Mathieu Roy
04-18-1999, 03:33 AM
JulesMrshn@aol.com wrote:
> [Snip]
> Having higher stats means you rely on them more. Instead of comming up with a
> plan, you rush right in with your stats and rely on them to get you through.
> THIS IS BY NO MEANS every case, but look back and you will see it is the
> majority of times. You make some easy plan that relies on stat/prof rolls,
> or spells that you have in abundance. With high stats you rely on rolls not
> roleplaying. It is the way those PCs are played. I know, I have played a
> charcter with no stat lower then 14 (yes i did roll them and in front of my
> DM who had a stroke : ) though we used the 4d6 method) but the first time I
> rolled a crappy character, my Dm said, no don't throw him away, play him out.
> So I did. I found that I could do more, especially since being a thief was
> all I could do. I wasn't the "tank" so I could I played him and he died a
> glorious death of tripping while inching along an aligator pit, not being
> kille by the aligators but by falling on the dagger I was using to try and
> stop myself from falling. Next time I rolled to get average stats.
"I found I could do more?" I think you mean you would look for more clever things
to do with your low-stat thief than a high-stat one, since clearly the high-stat
thief has the same abilities as the low-stat one. If your DM is playing his game
so that high-stat characters don't need to think on their feet, then he's not
doing his job.
When we play AD&D, we have pretty competent characters, who are usually
well-equipped, and still we succeed only by the skin of our teeth, through our
cleverness and daring, despite having the odds stacked against us. Having high
stats is not a crutch here, for our opponents are strong enough to have even odds
despite such characteristics.
A thought just struck me. Wouldn't someone who succeeded, in spite of low INT and
WIS, by being clever be roleplaying poorly?
> (Note: We
> play deadly games here in my group. Our first DM had no mercy so as the
> group evolved, we kept that deadly sense of a game. If you can survive our
> games then you are either lucky or have developed a good fleeing technique.
> None of that roll doctoring here) When you play an average theif, or an
> averag mage, or an average fighter and survive, you show your meddle. Maybe
> the problem realizing the shear feat of surviving with average stats to a
> high level like 10th is becuase your DM is a wimpy DM. There are a lot of
> them out their and I have seen my share online. They don't seem to go for the
> kill. They have the villians lay off someone with a lot of wounds, when
> natural selection dictacts to all by instinct to kill the wounded, the
> weakest link in the chain, especialy if they are a contantly high damaging
> fighter. No Mercy to the PCs : ) After all they are just paper and another
> PC is a few rolls away.
I have pretty radical ideas on PC death as well, but I won't expound on them
since we'd get into another argument. =) This text shows me, however, that we
have very different styles of play. I like games that aren't easy, where
cleverness is rewarded, where combat is present but is far from everything (and
even in combat, cleverness is far more important than mere dice-rolling), where
stupidity is punished, where the consequences of actions make sense, where defeat
is not an automatic death sentence, where victory is not assured, but where
player-characters can recoup from the consequences of a defeat in true, heroic
fashion. I don't roll characters; I design characters that are interesting and
well-balanced, which is a lot more difficult than just rolling their stats. That
is why I don't want to do it all the time.
Mathieu
> [Snip]
> Having higher stats means you rely on them more. Instead of comming up with a
> plan, you rush right in with your stats and rely on them to get you through.
> THIS IS BY NO MEANS every case, but look back and you will see it is the
> majority of times. You make some easy plan that relies on stat/prof rolls,
> or spells that you have in abundance. With high stats you rely on rolls not
> roleplaying. It is the way those PCs are played. I know, I have played a
> charcter with no stat lower then 14 (yes i did roll them and in front of my
> DM who had a stroke : ) though we used the 4d6 method) but the first time I
> rolled a crappy character, my Dm said, no don't throw him away, play him out.
> So I did. I found that I could do more, especially since being a thief was
> all I could do. I wasn't the "tank" so I could I played him and he died a
> glorious death of tripping while inching along an aligator pit, not being
> kille by the aligators but by falling on the dagger I was using to try and
> stop myself from falling. Next time I rolled to get average stats.
"I found I could do more?" I think you mean you would look for more clever things
to do with your low-stat thief than a high-stat one, since clearly the high-stat
thief has the same abilities as the low-stat one. If your DM is playing his game
so that high-stat characters don't need to think on their feet, then he's not
doing his job.
When we play AD&D, we have pretty competent characters, who are usually
well-equipped, and still we succeed only by the skin of our teeth, through our
cleverness and daring, despite having the odds stacked against us. Having high
stats is not a crutch here, for our opponents are strong enough to have even odds
despite such characteristics.
A thought just struck me. Wouldn't someone who succeeded, in spite of low INT and
WIS, by being clever be roleplaying poorly?
> (Note: We
> play deadly games here in my group. Our first DM had no mercy so as the
> group evolved, we kept that deadly sense of a game. If you can survive our
> games then you are either lucky or have developed a good fleeing technique.
> None of that roll doctoring here) When you play an average theif, or an
> averag mage, or an average fighter and survive, you show your meddle. Maybe
> the problem realizing the shear feat of surviving with average stats to a
> high level like 10th is becuase your DM is a wimpy DM. There are a lot of
> them out their and I have seen my share online. They don't seem to go for the
> kill. They have the villians lay off someone with a lot of wounds, when
> natural selection dictacts to all by instinct to kill the wounded, the
> weakest link in the chain, especialy if they are a contantly high damaging
> fighter. No Mercy to the PCs : ) After all they are just paper and another
> PC is a few rolls away.
I have pretty radical ideas on PC death as well, but I won't expound on them
since we'd get into another argument. =) This text shows me, however, that we
have very different styles of play. I like games that aren't easy, where
cleverness is rewarded, where combat is present but is far from everything (and
even in combat, cleverness is far more important than mere dice-rolling), where
stupidity is punished, where the consequences of actions make sense, where defeat
is not an automatic death sentence, where victory is not assured, but where
player-characters can recoup from the consequences of a defeat in true, heroic
fashion. I don't roll characters; I design characters that are interesting and
well-balanced, which is a lot more difficult than just rolling their stats. That
is why I don't want to do it all the time.
Mathieu