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

[Mayhem]

I want to play what *I* want to play, not what the dice tell me I have to play.

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Also - DMs are already worried about player imbalance - see the armour thread for evidence of this.

Random stats - where one guy can concievably have straight 18s (or very close to) and another can have whatever the minimum is before you are officially allowed to re-roll, will only exacerbate matters.

And since the sub-par PCs will generally die off quicker (or deliberately) whilst the high stat ones will tend to survive, all you will end up with is power creep with the "average" PC having higher stats that the average dice roll would suggest.

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If *you* personally like randomness, then roll some of your own dice before you start playing, and tweak the results to match the amount of points available.

The way the system stands ATM makes this possible, there is a choice. Enforcing randomness means less choice (and the biggest feature of D&D 3ed vs AD&D was always hyped as "choice )

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Also, to say randomness is the "PNP" way is a misnomer, since PNP allows for point buy as well - many folk play with a larger number of points than NWN allows as well.

[JspecWip]

We could make an optional system of dice rolls, I've thought about bringing this up. If you want what you bought sweet go right on through the starting area. Others could roll there char stats, and they would be set on the DM log, then PM the HDM/Dm whoever and the DM changes the stats. The char stats acheaved through rolling could be tagged right to the .bic to know that no favoritism is going on. Have the throwout like the PHB has for really low stats and we're set. Just check the vault once and a while for Pc's with uncommonly similar names/the player tag that made 10 pcs in one day to keep track of abuses.

Everyone gets their cake and can eat it too.

And from using both point buy and rolled stats you usually end up with stats pretty much the same, sometimes rolled stats have a higher middle ground, but the low end is usually lower than the 8 you get w/point buy

[peterdin]

I would go for a point buy system.

This has a drawback however when you have to spend ALL the points.
As an example: my char has a con,str, and wiz of 8 (it was a 9 year old kid) and I had to spent all the other points.

So I ended up with a somewhat unbalanced character.
In that case I would have wanted to spend less points than the 30 available.

[Blenderhead]

I don't like the idea of mixing a point buy system with a die roll system. That wouldn't make sense at all, because everybody would just kill their chars if they got a bad roll and give it another shot. The idea behind point buy is the fairness it provides. That would be ruined by mixing the two. It's either one or the other IMO.

Problem with point buy is that all players will just tell you: "if you like randomness roll a char yourself, but I don't want to. I'll make my superhero, and there is nothing you can do about it." Very human, but very boring.

And I don't believe we would end up with powerful players with high stats. This sounds logical, but I don't believe this will be the case. Powerful PC's tend to get overly brave in ALFA, and they die as often as the weak ones, I have noticed. I don't know this for certain of course, only time can tell. I am just saying, how logical this may sound, I don't think it's the truth.

A system that could enforce randomness, wihout making some too powerful and others way too weak is preferable. Personally I think a world with less choice and more randonmess makes sense. Imagine a real world where we had the choice to be what we wanted, everybody male would look like John Travolta and every female like Britney spears. It would become like one of those incredibly boring american TV-shows they show here in Denmark all day long. Full of stereotypes and normal people. The same is happening here in ALFA, I know that this isn't the real world, and it gives us the chance to play a hero. But what is a hero? Alfa should provide the RP possibilities for every kind of possible character concept right, and a weak player should be able to get as much inlfluence as a powerful one? Imagine a player with with stats below average pull of some great Rp and become very powerful in other ways. It's really like a game with cards, you play the hand you'll get. This will add to the maturity of the players here, and make the ALFA experience even more challenging and mentally stimulating.

[Mayhem]

Problem with point buy is that all players will just tell you: "if you like randomness roll a char yourself, but I don't want to. I'll make my superhero, and there is nothing you can do about it." Very human, but very boring.

1) You seem to be saying that because *you* want to play a random character, everyone else should be forced to. Doesn't sound very fair to me.

2) The points given for point build hardly result in superheroes.

3) What evidence do you have that players are all choosing the same stats?

4) Since the roll is of multiple dice, we get a pretty flat bell curve, which means random stats will be equally similar.

5) Stats don't make character interesting or boring - players do that. Poro stats don't force characters to be any more interesting than high stats or average stats.

I would go for a point buy system.

This has a drawback however when you have to spend ALL the points.
As an example: my char has a con,str, and wiz of 8 (it was a 9 year old kid) and I had to spent all the other points.

