You cannot have E6 for 20 levels without RNG obviation.

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Lago PARANOIA
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You cannot have E6 for 20 levels without RNG obviation.

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

The crown jewel of D&D imbalance, the alpha and omega of every single long-term balance problem of D&D is the problems that comes with making the game last until level 20. I'm talking specifically about RNG fuckery. While this is certainly not the only thing that causes imbalance, this is the thing that significantly aggravates almost any other kind of imbalance in the game. If 3E D&D ended at level 8 then many of the bad classes would cease to be bad. If D&D ended at level 5 then nearly all of them would be.

The obvious solution to this problem is to prevent the RNG from shifting too much. Yeah. This solution is doomed to fail from the start. Let's talk about why it will fail and why the proposed solutions will fail.

1) People wank too much to the idea of there needing to be 20 levels of advancement. The existence of E8 and epic show that people don't necessarily want their characters to transform--they just want their characters to get to level 20. Amazingly enough people don't really care that the upper limit of advancement is something stupid like 30 or 60 levels. 20 seems to be the bottom limit for some retarded reason.

2) This wouldn't necessarily be a problem in of itself, but some people seriously think that Conan the Barbarian or Lord of the Rings (not the high-powered stuff, just the bullshit low-level crap) has enough content in the game to have 20 levels of power division to the point where someone would notice in a narrative context. Sure, I think that if you were designing a Dragonball or a One Piece or a Marvel Super Heroes game you could definitely have a recognizably different archetype/iconic for each level of play. I mean in Marvel Super Heroes the difference between a level 14 superhero and a level 18 superhero is Thor and Silver Surfer and you can definitely see a difference in capabilities and ability to affect the plot. But for Conan? If the top end of power for that game is friggin' Thulsa Doom, what's the difference between a level 14 swordsman and a level 18 swordsman?

3) This again wouldn't necessarily be a problem in of itself, but people demand that substantial amounts of stuff be given to players in every unit of advancement. Hey, I don't have a problem with that. If a gaining a level didn't give me anything I wouldn't want to gain it either.

But remember, we're operating under the assumption that 1 and 2 are true. I've heard on these boards time and time again that people want to have 20 levels so they don't feel like they're advancing too fast. But they ALSO don't want to go beyond Conan level.

So you know what this means?

HUGE AMOUNTS OF LEVEL FILLER IN THE FORM OF RNG FUCKERY

That's fucking right. You know how 4E D&D constantly kvetches and crows about how 'everyone gets a new thing to do every level'? Well, that's because most of the things they give are cynical manipulations to the RNG. It'd be false to say that the schticks of a 30th level 4E character are always the same as a 1E character, but let's look at the limitations for high-level powers in that game.
- Almost nothing can have an effect longer than 5 minutes without a permanent cost.
- Characters are almost never allowed to get powers that alter the course of the plot.
- Combat is supposed to take place in a 20' x 20' x 15' rectangular prism at the absolute maximum. At all stages of play.
- 'Hit it with a sword' is always supposed to be a viable solution to problem solving. So challenges must be nerfed so that a really good swordsman with the capabilities of a mundane human can solve the adventure. Seriously, look at some 4E published adventures (Tomb of Horrors and Attack of the Frost Giants is a good start) if you don't believe me.
- Schticks gained at level 1 are supposed to be viable throughout the range of the game. Spider-Man kicking people in the face by swinging on a web is always supposed to work, even at level 30.
Those are some serious limitations, but unless you want the 3E problem of sword-based classes being totally useless outside of situations that don't require swording you have to limit abilities and challenges appropriately. Seriously, if you were not allowed to use numbers or reference power names, the battle between two level 30 4E martial heroes would sound exactly the same as a battle between two level 15 martial heroes.

But they still have 30 levels to fill. So they HAVE to make the numbers bigger. Heroes aren't fundamentally different, they're superficially different!

4) 1-3 is enough to break the RNG of most games. But still, in theory, it's not impossible to have all of these things built together and have a balanced game. After careful months of playtesting and math-hammering, you could design a game where the RNG doesn't diverge despite peoples' numbers continually increasing. You just have to really control the inputs.

