The Politics of Tabletop RPGs

[shepsquared]

...non-special NPCs shouldn't have anything above a 12, though, and also, who cares what 3e did 20 years ago for games made today?

Like, sometimes you gotta drop the power scaling so it stops ruining the game, especially when you're trying to draw new people in. 10 is average, everyone is little above average at something probably, give totally boring NPCs 10 across the board, maybe an 8 and a 12, bam, NPCs aren't running around with 16s anymore wtf.

Click to shrink...

5e's starting stats are trash though. They're built on the assumption that feats are an optional part of the game and even if you have optimal racial bonuses you go from +3 to +5 in your main stat over all 20 levels (though you probably max it at level 8 or 12). No further progression and the low numbers stack with the terrible save system to make high level combats a game of who can roll above a 17 against their save or sucks.

And its not like monsters or NPCs are similarly constrained with their stats.

 

[Leila Hann]

Reminder that the difference between Strength 10 and Strength 16 is +3 on a twenty-sided die roll.

Take an average-difficulty "lift heavy rock" DC 11 strength test. The person with Strength 10 has a 50% chance of success. The person with Strength 16 has a 65% chance of success.

On the other extreme, Strength 4 (-3 on d20 rolls) has a 35% chance of success. Strength 16 is about 86% more likely to lift the rock than Strength 4.

Looking at the strongest unremarkable young adult person in your neighbourhood and the weakest unremarkable young adult person in your neighbourhood, does this really seem like an unrealistically big difference?

Obviously it becomes more meaningful with higher DC's, especially if we're in the DC 21-23 range where the Strength 10 just straight up can't do it whereas the Strength 16 might be able to. It also helps if your DM is liberal with what they let the Athletics skill apply to. But still.


IMO, the problem isn't giving commoners too-high stats. It's the gradual creep away from LOW stats in subsequent editions, both for PC's and for NPC's. In the early editions a dump stat wasn't 8 or 9, it was 4 or 5.

If you want to treat 10 as a floor rather than an average, then that's fine. But it means that ability scores need to range much higher for normal people, and much higher still for exceptional heroes.

 

[The Laurent]

Reminder that the difference between Strength 10 and Strength 16 is +3 on a twenty-sided die roll.

Take an average-difficulty "lift heavy rock" DC 11 strength test. The person with Strength 10 has a 50% chance of success. The person with Strength 16 has a 65% chance of success.

On the other extreme, Strength 4 (-3 on d20 rolls) has a 35% chance of success. Strength 16 is about 86% more likely to lift the rock than Strength 4.

Looking at the strongest unremarkable young adult person in your neighbourhood and the weakest unremarkable young adult person in your neighbourhood, does this really seem like an unrealistically big difference?

Obviously it becomes more meaningful with higher DC's, especially if we're in the DC 21-23 range where the Strength 10 just straight up can't do it whereas the Strength 16 might be able to. It also helps if your DM is liberal with what they let the Athletics skill apply to. But still.


IMO, the problem isn't giving commoners too-high stats. It's the gradual creep away from LOW stats in subsequent editions, both for PC's and for NPC's. In the early editions a dump stat wasn't 8 or 9, it was 4 or 5.

If you want to treat 10 as a floor rather than an average, then that's fine. But it means that ability scores need to range much higher for normal people, and much higher still for exceptional heroes.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, basically. There's some wiggle room with Proficencies or Skill Levels or etc (in that lifting a rock would probably be Athletics so you would stack some bonuses there), but it is true that the differences can often be minute.

 

[Walter]

So, not *exactly* anything to do with the politics of tabletop RPGs, but on the subject of how people do their attributes I just let my players tell me what theirs are. If someone wants to play a character with all 20's or whatever, there's probably some interesting angles to be gotten from that.

Admittedly, I've run weekly games for 20+ years, so things are maybe a bit odd in the house of Walter, but, like if I'm playing D&D, that's how I do stats. We roll with whatever they come up with.

