Rolling up a PC [pen and paper vs. NWN(2)]

[Blackwill]

Rolling up a PC [pen and paper vs. NWN(2)]

It's a fairly simple question. IF NWN2 will use the same system of adding "points" to ability scores instead of the pen an paper system; could we code it to resemble the pen and paper 3.5 rules?

Some people which have brought this possiblity to my attention bring up a valid point IMO. At times the pen and paper system nudges people to create PCs which aren't always the typical hero.

Would it be possible in NWN, or is this 100% hardcoded. If NWN doesn't allow for this possibility, then there will be little chance NWN2 will be any different.

[fluffmonster]

I expect you'd run into the same problem you have with PCs taking ranks in some of the skills we added to the vanilla game. Haks and custom content do not load until after the PC has joined the server, and that doesn't happen until after the PC is created. Right now the only work around is to put files in override, but once you do that you essentially hang out a big neon sign of what files can be fiddled with to go back to point-buy.

Additionally, point-buy provides a very solid foundation of "fair" for all new PCs. This is quite important in a large community.

I'd say if somebody really wants to do it PnP way, actually roll dice and then buy points to reflect the rolls as best as you can manage.

[HEEGZ]

I like the point buy system. Mainly because it discourages more than 16 in an ability score and is the same for all PCs. If we did mod in a dice rolling type of feature, I'd hope that system would not be abusable by someone willing to spend 8 hours rerolling a new PC until they got all their 'random' rolls over 14 or something. I'm ashamed to admit I've spent untold hours rerolling the dice for some of my characters in ToEE trying to get the perfect stats, hehe.

STR 18
DEX 16
CON 20
WIS 17
INT 5
CHA 3

Hmm, maybe I should reroll and see if I can get a +4 saving throw there... Anyways, I've actually tried rolling dice and then putting the numbers into the NWN ability scores. They don't usually add up and I end up fudging it anyways, and going back to just selecting values that fit the PCs bio. and class.

[AlmightyTDawg]

Additionally, point-buy provides a very solid foundation of "fair" for all new PCs. This is quite important in a large community.

QFE. As a guy who's been on MUDs where people stick autorolling scripts running for days to get a workable (read: best possible) PC, I'd much rather have a universal system.

[Blenderhead]

Well, I don't know about the technical problems this will create and if it can be done at all, but I think it's a good idea. I have been trying to bring this topic up in the chatroom to discuss it at least. IMO this would add to the fun and immersion, and I consider this to be a natural extension of the permadeath rule we have here in ALFA. So far the only arguments I have heard against it resembles what all outside of ALFA say, when they hear of the permanent death rule: This is just a game, it does not have to be realistic, they say. It scares many away, because they want a nice little char, with perfect stats that lives forever. I dont expect this proposal to become incorporated into ALFA or become popular, but I am certain the Rp on the servers will become better, if it did.

Death is part of life, and without the permanent death rule, this universe would not make sense at all. There would be no fear for dying, and no great battles. It's like playing a poker game with fake money. Everyone who has tried it, knows it's not really fun.

If we rolled our stat points, the Rp could be enhanced in a similar way, I believe. As it is now, everybody creates the same kind of char, with the same points. Okay, I know there are differences, but no body wants to create a bad char, we want to make them as efficient as possible, it's very human. If we get a bad roll, we have to give the char some weakness, that we will be forced to Rp.

And we could make the roll count for future chars as well, so that the system would not be abused.

[HEEGZ]

And we could make the roll count for future chars as well, so that the system would not be abused.

Well if you were stuck with terrible stats for your next PC (say everything under 12), then you could just make the PC and... oops he died at night patrolling the road with no armor. I personally prefer to select my PCs weaknesses and would not enjoy being forced into selecting them due to a low die roll. I see your points though. My last PC I rolled is the first dwarf I have played with a low STR score and it has been interesting balancing his inventory weights and staying true to his character. I think we might be better off just observing PCs for min/maxing selection of stats and keeping a point buy system (assuming that's what it ships with). It would be nice to get the occasional PC with lucky die rolls though : P

[Mikayla]

Additionally, point-buy provides a very solid foundation of "fair" for all new PCs. This is quite important in a large community.

Agreed.

As a guy who's been on MUDs where people stick autorolling scripts running for days to get a workable (read: best possible) PC, I'd much rather have a universal system.

Indeed.

Well if you were stuck with terrible stats for your next PC (say everything under 12), then you could just make the PC and... oops he died at night patrolling the road with no armor.

