosing a fighter because he wants to be the guy that straps on steel to take on magic and monsters for fortune and glory. If the player wants to be the best at fighting, that player may well choose a fighter, but also might choose a barbarian or warlock or whatever else to get there. But even "best at fighting" -- again, IMO -- is a descriptive term for the character in the world, not the sheet on the table. The PC may well seek to be, or believe him/herself to be, the very best fighter of them all, but only by pitting steel against all comers would the PC ever really prove to be The Best.

You probably don't mean "I don't care about numbers" in an extreme and literal way, but for the sake of discussion:

Imagine an incarnation of the D&D fighter that literally is just "A guy who straps on steel to face down monsters and magic for fortune and glory," with no supporting numbers to make him an adventurer. He gets good weapon and armor proficiencies, but nothing more. No class features at all, the thac0/BAB and hit points of a wizard, and no good/proficient saves. Would your players still be happy playing this fighter, even though it does fulfill your group's stated description? Would you consider it a D&D fighter class?

Again, I don't think you meant "I don't care about numbers" absolutely, so you probably do care about them. Just not as much as some of us.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well that's just it. Define complete crap? I can roll an OD&D character 3d6 in order AND play whatever class I want regardless of the stats. If someone rolls a better stat than I do for a class prime requisite then they might get a bonus to earned XP and level up a bit faster ( OH NOES!!!)

OD&D doesn't have stat requirements for spellcasting, getting into certain classes and so on, then? It's been a while. If so that's lovely, but it's silly to pretend the numbers don't matter in the vast majority of D&D.

It certainly does. What the numbers are in contrast, don't have to mean much at all.

Blanket statement? No, that's false. In a specific circumstance in a specific edition? Maybe. The numbers usually matter, though.

3E, 3.5E, 4E

I call these the keeping up with the Jones' editions. If you do not allocate your stats/choose your powers & feats, "correctly" you will suck next to someone who does their due diligence on the numbers.

Why?

Because the systems themselves reward such analysis via escalating DCs and defenses. It is simply because the systems are designed to challenge the construct building abilities of the player over any other. 4E lessened the traps and made the path broad and easier to follow but the underlying theme was still there. This along with the attitude toward action resolution which was, if there isn't a die roll then nothing is really happening produced a game that was less interesting for me.

No, this is just edition-warring trash talk on your part, here. If you have a highly optimized 4E PC and you play him like a moron, you will fail, hard. If you have a normally-built 4E PC, and you play him extremely well, you will succeed, very seriously.

You can pretend that the decision you make in-game don't matter, but they do not, and it's a really silly kind of make-believe that only rationalize a dislike of certain games on your part.

Your claim that was a "if there isn't a die roll then nothing really happened attitude" is straight-up untrue. That's not supported by 4E in the least, and I don't think it's really true of 3.5E, either. You want to make an ultra-extreme claim like that, you need to back it up, or pack it up.

 

[Reynard]

Again, I don't think you meant "I don't care about numbers" absolutely, so you probably do care about them. Just not as much as some of us.

I suppose so, insofar as numbers that actively undermine the play experience are something I would concern myself with -- and have, in those rare instances when something Just Doesn't Work(tm). But I was referring less to those corner cases than I was to the spreadsheet and pie-chart style comparisons made on the boards.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Your claim that was a "if there isn't a die roll then nothing really happened attitude" is straight-up untrue. That's not supported by 4E in the least, and I don't think it's really true of 3.5E, either. You want to make an ultra-extreme claim like that, you need to back it up, or pack it up.

Show me a "challenge" in a 4E adventure that cannot be rolled through. Some meaningful portion of an adventure that can be negotiated without either a combat or die rolling fest. Adventures in these editions are constructed to challenge benchmark numbers on a character sheet, not players.

 

[billd91]

No, this is just edition-warring trash talk on your part, here. If you have a highly optimized 4E PC and you play him like a moron, you will fail, hard. If you have a normally-built 4E PC, and you play him extremely well, you will succeed, very seriously.

