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Quertus
2018-10-23, 04:46 PM
So, just a random thought I had:

Quertus is a Wizard, which is an Int-based class. So he boosts Int. So he gets lots of skill points.

For lack of anything better to do with them (in his opinion), he's spent a lot of them on "Thief" skills.

Quertus has never met a Rogue (or other skill monkey) anywhere near his level. And we've never played another party in that world up to anywhere near his level. As far as he knows, the world doesn't have a "Thief" of his level. Sure, the Monk could out Hide or Move Silently him, but otherwise? As far as I know, Quertus is the best Thief on the planet, out of all the established characters, and definitely out of all the PCs (despite the all-Rogue party that may have gone epic).

So, my question is, does that seem odd to anyone? That an academic mage, studying mechanisms and sleight of hand as a hobby in his free time, should be the best in the world?

Also, please feel free to share any stories you might have of other rules / world building oddities you've unintentionally stumbled across while playing RPGs.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-10-23, 05:30 PM
A wizard being the best at everything seems like perfectly normal D&D to me.

SunderedWorldDM
2018-10-23, 05:48 PM
I mean, there are many professors across the globe who use their intellect to become masters of their craft. Having an intelligent and studious individual master a skill better than most people is nothing new. The only problem is that they don't have the active experience as a thief like the Rogue class gives, so a Rogue of that level would blast the academic out of the water due to their real-world experience and mastery.

Quertus
2018-10-23, 06:24 PM
Yep, two very true statements. Lol.

Darth Ultron
2018-10-23, 07:09 PM
Well, I mean for your wizard, sure. You can just say that in your own personal world that the character has a +100 to every skill and everyone in the world only has one skill point. So, sure, you can sit back all day long and say your character is the god of gods..in your own personal fictional world where you have made it that way, because you wanted it that way. So....really, it does not mean much.

Sure, in any normal reasonable fictional world there would be at least a couple dozen people that could obliterate that wizard, or beat them at any silly skill check. But, of course, for your own personal fiction you can just ''say anything".

So, yes, it is odd.....but the fault is in the world building and the basic fiction and the way the rules are used.

Pleh
2018-10-23, 08:39 PM
I mean, there are many professors across the globe who use their intellect to become masters of their craft. Having an intelligent and studious individual master a skill better than most people is nothing new. The only problem is that they don't have the active experience as a thief like the Rogue class gives, so a Rogue of that level would blast the academic out of the water due to their real-world experience and mastery.

An academic might understand the nuances to every common lock mechanism and be able to disassemble it blindfolded.

But they would be most accustomed to doing so in a laboratory with minimal external stressors. They would be less accustomed to doing it on the street corner, trying to make it look like they were using their key or not be noticed at all (invisibility is a thing, but an equal level rogue will have it as well), with onlookers that might not only interrupt your delicate work, but might physically intervene or charge you criminally with the town guards.

Then again, why did you bother learning lockpicking instead of copying the Knock spell into your book?

Kaptin Keen
2018-10-24, 12:18 AM
Um ... it seems to me any Famous Rogue must be doing it wrong.

Mordaedil
2018-10-24, 12:58 AM
Then again, why did you bother learning lockpicking instead of copying the Knock spell into your book?
I'm not Quertus, but it's a similar question to "why do watchmakers exist when digital clocks exist"?

Maybe he just got fascinated with complex devices and started studying how they work and figured out how to pick locks as a hobby.

Yora
2018-10-24, 02:20 AM
The oddity is the lack of rogue NPCs in that world.

However, if the party are the only high level characters in the setting, then they are effectively superheroes and their class doesn't really matter.

And didn't Richard Feynman prank his coleagues with his lockpicking skills?

Pelle
2018-10-24, 03:07 AM
I'm not Quertus, but it's a similar question to "why do watchmakers exist when digital clocks exist"?


Isn't it rather "if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound if no one is there to hear it"? Seems like a black swan to me.

Eldan
2018-10-24, 03:17 AM
The oddity is the lack of rogue NPCs in that world.

However, if the party are the only high level characters in the setting, then they are effectively superheroes and their class doesn't really matter.

And didn't Richard Feynman prank his coleagues with his lockpicking skills?

Lockpicking is popular among many academic and technical types as a way to keep the hands busy while thinking, so probably.

Mordaedil
2018-10-24, 03:48 AM
Isn't it rather "if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound if no one is there to hear it"? Seems like a black swan to me.

