It's the Aesthetics of Optimization that I Don't Like [Archive] - Page 4

Daimbert

2010-06-29, 01:22 PM

Fluff is meaningless. The only fluff that matters is your character and the campaign. I don't really care if some random WotC book says that "this class is primarily known for riding on giant monkeys and picking their noses with spoons", if the class's mechanics work to emulate the concept I'm going for in the game, fluff be damned.

In one of my more recent tabletop games I had a player who was making a samurai-themed character based around the Crane Samurai from d20 Rokugan. He was the perfect samurai. He was loyal to his lord and his people, and his group. He was an expert duelist and expert of the unexpected attack (Iaijutsu). His dueling was swift, graceful, and almost acrobatic - like a dance; with powerful sudden strikes. When the chips were down, he could heroically force himself beyond his limits by singling his mind on the kill, pushing everything but his sword and his opponents out of his mind through his training in Bushido.

His character sheet just happened to say: "Fighter 4 / Barbarian 1 / Rogue 3".

I never claimed anything about this not being possible; in fact, it's something like what I did for poor Maria below. But for me -- and I think a lot of people -- what you did is an example of something, well, WRONG with the game. It's an example that there isn't a profession in the game that probably should be. To me, it seems driven by "I want to have a certain character concept, but the game doesn't really support it, so I'll stuff something in and tweak to make it work." I dislike it. I'll do it if I have to, but it leaves me cold. To me, a new class should be built so that all the fluff and all the mechanics match, and so that my character can go around saying -- in the world -- "I'm a samurai!" and everyone knows what that means.

Unless you're going to go with a "Samurai is just a title" thing like the Sapphire Guard, of course.

See, for my character I couldn't justify why my character would be a rogue. But there wasn't really anything else that could provide the skill points and class skills so that I could make her, essentially, the elegant, persuasive warrior. Maybe Bard would have worked better with some of the existing tweaks, especially when I went the Sorceress route to get the magic. I don't know. But the problem is that again it's not a "My character is a fighter or a mage or a barbarian, so what type of that thing are they?" but more "I want to have a character like this, so what profession matches the fluff ... okay, none of them. Crap. So which profession or professions allows for the mechanics so that my character can have mechanics to match the fluff I want them to have? Okay, these. Sigh. All right ...".

To me, fluff is all. I don't really care about the mechanics, as long as they let me do reasonable fluff and participate meaningfully in the story. Other people may have different opinions, of course.

I really don't see the difference inherent here. In one case, there's existing mechanics that allow me to properly represent my character concept, and it simply looks a little uglier in the class line. But even though my class list says Fighter 2/Rogue 5/Swashbuckler 3, my character concept is "pirate."

I'm sure we could put together a pirate class, so the class list just says pirate 10, but really, what's the difference?

Well, for me, part of it is the OOC planning and strategizing I have to do to get there. It just seems artificial, and is indeed something you have to plan (even if you started at 10). Whereas with one class you get to just say "I'm a level-10 pirate". IC, it's hard for me to justify my character's progression. Mostly because a pirate, for example, would learn all of those skills all at the same time (maybe focussing on one set or the other, but not across class lines) while this progression cries out for an explanation of why at level 1 they were a Fighter and then learned some Rogue skills at level 2, and so on.

Also, this is really bad if you wanted to be a Privateer as opposed to a pirate. I think you'd still need the Rogue mechanics, but there's no reason to have any rogue in your background, since you might be exceedingly lawful and even rigid in personality.

Again, not saying it can't be done. In fact, I'm not even saying I haven't done it ('cause I have). I just don't like it. And I don't like it because there IS a difference there in how you view things ... even if that doesn't bother you.

Glimbur

2010-06-29, 01:38 PM

Honestly, I'm just lazy. With the knowledge I have of 3.5, it's easier for me to model a thug as a fighter/rogue (or fighter with the thug variant) than to make up a new class with new mechanics so I can call it a Thug and get what I want single-classed.

hamishspence

2010-06-29, 01:43 PM

I think you'd still need the Rogue mechanics, but there's no reason to have any rogue in your background, since you might be exceedingly lawful and even rigid in personality.

In 3rd ed- there's nothing stopping a rogue from being lawful and rigid.

Giving the rogue a LN alignment, and having a backstory where he learns the relevant skills without being a thief- for example, being a government-sanctioned officer with the job of clearing out monstrous squatters- is all that's needed.

Hyooz

2010-06-29, 01:55 PM

Well, for me, part of it is the OOC planning and strategizing I have to do to get there. It just seems artificial, and is indeed something you have to plan (even if you started at 10). Whereas with one class you get to just say "I'm a level-10 pirate". IC, it's hard for me to justify my character's progression. Mostly because a pirate, for example, would learn all of those skills all at the same time (maybe focussing on one set or the other, but not across class lines) while this progression cries out for an explanation of why at level 1 they were a Fighter and then learned some Rogue skills at level 2, and so on.

Also, this is really bad if you wanted to be a Privateer as opposed to a pirate. I think you'd still need the Rogue mechanics, but there's no reason to have any rogue in your background, since you might be exceedingly lawful and even rigid in personality.

Again, not saying it can't be done. In fact, I'm not even saying I haven't done it ('cause I have). I just don't like it. And I don't like it because there IS a difference there in how you view things ... even if that doesn't bother you.

It's about as much planning and strategizing as you need to do to create your own class. You need to know what you want your character to be able to do, and then find a way to get that. I would never say "I'm a level 10 pirate" to describe my character. I would just say "I'm a pirate." Yeah, if someone asked how my character was mechanically able to do X, I'd point to the level of Swashbuckler I had, but in world, he just learned how to do that while pirating. IC, I have no level progression to justify. If you wanted one, it wouldn't be too hard (he started out just a proficient swordfighter, then learned the more specific pirate-ing skills as he actually was aboard the ship, think Will Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) but explaining things class-by-class juts gives the classes way too much power over your concept. Taking a level of rogue doesn't mean I stopped being a fighter or whatever, it means I learned to fight dirty as I progressed being a pirate or whatever.

And no, this would work just as well for a Privateer as a pirate. Being a rogue doesn't mean I can't have a strict personal code or even follow the letter of the law. It just means I'm good at doing X things, which a Privateer should be able to do (Even the rogue entry allows for Alignment: Any. It's preconceptions about what a rogue is and how they act that prevent this from working.)

There's only a difference if you let there to be one. My character wouldn't describe himself as a Fighter/Rogue/Swashbuckler. He'd describe himself as a pirate either way. He can do the same things either way. It's these preconceived notions of what it means to be a 'rogue' or a 'fighter' or a 'wizard' that keeps this from working.

Knaight

2010-06-29, 01:56 PM

*blink*

Um... Knaight?

I really mean no offense, but... are you at all familiar with the Rokugan setting?

Yes, but it predates the D20 interpretation, and alignment is not in it by default (Legend of the Five Rings). The closest you get is taint, and that's less an alignment matter and more of a "how much jade did you forget to bring when walking around where you shouldn't have been" matter. Its not "being lawful" that is critical, it is doing certain social rituals, and avoiding certain taboos, and even then that's just a matter of honor and reputation, which are very different from alignment.. And you still see a bunch of drunk samurai peasants have to deal with without killing, so I would question the lawful requirement overall, as that is largely overlooked. As said before its more "how do you conform to these expectations" than "what is your outlook on life."

Knaight

2010-06-29, 02:03 PM

"I want to have a character like this, so what profession matches the fluff ... okay, none of them. Crap. So which profession or professions allows for the mechanics so that my character can have mechanics to match the fluff I want them to have? Okay, these. Sigh. All right ...".

To me, fluff is all. I don't really care about the mechanics, as long as they let me do reasonable fluff and participate meaningfully in the story. Other people may have different opinions, of course.

This is my exact position. However, there is a small tweak. My fluff is everything, my players fluff is everything, whatever mechanics best support it for their characters is fair game. What I could care less about is WotC fluff, and I see the classes as mechanical packages that let me build up characters so they actually have the abilities they should have, and nothing more. Of course, I abandoned D&D a while ago for a full classless system partially due to this, so my perspective may not be hugely typical.

Kylarra

2010-06-29, 02:10 PM

I'm just gonna respond to both of you at once since you're asking the same question.

My personal view on this is along the lines of "Whats the difference?"

If you have the same backstory and same mechanics, just a class line with no slashes instead of one with, then what was the point?

I really don't see the difference inherent here. In one case, there's existing mechanics that allow me to properly represent my character concept, and it simply looks a little uglier in the class line. But even though my class list says Fighter 2/Rogue 5/Swashbuckler 3, my character concept is "pirate."

I'm sure we could put together a pirate class, so the class list just says pirate 10, but really, what's the difference?

To quote the title, aesthetics. :smalltongue: If you'd actually read my posts, you'd know that using 3.X as a glorified pointbuy system is aesthetically displeasing to me. I would much rather have classes be more representative of their archetypes through a variety of different ways, and be legitimately able to be taken to 20, or a PrC to 10, as the case may be, than watch a build ride up and down as they try to cram in a variety of different classes to qualify for a number of different PrCs in order to frontload abilities that they want.

Amphetryon

2010-06-29, 02:24 PM

I'm just gonna respond to both of you at once since you're asking the same question.

To quote the title, aesthetics. :smalltongue: If you'd actually read my posts, you'd know that using 3.X as a glorified pointbuy system is aesthetically displeasing to me. I would much rather have classes be more representative of their archetypes through a variety of different ways, and be legitimately able to be taken to 20, or a PrC to 10, as the case may be, than watch a build ride up and down as they try to cram in a variety of different classes to qualify for a number of different PrCs in order to frontload abilities that they want.
How do you - any 'you' that subscribe to this particular viewpoint - handle a situation where a player, new to the system and without knowledge of the Classes and PrCs, presents an idea that doesn't fit within a single Class or PrC?

For example: "My character is a happy-go-lucky gnome, very sociable, who prefers to handle combats through a mix of attacking from shadows and having his cadre of faithful monkeys swarm the bad-guys. One of these monkeys, Chim-chim, is her constant companion." (Yes, I've had someone ask for help making essentially that character before.)

Hyooz

2010-06-29, 02:27 PM

To quote the title, aesthetics. :smalltongue: If you'd actually read my posts, you'd know that using 3.X as a glorified pointbuy system is aesthetically displeasing to me. I would much rather have classes be more representative of their archetypes through a variety of different ways, and be legitimately able to be taken to 20, or a PrC to 10, as the case may be, than watch a build ride up and down as they try to cram in a variety of different classes to qualify for a number of different PrCs in order to frontload abilities that they want.

Why limit yourself to archetypes, though? Or even certain versions of archetypes? Being restricted to one vision of what rogue means or what a wizard is is so... restricting. Wizard 20 might look nicer on paper, but if it doesn't represent my vision of what my character should be able to do, then I say screw the pretty little class line and I'm going to do whatever it takes to get an accurate representation of my character. This doesn't mean power or breaking rules or focusing on 'build' over anything else. Representing my character is my goal.

I guess I could piece together new base class for every character I make that doesn't directly fit a given archetype, but mixing and matching classes saves a lot of work and deliberation with my DM (who may or may not be that open to homebrew).

hamishspence

2010-06-29, 02:27 PM

For example: "My character is a happy-go-lucky gnome, very sociable, who prefers to handle combats through a mix of attacking from shadows and having his cadre of faithful monkeys swarm the bad-guys. One of these monkeys, Chim-chim, is her constant companion." (Yes, I've had someone ask for help making essentially that character before.)

Gnome Druid using Summon Nature's Ally to summon monkeys, and a monkey animal companion. Possibly multiclassing into rogue or swordsage for the hiding in shadows.

Zen Master

2010-06-29, 02:29 PM

I've read literature for years. Basically my whole life. I'm hardly an expert in literary interpretation and understanding. House of Leaves still confuses the hell out of me. There's a lot of occasions where that's true. My mom's been cooking since she was little, probably a good 40 years, she's not a master chef. She's reached a certain level of competency, don't get me wrong, but she's no 'expert.'

