Balance... whatever it is

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

We kept age in the 'rollable' range. I should have said 'Choose one possible roll'

It does make a difference, but notice my example was in the rollable range; that was basically 17-27, and I used a 27 year old warrior in that example.

[drohem]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

The variance in profession using the randomizer there didn't help. While I realize some people's experiences differ, I didn't see a lot of people who enjoyed playing a civilized farmer in the group otherwise consisting of a civilized soldier, a barbarian warrior, a nomad noble and a primitive hunter (which was suprisingly good profession for typical adventuring because it got so many useful skills such as the stealth and perception ones).

My response is: what a bunch of babies! Seriously, ooh your toy is better than mine, not fair!

/oldmanvoiceon

In my day, we rolled rocks and liked it!

/oldmanvoiceoff

Why are they so concerned with what other people are playing? Why not focus on your own character and breath life into it?

I can understand this mentality to a point if it happened consistently, but given the nature of the tables I doubt this was a common occurence.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by drohem

My response is: what a bunch of babies! Seriously, ooh your toy is better than mine, not fair!

/oldmanvoiceon

In my day, we rolled rocks and liked it!

/oldmanvoiceoff

Why are they so concerned with what other people are playing? Why not focus on your own character and breath life into it?

I can understand this mentality to a point if it happened consistently, but given the nature of the tables I doubt this was a common occurence.

Unless you deliberately got killed early, you could be dealing with the consequences for quite a while from it. Like it or not, its just not satisfying to most people to play what adds up to the sidekick, and if you ended up with a 17 year old farmer, that was pretty much what you were going to be compared to almost anyone. Yeah, if you lasted long enough you'd probably even out, but you weren't getting much done during the game until then, as almost anything you did, someone did better--usually a lot better.

If this sort of thing doesn't bother you, it doesn't, but it _does_ bother a lot of people, and its not like they're getting paid to do this.

[drohem]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Unless you deliberately got killed early, you could be dealing with the consequences for quite a while from it. Like it or not, its just not satisfying to most people to play what adds up to the sidekick, and if you ended up with a 17 year old farmer, that was pretty much what you were going to be compared to almost anyone. Yeah, if you lasted long enough you'd probably even out, but you weren't getting much done during the game until then, as almost anything you did, someone did better--usually a lot better.

If this sort of thing doesn't bother you, it doesn't, but it _does_ bother a lot of people, and its not like they're getting paid to do this.

Wouldn't be cool to get paid for playing?

Yeah, everyone has different styles of play and what they consider *fun* in any given RPG game.

We had House Rules with our RQ3 games for character creation to mitigate some of the randomness of the dice (they can be a cruel mistress sometimes ).

[Atgxtg]

I really wonder about breath of experience here. A lot of role-playing settings have a chain of command and people do play "sidekicks".It can actually be a lot of fun.


Mythic Greece did that. In Pendragon, the standard was to play a squire to another knight before becoming knighted. Star Trek had it's chain of command, and most historical settings put everyone under the thumb of a feudal lord.

Frankly is everyone is going to be resentful and jealous of other character's abilities then I don;t see how any RPG could work. It's like hearing Batman whining "But Clark's character can fly, and I can't", rather than designing a Batwing, or jetpack. Or doing some detective work that has the other players going "Huh? How did you figure that out?"


In Pendragon there was a few sessions of "Yes m'lord" before one won his spurs, and even then the elder knight had a big skill edge over the newly knighted.

Was it a problem. No. Because the players were there to fight amongst themselves.

If people can't handle someone else being able to do things that they can't or do something better than them, then they have no business playing a Superhero campaign. There is always someone one the team with "better" powers.

"Whaa! She can shrink down to an insect, fly, and throw bolts of energy. Whaa! He's got high tech body armor, can fly, throw energy, had a buiklt in radio receiver. Whaa! He's a god and carries around a mystical hammer."

"I'm just a normal guy with a shirt of scales and an unbreakable shield. Whaa!"

[Gnarsh]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Unless you deliberately got killed early, you could be dealing with the consequences for quite a while from it. Like it or not, its just not satisfying to most people to play what adds up to the sidekick, and if you ended up with a 17 year old farmer, that was pretty much what you were going to be compared to almost anyone. Yeah, if you lasted long enough you'd probably even out, but you weren't getting much done during the game until then, as almost anything you did, someone did better--usually a lot better.

If this sort of thing doesn't bother you, it doesn't, but it _does_ bother a lot of people, and its not like they're getting paid to do this.

