TRPG General Chat

kviiri

4:17 AM

@trogdor Generally pronounciation matches spelling :)

"Fauna" is not exactly a common word but the contrived choice of vocabulary just makes it better

trogdor

4:34 AM

Ah ok

Tis fair

I simply didn't expect that particular similarity in language

But I do think it's at the very least some cool trivia

Also yeah I rarely either hear or read the use of the word Fauna unless someone is using the word to sound extra scientific

Ben

Afternoon everyone

I have a question about "OP" characters in games. I was going to ask it on site but I don't feel like I quite have the whole thing narrowed down.

The basis of the question is that my most favourite game I ever played was a Dark Heresy game. I played a Techpriest (a cyborg) and the GM was always pitting us against seemingly impossible challenges - full-on hordes of monsters - hundreds at a time… we had to come up with a solution to stem the flow while fighting off a constant tide of enemies.

Once we came up against a Lesser Demon of Nurgle! It was a tough fight, we barely survived but we managed to defeat it.

There was even one fight where we were in a fight for a full 10 rounds... we gave it everything we had, and after that, the bad guy stood up, brushed himself off, and offered for us to again, walk away if we wished. We were gobsmacked, even though we didn't beat it, it is still one of the group's favourite stories.

My problem is that since then, I've been playing with another group, and I haven't been able to experience that same feeling of power. Any obstacle we've come up against has been a struggle to overcome, and not in a good way. They always beat us, then come back, more powerful than before, or the fight is just a marathon, that when we finally beat them, it's just a relief that the fight is over.

So the question I have is what are the downsides of having "OP" characters in a game, both systematically, and thematically?

trogdor

4:58 AM

How does that story relate to OP characters?

Ben

Which story? Lol.

kviiri

@trogdor yea, same here

trogdor

Well any of the examples

You mentioned fights that were hard

Not,... Being overpowered per se

I mean, I am willing to sum up my take on why overpowered characters are not ideal

It boils down to either not being challenged as a group by the obstacles put before you, it in the cases where less than all the characters are OP, having everyone who isn't overshadowed by those who are

In many cases leading as far as the non OP having nothing to do

Ben

Well, there's "OP" in terms of like, a fighter that deals 24 damage per turn, or in terms of having powers to deal incredible amounts of damage "The guy of the 50mm machine gun unloads into you, most of the shots pinging off your armour, but one smashes you in the face, tearing your helmet open. You continue your charge, and seeing the fury and resolve in your face, they immediately abandon the gun and flee."

Whereas the fights that are hard are just like, the enemies are the ones doing all that damage. I punch them, deal 12 damage, then they fling me out a window, smashing me into the building across the street, and fall to the ground

kviiri

Being overpowered has at least three possible dimensions: one relative to one's group where the character outshadows others, one of the challenge where the game turns out easier or simpler than desired and one of the genre, where the character violates the spirit of the story through being too powerful.

trogdor

5:05 AM

@Ben I didn't mean I needed an example I just meant, how your previously mentioned battles tied into overpowered characters

?

Ben

I suppose the enjoyment I got from the first game was that the challenges we came up against were seemingly impossible - A full-fledged demon... a horde of the undead... a single mysterious creature that was able to withstand the full force of our attacks for so long, only to brush themselves off.

Whereas now all we fight are Orcs and Trolls. The scale of the challenges aren't quite so worthy of folklore.

trogdor

So do you mean fighting overpowered opponents or being overpowered yourselves?

Or sort of both?

Ben

The "Overpowered characters" is in regards to the apparent challenge of the enemy... yeah. I feel overpowered in the story, while on paper I quite clearly am not that amazing.

IN the examples where I felt overpowered, I can understand that everything was blown up to make it sound more amazing.

trogdor

Ah ok

That is,.. significantly different from the normal meaning or at least use of the word

Ben

That can easily be replicated... just narrate it all in a more exciting way. But the other thing I don't believe I mentioned is that in all of my games, I've never really advanced beyond a few levels in game.

Mike Q

5:10 AM

@Ben It depends. Guessing by your class choice, was your character "the" OP character in the group? Or were most of the party members powerful enough to overcome the DM's challenges?

trogdor

Feeling powerful is pretty good for games where power would matter like D&D

Ben

So in regards to numbers, the CR was never more than a Troll.

Or and Ogre

trogdor

The issue is,... When it bleeds over to not being a challenge, or invalidating other characters

Mike Q

@Ben And is the new game also in Dark Heresy? Or a different system?

Ben

@MikeQ In the first game, everyone was a different kind of OP... we had a psyker that would throw lightning everywhere, a gunslinger that could single handedly take down and Ogre, I was the melee guy, we had the tank that just didn't take damage, though he wasn't the hardest hitter, then there was the guy with the heavy machine gun.

The new games were in 5e, Numenera and Savage Worlds. I was the Fighter-type in all of those games, and I was one of the biggest hitters in most of the games.

Mike Q

5:15 AM

Aha. So you changed system. Yeah. Different systems flourish with different amounts of party-DM power balance.

i.e., some systems do well when the player characters are very skilled and powerful, expecting them to succeed all challenges. Other systems are meant for player characters to be weaker and fearful, where failure is part of the game.