Lets just get one thing quite absolutely, completely and utterly straight here.

Someone said that my choices seemed random. I stated that they are not, adding on how I've played for long enough for my choices to be anything but random. I know damn well what I'm doing. I know damn well that it works. And I know just as damn well what I like and don't like.

That makes me the ultimate damned expert. At what I want. There is no god damned randomness.

What ever it is you think I'm trying to say, I frankly just don't have even the slightest idea.

Umael

2010-06-29, 02:32 PM

Yes, but it predates the D20 interpretation, and alignment is not in it by default (Legend of the Five Rings). The closest you get is taint, and that's less an alignment matter and more of a "how much jade did you forget to bring when walking around where you shouldn't have been" matter. Its not "being lawful" that is critical, it is doing certain social rituals, and avoiding certain taboos, and even then that's just a matter of honor and reputation, which are very different from alignment.. And you still see a bunch of drunk samurai peasants have to deal with without killing, so I would question the lawful requirement overall, as that is largely overlooked. As said before its more "how do you conform to these expectations" than "what is your outlook on life."

(Okay, good, you know.)

And no, taint is NOT the closest thing you get to alignment - that IS honor and reputation (which, yes, is different, but it is a LOT closer than taint). Rokugan is all about doing the honorable thing and looking like you are doing the honorable thing. Whether you are good or evil doesn't matter.

As a barbarian (the concept), you are an outsider, less than a himin - you don't have a place in the Celestial Order. Doable to play a game with a barbarian, or around a lot of them, but that brings with it certain issues. The easiest way to do it is to play a Unicorn - who cares if you DO have gaijin blood? So does half the Clan, if that little! Yes, you could play a different concept that involves being a barbarian or having barbarian roots (Senpet-Scorpion descendent, Twenty-Goblin-Winter graduate), but there ARE aesthetic reflections on your character if you do.

Now as a Barbarian, the class, there are a few things to look at insofaras the mechanics impacts the aesthetics, Rage being the big one. Fast Movement is nice (Hiruma Harrier anyone?) for certain character concepts, and illiteracy is a blip (1 skill point, done). However, more subtly, without the right skills (like Tea Ceremony), your character cannot act properly in court - which is a big part of the Rokugan setting. Oh, you can avoid that easily, if you want, but that is still a choice you have to make, an action or a reaction to the mechanics of your character class.

As for Lawful, I ran a game of d20 Rokugan and didn't use the alignment system at all. Worked fine (although the Barbarian NPC was suitably... treated... by Rokugan society). But if you have Lawful alignment, then the question is "how do you conform to these expectations" - which the Barbarian class (as being restricted against being Lawful) has to be tinkered to avoid (i.e., to avoid the aesthetical consequences of the game, you have a mechanical solution - which still denotes the existence of the aesthetics/mechanical dichotomy).

Daimbert

2010-06-29, 02:35 PM

It's about as much planning and strategizing as you need to do to create your own class.

Yes. Yes, it is. And recall that one of my main gripes is that I feel that you only have to do this because there isn't already a class in the game to provide the appropriate mechanics and fluff to do what you want properly, either by normal variations in an existing class or by a specific class to do it.

I don't like having to add a class, either. But at least once you have a class, there's no planning and strategizing involved as a player to make it work.

but explaining things class-by-class juts gives the classes way too much power over your concept. Taking a level of rogue doesn't mean I stopped being a fighter or whatever, it means I learned to fight dirty as I progressed being a pirate or whatever.

This, though, is the key difference between us, since I don't see that as giving classes too much power over my concept. I WANT the classes to be an integral part of my concept, and think that in general 3.5 D&D does aim at that. You may have a different opinion.

And no, this would work just as well for a Privateer as a pirate. Being a rogue doesn't mean I can't have a strict personal code or even follow the letter of the law. It just means I'm good at doing X things, which a Privateer should be able to do (Even the rogue entry allows for Alignment: Any. It's preconceptions about what a rogue is and how they act that prevent this from working.)

There's only a difference if you let there to be one. My character wouldn't describe himself as a Fighter/Rogue/Swashbuckler. He'd describe himself as a pirate either way. He can do the same things either way. It's these preconceived notions of what it means to be a 'rogue' or a 'fighter' or a 'wizard' that keeps this from working.

What you're missing here is that, for me, I want there to be one. It is, as the OP says, aesthetically displeasing that I CAN'T let there be a difference, and that I have to cobble together classes with varying and even contradictory fluff to get the set of mechanics to carry off my concept. I understand why it happens and understand how to work around, but that doesn't mean that I have to like it.

This is my exact position. However, there is a small tweak. My fluff is everything, my players fluff is everything, whatever mechanics best support it for their characters is fair game. What I could care less about is WotC fluff, and I see the classes as mechanical packages that let me build up characters so they actually have the abilities they should have, and nothing more. Of course, I abandoned D&D a while ago for a full classless system partially due to this, so my perspective may not be hugely typical.

See, we're on the opposite ends of the spectrum, because I want to use WOTC's fluff as my starting point and work from there, building an identity with some things fixed already. Generally, it's only when I'm recreating a character from some other medium that I have my own fluff to work with, and even then the hacking to get it to fit into D&D is irritating to me.

Also, while I'm not all that experienced with classless systems, I'm not that big a fan of them. I like tighter classes, at least in my fantasy RPGs. I like it -- or at least tolerate it -- in Mutants and Masterminds because, really, class-based superheroes just don't work [grin].

Kylarra

2010-06-29, 02:38 PM

How do you - any 'you' that subscribe to this particular viewpoint - handle a situation where a player, new to the system and without knowledge of the Classes and PrCs, presents an idea that doesn't fit within a single Class or PrC?

For example: "My character is a happy-go-lucky gnome, very sociable, who prefers to handle combats through a mix of attacking from shadows and having his cadre of faithful monkeys swarm the bad-guys. One of these monkeys, Chim-chim, is her constant companion." (Yes, I've had someone ask for help making essentially that character before.)I realize that your rhetoric is deliberately phrased to make it more difficult, but that's basically a druid, other than potentially the cross classed hide skill, nothing there is outside the realm of a normal druid.

But that's addressing the specific point, in a more general sense, I have a number of ways of doing it, the first is to find out exactly what the player wants from their character. More often than not, people aren't dead set on what they want to do, at least not to the degree of specificity that you are portraying here, barring character ports, but that's a whole 'nother issue, I usually avoid those for reasons unrelated to the difficulty of translation. After that I either see what works or I homebrew something.

Gametime

2010-06-29, 02:40 PM

Years playing a game does not equate to years of experience or expertise.

Of course it equates to years of experience - that's what experience means. It doesn't equate to expertise, and experience doesn't make one an authority on something, of course. Also, experience with one type of game does not map to experience of another, or experience with games in general.

Gnome Druid using Summon Nature's Ally to summon monkeys, and a monkey animal companion. Possibly multiclassing into rogue or swordsage for the hiding in shadows.

Consider Whisper Gnome and the Dark template to really boost those checks sky-high. Getting Hide and Move Silently as class skills without multiclassing is giving me trouble, though. Also consider the Druid variant that gives up Wild Shape for fast movement, wisdom-to-AC, Track, and Favored Enemy.

EDIT: Guerrilla Warrior from Heroes of Battle gives you Able Learner for Hide and Move Silently, although it doesn't increase the maximum ranks for the cross-class skill. Still, it means you can max them out just by dipping a stealthy class. Also, the pun is too awesome to pass up. :smallbiggrin:

Matthew

2010-06-29, 02:41 PM

Math_Mage

2010-06-29, 02:43 PM

Accusing me of strawman arguments.

:confused:

A personal attack is committed when a person substitutes abusive remarks for evidence when attacking another person's claim or claims. This line of "reasoning" is fallacious because the attack is directed at the person making the claim and not the claim itself.

Saying that your argument is a straw man is attacking the argument. If saying that someone's argument is incorrect is a 'personal attack' on the person for making incorrect arguments, there could be no discussion without 'personal attacks'.

You could say that my point is the same as the OP's. You could say that as you strive more and more for a more powerful character, you move farther and farther away from a concept I'd want to play (or it becomes more and more difficult for me to explain to myself how the build fits the concept I want to play). You could say that I like oranges but not apples.

But you have yet to explain:
1) How making a many-classed character is equivalent to 'striving for a more powerful character';
2) How making a powerful character and making a character that fits your concept are diametrically opposed concepts;
3) How multiclassing inhibits your ability to play to a concept.

I gave Soras Teva Gee an example multiclass character concept (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8797052&postcount=657); I'd like to ask you to comment on it as well. In what way did I sacrifice my concept for power? At what point did multiclassing distort or undermine my concept?

I've tried to illustrate the same point with various examples to various people over several pages. Examples appear not to be working - perhaps parallels are difficult.

Did your examples adequately answer the above three points? If not, you should consider whether they were, perhaps, not good enough.

I'll try to be blunt instead.

In my opinion - and in my games:

Keeping things simple (for instance, 1 class + 1 prestige class) makes me enjoy the game more.

Making things complex (for instance, 2 classes + 5 prestige classes) makes me enjoy the game less.

So, is your complaint about complex mechanics? Is it about powergaming? Is it about a lack of consideration for the character concept? These things are not identical. Please clarify.

Making builds that 'cover all bases' just makes the game boring - it all becomes a contest between me and the GM, when we should be working together to tell a story and build a world.

This falsely implies that optimizing builds results in destruction of the storytelling paradigm. I think there's no better way to refute this than to reference Saph's excellent, and recently completed, Seven Kingdoms campaign journal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=139572). Maybe in your games, optimization ends up replacing the storytelling mentality with the 'win D&D' mentality, but you should avoid implying that in the general case.

Stronger builds increase in-group power differences (and while 1 class + 1 prestige class isn't automatically weak, it's one way of reducing power seepage none the less).

Stronger builds do not increase in-group power differences. Builds of disparate power level increase in-group power differences. Moreover, multiclassing does not increase power--it increases the precision to which you can tune your power level, and it increases the range of power you can achieve from any given base class/es.

You've commented before about your fellow party members' 'weak optimization skills'. In that case, clearly a stronger build increases the power difference. But the opposite is just as true, and possibly just as common.

The more complex the build, the less freedom I feel I have to write the backstory as I like. I feel the need to add in more random and irrelevant aspects to explain away how the character got such diverse training.

They are only 'random and irrelevant' if you do not bother to integrate them coherently into the backstory. Again, I ask you to consider Jenaya, whose interaction with the Nightsong Guild became a primary determinant of her current state, introduced antagonists for the DM to use, and deepened the reader's understanding of her basic motivation (devotion to stealth and trickery). And of course, while I was determined to use the Nightsong Guild for the sake of avoiding any possible accusations of refluffing, the class description explicitly states that any stealth-focused, team-based organization would do.

I can understand the reluctance to constrain your backstory through multiclassing. What I don't get is, if you develop a complex character concept, why would you deny yourself the option to represent that complexity with a multiclassed character sheet?

Oh ... and so on, and so on.

All valid points. I know this to be true, because I'm not talking about you - I'm talking about me. Every word of it is irrefutably true.

And it really isn't so complex that you should experience difficulties understanding it. English may be my second language, but it certainly isn't that bad.

I understand that you find multiclassing distasteful, and that you have these reasons for finding multiclassing distasteful. But then you go and shoot off at the mouth with comments like "what optimizer would play sword & board?" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8800143#post8800143) This implies that you find your experience generalizable, to some extent, to other cases of optimization. It's that aspect that I question, since obviously I cannot claim that your opinion about your own playstyle is false. But for comments like that, I can--and do.

If your mental concept for your character is, say, a womanizing lady-killer who sleeps his way to the top in a female-dominant society (like Wolf), your internal image of your character is male**.

**Unless you start high enough level to have alter self, although I don't know if that spell can change your physical sex).

