This British Hero thing seems to be an example of cherry picking. The good at a few specific things type hero was the general hero for much of the world (America and UK included) for most of history, with notable exceptions popping up everywhere. Late-20th/21st century popular cinema has slowly morphed into a celebration of omnicompetent protagonists, and that particular medium has been unarguably over-dominated by the US (although I expect China and India to both outsize the US in that field before most of us lay down our trophies).

Pertaining to D&D, rumors of vast differences in these fundamental trends in the game between old and new styles of play are vastly overstated. There have been players who want their characters to be special (and yes intra-party backstabbing) since time immemorial, and the system will still kill you if you don't act as a team. Same as it ever was.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1069517What you describe as "British heroes" do not really interest me, but that's probably also because I don't tend to like much that is identified as British (like Dr. Who, which I can't stand).

Nothing to do with the discussion, but I found it very entertaining that you compared not liking British (defined in this case as ordinary 3d6 in order) heroes to Doctor Who.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1066672Take a look at the DnD tag on twitter and all you'll see is hipster kids showing off drawings of their totally non-human orange or red or blue or purple thing, which they'll call 'my boi' or 'this cutie' or whatever, to the point where you wonder whether the fuck they've ever had them inside a dungeon or their whole campaign is just about the characters eating cake while complaining about the patriarchy.

So what do you think about modern D&D having all these kids playing tieflings, aasimar, genasi, tabaxi, dragonborn etc.?

Is it 'special snowflakeism'? Does it let them show off their (mostly imagined) non-conformity by all doing the exact same thing?

But is it basically harmless? Does it add to the game? or make it worse?

Honestly, I was never a fan of those cutsie Tolkien races in first place. So if those are losing space for something more huh... weird and exotic, I'm all for it.

My ideal set of playable races would be something with Beholders, Githyanki, Lieches and Mariliths (is this the correct name? The hindu fiend-woman with 6 arms and a snake lower body?).

Edit: this one in the arms of the flame dude (which would also be welcome in my party):

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3104[/ATTACH]

Quote from: Pat;1069580Nothing to do with the discussion, but I found it very entertaining that you compared not liking British (defined in this case as ordinary 3d6 in order) heroes to Doctor Who.

If you look a little closer at my statement, I noted that I don't like British heroes and I also don't like Dr. Who (given in my statement as another example of something British that I do not like). I'm under no illusions that Dr. Who is an "ordinary" individual, but his companions probably are.

You don't like Beowulf?  A British hero, or an Anglo-Saxon hero.  Also an extraordinary hero.

Odysseus, a Greek Hero, was an ordinary man.  Clever, but ordinary.  I don't think attaching nationality to the hero types is very helpful.  One can always find exceptions.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1069551...Remember that in order of importance to the success of a game session it's: people, snacks, setting and system. This doesn't mean that the system doesn't matter, only that the other things are more important.

I agree.  And for all of the people to enjoy the evening, all of their PCs must matter somehow.  This does not mean super ability scores.   I liked that in the original game, ability scores did not mean all that much.  ( The DM was supposed to roll them, too.  Thing which was ignored, universally, I think.)

...And that the snacks do not include Mountain Dew or Cheetos.   If that stuff shows up at the game, I swear that I'll roll up the CE thief.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1069591If you look a little closer at my statement, I noted that I don't like British heroes and I also don't like Dr. Who (given in my statement as another example of something British that I do not like). I'm under no illusions that Dr. Who is an "ordinary" individual, but his companions probably are.

If you'll look a littler closer at my statement, you'll see I realized that. In fact, that was kind of the point.

Quote from: Franky;1069608You don't like Beowulf?  A British hero, or an Anglo-Saxon hero.  Also an extraordinary hero.

Odysseus, a Greek Hero, was an ordinary man.  Clever, but ordinary.

Uh, wasn't the way he proved that he was really Odysseus after his 10 year journal was to string a bow that only he could, because of his strength?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1069631Uh, wasn't the way he proved that he was really Odysseus after his 10 year journal was to string a bow that only he could, because of his strength?

Yep and then he flawlessly fired the near-impossible shot through the row of axe-heads right before he killed every mutherfucker in the room. The guy was totally a badass and not in any way an everyman hero.

Quote from: Pat;1069630If you'll look a littler closer at my statement, you'll see I realized that. In fact, that was kind of the point.

OK. Sorry then; I must have misread.

Odysseus was also a king, so by definition not an "ordinary man".

