The Gaming Den

[deanruel87]

An interesting thing occurred to me about specialist characters while I was watching the action scenes from Sucker Punch. Particularly the scene where the driver chick is flying her Apache helicopter after the space-train filled with robo-soldiers.

The Problem.
In many rpg's people can hyper-specialize in an area and push themselves totally off the RNG. Using Hide in 3.5 as an example; If a Rogue and a Fighter are both in a 10th level party it is possible that there is no DC the Rogue cannot automatically beat that the Fighter can even possibly roll. In some cases there will be DC's that the Rogue auto beats AND the Fighter auto fails at. This means that the Fighter, and indeed perhaps the entire party, must be left behind any time someone needs to move quietly down a hall.
In summary specialization can cause problems of having no party acceptable DC's, and creating situations where everyone else has to sit out while one character succeeds.

The Solution?
Specialization may actually end up being a positive if we can just mechanically relegate it to very specific areas. In any Caper movie or Badass Team film there are specialists. They might be the Driver, or the Sniper, or the Hacker. This character really is off the RNG in that one particular skill. They are accepted as being automatically able to do things no one else could without affording any screen time to it. When Vin Diesel drives up to a Tractor Trailer and does a 180 to drop everyone onto it no one questions it. No one even cares. Hacker or sniper type characters in particular are usually just given intermittent shots of them typing or firing without even giving scene context. You just accept they are doing incredible things and you move on. This lines up well with how specialization works in RPG's, so why does this not bother us? What are are films doing that RPG's aren't?

The answer is in WHAT is being specialized in. What should be allowed as a choice for specialization. See adventuring basically breaks down into 4 skill sets in my opinion; Combat and Destruction skills, Stealth and Infiltration skills, Movement and Transportation skills, and Diplomacy and Socialization skills. These things are the main parts of adventuring life. In the past these are the sorts of things you could specialize in. You could max hide and sneak, or you could go full diplomancer or whatever. You could take an entire aspect of the game and make it your bitch. This is bad. See in the canon we want to emulate we see characters that are specialists within a subset of just ONE AREA of those skills and not the entire skill set. The Driver drives really well but he doesn't also do parkour. He doesn't MOVE in total better than everyone else. The Sniper is a wizard when her gun's on a tripod but she doesn't box like Ali and is no better at small arms fire than anyone else. This is really relevant I think and it turns the weaknesses of specialization into strengths. I think it's even ok to have the other players sit out for very brief periods of time in the rare instance where someone's specialty becomes tested to the max and is the only thing that can save the team's bacon. When Wash becomes "a leaf on the wind" everybody else just shuts up and watches while he plays the minigame he's specialized in. Mechanically, everyone is watching because they shouldn't even bother trying to roll those DC 40 checks because it is a waste of their time. I feel like this is not only acceptable but is a great way to occasionally make people feel like their characters are unique and special.

The Complication
The most obvious complication with this idea is this: If specializing in any sub skill trumps it's entire skill set you've fucked things up royal. If you allow specialization in "Sniping" you need to also make damn sure that that will not obviate the need for that character to melee fight, small arm fight, or talk. If the Sniper can quick draw her weapon in melee and has enough feats that even WITH penalties she's better off wielding the 50 cal in a back alley ambush you have fucked your entire combat system.
If you are going to allow specialization, and my point here is that I think it can be a huge boon to do so, it is necessary to make sure that no one can rely on the same old plan to get them through everything. It means forcing somewhat weird distinctions on chargen (You can specialize in target pistol shooting but not rifle shooting?). And it means making different skill sets objectively better at achieving different tasks. A pistol must always be the best choice in an alley and a 50 cal always the best choice from a building top.

Tl;dr? I think that hyper-specialization, if regulated to very specific skill sets, might be a positive feature in TTRPG's and help a game emulate its genre better.
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[Whipstitch]

I think the problem is that people sperg out over combat skills. The other skills are generally just things that the GM can say "No, that doesn't apply; you can't fly a boat, find a helicopter or plane to pilot" or "You can't seduce a gaping head wound shut, get fucked" whereas you really can just plain murder a guy with your rifle if you know what you're doing and they can't come up with a sufficient counter. That means that the only way to differentiate different flavors of violence is to start introducing more complexity. Oftentimes this means that you end up splitting the Bad Ass team role into "Sniper" and "Punch Guy". The result is deeply, deeply stupid in many games, particularly ones like Shadowrun where pulling off a heist will likely consist of attempting to avoid combat.

