Quote from: KindaMeh on September 28, 2022, 10:24:33 PM
And again, some people like minmax and particular race+class archetypes. It's not badwrongfun, and again there are reasons why a system that allows for the possibility of minmax can be preferable, on the basis of allowing meaningful specialization and choices. I'm not a fan of bad balance or having a brainlessly obvious one true build, but to be fair, neither are most minmax theorycrafters in my experience.

One can have meaningful specialization and choices without having deliberately bad balance.

Obviously, everyone has their own preferences.

I just don't prefer a system to deliberately set up some race-class combos as more powerful than others. I appreciate tactics and system mastery after play begins, but I don't want character design to be a game where some players win and get more powerful characters by selecting the right choices. Perfect balance is impossible, but deliberately unbalancing things to make some options better than others is a bad choice to me.

What some people are claiming in other threads is that not liking racial ability adjustments is destroying the game and makes all races into grey goo - which I don't think is the case, based on years of playing Fantasy HERO and other systems without such mechanics.

Quote from: jhkim on September 29, 2022, 03:36:21 PM

Quote from: KindaMeh on September 28, 2022, 10:24:33 PM
And again, some people like minmax and particular race+class archetypes. It's not badwrongfun, and again there are reasons why a system that allows for the possibility of minmax can be preferable, on the basis of allowing meaningful specialization and choices. I'm not a fan of bad balance or having a brainlessly obvious one true build, but to be fair, neither are most minmax theorycrafters in my experience.

One can have meaningful specialization and choices without having deliberately bad balance.

Obviously, everyone has their own preferences.

I just don't prefer a system to deliberately set up some race-class combos as more powerful than others. I appreciate tactics and system mastery after play begins, but I don't want character design to be a game where some players win and get more powerful characters by selecting the right choices. Perfect balance is impossible, but deliberately unbalancing things to make some options better than others is a bad choice to me.

Agreed. Like I've said before, I don't even have an issue with min-maxing. My issue with racial modifiers is that it promotes the wrong kind of min-maxing, by locking you into specific race-class combinations to achieve optimal builds. And these combinations don't always even help reinforce racial archetypes, cuz in the case of elves, for example, their ability modifiers incentivize Rogues and other Dex-based builds, which doesn't promote making mages, which is the elf's actual favored class.

Quote
What some people are claiming in other threads is that not liking racial ability adjustments is destroying the game and makes all races into grey goo - which I don't think is the case, based on years of playing Fantasy HERO and other systems without such mechanics.

Yeah, I'm at the point where I think people are just making a mount out of an anthill over this. They just see that the rationale for getting rid of racial ability modifiers is political BS (which I agree it is), so they focus on that without looking at the actual impact of this specific change—which is negligible—or look at the rest of the changes, which do still reinforce racial archetypes regardless, just not through ability modifiers specifically.

Quote from: jhkim on September 29, 2022, 03:36:21 PM

Quote from: KindaMeh on September 28, 2022, 10:24:33 PM
And again, some people like minmax and particular race+class archetypes. It's not badwrongfun, and again there are reasons why a system that allows for the possibility of minmax can be preferable, on the basis of allowing meaningful specialization and choices. I'm not a fan of bad balance or having a brainlessly obvious one true build, but to be fair, neither are most minmax theorycrafters in my experience.

One can have meaningful specialization and choices without having deliberately bad balance.

Obviously, everyone has their own preferences.

I just don't prefer a system to deliberately set up some race-class combos as more powerful than others. I appreciate tactics and system mastery after play begins, but I don't want character design to be a game where some players win and get more powerful characters by selecting the right choices. Perfect balance is impossible, but deliberately unbalancing things to make some options better than others is a bad choice to me.

What some people are claiming in other threads is that not liking racial ability adjustments is destroying the game and makes all races into grey goo - which I don't think is the case, based on years of playing Fantasy HERO and other systems without such mechanics.

I would not call the balance for races deliberately bad, since few developers, I feel, would do that unless it was to cater along lines that have very little to do with in-game mechanics and reasonable reasoning. If anything, Tasha's messed it up via devaluing floating ability score points and overemphasizing racial traits relative to racial ability modifiers. I personally feel, and am not alone in calculating, that it threw off balance and messed with a mechanical connection to game fluff and lore. Though as a gamer with simulationist preferences who likes build theorycrafting I may perhaps have been more sensitive to such things. Ability modifiers don't do a whole lot in D&D relative to random chance, but they matter enough to be a decision. I dislike taking away decisionmaking that fits the lore and allows not just specialized archetypes but also rebellions against these archetypes that come at some mechanical trade-off. A gnome barbarian is a more flavorful choice, at least in my perspective, when it is a GNOME barbarian.