So I ended up with a somewhat unbalanced character.
In that case I would have wanted to spend less points than the 30 available.

DMs can (and likely will, if asked) permanently reduce stats for you. Great your child with all the "spare" points in anything but INT (because of the skill point issues) and ask a DM to strip it down at the first opportunity.

I would have thought he fact that the toon was average human height would be more of a barrier to playing a child than the stats...

[Blackwill]

1) You seem to be saying that because *you* want to play a random character, everyone else should be forced to. Doesn't sound very fair to me.

3) What evidence do you have that players are all choosing the same stats?

1) We aren't forcing anyone. This is just a proposal which is being discussed. One system is fair if the system is used by everyone. Nobody said you didn't have the possibility to reroll twice or 5 times maximum. It's just a proposal.
2) I can show you, but then I'd have to kill you.

Now can we lighten up please mayhem, it seems like your taking this very personal. Can we please stick to talking about if such a system could work, what limitations or extras should be added to make it work.

PS. Sorry for acting as a forum mod, old habbits die hard.

[danielmn]

/me laughs, pointing at BW.

Telling MAYHEM to act cool an civil... /me shakes his head.

[Blenderhead]

Okay, I think some good things have come from this dialogue already. I think many of the arguments against a die roll system are kind of cheap though, so far. The most important thing in ALFA should be the lvl of Rp, right? If this lvl can be improved I'd day we should at least consider a change of system or discuss it more thoroughly. It's easy just to be the conformist, who wants to stick with the old. And it would of course be dangerous to make a hasty decision that could ruin ALFA as a whole. But to discuss it, to try and make the community better, and servers more fun, what's wrong with that? I believe there are a lot of exciting benifits to a well thought out die system, because the point buy system is too efficient, as Cipher said, to even out scores and make a lot of common chars. The die roll system could be far more dynamic in many ways.

Stats don't make character interesting or boring - players do that. Poro stats don't force characters to be any more interesting than high stats or average stats.

I really liked this argument from Mayhem, but somehow I feel it is not that simple. Of course players won't become great roleplayers just by rolling a dice, that would be silly. But to postulate that stats do not affect the RP at all is equally silly. We have the policy here in ALFA that our RP should reflect our stats for one, so this should create a minor difference. While this effect may not be that big, a serious weakness or some imbalance in your stats would force you to RP in a different way, perhaps even choose some feats you would not have chosen otherwise. The physical and the psychological cannot be separated: If you broke your leg in real life, you cannot go out and play soccer with your friends. Your behaviour will be limited, but with limitations comes new possibilities. A mage in NWN is limited to certain kind of behaviour. He cannot play the tough tank if he has got low strength and a completely different nature. You have to play the role that fits the class and the stats, and that will be a challenge if the stats are not totally to your liking. This would create some much needed diversity to the PC's here and in my opinion diversity make characters more interesting, and thus enhances the roleplay. So to repeat myself, naturally this will have an effect, but the questions is: Will it make the RP better - the servers more fun?

I believe the experience of playing online will be different in some ways, and perhaps even make way for some more psychologically profound PC's. Due to human nature a point buy system really doesn't work, nobody wants a challenge, really. But once you're in the middle of it, you will probably like it more than something that is not challenging. I don't think we should underestimate the impact stats have on the RP.

Another thing is the fairness: As it is now, the point buy system will benifit powergamers and not roleplayers, is that not true? So I cannot see this as a valid argument. You could also say, that the die roll system is not fair at all, but it's not really supposed to be fair, that's the beauty of it

Then there is the argument that it would hurt the community and make players leave.

I really don't think it's a question of maturity, it's a question of format. You're switching from a nominally party-based atmosphere to a quasi-party one with the implicit assumption of confrontation between players. Your balance shifts. I can tolerate a lesser character, as I play one in ALFA, but at the same time I don't think it's a good fit for a multiplayer community as a whole. However petty one wants to consider the concerns and jealousies and what not, dismissing them with a word like "mature," ultimately you've gotta understand that statistically, across a community, it will be a concern.