But you know what? That's just not possible for a game like D&D. People can just NOT RESIST having a bunch of shit stapled onto their character. This goes for both players and writers. The easiest way for anyone to have a game effect that people will notice is to attach a number to it. No one gives a shit about the rituals in the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide, but everyone and their mother talks about Dragonshards. If Unearthed Arcana didn't have Hybrids, flaws, and bloodlines no one would give a shit about it. Song and Silence is the least popular of the 3E classbooks because it doesn't have any new numbers in it.

Even if you had complete editorial control over your product, there's no way you can prevent power creep unless you're willing to sacrifice sales at the cost of number control. You have to account for it. But again, you have 20 levels worth of content to fill. And most people play in the early stages of the game. Just fucking LOOK at all of the RNG-fuckery stuff available for 8th-level characters in 4E D&D who picked it up Summer 2008 versus summer 2010. And that's only after two years. Would anyone really have picked up Adventurer's Vault 2 if they didn't have item sets and new item slots? Would anyone have given Eberron Player's Guide a second glance without some of the RNG-fucking PPs and items?

If you have more levels to put into your game, people will come up with more ways to fill them with content. This needn't necessarily be bad. The problem, unfortunately, is that even though people would think that it would be really cool for Conan to have a library of a hundred magical swords to choose from, the swords aren't allowed to change his schticks. So you either have to print nothing but trash drops (which will kill sales) or you fuck the RNG in the long run.


5) A less obvious, but still fail solution. Normalize the RNG at certain points in the game. This means that at level 15, your swordsman swinging a sword at +25 to hit suddenly drops down to +5 to hit when they get back to level 16. Did this mean that your swordsman became weaker? No. He is still better than a level 15 swordsman; it just means that when he fights sub- level 16 swordsmen they're cannon fodder who don't deserve large spots on the RNG. But since the L16 swordsmen are now also fighting level 16 enemies, that bulge of twenty points doesn't mean anything. So you might as well take it off from both ends

This is again a non-starter for two reasons.

5A) People insist on bonuses being the same relative bulge of advantage at all levels of play. From a narrative standpoint there's really no right way of saying whether minor bonuses should or should not count. I think it would be insulting if Captain America's major enemies got a huge boost in durability just by finally wearing some mundane armor, but on the other hand some people still want 'I have the high ground!' and 'that kiss my sweetie gave me gives me a +2 bonus to attack, which is enough to defeat you!' in the game.

Regardless, however you feel about it this STILL fucks up game. If you're playing the Incredible Hulk, you will always notice that +2 Gauntlets of Strength makes you kick more ass unless you're already off the RNG. People can whine about 'Christmas Tree Effect' all they want but the basic problem is that people still want that orphan's trinket to matter, so we'll always be mowing down weeds without pulling up the roots.

5B) If you're playing Marvel Super Heroes, no one is really going to care that you normalized the RNG. Once you start hanging out with Dr. Doom and Magneto, you're not going to care that your attack bonus dropped from +30 to +10, because in exchange for 20 points to attack with your adamantium claws you can now slice your sword hard enough to cleave a building in twain. Only a fucking nerd would care more about the number loss than the schtick gain.

Except that... we're not playing Marvel Super Heroes. We're playing Conan. Level 11 heroes still do pretty much the same shit as level 16 heroes. When your bonus goes from +30 back down to +10, people feel neutered. They're still the same character, it's just that for some reason their sword doesn't provide as much of a RNG bulge as it did in the past. You don't GET any new schticks to compensate for the fact because otherwise you wouldn't be playing Conan.

Thus RNG adjustment is impossible. Too many people will just not be able to suspend their cognitive dissonance enough to realize that it's good for the game even though their numbers (which don't mean fucking shit) down. Fuck, man, people might even get all butthurt and whiny at the unwanted but totally true realization that making their levels go up is pointless.

So we have eternal RNG fuckery.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Mon Sep 06, 2010 1:54 am, edited 3 times in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

So how do you fix this RNG fuckery? You actually have quite a few options. If you really want to aggressively fix the RNG, you could implement several of these at once. I mean, doing 2 and 5 would almost guarantee a balanced game throughout the lifespan of D&D no matter what hacks you have on your writing staff. But anyway.

1) Get rid of all these extra levels. People have told me repeatedly on these boards that without the stimulation to their reptilian center of the brain of bigger numbers then they will get really upset and hate D&D. I am starting to believe them.

