You trade the versatility of a point-buy system when you decide to go with the ease of a class system.

I can model James Bond a lot easier in WEG's d6 system. Everyone has a better idea of skill and power level when I say "Level 12 Rogue".

Bitching about the two is as useful as farting in the wind.

TL;DR version: Shut up and play!

Quote from: Novastar;577839You trade the versatility of a point-buy system when you decide to go with the ease of a class system.

There are open Class systems that provide a mix of the two approaches. Rolemaster for one if I'm remembering it correctly. Age of Heroes does this as well for what it's worth.

3rd Edition allows more versatility than 2nd Edition which allows more versatility than 1st Edition D&D. They're all still class-based games, no matter how many Feats, Talents, Kits or PrC's you stick in the game.

It's not a hard and fast, "There's only class-based, or point-buy systems!". There's a lot of shades of grey, with a lot of Class systems trying to add in greater diversity of player choices. Lot's of point-buy's also give examples of how to construct a typical build (HERO Fantasy comes to mind, which shows you how to spend points to get "Dwarf Thief" or "Elf Archer" , say...).

Quote from: Sacrosanct;577837That makes no sense.

It only makes no sense because you assume that all of your ability progression stops when you change classes, which it doesn't.  You are assuming that Fighters Fight and no one else Fights at all so to have the ability to Fight one must be a Fighter.  Your Fighter 2/Rogue 3/Cleric 6/Sorcerer 9 is much better at Fighting than a Fighter 2 despite "quitting" his Fighter "profession".

You also assume there is no practical barrier that would prevent one from improving their skills indefinitely, which isn't the case in real life, or in D&D.  You also assume that multiclassing represents "quitting" something, when it doesn't.

Most D&D characters have already "quit" their day jobs and are now professional adventurers instead.  Theoretically their skills should never improve, if you think that for them to improve they require active involvement in some organization that teaches those skills.

Instead the Thief, despite perhaps never being an active criminal again (or ever, in the first place) will get better at Thieving no matter what.

Quote from: Wolf, Richard;577859It only makes no sense because you assume that all of your ability progression stops when you change classes, which it doesn't.  You are assuming that Fighters Fight and no one else Fights at all so to have the ability to Fight one must be a Fighter.  Your Fighter 2/Rogue 3/Cleric 6/Sorcerer 9 is much better at Fighting than a Fighter 2 despite "quitting" his Fighter "profession".

You also assume there is no practical barrier that would prevent one from improving their skills indefinitely, which isn't the case in real life, or in D&D.  You also assume that multiclassing represents "quitting" something, when it doesn't.

Most D&D characters have already "quit" their day jobs and are now professional adventurers instead.  Theoretically their skills should never improve, if you think that for them to improve they require active involvement in some organization that teaches those skills.

Instead the Thief, despite perhaps never being an active criminal again (or ever, in the first place) will get better at Thieving no matter what.

Yeah, sorry, but no.

When you stop advancing as a cleric, you stop getting cleric spells.  When you stop advancing as a sorcerer, you stop getting sorcerer spells.  Etc.

Switching from class to class based on nothing but feat collection to reach an end game makes no logical sense from a campaign world character development standpoint.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;577870Yeah, sorry, but no.

When you stop advancing as a cleric, you stop getting cleric spells.  When you stop advancing as a sorcerer, you stop getting sorcerer spells.  Etc.

Switching from class to class based on nothing but feat collection to reach an end game makes no logical sense from a campaign world character development standpoint.

By Thor you're either stupid or you are being willfully ignorant. When you stop being a cleric you still have cleric spells. You stop getting better cleric spells or more clerixc spells but you still get cleric spells unless you did something to piss your personal god off. If you were a sorcerer you still HAVE your spells you just stop getting new ones.

Now assuming what you mean to say is you don't get new ones there's nothing holding you back from going back to the cleric/sorcerer class later. Just like I can stop studying a science and pick it up later on. So you're wrong in every possible fashion.