In short - if we allow dice rolled PC stats, people will roll and roll and roll and roll and roll and roll and roll and roll and roll until they get absolutely uber stats. Not everyone will do this of course, but many will, so, to keep things simple and keep things fair, I would strongly suggest not using any kind of dice-roll method for stats - lets stay with the point buy system.

[ç i p h é r]

The answer to the original question is that no, you can't change the NWN char creation system, but you can work around it. One way would be to use an external char creation tool that creates the bic file in the central vault. The formatting of the bic file must be known to do that, but it's otherwise a fairly trivial matter to expose a web based interface to it. Another way would be to use an in-game creation tool which modifies the existing character after the fact. NWNX/Leto was designed for this.

A point buy system works best if you want to build your stats around a known concept.

A die roll system works best if you want your stats to drive your concept. It's hard to use this sort of system when the level of maturity in the player base is inconsistent, however.

I personally think the point-buy method is too efficient at normalizing characters - stats tend to be about the same for common character concepts. I'm most partial to the one we use in our PnP group. Roll 3 sets of ability scores using 4d6 for each stat. Discard the lowest die roll for any ability score then pick the set you like best. While you can't abuse this system, you may occasionally hit the extremes. It's thus more of a lotto system but that's what draws people to it. Life itself is a lottery.

[Blenderhead]

Yes, some would try to abuse this system. That's why I proposed to make the roll count for future chars too. No matter how many Pc's you kill, because you carelessly patrol the roads at night without armor, you will keep your first roll - a fixed amount of points to spend.

You cannot expect players to make a weakness for themselves. Due to psychological reasons nobody wants to create a sucky char willingly. But we know we're powergaming if we max/min our abilities, so instead we all just make PC's with a slight handicap. IMO this doesn't work. A weakness really has to forced, and a bad roll will do that.

It makes sense in many ways. Some are blessed by the deities, while others are less fortunate. It would add to the diversity in game, I think ...

[AlmightyTDawg]

You can't stick someone with the same crappy or exceptional die rolls for their entire ALFA career. That's just unfathomable to me. Alternately, you can't legislate people going off and suiciding useless characters - seeing as it could be their uselessness which is what's causing their death. "If only I had rolled up a char with 17 STR and 16 CON, he would have survived. Alas poor Wimpy, I knew thee well."

Point buy is a system that hedges against extreme stats, but allows some level of min-maxing. While there are certainly more limited options for "smart" builds, I don't see that as any less perferable to having a guy with three +3 mods a couple of +2s and a +1 out the gate standing next to someone with two +1s and the rest zero or below.

I guess it's my vision of the game. When a 5th level in all +3 gear holds off a massive horde that my 10th level can't, I don't see it as any more heroic. He just has the numbers, there's no real RP validity to what he's doing - though IC one would be the hero and the other the goat. So it kind of is with stats, it's kind of an RP crutch to get the boosts I figure.

All of these characters are by definition above-average if not exceptional in most of their stats. Some of the stats have serious consequences at the low-levels and beyond, such as save improvements, etc. What makes a character in my mind is the RP. If stats and success drive the character rather than behavior and choices, I think we're going the wrong direction.


Edit: Just as a thought, something which might make for variability while aiming against the top-end would be something like variability in the point buy, say 29 + 1d4 or 27 + 2d3 points to spend. The extra cost in the point buy system still wards against the uber stats while giving some variability. That way the variability is there without necessarily making any character overpowered or anyone marginally unplayable.

[HEEGZ]

Yes, some would try to abuse this system. That's why I proposed to make the roll count for future chars too. No matter how many Pc's you kill, because you carelessly patrol the roads at night without armor, you will keep your first roll - a fixed amount of points to spend.

I think we would potentially lose a large part of our player base if this were implemented. A fixed atribute point system for the long haul would destroy ALFA. I'd take people exploiting a dice rolling fest over this. A lucky few would have great stats, but with my luck...

You cannot expect players to make a weakness for themselves. Due to psychological reasons nobody wants to create a sucky char willingly. But we know we're powergaming if we max/min our abilities, so instead we all just make PC's with a slight handicap. IMO this doesn't work. A weakness really has to forced, and a bad roll will do that.

I agree it is hard to make a truly handicapped PC, although I don't really see a problem with making one slightly handicapped, over none at all.

