Over at Twenty-Sided, Shamus posted about The Sims and how some people enjoy this far longer than others.
In one of his argument, he mentions his prolonged interests in Shooter type games.
When challenged by a hypothetical person of a different demographics (man I love how he dodged so many mines in that post*) he replied with:
For me, killing evildoers and gathering up their belongings is a perfectly valid way to spend an evening.
You know what? I think that pretty much sums up my position on RPGs. Yes you can do a lot more. Some do and enjoy it immensely and I often end up doing more than that.
But deep down, when we’re all tired and we’re done drinking our first beer of our gaming night, killing bad guys and collecting loot while having fun interacting face to face with friends is all I’m looking for.
Well technically, I spend the evening having my evil doers get slaughtered, but I’m fine with that too…
That’s why I’m currently nostalgic about all the Retro-Stupid stuff I read about.
* Shamus my friend, I feel your very vocal readership has made you create a complex set of rules so you could handle them! Thing is I don’t think you have a choice… there are a few pouncers in that bunch!
I actually had the whole thing about guys being hunter-gathering players and women being nurturing players. It was about three or four paragraphs. Then I came to my senses and realized that I’d just authored a roadmap to madness and war.
Looks like the less explicit version worked. No sniping so far.
Shamus’s last blog post..The Sims: A Transient Addiction
Adventuring- Travel to exotic locations! Enjoy new and unusual foods! Meet exciting and interesting people…and kill them!
@Shamus: I could almost feel the decisions you probably made as you were writing-rewriting it 🙂
@Jason: Have two-Handed Sword, will travel.
To be fair, I don’t think Shamus fooled anyone – we all knew what he was trying to say. 🙂
Chatty, while sitting down and slaughtering stuff certainly can be fun, it’s basically at the heart of why I don’t really like D&D. While it’s certainly true that a gifted DM and supportive players can make D&D an immersive experience filled with angst and triumph, the game itself doesn’t really help you do anything more than kill things, take their stuff, and level up. If I were to sum up my issues with D&D, I’d say that the inescapable focus on “get to the next level” is my biggest issue with it. We’ve had sessions – many sessions – where the players were fidgeting in their seats through the “talky” bits, interacting with NPCs, and so forth – because it was “wasting time that they could be using to get more XP”. Is this just because my players and I suck? That may be a part of it, but we don’t have this issue with other games. And when I see that D&D4e is going to contain 30 levels rather than 20, it’s hard for me to take seriously the claim that it will widen the “sweet spot” to be all thirty levels.
If I just wanted to kill things, then when my mates arrived we’d fire up Diablo or something. Less effort for me to prepare the game that way, and really – Diablo pretty much DEFINES that style of play. Everything that would slow you down from killing more stuff (healing, going back to town to sell your stuff, and so on) has quick fixes in Diablo to minimise the time you must spend not killing things.
I’m not demeaning anyones choice of how to play. My own preferred style is hardly Shakespearean. But for me, there has to be something more to it than just trying to level up. I’m certain that Chatty and other D&D fans don’t just play against random encounters all the time – I’m sure that you have involving storylines, fun NPCs to interact with, and interesting worlds to play in. But you are actually playing AGAINST the rules by doing all that.
Gazza-
I don’t see it. Sure, the rules cover combat in depth (and if you pay attention to the 3.0/3.5 rules, you’ll notice that there is a social interaction system that can be run pretty much like combat if you like) but, and this is a big but, combat is the only place where I want a firm rules foundation. I’m almost always put off by a system with firm social interaction rules. Hell, if I wanted to deal with that, I’d be playing a prescripted video game like neverwinter nights. I think that the strongest RP systems I’ve ever played in and run were the ones that left the social side mostly alone. D&D gives you some skills and some modifiers to use as references, but is content to let you play it out. If your players aren’t RPing because they want to get to the next crunchy chunk of xp, then it is likely that you’ve got players who just aren’t interested in the talky bits and thus aren’t bringing personalities to their characters (and wouldn’t be doing so even if the system tried to force them on the players) or your DM is missing some of his swings.