Well, the example doesn't work, but we can modify it a little. Say you want to play a female Drow Swiftblade with a Wizard/Fighter entry, but your DM plays with multiclassing XP penalties (why? I dunno). Still not perfect, since there are other entries, but in theory we have a choice to prioritize the mechanics vs. prioritizing fluff. In which case the choice comes down to the strength of my character concept, the disparity of the power levels in the two choices, and the degree to which the concept has to change to accommodate the different choices. (In the above case I would certainly go male, since my concept is light, the power level disparity is huge, and the concept is unlikely to need much changing.)

In character creation, I am trying to optimize two variables: mechanical power of a certain level (usually determined by the rest of the party), and quality of concept/aesthetics/fluff/whatever we're calling it now. I think an error many, many people make (myself included) is thinking that other people only value one of those variables, when they're simply comfortable at a different point in the optimization space.

In which case, did you not just make a choice between the mechanics and the "fluff", and pick the "fluff"?

Well, tbh, that was a point where the above variables coincided, since I didn't want to overpower the group with a full Druid (or do all the bookkeeping for a full Druid), and the concept had various reasons why the character wouldn't be good with animals.

Kylarra

2010-06-29, 02:52 PM

Why limit yourself to archetypes, though? Or even certain versions of archetypes? Being restricted to one vision of what rogue means or what a wizard is is so... restricting. I think many people have entirely too narrow views of what a given class can represent, or just feel that any restrictions on their so-called creativity are bad.

Wizard 20 might look nicer on paper, but if it doesn't represent my vision of what my character should be able to do, then I say screw the pretty little class line and I'm going to do whatever it takes to get an accurate representation of my character. This doesn't mean power or breaking rules or focusing on 'build' over anything else. Representing my character is my goal.The thing about claims like this is, the majority of the time, you're not conceptualizing a character, you're conceptualizing mechanics that you want and then building the character around that. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, however, it's a process that makes more sense in a classless system, which leads back to my original post on using a classed system like a classless one. So on some level I do agree that with the way many people tend to conceptualize "characters", archetypes are "constricting". I simply disagree that this is inherently a bad thing.

I guess I could piece together new base class for every character I make that doesn't directly fit a given archetype, but mixing and matching classes saves a lot of work and deliberation with my DM (who may or may not be that open to homebrew).I've already said that it's a matter of personal preference to homebrew or to jumble your parts together. I personally don't enjoy the aesthetics of it, though I do enjoy putting the parts together as thought experiments for myself, but I can see why others would choose to look at it from that way.

Heh; that is pretty much the history of D&D in a nutshell, trying to get the most popular system to do things and fit ideas that it was not really designed for: square peg, round hole. :smallbiggrin:
Indeed.

Gnaeus

2010-06-29, 02:59 PM

I gave Soras Teva Gee an example multiclass character concept (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8797052&postcount=657); I'd like to ask you to comment on it as well. In what way did I sacrifice my concept for power? At what point did multiclassing distort or undermine my concept?

There have been plenty of examples given. Responses varied from "real people don't do that" when they obviously do, to methods to fit the concept into a single class with retraining and feat rules that are obviously inadequate. The attempt to provide examples in the argument would work if their viewpoint were based on logic, as opposed to, as Acrimos so clearly pointed out, mere personal dislike.

In character creation, I am trying to optimize two variables: mechanical power of a certain level (usually determined by the rest of the party), and quality of concept/aesthetics/fluff/whatever we're calling it now. I think an error many, many people make (myself included) is thinking that other people only value one of those variables, when they're simply comfortable at a different point in the optimization space.

I think that their error is closer to thinking that people who optimize for mechanical power levels all and always have as their goal the highest power level achievable in 3.5 under any interpretation of the rules. Getting them to admit that there are optimizers that don't do that is difficult.

Umael

2010-06-29, 03:03 PM

Well, the example doesn't work, but we can modify it a little. Say you want to play a female Drow Swiftblade with a Wizard/Fighter entry, but your DM plays with multiclassing XP penalties (why? I dunno). Still not perfect, since there are other entries, but in theory we have a choice to prioritize the mechanics vs. prioritizing fluff. In which case the choice comes down to the strength of my character concept, the disparity of the power levels in the two choices, and the degree to which the concept has to change to accommodate the different choices. (In the above case I would certainly go male, since my concept is light, the power level disparity is huge, and the concept is unlikely to need much changing.)

So saying that you are balancing mechanics and aesthetics (sorry, but the word "fluff" is really tasting like rotten cotton candy to me) before making the decision to go with aesthetics is possibly a vast oversimplication, but it is theoretically correct?

(I'm not trying to trivialize your efforts and expertise in selecting how you wanted your character to advance. I hope you don't see it that way - it's not unlike being offered a job when you are already working - you have a lot of factors to consider, but in the end, it is (or can easily be) a binary choice.)

In character creation, I am trying to optimize two variables: mechanical power of a certain level (usually determined by the rest of the party), and quality of concept/aesthetics/fluff/whatever we're calling it now. I think an error many, many people make (myself included) is thinking that other people only value one of those variables, when they're simply comfortable at a different point in the optimization space.

Very true. And I probably am guilty of that myself, although where I fall on that scale, I don't know. Probably because that "scale" is a range, where if 0 is totally aesthetic and 10 is totally mechanical, I play 2 to 7 without problem, possibly even favoring around 3-3.5.

...Those numbers were really subjective, for the record.

Well, tbh, that was a point where the above variables coincided, since I didn't want to overpower the group with a full Druid (or do all the bookkeeping for a full Druid), and the concept had various reasons why the character wouldn't be good with animals.

So you had good reason and you showed good judgment.

But you still could have gone with a more mechanically advantageous solution. Yet you decided not, both for character reasons (not being good with animals) and for OOC reasons (again, perfectly sound to do what you did).

It wasn't a trivial decision and there were a lot of factors involved, but from where I stand, it still looks like you made a (wise) decision involving weighing the mechanical benefits against the aesthetic benefits. There was no "totally mechanical" option or "totally aesthetic" option, but a blend to do as much that fit for both for your concept. Yet at some point, you made at least one binary decision (in which you limited yourself for aesthetic reasons).

Smiling Knight

2010-06-29, 03:16 PM

If I understood correctly, it was a combination of mechanical and aesthetic reasons:the rest of the group would be weak in comparison to a full druid, and the character had a reason not to be good with animals.

Amphetryon

2010-06-29, 03:23 PM

'Multiclassing with rogue or swordsage' swerves from the quoted parameters:

I would much rather have classes be more representative of their archetypes through a variety of different ways, and be legitimately able to be taken to 20, or a PrC to 10,.

A druid without a method of making Hide a class skill will never match the picture in the head of the particular player whose idea I borrowed for the example.

Math_Mage

2010-06-29, 03:30 PM

I wouldn't classify this as a scale, with optimization and aesthetics as opposing ends of a continuum. I was very deliberately avoiding that paradigm, in fact. My point was that I try to create characters with appropriate mechanical power and a powerful, coherent set of aesthetics. That's why I characterized my thought process as trying to optimize those two variables in a space of character options, rather than trying to balance between them. To wit, my choices with regard to my Druid both brought my mechanical power closer to the appropriate level, and organized the character sheet around the character concept.

Umael

2010-06-29, 04:00 PM

I wouldn't classify this as a scale, with optimization and aesthetics as opposing ends of a continuum. I was very deliberately avoiding that paradigm, in fact.

Ah.

Okay. It was an analogy I could use, but alright.

My point was that I try to create characters with appropriate mechanical power and a powerful, coherent set of aesthetics. That's why I characterized my thought process as trying to optimize those two variables in a space of character options, rather than trying to balance between them. To wit, my choices with regard to my Druid both brought my mechanical power closer to the appropriate level, and organized the character sheet around the character concept.

Hmmm...

Let me attempt this (crude) analogy.

Instead of a scale where you have mechanics on one side and aesthetics on the other, you have two scales, one for each, ranging from an arbitrary zero to ten, where ten is the subjective optimal. Mechanics is how well the character does the job from a number-crunching viewpoint, while aesthetics is how well the character fits the mental image of the concept.

When you make various choices with your character, you can be adding or subtracting from either or both, depending on your decision. Take a level of monk or a level of swordsage? Well, the aesthetics are pretty good for both, but swordsage has higher mechanics.

So you mentally assemble your choices, you look at them, and then you pick the one that does the best job of fulfilling both, correct?

(I'll stop here and see if my analogy is agreeable.)

Kylarra

2010-06-29, 04:43 PM

'Multiclassing with rogue or swordsage' swerves from the quoted parameters:

.

A druid without a method of making Hide a class skill will never match the picture in the head of the particular player whose idea I borrowed for the example.Please don't quote me out of context. I don't think that all the base classes of 3.X qualify for those parameters, but it would be nice if they did. However, in my world, where we're conceptualizing this, there is a method of making Hide a class skill, via skill knowledge (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/alternativeSkillSystems.htm#skillKnowledge). Or there are a myriad of stealthy things to wildshape into, or simply Obscuring Mist (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/obscuringMist.htm), or again since we're working from my parameters, I'd swap something to make hide into class skill, I'm a big proponent of ACFs.

Amphetryon

2010-06-29, 04:52 PM

Math_Mage

2010-06-29, 05:00 PM

Hmmm...

Let me attempt this (crude) analogy.

Instead of a scale where you have mechanics on one side and aesthetics on the other, you have two scales, one for each, ranging from an arbitrary zero to ten, where ten is the subjective optimal. Mechanics is how well the character does the job from a number-crunching viewpoint, while aesthetics is how well the character fits the mental image of the concept.

When you make various choices with your character, you can be adding or subtracting from either or both, depending on your decision. Take a level of monk or a level of swordsage? Well, the aesthetics are pretty good for both, but swordsage has higher mechanics.

So you mentally assemble your choices, you look at them, and then you pick the one that does the best job of fulfilling both, correct?

(I'll stop here and see if my analogy is agreeable.)

That's the basics of it.

DragoonWraith

2010-06-29, 05:08 PM

I'd agree with the way Umael has formulated it. I don't (always) completely ignore classes' fluff (sorry, that's what it's called and trying to change terms just seems pretentious; I mean absolutely no derision with the term), but I also think someone who plays a Fighter/Rogue/Wizard who feels the need to say "Well, I trained in Fighter's College for two years, but then I dropped out and live my life on the streets, eventually joining a Rogue Gang! Then, tired of the poor life, I joined the Wizard Academy, and that's how I'm here today!" is... I mean, really? That certainly can work (depending on the character), but feeling the need to do it every time you multiclass? It's just silly. You could just say "Yeah, I'm a warrior, but I've picked up a few dirty and magical tricks along the way," and it will work a lot better most of the time.

And I really don't see that as ignoring or destroying the aesthetic of those classes.

Kaiyanwang

2010-06-29, 05:11 PM

For my taste, I find it odd when people are more inclined to brew up some house rules than to work within the established rules, classes, and PrCs to make the character fit the image in their heads. That said, if it works for you and your group, great.

People have different feelings and tastes about it. And it does not stands for classes and builds only.

As an example, some time ago I came here and started a topic about asking advice on an Epic Superawesome Sword I was building, a reward for an epic quest.

I stared asking advices, and arranged to combine infos (Kaorthi Resin, Elven Courtblade and so on).

Some people came up asking why, since I was the DM, I didn't simply made the sword like I wanted it.

A perfectly reasonable point of view. But part of my amusement in these things is move within the bounduaries of the rules*, that's why I asked for advice.

(Moreover, as a side note, i think that a solid crunch base means that if, say, players want to build the sword above because they found the arcanum fundare netherscroll, they can. You know, same rules for PC and NPCs, and so on..).

* Not that this makes me an optimizer. I absolutely don't consider myslef one, as one could evince from my posts.

Umael

2010-06-29, 06:39 PM

That's the basics of it.

Okay, I can work with this.

Now, please understand I'm trying to explain a particular paradigm, not that I am advocating it.

Let's start with a concept again, say the drow, maybe a drow rogue, someone who is devilishly charming, a womanizer, etc. Again, the male gets a -2 to Cha, the female gets a +2 to Cha.

