What is your opinion on vehicle based characters [Archive]

Pauly

2023-11-06, 07:55 PM

1) They work better in skills based games (eg Traveller, CoC) than level based games (eg DnD)

2) They work better when the party is a crew of a single vehicle (eg pirate ship, space ship) or each party member has their own vehicle (eg gundam, single seat fighter)

3) They work better in systems written specifically around vehicles (eg Mechwarrior, Autoduel, Space 1889) than systems where vehicles are tacked on as an appendix to the main rules (eg DnD’s long and troubled history with sailing).

4) There is a general problem in any game with one trick ponies. i.e. characters that are great in their chosen specialty but suck at everything else. This can come up with any specialist, not just vehicle specialists. This is more a character creation problem and many systems have many ways to deal with this issue.

5) related to (4). They work better in games that allow the specialist skills to be applied broadly. The 2 main ways of doing this are:
- To allow a broad skill such as ‘sailing’ to give bonuses to any check involving navigation, predicting weather, tying ropes, reading maps, understanding foreign languages/cultures etc.
- The other way is to require builds for a specialist to pick up skills that are helpful in other contexts, e.g. an Ace fighter pilot build might require spotting, gunnery, mechanical aptitude, reflexes, and navigation all of which are broadly practical skills while only the specialist skill of pilot is useful solely in the cockpit.

Mechalich

2023-11-06, 09:24 PM

gatorized

2023-11-06, 10:22 PM

Yeah, there aren't many uses for vehicles. That's why nobody uses them in real life and we didn't spend trillions of dollars building infrastructure for them.

gatorized

2023-11-06, 10:23 PM

Mechalich

2023-11-06, 10:54 PM

Driving a vehicle doesn't have to be your whole thing. Characters can be good at multiple things.

Of course characters can be good at multiple things, but the tricky thing about a vehicle-based character is that, because their abilities are linked to the vehicle, they need to be in the vehicle in order to use them, which becomes a problem when the party goes some place the vehicle cannot go. Depending on the vehicle in question, that can range from 'almost everywhere a person can' - in the case of a slightly larger than human-sized exosuit - to 'basically nowhere' in the case of a starship that can't land on planets.

Additionally, in most cases of a vehicle-based character who isn't in a party where everyone is vehicle-based (if the whole party is fighter pilots or mechwarriors this problem vanishes), the vehicle itself represents an asset with more power than the rest of the party combined, which means the moment the vehicle-based character gets out of the vehicle the party has left its most potent asset behind. Now, this can be avoided with telepresence, going the other direction, if the character can command the vehicle remotely and therefore utilize it without needing to be inside of it.

Telok

2023-11-07, 01:23 AM

Of course characters can be good at multiple things, but the tricky thing about a vehicle-based character is that, because their abilities are linked to the vehicle, they need to be in the vehicle in order to use them,

Not in most systems. There is often significant overlap, in almost all the systems I've seen, of 'vehicle' abilities and regular abilities. Quite often the only 'skill' or ability exclusive to a vehicle is whatever the drive/pilot skill is.

That said, many systems do make it possible to create a cripplingly overspecialized character, and there is often little or no actual advice about integrating vehicle oriented characters (and often a similar lack about integrating vehicles at all) into adventures. Often the simplest basic advice people need is to just do some player-GM communication about the role and frequency of vehicle use in the GM's adventure.

Leon

2023-11-07, 03:56 AM

Played for a short time a Vehicle based character in Shadow run and it worked reasonably well, was ok away from the truck but an (not actual) wizard when in it. Long term I don't know how it would have worked out but I had to stop playing due to time constraints

Pauly

2023-11-07, 06:22 AM

Of course characters can be good at multiple things, but the tricky thing about a vehicle-based character is that, because their abilities are linked to the vehicle, they need to be in the vehicle in order to use them, which becomes a problem when the party goes some place the vehicle cannot go. .

Ummm Traveller solved this problem in 1979. My experience is that it depends more on how the system integrates vehicles into play than anything else. Systems where vehicles are an integral/expected part of the game experience (eg Traveller, Mechwarrior, Space 1889, 7th Sea) have out time and effort into ensuring this problem doesn't arise in actual play.

stoutstien

2023-11-07, 07:40 AM

As long as the system has vehicle integrated into them rather just tacked on as an afterthought I don't see a problem with it.
I'm currently playing a mechanic/driver in CWN and while I'm quite good at it that doesn't mean every single mission allows me to just jump in a truck to solve the problem.

In the same vein systems that don't assume combat is the default and most efficient solution to problems tend to be better at handling stuff like vehicle/driving subsystems.

JellyPooga

2023-11-07, 08:11 AM

The problem with a vehicle-based character is that in most games this concept, while very appropriate to the universe, is best suited to an NPC. For example, Joker in the Mass Effect games or Wash in Firefly. Having a character whose job is to fly the ship matters, because that character is essential to controlling how the party gets from place to place, but since properly embracing said character's role means they should never leave the ship during the normal course of play, it's very difficult for them to function as a typical party member.

This can be avoided in high-tech games that allow for telepresence, so that the vehicle-based character pilots a drone of some kind while still on the ship in order to adventure with the ground crew.

I was actually going to bring up Wash as a good example of how to build a vehicle specialist character.

He's not just a good pilot of Serenity, but handles driving the mule, can fly other small craft (e.g. the ambulance they use in the hospital heist) and is generally a mechanically/technology minded person, able to not only assist Kaylee with ship repairs and modifications, but also handle communications, sensors, "hacking"/computer use and all the other tech that Mal and the rest of the crew either can't or don't, as well as generally being someone used to living on the fringe; he's comfortable with the seedier side of the 'verse (e.g. theft, rough living, forgery, scavenging, etc.) in a way that Simon or in some cases even Kaylee aren't, for instance, even if he's not as au fait with the more brutal aspects (e.g. Ravagers, Niska, personal combat) that Mal, Zoe, Jayne and Shepard Bush are.