No, that... Doesn't even come together in context.

Pelle
2018-10-24, 03:54 AM
No, that... Doesn't even come together in context.

No? Quertus hasn't met a better thief - therefore he is is the best thief in the world. That doesn't neccessarily follow. Akin to the tree sound, "if no one notices the thief stealing, was there any theft?". A thief being better than Quertus might be an outlier, but even though none has been observed doesn't mean it can't exist.

Silly Name
2018-10-24, 05:50 AM
What strikes me as odd would be the lack of Rogues/Thieves/Skillmonkeys in such a setting, rather than ol' Wizard Quertus spending skill points in cross-class skills.

But let's assume that Quertus is level 20, and that 90% of the world's Rogue population is below level 10. Obviously, Quertus outclasses the Rogues by virtue of having double or more the levels and, if he's feeling unfair, using magic to boost his skill check. But, again, the oddity here isn't "Quertus has enough skill points that he can invest in cross-class skills regularly"; the oddity is the lack of high-level Rogues.

As for me... As a consequences of my tendency to use NPCs to oppose the PCs, rather than monsters (either official or homebrew), my campaign worlds tend to have a lower "monster population density" than most, I believe. I don't mind it, and I actually find it weirder when you can't turn over a rock in a setting/adventure without getting ambushed by some bizzarre creature. I do, however, regret the fact that my PCs don't really fight against a bunch of cool stuff in the MM, which I'm trying to correct.

Mordaedil
2018-10-24, 05:53 AM
No? Quertus hasn't met a better thief - therefore he is is the best thief in the world. That doesn't neccessarily follow. Akin to the tree sound, "if no one notices the thief stealing, was there any theft?". A thief being better than Quertus might be an outlier, but even though none has been observed doesn't mean it can't exist.

Thanks for explaining. That does follow, I get you now. Yes, it is correct. My response was directly to the question of why a wizard would bother learning to pick locks, which wasn't in the same context as the term you provided.

Hopefully we are on the same level now.

Quertus
2018-10-24, 07:51 AM
OK, to clarify: it's not a lack of thieves in the world. Heck, we even ran an "all-thieves" party in that world.

It's the fact that Quertus is so high level, that him pursuing Thief skills as a cross-class hobby gives him more skill then any established character in the world. And, given that the world seemed baffled by his party's epic-ness, it is unlikely that there's a bunch of other epic characters in the world.

Thus the realization that Quertus is, most likely, the best Thief in the world.

As to why Quertus has such skills? He's been to many worlds (saved over 100 from "end of the world" scenarios, after all, so that fact should hardly be surprising), with many GMs, and these mechanical skills seemed to compliment Craft cars / plasma rifles / robotics / space ships / etc rather well.

Quertus has an academic interest in muggle technology, which expresses itself in a number of fairly useless skills. Much like him having the Run and Endurance feats, it's there for flavor. But it just happens to have an interesting side effect in this case, of making him the best Thief in the world.

Pleh
2018-10-24, 08:18 AM
OK, to clarify: it's not a lack of thieves in the world. Heck, we even ran an "all-thieves" party in that world.

It's the fact that Quertus is so high level, that him pursuing Thief skills as a cross-class hobby gives him more skill then any established character in the world. And, given that the world seemed baffled by his party's epic-ness, it is unlikely that there's a bunch of other epic characters in the world.

Thus the realization that Quertus is, most likely, the best Thief in the world.

As to why Quertus has such skills? He's been to many worlds (saved over 100 from "end of the world" scenarios, after all, so that fact should hardly be surprising), with many GMs, and these mechanical skills seemed to compliment Craft cars / plasma rifles / robotics / space ships / etc rather well.

Quertus has an academic interest in muggle technology, which expresses itself in a number of fairly useless skills. Much like him having the Run and Endurance feats, it's there for flavor. But it just happens to have an interesting side effect in this case, of making him the best Thief in the world.

Reminds me somewhat of Tom Bombadil (or my recollection of him, it's been a decade since I've read LotR). Powerful enough to not be affected by the Ring, but when people suggested he take the Ring to Mordor at the council of Elrond, Gandalf rules it out. He says Tom Bombadil only really cares about his own home and even if they could convince him to take the Ring to Mordor, he would care so little about it that he would likely lose the Ring along the way and simply wander back home.

I see that in Quertus where a group of thieves are planning an epic heist and talk about consulting Quertus, only for more experienced thieves to say his involvement would be more trouble than its worth.