2) Have meaningful schtick advancement. That's a righteous idea, but if your bottom end of power is 'mud-farming peasant' and your top end of power is 'King Arthur', then your schtick can't advance too much other the levels to begin with.

3) Get rid of level filler. The problem unfortunately is that the reason why people want to get to level 20 or whatever in the first place is to feel like they're getting somewhere and just seeing that number at the top of their charsheet increase is just not enough.

4) Implement level filler, tightly control the bonuses from then on. I'm pretty much laughing at you at this point. You have to have power creep to sell as many books as D&D wants to in the long run. Moreover, no one can resist handing out little bonuses to make their option relevant. If you want people to care about your new race/feat/PrC/etc. you need to make it stand out from the dozens of other options.

5) Normalize the RNG now and then. That way you can have all of the above but still have a balanced RNG in the long run. Unfortunately, the people who want D&D to go to level 20 at a Conan level would get really upset at having their numbers thrown in their face now and then. It kills the 'illusion' of advancement. If you had real schtick advancement like in One Piece this would not be a problem, but it is for the E6 people.


One of these game-balance binds are going to have to go. Otherwise 5E and 6E and whatever edition D&D comes out with IS GOING TO FAIL AND FAIL BADLY at long-term balance.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

4e had the seed of a potential interesting work around, but like most of 4e, it was ass-tastic in implementation.

We could totally have 20 levels, and advancement at all levels and keep people on the RNG. The trick would be to only give out RNG-influencing modifiers at TIERS. Instead of ticking BAB, AC, Saves, Skills and DCs up each level, they ticks up every 5th level. (or 4th or Nth)

Then non-tier levels get to provide non-RNG altering schticks, like damage bonuses, resistances, range increases, terrain alteration, movement abilities, additional skill uses, immunities, etc.

But yeah, you'd need tight editorial control to make sure this actually happened with all class abilities.

And yeah, you're counting on people not noticing that you just stealth redefined level. but that's okay because we've needed to do that for a long time now.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Josh Kablack wrote: We could totally have 20 levels, and advancement at all levels and keep people on the RNG. The trick would be to only give out RNG-influencing modifiers at TIERS. Instead of ticking BAB, AC, Saves, Skills and DCs up each level, they ticks up every 5th level. (or 4th or Nth)
Okay, so for levels 2, 3, and 4 what was a 4E character supposed to be getting?

They can't get substantial schtick alteration (because they've already decided that the top end of power should be Harry Potter) and there's a strict limit on horizontal advancement you can give someone before they just stop caring about it.
JK wrote: Then non-tier levels get to provide non-RNG altering schticks, like damage bonuses, resistances, range increases, terrain alteration, movement abilities, additional skill uses, immunities, etc.
Damage bonuses, resistances, extra movement modes, and immunities are RNG fuckeries. Range increases may or may not be RNG fuckery. If you gain +50 for your range on something that alreay goes out to 500 feet you won't care. If you gain 2 squares to your range when you start combat in a 10 x 10 x 3 square'd rectangular prism you probably won't care unless the distance gives you an extra turn. And extra turns are another form of RNG fuckery.

Terrain alteration?! That's another form of RNG fuckery.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Tue Aug 17, 2010 2:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by erik »

Meh. I barely ever get to play characters from 1-to-Teens anyway. My lizard brain has no complaints about having a 10 level game.

I also would be perfectly happy to play a DnD game where the DM said "We are going to play a level 5 campaign" and there would be no advancement of levels but players could still accumulate cool stuff like magic items and new spells in their books.
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Post by Ice9 »

Ok, you're using a broader definition of "RNG fuckery" than makes any sense. Extra movement modes and terrain alteration can't be "RNG fuckery", because they don't involve a fucking number! Now maybe you mean "affects balance", which is true, but you need some better terms.


An option (which I'm not sure would work), would be to go in some direction other than (increased personal ass-kicking) once you hit 10th level or so. Start giving people leadership / kingdom abilities as their advancement.

I think this might work, because people who whine about things getting "too anime" would have no way to whine at this. It's in the source material - Conan eventually becomes a king. And if you complain about that, you look like a bad roleplayer, at least according to the same definitions many of these guys use.


