The Strength of a PC

[wolfen]

I've been lurking for months. I only have one real comment to make, and it's driving me nuts.

!!!!! People, a character is only as strong as your roleplaying. !!!!!


I continually read threads around here that evaluate the "strength" of a character. "What if I multiclass? What if I choose these feats? What if I make it an elf instead of a human? What's the best prestige class?"

I'm not going to change minds, I know. But it's worth mentioning that the most fun is to be had playing to the character instead of to the stats.

Secondarily, are there any DM's out there who agree? From reading many of these messages it's easy to get the impression that players are constantly being judged merely on the combat-value of their character. If the DM is actually creating a gripping campaign, won't there be great value to Diplomacy, Disguise, and stealth? Won't he reward the player who plays a dumb or unwise character properly?

Doesn't any Fighter with an intelligence of 9 walk into a store, with a pile of gold, and buy something that wasn't calculated as the best tactical purchase? Does anyone buy anything because it fits the character?

Ok, I'm done. It just seems like the Min/Maxers are taking over the forums. Even people who think they're clever and balanced are actually just rambling endlessly about the best stats they can construct instead of the best characters they can construct.

Am I way off or is this an age-old gripe to be resolved by a post-Armageddon utopian dream?


wolfen

 

[Moe Ronalds]

Welcome to ENworld, kick up your feet, chat, stay a while.

That being said, not everyone shares this play style. Some people prefer to do massive ammounts of role playing. Others prefer a kick-in-the-door-style-of-play(and-I-know-I'm-over-using-hy-phens.). Still others prefer to find the happy medium, and various other fractions and percentages.

My personal opinion, is that min-maxing isn't necessarily bad. Afterall, it makes sense that the more specialized a character is for their profession the more likely they are to survive this far. And, as long as everything is played more or less correctly then from a roleplaying standpoint it works out too.

That being said, if it DOESN'T fit the character, then not min maxing can be a good thing.

Anyway, good luck on your first post, and don't be turned off from ENworld if this first one doesn't go too well.

 

[Mark]

Welcome to the EN Boards, wolfen!

 

[heimdall]

I tend to agree with you. Mainly because I learned this lesson first hand from my father. My dad had been DMing for a couple of years and his current players had never seen him play. They kept ragging him about the fact that he only "ran" anymore and that he wouldn't play in any of the campaigns they ran. My father finally was fed up and decided to go play in another campaign where all his players swore the DM was top notch. He took a relatively snuffy character (1st Edition Assassin/M-U) that was four levels below anyone else and the only one in the party without an artifact. Four hours later, he had assassinated the equivalent of Merlin (equivalent in importance of the game, not in actual power), destroyed a shipping company, killed off two more of the DM's best NPCs, completely de-railed any sense of order within the town and had all the PCs running scared of him. His players never bothered him again.

This experience taught me a lot about how to handle min-maxers with all the trimmings. My father's character succeeded because he used the character's strengths to the maximums and constantly throughout those four hours put himself in a position to be in control. He didn't need an artifact and he didn't need the levels. Fact of the matter was he understood every facet about his character including the "mundane" items and spells that are often discounted. Little things like the proper choice of poison and use of the assassination attempt and what it took to set that up made the artifacts irrelevant. BTW, "Merlin" wasn't killed on the assassination percentage (my father only had like a 10%). He was killed on the damage of a coordinated strike with the party's M-U who left "Merlin" weak enough to be slain by the damage.

In my campaigns I reward for role-playing. You'll get more through creative means than you ever will through a straight die roll. If you're creative, you can accomplish more with a "weak" character in my campaign than a non-creative min-maxed one.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Roleplaying appeal and game efficacy are not mutually exclusive

I've been lurking for months. I only have one real comment to make, and it's driving me nuts.

!!!!! People, a character is only as strong as your roleplaying. !!!!!

That's not technically true, if the word "strong" is to mean "capable of surviving/finishing a module."

Example: two characters. Bob, who has 3s in all stats, and Joe, who has 18 in all stats. It doesn't matter if Bob's player is a super-capable role-player. Bob will likely die before Joe.