Likewise, I think that when all choices and combinations are equally good for all specializations, there are no meaningful build differentiations and choices. Complexity and meaningful choice leads inevitably to the possibility that some combinations won't do a particular thing, or will be specialized better for something else entirely, or more balanced or jack-of-all in distribution. Likewise, minmax and build theorycrafting are not the enemy, nor are they intrinsically incorrect ways to play, especially given the many ways in which a given player might choose to specialize.

I agree though that everyone has their own preferences and it is not wrong to prefer species that do not meaningfully differ in lore and mechanics from humans attribute-wise. Or to like point buy or racial qualifying stats or whatever. Though obviously both sides of the community have a right to extol the virtues of their design recommendations. I just felt that this thread was targeting a bit of hostility at mechanical theorycrafters and minmaxers and predicated on the idea that racial attribute modifications objectively encourage min-max as a disease or something, which admittedly was perhaps not the intent. I apologize if I've had my hackles up a bit throughout these threads as a result.

I think you may be misunderstanding Pundit a bit here too if that last bit is a reference to his video thread and you didn't see the part where some folks really do want to do away with meaningful species differences on spurious racial grounds, admittedly with some political and cultural radicalization of the hobby too. I think many only wish to argue for differentiated species options, which in some instances may indeed relate to differing attributes like an ogre's strength, a dwarf's hardiness (high constitution and strength relative to size), an elf's grace (Dexterity) longevity and beauty (an argument for a CHA or APP boost is real), or a fairy's small size and winged flight. So yes, sometimes traits, but also sometimes best expressed through ability modifiers.

It is for these reasons that I've been attempting to push back a little bit on the thread's basic premises, which while leading to some pretty awesome discussion and creative innovation as regards the representation of species just didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

I appreciate, however, your cordial approach to debate both here and more generally. And appreciate you taking the time to respond to my own stated perspectives among others.

Quote from: Wisithir on September 26, 2022, 11:27:20 PM
I think there is a difference between a randomly generated character that might be disposable until the player grows attached to it over time, and a purpose build character designed around a mechanical or narrative feature for a game about how group of adventures accomplished the plot objectives.

The best way to handle different stat distribution for different biology is a per race conversion table. Thus a 10 STR is 10 for a human but 12 for an Orc or 7 for a Halfling, while an 18 might become a 16 for Human, 18 for Orc, and 12 for Halfling or something...

Regardless of how they are generated, all PCs are disposable.

Quote from: Effete on September 27, 2022, 02:05:30 AM
Min-maxing exists no matter which method of ability score generation is used.

3d6, six times, in order. The way the gods intended.

Quote from: dkabq on September 29, 2022, 08:22:20 PM

Quote from: Effete on September 27, 2022, 02:05:30 AM
Min-maxing exists no matter which method of ability score generation is used.

3d6, six times, in order. The way the gods intended.

Unless you also randomize class, race, background, and class progression+feat selection, I don't think so, lol. Have played with 3d6 in order and if anything the low stats in some things and high-ish in others just pushed most folk to have to play a certain class. (Though it could be partly an edition thing.)

Even with all that, I suspect some minmax would emerge just in actual play following creation as folks would naturally seek out gear, minions, wealth and connections that grant their characters a greater chance of success in their endeavors.

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 27, 2022, 10:00:40 AM
The idea that 3d6 in order magically stops minmaxing is ludicrous. A minmaxer will just look for the best race/class combo his rolls will allow and run with that.

It will to some extent in DCC -- no race bonuses. As for picking the class that is maximally benefited by your stats, that feels more going with your strengths (e.g., there is a reason I'm an engineer and not a pro athlete), which I am fine with -- YMMV. That said, in my campaign there have been times when I have told a player what class they are rolling up a PC for (e.g., I will be running an all-cleric adventure in 2023; one of my players did not have a cleric PC; they do now). But then my players have multiple PCs, so it's not like they are stuck playing that one class.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on September 28, 2022, 11:09:31 AM
saying that small characters carry half what the Strength chart says is a trivial problem.

The 5e PHB so nearly did that and then blew it.

QuoteSize and Strength. Larger creatures can bear more weight, whereas Tiny creatures can carry less. For each size category above Medium, double the creature's carrying capacity and the amount it can push, drag, or lift. For a Tiny creature, halve these weights.