This is more difficult to answer, I think. We all want more players in ALFA and not less. If this would make the players leave, it's not a good idea. However, it is not that simple again. Conflicts between chars: CVC in ALFA does not work at moment in my opinion, to make this an argument against why this should not be implemented is a little too easy. I don't think there will be more or less conflicts between players, than there is now. Players can easily see other PC's lvls when they log in. Sometimes they have decided that you will be their enemy before they have even met you in game. There is a lot of meta involved as it is, and it doesn't work. If lvls were hidden like stats, people would be more careful. There will always be powerhungry chars who gets increasingly worse as they reach higher lvls, but I don't think there will be more CVC action because of this. Remember, the player who usually likes to bully others because he gets intoxicated by the power he feels when playing, can get a bad roll just as easily as others. And personally I wouldn't mind playing a really bad PC with horrible stats, I don't know if it's got anything to do with maturity - but it could have

And the players who gets envious are those who would have become envious anyway, I think.

[fluffmonster]

If somebody wants to roll, then roll yer dice and map it to the point buy. Go with the same highs and lows. But adding overhead and headache of a technical approach, along with the bother of having to monitor it, just simply is not worth it. The costs exceed the benefits by at least an order of magnitude.

[AlmightyTDawg]

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.

I really don't think it's a question of maturity, it's a question of format. You're switching from a nominally party-based atmosphere to a quasi-party one with the implicit assumption of confrontation between players. Your balance shifts. I can tolerate a lesser character, as I play one in ALFA, but at the same time I don't think it's a good fit for a multiplayer community as a whole. However petty one wants to consider the concerns and jealousies and what not, dismissing them with a word like "mature," ultimately you've gotta understand that statistically, across a community, it will be a concern.

[danielmn]

get ready for alooooooota ale drinkin and tavern singin...

[HEEGZ]

With an online PW, you are breaking from the PnP atmosphere and format. I like the variety of options for rolling a PC, but IMO there needs to be a massively compelling argument to change what ships with the game. Point buy seems to be the most balanced for a really large community, though die rolling never gets old (at least not for the first few hours ).

[JspecWip]

I don't see why its one or the other, some people have a concept and make there char according to it. Others want to take the risk of rolling, or want to make a concept from what they get to simulate the randomness of reality then having both acomidates to both types of players.

Abuse of this wouldn't be to hard to detect, the vault can be looked at to see who is creating alot of PC's, and those .bics could be looked at if they are taged as having rolled stats.

I know its hard to keep a lowbie alive in Alfa but after the first few people get the picture that they can't be soloing and what not. It doesn't take 15 characters to come to the conclusion. A Dm can adress the player and the problems solved.

People do have near the same stats, people go for the modifier at least maybe one stat is inbetween modifiers....Or they take stats for the purpose of quilifing for feats, but only enough so they can put more points into core stats.

example
Ftr
16str
13dex
14con
12wis
13int
8cha
You get a +1 spot good ab/hp and dodge/expertise
People run the math when they make PC's its human nature, why are there so many FP fighters w/TS and expertise/dodge? because they know they can survive w/that build....

[Mayhem]

1) We aren't forcing anyone. This is just a proposal which is being discussed. One system is fair if the system is used by everyone. Nobody said you didn't have the possibility to reroll twice or 5 times maximum. It's just a proposal.

2) I can show you, but then I'd have to kill you.

Now can we lighten up please mayhem, it seems like your taking this very personal. Can we please stick to talking about if such a system could work, what limitations or extras should be added to make it work.

PS. Sorry for acting as a forum mod, old habbits die hard.

I was responding directly to Blenderheads post (the clue was in the quoting.

I was responding to a proposal with the reasons I thought it wasn't a good proposal. Talking about "if such a system could work" was exactly what I thought I was doing.

Not sure why this response, which made no personal attacks, should be taken as personal or in need of lightening up.

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Question: If a player started on your server with an L1 PC with no stat enhancing gear but a row of perfectly legitamate straight 18s (without taking Race Mods into account), would you let him play them? And in what way is that row of straight 18s more "interesting" than the sort of stats you get with point buy?

[ç i p h é r]

However petty one wants to consider the concerns and jealousies and what not, dismissing them with a word like "mature," ultimately you've gotta understand that statistically, across a community, it will be a concern.

I'm not dismissing the concern at all. I'm just saying that one's level of maturity will affect how they react, and accept, the roll of the dice. This has always been true, even in PnP, even with friends.

Although I've come to accept point-buy as the defacto character creation method, I'm still bothered by the fact that we have, by and large, cookie cutter characters. The cost structure in the current point-buy implementation (increase in proportion to the desired attribute modifier coupled with a lower limit) is I think what forces this normalization. It narrows the range of stats realistically possible, which means fewer desireable combinations, and thus more cookie cutter characters.