Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Darvi]

Yeah, you shouldn't give anybody the enemy's HP, that's what that one evil spell is for!
 
Also, I'm in fact a Munchkin, a straight man, a loon, and a Rper put together. Hah!

[Max White]

Well, an elite warrior to hollywood levels may be able to tell is he pierced a lung, but there is no way form them to say 'This monster this X health, and I did Y damage!' but rather it would be like a dwarf fortress adventure mode description of damage (But more organic, we are humans not computers, so we can make things sound nice and give a realistic level of information) rather then say, ToME where numbers come up.

[Darvi]

Ya. A good hit would be something like "You strike the ogre right into his belly! Blood gushes forth, and the beast lets out a loud roar of pain!" While a minor hit would be "You fire a magic missile at the enemy, but it only grazes his arm. At least it hurt him."

[nenjin]

I don't know why people think they are contradictory.

Heck personally I like systems that mix both gameplay elements and roleplay elements really well. I hate when systems easily bypass gameplay. (Dang it Exalted and Scion!)

Well, let's talk about what roleplaying actually means.

Talking to an NPC in character is roleplaying, sure.

But what about when you have to make decisions in character? What if a "characterful" decision is the complete opposite of what's best for your character? Take ridiculously stupid fighters for example. If they're roleplaying correctly, they shouldn't be trying to figure out how to best circumvent the block and tackle system keeping the portcullis from lowering. They should be running in and smashing the mechanism with a hammer. Yet what do half of "stupid fighters" do? They step out of being a stupid fighter when more intelligence is required from the player. Considering they loaded all their dice into physical stats....they're not playing their character, at all. They want the best of all THREE worlds. They want to be strong, they want to stupid when it's fun for them and not stupid when it's not convenient.

My experience has been that people who say they're min/maxers will play their characters in a roleplaying fashion up until the point where it becomes inconvenient for them. Then it's all about success, not roleplaying.

The two aren't mutually exclusive. But when people self-identify as min-maxers, I basically expect them to roleplay a min-maxer and not their character. And they usually fulfill that expectation.

[Max White]

Hell yea to bashing the winch with your axe! Also, extra points if you stupid ranger tries to cook the wizards familiar. Sorry, now I'm day dreaming...

[Darvi]

Hey now, I didn't really like that elf, but I still wouldn't try to cook her familiar.
 
Edit: in fact, she was the one who did the cooking.

 
Anyways, the best solution would be to have the RL-smart guy to tell the guy with the high int what to do. 's what i did.

[GlyphGryph]

Of course, they should feel free to misinterpret it/disbelieve/get insulted by the implication they are stupid if the other guys charisma isn't that high.

[Neonivek]

Then tell them how well they searched Glyph. It is always "You find nothing" or "You find a lot".

It is induced stupidity because of system created stupidity.

If you really want to give them the opportunity, have them make a skill check to determine how much damage has actually been done to the monster

You can tell how well the monster is doing by how it is carrying itself. Even Boxers show how close they are to a punch out.

Take ridiculously stupid fighters for example. If they're roleplaying correctly, they shouldn't be trying to figure out how to best circumvent the block and tackle system keeping the portcullis from lowering. They should be running in and smashing the mechanism with a hammer

There is stupid... and then there is heavy retardation.

Remember that there is intelligence and experience. Dumb people can SEEM to act intelligently when they act with experience. Especially since true stupidty would mean that a fighter would never advance as a fighter.

Afterall Children all have low adult IQs and you would be surprised on the solutions they can come up with.

There is acting upon your stats and then there is exagerating them.

Though never play a character whos intelligence (and technically Wisdom because Wisdom is also a dirrect form of intelligence) is so low that they cannot figure out basic things. It creates dramatic irony except in the worst way.

[nenjin]

Put it this way: I come from a group where we have a PhD mathematician. He always puts most of his points into INT to justify the crazy things he wants to try. I had a 10 minute "debate" with him about why it's not plausible to try and create a medieval hand grenade in game. That's the kind of thing I draw the line on when it comes to player action vs. character intelligence. Previous experience is one thing. When it comes to "novel solutions" though, the kind that you award extra XP for at the end of the game because they had that big of an impact....I take a hard look at character stats before I say ok.

