Should Arm's stat rolls go from random to an alternative?

[triste]

The real problem is that strength is OP as a stat. Don't get me wrong, I fucking love high strength combat PCs.

But it's still OP.

Narrow the range of strength to more closely reflect Darksun tabletop and slightly reduce its importance in combat and it won't be quite the end-all, be-all stat it currently is for combat-oriented classes.

Strength is so very important! From the amount of armor you can wear to how much you can carry, what constitutes catching your fall etc. I don't mind stats being awesome like that not one bit however....

My argument doesn't shame or preclude anyone from doing anything. You can play he-man if you get the stat roll for it, awesome!! But if you roll a warrior with average strength instead of superhero strength, maybe it's time to roleplay more of a Robin Hood type who survives with cunning and wits. Don't just kill the concept off if you can. Self worth isn't tied to stats! That low stat roll character you have might end up being your most epic and accomplished character and that sort of variety is great.

... stats should not make or break a character. He-Man isn't comparable to Robin Hood, they use almost entirely different skillsets. Robin Hood is a ranger whereas He-Man is a warrior! Stats are too important to a character's success in the survival of the game world, it's not even arguable. Social roles may not have to worry about this, they're not the ones contracted to slay the megafauna or powerful criminals of the wastes. He-Man stands out, he's no rogue who can nick a coinpurse from you, he's agile but in a different way. Robin Hood will use his dexterous abilities to takedown an individual, and his Merry Men aid him in guerrilla warefare as is their strategy. These are tactics that cannot be incorporated with the stat system in general if you think about it unlike D&D 5e.

Setting aside the point of Robin Hood being more of a ranger, you are actually backing up my point. With point buy, you might end up with 10 he-mans, five Robin Hoods, and one more human, less minmaxxed hero like Jessica Jones. Without point buy what type of stats you get are more random. So as a result you have more flawed heroes like Daredevil, Joker, JJ. Personally I find that more interesting and I am glad for anything that leads to less minmaxxed homogeneity. But I will drop it here, recognizing my own preference for flawed and nuanced characters than meta/minmaxxed characters.

Edit/Addition: Jessica Jones represents exactly the bad stat roll people despise. Mediocre strength [definitely below average compared to heroes like Hulk], terrible agi given now clumsy she is, average wisdom given the mistakes she makes, but great endurance with the multiple handles of whisky she drinks. The archetypical, "bad" high endurance stat roll. The kind of character a powergamer might suicide. But actually, she is one of the more iconic heroes of this last decade and totally a concept worth playing. All concepts are worthy and judging from ratings and the box office anti heroes and flawed heroes are more interesting and worth watching.

[Greve]

For two decades, it's been a stinky, ornery elephant in the room that statrolls vary so much. This is a game where code matters, otherwise we'd be playing a MUSH. Why, then, is it possible (frankly common) for two characters of the same race, class and age to have stat rolls that vary by a total of 50% or more? Why do we have to accept that one character gets exceptional, extremely good, extremely good, very good while the next gets good, above average, average, poor? I don't see what purpose it serves, but there have traditionally been a number of arguments against curtailing the randomness of stats:

1) It's realistic
2) It adds "fun" variation between characters
3) Not everyone is meant to be great
4) ArMaGeDdOn Is NoT mEaNt To Be BaLaNcEd

As far as #1 goes, while there certainly is a lot of variation between individuals in real life, we're playing a game here. Also, people usually aren't born with exceptional strength or poor endurance. You could have genetics that favor certain 'stats' but almost all of it comes down to the life you live, barring extreme anomalies like Andre the Giant. If you work out a lot, you'll be strong and tough. If you grow up in an intellectually stimulating environment and educate yourself, you'll be smart. You could be born with an irreparably low IQ or a fabulous physique, but by and large, people aren't just destined for some unfixable stat roll IRL. In the vast majority of cases, you are what you eat.

As for #2, just go to hell. This is the kind of virtue-signalling garbage spewed by people who want to look like superior roleplayers. In many cases, they're the same people who quickly abandon badly rolled characters and cling on for dear life when they roll great stats. There is nothing inherently fun about playing a character saddled with useless stats, and it's profoundly uncool to make enemies or otherwise compete with someone who rolled all godlike stats. We might as well have a 10% chance for any given character to start out with master in a random skill. It serves no purpose in a game that has a heavy emphasis on PvP.