Yes, he's the best person to have in the pilot seat when they need him there, but that doesn't make him useless when the ship isn't required in that moment. Just because he's a non-combat character doesn't make him an NPC. He's a well rounded character, in some ways far more of a protagonist than his wife or Jayne, who are way more one-dimensional in their role as combat-focused henchmen. If I were to break down the Serenity crew:
- Mal, Wash, Kaylee and Simon would be the actual primary PC's.
- Inarra, Zoe, Jayne and River would be player-run henchmen/alter-egos occupying a place somewhere between a true NPC and a PC. Inarra is Mal's nobility/non-combat alt and Zoe/Jayne/River are Wash/Kaylee/Simon's combat alts respectively (note that all the semi-PC's are also both gender and somewhat personality bends of their respective PC...coincidence? I think not). The GM also uses these to influence plot and story (Zoe ties into Wash as a wife and Mal for soldier stuff, Inarra has her Companion thing, River is River, Jayne is treacherous, etc.).
- Book is obviously the GMs DMPC (and a DMPC run correctly, to boot)

Do I think Josh Whedon either played or ran a Traveller game in exactly this way and wrote Firefly using that campaign as inspiration? Yes. Yes I do.

Catullus64

2023-11-07, 08:25 AM

The Ace role from Warhammer 40,000 RPG Dark Heresy (2e) is a pilot & vehicle focused character class, but it works pretty well because of the Aptitude system of that edition of the game. There are eighteen Aptitudes, such as Strength, Offense, Willpower, Tech, etc. Each character has a total of seven aptitudes at character generation. Your Role, like Ace, determines five of these, alongside a few very powerful special abilities.

Every advance in the game, be it skill, talent, or characteristic increase, has two Aptitudes associated with it, and the XP cost to purchase that advance depends on whether you have one, two, or zero matching aptitudes.

The Ace has the Agility, Finesse, Tech, Perception, and Willpower aptitudes. So while they have a couple of a abilities that specialize them towards flying/driving/riding, they still have plenty of good options to diversify their character for non-vehicle situations.

Wintermoot

2023-11-07, 08:38 AM

There's a reason why, in Shadowrun, Riggers (vehicle based) and Deckers (computer based) live in their own minigame systems within the system. Its hard to get them to interact with the rest of the characters when they are living in meatspace.

In Pathfinder, I had a charioteer based character which we needed to make a bunch of custom feats and rules for. She ended up interacting about as well as a mounted charger does really. Meaning great in open field combat, terrible inside buildings.

Mechalich

2023-11-07, 04:31 PM

There's a reason why, in Shadowrun, Riggers (vehicle based) and Deckers (computer based) live in their own minigame systems within the system. Its hard to get them to interact with the rest of the characters when they are living in meatspace.

And that's the central problem, the physical isolation, which is primarily a player problem, not a character problem, with the central issue being that while the vehicle-based character does their vehicle thing the rest of the party might not be doing anything, and while the rest of the party is doing their thing the vehicle-based character is liable to be sitting in a cockpit doing nothing. This enforces idleness on other players, and that's the issue. It's a tabletop-specific problem, a case of where something that works in a show or novel doesn't work properly in tabletop.

This is what I meant regarding the case of Wash: yes he is ultimately much more important to the crew than say Jane, but Jane is in vastly more of the show than Wash is, because Wash almost never leaves the ship and is barely in many of the episodes at all for precisely that reason. Now, making the show, that doesn't matter, Alan Tudyk can go off and do other things when he's not needed on set, but if you're running a tabletop, the player running the Wash-expy is going to spend a lot of time staring at their phone.

Now, again, there are ways around this, especially in high-tech settings where some level of telepresence is an option, allowing the player of such a character to participate in party activities without physically being there. Some systems, however, don't really have these.

Easy e

2023-11-07, 05:10 PM

Vehicle based characters are fine IF the GM can make adventures where there skills are useful and IF the player is willing to lean into non-vehicle stuff.

A player that refuses to ever let their character leave their truck/Mecha/Spaceship will never work.

JellyPooga

2023-11-07, 05:44 PM

And that's the central problem, the physical isolation, which is primarily a player problem, not a character problem, with the central issue being that while the vehicle-based character does their vehicle thing the rest of the party might not be doing anything, and while the rest of the party is doing their thing the vehicle-based character is liable to be sitting in a cockpit doing nothing. This enforces idleness on other players, and that's the issue. It's a tabletop-specific problem, a case of where something that works in a show or novel doesn't work properly in tabletop.

This is what I meant regarding the case of Wash: yes he is ultimately much more important to the crew than say Jane, but Jane is in vastly more of the show than Wash is, because Wash almost never leaves the ship and is barely in many of the episodes at all for precisely that reason. Now, making the show, that doesn't matter, Alan Tudyk can go off and do other things when he's not needed on set, but if you're running a tabletop, the player running the Wash-expy is going to spend a lot of time staring at their phone.

Now, again, there are ways around this, especially in high-tech settings where some level of telepresence is an option, allowing the player of such a character to participate in party activities without physically being there. Some systems, however, don't really have these.

The very valid point about telepresence withstanding for games that allow for it and setting aside Wash's screen presence as a "were-you-watching-the-same-show-as-me?" agree-to-disagreement, the problem of both "minigames" (yes, they're a problem) and tabletop focus stem from poor system engagement with the archetype. Whether it's vehicle specialisation or decking or whatever (we could even be talking about magic or combat), if an aspect of the game has its own mini-system distinct from the rest of the system, or requires that the GM divide play, that's a sign of poor game design or at the very least, a lack of elegance in the games function in play. A good system should allow a moderate GM (not even a good one) to easily run a game involving all the archetypes and themes that game professes to include without having to significantly divide table-time between players.

The easiest and simplest way to avoid this problem is to make complex or difficult aspects irrelevant. Don't allow for that archetype to be a significant aspect of play and make sure your players know it.
GM: "You want to be the ships hot-shot pilot? Sure, chuck it in your background notes and you get to sit in the chair up front whenever we narrate that, but note that it's not going to be significant to this game or campaign. How can we tie that to aspects of play that will come up? You want to be good with mechanics or computers or something? That could work, or maybe you're more of a Maverick type that's a cool drinking, social ladies man? Give me what you got."