 

[Madam Carstein]

So, not *exactly* anything to do with the politics of tabletop RPGs, but on the subject of how people do their attributes I just let my players tell me what theirs are. If someone wants to play a character with all 20's or whatever, there's probably some interesting angles to be gotten from that.

Admittedly, I've run weekly games for 20+ years, so things are maybe a bit odd in the house of Walter, but, like if I'm playing D&D, that's how I do stats. We roll with whatever they come up with.

Click to shrink...

As someone who plays a lot of Fighters with high CHA, honestly, having a boost to a less-used skill doesn't really make a lot of difference if one is playing a class that doesn't use it. A Wizard with high STR is still probably better off as a devoted caster, a Fighter with high CHA can talk their way out of a sticky situation but otherwise probably isn't that much more powerful for it aside from doing better on certain saves. Class-based TTRPG systems typically put a lot of constraints on playing significantly outside said class.

I haven't run games but as a player, I feel like people who play broken characters are usually broken based around exploiting unbalanced mechanics or using combinations of abilities that are fine individually but broken when used together.

But at the end of the day, what is "broken" or "balanced" isn't important so long as everyone is having fun.

 

[RoseEmbolism]

Honestly, balance is fungible and variable. For a recent character the stat bonuses were:
Str: +2 (14)
Dex: +7 (24)
Con: +4 (18)
Int: +5 (20)
Wis: +2 (14)
Cha: +1 (12)

She was honestly really underpowered, compared to the guy with the +13 Strength mod and the ability to chuck tanks around, or the alien shapechanger, or the power armor blasty guy. She had to depend on things like a combo Power Attack/All Out Attack to risk doing any damage, but mainly she relied on things like trips and holds to be combat effective.

So you know, it's relative.

 

[Konradleijon]

If recently got into Bloodlines and man the stuff with the Kuen-Jin is racist.

Kuen-Jin come from Kindred of the East and are spirits that escaped from various Hells and went back to their bodies and by convergent evolution Resemble Cainites.

The OG line was filled with orientalist nonsense and Exalted sequel stuff.

But the portrayal is even worse in Bloodlines. Atleast in KOTE your meant to play as a Kuen-Jin.

But in Bloodlines the Kuen-Jin are enemies introduced late in the game and are yellow peril stereotypes about evil Asians infiltrating America and even have Lacroix who made a deal with the racist ass dragon lady leader in a way that reminds me of the "politician works for China"

 

[nemo1685]

The OG line was filled with orientalist nonsense and Exalted sequel stuff.

Click to shrink...

I don't object to the characterization, but in the interest of nitpicking I would like to note that the OG line was filled with Exalted prequel stuff. I forget exactly where I heard it (though I think it was in the writer quotes on the Unofficial Exalted Wiki), but as I recall, the Exalted mechanics were specifically designed around existing KotE lore.

Also, KotE was first released in 1998, Exalted in 2001.

 

[Arrou]

It is certainly interesting how playstyles can differ. I don't think I've played or GM'ed a game with non-random stat allocation for what, 8 years? And I can't say I'm too tempted by the thought.
I dislike having too much fine control over my character. I want friction, grit, something to conflict with or add to my ideas. I want a character to feel lived-in and worn, not designed to spec.

Then again I don't find the idea of balance too appealing either. So I suspect the difference in preferences is wider yet.

 

[RoseEmbolism]

My attitude is that random character generation doesn't go far enough. If one wants random characters, they should go all the way. Not only stats, but they should also randomly roll for race, sex, gender, hair color, eye color, hit points, etc., etc., and class as well. If they end up in a class that doesn't suit their stats, well, it's often the case in real life that people end up in professions they aren't suited for.

Hell, just use the random reincarnation tables. If you end up playing a non-, magical badger, run with it. Badgers are cool.

 

[Drascin]

Personally, I tend to feel that I don't get anywhere enough playtime to waste it on a random character I am not excited about from moment one.