I’ve had it go just about every which way over the years, and it seems to be almost entirely independent of system.
There was the time when the DM wanted us to all play Righteous Heroes of Light and we formed an acting troupe.
There’ve been a number of games where everyone just wanted to play a tactical dungeon simulator.
There was the game where the DM brought a tactical smash and grab mission that turned into six hours of role playing and 45 minutes of butt kicking at the end.
The Amber Book’s crunch is almost how to run a conflict, and I’ve never played in an Amber campaign with more than 20% of the time devoted to fights, or less than 60% devoted to RP that wasn’t directly supported by the book.
I’m not to quiet about disliking overly crunchy games, but conflicts do happen and the only thing that you really need the rules for is to help resolving them. Many computer games supply this, but lack the depth and interactivity of roleplaying. The most popular system is D&D, and people would rather spend their time actually playing then in figuring out new rules for games, it’s like Microsoft Windows and UNIX, both are OS’s but Windows is more popular because everybody that you know uses it . . . except for your cousin Ned who is such a geek that he never comes out of his mom’s basement.
The key to making players happy is verity and “KEEPING THEM ENGAGED!” There is always something that is demanding their attention, but to resolve it they have to do A, B, and C. Of course while they are busy resolving this goal, they get even more goals thrown at them . . . and to make matters worse they have to complete them on an ice bridge that is on fire at both ends.
If there is discomfort during the talky bits, perhaps those bits aren’t needed? If it doesn’t further the story or give them the XP that they need then get rid of it. Instead of the DM doing all the talking, make the players work for every scrap of information that you have in your evil head while throwing to them even more questions that they can only learn the answers to by playing the game.
Every game has it’s ups and downs, if your players are getting bored, it’s time to bring in something to snap their attention back into the game. Be it a random encounter, a story encounter, a mystery, or a puzzle. Nothing gets players to start paying attention again like the simple phrase, “Okay, roll initiative!” or my personal favorite, “Make a savingthrow vs. spell.” variety and mystery! The life blood of any good game, once it stops flowing like it should, then the game dies.
RIP
Ripper X’s last blog post..Mining the Unearth Arcana
@Micheal: I agree entirely with what you said. It depends entirely on your style. I’ve been playing GURPS in which there is basically no levelling and then move too D&D and it did not change anything in the way we ran the game. Of course there is fundamental difference (mostly in the preparation time and in the sense of progression that D&D provides) but they should not impact whether you roleplay or not.
Yan – Does Gurps use a steady progression system? Something with possibly character points? I’ve played a lot of systems over the years, but the only Gurps book I’ve owned/read was the Gurps Vampire the Masquerade so I could read the setting information for Vampire so I could understand what my friends who played Vampire were talking about.
Which system has the longer prep time in your experience?
I would suggest that a poor or overly complicated combat system is possibly a good way to encourage role playing. If I have the option between talking to the guards or fighting them in ICE’s old Middle Earth Role Playing system? I’m going to do my damnedest to talk and talk and talk until they go away, let me through, or fall asleep.
Ahhh, Rulesmonster, I knew you well…and I enjoyed it, all three hours of character generation, all 10 charts of weapons, fumbles, critical hits… you will fear my bow with it’s once a day lightning attack, because that “J” lightning crit tears it up. Mind you, I’m not loving it when I swallow my tongue or trip over that invisible box turtle…but….it never deterred us from combat. Perhaps because our GM was a whiz at those charts, perhaps because we started to learn them ourselves…
Part of the problem is that there’s no good mechanic for resolving social conflicts in D&D– sure, you can point at the ad hoc awards, or the per-session awards, but neither of these deals specifically with the resolution of a social conflict, such as a winning debate before a hall of nobles or mundanely defusing a nascent mob. The rules just aren’t geared for it– there are perhaps three feats for such challenges in the PHB: skill focus, negotiator, persuasive…possibly leadership. This is compounded by the lack of lethality in the D20 system. Resorting to the sword is the easy, and in truth, preferred method of problem solving in the game. I’m down with some of that…I think it excludes some styles of play from as easy an implementation as the sword crowd, and I don’t know if I like that.