You got a thief (rogue) decides to pick up two levels of fighter. The player does the class dip for the 2 extra feats/hit points/martial prof/fort etc. The character does it to pick up some fighting skills to help with his adventuring/bandit career. Makes total sense in and out of game. A Wizard aims to be an archmage. Player gains skills/feats necessary for the prestige class. Character is just furthering his studies in the way he knows other archmages have done.

I can come up with in game reasoning for almost any class/feat combination with just a little bit of imagination. If you weren't being willfully stupid you probably would realize how character building doesn't have to disconnect from the logic of the setting.

Quote from: MGuy;577874By Thor you're either stupid or you are being willfully ignorant. When you stop being a cleric you still have cleric spells. You stop getting better cleric spells or more clerixc spells but you still get cleric spells unless you did something to piss your personal god off. If you were a sorcerer you still HAVE your spells you just stop getting new ones.

That's what I was talking about idiot.  He was saying that even after stopping as a fighter, you keep getting better at fighting.  and I was pointing out that's not true in every case and used cleric and sorcerer as examples.  When you quit being a cleric, you stop getting better at cleric spells.

QuoteNow assuming what you mean to say is you don't get new ones there's nothing holding you back from going back to the cleric/sorcerer class later. Just like I can stop studying a science and pick it up later on. So you're wrong in every possible fashion.

Holy....what, do you play with level 40 characters often?  I'm beginning to think you don't actually play the game with anyone, but make up ultra powerful characters one after the other in your mom's basement.

QuoteYou got a thief (rogue) decides to pick up two levels of fighter. The player does the class dip for the 2 extra feats/hit points/martial prof/fort etc. The character does it to pick up some fighting skills to help with his adventuring/bandit career. Makes total sense in and out of game. A Wizard aims to be an archmage. Player gains skills/feats necessary for the prestige class. Character is just furthering his studies in the way he knows other archmages have done.

ONCE AGAIN, I'm not talking about a f/t or a f/m.  I'm talking about the f/t/m/s/c/r build.  Fuck you are dumb.

QuoteI can come up with in game reasoning for almost any class/feat combination with just a little bit of imagination. If you weren't being willfully stupid you probably would realize how character building doesn't have to disconnect from the logic of the setting.

So tell me how a character would reasonably, in the context of a typical campaign world and adventures that a character goes through, to end up as a f2/r3/c5/s10?

Quote from: Sacrosanct;577881Stupid stuff plus a question:
So tell me how a character would reasonably, in the context of a typical campaign world and adventures that a character goes through, to end up as a f2/r3/c5/s10?

Depends, what is this build supposed to do?

Edit: There's something that's just so stupid I need to address it:

QuoteHoly....what, do you play with level 40 characters often?

This makes no fucking sense even in the context it was said. You say that you can't do cleric shit no more and that you don't get better at "being a cleric" yet there is no reason you cannot. There are prestige classes and even certain feats you can take to up your spell count or at least keep certain spells up and that's IF you don't take the class back up. If you CARE about being a better cleric at all nothing is stopping you from doing that and your response is garbage about 40th level characters? What the fuck is wrong with you?

Quote from: Sacrosanct;577881When you quit being a cleric, you stop getting better at cleric spells.

You don't necessarily keep getting higher spell levels unless you have the requisite ability scores.  Unless your example has a 14+ Wisdom he's capped out at his potential on what he can do as a Cleric magically speaking.

Now in character that doesn't mean he spit on the altar, tore off his holy symbol and "quit" being a Cleric.  It just means he's not ever going to wind up being the guy his god chooses to work world-shattering miracles through (and he's still vastly more powerful magically speaking than most servants of any god, without the Sorcerer levels.)  

Quote from: Sacrosanct;577881So tell me how a character would reasonably, in the context of a typical campaign world and adventures that a character goes through, to end up as a f2/r3/c5/s10?