Put another way: a pit trap doesn't care if Bob's player put all of Bob's skill ranks into Craft: Basket Weaving instead of Find Traps because it fit Bob's character concept.

I'm not going to change minds, I know. But it's worth mentioning that the most fun is to be had playing to the character instead of to the stats.

This statement has nothing to do with the first quoted statement.

First you argued that roleplaying = strength. That's not true.

Here you argue that roleplaying = fun. Thats true for many people, including me, and apparently including you. But it's not true for all people. And it doesn't have anything to do with your first argument. Or are you saying that strength = fun? I'm confused.

Secondarily, are there any DM's out there who agree? From reading many of these messages it's easy to get the impression that players are constantly being judged merely on the combat-value of their character. If the DM is actually creating a gripping campaign, won't there be great value to Diplomacy, Disguise, and stealth?

Yes--in that kind of campaign, a strong character would be a character min maxed for Diplomacy, Disguise, and stealth. Min/maxing for social skills does not = roleplaying, at least not in my book.

Most campaigns and modules, especially "official" campaigns and modules, are oriented toward combat. All of the RPGA modules I've ever played have heavily skewed toward combat, and since they have a 4 or 8 hour time limit, there's simply and literally no time for roleplaying.

Won't he reward the player who plays a dumb or unwise character properly? Doesn't any Fighter with an intelligence of 9 walk into a store, with a pile of gold, and buy something that wasn't calculated as the best tactical purchase? Does anyone buy anything because it fits the character?

Sure, but those actions certainly aren't "strong". They're quirky, they can be fun, but it's silly to argue that such actions are "strong" actions.

Ok, I'm done. It just seems like the Min/Maxers are taking over the forums. Even people who think they're clever and balanced are actually just rambling endlessly about the best stats they can construct instead of the best characters they can construct.

Min/maxers are the norm--D&D is a min/max game. Read the rules--they're written with Min/maxers in mind. If you want deep roleplaying, try a system that's designed with roleplaying in mind. D&D is really a tactical combat game; if you can fit in roleplaying, that's great--but it's a bonus.

I mean, think about it: would a real roleplaying game have a skill called Diplomacy? No way! You'd just roleplay-out verbal encounters, and the DM would decide what happens. Instead, D&D gives us skill ratings and charts of Difficulty Classes.

Under such a system, the best characters are indeed those that are composed of the best stats. Your Rogue with a 6 Dex and a long backstory of how he lost a leg to a crocodile is all fine and dandy, but when it comes time to clean out a tomb, the min/maxed rogue with an 18 Dex is the better choice for a companion. That's the rogue that can get the job done, and can help the party succeed at its mission.

And that's what this game called D&D is all about.

Note that roleplaying appeal and game efficacy are not mutually exclusive. Check out Piratecat's Story Hour, or Contact's Story Hour, or Sagiro's Story Hour. All those characters are very effective, very strong, very min/maxed. And they're all very deep, very interesting, very fun.

Am I way off or is this an age-old gripe to be resolved by a post-Armageddon utopian dream?
wolfen

I'd say you're wrong, *and* that it's a gripe that'll never be resolved.

But don't worry, I for one can feel your pain. Most people don't enjoy roleplaying, or are incapable of it, and I think they're missing out on a lot of really good fun.

-z, who really enjoys roleplaying his min/maxed characters.

PS: Welcome to the boards!

 

[LostSoul]

Re: Roleplaying appeal and game efficacy are not mutually exclusive

I mean, think about it: would a real roleplaying game have a skill called Diplomacy?

Yes.

 

[Technik4]

Its a tough subject (not that it has hit points).

I know a few people who are of the extremely min/maxed well-built "but we still roleplay" variety. I know that myself I usually feel guilty if I pack a character to the top with powergaming goodness. The problem is, because I realize that I can make a character so well, that to not min/max becomes my goal.