Ben.’s last blog post..Design Log: The Black Art of High APL Encounters
The rules matter, but the group matters more.
That is: D&D is definitely designed as a combat engine first and foremost. Take a bunch of people who want, give ’em D&D, profit. Or, take a group with no significant preferences (or with lots of experience with different playstyles), and they are likely to gravitate towards combat in D&D. Take a group who hates tactical combat and they will barely do any fighting.
The point: If the group does not strongly focus on certain style, the system can make a difference. Also, system can be used to communicate gaming preferences. If someone suggests a D&D game to me, I will assume that fighting will be the high point of gaming, because I see no reason to use D&D otherwise, given that other games are better at other stuff, but D&D is quite good at tactical combat.
For games that do significantly change the play, see random very focused Forge games. They often fall flat unless played in the proper way, and also (or hence) do a lot to encourage that particular style.
Also, since Shamus’ blog has evidently declared me a spam bot: The evolution justification is bullshit. See John H. Kim, for example, and read the comments: http://jhkimrpg.livejournal.com/68900.html.
Tommi’s last blog post..Rules as toys
@Micheal: GURPS is a point base system with a suggested progression some points per session. This progression is as well defined then the XP for good roleplaying are in D&D.(Not) It is up to the GM to decided whether you earn these points and how many.
In my mind It’s the perfect system for one shot adventure in weird settings the combat system is nice and the character are detailed. If you like building your own world this system will support it. But if you want a running campaign your initial character is pretty much what you are and what you’ll ever be.
Ohhh boy…. You know a blog as reached a certain point in its development when the comments are longer and more thoughtful than the author’s initial post. Aren’t I the one called Chatty? 🙂
@Gazza: You are right, we have stories and developing characters and recurring quirky NPCs all spiced up with tactical combats. I really think that you don’t need rules to roleplay… but I noticed that games (or DMs) that offer good incentives to roleplay tend to have a more diverse gaming environment.
In our case, I set a ‘combat’ Challenge Rating to all my role playing encounters (usually = to average party level) and I give out the XPs when players reach the scene’s goals. This makes the ‘talky’ parts valuable for all.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I’m playing against D&D’s rules… buit I will concede 100% that we play it, to a certain level, against it’s Core incentives.
Heck, going back to my last two games, I realize that the XP/time per scene ratio of our games heavily favors Role Playing encounters because a 15 minute scene can net out as much XP as a 2 hour fight with numerous mooks…
As for Diablo: It misses out one key element… the cheetoism, the fun of hanging out face to face with friends, of setting a slower pace, of pausing the game to talk about a movie or to crack a joke…
@Michael P.: I agree that the play group globally sets the play style. The GM has strong influence, but getting a gaming group out of the Storming stage requires that all interests and styles converge in a compatible mix. The game rules may become irrelevant… but the initial choice directs the direction the group takes. (As Tommi already pointed out… so replace that last paragraph with ‘yeah, What Tommi said!’)
@ Rip: Word man! The Rule of Cool and Keeping players engaged, that’s where it’s at.
@Michael and Ben: In an old post, Monte Cook described that a Roleplaying-heavy playing style often evolved from overly complex games because the players were loath to take out the dice for 3 hours to fight 2 guards and dog (à la Rolemaster and Gurps). He was carefull not to say that it was a better way to play, but it was a natural reaction to the system’s heavyness.
For instance, after 2 sessions where fights were very long, I would be very much inclined to make our next D&D session to be combatless. Of course, the PCs are in a demonic city… but that’s an interesting challenge.
Tommi: Couldn’t say it better!
The fact remains that Level based playing is a strong incentive. Many players types (Power Gamers, Butt Kickers, Specialist, planners…) thrive on getting to the ‘next level’ and unlocking that nifty new ability.