This is pretty easy, because this is basically Elminster, except he's a Wizard instead of a Sorcerer (who require no training, because they are 'wild talents' basically).  

Of course once you throw the Cleric in there any character path explains itself potentially anyway.  Deus Vult.  Done.

Regardless, what gets written in the "class" field on the character sheet is more often than not meaningless, and doesn't actually represent any in-game institution, tradition, profession, et cetera.

So tell me how a character would reasonably, in the context of a typical campaign world and adventures that a character goes through, to end up as a Cleric 20?

Oh great, gamers throwing around another word when they don't know what the fuck it means.
:rolleyes:

First, the semi-literate starting using the word "broken", not to mean something well broken, but as a euphemism for something they don't like, but are too fucking stupid to explain why.

Now the word "fallacy" is being abused. The only fallacy I saw in Libertad's lengthy post was this strawman:

QuoteThe Number Jerk Fallacy is the belief that guys who like to build powerful characters through excessive number-crunching are automatically inconsiderate selfish jerks out on an ego-trip, regardless of their relationships with the other gamers in the group.

It's a strawman because he cites no examples of anyone making this assertion.

In the age of Google, there's no excuse for (mis)using terms like that.

Quote from: beejazz;577247Swap that quote block for a *snip* please... it's just a peeve of mine when people quote massive blocks of text for a one-line response.

Did someone die, making you the chief of the quote tag police? No? Then fuck off!


In some cases, being a specialist who excels in a particular area will be more rewarding than being somewhat skilled in a variety areas. The opposite can also be true -even for the same PCs in the same campaign. The notion that one is inherently better than the other is moronic.

Quote from: Elfdart;577906Did someone die, making you the chief of the quote tag police? No? Then fuck off!

Says the man policing reasonable and politely phrased requests.

As for the cross-classing tangent, cross-classing favors martial dips. Casters shoot themselves in the foot by cross-classing. That said, having all the classes is stupid both in-game and rules-wise, but is it all that strange for Conan to also be a bit of a thief? For a guy deep into organized crime to want to train in bigger weapons? For a fighter to develop a connection with a deity (for paladin)? Somehow, none of this strikes me as any less reasonable than learning lockpicking when all you've done is fight monsters. Or hell, learning to fight on mostly RP XP as the case may be.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;577837Honestly, not very good.  Here's why.  Everything above you just described is training before you actually do any real experience.  If you wanted the analogy to fit with how the D&D build goes, you start out as infantry.  You land on the beaches and build your experience up.  As soon as get the ability to be proficient with a bazooka, you quit infantry and start learning how to be a camera man on the fly.  You really don't get any better at fighting, but hell, you have your bazooka so you're ready to go.  After doing more missions, you can take macro shots.  So you quit being a cameraman and decide you want to be a medical corpsman.  Sure, what the hell!  You aren't going back to school for any of this stuff, and you are only getting marginally better at the bazooka and camera, but now you're starting to learn first aid.  As soon as you complete a few more missions and learn how to apply a tourniquet, you quite once again and decide to start learning how to code.

That doesn't always follow.  If you're starting the game as an elite team (which is probably more fun than being one of 200 grunts) you're probably starting as higher than 1st level.  It's not unreasonable to expect someone to start with a background that describes their experiences.  

Now, since you posited the example as 'something so crazy that nobody would do' and I had to try to think what that example COULD mean, give me some credit.  I think we have a reasonably plausbile character given that you're just throwing random stuff together.  There's no clear indication that doing so would result in 'being able to blow tanks up with arrows'.  Nor is that always the purpose of mixing classes.  

Yes, a Ftr 2/Rogue 3/Cleric 7/Sorcerer 8 (notice I did change the levels just a bit) is more effective than a Ftr 20.  They probably aren't more effective than a Cleric 20.  And if someone shows up to a game with that idea in mind, that's not necessarily a problem.  If they totally suck until 20th level when they finally get the 'special ability' that their 'build' relies on to function, they've been hanging around not doing anything cool for 19 levels.  We have to presume both that the player has a reason for wanting to advance this way (ie, it makes him effective in the ways he wants to be effective) and that he's not rendering himself useless in order to achieve this build.  

