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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jardel_Karabella" data-source="post: 2558673">The wonder of power levels.While I agree that freeform combat should be about who does what, not who rolls what or who has what power level I think it's ridiculous to go with the "equal odds of winning" theory.The reason being I've seen to many "fights" of a rookie vs a veteran (in terms of character skill, not roleplaying) where it's been laughable that supposedly this kid who's never held a sword before is beating an expert. If you want your character to be powerful, play them as powerful, if you want them to be weak, play them as weak. This "well they're powerful but equal to everyone" is bad situation.Really the focus for the roleplayers shouldn't be winning, but just the fighting.  I've got characters of varying levels, some of them kick butt, some of them get their butts kicked, others just avoid combat.  Generally I only fight with other people's chars to the extent I trust them (I don't let someone I've never seen before come in and start a fight to the death with a cherished char).Every character I have fights in a completely different manner and has varying skill levels for in character reasons.  Thala is very primal, she hates to kill people and hse's relatively new to fighting.  She gets her butt whipped frequently 'cause she's hampered in many ways.  Jardel has spent his whole life learning to kill people, years of experience, no compulsions about fighting dirty or hurting people, he's good for those reasons.If Jardel and Thala were to have a serious fight, then Thala would have to do something exceptional to win.  Simply because Jardel has the experience and the skill to outdo her.  Thus as it should be, it's the point of having a strong or a weak character.Otherwise there's no point in bothered to decide how good your character is at combat and then you lose a big aspect of the adventurer type characters and reduces a lot of tension from encounters.  Where's the excitement in watching the wimp try to stand up to supervillian if the reality is it's a 50/50 odds?Really, at the end of the day there's no easy way to do it. You just have to decide what your characters can and can't do in advance, then stick to that. Whether your character uses all of this skill and power is entirely up to you, but it's your responsiblity to know your character well enough to ensure they stay at a reliable power level.One of the biggest problems I see is that people tend to place too much prestige on having a character who's really powerful, the toughest fighter, etc.  Then people start to think that to become accepted they have to have their character show off they can fight (everyone else is).Being a mighty warrior in the chat is kind of like having a cool car in real life.  It might help you make a great first impression, but if you can't live up to that first impression then it's not going to help you much.</blockquote>

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