If I was in the position of getting to play three games a week, then I might fuck with random chargen. But when I'm lucky to have three hours of roleplaying in a week I am absolutely taking the chance to make someone who I know is going to be fun for me to play extremely on purpose!

 

[The Narrator]

But at the end of the day, what is "broken" or "balanced" isn't important so long as everyone is having fun.

Click to shrink...

It's precisely so that "everyone" can have fun that balance is a necessity. Feeling useless or redundant isn't fun. Playing a character that hardly ever gets to do the thing that they're supposed to be good at because the caster has spells that can completely trivialize any challenge before you can even act isn't fun. Playing a character that's actually bad at doing the thing that they're supposed to be good at because the game's designers didn't understand math or because you had bad luck with a die roll during character creation isn't fun.

 

[A_Somebody]

It's precisely so that "everyone" can have fun that balance is a necessity. Feeling useless or redundant isn't fun. Playing a character that hardly ever gets to do the thing that they're supposed to be good at because the caster has spells that can completely trivialize any challenge before you can even act isn't fun. Playing a character that's actually bad at doing the thing that they're supposed to be good at because the game's designers didn't understand math or because you had bad luck with a die roll during character creation isn't fun.

Click to shrink...

Yeah as fun as 'improv' style systems Im an introvert who finds that 24/7 exhuasting. Im also a numbers nerd so when I'm doing Pathfinder or similar I actually want to engage with the elf flavored math

 

[Drascin]

It's precisely so that "everyone" can have fun that balance is a necessity. Feeling useless or redundant isn't fun. Playing a character that hardly ever gets to do the thing that they're supposed to be good at because the caster has spells that can completely trivialize any challenge before you can even act isn't fun. Playing a character that's actually bad at doing the thing that they're supposed to be good at because the game's designers didn't understand math or because you had bad luck with a die roll during character creation isn't fun.

Click to shrink...

On the other hand, this kinda gets to an irritation I had when running Pathfinder 2.

Balance's only usefulness is to ensure everyone gets spotlight rather than one person solving everything. If you have classes that are theoretically balanced if you put it all in an Excel sheet but at the end of the day one class is balanced by doing all the stuff that gets spotlight and another is balanced by doing a bunch of slight math-altering that might affect things four spots down the initiative count, you do not have useful balance, you have a fucking headache for me as the GM. Freaking Mutants&Masterminds has felt more balanced than PF2 has in useful terms of spotlight management, and that game literally has a sidebar saying that the devs had to choose between making a game that was balanced or a game that could let you make Batman and Superman, and they chose option B!

 

[Queshire]

Hrm. So starting to see the first Youtube videos about PF2e's Tian Xia character guide book. I don't have the book myself yet, but one criticism I've seen is that they wish it included more options for monks then what we're getting. I don't agree. There's only about half a dozen feats specifically for monks, sure, but the majority of the Archetypes in the book seem like they'd be a lot easier to do as a Monk than some other classes.

 

[The Narrator]

On the other hand, this kinda gets to an irritation I had when running Pathfinder 2.

Balance's only usefulness is to ensure everyone gets spotlight rather than one person solving everything. If you have classes that are theoretically balanced if you put it all in an Excel sheet but at the end of the day one class is balanced by doing all the stuff that gets spotlight and another is balanced by doing a bunch of slight math-altering that might affect things four spots down the initiative count, you do not have useful balance, you have a fucking headache for me as the GM. Freaking Mutants&Masterminds has felt more balanced than PF2 has in useful terms of spotlight management, and that game literally has a sidebar saying that the devs had to choose between making a game that was balanced or a game that could let you make Batman and Superman, and they chose option B!

Click to shrink...

I ran PF2E for about a year, and that wasn't our experience at all.