I can see this in other games, but this really isn't as much of a problem in RQ (especially RQ3). Skills tend to grow to 100 pretty quickly. Adventuring gains tend to outpace occupational gains. The difference in whether your character started with a 50% combat skill or an 80% combat skill tend to only matter for the first adventure or two.

One of my greatest characters (darn near legendary in our campaign) started out exactly as a 17 year old character. As beginning as you can be. Wearing leather gear (ok, leather+curboilli, so 4 points of armor). And as luck would have it, her first adventure ended out being one of the longest and most epic scenarios the GM had run to that date. Let's see, we started by gathering up pieces of a medallion to an oracle. We're talking about years of game time traveling around the world, exploring some of the most nasty and dangerous areas. Powerful liches. Massive gollum-statue things. Powerful wizards. A land full of vampires. A visit or three from a time-travelling-body-snatching Old One. Finding and destroying a powerful artifact. Oh... And dealing with a powerful Balrog that owed the party death (from a previous adventure).


Yup. Great time to roll up a brand new character with base starting skills, right? Sure. She didn't contribute much for awhile. But she'd get some swings in during each fight (mostly sticking next to someone who looked a lot more threatening then her of course!). She'd make climb rolls when we were climbing over things, and sneaks when we needed to sneak, and hides when we needed to hide. By the time we finished that long adventure, she had combat skills well over 100%, a few minor magic items, and had made a name for herself.


After the adventure, she was able to quickly make priest in her cult (and get some better armor!). She ended up being among a group that got deported from the lands we were at (long political story behind this), and over time became a major leader in the new lands they traveled to (there's an earldom named after her now). In fact, at the time she was one of the first characters in our campaign to get combat skills over 200% (and only maybe 10 ever have). Largely because she was so much younger then everyone else when she started (we do play aging pretty straight), and partly because I played her pretty constantly for a long time and in a lot of adventures.


The point being that there's no inherent reason why a very low skilled character cannot advance over time and become a major force in a campaign. None at all...

[Trifletraxor]

I really wonder about breath of experience here. A lot of role-playing settings have a chain of command and people do play "sidekicks".It can actually be a lot of fun.

Blalalala!

If you can't play the whimpy sidekick to your friend's demigod character you really suck at roleplaying!

SGL.

[soltakss]

One opf the players in our old campaign wanted to play a troll using RQ2 Trollpak, which had just come out, but the GM made him roll on race but choose an occupation. Every time he rolled up a trollkin, he put him in Xila Umbar and became a healer. Each trollkin lasted about one scenario as he ran out to heal injured PCs in combat. Eventually he rolled up a troll who lasted a few scenarios. Then he was allowed to choose a race and rolled up another Dark Troll who he wouldn't name for three or four scenarios, just calling him "My Dark Troll" just in case he put a hoodoo on the troll. The GM forced him to name the PC and he chose Derak the Dark Troll who later became a Hero and almost a Demigod.

So, choosing things is better than rolling them up, in my opinion.

Gone are the days when I rolled up a random occupation, random everything else and played the character as a roleplaying experience.

Nowadays, I think about the background, back story, motives and occupation of the PC before he even starts the game.

And, yes, I do mean Occupation as many of my PCs stay in the same occupation - it's an occupation not a hobby. Some do change over the years, though.

[Trifletraxor]

Originally Posted by Gnarsh

One of my greatest characters (darn near legendary in our campaign) started out exactly as a 17 year old character.

And all the other players where Runelords, skilled initiates or beginning characters too?

SGL.

[Gnarsh]

Originally Posted by Trifletraxor

And all the other players where Runelords, skilled initiates or beginning characters too?

SGL.

First off, we play runelords a bit differently (they're a step above priest in our game, so essentially a runelord-priest rather then an alternate path). Also, the GM running the game at the time only granted the level to legendary "hero" level folks (and no one had done it yet). He basically thought that runelord DI unbalanced the game, so he made it incredibly rare. Um... But one of the characters on that adventure did become a runelord.


However, in terms of the powerlevels of our game, this was arguably the most powerful and capable group of adventurers we'd ever fielded. A couple of powerful priests with powerful magic swords (boatloads of runespells, allied spirits in the items, etc). A powerful shaman (also with a bunch of nice items and lots of spirits, elementals, etc). A couple sorcerers, one of whom had a pretty powerful artifact type item on her. An evil hobbit (trust me!). And a handful of other priests and senior initiate level folks none of whom were "beginning" by any stretch of the word.

About half the group had recently returned from an ancient dwarven city lost in the Gods war, where truestone was mined. So yeah. They were powerful (and pissed off a freaking Balrog...).