All they needed to do was say for each size category below Medium halve the weight. (Tiny is two sizes below medium in their rules.)

However, this is still not too close to our intuitive understanding of size and strength. It's better to relate weight to strength. As a rough rule of thumb, weight and strength vary 1:1 or x:x, whereas height and strength vary x:x³.

For example, your average 5e human is 5'7" tall and can carry about 158lbs (15 x STR.) The average 5e halfling is 3' tall. Judging only by height the average halfling could carry about 1/6th as much. However, halflings aren't typically 1/6th the weight of a human. Using weights, the average human is 165lbs and the average halfling 40lbs, so the average halfling would be carrying about 1/4 the weight of the human. This would lead to a racial STR modifier of about -8 for the halfling. (Even if small creature carrying capacity were halved, it would still imply a -5 STR modifier for the halfling.) For completeness, based on av. weight:

race	av. carry	~STR mod	dice***
human	158	0	3d6
dwarf, hill	143	-1	2d6+1d4
dwarf, mountain	158	0	3d6
elf, high	113	-3	3d4
elf, wood	123	-2	1d6+2d4
elf, drow	96	-4	1d4+1d3+1d2
halfling*	38	-5	2d3+1d2
dragonborn	227	+5	2d10+1d8
gnome*	38	-5	2d3+1d2
half-elf	148	-1	2d6+1d4
half-orc	208	+3	3d8
tiefling	165	+1	1d8+2d6
ogre**	954	+21	1d20+1d12+1d8

* assuming half carrying capacity
** assuming double carrying capacity
*** since some of the modifiers might go out of range it might be better to roll different dice combinations instead

You can see how quickly these numbers go out of range as size / weight change.

I've been hesitating jumping in on this because I actually think it's a crazy easy to answer the concerns expressed in the original post if I understand them correctly. Don't want high STR to funnel players into automatically playing an orc? Then just make sure there are other viable options. Don't want someone playing an orc for the sole reason of squeezing out those extra points of STR? Then make choice of race a package deal of other characteristics that are substantial enough to make sure the player is actually fully invested in playing that race, and not simply interested in just one of its advantages.

And there are already existing, well-known RPGs that do this that a few people here have already alluded to.

And there are also holes that need poking into the original premise. Because if your highest ability is STR and therefore you end up playing a fighter, playing to your strengths actually does not necessarily mean going around doing a lot of strengthing. It means going around doing a lot of fighting. And DEX and CON are undeniably important when it comes to fighting. So it's actually never a given in the first place that *the* way to min-max your fighter means playing an orc to squeeze out some extra strength. Playing a dwarf to squeeze out some extra CON also works from a purely strategic perspective.

But it's the following that I really couldn't let go without comment:

Quote from: jhkim on September 29, 2022, 03:36:21 PM
I just don't prefer a system to deliberately set up some race-class combos as more powerful than others. I appreciate tactics and system mastery after play begins, but I don't want character design to be a game where some players win and get more powerful characters by selecting the right choices. Perfect balance is impossible, but deliberately unbalancing things to make some options better than others is a bad choice to me.

Two things here:

1)
The words "perfect balance" raises flags to me. Sure, you could count beans to make sure the see-saw remains perfectly horizontal. The problem is a gust of wind that blows off one of those beans, of a butterfly that comes to rest on one side or the other can throw off the balance. In other words, this view of balance will never survive contact with actual play.

On the other hand, you can have something like a tri-pod, which stands pretty well, balances pretty well. And the legs don't necessarily be equal. They can be off by a good amount before the balance is compromised. That's a much stronger version of balance. One that can survive contact with actual play. Here, "perfect" is neither necessary (the legs don't need to be the same length) nor sufficient (even if the legs are all exactly equal, if they are all in a co-linear position, it won't yield balance). So whenever "perfect" is uttered, even if to say you'll settle for less, it's not clear to me that the concept of "balance" is even properly understood

2)
Yeah. Maybe you actually do want to intentionally unbalance things. Now that's not necessarily the best way to say it. I am not a fan of the notion of a designer (who I imagine to be picking his nose, and face it, it will be a "he" if this is happening) while saying, "Well, we have 6 attributes, and 6 playable races. That means we can have one race that is the best at each of the 6 attributes." No. On this point, I agree with the original post. I don't want a game where you say, "Oh, your best stat is STR? You should be a half-orc. Oh, your best stat is CHR? It's half-elf for you." I'd say a better way to think about intentional imbalance is that you need to put some stank on it.