We had a party of both martials and casters, and everyone got their licks in. The fighter scored lots of crits and the monk was suplexing people, sure, but the druid could use an Aqueous Orb spell to roll up whole troops of zombies like it was Katamari Damacy while riding a bear. Spellcasters can't compare to martials when it comes to single-target damage, certainly. Martials wouldn't have a reason to exist otherwise! Spellcasters are usually better at buffing, debuffing and battlefield control, and almost have a monopoly on multi-target damage. And those things win fights. Every +1 for your allies or -1 for your enemies is a greater chance to hit and crit. Every action that an enemy loses or has to waste standing up or moving is one less chance for them to attack you. Teamwork is actually a huge force multiplier, and everyone is better off mixing damage and support actions. (Martials are better off using their third action to make a skill check against the enemy than to make a third attack.) And unlike a lot of versions of the game, one of the players doesn't have to dedicate themselves to primarily playing a healing role, which is about the most boring thing that you can be stuck doing every round in an RPG.

To players used to how casters completely dominate the meta in D&D, I'm sure it seems like a downgrade, but the fact that that they were better than everyone at doing everything was exactly the problem.

 

[shepsquared]

Hrm. So starting to see the first Youtube videos about PF2e's Tian Xia character guide book. I don't have the book myself yet, but one criticism I've seen is that they wish it included more options for monks then what we're getting. I don't agree. There's only about half a dozen feats specifically for monks, sure, but the majority of the Archetypes in the book seem like they'd be a lot easier to do as a Monk than some other classes.

Click to shrink...

The Tian Xia Character Guide looks pretty good to me. I wish they'd put in more support for monks with multiple stances, especially since 5 breath Vanguard is based aorund taking 5 of them, but its a great mix of character options across different classes.

Fan dancer is probably best for swashbuckler and bard but works with most other classes, durian crabs are hilarious, you can play as a dijiang spirit and pick up goat stance in monk to focus entirely on headbutts.

Now if only they'd given us art of a kaiju kobold.

 

[Madam Carstein]

I ran PF2E for about a year, and that wasn't our experience at all.

We had a party of both martials and casters, and everyone got their licks in. The fighter scored lots of crits and the monk was suplexing people, sure, but the druid could use an Aqueous Orb spell to roll up whole troops of zombies like it was Katamari Damacy while riding a bear. Spellcasters can't compare to martials when it comes to single-target damage, certainly. Martials wouldn't have a reason to exist otherwise! Spellcasters are usually better at buffing, debuffing and battlefield control, and almost have a monopoly on multi-target damage. And those things win fights. Every +1 for your allies or -1 for your enemies is a greater chance to hit and crit. Every action that an enemy loses or has to waste standing up or moving is one less chance for them to attack you. Teamwork is actually a huge force multiplier, and everyone is better off mixing damage and support actions. (Martials are better off using their third action to make a skill check against the enemy than to make a third attack.) And unlike a lot of versions of the game, one of the players doesn't have to dedicate themselves to primarily playing a healing role, which is about the most boring thing that you can be stuck doing every round in an RPG.

To players used to how casters completely dominate the meta in D&D, I'm sure it seems like a downgrade, but the fact that that they were better than everyone at doing everything was exactly the problem.

Click to shrink...

This is honestly a huge reflection of my own experience as a player in Pathfinder 2e. Especially vis-a-vis teamwork.

A group of new players where people aren't working together and using their abilities in sync vs. a group that works together effectively is a night and day difference in Pathfinder 2e. Our group had a number of new players who were either new to the system or TTRPGs in general and the group handled combats a lot better once we learned to work together.

It also was a very balanced experience: our Fighter (me) was the finisher who could take out tough enemies with big hits, which our Rogue got plenty of as well. More caster-oriented characters were dishing out buffs and spell effects and healing and it was a good experience.

2e was very much designed for game balance whereas 1e was really more an adaptation of 3.5 and wasn't really concerned about making a balanced game.

 

[A_Somebody]

This is honestly a huge reflection of my own experience as a player in Pathfinder 2e. Especially vis-a-vis teamwork.