Ben

Also GM

The Dark Heresy game ended because the DM had to move

trogdor

Ah yeah that sounds a lot like something we could check up to system change

Ben

Yeah, but even then the feeling is still the same. I do feel like narration is a big part of it. But I have also been feeling like I want to see what the potential of my character can be. The farthest I've ever got was level 5 in 5e, so I never really managed to see what potential my character had.

Mike Q

Often what frustrates players isn't the difficulty, but rather the perceived helplessness due to lack of options

Ben

I can definitely attest to that

Mike Q

5:20 AM

In DH/40k, characters start off with a decent amount of their options and resources. As they level up, they get better at the things they want to specialize at.

In D&D, character scaling is superlinear. Level 1 characters are basically commoners with no abilities. They have to work their way up before they can viably perform what their classes are advertised to do. Which means low-level play is often frustrating and tedious.

Ben

That's fair. I can understand that.

Mike Q

I've tried discussing this topic before. It helps to have a fellow DH player in the chat.

Ben

I feel like that's what I've been wanting to try and achieve in my latest game of Savage Worlds and potentially my new game of Pathfinder

Mike Q

As a longtime PF player, I can confidently tell you that PF has the same "superlinearity" problem

Insufferable for players at low levels due to lack of options. Insufferable for DMs at high levels because the PCs are gods, and it's really hard to challenge them anymore.

And may I say, dang, going from a DH Techpriest to a D&D fighter is one of the most dramatic drops in player power I can imagine

kviiri

Apocalypse World starts the players off as (figurative) gods who usually won't have a problem killing everything toe to toe. Of course depending on the playbooks chosen. DnD-based GMs may find themselves struggling to figure out how to make the PCs' lives interesting in other way than classic combat challenges.

Mike Q

5:35 AM

Well even the basic combat mechanics in DH are better for narratively exciting combats (compared to D&D), with how wounds and critical effects work

Even when a character has reached their maximum wounds, with broken limbs and demons in their mind, they're still hanging in there, fighting for their life. Players feel like total badasses.

And when they deal a lot of damage to an enemy, the DM is supposed to read out the effects that happen to them too. So the players get to feel like they're making an impact.

kviiri

That sounds interesting

Mike Q

By comparison, the default in D&D is just... numbers. You're above 0, then you're up, then drop to 0 and you're out of the fight. If you hit the enemy with a powerful attack, then narratively that doesn't mean anything, other than some big numbers. Yay numbers.

Ben

@MikeQ yes, exactly

@MikeQ @kviiri you've both helped me understand what my problem is. Particularly in regards to the difference between the systems.

trogdor

Wow fantastic nice work guys

kviiri

I like how some systems (like AW) make it relatively simple to pull off low blows towards the PCs without them feeling like low blows towards the players

Ben

5:51 AM

That might be something to pitch to the GM for the next game we play.

kviiri

If you're interested, you can get the 1e AW for free on their website after giving your email. (They've never spammed me anything)

I might have a direct link available somewhere if you'd prefer not to... let's see

apocalypse-world.com/previews/AW1E.zip

Ben

Though probably won't be happening for a while. In PF however, that game is fairly new and the GM has pitched using the "mythic" system. It sounded interesting in theory, but I'm not sure if that is what I'm aiming for.

kviiri

The book is a very good read. It explains a lot of the philosophy behind the rules and gives good basic ideas on how they can be tweaked.

Mike Q

6:11 AM

@Ben Mythic makes characters very durable and sometimes able to bypass the hard limits of the game (action economy, common feat prereqs, actions in threatened areas, etc.)... If the game is meant for low levels, then mythic could add in that extra power to the players, encouraging the players to be more risk-prone and perform more heroics

Ben

I suppose that's going in the right direction then?

Mike Q

At high levels, though, it's kind of like taking a group of superheroes, and injecting them with a mix of radioactive spider juice, gamma whatevers, and a free batcave

For reference, there's a published adventure path that goes to high level + mythic, and it's only fitting because most of the enemies are superdemons with absurd magic abilities

Ben

I feelike that's what we should be doing now, in savage worlds. The GM has always ranted about characters that have had the powers to punch through tanks... There's even an NPC in game that is virtually indestructible, and we are basically barely above street-gang level.

kviiri

@Ben Saints Row eh

Ben

Yeah. The hype hasn't matched up to the experience.

And the characters aren't overly versatile either... I punch things, and occasionally shoot some webs, the robot attacks with their sword, and the tech dude just shoots stuff.

kviiri

6:21 AM

SW is a nasty system in that versatility really costs one. Better to make that one trick combat pony like everyone else.