[sigma999]

So give everyone two specializations.

They'll be better off than having just one.

[Schwarzkopf]

God the movie Sucker Punch is so unbelievably fucking terrible.

/tangent
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"Welcome to the Den. We will steal your car, burn your house, rape your wife, and kill your dog. Then we will say mean things to or about you. On the internet." -Frank Trollman

[deanruel87]

[Schwarzkopf]

I watched the entire fucking thing; I was more than prepared to like it. I was stoked for it. Seldom have I ever been so disappointed.

That people who are otherwise of average or higher intelligence actually like it is fucking DIZZYING to me.
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"Welcome to the Den. We will steal your car, burn your house, rape your wife, and kill your dog. Then we will say mean things to or about you. On the internet." -Frank Trollman

[shadzar]

[Stubbazubba]

I don't think that solves the Hide problem, though. K, so someone specializes only in one kind of Hiding, like jungle camouflage, for example. He's still off of the Fighter/Pilot's RNG. It won't come up as often, which I suppose will make the Fighter feel a bit better, but then the sneaky guy having such a narrow specialty is kind of a waste. Also, there's still no guarantee that the Fighter can keep up with even a generalist Stealthy guy. This is, perhaps, a problem with stealth in and of itself. Although all these specialties, hacking, piloting, etc., are all typically one-man things, that show off how cool X character is in his own court, but it's not something a party can participate in, which is the fundamental divide between multiplayer games and movies; the movie audience doesn't get bored when you spend a whole scene on Black Widow's infiltration of Justin Hammer's complex, but Iron Man's player totally does. Unless watching someone else's scenes are fun for everyone else, then I don't see hyper-specialized skills working very well.
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Josh Kablack wrote:

PhoneLobster wrote: He is like a living warning to all RPG designers of what happens when you talk about RPG design for too long without sitting down and actually trying to test some of your insane ideas in practice. That's unfair. By which I mean it probably applies to most posters on this forum, so it's unfair to single one of us out with it.

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Matters of Critical Insignificance
03/23: Cinematic combat without damage or HP? Challenge accepted!

[deanruel87]

See it's honestly my belief that every character should be able to play every one of those games. I don't think a system should allow you to be totally unable to play at any one of those 4 major games. I think every character should be able to sneak around, get in a fight, make a deal, and flee for their lives at levels of capability that are acceptable for the caliber of character they are intended to be. No character in the Fellowship is unable to move fast, no character in Firefly isn't able to sneak, no character in Buffy isn't able to fight, and even a moisture farmer from Tattoine can fly a space ship like an ace. Any protagonist should be able to fight, sneak, speak, and move at levels appropriate to their overall character tier.
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[kzt]

[JigokuBosatsu]

[Lokathor]

Man... I thought Sucker Punch was good...
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A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, is this young man's birthday. Though it was thirteen years ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a name!

[Prak_Anima]

[Kaelik]

[Judging__Eagle]

I've come to the conclusion that using the BECMI as a guide; as well as Koumei's work on Dungeon Crusade, Frank's FF d20 "pre levels"; and elements of larps such as Amtgard's very 'low' level system might be a way to solve specializations.

Namely by having "class" be merely something your character is studying/practising right now. That "class" is short in levels; limited by tier; and most importantly, swappable for other classes (or, uses the highest values if several redundant values are in existence).

Most people can't really get their heads out of "level 1-5 story space"; so leaving them to stay there, and still "gain power/options" is a good thing. Instead of giving the players 30 badly balanced levels, give them 5, and the option to trade out their levels in 'Fighter' for 'Scount', 'Herald' or 'Magus' as they get are finished with one sort of training, and seek to widen their repetoire.

Perhaps something akin to a Gestalt system; except that once you've got 5 levels in Races of War Barbarian and Dungenomicon Monk, levels in RoW Fighter will only give you class features, a few more skill points and new class skills; while levels in Rogue, Druid, Cleric or Wizard give you stuff that could be synergistic .

I guess nods to some of the FF dress-up games and class change games would be a related analogy; but I'm rather vague on how that system worked at all. only having watched others play it, and not used it myself.

Even then.... I'm not a big fan of using classes; a classless system is not going to have as much "mental perception of a class" baggage, and will always be able to easily represent more character archetypes than any sort of classed system would.