A group of new players where people aren't working together and using their abilities in sync vs. a group that works together effectively is a night and day difference in Pathfinder 2e. Our group had a number of new players who were either new to the system or TTRPGs in general and the group handled combats a lot better once we learned to work together.

It also was a very balanced experience: our Fighter (me) was the finisher who could take out tough enemies with big hits, which our Rogue got plenty of as well. More caster-oriented characters were dishing out buffs and spell effects and healing and it was a good experience.

2e was very much designed for game balance whereas 1e was really more an adaptation of 3.5 and wasn't really concerned about making a balanced game.

Click to shrink...

I think a lot of it really depends on encounter balance. I started pretty early in the cycle, and a lot of the publishes adventures seemed over focused on One Big Boss "Severe" or "Extreme" encounters, which due to the general math + lower levels having fewer options made Spellcasters feel extra useless (why bother, it'll trivially crit success any spell I have, and I'm not built for actual DPS) while anything but fighter felt like playing happy slaps. I also think people (or at least I did) had leftover PF1E mentality of "lol, you should add+5 to any CR since it's so easy to hyperoptimize," instead of realizing Normal is actually Normal here lol.

I think my awful time trying with Mastermind Rogue trying to do spell sneak attacks have poisoned the well for me on INT characters. Well thta and an AP that gave everything tags which made identifying difficult if not impossible (Oh that nat 20 is only a regular success...)

 

[Night]

t's precisely so that "everyone" can have fun that balance is a necessity.

Click to shrink...

As a longtime Rifts guy, no, not really. Everybody in the party should have something to do but this is the job of the person running the game. Actual combat balance between player classes is completely optional. This is actually sorta normal and expected by most people! The rogue is not usually here to come into a combat scenario and swing a big dick. The rogue is here to do roguey spy stuff. Give them roguey spy stuff to do.

Ironically for my love of BattleTech, I have never been the Robot and Power Armor guy at the Rifts table. Granted I have found extremely broken ways to use my characters because it's Rifts and hey, I can point at you on a map from two kilometers away without line of sight because high-level Dog Boy, but I've never been the big tank/damage dealer, always played a supporting role in a firefight, and that's fine. The Dog Boy gets to be the J'ACCUSE person when it comes to supernatural threats and that's pretty cool. Y'all wouldn't last five minutes without it.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

Quick question for the sake of curiosity, how many people in this thread actually work in the RPG industry?

Click to shrink...

Define "the RPG industry"?

Indie, Freelancer, and Line Dev are, to my understanding, pretty different experiences/lifestyles even if they produce products that are all "RPG"

I rarely bother to criticize the former two sorts of people because they mostly don't have power. The latter on the other hand, are fair game, and Mearls deserves every bit of criticism thrown at him. Occasionally someone moves between these categories, but it's rare to jump to Line Dev, because I have commented before, the few actually properly corporate RPG publishers tend to be a Good Old Boys club who keep hiring back the same set of old white dudes.

Yeah, the first moment I realized that there might something deeper going on with them beyond typical rpg nerd cluelessness was stumbling on the phrenology skillcheck. Not really the kind of thing you can put in a published rulebook by accident.

Click to shrink...

Holy shit, I can roleplay as Measurehead in PF 1E lmao.

Click to shrink...

Paizo's "Psychic" classes/system consisted of 1/2 copying D&D psionics (which they had claimed a decade prior they would never do) and squashing them into spells, and 1/2 flavoring it with every bit of Victorian Occultism they could think of.

No, they didn't sensitivity read it.

 

[maskedanddanger]

I think that balance becomes more important the more the ruleset is focused on providing "balanced combat encounters". More intrigue based games, or ones with flatter power curves then your average fantasy heartbreaker, can revel a bit more in characters with skillsets that don't revolve around how they do in combat. That's one of the big draws of the Basic Roleplaying games many descendants like Call of Cthulhu and WFRP, after all.

