Quote from: GnomeWorks;759720It's not like you can have social encounters on the list. There's no rules for them, and no class is particularly focused on them; as I said, you can't measure what doesn't exist.

There are rules for social encounters. Third edition has bluff, diplomacy, etc and for some those are class skills. Earlier editions still used chr and the reaction ajustment. You also have the bard. 2E had a bunch of NWPs that were divided by class and could be used in social situations (for example using ettiquette you might know how to behave before a king). But there are more things you could measure than just social encounters. There are investigations, tests of athetic ability, politics (particularly if you are using things like keeps and followers). But even if there were only just combat and stuff like detecting traps and opening doors, it doesn't make sense for the lists to be 98% combat.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;759722There are rules for social encounters. Third edition has bluff, diplomacy, etc and for some those are class skills. Earlier editions still used chr and the reaction ajustment. You also have the bard. 2E had a bunch of NWPs that were divided by class and could be used in social situations (for example using ettiquette you might know how to behave before a king). But there are more things you could measure than just social encounters. There are investigations, tests of athetic ability, politics (particularly if you are using things like keeps and followers). But even if there were only just combat and stuff like detecting traps and opening doors, it doesn't make sense for the lists to be 98% combat.

No point arguing with a Denner...

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;759722There are rules for social encounters.

That's... kinda funny.

You can't really argue that the social encounter systems in D&D - pick an edition - hold a candle to the amount of mechanics that exist for combat. In 3.5, you've got, what, three skills? Compared to how many pages of goddamn feats, not to mention the tome of battle?

Sure, attempts have been made at handling them, but not nearly to the breadth of options or depth of play that combat has. When there's a class all about talking to people opposite the fighter, then I'll entertain the notion that D&D gives a crap about social stuff. Until then, not so much.

QuoteThere are investigations, tests of athetic ability, politics (particularly if you are using things like keeps and followers). But even if there were only just combat and stuff like detecting traps and opening doors, it doesn't make sense for the lists to be 98% combat.

Honestly... it doesn't matter.

The SGT was designed with 3.5 in mind, so let's keep to that, just for sake of discussion.

Investigations: at 10th level, a wizard can just magic the answer. A cleric can probably do so better - speak with dead, commune, blah blah blah. A fighter is going to use... gather information? As a cross-class skill? Based on Charisma? Yeah. That'll go well. A rogue might do okay, but not all rogues are Cha-focused. A bard would probably do well, because that's up their alley, but they're also casters, so... casters win.

Tests of athletic ability: the wizard polymorphs and wins. The druid wildshapes, and wins. The cleric probably has an answer of some kind. A fighter will do well, but can't really hold a candle to the wizard turning into a troll or whatever. The rogue will probably do cool balancing things, but the druid can turn into a cat or whatever and win more.

Politics: This is probably just straight social skills. Some casters (sorcerers, clerics) will be better at this than others (wizard, druid), but then magic says "Hi, you're my friend now, tell me everything you know." Or just read their thoughts. Or whatever. Most of those skills are cross-class for the fighter-types, so they... get to stand around, mostly, and not contribute? Bards, again, will probably win here, but - again - they're also casters.

The other problem with these sorts of tests is that they're subjective. And I don't necessarily mean just in terms of mechanics; I mean the goals are subjective. If you fight an owlbear, there are two outcomes: it dies, or you do. Trying to determine if you win a political encounter - whatever that would look like - is a lot messier and harder to judge.

The game is largely about murderhobos. There's nothing wrong with that, but it is what it is. Combat's the thing it's mostly about, and it's convenient that the combat system has a pretty objective ending point. It's a reasonable metric, and makes the point pretty clear: 3.5 is caster edition, full stop. You'd be hard-pressed to find a class that can hold a candle to most casters.

Quote from: Fiasco;759723No point arguing with a Denner...

In this case you would seem to be correct.

Right. I forgot that you folk don't like the idea of investigating the mechanics of the games you play with any degree of mathematical rigor, and like to just pretend that how the rules function should have no impact on what players do at all or what makes sense in-setting.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;759720Don't really give a fuck what happens at your table. A given instance of the game does not change the fact that the system is 90% combat driven. Exploration and social rules pretty much do not exist; you cannot objectively measure things that don't exist.

Serious question: have you actually played the game, or are you merely making an analysis by reading the book? The forest and trees and all that shit...also, not having rules spelled out in the book to do stuff doesn't mean you can't do those things. That's why you have a referee, to arbitrate actions that need to be interpreted.

Waiting for the response about wanting something more "objective", ignoring that every legitimate sport in existence has a referee...

A major flaw I see with the SGT is that it would be blind to synergistic effects between PCs. What if a character by themselves is disadvantage, but in a party with other niches being taken by other characters they can kick ass? A fighter by themselves might struggle, but what about a fighter carrying all the buffs their wizard and cleric pals can pile on them? If you're going to take this sort of rigorous approach to testing out classes, and you're going to brush aside large parts of the game on the basis that the rules don't really focus on them, shouldn't you also take note of the fact that the rules assume that the game is not going to be a 1-on-1 affair, but will involve a party with multiple classes represented?

(And what about the magic sword which the fighter, wizard and cleric found last week, and which only the fighter can use?)

Disagreeing with your conclusions does not mean people don't want to consider the math. I am happy to examine the math and happy to look at game balance, but I don't believe combat should be the only factor considered. It is also important to factor in what actually goes on at the table.

