The Man Keeping the Martial Down

[Max_Killjoy]

What he said. One of my big complaints with CCGs is that quite often the match is effectively over before the first card is drawn - be it because one player spent a few hundred bucks more or because one strategy completely shuts down the other. That is barely excusable in a CCG, which is supposed to have an economy that's a cross between crack cocaine and the nuclear arms race, but it isn't excusable at all in an RPG.

There's a reason I took one look at MTG and other CCGs early in the craze, said "I'm not a sucker", and wandered off to look at something else.

Absolutely none of that belongs in an RPG. None of that.

Because it is such an impressive achievement to write 'Wizard' in the space labeled 'class'.

I have the same reaction to any other mechanical build, from the simplest to the most complex. It's not an achievement, and quite often it's a simply a relief to find something that fits the character, especially in any version of D&D.

"Winning" the character creation minigame, for me, isn't a matter of trivializing the adventure, or the other PCs. That's easy. No, winning the character creation minigame, for me, involves creating a character that I'll enjoy playing, who adds to table's enjoyment, who lets me explore the human psyche. A character whose concept and mechanics match well, who isn't "held back by their mechanics". A character whose contribution to the game, whose involvement in the various minigames, is… entertaining.

I can absolutely win or lose at character creation, even before there is a "rest of the party".

That's not "winning" or "losing" in any real sense, that's just the process of building a character. Some systems make it easier or harder, some systems make it functionally impossible, but it's just the process.

Many people feel superior for being a ****, and fielding some op piece to steal the spotlight. Really, the superior people are the ones who know better than to be a ****. Balance to the table.

That's where the whole "winning character creation" thing falls for me... if that player is "winning", then who is "losing"? Is the point to map the character in your head into the system, etc, as you lay out above... or is the point to "win", to make a more powerful character than everyone else and "beat" the game before it ever starts? (Never mind the total silliness of the idea of "beating" an RPG.)

this discussion makes me think of someone who likes working on cars claiming that some model of car that breaks down several times a week is an amazing car just because they happen to love fixing it. You can like fixing that car but that does not make it a good car.

That is the perfect analogy for what's going on here.

They did not sell d&d on the premise of complex character builds, if you look in the dmg prestige classes were supposed to be strictly limited by the dm. (I know they abandoned that premise later) That indicates that complex mixtures of prestige classes were not intended. Multi-class penalties are also intended to discourage class dipping and that mentality.

But the worst thing is many character concepts are crippled by their system, if they actually competently wanted to design complexity into the game their should be simple martial classes that have a high floor low ceiling and complex martial classes with a low floor and a high ceiling. Or the difference between an optimized character and unoptimized character should be small enough that they can be in the same party.

Except thats not what they did you have classes like the druid who are wildly overpowered with little to no effort, items like candle of invocation that require zero thought to break the game and spells like poly-morph that render most standard threats pointless.

Furthermore the base monsters and challenges simply cant begin to contend with the power levels presented by optimized characters. If someone brings a hi-op caster to a normal games the dm best moves is to say congratulations you won d&d now come back with an appropriate character.

Simply put, the purpose of the character creation rules in any RPG system is to enable any appropriate character or concept to be translated into the mechanics of the game, in a balanced manner, and enable enjoyable gameplay with that character. If a player "wins" or "loses" character creation, then the system and/or the GM have failed.