@nitsua60 Thank you for this answer, like everyone around was inventing ways to punish that knight who facetanks the traps for GM's fault, while you actually addressed the main problem. A mechanical decision would work, but even then it would probably be far from "Kill that damn knight so he learns to never fail to guess what I have in mind!".
On that answer, @nitsua60, you might consider using a word like "participant" to mean "everyone at the table" rather than repeating "player" with a parenthetical caveat.
@Baskakov_Dmitriy Well, to be fair, everyone else is answering the question as posed: OP explicitly asked for in-game ways to incentivize/punish the character. I just think that's a bad question to ask and answered thusly. Note: that's a really dangerous stance to take, and easy to badly botch.(It helps that I was piggybacking on the shoulders of Angry, which lends a lot of credibility in some's eyes.)
@BESW Ahh... gotcha. I was losing that second one in a blind spot. I'm trying to thread the needle between "bad writing" and "remind people that GM is a player, too."
I kinda want to bounty answer #3 on that question, but I also kinda feel like my grubby fingerprints are all over that Q&A in lots of ways already... =\
I mean, I've closed, reopened, edited, protected, and answered. And commented a bunch on others' answers. It seems a little stalker-ey... =(
@nitsua60 Even those in-game ways were mostly bad. Really, killing the knight who disposes of traps by tanking because you can't talk to them and he doesn't guess it by reading your mind that you don't like it...
The main answer to your question is "when you want to play a character who is more naturally strong than naturally dexterous." But you're looking for an optimization strategy, so that's not a complete answer.
From a purely optimization standpoint, I'd say:
You don't explicitly call out in your...
Dexterity rules all? I should play this system more.
@Baskakov_Dmitriy It's a sadly common attitude, fueled by weird "GM as elite" notions that tie into social forces like the Geek Fallacies and the idea that creativity is a rare gift rather than a universal quality.
I admit to using the idea that the GM is de recto the social ringleader of the group, in my early RPG years, to manipulate the environment at the table and force social choices on my friends.
@Zachiel I happened to luck in at a time when I'd pretty-well gotten my head around 5e's ruleset (and I think coming straight from 2e was helpful there) and a lot of new people were starting up with it.
While I am still all "5e? I don't want to mess my mind with yet another different D&D ruleset, I already have problems remembering 4e straight because of 3.x" :p
(I'm a little bit baffled that the ion cannon question gets more attention than "do you keep DCs secret?", but hey, that's the Internet for you. ttfn
@Zachiel I am in an even worse situation -- I only play VtM and it seems like there are is only likely half a dozen other players on this site. Even though I know that there are actually more, it just feels like this.
@Baskakov_Dmitriy Beware of One True Wayism, friend. I've been at tables where the explicit game we were playing was: let the GM come up with something diabolical and then play it "by the book", and let's see if we can get out with our skin intact and some full sacks of loot.
@Baskakov_Dmitriy the funny thing is my highest-rated answer on the site is on a VtM question and I have 0 experience with the system (doesn't stop me from having an idea for a VtM character should I ever get to play it though)
@nitsua60 You know, for an inexperienced GM it is probably way better than something diabolical not even played by the rules. As a very inexperienced GM myself, I am going to strongly avoid not playing by the rules in my chronicles. I just don't feel the rules as good yet to be able to ignore them.
@Shalvenay No, it's not for VtM (Vampire: The Masquerade), it's for Vampire: The Requiem, set in a completely different universe with not a lot in common with VtM, played by almost completely different rules.
@Baskakov_Dmitriy He doesn't mean the Corebook and Supplement.
If you're not on mobile, you can hover over a direct-response message (the kind with a little arrow at the front) to see exactly what message it's responding to.
@BESW Not failure to railroad, but rather failure to, say, listen to a supportive NPC who wold you not to go out during the day, because you will die. If you do, I will roll the dice and give you the result. THe odds are high that you will just run back in the room in panic, but you may be able to overcome it and go to your death which would take aroung 9 seconds.
WoD is actually out normal world + supernatural additions
Well, yeah, you need an airplane to transport things
But that's what ghouls normally do
Even though very experienced ghouls
(A ghoul is a human who drinks vampire blood; it makes him supernaturally strong and be able to posess some of the vampiric abilities, such as high resistance to bullets, but addicted to drinking vampire blood and emotionally attached to the vampire)
Why would a vampire spend his time on flying an airplane?
@KorvinStarmast The comment you left on meta, which I worried would resurrect the piracy issue in that whole debacle. (Which you may not have even known of?)
@KorvinStarmast I wouldn't have wanted someone who might have been following that meta Q and its comments to think they were being teased.
(Which I don't think you were doing, but I worried that the comment might have been construable that way.)
