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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5743688" data-attributes="member: 177">That's what saving throws are for, no?  In 4e, this is really simple - the swordsman and the spellcaster are pretty equivalent, though there is a sort of "sameness" to this approach.We do have to remember, though, that what sounds like something cool from a story/setting perspective can be kind of crappy from a player's perspective.  You're setting up both the character and the player to be a notable disadvantage to the group.  It is one of those cases where what's kind of cool in a novel may not be so great in the context of a game with many players.Let's look at an extreme example to demonstrate the issue baldly.   Say you told a player, "Yes, you can have your character specialize in ranged weapons, but your character will have a harness of hand grenades permanently strapped to them, and any time you use a ranged weapon, there's a 1% chance the grenades go off, killing you and injuring everyone nearby."  Does that make using a ranged weapon more fun?  Is it an incentive to using such a weapon, or a disincentive?  You've put together a character that can do cool things, but every time you exercise your coolness, you risk hosing yourself?  Is that fun?  Is it fun when nobody else has to hose themselves do to their cool stuff?  Now, White Wolf's Mage has significant dangers (Paradox) for mages.  But, if you're playing Mage, then everyone in your group is a mage, and you all have the same kind of problem, so nobody is singled out.  If you play a mixed White Wolf game, most of the powerful supernatural types have drawbacks - so everyone's a risk in some way or other.  Nobody is singled out, in the long run.I don't mean to say that you can't do such a thing.  Merely that you ought to be careful doing it. There has to be some... not necessarily "balance", but fairness about it.</blockquote>

Verification