It makes sense in many ways. Some are blessed by the dieties, while others are less fortunate. It would add to the diversity in game, I think ...

While it would be nice to have the randomness, diversity, and occasional weaknesses from a low roll... I just don't see how this could be implemented without major headaches or abuse by people willing to easily re-roll. A fixed atribute system won't work. Die rolling is exploitable. Point buy is the lesser of three evils. TDwag's idea is interesting, but perhaps overly complicated. I think alot of people will think "why fix what's not broke?" Only the truly hard core players will seriously gimp their PCs via ability points, and we do want to retain as many players as possible. The survivability of PCs and frequent rerolling of new PCs for many ALFAns should be kept in mind for any proposed change to the current point buy system. Hopefully we can get some good ideas to come from this, but it's a pretty long shot at putting in a new ability score system that is not exploitable. I think it would have been invented by now.

Actually, after proof-reading this post, I thought of something from ToEE. When you roll a new PC it keeps track of how many times you re-rolled. We could allow rerolls but put a cap on the number of rerolls (a dozen?) before you are forced to keep your final roll for that PC. You are much more likely to get the variety and randomness of stats, but also prevent the 5 hour click quest for those elusive trio of 18s. You still have the problem of people killing off a gimped PC from that last roll that they just HAD to push, but I can see this as a compromise solution. *note* I still prefer point buy.

[Blenderhead]

The survivability of PCs and frequent rerolling of new PCs for many ALFAns should be kept in mind for any proposed change to the current point buy system. Hopefully we can get some good ideas to come from this, but it's a pretty long shot at putting in a new ability score system that is not exploitable. I think it would have been invented by now.

Of course, I can see the problems that will arise by using die rolls. It would take some tweaking and thinking to make it work. Perhaps it cannot be done at all ...

To force players to keep a crappy roll for an entire ALFA career would be cruel, but surely there must be some way around this. So far my only idea is probably bad: If you get PC to lvl 5 (or 3) you have earned your right to make a new roll? Or something else. And extreme rolls could be left out: if you get below a certain number or above a certain number of points, you immediately get a chance to reroll *shrugs* There are several possibilities.

This should be used as a tool for creating diversity in ALFA, not to mention that the powergamers here will suffer *winks*

[ç i p h é r]

There are many MANY character creation methods in PnP using die rolls. The UNLIMITED REROLLS option is not one of them so if that's your only objection to die rolls as a preferred system, it's not valid.

We could implement anything from a straight up rolling system (3d6 roll for each stat and you're done) to rolling 18d6 and grouping die rolls into whatever combination you like (typically resulting in groupings of very high and very low stats). There are any number of derivatives from there, such as allowing a limited number of rerolls or adding extra dice that can be discarded to guard against terribly low rolls. The point buy system is pretty inflexible in comparison.

Whether or not people in the community are mature enough to accept their fortunes with the dice, whatever they may be, or whether they will choose to "take their ball and go home" is a question to contend with. However, it's important to note that die rolls have been at the heart of PnP character creation for decades and the game has certainly survived the countless "injustices" to player characters in that time span. Not only are we still playing the game, but we're playing it in a format we likely never dreamed of at the time.

If nothing else, it would be a fun experiment on beta servers.

[HEEGZ]

There are many MANY character creation methods in PnP using die rolls. The UNLIMITED REROLLS option is not one of them so if that's your only objection to die rolls as a preferred system, it's not valid.

We could implement [snip] rolling 18d6 and grouping die rolls into whatever combination you like (typically resulting in groupings of very high and very low stats). There are any number of derivatives from there, such as allowing a limited number of rerolls or adding extra dice that can be discarded to guard against terribly low rolls.

I would be interested in trying out the system you describe here. Can this be implemented via script on NWN1, or a web page somehow?

[Blackwill]

In short, a system like this requires trust in the players. Trust which is hard to place with so many powergamers in the NWN community as a whole. You'd think that with a written application and an OAS system, the ALFA players would be pure Role-Players. If any abuse is caught with this system, then action should be taken. But this is the case with many things like powergaming, metagaming and min/maxing which is something far easier to do, and harder to punish.

Personally I have no problem for players to reroll their PCs if their skills are utterly horrid. But using a software program to bite into the best roll should be something any of our players shouldn't even be thinking about.

And anyway, if a system like this is tested, or even implemented, I'm sure we can limit 5 rerolls per player somehow? Attach the rolls to the public CD-key or something?

PS. Read my signature and think about trust and maturity.