@nitsua60 Heh, you caught me. That was most definitely a sideways ref at the inanity of the past week after someone with your name tried to be helpful.
@nitsua60 I stayed out of that debacle as I noted in a note to SSD, my first instinct on the question was not charitable, so for once I kept my mouth shut for a while.
@nitsua60 After the RAW tag drama and emotional discussions, I have re evaluated what I will or won't engage in on meta. Less is better.
As a flying character I'm trying to do some aerial recon/scouting and wanted to know how a perception check works (passive and active) while flying.
Aside from lightly/heavily obscured (PHB p. 183), what other penalties/factors are there?
For example:
Does height play a factor?
Does speed pl...
I wonder if he's playing the long-game: having assumed he's going to jail for whatever the original crime was, he's setting up an easy ride there. "What're you in for?" "Stabbed three different lawyers." "Guys! This one's cool."
@nitsua60 keeping in mind that I have no way to truly judge this guy's intelligence level, just from this article he doesn't seem bright enough for that gambit
also, my guess is he is originally in for stabbing a guy in the neck, I assume pencils are just his choice when nothing else sharp is around
@nitsua60 yes, the gist would be "this guy gets math". I subsequently re-read my question and tried to determine if I somehow came off as condescending, just in case. And yes, humans make stupid mistakes. In one answer here, I asserted the Cleric casting stat was Cha. :(
Yay or nay on mainsite... Q: What would be a good name for a band? A: 10% Fabulous Androgyny (glam tribute) 90% Dead (probably Rolling Stones cover band) A Fistful of Fate Points A Helpful Soul (possibly presumptuous) A Prod Ungently All the Lurkers An Indefinite Ben Analysis Paralysis Analysis Paralysis Hell (band that uses floppy drives as primary instrument) Angry Time God (Trock band) ASCII Moustache ASCII Owl Blindbag Dalek ("Pretty good") Bloodthirsty Nouveau Riche Gangster Donald Trumps ((posted in 2013))
Q: Those are good, but turns out I need a great name. Where can I find some of those? A: right here! 2nd Phone Booth Youth Abyssal Whale Fall Back From Confusedville (band that just got back together after a decade-long breakup marked by abjectly failed individual projects) Baffling Wombat Death Penalty Elimination Count Dystopian Rabbit Hole Glaive Phase Huge Brass Pistons Invincible Landsharks Killer Suggestion Charm (shoegazing band) Leaking Abstractions (backup) Shooting the Breeze Skunk Static
[Stopping now. But I want you to know it takes self-discipline, 'cause I've got albums, songs, and "other" sitting in my back pocket!]
I was browsing 4e builds and I found a - mutants and masterminds, I think? - thread with some Marvel heroes and enemies statted in some obscure system. This Lady Lotus seemed promising. http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/ladylotusinvaders2.jpg She's not even using the lotus pose!!!
[righteous rage]
@trogdor I think I need your help. It really depends. Have you ever played Guild Wars?
@nitsua60 I think you just described Fourthcore. Even if usually there's not loot at stake. The future of the universe is a better choice for it, given that it runs on time limits.
@trogdor I have found a couple new players for my D&D game, they're both new to the hobby (they altready got the dice, but they couldn't find anyone else to play with at the time, and a friend of mine happened to know them. Things happen.) One of them wants to play some sort of arcanist, we'll see what, one is interested in playing some support character - his favourite GW builds were traps-and-bow archer (which might be a seeker?) and monk-healer (which might be... I have no idea. Any ideas?)
Arcanist seems like kinda a broad thing, traps and bows might be seeker, monk healer may be a particular variant of cleric (the cleric that doesn't do damage and instead focuses on healing and severely debuffing opponents)
@Zachiel Seeker fits if it's about debuffs and ranged attacks, and the seeker is a great choice for an optimiser in an otherwise non-optimised party. But if you've got a party of optimisers the seeker will be a lot more work for a lot less payout.
What's the appeal of the monk-healer? Melee ability combined with buff ability?
That sounds like a battle cleric or a paladin, or possibly one of the psionic classes I can't remember much about.
@BESW My problem currently is that everyone wants to do support. The ranger player wants to play an ardent (leader), the fighter doesn't want to change his character, the runepries is ok with having an ardent take his place but he wants to try a swordmage next. And the new players might end up being a seeker or another ardent and hopefully not a second wizard.
I think he was more effective as a ranger, but as a rogue he was still pretty nasty.
...Trogdor has informed me he was a monk.
He sacrificed all his damage in exchange for debuffs like slow, immobilise, prone, and whatever his weapons added (he liked "can't teleport" for obvious reasons).
There was also a cleric who sacrificed damage for attacks that debuffed the enemy and healed his allies.
