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<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 2608072" data-attributes="member: 11697">The very act of giving something shrouded in myth and legend a set of stats, finely delineating their abilities within a ruleset, tacking down everything they can do and defining it, that's the root of the problem. The cover is lifted and the mystery is revealed, the legend is gone, its really not a monster it's old farmer brown, and no longer is the legendary any bit legendary at all, it's just a dry collection of crunch devoid of worth and mystique.Though this applies more to NPCs than PCs. The Player of joe legendary PC knows what is there under the curtain that all the level 1 commoners are in awe over, so for him there's little problem with giving him abilities because they were never shrouded in mystery for him to begin with.But the problem many seem to have is that the PC can do anything, ever, and the universe not only should but does revolve around them and only them, and the rules should support this. In this design philosophy the gods are waiting in divine dungeons to kill, archfiends are twiddling their thumbs in the lower planes, and the PCs are the only ones now or ever to do such things. It's my feeling that once you attempt to quantify that which can't be quantified, the game loses something.Perhaps what I'm trying to say is that after a certain point the PC needs to gain that mystique, stop trying to quantify everything into abilities, hit dice and levels to be gained and feats to be taken. At a certain point a strict ruleset cannot handle these things without becoming nearly self parodic in its treatment of those topics. And then you get Waldorf with his enslaved Greyhawk pantheon as an example. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 2608072, member: 11697"] The very act of giving something shrouded in myth and legend a set of stats, finely delineating their abilities within a ruleset, tacking down everything they can do and defining it, that's the root of the problem. The cover is lifted and the mystery is revealed, the legend is gone, its really not a monster it's old farmer brown, and no longer is the legendary any bit legendary at all, it's just a dry collection of crunch devoid of worth and mystique. Though this applies more to NPCs than PCs. The Player of joe legendary PC knows what is there under the curtain that all the level 1 commoners are in awe over, so for him there's little problem with giving him abilities because they were never shrouded in mystery for him to begin with. But the problem many seem to have is that the PC can do anything, ever, and the universe not only should but does revolve around them and only them, and the rules should support this. In this design philosophy the gods are waiting in divine dungeons to kill, archfiends are twiddling their thumbs in the lower planes, and the PCs are the only ones now or ever to do such things. It's my feeling that once you attempt to quantify that which can't be quantified, the game loses something. Perhaps what I'm trying to say is that after a certain point the PC needs to gain that mystique, stop trying to quantify everything into abilities, hit dice and levels to be gained and feats to be taken. At a certain point a strict ruleset cannot handle these things without becoming nearly self parodic in its treatment of those topics. And then you get Waldorf with his enslaved Greyhawk pantheon as an example. ;) [/QUOTE]

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