Next up is #3. Sure, not everyone is meant to be the exception. We can't all be Alexander the Great, otherwise it wouldn't mean anything. But why does this have to be determined by a diceroll? Shouldn't your level of greatness be determined by your actions in-game and by the character creation options available through karma, special applications and things like that? More importantly, a shitty statroll can absolutely prevent your character from achieving coded greatness. I would like it to be a game where the potential of my characters did not depend so heavily on mindless dice. If I can't be great, I want it to be because my character's life and actions didn't warrant greatness, not because I rolled above average strength on my fighter.

And then we arrive at #4. How can you be this dumb, Imaginary Person Who Said That? We're sitting here playing a game with permadeath in a brutally punishing world, with wildly volatile combat code, and with a story that has become so low-key that killing dudes with bone swords is the highest achievement that most players can think of. How dare you sully my post with such a weak argument! No but seriously, can we please get rid of the notion that in a game with a rigid and carefully designed class system, where the outcomes of fights routinely come down to single-digit variations in skills and stats, balance is somehow not a thing? Hear me out here. I'll have to go into multiple paragraphs with this.

It takes a long-ass time to build up a combat character. We all know this. It's RL months of your time that go into training up these skills. It's RL years that go into earning the karma for some of the more interesting options. Yet somehow, for no readily apparent reason, much of that can be rendered invalid by something as random and uninteresting as statrolls. You can spend two months sparring diligently in the clan of your choice, but some random three-day idiot with AI strength will one-hit you with a maul to the head. You can play the world's most accomplished climber, but if you have 94 health, you'll die from a four-room fall. You can aspire to be the greatest thief in Allanak, but if you rolled good agility, there's going to be about thirty other miscreants in the city who are just better at it than you. And why? Why should this come down to a toss of the dice?

We aren't playing tabletop here. You aren't my buddy, pal. When you roll insane stats and I roll shit stats, we're not going to have a chuckle about it over a beer. My playing a bumbling, incompetent idiot is not some comedic element that we bond over. Odds are that you'll be the guy who gets promoted before me because you're way better at your job due to those stats. Or I'll be the guy who murders you because my stats were better. We're not supposed to exchange this information on Discord, so it's just going to be a souring, demotivating experience for one of us. It doesn't add anything to the game. It doesn't make anything more fun for the one whose stats come out to an average of, well, average. It might be fun for the guy with three exceptionals, but it shouldn't be. That shouldn't be a thing.

Equalize stats. Make it so that when you roll up a character, you have a relatively static total pool of baseline points. If you roll awesome strength, you don't also get awesome agility and endurance. If you get alright strength, you should pretty good rolls in the others. Let's be real, the code is wildly unbalanced in some aspects and will make or break characters based on statrolls. Take two guys with the same level of slashing skill and everything else; one can deal literally twice as much damage over the course of a fight as the other if he had exceptional strength and the other had good. When the latter character is not given something with which to compensate for that disadvantage, it feels terrible.

And while we're at it, do something about how much strength matters in combat. Seriously. We all know by now. Strength has had its day. I mean, come on.

[John]

Some of you seem to be suffering from a misperception or misinformation.

Roll (based on race)
Age adjustments
Class/subclass adjustments

The lowest possible Roll is is the lowest tier of below average.  If you are seeing poor or lower, it is not because of the Roll, but because of the adjustments that follow it.

while I appreciate the attempt to correct misconceptions, I dont think poor vs below average is really germane to anything anyone said.

Hmm, you are right!  I misread something that was said, about having all stats "above average" as "below average".  I guess I should have posted something about understanding what average means.

I dont really think any comments about average would have really added to the conversation.

[Strongheart]

You voice my thoughts MUCH better than I do, Greve O_O clearly you're a mindworm!!

[triste]

As for #2, just go to hell. This is the kind of virtue-signalling garbage spewed by people who want to look like superior roleplayers. In many cases, they're the same people who quickly abandon badly rolled characters and cling on for dear life when they roll great stats.