@BESW @Shalvenay But it is actually common for vampires to do it. Not only do they have supernatural instruments to do so (or simply get more contacts), but they also need way less to sustain themselves. They don't need food, for example, or medical insurance.
@nitsua60 Well, Vampire: The Masquerade isn't a Tippyverse, by no means can it be. I has enough details to leave small gaps for guessing. World of VtM is like our real world, but it just has ~70 000 (active) vampires to add to our existing situation who manipulate some parts of the world.
It is covered very well how do they sustained themselves, how do they get money etc.
@Axoren So the 5e SRD with OGL lets you write what you like and distribute however you like; catch is that SRD is a somewhat-limited subset of core. Alternatively you can use all of 5e if you distribute through DM's guild; catch is that it's either FR or setting-less. See here for the overview, and feel free to ping me with more-specific questions =)
eimyr's endless struggle: not being able to tell people D&D was like his 3rd or 4th RPG played, because everyone assumes it was the 1st and asking is pointless
SO my older brothers let me tag along a little bit (this was during BECMI and 1e), but not much, and soon they were out of the house and I had no game. But for a good decade of 1e and 2e there D&D kept me company playing "solitaire." Designing dungeons and castles, building characters and towns, pretend-playing through Mentzer's Elemental Evil over and over again....
All through HS I could never get friends to give RP a try. We were the "drama crowd," so creativity and goofiness wasn't the barrier. I got 'em all hooked on MtG, so fantasy wasn't the barrier. I got 'em hooked on Axis & Allies, so time wasn't the barrier. Don't know what it was.
Nowadays I play because it's what's going on in the FLGS, I run the group with the HS kids... I think it's largely market-share and name-recognition that drives it. Despite all its flaws, with a GM who recognizes what D&D is I still feel like it's a decent first game to expose people to. 'Cause they're going to be able to tell people what it is, and they'll be able to find other people using that keyword.
(With the HS group we play D&D+1 every year. That is, we play whatever's current in D&D, alternating sessions with something else. Last year it was ODD, two years ago was one of the Cthulhus, this coming year we're thinking about something scifi.)
Is it because some editions of D&D have the optimal choices be tied with incoherent character choices that contrast with each other, like the double-betrayer of Shar or the elven cleric with the elf domain polymorphing into an arrow demon?
@Shalvenay Oh, that's easy. Because in any situation the intersection of the set of people who want to roleplay and people who want to optimise is smaller than the union of the two.
@Miniman -- what @eimyr is referring to is what I call "demand" -- how much demand is there in the world for the role or job the character is optimized for?
@Shalvenay Optimization is in essence an eigenvector problem - abandoning this "demand" makes you optimise without even being able to measure the effectiveness or success of your optimization.
Hey! I optimized for an unrequired skill (escape artist) and my effectiveness is measured in how big of a bonus I can get, compared to how big of a bonus people can get in skills of their choice.
@Miniman my thinking in separating the demand factor out is that you can take a world and concept and turn them into a requirements specification for a character to fulfill, and then optimize a character to fit that requirements specification
In any case, I should certainly shut up, as I don't even really follow what people mean when they're talking optimization. (In RPGs. In lots of other fields, yes. Here, no.) [Note: this ^^ should not be construed as an invitation to educate me on what "optimization" means. Not interested, from all I've seen.]
@Shalvenay Ok, so you really do mean intrinsic to the character, not intrinsic to optimisation? Because in that case, none of your dimensions fit that criterion.
so... effectiveness optimizations aren't a problem from a RP standpoint at all -- you can make a character effective at their intended task/role without "breaking RP" IOW
versatility optimizations can be a problem because they can lead to a character overshadowing others, but they can also allow a character to "come in off the bench" and allow other characters to shine by filling in gaps in parties
and resistance optimizations are often a problem -- they make the character's performance more consistent and reliable, but at the cost of taking away tools from other participants that they can use to influence the character's performance and behavior
@eimyr We should totally switch back to an uncontroversial topic... what ever happened to "why the hell do you play that stupid D&D game, anyway, you seem so nice?" [giant grin, totally joking, hopes this doesn't become Pompeii =) ]
@Miniman what I'm saying is that when the GM (in a campaign structured environs) or other players (in a persistent world environs) don't have the ability to cause meaningful adversity for a PC, that PC becomes an obstacle to RP
@Shalvenay That's not 100% true, but it's certainly a valid point.
The issue is, the GM always has the ability to create meaningful adversity.
And trying to play D&D as a persistent world is yet another classic case of "using it for something it's not designed for at all and wondering why it doesn't work".
@Miniman in a GM-based system like D&D, that is mostly true. resistance optimizations aren't as big a problem there. however, when you don't have an overarching GM with that level of power over the world, resistance optimizations loom large as a problem
@Miniman agreed -- but I'm talking at a system-agnostic level here.