So on our theoretical scales, we want this concept, which we can express very well by picking the drow race and the rogue class, put some points here and here in various skills, and we come down again to the choice of gender. On one hand, the concept calls for a womanizer, someone who probably bucks the trend in the matriarchy of drow society, which lends itself to being male, but for charming we think high Charisma, so mechanically, the female is better insofaras this part of the concept goes.

At this point, our character is gender questionable. The idea of a male drow womanizing his way through drow society, sleeping with all of his superiors to get promotions, is pretty firm in our head, but it is more difficult to pull that off with the -2 to Charisma instead of the +2 to Charisma. We could try to change the concept to make the character female, of course, but that is not an insignificant change.

Our theoretical scales are showing an arbitrary 8.5 on the mechanical and 9.1 on the aesthetics, with only the gender to determine. The concept is solid, both from a mechanical viewpoint and from an aesthetical viewpoint. All the feats are picked, the DM knows about the general backstory and thinks its great... it's just time to pick the gender.

Go with male for the aesthetics.
Go with female for the mechanical.

It's not that the character concept CAN'T go female from an aesthetic viewpoint. Maybe she's lesbian, or she slept her way to the top by seducing the male drow closest to the females. Everything else stays the same, from the dominating mother, whose memory haunts the PC to reason invented to explain the Skill Focus (Diplomacy) Feat that was granted by the DM.

And it's not that the character concept CAN'T go male from a mechanical viewpoint. After the point-buy and the racial modifiers, Charisma would still be pretty good. There are plenty of things that don't involve Charisma that will allow the character to have plenty of time in the spotlight.

From one perspective, the choice then DOES become mechanics or aesthetics. From another perspective, it never was a choice between the two, but how to satisfy both.

@ DragoonWraith - aesthetics, fluff, art - as long as we agree on what it is we mean, it's all good.

And for the record - on how you described multi-classing - no. I wouldn't do that every time. I wouldn't do that most times.

DragoonWraith

2010-06-29, 06:59 PM

Gametime

2010-06-29, 07:10 PM

'Multiclassing with rogue or swordsage' swerves from the quoted parameters:

.

A druid without a method of making Hide a class skill will never match the picture in the head of the particular player whose idea I borrowed for the example.

Druid 10/Holt Warden 10? Full casting advancement, trade away Wild Shape for some monk and ranger features. You can spontaneously summon monkeys, you have Hide and Move Silently as class skills for Holt Warden (and basically for Druid, too, if you take Guerrilla Warrior), and you even get a bonus to hiding in natural terrain. Optionally, Whisper Gnome and the Dark template to pump your Hide and Move Silently even higher.

Unfortunately, it doesn't advance Animal Companion. Best way to deal with that is to take Wild Cohort instead of using the class feature, or just deal with having the companion of a 10th level druid. Natural Bond will add 3 to that.

EDIT: Ruathar would work, too, if you don't mind or can ignore the fluff. That way you're only beholden to 3 levels, which can be compensated for by Natural Bond.

Math_Mage

2010-06-29, 07:17 PM

Okay, I can work with this.

Now, please understand I'm trying to explain a particular paradigm, not that I am advocating it.

Let's start with a concept again, say the drow, maybe a drow rogue, someone who is devilishly charming, a womanizer, etc. Again, the male gets a -2 to Cha, the female gets a +2 to Cha.

[...]

From one perspective, the choice then DOES become mechanics or aesthetics. From another perspective, it never was a choice between the two, but how to satisfy both.

I really don't understand why you're sticking with this example, when I gave you a better drow example on a silver platter.

To answer the general contention: Yes, sometimes you will be choosing between 8.5 mechanics/9.0 concept and 9.0 mechanics/8.5 concept. I fail to see what the problem is. That is Mike_G's original contention, isn't it? That the tendency to choose mechanics over fluff in those situations where they're opposed represents some kind of aesthetic problem?

Also, nitpick: Why would you need the Skill Focus (Diplomacy) to be granted by the DM? Couldn't you just take it? :smallconfused:

imp_fireball

2010-06-29, 07:25 PM

If you wanna stick genders into roles, here's what I've worked out -

For humans

- Men: +2 to will saves. As 'hunters', men can generally handle certain kinds of stress better then women.

- Women: +2 Charisma, +1 search. Women are conversationalists but can also be meticulous due to having evolved from 'gatherers'.

Physically

- Men: +1 Str. Enhanced metabolism over women gives men greater Str in general.

- Women: +1 Dexterity. Women are naturally inclined to react more rapidly to stimuli and have greater spacial distinction then men by some degree.
------

Sound good at all?

Kylarra

2010-06-29, 07:27 PM

For my taste, I find it odd when people are more inclined to brew up some house rules than to work within the established rules, classes, and PrCs to make the character fit the image in their heads. That said, if it works for you and your group, great.To throw out a potential counterperspective, the established rules, classes and PrCs represent a system that's already unbalanced and broken. Many, many people play with houserules in an attempt to fix some of the problems. If I perceive the fact that dipping across a half dozen classes in order to fulfill some vaunted character vision is a problem, why shouldn't I spend the time to work with my player in order to make something that works a bit more smoothly? It's virtually the same as playing with houserules.

Except, as someone pointed out, the Drow don't have -2 Cha (Male), +2 Cha (Female). All Drow have +2 Cha. There are no mechanical differences between male and female anywhere in 3.5 for exactly this reason.Au contraire. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/racialParagonClasses.htm#drowParagon)

:smallbiggrin:

Knaight

2010-06-29, 07:39 PM

DragoonWraith

2010-06-29, 07:39 PM

Au contraire. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/racialParagonClasses.htm#drowParagon)

:smallbiggrin:
A decent point; I wasn't aware of that (though I was, of course, aware of the Favored Class difference in the Drow race - there's also the Swanmay, a female-only Prestige Class). Those still aren't differences in ability scores, though, and the Drow Paragon reflects more on Drow society than Drow physiology. WotC avoided things like what imp_fireball suggests for... obvious reasons, I'd think. At least one facet of which being that one shouldn't feel pressure to be a male or female character because it would be better to be that way. WotC didn't really want people to play Drow anyway, but the Drow Paragon and the Swanmay are the only cases I am aware of where a character's gender ever comes into play, and both are quite different from what Umael suggests.

In the Drow's case, it's a societal thing, and the Drow Paragon is specifically supposed to embrace that society. For a male to not be a Wizard, or a female to not be a Cleric, would be to fly in the face of everything important to that society, and therefore would not be fitting for a Paragon of that culture.

For the Swanmay, I believe that has specific real-world mythological roots that dictate the way it is.

Math_Mage

2010-06-29, 07:39 PM

Mystic Muse

2010-06-29, 07:54 PM

Sound good at all?

No. Not at all.

Viskocity

2010-06-29, 08:12 PM

Umael

2010-06-29, 08:35 PM

I really don't understand why you're sticking with this example, when I gave you a better drow example on a silver platter.

To answer the general contention: Yes, sometimes you will be choosing between 8.5 mechanics/9.0 concept and 9.0 mechanics/8.5 concept. I fail to see what the problem is. That is Mike_G's original contention, isn't it? That the tendency to choose mechanics over fluff in those situations where they're opposed represents some kind of aesthetic problem?

This is my first post to you on the subject, linked for ease of use. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156489&page=23)

As I understand it, yes, that is Mike_G's problem. But my point was to illustrate that, in a possibly perverse way, he is right. It's all a matter of thinking about it.

Again, this is going off what I interpret, but Mike_G seemed to think that it was an either-or situation, implying that there are people who would prefer to think of the best mechanical advantage, even if it changed the original idea, possibly even going against it. You then inferred that if this meant you can not do both.

I was trying to avoid giving the idea that I agreed with him, only that I saw his point. This idea, that someone might pick mechanics over aesthetics, is not necessarily a bad one, but easy for someone to perceive that it is a problem. To go back to the original point way back on the first page, because there is a possible mechanical advantage to having a weapon skill-set style other than sword and shield, even if said weapon is outlandish, it fuels the notion that some people are picking character designs based solely on the mechanical benefits.

To me, it is something of a mirage - I can see it, I know why I see it, but I know that what is really there is quite different. There is no distant pool of water in the middle of the hot road as I drive down it, but it looks like it.

Also, nitpick: Why would you need the Skill Focus (Diplomacy) to be granted by the DM? Couldn't you just take it? :smallconfused:

Sorry if that was confusing - it was the Feat was granted by the DM, but the player had to explain it (or just wanted to explain it). Kinda like:

(Please pardon the liberties I took with this.)

DM: Here, take one.
*offers hat with several pieces of paper in it*
Math_Mage: Weapon Focus (Mace) if BAB+1, otherwise Skill Focus (Diplomacy)?
DM: Yeah, you're playing a rogue, right?
Math_Mage: Yes.
DM: Okay, your character starts with Skill Focus (Diplomacy). Free Feat.
Math_Mage: Oh, okay. Let me revise my backstory then.
DM: Dragoon, your turn.
DragoonWraith: Run? Math_Mage got Skill Focus (Diplomacy) and I got Run??
DM: Hey, it's a free Feat.

Umael

2010-06-29, 08:46 PM

Except, as someone pointed out, the Drow don't have -2 Cha (Male), +2 Cha (Female). All Drow have +2 Cha. There are no mechanical differences between male and female anywhere in 3.5 for exactly this reason.

*wanders off*
*reads*
*returns*

It's... been a while since I've played with Drow, apparently.

Last I recalled was their 3.0 stats.

*shrug*

Math_Mage

2010-06-29, 08:50 PM

All right, then. If that's how it is, that's how it is. [/tautology man]

Zen Master

2010-06-30, 02:21 AM

:confused:

Saying that your argument is a straw man is attacking the argument. If saying that someone's argument is incorrect is a 'personal attack' on the person for making incorrect arguments, there could be no discussion without 'personal attacks'.

But you have yet to explain:
1) How making a many-classed character is equivalent to 'striving for a more powerful character';
2) How making a powerful character and making a character that fits your concept are diametrically opposed concepts;
3) How multiclassing inhibits your ability to play to a concept.

I gave Soras Teva Gee an example multiclass character concept (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8797052&postcount=657); I'd like to ask you to comment on it as well. In what way did I sacrifice my concept for power? At what point did multiclassing distort or undermine my concept?

Did your examples adequately answer the above three points? If not, you should consider whether they were, perhaps, not good enough.

So, is your complaint about complex mechanics? Is it about powergaming? Is it about a lack of consideration for the character concept? These things are not identical. Please clarify.

This falsely implies that optimizing builds results in destruction of the storytelling paradigm. I think there's no better way to refute this than to reference Saph's excellent, and recently completed, Seven Kingdoms campaign journal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=139572). Maybe in your games, optimization ends up replacing the storytelling mentality with the 'win D&D' mentality, but you should avoid implying that in the general case.

Stronger builds do not increase in-group power differences. Builds of disparate power level increase in-group power differences. Moreover, multiclassing does not increase power--it increases the precision to which you can tune your power level, and it increases the range of power you can achieve from any given base class/es.

You've commented before about your fellow party members' 'weak optimization skills'. In that case, clearly a stronger build increases the power difference. But the opposite is just as true, and possibly just as common.

They are only 'random and irrelevant' if you do not bother to integrate them coherently into the backstory. Again, I ask you to consider Jenaya, whose interaction with the Nightsong Guild became a primary determinant of her current state, introduced antagonists for the DM to use, and deepened the reader's understanding of her basic motivation (devotion to stealth and trickery). And of course, while I was determined to use the Nightsong Guild for the sake of avoiding any possible accusations of refluffing, the class description explicitly states that any stealth-focused, team-based organization would do.

I can understand the reluctance to constrain your backstory through multiclassing. What I don't get is, if you develop a complex character concept, why would you deny yourself the option to represent that complexity with a multiclassed character sheet?

I understand that you find multiclassing distasteful, and that you have these reasons for finding multiclassing distasteful. But then you go and shoot off at the mouth with comments like "what optimizer would play sword & board?" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8800143#post8800143) This implies that you find your experience generalizable, to some extent, to other cases of optimization. It's that aspect that I question, since obviously I cannot claim that your opinion about your own playstyle is false. But for comments like that, I can--and do.