The next way is to apply KISS principles. Simple is good and simple that sticks with the system is best. If all uses the same system, then even with a half-competent GM it shouldn't take spotlight (or table time) away from the rest of the table to achieve it, even if you're in a different location or doing something completely different.
GM: "You want to be a netrunner? Ok, cool. Put points in Netrunning. Any time it comes up just roll it like any other skill check. Hacking turrets, finding data, downloading personnel files? Yeah, it's all there on my DC chart, no drama."
"Ok Dave, you've bypassed the outer server and are inside the security net. Roll to tap the video feed and tell me what you get. 15? Cool. Right, back to the Shady Lady and the rest of the team; Doug the Dog just laid down three aces and Dave just came in on the comm; he's got eyes on at least another 2 aces in play from the vid-feed. What're you guys doing?"

If you feel like it's significant enough an aspect of the setting or campaign that it does need complex rules, then at least make them work similarly to other game mechanics so they can interact more intuitively and allow characters to participate in play even when they don't necessarily have a stake in that aspect.
GM: "The Hurk Raiders are hot on your tail and fire their steam-cannon but you all manage to duck the worst of the shrapnel as it glances off your chariots armour. Dave, make me a Vehicles check to keep the chariot steady after that attack and let me know if you're doing anything but trying to outrun them this turn. Sally, are you using your regeneration spell to keep the horses fresh again? Cool, roll the bones. Same Spell DC as last turn, on a success boost your guys' Fatigue Threshold by another d6+1. Frank, what're you doing this turn? You botched that attack last turn, you trying again or doing something different? You could try negotiating...? Yes? Awesome, you'll be shouting but it'll start a Battle-of-WitsTM. Their Cool is 12 and they have a Temper Threshold of 15; what's your Angle?"

My thoughts of game design aside, if the GM allows a player to engage with a specific aspect of a campaign/archetype/game rule then they had better damn well let that player use it. If the game isn't going to have anything interesting happen with regard to vehicles, then make sure your players don't build characters that are focused entirely around vehicles. If the players want vehicles to be a interesting part of the campaign, then write the campaign so it accommodates that.

Brookshw

2023-11-07, 07:33 PM

Only good where the whole party is invested in vehicles. Take slStar Wars, playing a squad of star fighter aces, sure, that works. 1 person playing the flying ace and everyone else being committed pedestrians generally equals long stretches where the ace doesn't get to use their flying stuff, or everyone else is basically twiddling thumbs while the ace flies. Not good, it's a mechanical way to guarantee you're splitting the party kinda.

Telok

2023-11-07, 08:11 PM

So, important unaddressed items here, first: What does everyone mean when they say "vehicle based character"?

And second: What are the games you've played in that inform your opinion?

Because I think I'm seeing a lot of mismatched assumptions in the thread.

Now, for myself the idea of a "vehicle based" character is a PC with a focus on being great at vehicle stuff. Usually meaning stunts, going above & beyond stock specs, and vehicle combat. Generally with one preferred vehicle, but seriously above average with nearly all vehicles or a large class of vehicles.

I've personally seen it done both well & badly in Rifts, Shadowrun, Champions, Call of Cthulhu, and DtD40k7e. Badly in Rifts & Shadowrun. Rifts having crippling overspecialization, and Shadowrun with players & GMs who think riggers & deckers need to sit out the game until their little mini-game comes up. That's Rifts having borked narrow character classes and Shadowrun not telling people how to really integrate the archtype into the typical game play.

Done well I've seen it in Shadowrun, Champions, Call of Cthulhu, and DtD40k7e. Sharowrun does it great when the GM actually integrates vehicles into the game once or twice a run and the other players don't whine that the rigger should sit outside in the getaway car the entire time. Call of Cthulhu is fine because even if you drop as much as possible into the drive skill (and pick the "wealthy jerk" profession to start with a good car) you'll still have a bunch of other skills, drive covers basically everything with wheels and an engine, and having someone actually able to out race a monster is just generally useful. Champions and DtD40k7e basically just treat vehicles like another character. This works out like having a Bruce Banner/Hulk character (or any other two-form character like a werewolf or grow/shrink super), part of the time the PC is in 'soft fleshy' mode and part of the time in 'big smashy' mode. If the GM only runs adventures where you get to play in Brice Banner mode then its on the GM to stop castrating half of the player's character or work out some sort of adjustment.

Yup, Shadowrun is in both lists based purely on GM skill & experience, and player maturity.

Mechalich

2023-11-07, 08:40 PM

So, important unaddressed items here, first: What does everyone mean when they say "vehicle based character"?

I would generally state it as a character whose overall concept is connected to vehicular action in some fashion, meaning a concept like 'driver' or 'pilot' or 'sailor.' This includes the assumption that said character is heavily invested into that concept, such that they will be measurably better than everyone else in the party who is not similarly specced at vehicle stuff and measurably worse at basically everything else as a consequence. Not to the point of being non-functional, obviously, but sufficiently such that in basically any situation where they are not either in or controlling a vehicle, they are sub-replacement.

One thing that's important here is group size. To reuse the Firefly comparison, the 'party' in Firefly is both very large - there are nine characters on the Serenity - and has an obvious lead in Mal who hoovers up considerably more screen time than anyone else, which allows for considerably greater specialization than in a smaller group. In Mass Effect, by contrast, you only get three characters at one time and they all have to be able to handle whatever the game can throw at them, and as such their 'specializations' tend to be surprisingly cosmetic in nature (DLC character Kasumi Goto in ME2, who's supposed to be a master thief but who turns out to be a great fighter for no particular reason being a good example).

A vehicle-based character is ultimately one of many types of character with a situation-based specialty. When their situation comes up, they're invaluable, but when that circumstance doesn't apply, they are sub-replacement to a more generic version of their character. The classic example is Aquaman, who swings from practically godhood to just another beatstick depending on whether or not the action is happening underwater at any given moment. The larger any operational group is and the more common the situation in question occurs, the better the game is at dragging such a character around - characters with the 'trapfinding' ability or its equivalent often operate on this principle. If traps are abundant (ex. in BGII), you'd better bring one along, but if traps are comparatively rare, then maybe you dump that character for better DPS.