@Shalvenay These aren't system-agnostic concepts. I don't have the expertise in any GM-less system to discuss it properly, but all of the ones I've looked at have controls to prevent one player's power from outscaling others.
I've been trying to write a response for 5 minutes, but it's impossible to succinctly express the issues of freeform in this medium - I'd need to write several essays. Suffice to say that if you're playing freeform RP not with a group of people you trust completely, you've already stuck your arm in the meat grinder and everything after that is just symptoms.
@Shalvenay Anyway, it's 3am here and talking in sweeping generalities just isn't useful - I'll read anything you leave here tomorrow, but right now I have to go sleep.
@nitsua60 Homebrew. I knew we were going to start a campaign but wasn't expecting it so soon. I threw some things at the party and tossed in some hooks.
Ya, so, my campaign is homebrew. This weekend I need to nail down what it is and is not, terrain, local communities, and a couple NPCs. I also need to decide whether this is the same campaign setting I've used with a different group, or a new one. There is some demand for the existing setting.
As a flying character I'm trying to do some aerial recon/scouting and wanted to know how a perception check works (passive and active) while flying.
Aside from lightly/heavily obscured (PHB p. 183), what other penalties/factors are there?
For example:
Does height play a factor?
Does speed pl...
It has still some parts taht do look unclear to me. Just below the two bullet points, what do you mean with "do we assume a speed of 50 ft.?"? Are you asking if a standard speed should be assumed (this makes no sense to me, if speed was a factor, the modifiers would depend from the speed chosen by the reconnoiter), _or_ are you telling us "if speed is a variable, let's suppose it is 50 ft. for the examples in your answers"? Or is it something different?
I'd also change "does height play a factor?" into "does height (i.e. distance from the target) play a factor?"
@AlSun does it really say so without telling what a fast speed is?
For comparison: if this was 3.5e I'd say that you get penalties at full speed (and if you move half your speed or less you don't get them), or something similar.
Yes, but it's worth asking. Maybe as a separate but related question. I guess the distance from the target matters way more here, but I'm thinking D&D 3.x here (-1 for each 10 ft. of distance)
On one recent answer I saw the following box-text at the bottom:
Nothing about it appears in the post's source.
Why is it there?
Who put it there?
Is a post that outright states "this is how I would rule" really on notice for deletion?
I've never seen this notice anywhere else--should I be f...
@AlSun Note that's in reference to "Travel Pace" on PHB p.182; the "fast" pace there is characterized only in relation to minutes, hours, and days, not combat rounds. It may be worth asking (separately) something like "if my character moves 40' in a combat round do they incur the -5 penalty from the Travel Pace chart?"
@SevenSidedDie also (and this probably goes without saying), feel free to edit/massage my meta Q to help it serve as a better FAQ if it occurs to you there's something that'd be good for people to realize but which I didn't think to ask about.
@nitsua60 Yeah, I was able to get that from that niche little area the blogpost linked to. Is it just me, or is Wizard's site now atrocious to navigate?
@Zachiel @Shalvenay @eimyr Actually, all the tabletop RPG systems that I know about have such an issue at least to some extent. If you don't think of optimization and another player does, a campaign will suck.
A good optimizer and roleplayer can easily make a character who he wants to roleplay also very strong.
But it is always possible to make an overpowered character and write a good story for him.
In my example of a Tremere with Willpower 10 and True Love/Iron Will, the story is pretty obvious, and I actually want to play something like that. Even though I know that it's a classical Mary Sue.
However, a Toreador who can only dance and seduce isn't going to be a good gameplay solution even if you like to RP something like that.
Yes, RP is important -- but combat is resolved by rolling dice.
He (or she) might be using Celerity and high natural Dexterity to be good at dancing. And Auspex 2 is what he or she uses to easily find a good victim for seduction. Add some Firearms, and that character is already not completely defenceless. For vampires, a sawed-off shotgun with Dragon Breath ammunition may be useful, for humans -- a simple SMG. Both are highly consealable, and may be a great threat to not very dangerous foes.
The main answer to your question is "when you want to play a character who is more naturally strong than naturally dexterous." But you're looking for an optimization strategy, so that's not a complete answer.
From a purely optimization standpoint, I'd say:
You don't explicitly call out in your...
As a flying character I'm trying to do some aerial recon/scouting and wanted to know how a perception check works (passive and active) while flying.
Aside from lightly/heavily obscured (PHB p. 183), what other penalties/factors are there?
For example:
Does height play a factor?
Does speed pl...
On one recent answer I saw the following box-text at the bottom:
Nothing about it appears in the post's source.
Why is it there?
Who put it there?
Is a post that outright states "this is how I would rule" really on notice for deletion?
I've never seen this notice anywhere else--should I be f...