Well, the example doesn't work, but we can modify it a little. Say you want to play a female Drow Swiftblade with a Wizard/Fighter entry, but your DM plays with multiclassing XP penalties (why? I dunno). Still not perfect, since there are other entries, but in theory we have a choice to prioritize the mechanics vs. prioritizing fluff. In which case the choice comes down to the strength of my character concept, the disparity of the power levels in the two choices, and the degree to which the concept has to change to accommodate the different choices. (In the above case I would certainly go male, since my concept is light, the power level disparity is huge, and the concept is unlikely to need much changing.)

In character creation, I am trying to optimize two variables: mechanical power of a certain level (usually determined by the rest of the party), and quality of concept/aesthetics/fluff/whatever we're calling it now. I think an error many, many people make (myself included) is thinking that other people only value one of those variables, when they're simply comfortable at a different point in the optimization space.

Well, tbh, that was a point where the above variables coincided, since I didn't want to overpower the group with a full Druid (or do all the bookkeeping for a full Druid), and the concept had various reasons why the character wouldn't be good with animals.

Everything you ask has been answered over and over again. You can just go back, and read what I've already said. If you find something that's unclear, I'll joyfully clarify - I will not however go on writing the same things over and over again.

I'll say one thing though: To accuse me of strawmanning when I'm not is a personal attack - not going after the argument.

hamishspence

2010-06-30, 02:46 AM

There are no mechanical differences between male and female anywhere in 3.5 for exactly this reason.

In Underdark- the height and weight tables make female drow taller and heavier than male drow (on average)

imp_fireball

2010-06-30, 02:51 AM

I think that I, for one, will simply assume that this was sarcasm. If not, FATAL is calling your name.

Great, maybe I should stat out penis hammers next. Attainable at first level on a roll of 2 on 1d800. That's the chance of having a **** large enough.

Ashiel

2010-06-30, 06:56 AM

(Okay, good, you know.)

And no, taint is NOT the closest thing you get to alignment - that IS honor and reputation (which, yes, is different, but it is a LOT closer than taint). Rokugan is all about doing the honorable thing and looking like you are doing the honorable thing. Whether you are good or evil doesn't matter.

As a barbarian (the concept), you are an outsider, less than a himin - you don't have a place in the Celestial Order. Doable to play a game with a barbarian, or around a lot of them, but that brings with it certain issues. The easiest way to do it is to play a Unicorn - who cares if you DO have gaijin blood? So does half the Clan, if that little! Yes, you could play a different concept that involves being a barbarian or having barbarian roots (Senpet-Scorpion descendent, Twenty-Goblin-Winter graduate), but there ARE aesthetic reflections on your character if you do.

Now as a Barbarian, the class, there are a few things to look at insofaras the mechanics impacts the aesthetics, Rage being the big one. Fast Movement is nice (Hiruma Harrier anyone?) for certain character concepts, and illiteracy is a blip (1 skill point, done). However, more subtly, without the right skills (like Tea Ceremony), your character cannot act properly in court - which is a big part of the Rokugan setting. Oh, you can avoid that easily, if you want, but that is still a choice you have to make, an action or a reaction to the mechanics of your character class.

As for Lawful, I ran a game of d20 Rokugan and didn't use the alignment system at all. Worked fine (although the Barbarian NPC was suitably... treated... by Rokugan society). But if you have Lawful alignment, then the question is "how do you conform to these expectations" - which the Barbarian class (as being restricted against being Lawful) has to be tinkered to avoid (i.e., to avoid the aesthetical consequences of the game, you have a mechanical solution - which still denotes the existence of the aesthetics/mechanical dichotomy).

"Barbarian" wasn't his concept. His concept was fast nimble guy with a sword who was good at fighting and making unexpected Iaijutsu strikes; which interestingly enough was perfectly done with the aforementioned classes. He mechanically represented his concept better than a Crane Samurai could, and that's exactly the point.

I've played L5R before it was d20, and I see no real reason to dumb it down by trying to make D&D alignments somehow fit the setting like some sort of holy grail of game-play. Mainly because despite what the d20 Rokugan setting says, Lawful and Honor have little to do with each other; as by the way it functions, a chaotic evil character can improve their honor standing by doing the right things in front of the right people. Let alone the fact that even a Chaotic Good character isn't slowed on the path to Rank 5 Honor by anything more than the Duty/Loyalty guidelines - assuming he or she isn't loyal to their leader merely out of love, respect, or faith. A Neutral Good character can reach Honor 5 without trouble at all.

A courtier can say whatever they damn well please, but "I think he might be Neutral Good" doesn't cut butter. They better have something that actually means something. There's no reason his character wouldn't be suitable in a Rokuganni court. Interestingly enough, ever notice that Rogues have Diplomacy, and Sense Motives as class skills?

As for your Rage comment, Rage has listed mechanical effects. +4 Strength, +4 Constitution, +2 Will, -2 AC, limits the skills you can use to be primarily physical. Now let's think about this for a moment. I believe I said the mechanic was used to represent an intense focus that pushed aside thoughts of everything but you and your opponent, preparing for that killing strike; regardless of the cost; even disregarding your own safety to achieve what needs to be done. Yes, this worked perfectly.

His character exemplified the way of Bushido as described in Taira Shigesuke's Bushido Shoshinshu (Code of the Samurai). So quite frankly, I don't really give a damn what his alignment was, because his character functioned perfectly the way he intended him to function using the mechanics that he was intended to have.

If his character absolutely required a Lawful Alignment, then removing the Alignment restriction from the Barbarian class would have been an easy fix, rather than creating an entirely new class to combine three different classes into a single package - which he would probably still end up multi-classing from if something else came along that fit his concept better.

To take a cue from d20 modern, he was a Strong 4 / Fast 3 / Tough 1 hero. The classes are nothing more than building blocks, and the fluff archetypal. I have come to despise most of the WotC fluff for this very reason. People seem to think that you must be limited to these narrowly defined archetypes to be playing the game correctly, which goes against the whole idea of building an interesting character within the game.

Also, for the record, during times of war, many samurai could be illiterate, because more time was spent training them for battle rather than teaching them to read. Assuming there was no current conflict. This wasn't the case with his character (who possessed a level of Fighter and Rogue before Barbarian, making Illiteracy moot; nor would it have mattered if we were playing by the more intuitive Pathfinder rules which removed Illiteracy). However, I cite to you again the "Code of the Samurai: Education".

Warriors stand in a position above the other three castes, and are supposed to be professional administrators, so they need to study and gain an extensive understanding of the principles of things. Even so, warriors in times of warfare invariably participate in their first combat by the age of fifteen or sixteen, doing their work as knights, so they practice martial arts from the age of twelve or thirteen. For that reason they have no time for study, and are naturally illiterate.

During the Era of the Civil Wars, there were any number of warriors who couldn't even look up a word in the dictionary. That was not necessarily because of their own negligence, or because their parents raised them badly, but because their immediate need was to concentrate on military arts.

We have an elegant and beautifully crafted system for creating believable characters, and people are complaining that it's elegant and not limited enough. Well, again, quite frankly I would much rather enjoy a system that I can take a few classes and make a thousand character concepts, rather than going with other class systems (like 2E) and needing a new class or Kit for everything under the sun, because the system is so rigid.

I dislike the Complete Adventurer Ninja class because a Rogue can Ninja better than a Ninja. A Rogue/Assassin can magic-ninja better than a Ninja. As can a Rogue/Ninja Spy, Rogue/Shadow Dancer, Rogue/Bard, Rogue/Wizard, or Rogue/Sorcerer, or even a Ranger, or even levels in Druid (since some tales would suggest that ninjas used animals or could turn into animals to act as spies). Meanwhile the "Ninja" is pidgeonholed into a single concept, and it fails at doing its thing mechanically.

Finally, since you asked, my brother's character did retain the arcane spells that the bard got; because he wanted to play him with arcane spells. He was talented in deceptive combat tricks and strategy, and was exceptionally gifted in court. He fought with gunpowder weaponry which he himself crafted during their down-time, and he practiced alchemy (which wasn't counted as a Low-skill because OA was 3.0 and in 3.0 Alchemy was its own skill). He was samurai-caste but not a traditional samurai; but he was no less a loyal and respected member of the group. He was very similar to a Courtier.

DragoonWraith

2010-06-30, 09:46 AM

Everything you ask has been answered over and over again. You can just go back, and read what I've already said. If you find something that's unclear, I'll joyfully clarify - I will not however go on writing the same things over and over again.
Acromos, the conclusion I've come to is that you don't like more than 1 base/1 PrC because it becomes overly complicated and it's more than you want to deal with; too fiddly, if you will. I can completely understand a disinterest in that aspect of the game and have no problem with it, and you're welcome to enjoy the game however you like.

However, you try to justify your preference, maybe to yourself most of all, in terms of roleplaying and backstory quality (and also in terms of not overpowering the party, but I've noticed you've backed down from that position, which is good as it's completely untenable), and I just don't think that's realistic. Your rule does nothing for your backstory or character roleplaying, honestly, excepting perhaps that you've convinced yourself that it would, and would therefore subconsciously be bothered enough by it to not do as good a job. But when you do this, you go from a personal preference that we can appreciate if not share (mechanical complexity isn't worth my time), to something that sounds strongly like an insult to those of us who enjoy mechanical complexity (having more classes would make the character worse for roleplay and believability). No one has a problem with how you want to play the game, but pretending it makes you a better roleplayer for having it is insulting.

I'll say one thing though: To accuse me of strawmanning when I'm not is a personal attack - not going after the argument.
That's... simply incorrect. It's a statement that your argument is a strawman argument. It couldn't be more focused on your argument. I don't even recall who said you were or what argument they were referring to, but seriously, this statement taken on its own, is inaccurate.

Setting up a strawman doesn't make you a bad person. It's not a criticism of you. It's an extremely common thing for human being engaging in discourse to do, even subconsciously. Again, I don't recall the original comment, but it is entirely possible, even likely, to mean no insult when pointing out a strawman. Any insult here seems likely to have been invented by you. Unless the original comment insulted you as well as pointed out the strawman.

In Underdark- the height and weight tables make female drow taller and heavier than male drow (on average)
But height and weight don't matter and can be set arbitrarily by the player anyway.

Gametime

2010-06-30, 10:07 AM

I'll say one thing though: To accuse me of strawmanning when I'm not is a personal attack - not going after the argument.

Accusing someone of making a personal attack against you when they accuse you of strawmanning sounds like a personal attack to me. And now I'm making a personal attack by accusing you of making a personal attack by accusing someone else of making a personal attack.

This post needs an Xhibit macro. Yo dawg, I herd u liek ad hominem fallacies?

Umael

2010-06-30, 10:34 AM

I've played L5R before it was d20, and I see no real reason to dumb it down by trying to make D&D alignments somehow fit the setting like some sort of holy grail of game-play.

Okay, then I have two questions for you.

Why play d20 Rokugan in the first place and not L5R, and since you did, why play with alignments in the first place?

Mainly because despite what the d20 Rokugan setting says, Lawful and Honor have little to do with each other;

So you disregard the d20 Rokugan setting, but still use alignments? :smallconfused:

*alignment*

Please don't think I'm being arrogant or unthinking when I dismiss your arguments, but I have a policy of avoiding alignment debates, and since your explanation looks like you would disagree with how I view alignment as working, I'm going to simply step aside on that part of your rebuttal. Sorry if this annoys you.

A courtier can say whatever they damn well please, but "I think he might be Neutral Good" doesn't cut butter.

...Not what I said.

I was directly implying the Rage issue, NOT the alignment issue.

Interestingly enough, ever notice that Rogues have Diplomacy, and Sense Motives as class skills?

*snip*

Now let's think about this for a moment.

I'll be more open to your points if you were more civil and respectful.

Please keep in mind that I am disagreeing with your interpretation on various things. I am not using a condescending tone.