Now personally, I'd like to see multiple possible tracks - you hit 10th level, then you can go on the "Kingdoms" track and start ruling people, or you can go on the "Mythic" track and start doing superhuman stuff like taming the lightning to ride. Probably not in the same campaign, but it would be a choice the group could make.
Last edited by Ice9 on Tue Aug 17, 2010 2:38 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Post by Archmage »

Ice9 wrote:Now personally, I'd like to see multiple possible tracks - you hit 10th level, then you can go on the "Kingdoms" track and start ruling people, or you can go on the "Mythic" track and start doing superhuman stuff like taming the lightning to ride. Probably not in the same campaign, but it would be a choice the group could make.
The only issue with this is that those are functionally different games.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
Josh Kablack wrote: We could totally have 20 levels, and advancement at all levels and keep people on the RNG. The trick would be to only give out RNG-influencing modifiers at TIERS. Instead of ticking BAB, AC, Saves, Skills and DCs up each level, they ticks up every 5th level. (or 4th or Nth)
Okay, so for levels 2, 3, and 4 what was a 4E character supposed to be getting?
Level 2 increased the lvl/2 component from 0 to 1, which increased attack bonuses, Skills ACs and NADS.

Level 4 increased did that again going from 1 to 2.

Level 2 and level 4 also provided a feat, which was frequently (although not always) Weapon/Implement Expertise or an improved Armor Proficiency or potentially a +5 to a given skill.

All of those influenced the RNG, and having them happen 15 times while also having item and power stacking on top results in an impossible range for the RNG if you use a d20. Having them only happen like 6ish times, does not necessarily result in an impossible range on a d20

Level 3 gave an additional encounter power. Which was usually small potatoes and usually did not influence the RNG. But the people I played 4e with were still excited about advancement from 2nd to 3rd level, because they got something new.
They can't get substantial schtick alteration (because they've already decided that the top end of power should be Harry Potter)
Okay, that's the part of your rant I missed.

But an item of at-will flight, ability to call said item, ranged disarm, invisibility, claraudience and a number of variable utility schticks that require out-of-combat preparation still puts characters into at least the marvel superheroes range. And there's probably enough room between Dorothy Gale of Kansas and Spider Man to squeeze out 20 distinct levels.
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Post by Juton »

I think there are ways to stretch out the schtick of being good with a sword, maybe even fill 20 levels but it's hard to do when you are standing next to a mage. The Wheel of Time (d20) and the Lord of the Rings RPG (CODA) do an adequate job of this, as most magic is weak sauce. I actually like them, and despite being closer to contemporary fantasy the grognards will still complain that they aren't D&D.

D&D has the broken shit though, invisible flying bad guys, creating indestructible force walls and dropping hordes of angelic badgers on people's heads for lulz. People want this shit and playing a caster gives it to them. We have to find some way of tricking the neckbeards who want to play Fighters into playing something with superpowers. They will scream 'animu!' if you actually just give Fighters mechanical abilities that matter so we have to trick them.

The only way for mundanes to keep up is to abuse WBL, which is impossible in 3.5 because only casters can craft shit. There is an exception in the DMG II, players can 'bond' an item and just enchant the weapon their damn selves. Maybe we can have a system where mundanes can sacrifice XP to have their magic weapons/armour increase in potency, the increases could be thematically linked to their adventures or it could be whatever. XP is a good choice in a 3.5 derived system because the more you lose the quicker you gain it back.
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Post by hogarth »

The existence of E8 (that goes up to level 8) shows that people want to play up to level 20? I didn't make it into the wall of text past that head-banger.
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Post by Juton »

hogarth wrote:The existence of E8 (that goes up to level 8) shows that people want to play up to level 20? I didn't make it into the wall of text past that head-banger.
E8 isn't like E6, it's a hypothetical game where you can go from levels 1-20 but you never get anything new and meaningful after level 8. So basically Lago is positing that people want a game like D&D but where fighters can still contribute at all levels, so basically you can't have anything more powerful than 4th level spells or fighters can't contribute. Mind you fighters may have a hard time contributing but it's possible.
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Post by erik »