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1069510On the contrary. I find the characters with the good stats got killed, and those with shitty stats survived. Why? Because if they had good stats the players were careless with them, if they had shitty stats they played smart.

I had exactly the opposite experience; if they rolled good stats, players were very cautious with them, and if they had bad stats then they were reckless (in some cases trying to get the character out of the way quickly to get new rolls with another). (But it was also the nature of early 3d6 in order D&D that characters often died or survived independently of the quality of the players' efforts.)

Add in that once raise dead was something a player character cleric could cast, a very high constitution gave a character a much better chance of surviving (as long as a TPK or an unresurrectable death were avoided). The one character I ever had with an 18 retired at 14th level; it was in constitution.

Of course, you may have had DMs who tried to kill characters with good stats to prove their own theories about how bad stats were actually better. It doesn't make the idea correct.

Quote from: rawma;1069681Of course, you may have had DMs who tried to kill characters with good stats to prove their own theories about how bad stats were actually better. It doesn't make the idea correct.

Personal experience has shown me that those who claim to 'old school' DM's are notorious for this.  They often also seem to have ego issue with their players not really caring about D&D, so character deaths are meaningless to them.

I'm cool with weird races...but only if they add to the game as characters/cultures, not just another set of kewl powerz.

Quote from: rawma;1069681I had exactly the opposite experience; if they rolled good stats, players were very cautious with them, and if they had bad stats then they were reckless (in some cases trying to get the character out of the way quickly to get new rolls with another). (But it was also the nature of early 3d6 in order D&D that characters often died or survived independently of the quality of the players' efforts.)

Add in that once raise dead was something a player character cleric could cast, a very high constitution gave a character a much better chance of surviving (as long as a TPK or an unresurrectable death were avoided). The one character I ever had with an 18 retired at 14th level; it was in constitution.

Of course, you may have had DMs who tried to kill characters with good stats to prove their own theories about how bad stats were actually better. It doesn't make the idea correct.

Same. You roll crap stats, you try to get rid of your character as quickly as possible for another chance to get a better one.

Quote from: rawma;1069681I had exactly the opposite experience; if they rolled good stats, players were very cautious with them, and if they had bad stats then they were reckless (in some cases trying to get the character out of the way quickly to get new rolls with another). (But it was also the nature of early 3d6 in order D&D that characters often died or survived independently of the quality of the players' efforts.)

Quote from: Kiero;1069714Same. You roll crap stats, you try to get rid of your character as quickly as possible for another chance to get a better one.

These mirror my experiences as well, which is why I brought it up in the first place. Unless your GM has it out for you, you'll eventually end up with an above average character just by laws of attrition and once you had one, you were pretty careful with it (Generally speaking, my experience was that if you could make it to about level 4-5 with an above average character you'd have enough hit points and other goodies to be able to survive most things if your party was just careful about when they chose to fight).

Character funnels, roll more dice/re-roll 1's, point buy and arrays are just ways to speed up that process. Point buy and arrays are the ones that are most efficient for cutting out the intervening steps to reaching a competent PC while also removing the prospect of an unlikely (but possible) set of dice rolls producing an omni-competent PC.

My preference is for arrays over point-buy though because it takes out the min-max aspect of leveraging the points (ex. even ability scores being better in all WotC-era D&D games) and forces you to consider which aspects of your character are only average (or even below average) and, because suiciding to get another shot at the random number generator isn't going to actually produce a better quality PC, there is no incentive to not just play your character smart/cautious like a real person would behave when going down into a monster infested death trap.

There's no siren's call of "If I flub this ridiculous risk I might get a better PC to replace them so its Win-Win to do this thing no sane person would ever attempt" with point-buy or arrays.

There's also no PCs who are so incompetent the only safe thing for a real band of adventurers to do would be to leave that PC behind so the idiotic clumsy weakling doesn't get you all killed (another reason why Kender should always be banned as a PC race... because no sane adventuring party should ever be taking one someplace where touching the wrong thing could set off a deathtrap and kill you all) but that you HAVE to take with you because they're a PC.

And there's no GMs pet who magically rolled straight 18's, upper upper social class, maximum starting wealth and scored major psionics on the random roll for that too... HONEST.

You just have a group of competent PCs who are each good at what they do, but still have gaps where they'll need to rely on other PCs to fill if they hope to be successful.

That's why Arrays are always a win in my book.

As an added bonus, if you really want to run an "everyone is average" type game the GM can always just use a different array (ex. 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, that gets exactly the type of PCs he wants.