Heck, MMORPGs stole that from D&D and related games!
You should see Yan when he creates a new PC. He specs it up to the 20th level before we even start playing! 🙂
-ben-
I would (and to a degree, have above) argue that the lack of social conflict resolution rules (which actually, there are fairly extensive SC rules in the core books, but I’ve seldom seen them actually used) is a strength role playing wise. Essentially I figure every time you pull out the dice, or have to quote a rule or a stat plus modifier, it slows down whatever you are doing. In combat that is really alright in this setting, since it is supposed to be tactical instead of freeform and immersive, but in social situations, I find that any time I tell my players to interact with the rules, it breaks the flow of the scene.
-every one who mentioned that the D&D rules have xp for combat and not for talking-
That is a massive misapprehension that I’ve found among both players and GMs. Notice in the DMG that it says you get experience for overcoming a dangerous experience, and that it doesn’t differentiate between combat and non-combat methods. If I set up an adventure where the PCs are supposed to enter an Hobgoblin lair and retrieve a stolen treasure, walking in, killing everything that moves, and taking the treasure is only one method of overcoming the threat provided by the Hobgoblins. If one of my players manages to talk his way in and convince the Hobgoblins to freely give up the treasure without a fight? That’s another way of overcoming the threat. Hell, if they are quick on their feet, a group of PCs can turn that band of Hobgoblins into a potential resource. If they convince me that they are able to convince the Hobgoblins to come to the negotiating table with the party or the local community, I’ll probably access some bonus experience there. The rewards in this case are much higher than in a standard “break down the door, kill everything that moves, smash everything that doesn’t” model. One they gained power by gaining the experience for the fights. Two they gained power by adding a potential resource to call upon. Allies are worth more than treasure almost any day. Three they gained power by getting that additional rp experience award. One thing, if your players do tend to go for the diplomatic approach and you don’t want their reward to be a horde of servants wandering around behind you, I would suggest keeping their commissions pretty high, since they will be foregoing a fair amount of treasure, and treasure is part of the calculated power progression in D&D.
(Guess who runs Eberron)
Here’s something else I’ve noticed. If your party is made up of characters who kick butt effectively and efficiently, they often feel like they have more leeway for role playing. Essentially, if I’m running a major combat monkey, I am comfortable talking to just about anything because I don’t need the tactical advantage of a first strike if everything falls a part and the discussion becomes more physical. Whereas if every combat in a game has been on the edge of overwhelming, a party will often develop a tendency to strike first and hard in hopes of killing potential opponents before they have a chance to respond.
-Chatty- Heh, I have about a dozen 1st through 20th character builds on my computer, things I put together so I would always have a properly leveled character for a given pickup game in whatever party role is needed.
As a GM, I try to make most fights avoidable, but I make sure that each adventure has at least one fight where the other side is either mindless or relentlessly hostile so that the party’s combat specialists can have their fun. Along the same lines I like to make sure that there is at least one big fight (CR Party level +4 or more) every 3 sessions or so. I also aim to include a mook fight every couple of sessions, something where the danger is minimal and every one gets to show off new powers or tricks. This is stuff like 20 lacedons vs a party of 5th-6th level characters. (If I recall it was actually closer to 30, there were a few backup waves I added when I realized that several characters were reliably one-hitting multiple opponents a round, and were going to run out of things to squish before they were ready to not be squishing things anymore. The lacedons were mostly put there because one of my front line combat folks had just grabbed one of the Cleave feats, and I tend to make fights against a single tough opponent, so I figured he needed a combat tailored to his character.
It seems that I wasn’t really quite clear. It’s not the combat system of D&D that I dislike (indeed, I may be rare in actually liking, for the most part, the AoO mechanic). You’ll never hear me complain very hard about the “armour makes you hard to hit” mechanic, or anything like that.
