I think the best solution is to seperate the Coolzz from the Powers. I have run mechanically simple system were three players all had healing spells. Mechanically exactly the same. Descriptive and coolz wise they each produced their healing differently. Each in its own cool individual way

1) one prayed and sand Psalms
2) the martial artist - Mr Miyagi it rubbing his hands together etc
3) was a Dr. so did mock surgery putting things back together

If you're talking about class-based systems... I'll pass on this idea.

What would be the point? If everyone has it, then you should just bake it into the core system.

If you're talking about these being options a PC can take - fine. Ultimately it will still be regulated by the advancement rules of the game and that throttle is in the hands of the GM.

Quote from: Old One Eye;831354Here is an analogy.  Part of my day job is to work with the mortgage industry.  A mortgage loan officer gets paid commission for selling mortgage loans.  You will starve as a mortgage loan officer if your pitch consists of the terms of the mortgage loan.  You hook the customer by selling them the dream of owning a home.  You have them imaging getting the keys and becoming master of their own domain.  You talk about the home the realtor showed them, you discuss what they plan to do with each room, how they want the yard, etc.  Only after they WANT that home do you get into the nitty gritty of 4.5% interest, 5% down, etc.

Selling a dream.... so you're the guy who trashed the global economy in 2008.

Quote from: soltakss;831374Kewl powers are what makes the PCs different and special. Personally, I love them.

To quote the wily Watto " No, they won't-a"

Unless a kewl power is UNIQUE to a particular character, and no other character before or after that one has the same power, the kewl powers do nothing to make the character unique and special.

They are simply mechanical widgets used to do do stuff. If I can build a character with the exact same kewl powers as another character thenneither of by definition are unique.

One of the issues with having a vast array of kewl powers is that some of them are going to be better than others and will chosen by everyone due to effectiveness producing optimal cookie cutter builds which is the exact opposite of unique.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;831539One of the issues with having a vast array of kewl powers is that some of them are going to be better than others and will chosen by everyone due to effectiveness producing optimal cookie cutter builds which is the exact opposite of unique.

Funny thing: this seems to never actually happen.

Could it be that there's a difference between: (1) theorycrafting and investigating the mechanical underpinning of a game; and  (2) making decisions about what you want to play, limiting the problem space and - while possibly optimizing within that space - winding up with a local maxima, rather than a global one?

Quote from: S'mon;831507Selling a dream.... so you're the guy who trashed the global economy in 2008.

Hehehe, pretty good one.  I'm the poor sap trying to stop the economy from being trashed by such greedy folks.  

Quote from: Batman;831365I totally agree. Player Agency, a term often that refers to specialized stuff a player has complete control over, has often been only the purview of spellcasters in pre-3E D&D. With the advent of Feats and the continuation of things like Maneuvers (3e, 5e, and Pathfinder) and re-newable exploits (4e) it's given more agency to a far larger number of character classes. What was originally 1 person making the "what should I use now....?" is now the entire table. I'm not sure why that's a bad thing, but apparently it is.

I think its arguable that anyone gets "player agency" as you put it, pre-3E. Outside of very fixed circumstances what they do is very GM-dependent, the rules they plug in to are fuzzy, and there's a lot of hidden information that will invalidate them: the 1E DMG has a secret chapter of what spells do that the PHB omitted, and monster abilities are (or are meant to be) mysterious.
But to answer your question, when the exact capabilities of everyone is delineated you eventually get to the point where every problem is solved by pushing a button on your character sheet and the player may as well not be there.
For the game to be worth playing it has to incorporate player skill - the only questions are how much, and what kind ? Rules-fu before the game, tactical play during the game, role-playing...these are all player skills of one sort or another.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;831588But to answer your question, when the exact capabilities of everyone is delineated you eventually get to the point where every problem is solved by pushing a button on your character sheet and the player may as well not be there.

See, I get the impression that all we're bashing is 4e.  Because a lot of players did that in the local RPGA.  But that was a problem with how the RPGA was set up, where improvisation and free thought was frowned on, simply because allowing it would alter the playing field, and when you have players who can wander to any table, you need a pretty firm set of rules.  But home games are supposed to be more flexible.  Maybe no one thought outside the box after all.

You know, now that I think on it, Kool Powerz have been around since at least AD&D 2e.  I don't recall seeing anything in the reprinted 1e books, but if you wanted the best all-round saves, you went Fighter.  If you wanted to specialize in a weapon, to hit and do more damage, you also went Fighter.  You wanted to be a half-healer, be immune to diseases, you went to Paladin.  Rangers are for those who want to dual wield and look badass doing it in the woods.  You want to pick locks and climb walls, you went Thief.  You fell into the Jack of All Trades trap, you went Bard...  But everyone knows that they are the Party's Face.  Their go-to guy/gal when you wanted to step into politics.