The fact is, most 'builds' are pretty reasonable - especially if they're primarily martially focused.  You can have char-op without having polymorphing-arrow-clerics.

Quote from: MGuy;577895Depends, what is this build supposed to do?

Thanks for helping illustrate my point.  See, you don't care what happens in the campaign.  You're planning your build before the character even takes a first swing at an orc.  You're placing powers over actual game play.  Any time you've planned out 20 levels of character progression with the purpose of selecting a feat tree, you're completely pushing to the side how the actual game play in the game world happens.  It doesn't matter what actions your character takes, or what story he's following in the campaign, but you'll be damned if you aren't following your pre-planned build.  That's the part that doesn't make sense.

QuoteEdit: There's something that's just so stupid I need to address it:
 This makes no fucking sense even in the context it was said. You say that you can't do cleric shit no more and that you don't get better at "being a cleric" yet there is no reason you cannot. There are prestige classes and even certain feats you can take to up your spell count or at least keep certain spells up and that's IF you don't take the class back up. If you CARE about being a better cleric at all nothing is stopping you from doing that and your response is garbage about 40th level characters? What the fuck is wrong with you?

Again, context evades you.  We're talking about a character who is already level 20.  How often do you level up?  You made it sound like it's easy to keep gaining levels and switching back and forth.  That's why I made my comment.  Because for people who actually play the game, it's not like an MMO where you hit max level after a few months.  It took me almost 2 years to raise my fighter from level 15 to 16 in my original AD&D campaign (the highest level character I've ever had, btw, created in 1983). This is why I think you sit and make up level 20+ characters from scratch without actually playing them.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;578002Thanks for helping illustrate my point.  See, you don't care what happens in the campaign.  You're planning your build before the character even takes a first swing at an orc.  You're placing powers over actual game play.  Any time you've planned out 20 levels of character progression with the purpose of selecting a feat tree, you're completely pushing to the side how the actual game play in the game world happens.  It doesn't matter what actions your character takes, or what story he's following in the campaign, but you'll be damned if you aren't following your pre-planned build.  That's the part that doesn't make sense.

No, you misunderstand.  When someone asks 'what is your build supposed to do', they're asking 'what is your vision for your character.  If you're not just assembling pieces together randomly, you should have some vision of what your character is and what he wants to be.  If you're making a 1st level wizard, even at that point, he should have apsirations.  Maybe he wants to become the most powerful wizard ever.  Maybe he wants to conquer the world.  Maybe he wants to avenge his murdered father.  But at that point, he probably has some ideas about how he wants to accomplish his goal.  Studying magic, enslaving the orc race, learning how to combine magic and tracking to locate the killers...  

Rather than 'make a Fighter', you can make a character inspired by something you've seen or read, or even just an idea that you think is cool.  Making 'Robin Hood' doesn't necessarily mean 'take levels of Fighter' or 'take levels of Ranger'.  I think this is a great example, so let's go ahead and follow this a little more - let's look at Disney's Robin Hood (you know, the one with the fox).  In that movie, Robin Hood shot an arrow that neatly split another arrow already lodged in the target.  He also fired an arrow at another arrow in flight, redirecting the first arrow to strike the target.  How does a Fighter or a Ranger represent those actions?  Just hoping to get lucky and roll a Natural 20?  That might work, but if you REALLY want to capture that feel, you can find other ways that represent it better.  True Strike is a good way to hit the target without relying on a Nat 20.  Some kind of seeking ability might represent redirecting an arrow in flight...  If they suit the 'feel' the player has for his character, they're appropriate choices.  