My issue is with the “ding” thing. My issue is that my games – running or playing – tend to measure how good a session is by how much experience we earned. I’m not saying that’s the ONLY thing that we consider, but it’s a big part of it. Get that next level up. Get the next lot of goodies. That tends to become the focus, in my “experience” (man, puns are hard to avoid here), of even the most narrative style D&D game within a few sessions. Heck, it’s a selling point – you’ll find campaigns that boldly claim that they’ll get you from level X to level X + 4, or whatever.
My personal preference is not for there to be no character advancement, but for the whole “get to the next lot of goodies” stuff to fade into the background – dessert, not the main meal. And lest I be thought of as some elitist snob, let me be clear: I’m one of the worst breed of rules lawyering power gamers you’re ever likely to run into. But I’m not proud of that – it’s just hard (for me, at least) to AVOID developing that side when fed a steady diet of a rules system that rewards it so well.
However… I do think, to some extent, that this attitude is fostered by what I will term “MUD Syndrome”. You’ve all played MUDs in your time; I’m talking here about the way you start off so pathetically weak that you have to work your way up to being able to beat up a chicken. A 1st level D&D character isn’t much tougher than that; it’s really not until 5th level or so that you start to get interesting, and I think it’s generally acknowledged that 10th-12th level or so is the sweet spot.
So you start off really weak, and you want to get to the point where it’s actually worthwhile spending time on a backstory (I’ll be buggered if I can be bothered writing up 3 pages of background text for a character that may not last as long as it took me to create). By the time you hit 10th level, you’re so used to that focus that it can be difficult to readjust to the fact that, actually, your character is pretty cool right now, and maybe it doesn’t really matter that much if it takes 10 sessions instead of 4 to get to level 11.
Is that just me? My group have pretty much all reached this conclusion independently; even the D&D lovers in the group generally start us off at 8th or so level. We’ve mucked about with the experience point system, the “wealth by level” system, banned primary casters, set a hard level cap of 10th, and all sorts of other things in attempt to de-emphasize this constant “level up focus”.
But given that 4th edition is supposed to specifically address some of these points… well, I remain skeptical, but what the heck. Stranger things have happened. 🙂
(Oh, and Chatty – sorry, I’ll ignore your next few posts to let you overtake my word count again. 😉 ).
@ Gazza: Dude! You can post as much as you like here! Your insights and opinions, which aren’t necessarily aligned with mine, are always well thought of and interesting.
That goes for everyone who are commenting! You have interesting things to say, go, I have a S#itload of space on the server! 🙂
I agree that the Ding factor of D&D is a HUGE motivator that is hard to ignore.
You may prefer to look at level based games where the crunch of going up levels is lessened. 4e is making it ‘worse’…. Whereas A D&D wasn’t so much about leveling up goodies.
Getting “experience” is the essence of roleplaying games anyways. My first experience outside of playing D&D was Deadlands. Anyone remember that? (Spaghetti Western…with Meat!) It had one of the most unique non-combat systems out there, but I still wanted to get into combat. Like Michael said, roleplaying doesn’t need rules. Combat needs rules. People who say that D&D is all about combat have never played in MY game. My players are more hooked into the story I tell than anything else.
-gazza-
Oh I can definitely see the ding issue happening. It has happened in some (but not all) of my D&D games.
I usually start my party out at first ore second level, but the low level experience curve doesn’t particularly follow the book anyway. Up through 4-5th level my players usually level once per adventure, mostly because a low level party can take on challenges that are a lot tougher than advertised in the DMG. (I find that, if you avoid bruisers, a party of 4 1st level PCs can handily deal with repeated EL 3 encounters. A 2nd level priest with half a dozen human skeleton minions is threatening but not overwhelming for a balanced party and is worth 900 XP. An infected wererat with 3 dire rat minions is a tough fight for first level characters, but not overwhelming. Same EL and XP as the priest. Same with a medium monstrous spider and a colony of tiny ones.
How important the get to the next batch of goodies thing is really depends on the GM and the group’s play style. As long as treasure is allocated evenly throughout a level, it acts as a pretty solid character progression tool. If they are fully engaged with the campaign get tot the next plot coupon or next stage of the party’s master plan can be hugely more important to the players than the next power increment.