Telok

2023-11-07, 11:03 PM

measurably better than everyone else in the party who is not similarly specced at vehicle stuff and measurably worse at basically everything else as a consequence. Not to the point of being non-functional, obviously, but sufficiently such that in basically any situation where they are not either in or controlling a vehicle, they are sub-replacement.
bold added

Ah, I see where some disconnect is already. To me that bolded part is saying "cripplingly overspecialized because they aren't baseline competent at other stuff". I've only seen that specific issue in Rifts/Palladium Robotech where the character class setup and limited (in number per characyer) yet super specialized skills made the pilot character type barely average npc in a gunfight outside the vehicle and not much use elsewhere. But that's the only system where I've personally seen that. Its a major flaw in game design and GMing advice in that system (to the extent of my recollection), but easily fixed by making custom classes that are less overspecialized.

Mechalich

2023-11-07, 11:40 PM

Ah, I see where some disconnect is already. To me that bolded part is saying "cripplingly overspecialized because they aren't baseline competent at other stuff".

That's not what that means. It means they are worse than some other, totally average, character slotted into their place, and that can be achieved quite easily. 3.P D&D has whole classes that are sub-replacement at all times - Tier 4 and below - and therefore are problematic in play at basically all times if the campaign is at all competitive.

To use a numeric example, if an average balanced character is a 75 in any situation, and the typical PC has 100 points but 30 are invested in vehicular stuff, then they are only a 70 absent their vehicle, making them sub-replacement. And really, if a character has less than 30% of their build invested into vehicle stuff, how are they 'vehicle-based.'

Han Solo, for example, is a famous pilot, but he's not a vehicle-based character. Wash, by contrast, is vehicle-based, because his skills are much more specialized and he relies on being on the ship for protection - to the point that he was the obvious choice as a sacrificial character to build stakes in the climactic confrontation.

But that's the only system where I've personally seen that. Its a major flaw in game design and GMing advice in that system (to the extent of my recollection), but easily fixed by making custom classes that are less overspecialized.

This level of specialization is usually difficult to produce in class-based systems, because the whole purpose of classes is to balance against such build issues (it doesn't always work, as noted by every edition of D&D ever made), but can occur very easily in classless systems. In point-buy systems it is possible to make a character who literally cannot move on their own in most environments - Eclipse Phase will let you play as both a literally bodiless character and a character whose body is a starship - and there are whole character concepts spaces that are based around this kind of specialization. For example, basically the entire mystic tradition of the Virtual Adepts in MtA was intended to be connected to the internet at all times, and if one ended up in a dead zone for any reason, their powers got ganked hard (this is an oversimplification, but it was the obvious way to play a VA).

There are also whole heroic archetypes based around this kind of character, the so-called 'man in the chair' (the most famous version is probably DC's Oracle), who is part of a team without ever being physically present. And this can work, but it does require awareness. For example, the GM is generally obligated to play very, very nice regarding things like communications jammers when dealing with such a character.

Duff

2023-11-08, 02:46 AM

The more important the vehicle is (probably most simply measured by the resources put into it), the more "gimmicky" the character is.

Any gimmicky character is best created with a good session 0 conversation.
Make sure the vehicle will be neither over, nor underpowered in the campagin
Or that everyone at the table will be fine with the imbalance if there is one The character in question and the GM are the obvious first in line here, but the other players may also be annoyed with having to drag a "passenger" through the dungeon their ship won't fit into, or that they are spectators when the ship is engaged in fighting off the Borg

If the vehicle is officially belonging to one character, but is going to function as a party resource, consider whether it should be paid for by the character, by the party, or whether it's a plot point the GM should give/inflict on the party

I file vehice based characters under "advanced GMing stuff". Not something novice GMs should try or allow in games where there's a mix of vehicle & non-vehicle based characters.

Good point

Errorname

2023-11-08, 03:20 AM

I would say I'm against trying to force it into a game that is not built with vehicles in mind. Like for a D&D type game if someone wanted to play a great sailor or a chevalier I would not want that character to have a class built around their vehicle/mount. That's not the sort of thing the game is really designed to simulate and not something that's part of standard combat. I think you can still build characters who play to those fantasies without mechanically specializing in them, if someone rolls a cool pirate captain you can give them a moment where they show off as a sailor without needing them to put a lot of mechanical points into sailing skills which will not be relevant in an average session.

Eldan

2023-11-08, 05:12 AM

This depends infinitely on setting and system.

I've played a drone pilot in Shadowrun before. The actual character sat two blocks away from the target in an armored truck, just playing coms hubb and mostly doing surveillance and fire support from the sky. Never any problems.

JellyPooga

2023-11-08, 09:07 AM

I disagree that the definition of "vehicle based character" need necessarily detract from other aspects of that character, any more than any other background or catch-all generalisation.

Yes, if vehicles or netrunning or whatever we're assigning to X are a significant part of the system or campaign, being X-focused should take away or infringe on other aspects. Even then, however, a "vehicle based character" can still be a magic user, just as much as "decking based character" can also choose to be a socialite, combat specialist or circus clown.

Thus if X isn't significant, you can still identify as X and shouldn't necessarily have to sacrifice anything for it. For example; in a Top Gun game about relationships at an air force training school in which the actual flying is sidelined to make room for "playing with the boys", smooching in the elevator and dates at the beach shack, you can still be Maverick or Ice Man (nominally "vehicle based" characters) instead of Charlie or Viper (who are more social or intellectual based characters).

It will, of course, depend on the system but consider how the Backgrounds in 13th Age demonstrate how using "Pilot", "Sailor" or "Charioteer" can inform a lot about a character, even define that character while having in-game impact, except without having to have constant in-game interaction, nor taking anything away from other aspects of that character (i.e. Class features, etc.).

Jay R

2023-11-08, 09:46 AM

The difficulty of an X-based character is that X is not always an appropriate tool for a given situation – for pretty much any value of X.