Juton wrote:We have to find some way of tricking the neckbeards who want to play Fighters into playing something with superpowers. They will scream 'animu!' if you actually just give Fighters mechanical abilities that matter so we have to trick them.
I like the notion of basically giving them wizard spells but describing them differently. Rather than casting Blindness, the fighter picks up sand or dirt or whatever and uses his dirty fighting to throw it into the eyes of his enemy. The fighter uses an attack to clap his hands on a humanoid enemy's ears to cause Deafness (plus damage). Screw cleave- the fighter throws his weapon a la whatever spell it was in Spell Compendium that let you launch a weapon as a line area attack against enemies. Instead of Shield spell, the fighter uses his battle canny to find cover. Give him a some save or dies with his sword. And so forth. Just keep giving choices for abilities like this and the neckbeard never realizes he has tons of spells as extraordinary abilities.
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Post by Mask_De_H »

So, Frank's Soldier erik?
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Ice9 wrote:Ok, you're using a broader definition of "RNG fuckery" than makes any sense. Extra movement modes and terrain alteration can't be "RNG fuckery", because they don't involve a fucking number! Now maybe you mean "affects balance", which is true, but you need some better terms.
No, it's RNG fuckery, in the same way that awarding extra attacks are.

Extra movement and terrain alteration is binary in terms of tactics. Either it generates you extra turns (because you are using hit and run or ranged sniping tactics) or it doesn't do jack shit. If you're able to spring attack someone so fast that they can't reach you even with a run, then getting extra movement on top of that isn't going to help you. Similarly, if you don't have enough speed for spring attack then getting more speed before the point of 'gets you an extra turn' doesn't help. Terrain alteration works exactly the same way.
I think this might work, because people who whine about things getting "too anime" would have no way to whine at this. It's in the source material - Conan eventually becomes a king. And if you complain about that, you look like a bad roleplayer, at least according to the same definitions many of these guys use.
Sure, it's a genuinely cool addition to the game (or it helps hides what's going on if you're cynical), but if that's all you're getting then you might as well switch the game over to Sim City after a certain point. Or you're going back to RNG problems again. And after all, it's not like D&D has been able to avoid the sweet allure of giving people cool bonuses depending on their membership, right?
hogarth wrote:The existence of E8 (that goes up to level 8) shows that people want to play up to level 20? I didn't make it into the wall of text past that head-banger.
Was that head-banger aimed at me? Because if it is, don't blame the messenger. People WANT their numbers to increase but want to play at Conan level. That creates RNG problems over time, which is the point of this thread.
Josh wrote: All of those influenced the RNG, and having them happen 15 times while also having item and power stacking on top results in an impossible range for the RNG if you use a d20. Having them only happen like 6ish times, does not necessarily result in an impossible range on a d20
The RNG will have to be tamed for the next edition no matter what we do, I agree, but I subscribe to the school of thought that material expands to fill space. That's why the amount of item slots in 4E continues to inflate and would probably keep inflating if they weren't switching to Essentials.
And there's probably enough room between Dorothy Gale of Kansas and Spider Man to squeeze out 20 distinct levels.
There definitely is, but a lot of people don't want the level of power to end at Spider-Man for sword-based characters. They want it to end with Batman. And not the Batman who puts on power suits to deal with xenomorphs or has personal laser arrays, but Dark Knight-level Batman.

If you remember that End of 4E thread, people got mad that I suggested that a fighter should be able to lift a 1.2 ton boulder and do a marathon while holding it. Spider-Man kicks significantly more ass than that.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Actually, one option that I forgot to mention...

You could do what 4E does. That is, you let people write RNG-screwing over material and then you errata the material after a certain period of time. Then you release more RNG-fucking stuff. Then you nerf that again. And so on.

If you keep doing that, you can keep having new material in the game without screwing over the long-term numbers.

I haven't seen how this has played out with 4E yet, so I can't really give a statement on the effectiveness of this program. But if it works, it may be the solution to this problem.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Psychic Robot »

How are extra attacks RNG screwing?
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Post by erik »

Mask_De_H wrote:So, Frank's Soldier erik?
Ehhhh... I reckon that's pretty similar to what I was imagining. It probably takes it even a bit further though since some of the powers are pretty overtly magical, whereas I was basically aiming to disguise magical effects as best I could, as mundane.

