Quote from: MGuy;589537Isn't "lack of choice" something people were saying was good about older editions?

Well skipping that, I don't know that you can't make a character that is bad at combat in 4E. I made a paladin when I tried it out and I was pretty damn useless. Honestly if it weren't for the GM choosing to have enemies attack me for what was in my opinion no good reason (when there were better, more effective targets) I'm fairly sure that my character would have been COMPLETELY ineffective.

Edition stuff aside neither of those things are likely to happen. In fact making Craft: Woven Basket free makes it a more attractive option because you can get it without taking a hit to your character's overall effectiveness and add fluff to your character that may/may not come up. The second thing is almost an impossibility because "Diplomacy"is one of dem good skills and still would go by the same normal costs.

No we said there isn't enough customisation potential in older editions to make a truly gimped character. we didn't say if that was good or bad just that you can't do it.

The basic break here is a playstyle one.
You think that a good game creates characters who are all competant in their chosen niche and can contribute fully to the scenario. You also seem to believe that a game like D&D has a narrow number of scenarios and that most of those will involve in some form killing things and taking their stuff. You see it as a duty of each player to create a character that can pull their weight in the presumed game paradigm. Right so far?

Mr CG thinks that he is awesome and that he is the best roleplayer because he can find the best rules exploit to create the most optimised chanracter in terms of the predicated game paradigm. I suspect he regards taking suboptimal choices either in char gen or in play as BAD PLAY. So Mr GC thinks that 3.5 is the shit because there are lots of rules on character gen so more chances for optimisation.

Both of these are just playstyle choices.
I think that in fact as its a roleplaying game taking suboptimal choices due to roleplay reasons is good roleplay even if it results in a TPK. I also think that a game that allows you to create characters of each class that are well balanced for a particualr game paradignm is a good one, but I don't want the game to actively preclude me from making suboptimal choices if I want to. Not every superhero needs to be superman there is room to have fun playing wonder woman or even Batman.

I can see that you want a perfect system and you are trying to proselytise how that system might look and play but you have to understand that there are entirely other ways of playing from the OSR player skill with minimal input from the character to a heavy roleplaying game.  D&D can cope with all of these types of games. You must realise that and that the people here whatever their personal foibles and sometimes blinkered view on the reality of their favourite games do have favourite games and have had a fucking lot of years to decide what their favourite playstyle is so its unlikely that you pointing out that their math doesn't add up or the game doesn't actually work like that is just going to annoy them. You would be better off trying to see what it is about their favourite style that they enjoy and trying to incorporate that into your homebrew game.
No one isn't going to play a game because the characters are too balanced. People didn't hate 4e because the classes were balanced they hated it  because the classes were the same. Balance doesn't have to do that.

Mr CG is pretty much a hopeless case as he really does regard his playstyle as the pinacle and it's obvious that he has so few social skills that he can't grasp that the person that wins in D&D is the person that everyone likes because they are fun to play with. They are the guys that can always get a game and that is a much better measure of winning than the one that can build a character with the highest DPS.

Quote from: jibbajibba;587840I hate optimisation becuase its highly unrealistic and becuase I love role playing.

So I create a character and if they end up withe lots of points in basket weaving then so be it, if they for example come from a long line of basket weavers.

No problem with that. You have to have options. Options enable roleplay. Roleplay is good.

Now deliberately optimising basket weaving is just as faux as deliberately optimising everything but spending enough points to be a master weaver that is fine.

I dislike 'professional adventures' far more than I dislike basket weavers, plumbers, horse salesman and egyptology professors.

I ran a Zombipocalypse game one shot where the PCs were all workers on a tube train. I used a modded oWoD system. Each PC rolled a job. We had 2 office workers, a plumber and a teacher. They created their PCs as realistically as they could. The tube (underground train) they were on got caught in a temporal rift, triggerd by an NPC on the carriage, they all wake to find themselves and a handful of others on the crashed train,. Then the Zombies show up.
I didn't tell the players what was coming but there was a definite desire to get the usual combat skills if they could trying to justify it through being in the TA, being an amateur boxer, a martial arts fanatic etc ..
They eventually got the idea and pulled that back to norm levels.

This for the win.

I create characters based on a background story and they get skills accordingly. So if someone was, say, a wage slave in a corporate labor world until he was rescued by the rebellion and joined as a soldier, he might start out with more skills in various fields of work than combat, he's just beginning his combat career. Hey, the lower skills are usually developed faster and easier in most systems, so it works out.

I admit basketweaving in itself isn't too useful, but I understand it's being used as an example.

Quote from: jibbajibba;589550Mr CG is pretty much a hopeless case as he really does regard his playstyle as the pinacle and it's obvious that he has so few social skills that he can't grasp that the person that wins in D&D is the person that everyone likes because they are fun to play with. They are the guys that can always get a game and that is a much better measure of winning than the one that can build a character with the highest DPS.