It's no different than a character who has never met a basilisk or ostensibly heard of one knowing that they petrify. It's meta-gaming. So I tend to try to keep players true to their PC stats when they're not doing it themselves. People are fine roleplaying their short comings when it doesn't really matter.

[Neonivek]

That is the one thing odd about Dungeons and dragons.

Even common things are mysteriously unknown.

It is actually one of the things that frustrate me. "What is it?"... "You don't know"... "It is an ogre isn't it?"... "Well I am not supposed to tell you unless you make the nature roll"... "What were the chances of us bumping into one?"... "Fifty out of a hundred"... "Shouldn't we KNOW about these things if they are that common?"... "NOOOoOoOOooo!!!"

It is like every dungeons and dragons game EVER takes place in a zombie movie. except replace Zombies with Monsters.

Though that is because Dungeons and dragons supports what I call... Selective incompetence.

[uber pye]

one of my DM's house rules is reroll 1's and 2's during character creation

bad atribute scores=bad adventures=not much fun

[Neonivek]

I guess suffice it to say...

You have to give players leeway on how they roleplay their characters to an extent.

You don't want to punish bad roleplayers anymore then you want to overly praise good ones for being good.

[nenjin]

one of my DM's house rules is reroll 1's and 2's during character creation

So the ability scale is 9 to 18?

Wow. People really react that badly to a -1 in something? Forget ability check rolls too, which that system basically bumps to an automatic 50% success rate without modifiers.

At that point it's almost worth going with a roll-less system.

[Gorjo MacGrymm]

Speaking as a player, i would constantly do things that were "in character" that were completely against party success/survival.  They hated it, the Dm loved it.  But I realized that doing so too often would upset players too much and I had to learn to pick and choose when I "played my characters int".  But beyond roleplaying stats, too many players I meet nowadays, who ony know 3.0+ D&D seem to misunderstand what roleplaying is.  Since the game became so min-max tabletop miniature focused, much of the flair and joy has left the game IMO.  It became a boardgame, full of people who roll dice and move their playing piece.  NOW, I do not beleive this is their fault, i just think they havent been exposed to real roleplaying games.  SPeaking as a DM, i TELL my players taht the more the "play" the role they have the more rewards I give them (10-100xp here and there).  This encourages them to do so, and also gets the other players thinking how do go about doing the same for those rewards.

Also, speaking as a DM, may favorite word is "consequences".  basicly, after the first adventure, the results of the players actions (and inaction) often drive every single adventure after that.  I love watching the players faces as they contemplate those moral decisions and "should I or shouldn't I" moments while fondly inform them that any either way decision always has consequences.

A far as stats go:  I have always favored 4d6x7, drop lowest d6 and lowest 4d6, assign as needed when I was a DM.  But because I am strange, as a player I really prefered the more hardcore stat generators and purely avg characters.  Min-max always bored me.  The 3.0 and 3.5 DM's guide has alternate stat ideas with hardcore (13,12,11,10,10,8 assign as desired) and "elite" (15,14,13,12,10,8); I may be off a number or two, but these are esentially correct.  Both are actually tough to work with.  Min maxers will immediately choose to play a dwarf or half orc or such to get the stat bumps.  The hardcore roleplayer (IMO) will play a human and take his lumps.  Try making a monk with the hardcore points as a human.........ouch.  The nice thing about these kinds of generator systems (like point buy and the above) is that you avoid the one guy who rolled 2 18's and nothing below a 14 and the other guy who rolled nothing better than a 13, because then, the dice just decided who the main character is really going to be before you have even started.

oh well, this is all prolly tl;dr  lol

[Sowelu]

Do be careful with "bonus xp for RPing your flaws".  I've got a Deadlands game going with that rule, and one of players characters with black lung has taken to coughing obnoxiously at random times in a vain attempt to get more stuff, as though it was roleplay :|

"Damn it...Lung's acting up...Hard to get up this hill, wait a second guys" => well, that's good for portraying the inconveniences involved, especially if they were in a hurry.  Screwing over the whole party is bad, but being the one guy who's a round or two late to the sniping spot is okay.

"Okay so tell me about the last place you saw your sister COUGH COUGH HACK WHEEZE Oh I'm sorry was the NPC talking" =>