And this can make for great stories. Occasionally Superman loses his powers. Iron Man 3 was in large part the story of “What does Tony Stark do when the Iron Man suit doesn’t work?” Robin Hood is an archery-based character who carries a sword, and fought Little John with a quarterstaff. The away team loses contact with the Enterprise.

Rifle-based soldiers in real life are also trained in hand-to-hand combat.
Musketeers have rapiers for when they aren’t using muskets in a battle.
FBI agents are expected to be trained in accounting, IT, the law, or some similar field.

The player building a sword-based character needs to ask, “What will she do when a sword won’t help, or she loses her sword?”

The player building a stealth-based character needs to ask, “What will my character do when stealth won’t help, or it’s impossible to be stealthy?”

And for the same reasons, the player building a vehicle-based character needs to ask, “What will he do when his vehicle won’t help, or they go where the vehicle can’t go?”

An X-based character is fine. A character who cannot function without X is a frustrating game waiting to happen. No resemblance.

Telok

2023-11-08, 12:25 PM

That's not what that means. It means they are worse than some other, totally average, character slotted into their place,...

...This level of specialization is usually difficult to produce in class-based systems, because the whole purpose of classes is to balance against such build issues (it doesn't always work, as noted by every edition of D&D ever made), but can occur very easily in classless systems.

That's not what it what it means to you. Your definition of "vehicle based" fits my experience & understanding of "crippling overspecialization" pretty darn well. Like you can replace the word "vehicle" in your description with anything along the lines of stealth, punching, tanking, intimidating, fire, illusions, mind control, etc., and its exactly the same problem. A character with a gimmick that sucks & fails when the gimmick isn't in play.

On class vs point buy its funny because I have exactly the opposite experience. Its been the class based systems that produce the most overspecialized characters while the point buys don't. What that could be though, is actual play vs theory craft. In theory any point buy system can produce stupidly speciallized gimmick characters that are totally incompetent outside their chosen specialty and any class based system should easily avoid that.

But from the systems I've played & read & tried its the other way around. The class systems don't provide that baseline competence very well and the people playing point based systems tend to mostly avoid that sort of ultimate one trick pony if they have any level of understanding of the game being played. In fact the only time in my life I've seen such overspecialized characters in an actual game was a Shadowrun game where several players had never played anything but D&D and didn't quite get the cyberpunk tropes, letting 2 of the 4 players create amazing gun bunnies that could barely function outside of combat. And then the GM let them rebuild after the first session and the problem went away.

sktarq

2023-11-08, 06:49 PM

experienced players with experienced GMs/DMs etc only.

The real kicker is how to manage a campaign that allows for the vehicle specialist to do their thing without them being useless the rest rest of the time as well as how to make sure that when the vehicle specialist is doing their thing that the rest of the party isn't just sitting as passengers holding onto their butts with their fingers crossed.
This is just as true for deckers in shadowrun and to a variable degree any character who needs to use a specialized rule set that the other characters don't directly interact with...and then to anyone who needs X to use their abilities and is less than neutrally useful when X is not met. (When a wizard runs out of spell slots or when an old school paladin or cavalier doesn't have room for their horse)

Now I don't give a hoot about tiers because I don't think they really help the fun at the table but understanding that in order for player 1 to have fun all the other players will have to sit and watch is an issue....not an insurmountable one as plenty of DM's can do it but it takes both practice running a table and skilled player who knows how to make themselves useful at other times, manage expectations, and keep the others players entertained when they are having their specialized moments.

As an aside it can also be used to manage large differences in player acumen/experience etc. If you have one player who has been playing for 20 years and bunch of rookies making said veteran the pilot or other specialist does a lot to make sure they don't end up dominating the group totally.

And a 30% specialist is basically any specialist IMO that is not abnormal. Hell PC's that are not that are basically a specialist themselves. Yes the pilot probably has a sidearm and some non vehicle skills (mechanical, social, etc) which means they are not JUST twiddling their thumbs but are probably bringing down the average on everything else (because 50% of people are always in the bottom half)

GloatingSwine

2023-11-09, 05:04 AM

Mechalich

2023-11-09, 07:39 AM

I don't necessarily agree. I think a lot of it is on the systems design.

A well designed skills based system naturally guides the player to be good at a reasonably broad but not comprehensive set of things, and also limits the amount at which investment will further increase their skill at any of those things beyond "good enough most of the time".

While this is true - with the caveat that 'well-designed skills-based systems' are rather thin on the ground - there are some other problems. TTRPGs are mathematically limited due to the nature of the hobby. The game's 'engine' - the series of equations and models that make up its resolution mechanics - is necessarily incredibly simplistic due to the limitations of things like a dice-based RNG and the need to use no mathematical operations more complicated that the arithmetic that an average middle school student can comfortably perform in their head. This often means that the engine core mechanics are only good in a limited set of circumstances, which usually priorities small-group combat for both historical reasons and because that's the area where a dispute resolution mechanic is the most important in actual play (a far greater number of tables are comfortable with GMs using incredibly simplified social conflict resolutions than are willing to accept such things for combat).

This means that when a circumstance arises that the core resolution mechanics can't simulate effectively because it doesn't fit the math and said circumstance is considered essential to the overall gameplay, usually for setting-based reasons, the result is a mini-game with new and different resolution mechanics. A character who spends points on becoming good at said mini-game generally cannot translate them back out into the primary gameplay circumstance because they use incompatible math.

In many cases the optimal solution for the GM is to simply avoid all engagement with this minigame - especially if the rules for the minigame are bad. For example, the vehicle-based case if common in Star Wars: space combat using ships is an essential part of the franchise and every iteration of Star Wars in tabletop has had space combat rules and they have all been terrible, to the point that it's better off if Star Wars campaigns just don't do space combat. There are lots of similar ones though: hacking and mass combat both face this problem a lot.