As I mentioned before, this 'BaDaSs HARDCOREZ D+D PLAYA' crap is a self-delusional ego shield.  RPGs have a referee of some kind; DM, GM, Storyteller, Hollyhock God(ess), whatever.  Therefore, all RPGs of every stripe include some kind of social contract and negotiation between the participants.  Every single one.  Pretending this is some bizarre artefact of Vintage Games is utterly stupid.  GMs in modern games are not shackled to the rules any more than in older games, and it is delusional to think they are.

And internet tough-guy players just love using oral sex metaphors to denigrate a style that isn't as HARDCORE as theirs.  So, while they are fellating the DM with maths, they want to laugh at point at other players that are fellating the DM with prose, because that is clearly how retards play.  Except they get a money shot in the eye when they start pointing.

So before we start presenting 'arguments' for the basket weaving style of play as though the HARDCORE PLAYA's points have even the slightest amount of merit, let's remember that 'sword weavers' get a hot load in the mouth no differently.  To paraphrase their favourite prancing tune:

All night long, the whining drones.
All night long, the tough guy moans
for a warm, mother-like DM,
who'll hide the math that coddles him,
 Fellatio!

Or, probably the better idea is to dispense with this junior high bullshit using homophobic undertones and engage in actual discussion.

There has not been presented so much as one example from any game that isn't D&D 3.5 where this kind of skill selection is even a slight problem.  In fact, the only kind of D&D 3.5 games where this is a problem are the ones that are played like a board game recreation of WoW using skills, feats and other character sheet information exclusively to resolve every single action.  The only time a non-combat skill is pointless is when there are zero non-combat activities.

To put it in general terms:  Only worthless players complain about worthless game elements.

Rage all you want about 'basket-weavers' or 'gimped characters', just don't forget that 'mother may I' with numbers is still 'mother may I'.

I am an active member of a raiding guild in World of Warcraft.  If I want to scratch the itch that GC goes on about, then I will either log into the game, watch raid/dungeon videos at YouTube, or I will read the latest threads about my main's class and spec at Elitist Jerks.  World of Warcraft is a good enough venue for this sort of thing, once you get to the level cap, and that's where I see a lot of GC's attitude taken as quite acceptable.  Given that there's really no role-playing in WOW, I can tolerate that.

Why the fuckity-fuck-fuck-McFuck would you want to do that to a tabletop role-playing game?  This is not Arhkam Horror, Descent or (Advanced) Heroquest.  It's something else from MMORPGs and boardgames, and reducing it to that not only points out why those other media are superior outlets for such preferences it also demonstrates that one simply does not comprehend what this medium is actually good at doing.  (It's not good at competitive gaming- no really, that's why the Raid/PVP Scene in MMOs, CCGs in general, and boardgames stole so many such folks away.)

There's nothing to win here.  Being "hardcore" or "competitive" really means that you're a pathetic shit of a man; that attitude is, simply put, not okay.  It's not that I can't fathom the paradigm either; it's that the end result is one where you end up a Bitter Non-Gamer because no one sane will play with you, and as TRPGs are very much a game dependent entirely upon being connected to the social network of users being cut off for being a big dick about this stuff being shunned actually is an effective punishment.

Speaking of shunning...

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;589614I am an active member of a raiding guild in World of Warcraft.  If I want to scratch the itch that GC goes on about, then I will either log into the game, watch raid/dungeon videos at YouTube, or I will read the latest threads about my main's class and spec at Elitist Jerks.  World of Warcraft is a good enough venue for this sort of thing, once you get to the level cap, and that's where I see a lot of GC's attitude taken as quite acceptable.  Given that there's really no role-playing in WOW, I can tolerate that.

Why the fuckity-fuck-fuck-McFuck would you want to do that to a tabletop role-playing game?  This is not Arhkam Horror, Descent or (Advanced) Heroquest.  It's something else from MMORPGs and boardgames, and reducing it to that not only points out why those other media are superior outlets for such preferences it also demonstrates that one simply does not comprehend what this medium is actually good at doing.  (It's not good at competitive gaming- no really, that's why the Raid/PVP Scene in MMOs, CCGs in general, and boardgames stole so many such folks away.)

There's nothing to win here.  Being "hardcore" or "competitive" really means that you're a pathetic shit of a man; that attitude is, simply put, not okay.  It's not that I can't fathom the paradigm either; it's that the end result is one where you end up a Bitter Non-Gamer because no one sane will play with you, and as TRPGs are very much a game dependent entirely upon being connected to the social network of users being cut off for being a big dick about this stuff being shunned actually is an effective punishment.

Speaking of shunning...

If you wanted to bring up competitive games you'd bring up the relevant ones. You know, the skill based ones, not just pass gear check to win.

That said, you're right that outside of tabletop people are much less stupid about effective play as they don't have these bizarre blocks against it. But that's the only thing you were right about.