Now, if the player has an idea (like 'I want to play Robin Hood) but the game doesn't support it (we're playing a game set in an underwater Atlantis like setting) it would make sense to work that out BEFORE character creation.  Otherwise, the player has a sense of the type of things that he will be doing, and a type of character that is appropriate to the setting, and it's okay that he knows some of what he's getting into in advance, and has some plans about how to develop his character appropriately.  He can always change his mind if the setting doesn't support his planned choices, but there's no problem with planning ahead.  My wife had to plan for 10 years to get into her current occupation.  She had to expend resources developing particular talents (ie, getting educated) to gain entry into her chosen field.  That's a normal part of life, and it should be a normal part of gaming.  You shouldn't just say 'now I want to have super-powers' and get them - you should say 'I think this would be an effective way to develop my character, so I'm going to start working toward these goals'.  

That's what all 'empowered' players should do, and that's a good thing.  

Otherwise, the DM should just say 'you gain a level.  I've decided that this is the class you advance in and this is the feat you get.  I made these choices based on what your character did over the course of the last level.'

But I wouldn't play that game.  

Quote from: Sacrosanct;578002Again, context evades you.  We're talking about a character who is already level 20.  How often do you level up?  You made it sound like it's easy to keep gaining levels and switching back and forth.  That's why I made my comment.  Because for people who actually play the game, it's not like an MMO where you hit max level after a few months.  It took me almost 2 years to raise my fighter from level 15 to 16 in my original AD&D campaign (the highest level character I've ever had, btw, created in 1983). This is why I think you sit and make up level 20+ characters from scratch without actually playing them.

If the character is fun to play at 15th level, and the character is still fun to play at 16th level; and the character is generally effective at all levels of play, it doesn't really matter that you have a plan.  And gaining levels in 3.x is pretty easy - too easy, in my opinion.  But you can literally rise to 20th level in less than 6 months of game time.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;578002Thanks for helping illustrate my point.  See, you don't care what happens in the campaign.  You're planning your build before the character even takes a first swing at an orc.  You're placing powers over actual game play.  Any time you've planned out 20 levels of character progression with the purpose of selecting a feat tree, you're completely pushing to the side how the actual game play in the game world happens.  It doesn't matter what actions your character takes, or what story he's following in the campaign, but you'll be damned if you aren't following your pre-planned build.  That's the part that doesn't make sense.

I don't think you addressed, though, that the same exact thing is true of single-class advancement.  If I plan to advance only as a paladin, then I am locking in powers I am going to get, regardless of what actually happens in the campaign.  When I get to 5th level, I'm going to get a special mount - regardless of what interest we've shown in horses or what terrain we're in.  I'll get spells at a particular level, regardless of what the party's need is or what scrolls I've studied.  etc.  Consider the following two cases:

1) I plan to advance just as a paladin.
2) I plan to advance as a fighter for 3 levels, then take a level of cleric.

In both these cases, it is locked in that I will start getting spells at 4th level, regardless of what is happening in the campaign.  

On the one hand, I can see that someone might want it different than this.  So you might like it if my character got a special mount at an appropriate time in the campaign rather than locked in at 5th level - like when she just performed a service to the desert nomads.  However, predefined progression isn't that terrible.  Just because it's predefined that I'll get a special mount at 5th level, that doesn't mean that my role-playing is ignoring the campaign events.  i.e. What powers I get is different from how I play the character.  

One possible difference here is that I don't treat the classes as in-character profession.  i.e. I would never have my character say "Hello.  I am Variel, a 3rd level Rogue."  As a result, if my character stops advancing as Rogue and starts taking some levels of Fighter, I don't conceive of that as Variel quitting his job and taking a different job.  I think of it as just improving in different skills.  

If I have a concept of a dedicated religious warrior, that could fit with either my #1 above or #2.  In the case of #1, she is immediately granted minor powers, but the god holds off on spells until level 4 and then sends a special mount at level 5.  This is locked-in and ignores campaign events, but can be consistent.  In the case of #2, she has no supernatural powers at first, but she gains a number of them at level 4.  Again, this is locked in and ignores campaign events, but can be consistent.