You can pretend that the decision you make in-game don't matter, but they do not, and it's a really silly kind of make-believe that only rationalize a dislike of certain games on your part.

I don't think he's really saying that. Rather, he says that 3e and 4e reward build decisions more than they reward any other - and that isn't saying that they're all that matter. And I think he has a point. Bad player decisions in play can lead to a PC's death or a TPK - major but still relatively infrequent events - but having an 18 in one's primary stat compared to a 16 offers a +1 reward dozens of times a session. And I think certain kinds of players have responded to that in a big way to the point that that's the game they play to a greater extent that was ever the case with 1e/2e.

I don't think 3e, at least, was designed with that intention - that it would be a feature so highly rewarded by the system and responded to so strongly. Rather, I think they were just building in a subsystem to satisfy a segment of the gamer population that really liked the crunchiness of mechanical design options. I think it ended up with an effect rather like fertilizing kudzu, but that's my personal preference.

 

[Starfox]

Specifically, in very linear adventures, especially most organized play like scenarios, "what do you do now?" is almost irrelevant. There's only one thing to do; the question is moot. Therefore, "What's you modifier" is the only question that really matters. But, again, that can be true regardless if you are playing OD&D, 4E, Shadowrun or any other traditional RPG.

I have to disagree. Even in the most linear adventure, how you so somethig still matters a lot. Now matter how linear the plot, the situations that appearstill have to be overcome.

GM: You come to a dead end.
Player: 36!
GM: What?
Player: That's my Search roll
GM: So you are searching? Where?
Player: I just spend 10 minutes searching the entire area for secret doors.
GM: Ok, NOW you can roll Search. (Secretly rolls a disbelief save against the illusory wall the character is now interacting with, disregarding the Search rolls completely)

This is a very simple example, but numbers without context are pointless.

Because the systems themselves reward such analysis via escalating DCs and defenses. It is simply because the systems are designed to challenge the construct building abilities of the player over any other. 4E lessened the traps and made the path broad and easier to follow but the underlying theme was still there.

Looking at the most skill-intense class, the thief, in 1E you had a slowly escalating % to manage a situation. How is this really different from later editions, except in that by having changing difficulties, a 1st level rogue in 3E actually has a decent chance to pass these tests.

In 2E, you got to divide your skill percentages yourself between different skill. The way this played out around here is that you picked 2 skills (the least split you were allowed) and increased them until you got competent (90%), then you picked two other abilities to improve. How did this not "reward such analysis"?

This along with the attitude toward action resolution which was, if there isn't a die roll then nothing is really happening produced a game that was less interesting for me.

This bit I can really respect. The dice are not needed; they are something that are brought out when the issue has to be decided by chance, or when either the GM or player just doesn't feel like playing out the details of the situation.

Edit: I guess the playstyle difference is old school or not. If you narrate your every action, the character's mechanical numbers matter a lot less. But even Amber Diceless Roleplaying had attributes, tough they were (of course) not randomly determined.

 

[Ratskinner]

This definitely happens, but it has less to do with the game being played than the context, I think. Specifically, in very linear adventures, especially most organized play like scenarios, "what do you do now?" is almost irrelevant. There's only one thing to do; the question is moot. Therefore, "What's you modifier" is the only question that really matters. But, again, that can be true regardless if you are playing OD&D, 4E, Shadowrun or any other traditional RPG.

Well there's your problem, traditional rpgs!

The simple fact is that in trad rpgs, you have all these fiddly bits to influence the numbers...and everything about how the character plays comes down to the numbers. So writing "Fighter" on the paper doesn't mean as much as all the fiddly bits that go with that (both on the character sheet and in the rules algorithms themselves)...so the fiddly bits are what get argued about, because they matter.

There are, however, many non-traditional rpgs that have rather more "freeform" descriptors that actually impact play. The typical method involves a bonus derived from an attempted action (in character) that matches one or more of the descriptors of that character. Whether or not a descriptor applies to a given roll or not is decided at table.

 

[Evenglare]

I'm with OP as well. You aren't alone.