JellyPooga

2023-11-09, 09:29 AM

stoutstien

2023-11-09, 02:35 PM

If the core mechanic of a system necessitates the formulation of a "minigame" to handle complex scenarios of a particular theme or type, I posit that either the core mechanic is poorly designed for the intended themes that the game intends to explore and should probably go back to the drawing board (it'd be like designing a bread knife that's great for fish, but needs an attachment to cut bread), or that the theme the minigame explores shouldn't be present or accomodated (like cutting bread on a board that's had raw fish on it; no, this is a fish board, no bread allowed). Bad faith and/or bad design, one way or the other.

As a general note I'd agree with you here but there are some exceptions like crafting that tend to work better if they set aside unless it's the core goal of the system.

I have also been really surprised how smooth the hacking rules work in CWN as well. You must be on location 90% of the time, so no sitting in the van, and you are running parallel to the core system so if you do go into combat it folds right in without any issue even it does have some rules that only pertain to it. It's a mini game but it only as sperate as it needs to be.

JellyPooga

2023-11-09, 05:15 PM

As a general note I'd agree with you here but there are some exceptions like crafting that tend to work better if they set aside unless it's the core goal of the system.

I have also been really surprised how smooth the hacking rules work in CWN as well. You must be on location 90% of the time, so no sitting in the van, and you are running parallel to the core system so if you do go into combat it folds right in without any issue even it does have some rules that only pertain to it. It's a mini game but it only as sperate as it needs to be.

It depends how far down the rabbit hole you go as to what we call a "minigame". 5e Combat could be construed as a minigame of the core mechanic of "roll d20 vs a DC", involving actions, bonus actions, reactions, movement, AC instead of a DC but Saving Throws still vs. a DC, HP denoting the win condition but with a plethora of exceptions and so on and so forth. It's practically a poster-child for bolting on additional parts to make X thing work within the fantasy of the games expectations.

Compare 5e to Wushu. Wushu literally handles everything the same way...as combat. Social encounter? Combat. Chase scene? Combat. Playing high stakes poker? Combat. Combat? Guess what? It's Combat. The core expectation of your typical Wushu game is martial in nature, so the rules reflect that by staging everything in the same way i.e. a conflict. Anything that cannot be staged as a conflict is either roleplayed without rolling dice or crowbarred into being a conflict. You could even model crafting as a conflict and the rules would support you doing so; they're intentionally mythic and epic, so how better to craft the legendary weapon that will defeat the BBEG than to literally "fight the forge"? It makes every scene worthwhile because if the resolution doesn't matter, why are you bothering rolling for it? Lights! Camera! Action! is the Wushu way.

Playing devil's advocate for a moment and picking up on the crafting thing, what is the purpose of rules for crafting? Why is crafting important to the game as a whole, the narrative or the rules? If there's a valid and positive answer to this question, should not the core mechanics of the system reflect that inherently such that a minigame that diversifies away from that core mechanic isn't required? If what makes the game dramatic and entertaining is combining things to make better things, then make the game about combining things to make better things! Make combat and social encounters and high stakes poker follow the same paradigm; combine "moves" or "quips" or whatever to make "manoeuvres" and "arguments"; plenty of fiction follows similar lines, like a lot of magic/alchemy for instance is about combining things (runes, reagents, words of power, etc.) to create effects and RPGs don't require dice rolls or even any random element to be exciting and challenging. Rock-Paper-Scissors style, hidden movement, worker placement, chosen values (e.g. choosing from a limited hand of cards), etc. can all add strategic elements to a system designed this way such that the "combine for effect" paradigm can really work as a core mechanic. In such a system, crafting could easily function without either a minigame, let alone one as insanely complex as 5e's combat minigame, or being the primary focus of the system.

Jay R

2023-11-10, 05:49 PM

Mechalich

2023-11-10, 06:45 PM

Batman is a vehicle-based character. But he can function without the Batmobile.
Captain Kirk is a vehicle-based character. But he can function away from the Enterprise.
Iron Man is a vehicle-based character. But he can function without the suit.
The Silver Surfer is a vehicle-based character. But he can function without his board.

If that's your boundary for 'vehicle-based' then the term is so broad it's meaningless.

Batman has the Batmobile, yes, but its existence and his ability to utilize it are central to only a tiny fraction of his stories. Most of the time the Batmobile appears it's just a cool looking transportation device, and it doesn't even appear in the majority of Batman stories.

Captain Kirk is one of hundreds of people on the Enterprise, a vessel he is entirely incapable of running himself. The Enterprise functions are both character and setting within Star Trek, and 'Captain of the Enterprise' is an aspect of Kirk's character, it's only one of them, and hundreds of others have 'X of the Enterprise' on their sheets.

The Silver Surfer's board ranges from either a physical part of his body to a weakness that can be used against him, but it's primary function is as a visual device to make a character who has a very of the generic Superman powerset (flight, superstrength, durability, and speed, energy blasts) at least a little bit distinctive from all the other characters floating around the Marvel cosmos with the exact same abilities.

Only Iron Man, out of those four, is properly vehicle-based, counting an exosuit as a vehicle (something only some systems would do). He's also a character whose power and consequently his ability to stand alongside his peers and impact the plot plummets when the suit is taken away, which has been noted as being the central problem of such characters in this thread (Marvel, notably, tends to endow Iron Man with lots of tricks to make certain his suit is available as much as possible).

Fundamentally, in game design, there's a difference between a character who has X and a character whose concept is built around X - for example, a character who has hacking skills and a Hacker character. The latter is always more complicated, even when X is something abstract like 'revenge.' Vehicles are simply both a notably common and, because most vehicles have strict limitations on where they can go, notably restrictive case.

RandomPeasant

2023-11-11, 01:05 AM

Calling Silver Surfer in particular "vehicle-based" is really weird. It's not clear to me, as a moderately-engaged comics fan, that the board is even a meaningfully distinct object from him.

Anonymouswizard

2023-11-11, 06:43 AM

Like if you need to enter a tight space or if your vehicle get's destroyed. Also unless high tech vehicles are an option there's not many uses to a vehicle.

You severely underestimate Unicycleman.

Batman is a vehicle-based character. But he can function without the Batmobile.