I actually think it's one of the main reasons D&D doesn't interact with class (as in one's wealth and social standing) outside of roleplay elements the way something like WFRP does, because it would be unbalancing to those delicate power curves to have one character play a prince (and thus have one character able to play sugar daddy) and the other a pauper.

 

[Arawn_Emrys]

I think that balance becomes more important the more the ruleset is focused on providing "balanced combat encounters". More intrigue based games, or ones with flatter power curves then your average fantasy heartbreaker, can revel a bit more in characters with skillsets that don't revolve around how they do in combat. That's one of the big draws of the Basic Roleplaying games many descendants like Call of Cthulhu and WFRP, after all.

I actually think it's one of the main reasons D&D doesn't interact with class (as in one's wealth and social standing) outside of roleplay elements the way something like WFRP does, because it would be unbalancing to those delicate power curves to have one character play a prince (and thus have one character able to play sugar daddy) and the other a pauper.

Click to shrink...

Base D&D doesn't. But there were campaign settings that did. Kara Tur made you fill out a full family chart with rolls on rank and wealth, Council of Wyrms explicitly was about class, and the Historical stuff from 2e also explored it both with the idea that in the Rome setting someone WAS supposed to be the sugar daddy as a Senator, and by actually making feudal responsibilities part of the game in the Paladins of Charlemagne setting.

 

[RoseEmbolism]

Freaking Mutants&Masterminds has felt more balanced than PF2 has in useful terms of spotlight management, and that game literally has a sidebar saying that the devs had to choose between making a game that was balanced or a game that could let you make Batman and Superman, and they chose option B!

Click to shrink...

It's Actually easy to make a game where Superman and Batman are balanced. But the problem with Mutants and Masterminds, like the problem with Champions, is they are "Describe superpowers" have, and not "describe a comic book".

It's trivial to balanced versions of Superman and Batman in games like Fate Accelerated Edition: "Last Son of Krypton +3" and "The Caped Crusader +3". Each of them are going to deal with challenges equally well, though the descriptions will vary.

Likewise, in Sentinel Comics RPG, a Superman with an array of: "Super Strength D10, Invulnerable D10, Flight D8, Stranger Visitor From Another Planet D8" will be balanced with "Acrobatics D10, Stealth D10, Utility Belt D8, Billionaire Playboy D8"

And part of the problem is people will look at the stated abilities of the characters, and say "Oh, Superman must completely overpower Batman", and not the actual source material, such as the comics or DCAU.

That's basically why power measurement systems like the D20 evolutionary tree aren't actually good for emulating media, and usually lead to dissatisfying results.

 

[Kaiya]

It's Actually easy to make a game where Superman and Batman are balanced. But the problem with Mutants and Masterminds, like the problem with Champions, is they are "Describe superpowers" have, and not "describe a comic book".

It's trivial to balanced versions of Superman and Batman in games like Fate Accelerated Edition: "Last Son of Krypton +3" and "The Caped Crusader +3". Each of them are going to deal with challenges equally well, though the descriptions will vary.

Likewise, in Sentinel Comics RPG, a Superman with an array of: "Super Strength D10, Invulnerable D10, Flight D8, Stranger Visitor From Another Planet D8" will be balanced with "Acrobatics D10, Stealth D10, Utility Belt D8, Billionaire Playboy D8"

And part of the problem is people will look at the stated abilities of the characters, and say "Oh, Superman must completely overpower Batman", and not the actual source material, such as the comics or DCAU.

That's basically why power measurement systems like the D20 evolutionary tree aren't actually good for emulating media, and usually lead to dissatisfying results.

Click to shrink...

yeah but on the other hand Fate: Accelerated will never, ever feel like actually PLAYING Superman because it cannot actually model his superpowers or, uh, really anything but his personality. If you strip all the flavor and nuance and ability to express their powerset and put them at "they just Do Their Role" sure, they're about the same.