Banned primary casters? Interesting. I’ve always seen them as the most level independent characters interesting power wise, at least wizards and priests. A wizard can always learn a new spell, giving him a new shiny to play with each adventure, and priests can research new spells doing the same.
5-6 is definitely where a lot of character classes hit their definitive early powers. Fireball/Lightning Bolt/Fly for the arcane primaries, Improved Uncanny Dodge for the barbarian, cool spells for the priest, wild shape for the druid, Weapon Specialization plus the third feat in most of the feat progressions for the fighter, second combat style feat for both monk and ranger, the paladin’s
pokemoner horse, 3d6 sneak and +8 skill bonuses for the rogue, so yeah, that’s distinctly where they start doing their ooh cool thing.That said, if the party works together and pools their resources, 2nd level gives a great deal of durability. (I usually try to get my party to buy a wand of cure light wounds as soon as we have 750 gp between us.)
Heh, a 6th level human fighter can have EWP Bastard Sword, Weapon Focus Bastard Sword, Monkey Grip, Power Attack, Oversized Two Weapon Fighting, Weapon Specialization Bastard Sword, and Cleave. Add a pair of Large Masterwork Bastard Swords, and that is 2 2d8 attacks at -2 to hit (so like a ranger) and one at -7
@Michael: The thing is, some people over here will read your last paragraph and will say in disgust ‘That’s why I hate D&D’…. It truly is made for tactical combat and players are strongly motivated to make all their choices toward optimized combat.
Just look at all those sourcebooks you have with feats you will never take because they just aren’t worth taking vs an optimized combat feat.
Heck, I once discussed with Yan that I’d consider separating feats in 2 power categories. The tier one feats (ex: Power attack) would be gained with leveling ups. Tier 2 feats (ex: Skill Focus) would be obtained by giving your PCs minor disadvantages (like Gurps and other point based systems) and maybe as Role Playing ‘growth’ rewards.
Michael: D&D certainly rewards combat with experience. In my opinion, the more important reward is that D&D combat is fun. That most character building is also geared towards abilities useful in combat doesn’t dilute the effect.
To whoever said so: There is nothing inherent in combat or social situations or whatever that forces dealing with one in huge mechanical detail and makes dealing with the other in the same way unacceptable. It it mostly a habit (enforced by a significant majority of rpg rules).
Tommi’s last blog post..Rules as toys
Oh gods, keep the “tier 2” feats on the regular feat path. Here’s a quick and dirty build off the top of my head:
Elite Array, 15 Cha
Half Elf
Bard 6
Bonus Ability Point in Cha (Cha 16)
9 skill points in Perform
9 Skill points in Diplomacy
5 in Bluff
5 in Sense Motive
5 in knowledge nobility
Skill Focus Diplomacy
Skill Focus Perform
Negotiator
That is, naked, a 25 point bonus on diplomacy checks. A couple of pieces of cheap equipment, a casting of Eagle’s Splendor, and you have a +30 on your diplomacy checks. Put the rest of your skill points into languages and you’ll never have to fight a sentient opponent again.
Again that is at 6. A 6th level bard can have a 50% chance of making a DC 40 check.
They also have a base save vs their music abilities of 15+1d20 at that point.
Chatty hides from the mean old Min Maxer and cries himself to sleep
🙂
Okay, Skill focus was a bad choice… but there is a clear imbalance of feat powers that cries for a scaling of their ‘costs’.
I didn’t build that one. I had a guy run that in one of my campaigns.
Diplomacy is special though. It gets 6 points of synergy bonus. It is a lot harder to get the other skills up to the same insane levels as early. Perform is a nasty one for a bard to pump up.
But yeah, the fact that he can eat the 10 point penalty on a rushed Diplomacy check is sort of ill making.
Yeah, and the best part? He can do that with Bluff alongside it, and in a couple levels he gets the spell Glibness. An additional +30 on bluff checks, on top of all that! Fun!