By the way, I think this is also the biggest mistake you can make when running a sandbox. When you are so dead set at honoring "player agency" or whatever wanker RPG theory you subscribe to that you obsess at making sure to make all options equally viable, I'd argue you're actually robbing the player of meaningful choice. Most people recognize for choice to have meaning it has to have consequences. But it's also the case that the player must have reason to believe one choice is actually better (however the player views "better") than another. Otherwise, you may as well just flip a coin. And that's not a meaningful choice.

So you do need, in character creation, for there to be paths and advantages and disadvantages that will nudge the player a little here and there. It can't be some elegant balance or symmetry. It needs some stank on it. A game without stank, gamers may jerk off to it all day long, because it may seem so great in theory. It's not going to create the magic in actual play.

In a good RPG, I frequently create cross-type characters. If I'm playing AD&D 1E--and this is certainly the epitome of an RPG with some stank--I'll do a cleric whose highest stat is in STR. Who will take advantage of that awesome armor the class allows and take up a lot of the fighting. Hey, as long as I'm fighting, I'm not blowing my spell slots. So they get saved for when they are most important. But, if I'm playing the class that is only second-rate at fighting, I'm going to need all my min-maxing might to be able to hold my own shoulder-to-shoulder with the fighters in the party. Maybe I do the half-orc cleric/fighter. Automatically begin in mature age category, which is good for +1 to STR and +1 CON on top of the +1 STR and +1 CON for a half orc. That's going to make me start and a friggin awesome fighter. Yeah, the yumans will catch up over time. But by the time that happens, I can always hit them with a hold person if they get to uppity.  110% viable character. Not cookie-cutter at all. Another player might do something else with the same dice rolls. In fact, almost none will do what I described.

QuoteWhat some people are claiming in other threads is that not liking racial ability adjustments is destroying the game and makes all races into grey goo - which I don't think is the case, based on years of playing Fantasy HERO and other systems without such mechanics.

I don't think that's true. I think this lacks context. It's got nothing to do with racial ability adjustments. It has to do with a fatwa against any and all differentiation. You're allowed to have pointy ears. Unless they might be exoticized or some shit. Then you have to be allowed to be a fat, blue-haired elf with an undercut and small, round ears. You know. Because not all elfs. If that's what you're arguing against, racial ability adjustments is a symbol for differentiation that doesn't sound so generic and lifeless and meaningless.

"Stank"?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on October 04, 2022, 10:05:18 PM
"Stank"?

Putting some stank on it means not delivering something clean, tidy, and neat, but rather it's about risk-taking and flair. Mess it up. Make it unique. Give it life. Give it soul. Reality isn't so perfect. So make it real.

It's assinine to quantify character stats and then get upset when player min-max. If you're rolling damage, do you want a +1 or a +2? Do you want to sink the party because you chose to "role play" a dumb wizard?
If a game has obviously better choices then a lot of players are going to make those choices. I have gone against "type" before, for RP sake. (Usually to make a character more amusing than effective) but I try not to be obnoxious or drag the party down too far doing it.

I've never cared about min-maxing once I got my big-boy GM pants on. Just like I chuckle at power-gamers and all the other categories of players out there.

Stats and gear will not cure stupid. People that need to min-max will only leave themselves open in sandbox games for the things that they're not qualified to deal with due to hyperspecialization. Of course if you only run modules and such faire then you might have issues.

Ability scores matter only insofar as the GM feeds those actions. All that should happen is contextualizing what those stats mean in the setting and play accordingly. You can't smash all problems to death with a battle-axe, but feel free to try. If you're running a game where you CAN do those things... then the problem isn't with the player, it's with the GM that incentivizes that kind of play.

Quote from: Lunamancer on September 30, 2022, 12:16:27 AM
Maybe you actually do want to intentionally unbalance things. Now that's not necessarily the best way to say it. I am not a fan of the notion of a designer (who I imagine to be picking his nose, and face it, it will be a "he" if this is happening) while saying, "Well, we have 6 attributes, and 6 playable races. That means we can have one race that is the best at each of the 6 attributes." No. On this point, I agree with the original post. I don't want a game where you say, "Oh, your best stat is STR? You should be a half-orc. Oh, your best stat is CHR? It's half-elf for you." I'd say a better way to think about intentional imbalance is that you need to put some stank on it.

By the way, I think this is also the biggest mistake you can make when running a sandbox. When you are so dead set at honoring "player agency" or whatever wanker RPG theory you subscribe to that you obsess at making sure to make all options equally viable, I'd argue you're actually robbing the player of meaningful choice. Most people recognize for choice to have meaning it has to have consequences. But it's also the case that the player must have reason to believe one choice is actually better (however the player views "better") than another. Otherwise, you may as well just flip a coin. And that's not a meaningful choice.