His character exemplified the way of Bushido as described in Taira Shigesuke's Bushido Shoshinshu (Code of the Samurai).

Neat.

Historical reference, I take it?

Used for a world that takes its cues from Japanese history but is not solely based on it?

Please correct me if I am mistaken.

So quite frankly, I don't really give a damn what his alignment was,

1) So why play with alignments at all?
2) You're bleeding emotion and attitude into your post and are coming across as a little belligerent. Could you please refrain from that?

because his character functioned perfectly the way he intended him to function using the mechanics that he was intended to have.

And again, it looked like it worked great for your group, and that is what matters most. But that doesn't mean that it would have automatically worked for me if I was running the game.

Different interpretations.

To take a cue from d20 modern, he was a Strong 4 / Fast 3 / Tough 1 hero.

...why are we bringing d20 Modern into this? :smallconfused:

People seem to think that you must be limited to these narrowly defined archetypes to be playing the game correctly, which goes against the whole idea of building an interesting character within the game.

It's called [i]paradigm.[i/] If you are aware of it, it is neither good nor bad.

Also, for the record, during times of war, many samurai could be illiterate, because more time was spent training them for battle rather than teaching them to read.

Again, basing Rokugan culture more closely on Japanese history than required.

It is perfectly okay if you and your group played it that way, but you should not expect everyone else to accept that this IS a universal truth.

We have an elegant and beautifully crafted system for creating believable characters, and people are complaining that it's elegant and not limited enough.

:smallconfused:

You completely lost me on this one, although this sounds like an awful lot of personal opinion. Is there a reason you directed this comment my way?

I dislike the Complete Adventurer Ninja class because a Rogue can Ninja better than a Ninja.

Umm... weren't we just talking about d20 Rokugan, which has its own Ninja class? So why are we talking about Complete Adventurer? :smallconfused:

Finally, since you asked, my brother's character did retain the arcane spells that the bard got; because he wanted to play him with arcane spells.

Okay. Against the recommendations of the d20 Rokugan setting, but, again, if you guys had fun, no skin off my nose.

(Again, I probably wouldn't allow it if it was my game, but we both know it wasn't my game.)

He fought with gunpowder weaponry which he himself crafted during their down-time, and he practiced alchemy (which wasn't counted as a Low-skill because OA was 3.0 and in 3.0 Alchemy was its own skill).

...

Oooookkkaaaayyy...

I repeat my near-directly previous comments. Heavily.

Ashiel

2010-06-30, 12:03 PM

Okay, then I have two questions for you.

Why play d20 Rokugan in the first place and not L5R, and since you did, why play with alignments in the first place?

Because I prefer the d20 system. Also, I don't find alignments to be very restrictive and can make for great guidelines or starting points.

So you disregard the d20 Rokugan setting, but still use alignments? :smallconfused:

Quite the contrary. You see, as described on page 62 and 63 of the OA: Rokugan campaign setting book, a character's Honor is separate from a character's alignment, and is heightened or lowered by acts whitnessed; and while Lawful Good characters are naturally likely to gravitate towards higher honor levels, it's far from a requirement.

Please don't think I'm being arrogant or unthinking when I dismiss your arguments, but I have a policy of avoiding alignment debates, and since your explanation looks like you would disagree with how I view alignment as working, I'm going to simply step aside on that part of your rebuttal. Sorry if this annoys you.
Fair enough. People tend to spark mighty arguments putting much stock in alignments.

...Not what I said.

I was directly implying the Rage issue, NOT the alignment issue.
As I read it - likely my error I guess - you said he couldn't be a great samurai due to having the Rage quality which cannot be used with Lawful Good alignments due to the Barbarian class's alignment restriction (though it is no quality of the Rage ability itself).

In short, a Courtier better have something that actually matters. "That's a class feature of a non-lawful character, my lord" doesn't cut it. In fact, even if it does represent anger rather than what he was using the mechanics to represent, unless he's doing something low then it doesn't matter. If you get angry and cut down a henin because he called your lord a "Puss-filled pimple on the ass of a motherless dog", it's not a strike against you either - unless your lord or superior told you not to and you did it anyway. Using anger and giving into anger are two different things.

I'll be more open to your points if you were more civil and respectful.

My apologies. I wasn't intending to be disrespectful. I don't actually see where I stopped being civil, but apologies for the sake of friendliness.

Neat.

Historical reference, I take it?

Used for a world that takes its cues from Japanese history but is not solely based on it?

Please correct me if I am mistaken.

You are mistaken. Consider yourself corrected. Legend of the Five Rings is a fantasy RPG that is based on japanese concepts, lore, and philosophy. While it's not 100% accurate, it does place the Philosophy of Bushido as part of that fantasy, and Bushido is a real thing; a real Philosophy.

As such, I'm citing a reference to Bushido which applies to the game, as opposed to what Emperor was in power during a particular era in real life. One is relevant to the discussion, the other is not, because one is a subject of the game, while the other is not.

1) So why play with alignments at all?
2) You're bleeding emotion and attitude into your post and are coming across as a little belligerent. Could you please refrain from that?
As noted before, because it doesn't cause disruptions to the game, and can be a useful tool if not abused. Also because some game mechanics make use of it.

...why are we bringing d20 Modern into this? :smallconfused:

Because of the topic at large. Also because it's a perfect analog to the situation. Character classes are templates that are generally setup for perfect archetypes; but can be combined to form deeper characters that are not cookie-cutter adventurer #3. Hence the beauty of the multi-classing system.

It's called [i]paradigm.[i/] If you are aware of it, it is neither good nor bad.

See above. Paradigm is a set model or pattern, or an example. However, limiting yourself in such a way is counter-intuitive to role-playing a different character; since if you only follow the standard fluff then you will only produce clones of official fluff.

Order of the Stick does the excellently with the Sapphire Guard.

Again, basing Rokugan culture more closely on Japanese history than required.

It is perfectly okay if you and your group played it that way, but you should not expect everyone else to accept that this IS a universal truth.

Again, we're talking Samurai and the Bushido Philosophy, which are both in L5R and Rokugan. It specifically says they follow the Bushido philosophy, which is a real philosophy and is thus relevant. I'm quoting the translation of Bushido Shoshinshou; which aids in understanding Bushido.

You completely lost me on this one, although this sounds like an awful lot of personal opinion. Is there a reason you directed this comment my way?

Umm... weren't we just talking about d20 Rokugan, which has its own Ninja class? So why are we talking about Complete Adventurer? :smallconfused:

Because we are both in a group discussion and I was being on-topic. I was expanding on my previous example of being able to use a few classes to create additional archetypes rather than having to have a separate class for every archetype, or having to turn every concept into a new mini-archetype.

Okay. Against the recommendations of the d20 Rokugan setting, but, again, if you guys had fun, no skin off my nose.

(Again, I probably wouldn't allow it if it was my game, but we both know it wasn't my game.)

Oooookkkaaaayyy...

I repeat my near-directly previous comments. Heavily.

Indeed. It's worth noting that his abilities functioned very well as examples of his weird science tricks, like his flashing powders and unusual weaponry; which for the record is not against the suggestions of the Rokugan setting that I could find; nor are such things against the code of Bushido. Additionally, not only Divine Magic or Blood Magic exist in Rokugan, so even if his was an aberrant style of magic created by himself or that he was merely favored by the spirits, it only offers opportunities.

I know it wasn't you game. Personally from the sounds of it, I wouldn't really have much to do with your games. I'm not very fond of games where you have to play a cookie-cutter character, where meta-game titles are more important than character development and representation, and where real-life philosophies using the same names are altered and twisted to complicate things.

But really, I don't like most games where meta-gaming is the name of the game. Which is the case of having the Barbarian class means you must suddenly start being a frothy mouthed nutcase; rather than a set of statistics to represent a living character.

Math_Mage

2010-06-30, 12:45 PM

Everything you ask has been answered over and over again. You can just go back, and read what I've already said. If you find something that's unclear, I'll joyfully clarify - I will not however go on writing the same things over and over again.

I don't know, man, the basic consensus I've seen reached on this thread is that multiclassing doesn't inhibit roleplaying at all, that multiclassing doesn't equate to striving for power at all, and that optimization is not opposed to roleplaying in 99% of cases. To demonstrate this, I built a multiclass character with a little more combat prowess and a little less skillfulness than a rogue, and developed what I regard as a good backstory for that character. None of this has been satisfactorily answered in any way except "look, it only applies to me and to my campaigns, so I'm right about my playstyle and my campaigns." Which would be great, if you only talked about yourself and your campaigns; but see below for a counterexample.

I'll say one thing though: To accuse me of strawmanning when I'm not is a personal attack - not going after the argument.

I am not accusing you of being a person who regularly strawmans arguments. I am saying that your argument is a straw man. Specifically:

Well ... that's a decent point right there. Because see - I've played lots of characters with sword and shield. And truly - what optimizer would? In fact, I believe every fighter or paladin I ever played used a shield. No, I tell a lie - my savage halforc paladin Grell used a greatsword.

I'm not advocating going for choices that are visibly sub-par. But personally, I like that my swordfighter uses a bloody sword - and that he uses a bloody shield to go along with the sword, because that's the image I'm going for.

Now, honestly I wish the rules were made in such a way that it wasn't such a suboptimal choice. But confronted with the fact that it is - I'm damn well gonna do it anyways. And quite frankly, leave it to the GM and the weak optimizing skills of my fellow players to ensure I'm still capable within the group.

You set up a false impression of 'optimizers' as 'people who would never play sword and board because it's suboptimal,' and argue against that. But many optimizers would do sword and board, knowing it's a suboptimal combat style, and simply try to make it as good as they could. Or perhaps they would play a suboptimal combat style in order to handicap themselves, because the rest of their group isn't as good at optimizing. In other words, they'd do exactly what you are doing. It's clear that the error is in your argument's characterization of optimizers, in setting up a strawman of optimization to knock down. This is a textbook example of a strawman argument, and it's not a personal attack to point that out.

It's also an example of when you made an argument not limited to yourself and your campaigns. You made a general statement about what optimizers are and what they would or wouldn't do, contrasted with what you would or wouldn't do, and implied that you are the superior roleplayer because of it. It really sounds like "See, I'm better than those optimizers, because I'm bold enough to take the suboptimal choice for the sake of my character and my group!" And when combined with your mischaracterization of optimizers...do you see how we could find that offensive?

Umael

2010-06-30, 01:40 PM

Because I prefer the d20 system. Also, I don't find alignments to be very restrictive and can make for great guidelines or starting points.

Interesting. I happen to prefer the d10 "roll-and-keep" because I think it fits the Rokugan setting better, but to each their own.

Quite the contrary. You see, as described on page 62 and 63 of the OA: Rokugan campaign setting book, a character's Honor is separate from a character's alignment, and is heightened or lowered by acts whitnessed; and while Lawful Good characters are naturally likely to gravitate towards higher honor levels, it's far from a requirement.

The trouble is when you look at the examples given of all these individuals who are Lawful Good, you get people with high honor, but the examples of people who are Chaotic Evil, you get people with low honor. Given that the Rokugan empire is set up as a Law vs. Chaos dichotomy instead of Good vs. Evil of traditional D&D, high honor and being Lawful seem linked.

However, I'm going to have to defer to you on what the actual d20 Rokugan book says. My copy was rended unusual due to a recent fire*.

(* - no, I am not making this up - I had a small fire in my home that destroyed a lot of my gaming materials. I lost ALL of my d20 Rokugan materials, easily $200 worth of gaming books right there.)

As I read it - likely my error I guess - you said he couldn't be a great samurai due to having the Rage quality which cannot be used with Lawful Good alignments due to the Barbarian class's alignment restriction (though it is no quality of the Rage ability itself).

This might be my fault for going off my memory (I don't have access to my books most of the time I post) and confusing certain aspects of Rage with the Frenzy mechanics from Vampire: the Masquerade. As I recall, a Barbarian who is in the middle of a Rage cannot use Diplomacy. Maybe it's just that as a GM I would likely impose a circumstance penalty for trying to use certain (mostly Charisma-based) skils while in the Rage - but I cannot recall any kind of actual mechanics that say something to that effect.