Actually, thanks to Weapon Focus and Spec, they end up being:
Two 2d8+2 attacks at -1 and one at -6.
Also, you don’t need Monkey Grip, though you do need the Two Weapon Fighting feat, so the number of feats stays the same.
Man, what is everybody’s beef with 1st level characters? Did you all have mean DM’s that bored the crap out of you or out right killed you? 1st level is tough to DM with interesting encounters, but isn’t that what the game is about? Challenge? Avoid the crap, a man can be just as scary as any monster, use your damned imagination! 1st level is where you meet NPC’s and world heroes, not that you NPC 5th level Ranger should take over fights, but they can assist with the little parts . . . like holding back the undead horde while the PC’s go get their evil master. 1st level characters are tougher then what you’re giving them credit for. PC’s always have the advantage of being completely unpredictable, while NPC’s are typically stagnant and only have one strategy, and since they are evil this strategy is usually based on power.
True, if your strategy as a player, is always “kill them all” with a frontal assault every encounter, then you and your party are going to get slaughtered, but that goes for high level characters too.
I know that lots of you use modules, I honestly have found very few modules that were all that good! They are usually based on crunch and have very little story to them. They are one shot deals with very little impact on the characters, and after you beat them, then it’s over. If you don’t have enough goals or enough story to distract you from the crunch of the game, you are going to focus entirely on rewards instead of enjoying your new found power, and start seeing your character as nothing but a bunch of numbers.
Not that all modules are bad! I use them here and there, preferring the ones with four or five separate mini adventures. And as learning tools . . . well, you absolutely can’t beat modules for teaching a DM how to learn the craft.
I’m not over combat heavy, but in order to have a story worth telling, you must have conflict! Violence is important, not just for XP, but as a tool to furthering your story. Nobody wants to play a game about Tarnis who drove all of the bunnies out of the kings garden and lived happily ever after. Or the Barbarian Bur whose mortal enemy is bread that sticks to the roof your your mouth. Judges make boring player characters, but the officers that enforce the law are anything but boring.
You hear people complain all the time that there is too much violence in entertainment, however unless you are 3-years-old, or have one, then you are never going to see a touching story about a boy and his horse. God forbid that entertainment devolves into that! Violence is interesting, that’s just the way it is.
-RIP
Ripper X’s last blog post..Mining the Unearth Arcana
-Graham|ve4grm-
Bluff comes close, but it falls behind in bonuses. Bluff doesn’t have any synergies and Half Elf only gives a bonus to Sense Motive and Diplomacy, so out the gate it is 8 points behind diplomacy. (Bluff ends up competing with perform.)
I screwed up the build as listed, but it still does need monkey grip. Drop cleave for 2 weapon fighting. Those bastard swords are sized for Ogres. The penalties are:
-2 to hit for the larger weapons
-2 to hit on each hand for two weapons (adjusted by oversized 2 weapon fighting)
the bonuses are:
+1 to hit for weapon focus
+1 to hit for masterwork
for a total of -2 to hit on each weapon.
I did leave out the specialization’s extra damage as well.
To bring it to an obscene amount of damage though, make it a 10th level build, a natural werebear/Human fighter 1.
Monkey Grip
2 Weapon Fighting
Oversized 2 Weapon Fighting
Exotic Weapon Proficiency Bastard Sword.
In hybrid form, the werebear can wield a pair of Bastard Swords sized for a Huge creature. That’s 3d6 damage each
BaB is low, but the 16 bonus strength points help out a lot.
I think the werebear human should actually get an extra feat since lycanthrope is a template and the base creature in this case is human, so this isn’t necessarily a fighter build.
Or the Ogre Chain Fighter
Ogre/Fighter 4
EWP Spiked Chain
Monkey Grip
Combat Reflexes
Dodge
Mobility
Spring Attack
3d6 damage, 20 foot reach, threatens every square within reach with a huge sized spike chain.
@Rip: Mechanically speaking, straight up 1st level characters suck in D&D.
They miss attacks, can’t be stealthy and fail to hear a bee that enters their ears.