I think this is the core of difference. I absolutely want a game where players succeed or fail based on their in-game choices, and there are unique consequences to those choices. I want combat to be engaging and tactical. I want players thinking about the best in-game strategies to maximize their gains. So when I run a sandbox, I also want player choices to be meaningful and contribute to success or failure.

However, I don't want character creation to be a tactical game that players win or lose in. Character creation to me is a metagame step prior to when the game itself starts. I generally run character creation as a cooperative stage, and I try to make sure all players start out on an equal footing. I don't want players approaching character creation tactically, thinking about how they will get the best build to maximize their power.

For example, if during the game, a player comes up with a clever in-game strategy that will shortcut their opposition to win, I will applaud them and let it work. However, if someone comes up with a cleverly extra-powerful character creation build, I will tell them no and make a ruling so that their character is roughly balanced with the others.

Quote from: Lunamancer on September 30, 2022, 12:16:27 AM
In a good RPG, I frequently create cross-type characters. If I'm playing AD&D 1E--and this is certainly the epitome of an RPG with some stank--I'll do a cleric whose highest stat is in STR. Who will take advantage of that awesome armor the class allows and take up a lot of the fighting. Hey, as long as I'm fighting, I'm not blowing my spell slots. So they get saved for when they are most important. But, if I'm playing the class that is only second-rate at fighting, I'm going to need all my min-maxing might to be able to hold my own shoulder-to-shoulder with the fighters in the party. Maybe I do the half-orc cleric/fighter. Automatically begin in mature age category, which is good for +1 to STR and +1 CON on top of the +1 STR and +1 CON for a half orc. That's going to make me start and a friggin awesome fighter. Yeah, the yumans will catch up over time. But by the time that happens, I can always hit them with a hold person if they get to uppity.  110% viable character. Not cookie-cutter at all. Another player might do something else with the same dice rolls. In fact, almost none will do what I described.

I agree the half-orc cleric/fighter isn't cookie-cutter, though long-term it has the problem that half-orc is capped at Cleric level 4. Still, it sounds like approaching character creation tactically based on optimizing bonuses. The problem I was expressing in the beginning isn't that all optimized characters are cookie-cutter. In the modern D&D community, there are all sorts of people coming up with creatively optimized builds.

Using your terms, AD&D1 as well as modern D&D editions have loads of stank. That's still true even if one removes racial attribute modifiers. Becoming stankless isn't a problem. The attribute modifiers create very obvious race/class optimizations that don't seem interesting to me, and only serve to funnel and encourage thinking in terms of optimized builds.

Quote from: tenbones on October 05, 2022, 11:38:40 AM
I've never cared about min-maxing once I got my big-boy GM pants on. Just like I chuckle at power-gamers and all the other categories of players out there.

Stats and gear will not cure stupid. People that need to min-max will only leave themselves open in sandbox games for the things that they're not qualified to deal with due to hyperspecialization. Of course if you only run modules and such faire then you might have issues.

Ability scores matter only insofar as the GM feeds those actions. All that should happen is contextualizing what those stats mean in the setting and play accordingly. You can't smash all problems to death with a battle-axe, but feel free to try. If you're running a game where you CAN do those things... then the problem isn't with the player, it's with the GM that incentivizes that kind of play.

Agreed, and I wish I had said that.

When I prep a game, whether writing my own material or tweaking a published module, I try to optimize for fun by presenting various levels of challenge.  If the players have invested in some ability, sure, give them an opportunity to roll over some otherwise challenging monster by doing their schtick.  That's fun.  There will also be easy encounters, interesting challenges, and really tough encounters.  It doesn't much matter how much they optimize their PC's, I'm still going to adjust the game to give that kind of variety, because in my experience that's what makes for the most fun.

The only time it really causes a problem is when you have a mix of player types.  A non optimizer among an optimizing group will have a weaker character, and that's not much fun for him.  An optimizer in a nonoptimizing group will hog the spotlight, and that's no fun for everyone else.  The important thing is to get everyone on the same page.  You can do this by making sure that the rules ensure that everyone is equally powerfully, but that comes at a cost.  Such rules are tough to design, and are in my experience bland and flavorless.  The better option is to be aware of the issue and have agreement of the group as to how you're going to approach things.  If you do that it won't much matter that there are broken or OP builds.