Pelle
2018-10-24, 08:32 AM
And, given that the world seemed baffled by his party's epic-ness, it is unlikely that there's a bunch of other epic characters in the world.


You know, real epic thieves do not make the world aware of themselves.

Darth Ultron
2018-10-24, 11:12 AM
It's the fact that Quertus is so high level,

Well, I guess it's odd your world has no high level people of his level or above.

Though, by the way you say your world works, there should be thieves of high level that are so special that they learned magic in their free time and are like twice as powerful wizards as Quertus.

Quertus
2018-10-24, 11:52 AM
You know, real epic thieves do not make the world aware of themselves.

Agreed - except that *real* epic thieves are known as politicians. :smallwink:

The issue is, there's no (other) known parties of epic adventurers in that world, no evidence of their deeds, etc. No evidence of anyone dealing with the level of challenges that, by RAW, would be necessary for them to be leveling, etc. Sure, there's other worlds, and, sure, there are epic Rogues on those worlds, out exploring the planes, etc. But, afaict, there are no adventurers natives to the world Quertus had spent most of his 3e career on who can match Quertus at traditional thieving skills.

I mean, sure, there could be some 50th level Rogue / 20th level Wizard Lich from ages past, biding his time before revealing himself, but, again, for established characters, Quertus holds top marks, simply by being a more effective version of Mr. Weasley.

MoiMagnus
2018-10-24, 12:06 PM
So, just a random thought I had:

Quertus is a Wizard, which is an Int-based class. So he boosts Int. So he gets lots of skill points.

For lack of anything better to do with them (in his opinion), he's spent a lot of them on "Thief" skills.

Quertus has never met a Rogue (or other skill monkey) anywhere near his level. And we've never played another party in that world up to anywhere near his level. As far as he knows, the world doesn't have a "Thief" of his level. Sure, the Monk could out Hide or Move Silently him, but otherwise? As far as I know, Quertus is the best Thief on the planet, out of all the established characters, and definitely out of all the PCs (despite the all-Rogue party that may have gone epic).

So, my question is, does that seem odd to anyone? That an academic mage, studying mechanisms and sleight of hand as a hobby in his free time, should be the best in the world?

Also, please feel free to share any stories you might have of other rules / world building oddities you've unintentionally stumbled across while playing RPGs.

For me Int reflect how good you are at learning. So only high Int people are able to progress as quickly as a level up in multiple skills.
But for me, if you pass years and years training at something, but without adventuring and levelling up as a hero, you should get additionnal skill points even if you don't level up.

For me the "main problem", or "main unintended consequences", is the fact that powerfull peoples are focussed on one stat.
In a realistic setting, a master rogue would probably have a very high Int. So should the best fighters.
In other words, someone with Str 30, Int 10, Dex 10 should have far less chances to hit an ennemy than someone with Str 20, Int 20, Dex 20.

icefractal
2018-10-25, 11:54 AM
Is it really odd for a Wizard to pick up some off-brand skills? They still need to operate in the world, mostly.

For example, one that I'm making (PF) has:
* Perception - obviously useful
* Sense Motive - ditto, and also the Unchained uses for it are amazing.
* Stealth - magically boosted Stealth is the best way to be unseen at high level. Once True Seeing and Blindsight are common, it's a lot more useful than Invisibility.
* Disable Device - "devices" is a much bigger category than locks, and could include very important stuff.
* Disguise - shapeshifting is only +10, you need ranks if you want it to work on serious opposition.
* Bluff - he prefers to avoid conflict, and lying is often helpful for that.
* Diplomacy - ditto
* UMD - obviously useful
Of course it helps that in PF, cross-class just means a three point difference, and there are traits to make Bluff/Diplo/UMD Int-based. But even if that weren't the case, 40+ Int means you take cross-class skills or a lot of Craft and Profession.

Reversefigure4
2018-10-26, 04:09 PM
In the absence of similarly levelled characters, Quertus is not just "a wizard who tinkers with locks in his spare time". He's the most intelligent man on the planet, a veritable demigod compared to those around him, for whom all tasks are simple. He's saved over 100 worlds. He's better than Yoda, and Batman.

Of course he can pick locks better than a professional rogue. At that sort of level of accompishment, no mundane task should be beyond him. I'd also expect him to run faster than a professional sprinter, and be able to beat up bar toughs with his bare fists with one hand tied behind his back.

Epic characters are epic.