Which is rather strange. I usually second-guess myself, telling myself that I've gone too far when I make a character, so I strive to tone them down, make them weaker (but usually more versatile) all for the sake of not being a min/maxer. Of course, the very fact that I realize I am doing this might very well make me a min/maxer, or perhaps a max/minner.

When I DM it all boils down to fun. Ive seen characters roll some dice and come up with widely different character "point" values, but some of the underdogs become the true heroes through things like crits or smart thinking. D&D 3rd edition is designed with a strong ruleset to allow combat to proceed in a very tactical way, almost like a computer game. However, sometimes people can think outside of the box, they are so wrapped up in their suspension of disbelief that they think of actions that would seem obvious if you were really there, obviously effective; it is neither so obvious nor so effective if you are wielding your latest powergaming-smackdown sensation hoping for crits/sneaks/failed saves or what-have-you. That is the strength I believe wolfen to be referring to.

I'm not saying that the two are mutually exclusive, hardly. I'm merely pointing out that sometimes the best min/maxers get into number-crunch mode mid-battle and miss something that might make things easier. Sometimes its the person so into the game that decides to smoke out a cave of enemies instead of rushing in headlong (despite the glaring lack of rules for smoking someone out of a cave [/sarcasm]).

Technik

 

[Umbran]

I'm not going to change minds, I know. But it's worth mentioning that the most fun is to be had playing to the character instead of to the stats.

For you this may be true. Please don't try to say you know what's most fun or other people. This is a situation where the Golden Rule certainly applies.

The game is, all in all, just a set of rules. Just as there's more than one approach to baseball - from pro sports to freindly games in the park, there's more than one approach to RPGs. Play them the way you like, and allow others to play as they like.

 

[heimdall]

Example: two characters. Bob, who has 3s in all stats, and Joe, who has 18 in all stats. It doesn't matter if Bob's player is a super-capable role-player. Bob will likely die before Joe.

Okay, but here we're talking extremes. I know you do it to make a point, but given the scenario where you have a character with average stats and a great role-player (Bob) vs. a character with unbelievable stats and a terrible role-player (Joe), Joe may do something bone-headed or not come up with a creative solution that gets himself geeked, whereas Bob knows how to avoid the situation in the first place. I saw this over the weekend where a powerful wizard got himself in a situation and got geeked. Had he been a better role-player the situation would never have had to happen.

Most campaigns and modules, especially "official" campaigns and modules, are oriented toward combat. All of the RPGA modules I've ever played have heavily skewed toward combat, and since they have a 4 or 8 hour time limit, there's simply and literally no time for roleplaying.

This is a big problem and as a result, if I decide to use stock material, I always heavily modify it. We were having a conversation this past Saturday about the little things that are repeated over and over again like the hallway with no doors. Ahem. "Everyone search for secret doors." Okay, it's found, but no triggering mechanism is available around the door. "Everyone check the torch sconces."

Maybe I'm spoiled from my days where I spent most of the time in the WoD, but I'm not real big on "search for traps, open door, spot monster, kill monster, repeat." So I introduce elements that require players to think. A high diplomacy won't get you anything. Tell me how you're going to use that high diplomacy, and now you're on to something.

 

[Aeris Winterood]

Strengths...

I play with 2 other people. I DM one campaign and play in another. The cool thing is that all three of us think like each other in the fact that we develop character's histories and personalities and then fit the PC to it.....

I never worry about stats or min/maxing.... I think of an idea... My latest character is in a homebrew world of my friends. My PC is an orphan of a tribe in a very brutal unforgiving world where life spans can be measured in months. Supposedly my PC has some important role to play (according to the shaman of the tribe) I made a 3rd level Psychic Warrior... I wear pelts (hide armor) and wield a maul. I am strong and intelligent but not the most dextrous or wise of men.....

The PC's in my campaign think of what they want to play first and then develop as well... one PC is a half elf Bard3/Fght1, and the other is a NG paladin (from BOHM)..... After years of gaming with people who just min/max and only care about stats I finally have a group that enjoys ROLEplaying. We played for about 4 hours the first day before any combat even occured...