Funnily enough I was going to bring up Mutants & Masterminds as the only time I've seen non-team vehicles. They were mostly a footnote, except for the character with power incontinence and no driver's licence (they spent the early sessions taking the bus to crime scenes, eventually we sucked it up and carried them places). Of course M&M is a) pretty generic with its mechanics and b) gives a pretty hefty discount on things like vehicles and mundane equipment, even built as a PL8 character very few of Batman's points are invested in the Batmobile.

If the Batmobile was a large part of Batman's thing to the point the ran people over more than punching people than you'd probably buy it as a Gadget instead of Equipment, and potentially take a complication that unlike Iron Man's suit there are places where you just can't take the supercar. Although if I was seriously building Batman I'd give him a Garage power which provided an array of vehicles so that he also has access to the batcopter (complete with shark repellent batspray), batwing, batboat, batsub, and with Extra Effort stuff like the batshuttle, battrain, and battractor.

stoutstien

2023-11-11, 07:32 AM

It depends how far down the rabbit hole you go as to what we call a "minigame". 5e Combat could be construed as a minigame of the core mechanic of "roll d20 vs a DC", involving actions, bonus actions, reactions, movement, AC instead of a DC but Saving Throws still vs. a DC, HP denoting the win condition but with a plethora of exceptions and so on and so forth. It's practically a poster-child for bolting on additional parts to make X thing work within the fantasy of the games expectations.

Compare 5e to Wushu. Wushu literally handles everything the same way...as combat. Social encounter? Combat. Chase scene? Combat. Playing high stakes poker? Combat. Combat? Guess what? It's Combat. The core expectation of your typical Wushu game is martial in nature, so the rules reflect that by staging everything in the same way i.e. a conflict. Anything that cannot be staged as a conflict is either roleplayed without rolling dice or crowbarred into being a conflict. You could even model crafting as a conflict and the rules would support you doing so; they're intentionally mythic and epic, so how better to craft the legendary weapon that will defeat the BBEG than to literally "fight the forge"? It makes every scene worthwhile because if the resolution doesn't matter, why are you bothering rolling for it? Lights! Camera! Action! is the Wushu way.

Playing devil's advocate for a moment and picking up on the crafting thing, what is the purpose of rules for crafting? Why is crafting important to the game as a whole, the narrative or the rules? If there's a valid and positive answer to this question, should not the core mechanics of the system reflect that inherently such that a minigame that diversifies away from that core mechanic isn't required? If what makes the game dramatic and entertaining is combining things to make better things, then make the game about combining things to make better things! Make combat and social encounters and high stakes poker follow the same paradigm; combine "moves" or "quips" or whatever to make "manoeuvres" and "arguments"; plenty of fiction follows similar lines, like a lot of magic/alchemy for instance is about combining things (runes, reagents, words of power, etc.) to create effects and RPGs don't require dice rolls or even any random element to be exciting and challenging. Rock-Paper-Scissors style, hidden movement, worker placement, chosen values (e.g. choosing from a limited hand of cards), etc. can all add strategic elements to a system designed this way such that the "combine for effect" paradigm can really work as a core mechanic. In such a system, crafting could easily function without either a minigame, let alone one as insanely complex as 5e's combat minigame, or being the primary focus of the system.

I personally think 5e makes a poor example foe this because it's really just 10 subsystems in a trenchcoat. It pretends to have a core resolution mechanic but anything past "set DC >roll dice> add some stuff" it doesn't have much consistently.

Ars Magica is probably the poster child of crafting that is separated enough to be considered a subsystem but meshes well enough that no one would notice.

Eldan

2023-11-11, 09:22 AM

Anonymouswizard

2023-11-11, 10:19 AM

Combat in 5E is absolutely a minigame. It's just that it's a minigame in a lot of RPGs, especially more traditional ones. But I have more than one game on my shelf where combat is "roll a combat check against the enemy's defeat difficulty".

But you need a lot of rules for combat!

I get annoyed when I see game designers come up with a good concept for a game and then turn around and start including a combat minigame. It makes me want to smack them with my copy of Chuubo's.

sktarq

2023-11-11, 05:22 PM

I don't necessarily agree. I think a lot of it is on the systems design.

Thing is with the whatever system is that no matter how helpful or harmful the system is I think the table and story challenge of running a character who does stuff not with the other members is more of an issue than the system itself. The problem with such characters isn't "is the system complex" or even "is this unbalanced" it is "does this make it harder for everyone to have fun".

This could be the ship pilot basically being charge in space (while others hang on) and a backup character when "on an away mission"/90% of the time
This could be a decker in shadowrun
It could be the only social/face character in an otherwise murberhobo party
or even just a vampire with obfuscate (any mobile invisibility or other scout type really)

Morphic tide

2023-11-11, 06:03 PM

It depends how far down the rabbit hole you go as to what we call a "minigame". 5e Combat could be construed as a minigame of the core mechanic of "roll d20 vs a DC", involving actions, bonus actions, reactions, movement, AC instead of a DC but Saving Throws still vs. a DC, HP denoting the win condition but with a plethora of exceptions and so on and so forth. It's practically a poster-child for bolting on additional parts to make X thing work within the fantasy of the games expectations.
...No? Combat has the largest share of the page-space, has the through-line to the original Chainmail wargame, is what most of the character sheet refers to, and more. What you're referring to as the "core game" is the resolution mechanic, but that premise of the system can only fit so many things until you either surrender any notion of representing the specific thing being done or have to introduce technically-external staging of resolution specific to the thing being resolved, such as Hit Points or Exhaustion.

Also, the parts were not bolted on to fit to the existing expectations, because in the absence of expectations rules would be made up on the spot for that thing in particular. Then Wizards of the Coast tried to crowbar them into a single resolution mechanic but stopped short of standardizing terminology for reasons that come down to "brand recognition".

