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Jan 1, 2013 -- 1:57AM, Pashalik_Mons wrote:

What about chucking racial stat bonuses entirely?

Yeah, I'm down. 

Same here.  Get rid of them.

Since making this thread, I've had a chance to hear some more 13th Age details, and they actually do something that's fairly elegant in regards to stat bonuses. Specifically, every race and every class gives you your choice of two stat bonuses - you choose one from your race and one from your class. However, you can't choose the same bonus for both, and I believe that classes always offer the primary stat for that class as one of the options. This cleaves right through many of the issues that racial stat bonuses have while still maintaining a very D&D spirit and remaining relatively simple. ("Solves issue, maintains a very D&D spirit, remains relatively simple, all more elegantly than you thought possible" is something that powerfully suffuses 13th Age across the board.)

I do still like my OP idea - your race influences how you do class X rather than just how well you do class X - but it's admittedly far more complicated.

Jan 26, 2013 -- 6:19AM, Ksorkrax wrote:

You cannot expect a bunch of armed peasants to be comparable to a trained swordsman who is reckless enough to prefer the life of a free adventurer to a regular income.

I expect that they should be comparable - that they are expressed using the same language, that you literally can compare them - and that the trained swordsman is better along the appropriate metrics.

But now why shouldn't there be that one elf that stands out because he prefers to don heavy armor and an axe for what he trained all his life? Isn't such an exception what makes for the heroes we know from tales and literature? Why should one want to penalize/discourage such a character?

In my opinion, PCs level way faster than most NPCs because they have more potential to begin with.

 If you write the rules to describe only the ones who break that mold, and try to apply those rules to generate the population, then they will not lead to that mold having been formed in the first place. If they want PCs to use the same rules as NPCs, then the rules should be written to support that. If not - if PCs are inherently special - then they should declare that up front, because it's not the sort of thing that can be easily solved at the modular level.

Took the rogue only several months to become a master of lockpicking. And it's not like as if the NPC mechanic did sleep through all his years of practice.

I agree. This is one area where I've always felt that the 3E rules did a poor job of representing an otherwise-consistent world. The AD&D system of Non-Weapon Proficiencies - where you are trained and can perform basic tasks with no check, but otherwise your entire potential is measured by the relevant ability score - did a much better job of de-coupling skills from combat level.   

The longbowmen have this training. The generic englishman does not.

I was under the impression that there was a royal decree that all able-bodied men would practice archery, which is as close as you can get to real-life enforcement of a bonus weapon proficiency. And, if you practice archery, you will develop better hand-eye coordination than if you did not - so that makes sense for them to get +Dex on a national level.

But if you need an in-game explanation, think of chosen heroes, champions of the gods or something like that.

If the rules exist only to represent heroes and champions, then I have zero interest whatsoever in playing that game. This was a major issue with 4E which alienated 3E players. Personally, I would say that it was the reason why I have no interest in that game - because that assumption was so fundamental and pervasive that it became unfeasible to correct it with house rules.

What are my stats?

So the world is comprised two realities: the map, and the territory. The territory is everything that actually exists - your brain cells, muscle tissue, etc; the map is how you view that reality - your ability to lift weight, your ability to solve problems, etc. The map of you can be written as a character sheet with some very large number of stats on it, and the more individual stats you write down, the more accurately that map will conform to the territory. You have stats, which correspond to the objective reality.

In the game world, we have the same dichotomy. There are the actual characters - the Aragorns and Batmans - and there are also their maps - the character sheets you would use to quantify their abilities. That D&D only uses six basic stats (along with classes and levels, trained skills, etc) does not mean that the underlying realities of their worlds are any less objective. It just means that our map of that reality is simpler.

Jan 27, 2013 -- 9:40AM, Saelorn wrote:

  If you write the rules to describe only the ones who break that mold, and try to apply those rules to generate the population, then they will not lead to that mold having been formed in the first place. If they want PCs to use the same rules as NPCs, then the rules should be written to support that. If not - if PCs are inherently special - then they should declare that up front, because it's not the sort of thing that can be easily solved at the modular level.

