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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3690657" data-attributes="member: 42582">That means that anyone with a background has a real chance of beating a lion in bare-handed combat. If you want the rules to model reality, that is a bad outcome.It also means that the bulk of professional soldiers, who (per the DMG and most modules) are low-level warriors, have no background, and are no better at warfare than someone fresh off the farm. This too is a bit counter-intuitive.The fact that two such contradictory opinions about the relationship between character background and character level can be so confidently asserted suggests that the D&D rules are far from clear on the matter.I also think that it suggests that the current D&D rules are, to some extent, stuck between two different approaches to character building: the classic D&D/OD&D/1st ED approach, in which the character sheet only represent adventuring skill, and everything else is hand-waved; and the Rolemaster (especially RM2/RMSS) approach, in which the character sheet is the total picture of the character's abilities, and in which it is possible to be a great scholar without also being a great adventurer. I say "stuck between" because D&D does not give enough skill points, or allow a de-coupling of skills and BAB, to really be the later; but its presentation of NPC classes on the same template as PC classes (BAB, saves, skill points, hits) rules out the 1st-ed approach (compare the 3rd ed rules for Experts to the 1st ed rules for Sages, or look at the 1st-ed rules for mercenary captains and sailors, which make it clear that NPCs do not improve by gaining XPs from adventuring in the way that PCs do).There is some truth to the idea that one should "write your background while accouting for the system." In a Champions game, for example, the background should be one for a super-hero, and it is no real complaint that the game can't accomodate the difference in background between (for example) an experimental and a theoretical physicist.But D&D is meant to be a generic fantasy system. It therefore is an unhappy consequence if it can't accomodate characters with fairly generic fantasy backgrounds of the sort that various posters (other than the one about the uber-ninja) have put forward.</blockquote>

Verification