I personally think 5e makes a poor example foe this because it's really just 10 subsystems in a trenchcoat. It pretends to have a core resolution mechanic but anything past "set DC >roll dice> add some stuff" it doesn't have much consistently.
In game design terms, it is in fact a single "resolution mechanic", used across all subsystems. The resolution of the individual attacks, saving throws, skill checks, and so on is the shared 1d20+Proficiency+Ability with occasional other bonuses, but the output of that resolution varies by what it's used for. I usually see the line for a "subsystem" in light of the primary combat system to be a matter of independent operation outside the combat system like the more detailed crafting rules or when resource mechanics have option lists such as the UA Mystic or the Battlemaster's Superiority Dice. Or indeed the spellcasting, though Pact Magic is just a different resource mechanic for the same subsystem.

The inconsistency is the output of the resolution mechanic, but "the resolution mechanic" is just the individual die-roll. This is because of the generational trauma from TSR design habits making "uses one dice mechanic" genuinely a noteworthy innovation. A lot of the confounding things about "old guard" RPG design language come down to "old-school D&D was an incoherent mess".

JellyPooga

2023-11-11, 08:29 PM

...No? Combat has the largest share of the page-space, has the through-line to the original Chainmail wargame, is what most of the character sheet refers to, and more. What you're referring to as the "core game" is the resolution mechanic, but that premise of the system can only fit so many things until you either surrender any notion of representing the specific thing being done or have to introduce technically-external staging of resolution specific to the thing being resolved, such as Hit Points or Exhaustion.

Also, the parts were not bolted on to fit to the existing expectations, because in the absence of expectations rules would be made up on the spot for that thing in particular. Then Wizards of the Coast tried to crowbar them into a single resolution mechanic but stopped short of standardizing terminology for reasons that come down to "brand recognition".I'll refer you again to the game Wushu. Every scenario is resolved thus (to paraphrase and simplify, but only to the smallest degree and only for brevity);

(1) Describe what you're doing (the more and more awesome, the more dice you get to throw)
(2) Roll Attack and Defence
(3) Resolve round for win conditions (boils down to "Have enemy/ally attacks exceeded ally/enemy defences? If Yes, deduct difference from Health. End combat if Health = 0")
(4) Repeat.

That's it. The whole game in three easy steps. There's no conditions, special features, unique abilities, rules for terrain, movement or environment. There's no functional distinction between casting a spell, swinging a sword or jumping a chasm. The rules are there simply to facilitate the narrative and roll some dice. The only thing that really matters is that narrative. It circumnavigates the need for house-ruling anything by incorporating anything that might need it into the narrative aspect of the game. The resolution mechanic does not differentiate between scenarios, regardless of whether it's a brutal melee in a volcano caldera or a dreary court-room drama; if extreme heat exhaustion has the same functional game effect in a volcanic combat as psychological ennui does in a law court, Wushu challenges the notion that there any purpose in differentiating between them.

5e (and D&D in general), by comparison, is a mess of special rules, exception cases, specific conditions and tacked on extras that feed the player their narrative on a platter. This has its benefits of inspiring the awesome ("Dad! Dad! Look at this awesome thing I can do! I press the button and Bam! Fireworks!"), but has the drawback of both stifling player creativity ("Sorry Son, you can't do the thing you want. You can only press the button I give you.") and requiring a whole heap of additional moving parts in order to work ("How do I build this here button for my boy to press?"). This is a great marketing model because you get to sell new "buttons" regularly and as a consumer it saves a whole bunch of effort in the creative department, but don't mistake it for what it is; a Frankenstein amalgamation of new ideas and sacred cows bolted together into the beautiful monster it is.

Morphic tide

2023-11-11, 09:46 PM

That's it. The whole game in three easy steps. There's no conditions, special features, unique abilities, rules for terrain, movement or environment. There's no functional distinction between casting a spell, swinging a sword or jumping a chasm. The rules are there simply to facilitate the narrative and roll some dice. The only thing that really matters is that narrative. It circumnavigates the need for house-ruling anything by incorporating anything that might need it into the narrative aspect of the game. The resolution mechanic does not differentiate between scenarios, regardless of whether it's a brutal melee in a volcano caldera or a dreary court-room drama; if extreme heat exhaustion has the same functional game effect in a volcanic combat as psychological ennui does in a law court, Wushu challenges the notion that there any purpose in differentiating between them.
The resolution mechanic still doesn't differ between things in 5e, either. Again, "resolution mechanic" is just the individual thing-being-resolved dice roll (or diceless calculation), not the entire "situation" being resolved. And the point in differentiating is that there's different consequences to track with different intermediate stages. What you've described of Wushu is intensely fuzzy-narrativist design to the outright contempt of any verisimilitude from details interacting directly. Very useful for generalizing to tell a wide range of stories, very bad for the step-by-step logic of events.

5e (and D&D in general), by comparison, is a mess of special rules, exception cases, specific conditions and tacked on extras that feed the player their narrative on a platter. This has its benefits of inspiring the awesome ("Dad! Dad! Look at this awesome thing I can do! I press the button and Bam! Fireworks!"), but has the drawback of both stifling player creativity ("Sorry Son, you can't do the thing you want. You can only press the button I give you.") and requiring a whole heap of additional moving parts in order to work ("How do I build this here button for my boy to press?"). This is a great marketing model because you get to sell new "buttons" regularly and as a consumer it saves a whole bunch of effort in the creative department, but don't mistake it for what it is; a Frankenstein amalgamation of new ideas and sacred cows bolted together into the beautiful monster it is.
And that doesn't mean D&D combat is a minigame. Because all those fiddly details are a mix of simulationist and gamist "how" arising from D&D still being more a wargame hack than a bottom-up RPG. The combat with all its minutia is the primary game, the fuzzy-logic of things like "who" and "why" are left to the participants to decide. It is far from feeding narrative on a platter, and the probabilities and objective risk criteria actually tend to do the opposite by denying success rooted in narrative convention and spitting out intense misfortune when you'd think it safe.

Also, it's only with 4e that the game started being closed in enough that throwing barely-coherent natural language shenanigans at the wall and vaguely glancing at the numbers would be an issue. The variance in TSR and 3.X D&D is such a vast gulf that you really, really do not have to think your homebrew through because only the most utterly insane things cause new problems, and even those could be played around on the fuzzy-logic narrative level where ridiculous numbers don't mean anything.