Kool Powerz exist to help differentiate each other in a game where niches are important.  If you remove those, then you may as well all make the same character, because there's nothing that will say "I'm a FIGHTER!"  Or "I'm the Wizard!" unless you give them special toys to fondle.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;831591See, I get the impression that all we're bashing is 4e.  Because a lot of players did that in the local RPGA.  But that was a problem with how the RPGA was set up, where improvisation and free thought was frowned on, simply because allowing it would alter the playing field, and when you have players who can wander to any table, you need a pretty firm set of rules.  But home games are supposed to be more flexible.  Maybe no one thought outside the box after all.

You know, now that I think on it, Kool Powerz have been around since at least AD&D 2e.  I don't recall seeing anything in the reprinted 1e books, but if you wanted the best all-round saves, you went Fighter.  If you wanted to specialize in a weapon, to hit and do more damage, you also went Fighter.  You wanted to be a half-healer, be immune to diseases, you went to Paladin.  Rangers are for those who want to dual wield and look badass doing it in the woods.  You want to pick locks and climb walls, you went Thief.  You fell into the Jack of All Trades trap, you went Bard...  But everyone knows that they are the Party's Face.  Their go-to guy/gal when you wanted to step into politics.

Kool Powerz exist to help differentiate each other in a game where niches are important.  If you remove those, then you may as well all make the same character, because there's nothing that will say "I'm a FIGHTER!"  Or "I'm the Wizard!" unless you give them special toys to fondle.

Been there since Paladins and rangers were more than just ways of playing a fighter and druids weren't just a sort of cleric (who of course also had kool powerz)

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;831588I think its arguable that anyone gets "player agency" as you put it, pre-3E. Outside of very fixed circumstances what they do is very GM-dependent, the rules they plug in to are fuzzy, and there's a lot of hidden information that will invalidate them: the 1E DMG has a secret chapter of what spells do that the PHB omitted, and monster abilities are (or are meant to be) mysterious.

True, but every game is dependent on the GM. The GM in a 4e game, for example, is just as able to say "nope, that spell doesn't work here" as they were in a 2E AD&D game. But that's not entirely what I was alluding to. The point wasn't that the DM can change effects but that codified effects were prevalent information for the players. A wizard casts fireball has a reasonable idea of what is going to happen but a fighter who says to a DM he wants to vaunted over the table, slash at an orc, then leap up to a hanging chandelier has really no clue as to what that will entail. The agency here is 100% with the GM.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;831588But to answer your question, when the exact capabilities of everyone is delineated you eventually get to the point where every problem is solved by pushing a button on your character sheet and the player may as well not be there.

If that is true then this is a systematic problem that has effected nearly every single version of the game. It specifically points to spells and other do - dad's (magical and mundane) that entails any mechanic outside of what the DM states to do. And if that's true, then the entire premise for classed - based games are obsolete. You might as well play a class-less game like GURPS or even straight basic d20 with ability scores and race but everything from that point on (except math) is free-form.
 

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;831588I For the game to be worth playing it has to incorporate player skill - the only questions are how much, and what kind ? Rules-fu before the game, tactical play during the game, role-playing...these are all player skills of one sort or another.

I haven't seen a D&D - style game yet that has excluded these so far.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;831542Funny thing: this seems to never actually happen.

Could it be that there's a difference between: (1) theorycrafting and investigating the mechanical underpinning of a game; and  (2) making decisions about what you want to play, limiting the problem space and - while possibly optimizing within that space - winding up with a local maxima, rather than a global one?

Spin it however you like, the simple truth is that the only unique things about a character to make it special come from the player, not a rulebook or the character sheet.

Quote from: Batman;831619True, but every game is dependent on the GM. The GM in a 4e game, for example, is just as able to say "nope, that spell doesn't work here" as they were in a 2E AD&D game. But that's not entirely what I was alluding to. The point wasn't that the DM can change effects but that codified effects were prevalent information for the players. A wizard casts fireball has a reasonable idea of what is going to happen but a fighter who says to a DM he wants to vaunted over the table, slash at an orc, then leap up to a hanging chandelier has really no clue as to what that will entail. The agency here is 100% with the GM.

Fireball as all sorts of unknowns associated with it. How is the GM going to estimate the whole 33,000 cubic foot area, is he going to blow up the party? Are they seriously going to enforce item saving throws that will fry all the treasure? Most spells in AD&D are a double-edged-sword; there's not as much discrepancy between the fighter and the wizard as you might think.