Much like you can Roleplay without roleplaying rules, you can make interesting adventures by not focusing on the crunch of 1st level PCs.
I didn’t mind so much because I would choose cool pre-written adventures that featured weird low-level monsters and interesting NPCs.
Then I discovered Iron Heroes and saw just how damn competent a 1st level character could be made with a few tweaks of the rules.
I never want to play a 1st level 3,5 game ever unless I house rule it with Iron Heroes’s skill system.
@Michael: You my friend are quite the crunch minion! The Crunch Overlord is pleased!
-Ripper- I hear you. I like first level play. It seldom lasts long because the PCs are tough little buggers especially when working in coordinated groups. On the other hand, I seldom bring out my strong NPCs until the party is of a level where, working together, they could take out a given NPC. Not because I want my party to go slaughter NPCs, but because I don’t want the game to suffer from “a 10th level wizard vampire in every shop” syndrome.
-chatty- The original build on the werebear assumed the human bonus feat and was for a pseudo-pacifist Paladin. His goal was to be so damned scary that the only people who would fight him were the irredeemable. He was absolute death to supernatural evil, but mortal evil was stopped and he attempted to show them the error of their choices. He was a physical demonstration of the wages of sin in the material world.
Are you trying to crash my brain by weaving both Fluff and Crunch at the same time? 🙂
Well played… 🙂
-chatty- Heh I write back stories for my warhammer 40k armies. The crunch always walks hand in hand with the fluff.
2e 1st lvl characters are a lot of fun! 3.5 might have changed this, I think that systems tend to forget about low level characters, which is a shame. You do have to pull your punches when dealing with them, but it takes a lot of moxy to have 8 hp, and still have the guts to tell a 6th level Bandit boss, “NO! I’ll not let you do this!”
THAT is heroic! More heroic then a 10th level Fighter who never misses and always inflicts double damage on any roll higher then a 4 chopping the head of a dragon off with on swing of his ax.
To me, being a hero is to know that you might die by entering a given fight, but you do it anyway because you believe in yourself and your cause. This should be rewarded! And in my games, you are. If you are a fighter, it only takes 16,000 XP to get to 5th level, this is not a lot. About 3 or 4 games, but in these 3 or 4 games the characters are really challanged to use their minds, and rely on what the character himself is telling the player.
“If we enter combat with this two-headed ogre, you might not make it.”
“It’s okay, that thing ate my sister, I’ll have my vengeance or die trying, I’m ready.”
As a DM you just have to remember that your evil NPC’s are going to grossly underestimate their skills, and their ego will be their ultimate undoing. That and completely ignore some of your rolls. It’s like playing tennis with royalty, you don’t want to win, but you don’t make it obvious that you are trying to lose either.
Again, this may not be possible under the 3.5 rules. The more I learn about them the more I dislike them. Hopefully 4e will give the lower levels some attention that they richly deserve. There is just something extremely gratifying for a player to boast that they have played their 16th level characters from 1st level.
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-Ripper- in the Rules as Written, the 3.0/3.5 starting PCs are actually a lot tougher than the 2nd edition characters.
Additionally, when “and completely ignore some of your rolls” is part of the criteria for making it enjoyable, it doesn’t matter what system you use.
This I believe: If you fudge rolls, you are using a game that does not suit your actual style of play. (Playing a perfectly fitting game and not fudging may not be easy, and would require something of a shift in GM’ing style, though.)
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Hah, so far my low end group has edged death so much.
Using 2e, the only reason we survive is high cons, I am not sure how it works without house rules though. we rule verses our con to stay up and in the fight when we go below 0, though its some thing to get a 1 on the roll and have the DM tell you that you must have ALSO pee’d your pants while going down… flop.
Also seeing that our level rate is soo slow… my group has been playing for more then half a year, and I am still level 4… I’d be 5 if it wasn’t for a level drain… bah.
The highest level in the group, of such I am kinda glad though, is our clerics, they some how managed to convert the goblins we saved…