Quote from: CRKrueger;758628So what you have on the one hand is guys like Jmal trying to divine the old school experience and people rallying around that, then you have the guys hating and talking about stuff they have zero experience with, just echoing purple prose.

Yes, let's note that "Jmal", who in spite of having zero old-school play experience got crowned "pope of the OSR" by certain quarters that liked his elitist fanaticism (which he no doubt borrowed from years and years of being a fan of the White Wolf Storytelling Games that his new drooling fanboys despised, ironically), also proudly declared himself a member of the "OSR Taliban".

Presumably, those who still think (in spite of his defrauding countless backers plus a respectable gaming company that made the mistake of getting into bed with him) that JMal is in some way an authority on the OSR would not be so hypocritical as to think that self-described Taliban JMal is totally awesome, but I'm a horrible person for implying that there is an OSR Taliban.

Quote from: Brad;759743not having rules spelled out in the book to do stuff doesn't mean you can't do those things. That's why you have a referee, to arbitrate actions that need to be interpreted.

No. No that is not fucking why you have a GM.

As a GM, I have better things to do with my time than come up with fucking "rulings." I have a world to run, NPCs to play, and things to do in the background to make the world resemble an actual place as can reasonably be accomplished.

The rules are the physics of the world. That is how I interpret them, that is how I interact with them, and that is the proposition that serves as the foundation for the rest of my approach to gaming. Away from the table, discussing the extreme limits of a system is important because it can reveal things like "non-casters are essentially non-persons," as is revealed in 3.5 with sufficient scrutiny. The system encourages certain approaches and discourages others, through what mechanics are present: essentially, system fucking matters.

At the table, I want mechanics to support all the various things that characters may do, from combat to social encounters to exploration to crafting and dealing with economics, because I don't want to sit at the head of the table trying to make shit up on the fly, because that's how you get bad rules and an inconsistent system, and inconsistency is to be avoided at pretty much any cost (again, personal preference, but is a key tenet in my approach to gaming).

QuoteWaiting for the response about wanting something more "objective", ignoring that every legitimate sport in existence has a referee...

If you're just going to belittle my opinion, then why even fucking ask?

No system can cover all situations. This is obvious. Even with a game that has rules covering a wide variety of topics, a game must necessarily not cover everything, because to try to do so would be to produce a game that is unwieldy and unplayable due to lookup times. Sacrifices have to be made: exchanging precision of correlation to events in-fiction for playability at the table, and that's fine, to an extent.

The GM is there to fill in the gaps, but those gaps need mostly be corner-cases or things where the rules couldn't be reasonably expected to cover (very specific circumstances, or just odd/unexpected ones produced by things happening in the instance at the table).

Quote from: Warthur;759744A major flaw I see with the SGT is that it would be blind to synergistic effects between PCs. What if a character by themselves is disadvantage, but in a party with other niches being taken by other characters they can kick ass?

That is an interesting point, I suppose, but I'm still not sure it matters.

The problem is that the fighter "needs" those buffs and items and such to stay competitive. You're right, a wizard and a fighter can get some pretty fantastic mileage with buffs.

But the problem is that the fighter isn't strictly necessary in a lot of cases: spellcasters, in 3.5, have access to just too many spells and tricks and such. I mean, if you look at accounts of high-level play in 3.5, a lot of the times the fighter is reduced to glorified meat shield in combat, while the casters are doing the heavy lifting. It's called rocket tag for a reason, and the fighters are the guys bringing dull knives to that fight.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;759745It is also important to factor in what actually goes on at the table.

What happens "at the table" cannot be objectively quantified, or - if it can - I have not seen any means of measurement that allow for it.

You have to take the system as it is, and see what happens with it. If the game is written in such a way that high-level wizards can basically do whatever they want with impunity in whatever setting they find themselves, you - as a GM - need to figure out why they haven't. Why, if the game basically says that fighters and monks are useless, people of those classes are even still around.

I'm interested in things like the SGT because they draw out the implications hidden in the mechanics that impact the setting. Mathematical analysis of the system as itself is necessary to figure out the logical ramifications it has on the world it is intended to act as a simulation for. Basically my goal is to find the absurd optimizations so that I can avoid them in my own design, because I don't care for the effect it has on the setting.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;759747No. No that is not fucking why you have a GM.

That's exactly why you have a GM.

Quote from: Brad;759750That's exactly why you have a GM.

Don't bother. When someone fully believes that the rules ARE the game then you might as well be addressing a brick wall.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;759751Don't bother. When someone fully believes that the rules ARE the game then you might as well be addressing a brick wall.

If you read the rules of poker, and analyze them mathematically, there is NO WAY for a pair of deuces to beat a full house. It just can't happen. Then you actually play poker with people and learn that there's skill involved and sometimes the better hand doesn't win and yes, you can beat a full house with deuces.

So, yeah, you're right...the game itself is the product of rules put into play, not the rules themselves.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;759749What happens "at the table" cannot be objectively quantified, or - if it can - I have not seen any means of measurement that allow for it.

Sure you can. You may identify a potential problem in the game based on the numbers, then you do a survey on how that problem is adressed at the table and discover 90% of tables do something that makes it a non-problem for them (or that to your surprise 90% of them actually like it). I am not saying it is the same as measuring the difference between a +5 long sword against an ogre and magic missile against an ogre, but it can be quantified and does impact what your numbers mean. If you are going to build and sell a game, it is important to know how your customers use the product and how they deal with problems you have identified. I think just going on your numbers in a vaccuum isnt enough.