Sure it can. I mean, you can make NPCs that are like PCs in 4E pretty easily. If you want you can give them fighter powers and do all the math, or you can use the default NPC system.

It's very easy to add a module after the fact that lets you create NPCs as PCs, in fact all it really takes is a way to rate thier EXP.

It's a bad idea to have suhc a system be a default however, and 3E showed us why. Making NPCs was a colossal pain in the ass in 3E and most people don't want to spend an hour designing a high level NPC that lasts for a single battle (and may well die before even taking an action). A typical enemy NPC just isn't worth that level of commitment, and thus a simple 4E-style system is better.

Jan 27, 2013 -- 9:40AM, Saelorn wrote:

I agree. This is one area where I've always felt that the 3E rules did a poor job of representing an otherwise-consistent world. The AD&D system of Non-Weapon Proficiencies - where you are trained and can perform basic tasks with no check, but otherwise your entire potential is measured by the relevant ability score - did a much better job of de-coupling skills from combat level.

Hmm I don't know - I agree with you on the 3E issue but just abilities as relevance...
I'm used to TDE and WoD in which there are skills and one can start high in these (in WoD easily at maximum in one skill, in TDE you start at least as a professional if you are one)

I was under the impression that there was a royal decree that all able-bodied men would practice archery, which is as close as you can get to real-life enforcement of a bonus weapon proficiency. And, if you practice archery, you will develop better hand-eye coordination than if you did not - so that makes sense for them to get +Dex on a national level.

I'm not that versed on the background but really everyone? Every peasant?
If so, yeah, replace the english archers with another nation with speciality like ancient greek pikemen.
The thing about nature and nurture stays - does a bonus represent a nature (genes) or a nurture (culture in this context)? Imho it shouldn't do both since again, there are exceptions

If the rules exist only to represent heroes and champions, then I have zero interest whatsoever in playing that game. This was a major issue with 4E which alienated 3E players. Personally, I would say that it was the reason why I have no interest in that game - because that assumption was so fundamental and pervasive that it became unfeasible to correct it with house rules.

D&D tends to be high fantasy but yeah, I somewhat prefer low fantasy.
As for 4E, wasn't my issue with it.
But ok, let's scale that down. Let's talk about Panache, the little something that separates legends from common men. People who are not really much smarter or stronger but driven by something. In low fantasy, that's what makes a hero. Again, the person is an exception who does not simply take the part he is assumed to. In essence: Strong-willed people that become low fantasy heroes tend to be different somewhat by definition (not quite since they do not have to be in any case)

So the world is comprised two realities: the map, and the territory. The territory is everything that actually exists - your brain cells, muscle tissue, etc; the map is how you view that reality - your ability to lift weight, your ability to solve problems, etc. The map of you can be written as a character sheet with some very large number of stats on it, and the more individual stats you write down, the more accurately that map will conform to the territory. You have stats, which correspond to the objective reality.

K, got your concept.
So let's go back to NPCs using the same stats but different rules than PCs that you objected to.
Let's pick a situation with NPC characters that defend a town. Apply PCs rules and stats and maybe a week later the siege is resolved with dice.
Bundle them as mobs or use entirely different rules (let's say the rules of a tabletop) and only go back to normal rules when the PCs are concerned directly and it can be done in an evening.
Basically, at this point we haven't changed what you call territory but what kind of mapping we use for convenience.
I see no reason why the DM might not say "I don't care about stats, I describe how they fire some encouter abilities without thinking if it represents the usual AEDU-system" - the AEDU-system and any other system is not territory after all but a crude map at best (I'd say that a mage can choose to levitate while studying without having a corresponding power or stat or rule - as long as it doesn't hurt any balance or logic, style stuff should go freely. In your terms, it's simply something our current map is not representing yet.)