(Sidenote: I have always seen the Intimidate skill as being the art of subtle manipulation to coerce fear. Darth Vader was someone with a temper and a lot of Intimidate, but he kept it contained and used a lot more veiled threats with a tight leash on his anger. Something like the Rancor beast could be considered pretty scary, but that was because you might would think that a 20-feet hungry monster IS pretty scary.)

In short, a Courtier better have something that actually matters. "That's a class feature of a non-lawful character, my lord" doesn't cut it.

No, but "I think Hida Amori has a temper problem" does.

(Of course, saying that Hida Amori has a temper problem is like saying that most samurai bushi prefer the katana.)

((On a completely different sidenote, does my mentioning of certain people like Matsu Tsuke and Hida Amori date my preferences?))

In fact, even if it does represent anger rather than what he was using the mechanics to represent, unless he's doing something low then it doesn't matter.

*snip*

Using anger and giving into anger are two different things.

From a personal aesthetic viewpoint, I see Rage as the character giving into his primal nature, letting his reptile-brain take over. Who cares about tactics and arrow wounds? Just smash anyone who gets in your way!

The trouble is that while you can use your anger and not get any penalty to it, that doesn't necessarily mean that you maintain a perfect On. Someone who goes out into the battlefield and becomes a berserker and wins the battle is good, but people might not invite them to court (again, Hida Amori). On the other side, you can have people who have a cold rage when they fight (Hiruma Kage).

There is an aesthetic precident for this in that the L5R Card Game has the Battle Action: Frenzy, which gave a target samurai a bonus to Force, but dishonored him (or her). Since both the card game and the L5R RPG were produced by the same company, the connection should be understandable (not given, just understandable).

My apologies. I wasn't intending to be disrespectful. I don't actually see where I stopped being civil, but apologies for the sake of friendliness.

Accepted.

It was your choice of words. Your tone might not have been disrespectful, but the Internet is notorious for masking that fact.

(Also, if you think I am being likewise, call me on it. Immediately.)

You are mistaken. Consider yourself corrected. Legend of the Five Rings is a fantasy RPG that is based on japanese concepts, lore, and philosophy. While it's not 100% accurate, it does place the Philosophy of Bushido as part of that fantasy, and Bushido is a real thing; a real Philosophy.

EXCEPT that L5R is NOT just based on Japanese concepts, but also involves elements of Chinese, Indian, Mongolian, and likely Korean and southwest Asian cultures (like Vietnam).

And while Bushido IS very much a part of Rokugan culture, where tenets of Bushido translate, treatises on Bushido do not necessarily translate.

As such, I'm citing a reference to Bushido which applies to the game, as opposed to what Emperor was in power during a particular era in real life. One is relevant to the discussion, the other is not, because one is a subject of the game, while the other is not.

Unfortunately, you cannot divorce any cultural phenomena (including, say, language) from history. While Bushido is indeed part of the Rokugan culture, the differences in Japanese history and Rokugan history mean that Bushido would not evolve the same way in both cases.

As noted before, because it doesn't cause disruptions to the game, and can be a useful tool if not abused. Also because some game mechanics make use of it.

*shrug*

Your choice, you like it, and I'm not infringing on that decision in any way.

Because of the topic at large. Also because it's a perfect analog to the situation. Character classes are templates that are generally setup for perfect archetypes; but can be combined to form deeper characters that are not cookie-cutter adventurer #3. Hence the beauty of the multi-classing system.

I'm not going to disagree with you (although I believe the inclusion of d20 Modern was unnecessary, as I believe you could have kept your argument contained without drawing on it - but on the other hand, I am notorious for doing so myself, so I guess I can call this a moment of understanding from the other side of the fence).

At least, I'm not about to disagree with any part of what you said. Taken as a whole, your comment seems an endorsement for multi-classing. I prefer point-systems (like Champions) and L5R's point-system that included Schools, but that's just my opinion.

See above. Paradigm is a set model or pattern, or an example. However, limiting yourself in such a way is counter-intuitive to role-playing a different character; since if you only follow the standard fluff then you will only produce clones of official fluff.

Which is why I said "if you are aware of the paradigm".

If you note, I never said anything that was a "you can't be a samurai bushi without taking levels in the samurai class". It was more of a "if you take this option, your character is optimized in this manner, which might cause the world to react differently". If anything, I would think you would approve of this; the correllory is taking a different class and getting the exact same result.

Order of the Stick does the excellently with the Sapphire Guard.

Yes. And so not my point.

Again, we're talking Samurai and the Bushido Philosophy, which are both in L5R and Rokugan. It specifically says they follow the Bushido philosophy, which is a real philosophy and is thus relevant. I'm quoting the translation of Bushido Shoshinshou; which aids in understanding Bushido.

And my rebuttal is the same - the evolution of Bushido Philosophy cannot follow the same path. Look at how gunpowder is treated in Japanese history versus Rokugan history - while there are similarities, it is not the same.

Indeed. It's worth noting that his abilities functioned very well as examples of his weird science tricks, like his flashing powders and unusual weaponry; which for the record is not against the suggestions of the Rokugan setting that I could find;

In the discussion about character classes, it has a list about what classes translate over and which ones don't do so well, and why. For example, only Kitsune should be druid.

nor are such things against the code of Bushido.

No, but the Emperor forbade the use of firearms. The only ones who get to play with gaijin pepper legally are Clan Dragon with their fireworks.

Please note that I am not saying or implying that you can't do things with your character that go against the grain, only that there might be consequences.

Additionally, not only Divine Magic or Blood Magic exist in Rokugan, so even if his was an aberrant style of magic created by himself or that he was merely favored by the spirits, it only offers opportunities.

While an interesting explanation, I can't say I care of it.

The only accepted form of divine magic are the shugenja, and NO blood magic is accepted by Rokugan society as a whole because it bears the (understandable) connotation that you are a maho-tsukai. Sorcerers ARE allowed if you are one, or if you play a Ratling.

I know it wasn't you game. Personally from the sounds of it, I wouldn't really have much to do with your games. I'm not very fond of games where you have to play a cookie-cutter character, where meta-game titles are more important than character development and representation, and where real-life philosophies using the same names are altered and twisted to complicate things.

Okay, this? This is an example of you being disrespectful.

You inferred that my games require "cookie-cutter" characters, call my ability to value character development and representation into question, and come just shy of accusing me of being libel by being not treating a real-life philosophy with the respect it deserves.

What you inferred is so completely off-base that it seems that not only are you operating on a mistaken impression, but you seem rooted to the idea of portraying me in a certain light that any admission of you of wrong-doing would cause serious loss of face.

I never said nor implied anything about cookie-cutter characters - only that if you do things a certain way, there are going to be aesthetic consequences. As for character development and representation, if you want to go against the grain, that's great.

Your comment about Bushido I'm not going to touch because that was flatly too low to even consider.

But really, I don't like most games where meta-gaming is the name of the game. Which is the case of having the Barbarian class means you must suddenly start being a frothy mouthed nutcase; rather than a set of statistics to represent a living character.

Cute.

Shall I signal the syphocants to applaud for you now?

Frosty

2010-06-30, 01:50 PM

Ashiel, the d20 Rogukan books seems...flawed. From everything I've known about Rokugan (I am DMing a 3E Revised L5r game and playing in 2. Might switch to 4th ed L5R soon), your Honor has absolutely NOTHING to do with what people witness you do. What others think of you has to do with your Glory and your Infamy, whereas Honor is a reflection of how closely you follow Bushido. It goes up and down when you do honorable or dishonorable things regardless of others seeing those acts because YOU'LL know.

That said, the separation of Honor from Alignment is the correct move, but your assertion that Lawful Good characters are more likely to be honorable is wrong. LAWFUL characters are more likely to be honorable. Good has nothing to do with it.

Rokugan as a whole is a Lawful Neutral to Lawful Evil society. The code of Bushido they follow demands no less. There is very, very little room for compassion (yes, that is one of the tenets, and Bushido self-contradicts itself in hundreds of ways) when you also need to fit Loyalty and Duty to your lord. For example: In Rolugan, there is effective slavery when you look at the Peasant and Eta castes. They're property. A samurai can kill an Eta just to test the sharpness of his sword and all he might need to do is pay some coin for destroying property. There are so many actions deemed 'honorable' in Rokugan that we'd call outright evil that I laugh at the concept of associating Good with Honor.

The Dark Lord Daigotsu and his society of The Lost are Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil. Neither side offers up anything close to an utopia (although they'd disagree with you by cutting your head off).

In the sad, rigid stories of Rokugan...there is only GRIMDARK.

EDIT: Damnit, NINJA'ED!

Zen Master

2010-06-30, 04:42 PM

I don't know, man, the basic consensus I've seen reached on this thread is that multiclassing doesn't inhibit roleplaying at all, that multiclassing doesn't equate to striving for power at all, and that optimization is not opposed to roleplaying in 99% of cases. To demonstrate this, I built a multiclass character with a little more combat prowess and a little less skillfulness than a rogue, and developed what I regard as a good backstory for that character. None of this has been satisfactorily answered in any way except "look, it only applies to me and to my campaigns, so I'm right about my playstyle and my campaigns." Which would be great, if you only talked about yourself and your campaigns; but see below for a counterexample.

I am not accusing you of being a person who regularly strawmans arguments. I am saying that your argument is a straw man. Specifically:

You set up a false impression of 'optimizers' as 'people who would never play sword and board because it's suboptimal,' and argue against that. But many optimizers would do sword and board, knowing it's a suboptimal combat style, and simply try to make it as good as they could. Or perhaps they would play a suboptimal combat style in order to handicap themselves, because the rest of their group isn't as good at optimizing. In other words, they'd do exactly what you are doing. It's clear that the error is in your argument's characterization of optimizers, in setting up a strawman of optimization to knock down. This is a textbook example of a strawman argument, and it's not a personal attack to point that out.

It's also an example of when you made an argument not limited to yourself and your campaigns. You made a general statement about what optimizers are and what they would or wouldn't do, contrasted with what you would or wouldn't do, and implied that you are the superior roleplayer because of it. It really sounds like "See, I'm better than those optimizers, because I'm bold enough to take the suboptimal choice for the sake of my character and my group!" And when combined with your mischaracterization of optimizers...do you see how we could find that offensive?

There is NO strawman. Once you realize that, maybe we can go on - I will not waste any further time on that.

And your 'general consensus' means nothing to me. That the optimizers all agree that Mike G and others, myself included, are just plain wrong, doesn't prove anything, and doesn't surprise anyone.

A billion chinese are chinese, but you don't see me being chinese for that reason. We're discussing taste here - and that you like apples does nothing at all to change the fact that I like oranges.

Tavar

2010-06-30, 04:53 PM

How is it not a strawman? In other words, care to actually defend your point? And if it's not a strawman, that still isn't a personal attack, as it's simply a fault in logic. Can't really say the same in regards to yours, however.

Salbazier

2010-06-30, 05:01 PM

I think what Math_Mage consider as strawman is you saying that no optimizer will play S&B, which is, as they repeat over and over, is not true.

Gametime

2010-06-30, 05:18 PM

There is NO strawman. Once you realize that, maybe we can go on - I will not waste any further time on that.

I'm going to do my best to replicate the line of thought that leads Math_Mage to think you're making a strawman attack. Please let me know where I go wrong.

1. You claim that there is a correlation between optimization and poor roleplaying (or, at least, limited roleplaying).

2. Others disagree.

3. You point out that you like to play sword 'n' board and claim that no optimizer would do that because it is suboptimal.

4. Others point out that optimizers certainly would play sword 'n' board, and that you case rests on an inappropriately narrow definition of what optimization means - in other words, taking one aspect of the opposition's argument, representing it as the whole of the opposition's argument, and knocking it down rather than addressing the entire issue.

Does that seem fair?

And your 'general consensus' means nothing to me. That the optimizers all agree that Mike G and others, myself included, are just plain wrong, doesn't prove anything, and doesn't surprise anyone.