My point is more of a tangent and I'm actually not specifically calling out 4E here (3E probably comes closest to complete player empowerment). What I'm trying to say is that if you're looking to justify powers as an alternative to player skill because player skill is bad...that doesn't necessarily hold up since the game has to test player skill of one kind or another. And it does, just different skills in different versions.

Similarly but (going back to your earlier example) I wouldn't hold up the Int 9 dwarf lockpicker as a 'bad thing'; its a different playstyle to what you may prefer, but if the game is being viewed by all the participants as a contest of player skill vs. DM fiendishness there's nothing wrong with it; its at the least some involvement. In the same vein, I'd rather have people tell me how they're searching for traps/doors/whatever than just rolling a die.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;831653Fireball as all sorts of unknowns associated with it. How is the GM going to estimate the whole 33,000 cubic foot area, is he going to blow up the party? Are they seriously going to enforce item saving throws that will fry all the treasure? Most spells in AD&D are a double-edged-sword; there's not as much discrepancy between the fighter and the wizard as you might think.

I'd probably slap the DM for quibbling over minutia. But lets say that the Player doesn't know how the DM decides these things. After it happens and the DM decides that it doesn't blow up the party instantly but he requires saving throws for both characters and items (success means you are singed, but you're overall fine in regards to clothing and items. Failure means you take significant damage and your items are mostly destroyed, find a new suit). The player, assuming he survives, would then know from that point on how a Fireball will most likely be addressed in a similar circumstance. If not and the DM does something completely different the next time, that's a DM problem and not a game/rules/player one.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;831653My point is more of a tangent and I'm actually not specifically calling out 4E here (3E probably comes closest to complete player empowerment). What I'm trying to say is that if you're looking to justify powers as an alternative to player skill because player skill is bad...that doesn't necessarily hold up since the game has to test player skill of one kind or another. And it does, just different skills in different versions.

I don't think game-widgets justify anything, they're specific abilities gained from a class (often considered a character's profession) and don't necessarily mean an alternate to player skill. In some circumstances the rules help, like using Diplomacy, because not everyone using Diplomacy in a D&D game is an aspiring thespian with the natural knack for sounding fancy. Does that mean that a player shouldn't try out the Diplomatic-thing because they're personally not inspiring?

Also, I agree that player's skill is important because they have to know how, when, and how often to employ such widgets. Further a player's skill is also tested when situations arise when there's not easily readable solution. For example, climbing up a sheer cliff might be easy for the Fighter and Rogue, but far less so for the Str 11 Cleric or Str 8 Wizard. This means that the player might have to devise a way up that's not specifically drawn from their character sheet (or uses a specific spell or item in a way that's not ordinary). That doesn't mean that they shouldn't still have those widgets, it means that situations should arise where they're less prominent.  

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;831653Similarly but (going back to your earlier example) I wouldn't hold up the Int 9 dwarf lockpicker as a 'bad thing'; its a different playstyle to what you may prefer, but if the game is being viewed by all the participants as a contest of player skill vs. DM fiendishness there's nothing wrong with it; its at the least some involvement. In the same vein, I'd rather have people tell me how they're searching for traps/doors/whatever than just rolling a die.

I've never personally picked a lock before but I have a 1st level Rogue character with a +7 (+9 with lock picking tools) in Disable Device and Open Lock. Should I still be required to go into detail how I open the lock with picks and files? Because we'd be there a while as I slowly search Wikipedia on the subject as my turn continues on and on. Or what if I were terribly uncoordinated and lacked any physical attributes in real life, would I have to perform or describe with specific detail how my Goliath Fighter chopped one in half with a fancy sword-wielding maneuver?

The thing is most people don't know how to search for traps in real-life, or fight with dual-scimitars, or recite complex rituals off-the-cuff, or swoon a fancy Lady of the State with words of love via diplomacy, or even pick a simple dead-bolt. By making the player find out how to do all this stuff is unreasonable and taking away widgets to accomplish these abilities you might as well not bother playing in the first place. What happens is: "well I'm terrible at talking to pretty girls IRL so I might as well scrap this poetic bard character even though I wanted to play one because deep down the idea is intriguing. But imagination and wanting to play someone your not be damned if I can't back it up in role-play."

Quote from: Exploderwizard;831647Spin it however you like, the simple truth is that the only unique things about a character to make it special come from the player, not a rulebook or the character sheet.

:rolleyes::rolleyes:

The rulebook and character sheet is what the player uses to make the character unique.

Quote from: Sommerjon;831701:rolleyes::rolleyes:

The rulebook and character sheet is what the player uses to make the character unique.

Considering that all players (hundreds-of-thousands or more, in D&D's case) have access to the same rulebook and character sheet, it would seem, a priori, that those are not what make a character unique. Unless you're working with a different definition of unique than the rest of us...