Once you get to the really high level stuff, that's almost unavoidable though. Granting other powers via class-granted magic doodads would possibly be acceptable to sticklers. Like rather than granting Flesh to Stone, the fighter can choose to preserve a Medusa's head and brandish it once a day (for say 1 rnd/level) for a gaze effect.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/3/12/

This is pretty much the best satire of gaining meaningless levels I've ever seen.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by hogarth »

Juton wrote:
hogarth wrote:The existence of E8 (that goes up to level 8) shows that people want to play up to level 20? I didn't make it into the wall of text past that head-banger.
E8 isn't like E6, it's a hypothetical game where you can go from levels 1-20 but you never get anything new and meaningful after level 8.
a) I don't know why you think E8 is "hypothetical". Various people are playing it; it's just a minor variant on E6.

b) Note that you can go from levels 1 to a zillion in E8, if you want. There's absolutely nothing special about the number 20.
Last edited by hogarth on Tue Aug 17, 2010 12:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Thymos »

There are ways to give bonuses without fucking with the rng.

Rerolls are a great example.
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Post by PoliteNewb »

Lago PARANOIA wrote: No, it's RNG fuckery, in the same way that awarding extra attacks are.

Extra movement and terrain alteration is binary in terms of tactics. Either it generates you extra turns (because you are using hit and run or ranged sniping tactics) or it doesn't do jack shit. If you're able to spring attack someone so fast that they can't reach you even with a run, then getting extra movement on top of that isn't going to help you. Similarly, if you don't have enough speed for spring attack then getting more speed before the point of 'gets you an extra turn' doesn't help. Terrain alteration works exactly the same way.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Where are the random numbers (as in "random number generator") is any of the above? If there are no random numbers being generated, how is it RNG fuckery?
If you remember that End of 4E thread, people got mad that I suggested that a fighter should be able to lift a 1.2 ton boulder and do a marathon while holding it. Spider-Man kicks significantly more ass than that.
When, exactly? Are we talking movie spider-man, or comic book spider-man? And if the latter, which era?

I haven't read Spidey in a while, but I seem to recall him getting his ass kicked by fairly ordinary peeps on a regular basis, and I've never seen him do anything nearly as impressive as pick up a car and run a marathon with it. His most impressive schtick is dodging bullets.
(for reference, this is 80's era Amazing Spider-man and Marvel Tales, where he frequently teamed up with the Punisher)

His general tactic of dealing with guys is to punch them in the face, or tie them up. While the latter is straight crowd-control wizard stuff, the former is pretty fighter-ish.

So how does Spidey = DBZ?
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Post by erik »

I thought comic spidey could lift manyseveral tons. I would look up some stat cards for him (and others) that I had as a kid but lord knows where it is now. I think he was in the 10 ton lift neighborhood.

And the only "normal" guy I ever saw kick spidey's ass was the Kingpin and considering big K ripped a spiral staircase out of the floor and ceiling to use it as a weapon I am hesitant to grant him normal status. Come to think of it spidey did not even lose there he just dodged.
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Post by Juton »

One version of Spidey can lift 6+ tonnes, has improved healing, amongst the other powers. I'm not sure if Lago is saying Spiderman > Batman or vice versa, because in the Dark Knight he K.O.s Superman, but he uses an exosuit and a bunch of gadgets. Kingpin's superpower is that he isn't fat, he's like 400 pounds of pure muscle.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

You know what? I completely forgot about this thread.
PN wrote: What the fuck are you talking about?
Where are the random numbers (as in "random number generator") is any of the above? If there are no random numbers being generated, how is it RNG fuckery?
I really should have said 'screws the outcome such that the d20 roll doesn't matter'. More generally I mean adding stuff to the game that makes rolling the dice increasingly meaningless.

I mean, if you're the only character in the game that can fly and the only character that has a ranged attack, you've predetermined the outcome so much that it doesn't matter what the opponents roll; for all the flow of the game cares you may as well have an AC of 50 at level 8 and a way to autododge critical hits.

I call most methods of railroading an outcome RNG fuckery, it's just that the latter is more obvious and more numerous. But as far as the game cares it doesn't really matter whether you have resist 40 all or you're adventuring via a simacrulum. And awarding benefits like terrain manipulation and rerolls eliminates chance from the outcome just as surely as giving people a +20 to attack. I know it's a misleading name (since a lot of people here whined about the name rather than the overall point), but if someone can give me a punchy phrase that effectively means 'grabbing so many options that what an opponent or you roll on a RNG is meaninglessly' I'll use it instead.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Mon Sep 06, 2010 1:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Saxony »

Diceless outcome? RNG obviation? Automatic winning?
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