In order to continue with your whole making effective D&D characters is stupid spiel you must first explain why any real person would not choose to be good at a job that has a high chance of killing them and yet continue doing that job. As you will be unable to do so, and roleplaying is about portraying a fictional character as if they are a real person, you must then accept that real roleplaying is optimizing.

You will not do this, as that'd require you to make sense and admit that I am right.

At least you're not going on some spiel about playing the actual game instead of whining that D&D is too hard and you'd rather play pretend is also blowing the DM.

That said, I have players to play with. The problem is the good ones are so extremely rare.

Mr GC real people are not optimized. They dont focus on training for a single profession their whole life. They pick up basket weaving skills here or there. Even someone like a soldier or pro athlete likely had some interests outside their chosen profession. Plus peopke make 'suboptimal' decisions all the time for a host of reasons.

Real people try to be effective at what they do. But real people also have flaws and deal with a much more clouded reality because they cant metagame like a player does.

I would just add people who are bad at their occupations (even dangerous ones) stick to it out of passion all the time. I have met plenty of not so great cops, untalented boxers, sucky extreme sports nuts, awful fisherman etc. They do it because they like it. Some even overcome a lack of talent and get better.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;589627I would just add people who are bad at their occupations (even dangerous ones) stick to it out of passion all the time. I have met plenty of not so great cops, untalented boxers, sucky extreme sports nuts, awful fisherman etc. They do it because they like it. Some even overcome a lack of talent and get better.

Bad boxers at worst get knocked the fuck out. Fishermen don't get eaten by fish if they're bad at fishing. Even stuff like cops... a bad cop is going to be put on something like checking meters (the adventure equivalent of rat farming) in an attempt to protect them from themselves.

The whole skills argument is irrelevant because as I mentioned before skills are a different resource pool than effectiveness anyways and therefore all skills might as well be literal basket weaving.

Bad boxers at worst can die. It is rare but happens (even in the amateurs).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;589634Bad boxers at worst can die. It is rare but happens (even in the amateurs).

The chances are near 0 though. Whereas a bad adventurer gets laid out and that means he's dead in the best case scenario. More likely he ends up an undead minion/having his soul eaten/etc.

Quote from: Mr. GC;589639The chances are near 0 though. Whereas a bad adventurer gets laid out and that means he's dead in the best case scenario. More likely he ends up an undead minion/having his soul eaten/etc.

Hehe, you are funny.  Despite the unaldulterated fact that the adventurer's relative chance of death is derived from whatever the DM wants it to be, you keep arguing that a player's skill in character creation and utilization of character resources is paramount.  You are a fun guy.  

Quote from: Old One Eye;589640Hehe, you are funny.  Despite the unaldulterated fact that the adventurer's relative chance of death is derived from whatever the DM wants it to be, you keep arguing that a player's skill in character creation and utilization of character resources is paramount.  You are a fun guy.  

I'm going to pretend this isn't a one liner fuck you type post.

Even normal enemies have a very high chance of killing such characters, so it doesn't matter.

And so it makes a big difference if you're a badly played Rogue or a well played Wizard.

Quote from: Mr. GC;589639The chances are near 0 though. Whereas a bad adventurer gets laid out and that means he's dead in the best case scenario. More likely he ends up an undead minion/having his soul eaten/etc.

It is non-zero chance of dying, which you always say matters so much.

Since we are limited to real world analogs they will have to do. Fisherman and cops are two of the most dangerous professions. There are bad fisherman and cops. People dont always get into professions they have a natural aptitude for. Boxer is also up there in terms of sheer physical punishment and damage. Yet guys stay in boxing for years as tomato cans because they either love the sport or are desperate for cash.

Look at criminal professions. There are criminals who would have been better off taking another 'class' or entering a different profession, but for money, desperation and/or love of the lifestyle they choose to be criminals.

Real people are not optimized.

Mr GC, I have a question for you.  

When you play, do you ever speak as your character?  Do people you play with ever speak in their first person character's voice.  No, I'm not talking about speaking in a funny voice or a fake accent or anything.  I'm just talking about saying the words that your character would be saying like it was an improvised skit.    

Is that part of a RPG to you?  Or since it has no bearing on killing monsters, does it have no place in your game?  Is portraying a character just non-mechanical basket weaving according to your definition?

Quote from: Gabriel2;589645Mr GC, I have a question for you.  

When you play, do you ever speak as your character?  Do people you play with ever speak in their first person character's voice.  No, I'm not talking about speaking in a funny voice or a fake accent or anything.  I'm just talking about saying the words that your character would be saying like it was an improvised skit.    

Is that part of a RPG to you?  Or since it has no bearing on killing monsters, does it have no place in your game?  Is portraying a character just non-mechanical basket weaving according to your definition?

Is this a serious question? I'm going to assume it is even though I am fairly certain it is not.

My stance has always been that optimization promotes roleplay so I'm not sure why you'd think I didn't do both but yes I do end up doing both.