A billion chinese are chinese, but you don't see me being chinese for that reason. We're discussing taste here - and that you like apples does nothing at all to change the fact that I like oranges.

But most of us don't think that you are wrong about what you do and do not like. We do think you are wrong about there being a direct correlation between optimization and poor roleplaying, but none of that should impact your personal preferences. I don't think anyone in this thread has said you play the game wrong, but more than once you've made sweeping statements that don't just apply to the games you yourself play. That's what we take issue with.

Again: There's nothing wrong with whatever and however you like to play. We're not judging that. We are judging the claims that you appear to present as fact, your signature aside. If you didn't intend them to be fact (I.E. you didn't actually mean that optimization and multiclassing makes a backstory inherently worse), then I'm sure we could end this whole line of discussion if you'd clarify that point.

Math_Mage

2010-06-30, 06:46 PM

There is NO strawman. Once you realize that, maybe we can go on - I will not waste any further time on that.

When I, and now Gametime, have laid out the exact way in which your argument is a straw man, I fail to see how you can continue to claim that there isn't one. And when your arguments to that effect have been simply "this is not a straw man, stop attacking me," without a shred of reasoning or, indeed, knowledge of what strawman arguments and personal attacks are, it's a little annoying to see you pretend that we are the ignorant ones.

And your 'general consensus' means nothing to me. That the optimizers all agree that Mike G and others, myself included, are just plain wrong, doesn't prove anything, and doesn't surprise anyone.

A billion chinese are chinese, but you don't see me being chinese for that reason. We're discussing taste here - and that you like apples does nothing at all to change the fact that I like oranges.

The general consensus was established by the force of reason, not the force of numbers.

Where you are obviously correct: "I think it's ridiculous that sword & board is suboptimal, but I'll play it anyway for the sake of my character concept."

Where you are obviously incorrect: "Optimizers would not develop and play a sword & board character, because it is suboptimal."

I don't see how I can be any plainer than that. I object to your general statements about optimization, not your specific statements about your campaigns and characters.

Caphi

2010-06-30, 10:23 PM

You know, now that we're back on the whole Sword and Board thing, I'd like to mention at this point that I had a player who is a reasonably talented optimizer and a total rules lawyer, and he did play a S+B paladin, completely willingly, in my Pathfinder game, and as a bonus, wouldn't shut up about how amazing it was going to be when he could knock people across the room by shield slamming them in the face.

So yeah. Thought I'd bring that up.

Thrice Dead Cat

2010-06-30, 11:14 PM

On the whole strawman argument, this may help. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man) As others have said, it is not an attack, just a simple error in logic.

Also, if I had any photshop skills at all, I would totally make this happen:

Accusing someone of making a personal attack against you when they accuse you of strawmanning sounds like a personal attack to me. And now I'm making a personal attack by accusing you of making a personal attack by accusing someone else of making a personal attack.

This post needs an Xhibit macro. Yo dawg, I herd u liek ad hominem fallacies?

To whit: Yo dawg, I herd you liek awesome, so I put awesome in ur awesome, so you can win while you win. Gametime, you win a freaking internet.

Esser-Z

2010-07-01, 12:47 AM

Tar Palantir

2010-07-01, 12:49 AM

I bet I know who that is!

Of course, don't forget the part where I was planning to get some awesome stuff by dual wielding shields. :smalltongue:

I had a dwarf knight PC who dual-wielded shields at one point in my RHoD campaign. Regular 3.5, not Pathfinder. Worked pretty well, too.

EDIT: For the record, I am personally a rather heavy optimizer, and I've played many sword-and-board (or, as above, board-and-board) characters, for a number of reasons. One, I really enjoy the archetype. Two, it's more challenging to make a sword-and-boarder effective, and challenging is fun. Three, optimizing isn't about making the best character ever; it's about making a character that does what you want it to do at the power level you wish it to perform at, with the op-fu a matter of precisely matching a particular musical note, as opposed to simply making the loudest noise.

Zen Master

2010-07-01, 08:19 AM

1. You claim that there is a correlation between optimization and poor roleplaying (or, at least, limited roleplaying).

I make no such claim.

Tavar

2010-07-01, 08:55 AM

I make no such claim.

Uh..Yeah. You do. The whole "multiclassing leads to poor backstories" thing.
Or the Sword and board example, which is the actual part of the debate that's a strawman.

hamishspence

2010-07-01, 08:57 AM

My 'certain, set limits' do a great deal to improve my character.

I think it was this (where the "set limits" are things like "1 PRC, at most 2 classes, no 1 level dips") that caught people's attention.

It implies that an "un-improved character" is one that does not follow those set limits.

Jayabalard

2010-07-01, 09:34 AM

1. You claim that there is a correlation between optimization and poor roleplaying (or, at least, limited roleplaying).Personally, I think that optimization and Roleplaying clearly have some influence on one another; your roleplaying choices can limit the options you have to choose from when optimizing, and your optimization choices can dictate certain roleplaying limitations.

If you make story decisions about your character like: he has an aversion to using magic, he inherited an ancestral weapon from his father that's very important to his family identity, he's spent some time fighting in the gladiatorial arenas, he's worked as a mercenary in several large scale battles, and he loves dogs and has raised a wolf pup that he found abandoned... those story choices going to dictate what things are available for you to use when optimizing, because some things just won't be thematically appropriate. You probably won't be taking wizard or cleric levels, or have a dinosaur animal companion as some rather obvious (and extreme) examples.

Or you can you work from the other end, meaning: building the character and then writing the story based on the build. In that case, your build choices are going to dictate what makes sense as a character background, what motivates you, and what sort of person you are today.

That doesn't mean that you're going to be a poor roleplayer if you optimize, or a poor optimizer if you roleplay, or even that optimizing means that you'll be worse at roleplaying than someone who only doesn't optimize or that roleplaying means that you'll be worse at optimization than someone who doesn't roleplay.

But for a lot of people focusing on one going to have an effect on the other; they only have so much time to devote to creating the character, and after a certain point, focusing on the build of the character (optimization) is going to cause the story/background of the character (all of those little details that make a character be really believable) to suffer, simply due to the lack of time available. Likewise, after a certain point, focusing on the character's background, story, motivations, etc will cause the build of the character to suffer, just because they'll lack the time needed to weigh all of the options.

This is the easily apparent with new players: they need a lot of time to prep for both, so when they start focusing on one it can (and usually does, at least in my experience) have a fairly significant impact on the other. The newbie optimizer will often have one dimensional characters defined only by what they can do; the newbie roleplayer can have characters that are simply ineffective. Experienced players, on the other hand, don't need nearly as much time and so they can focus on optimization or roleplaying with very little impact (or even an insignificant amount of impact) on the other, though in my experience, it's still generally noticeable when you're gaming with someone who has focused on one over the the other.

So the correlation between optimization and tendency towards subpar roleplaying seems pretty clear to me. Likewise, the correlation between focusing on roleplaying leading to a tendency towards subpar optimization seems very clear. It doesn't always happen, but it's often enough so that it's noticeable.

Gnaeus

2010-07-01, 09:43 AM

Personally, I think that optimization and Roleplaying clearly have some influence on one another; your roleplaying choices can limit the options you have to choose from when optimizing, and your optimization choices can dictate certain roleplaying limitations.

This part, at least, is true. Your choice not to optimize has strong roleplaying limitations, when your character dies and you don't get to roleplay AT ALL.

As the rest of it contains language clarifying that it is an opinion, I will simply say that I disagree.

Zen Master

2010-07-01, 09:55 AM

{scrubbed}

Zen Master

2010-07-01, 09:56 AM

I think it was this (where the "set limits" are things like "1 PRC, at most 2 classes, no 1 level dips") that caught people's attention.

It implies that an "un-improved character" is one that does not follow those set limits.

Like above - yes, for me!

I'm not talking about you. None of you. Only .... me.

Jayabalard

2010-07-01, 09:58 AM

Your choice not to optimize has strong roleplaying limitations, when your character dies and you don't get to roleplay AT ALL. Not optimizing at all does not mean that the character will certainly die. Nor does dieing mean that you can no longer roleplay.

As the rest of it contains language clarifying that it is an opinion, I will simply say that I disagree.Oddly enough, the part you quoted is the only part with really strong indicators that it's opinion.

I think that I, for one, will simply assume that this was sarcasm. If not, FATAL is calling your name.If this is just a remark generally aimed at having differences between genders modeled in a roleplaying game... well you don't need to be playing FATAL to be playing a game where there are physical and mental differences based on gender. It's not uncommon, especially in older games (where the design was more about modeling the game world and less about making it fun for everyonetm. I mean, the easiest example is if you play the game "real life" you'll run into lots of examples like this; certainly you can run into a male who's rolled a 5 on strength (giving him a 6 total) who is much weaker than the female who rolled a 18 on strength (giving her a 17 since she gets no bonus), but there are still those males that are stronger (the ones who rolled an 18 and wound up with a 19 total)

DragoonWraith

2010-07-01, 10:07 AM

The argument holds just fine. Now please move on - I'll waste no more time on this.

EDIT: In fact, you know what? There are optimizers enough in this discussion - lets have a show of hands, why don't we?

Hands in the air - everyone who'd rather play a S+B fighter than any other type of more powerful melee character or gish.

I would. How many else?
I've never particularly liked the archetype and have never played a S&B fighter even in games where it was perfectly effective. Even in Diablo II, where the Paladin with his Holy Shield and Smite was the most powerful melee class in the game (hardly an RPG, but hell, if anything that strikes me as a greater demonstration of my opinion).

Your point is still pointless. Optimization does not ever say "you cannot play a S&B fighter" - it says "if you're playing a S&B fighter, you're going to make it work, and that's going to be hard because the game does not make it work easily." You are defining for us what we do, and that is A. a strawman, and B. extremely insulting.

You are, by your own admission, not an optimizer. Therefore, do not try to tell us what it is that we, and not you, do.

You are wrong, Acromos. You have a screwed up miconception of what optimization is, and you are wrong. Your continued stubborn refusal to understand this simple fact is now getting insulting.

Gnaeus

2010-07-01, 10:13 AM

Not optimizing at all does not mean that the character will certainly die. Nor does dieing mean that you can no longer roleplay.

No, but it makes it more likely. And taking a dirtnap while other party members are doing stuff isn't my idea of an exciting scene.

Oddly enough, the part you quoted is the only part with really strong indicators that it's opinion.

I'm sorry. I assumed that that held for the entire post. My bad. In that case, you are just wrong. It supports good roleplaying when you can do what your concept was intended to do. It inhibits good roleplaying when your character cannot mechanically carry out his concept.

Most of your evidence consists of personal observation of highly subjective phenomenon. "Seems pretty clear to me" is nothing but another way of saying "in my opinion" particularly since it appears to me that many people on the other side of the argument have not noticed this "generally apparent", "easily noticable" phenomenon.

You think optimizers play sword and board? Right - maybe they do. I can't deny the theoretical possibility - but take a look around these boards. Find all the threads that detail how to make an optimized S+B fighter. Come back here and tell me how common that is compared to uberchargers, chaintrippers, gishes and so on.

The argument holds just fine. Now please move on - I'll waste no more time on this.

EDIT: In fact, you know what? There are optimizers enough in this discussion - lets have a show of hands, why don't we?

Hands in the air - everyone who'd rather play a S+B fighter than any other type of more powerful melee character or gish.

I would. How many else?

Would I rather? No. I think they are boring. The fact that they are also weak means less to me than that I find them dull to play.

Have I played them? Certainly. I had a lizardman Fighter/Knight S&B er optimized for ac that did quite well in a local con. It is likely that I would have won if I had gotten an adamantine shield (when my shield got sundered, I was no longer an S&Ber, and I got owned).

As an aside, while an optimizer may play a gish (they can be tricky to build and some optimization-fu is required to make them work right), they are hardly a powergamer's ideal. It is easier to rule the universe as a straight wizard, without wasting one or more caster levels in melee classes. Batman is stronger than an equal level gish 95% of the time.