D&D can't support Ghost Robots (warforged Ghosts? nope, not unless you're making a whole new thing up, they can't ever be ghostified). While AS/AWoD can, it can even make 3 kinds of Luminary ghost robots.

That's rather important to always keep in mind. A classed system is always going to unable to do certain things; and to say that such missing things can merely be pencilled in later or "by the people who really want whatever", is the Oberoni fallacy.

Of course a classless system will have it's own issues, like every adventurer potentially looking the same. Although, having watched some of Lil' Boozie, that makes sense, and adventurers who are part of the same squad will likely adopt collective common practices.
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The Gaming Den; where Mathematics are rigorously applied to Mythology.

While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.

[Judging__Eagle]

I've come to the conclusion that using the BECMI as a guide; as well as Koumei's work on Dungeon Crusade, Frank's FF d20 "pre levels"; and elements of larps such as Amtgard's very 'low' level system might be a way to solve specializations.

Namely by having "class" be merely something your character is studying/practising right now. That "class" is short in levels; limited by tier; and most importantly, swappable for other classes (or, uses the highest values if several redundant values are in existence).

Most people can't really get their heads out of "level 1-5 story space"; so leaving them to stay there, and still "gain power/options" is a good thing. Instead of giving the players 30 badly balanced levels, give them 5, and the option to trade out their levels in 'Fighter' for 'Scount', 'Herald' or 'Magus' as they get are finished with one sort of training, and seek to widen their repetoire.

Perhaps something akin to a Gestalt system; except that once you've got 5 levels in Races of War Barbarian and Dungenomicon Monk, levels in RoW Fighter will only give you class features, a few more skill points and new class skills; while levels in Rogue, Druid, Cleric or Wizard give you stuff that could be synergistic .

I guess nods to some of the FF dress-up games and class change games would be a related analogy; but I'm rather vague on how that system worked at all. only having watched others play it, and not used it myself.

Even then.... I'm not a big fan of using classes; a classless system is not going to have as much "mental perception of a class" baggage, and will always be able to easily represent more character archetypes than any sort of classed system would.

D&D can't support Ghost Robots (warforged Ghosts? nope, not unless you're making a whole new thing up, they can't ever be ghostified). While AS/AWoD can, it can even make 3 kinds of Luminary ghost robots.

That's rather important to always keep in mind. A classed system is always going to unable to do certain things; and to say that such missing things can merely be pencilled in later or "by the people who really want whatever", is the Oberoni fallacy.

Of course a classless system will have it's own issues, like every adventurer potentially looking the same. Although, having watched some of Lil' Boozie, that makes sense, and adventurers who are part of the same squad will likely adopt collective common practices.
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The Gaming Den; where Mathematics are rigorously applied to Mythology.

While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.

[Lokathor]

Non-mechanically speaking, a warforged can easily have a ghost. Whatever spirit thing that drives it gets ghostifified when the body of the warforged is no longer able to support it. Could be a soul fragment, could be a bound elemental, whatever the hell you say it is: that gets ghostified.

There's mechanical issues with technicalities in what you're allowed to apply the template to, but those are easy to gloss over, particularly since the Warforged (a non-mindless construct) was made after the Ghost template was written, so later things are bound to introduce some weird spots sometimes.
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A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, is this young man's birthday. Though it was thirteen years ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a name!

[Whipstitch]

Sucker Punch is really meta but in a bad, self-indulgent way, and it becomes pretty clear if you pay attention to the things Snyder says in interviews and do a li'l dot connecting. Basically, Snyder acknowledges a lot of critics and the misgivings people have about women being paraded around in miniskirts for the sake of a leering audience of nerds but he actually doesn't have anything interesting or insightful to say about the topic. So he acknowledges the inherent skeeviness of a bunch of men sitting in a dark room watching young women gyrate by making the bordello into a ham-fisted stand-in for the audience to show that he "gets it." But since he's an old-school Heavy Metal fan at heart he doesn't actually mind sexual or violent imagery in his fantasy and isn't about to really condemn anyone. So you just end up with a movie that is both awkward for those who mistrust anything prurient but isn't sexy or enthusiastic enough for the people who just wanted to stop in for a trashy flick where shit blows up good.

[OgreBattle]

I think you guys should watch the anime movie Red Line
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