Ben

We should be focussing on "Power Moves"

Mike Q

Makes you miss praying to the machine god, eh

Ben

So much

Mike Q

And let's not forget the endless opportunities for "tech support" jokes

Ben

kviiri

6:25 AM

One of the clever ideas of 4e I only learned to appreciate after playing without it is the separation between combat, utility and out-of-combat powers

Mike Q

> Player: "I want to be the tank, the artillery, the skillmonkey, and the healer. I also want a pet follower."
D&D: "Sorry, pick one, and maybe you'll be decent in 5 levels."
DH: "Sure. How many arms do you want?"

kviiri

The idea that "I'm useless in combat but I compensate by doing everything else better" isn't such a good idea when combat gets 90% of the mechanical focus of the game

Ben

Haha. We had one session where we entered the mind of one of the players. Since we were in a psychic plane, we all envisaged ourselves in our ideal forms. I had a revolving array of mechadenderites

I also had a servo skull that was the skull of the dead psyker that Died early in the game. I gave it an communicator and it floated around occasionally preaching the words of the emperor

But in that psychic plane, everytime I interacted with something, I had to struggle with understanding it since it was illogical.

Vylix

I think we have a policy about a question that basically just say: "Please look up on the core book for this information" ?

How to say nicely that "Hey, I think you don't spend much effort to find what you are looking for. Come back here if you've shown us where you have been looking and failed to find what you are looking for?"

The Oracle

0

Q: We still don't actually take flags seriously, right?

So, now when I flag comments I get a "We take your reports seriously" message popup. I just wanna make sure I'm correct in identifying that as corporate-speak (i.e. a lie) and we don't actually take flags seriously. Specifically, it's still okay to flag stuff for removal without there being any...

Ben

6:41 AM

@kviiri I did see that problem a bit, but in reverse. I focussed entirely on combat (I was often the main target in all combat scenarios, being the big guy with a power axe) so I focussed a lot on combat stats... Armour and damage output. My skills were a little lackluster, and that's where the rest of the party suffered. They weren't as good in combat, so they couldn't really stand up to the guys that were dealing me damage.

kviiri

@Ben Yeh, it's hard to design a stat-based combat game if one can't ever rely on two characters of the same level, even the first one, to be roughly equal in terms of power.

Ben

They weren't as good

BESW

> Please [edit] your question to tell us about your own research, and specifically what you're confused by in what you've found.

kviiri

One issue with combat in particular is that tradition places it as The Mechanic which always warrants full zoom. Everything else is often kinda flaky and depends on the GM, solar winds and the like

Ben

It is hard to balance things sometimes

BESW

7:36 AM

Yeah, and part of that "must zoom" feature is that traditionally combat mechanics are mapped to narrative actions with a very specific pacing.

While most everything else is not given specific beats-per-mechanic.

That is, when you roll a basic attack you know that it's a standard action which takes a little more than half of your six-second turn. But when you roll to pick a lock, that's.... what kind of action? Takes how long? For most "traditional" games the answer is [expansive shrug and a handwave at some vague suggestions].

Helwar

8:06 AM

@BESW It was fun explaining my DM for a One Shot, who is a nurse, how my rogue was bandaging the dwarf in 3 seconds... :P

kviiri

Yeah. I got a bit distracted by work (stupid priorities) but I mean, it's easy to imagine a DM making the picking of a lock require no rolls at all ("eh, it's a poor lock. Just open it"), one roll, two rolls (one for picking, the other for Stealth to see if you make noise), three rolls (another Lockpicking to see if you break a pick)... while combat rules are seldom nudged

BESW

@Helwar Pump-Action Bandage Gun.

@kviiri This is one reason I love using Roll For Shoes as a palette cleanser between systems: it has no opinions at ALL about zooming, so you can bounce around and just have a lot of fun with it.

In one game we spent ten minutes on ten seconds of a retired samurai being ambushed by ninjas in his garden, and then a scene later it was one roll for him to hop in his one-man spaceship and fly to the Jovian system.

"Do I have my own spaceship?"
"Roll to see if you have a spaceship."
"....yes, I do."
"Excellent! As you arrive in the Jovian system..."

vs

"Do I sense the ninjas before they attack?"
"Roll to see if you sense the ninjas as they sneak up on you."
"...I don't!"
"A shuriken flies out of the sculpted elephant topiary and embeds itself in your thigh. You feel the sting of its poisoned edge!"
"I'm a retired samurai with a garden of poisonous plants. Am I immune to the ninja poison?"
"Roll to find out if you're immune to the poison."

And so on.

Helwar

10:29 AM

@BESW So weird

@BESW So very weird

Zachiel

10:44 AM

Hooray! D&D Wiki is trying to improve!

3

Q: Why do people not notice our enormous, prominent, clear and contrasting purple banner?

I'm part of a MediaWiki site called D&D Wiki. Among others, one of our longstanding issues in the public eye was our failure to label clearly enough that certain pages are categorised 'Homebrew', as opposed to 'Official'. Consequently, we pushed through a solution wherein all pages that are not ...

website-design color web image page-layout

5

kviiri

@Zachiel The top answer matches my (non-professional) intuition.

The banner is separate from the article content --- it's even above the main title --- so it's easy to consider it to have no semantic value by accident.

BESW

12:02 PM

@Zachiel Hooray! ...unfortunately that question also shows us where they're starting from, so I hope the Stack is ready to field a lot of questions.

NautArch

1:26 PM

howdy howdy

Transcript for