Not true at all. I have a stat roll comparable to other stat rolls that, upon showing people, they laughed at how bad it is. On deceased characters I've gotten feedback of "wow, I didn't even know HP can get that low." But I played these characters. I don't suicide over a bad stat roll. Actually, my "bad stat" characters have ended up PKing more and leading more than a lot of characters with a "good" stat roll. Because characters are meant to be fully fleshed out humans/whatevers.

Please refrain from vulgarity and patently wrong assumptions. I am not going to let you completely mischaracterize critics like this, it's a crass ad hominem attack, try again. Patently wrong name calling? Please try harder.

[Shalooonsh]

Certain posters on this thread, who shall currently remain nameless, should very much consider a kinder tone in their posts. 

I do not like policing the GDB.  It makes me somewhat cross.

You won't like me when I'm cross.

Please stay civil.

[triste]

Anyway, insults aside, I am for whatever most players want, and what would make most players happy. We have a lot of GDB debates like this without any resolution, because there isn't a reliable way to measure player feedback and act on it.

I think some randomization with additional point buy could be really nice, similar to what Valeria proposed. Or, making the impact of different stat levels less extreme (arguments have been made that random stat rolls made more sense in early editions of DnD because the variance in stats had less impact). And we almost all agree Strength has too much impact on the viability of combat characters.

I think enough players are unhappy that we might want to see something change, but I appreciate all the players who have warned against full point buy, as there are enough case studies from DnD, etc to see how it impacts a game. But some compromise might be in order and lend to partial point buy, a decrease in variance for stat rolls, or some adjustment to individual stats like strength.

[KittenLicks]

I mostly agree with what Greve said (minus the ad hominem stuff)

Aside from that, I'll take a plate of "stats matter too much to playability" with a side of "strength is op" and a light defeatist sprinkling of "I think actually fixing stats is such a massive job that staff wouldn't do it, even if the playerbase was in agreement".

[Strongheart]

I mostly agree with what Greve said.

Aside from that, I'll take a plate of "stats matter too much to playability" with a side of "strength is op" and a light defeatist sprinkling of "I think actually fixing stats is such a massive job that staff wouldn't do it, even if the playerbase was in agreement".

Amen.

[Kyviantre]

As long as I have at least one extremely good stat...I feel happy.  I feel a bit sad if I get one poor stat, but that is always my dump stat, so I am good with that.  I've never felt a lack of success with poor stats.  But I am one of those weird elitists that Greve was complaining about in #2.  I have never suicided/stored because of my stats.

I'm happy with the current set-up.  I like the randomness - rerolling gives me enough 'choice' to feel like I've had input.

What I -would- be far more interested in is having the ability to switch 1 point per IG year.  To take into account our characters lives affecting them.  So, your runty low strength high agility char that joined the Byn for a year?  Perhaps their strength went up by a point, but they lost 1 point in wisdom from all the mind-numbing latrine duty.  Cap it to avoid problems, but at least offer slow change as an 'option' - same amount of points you started with, but reallocated.  BUT...stats only matter at the beginning and end-game, so, it wouldn't really effect anyone in real terms - I just like the ability to represent lifestyle choices

[ShaLeah]

I wouldn't mind a point system.

I also wouldn't mind having 5 rerolls.

The grind to get anywhere codedly sucked before.  Sucks worse now. Shitty stats make that even worse. 
Can't suicide a sucky stat character though, that's BAD RP _and_ it goes on your "permanent" record.

So where's the balance?

Here's a thought... separate PLAYING the game from ROLEPLAYING the character.  The game should be fun.  Having no control over your stats isn't fun.

You can roleplay a badass all you want but if your stats don't jam with it it's gonna show.

Points or extra rerolls seems to be the easiest fix.

[Strongheart]

Well stated!

[lostinspace]

In the event of point buy stats, would I be able to spend all my points in a single stat? I know that for some races and stat priorities I've found extremely strong. I've played an AI endurance half-giant. I ask because I don't know if an all agility elf would ever have to worry about wildlife hitting them, or an all strength dwarf build reeling megafauna or something.

[Narf]

In the event of point buy stats, would I be able to spend all my points in a single stat? I know that for some races and stat priorities I've found extremely strong. I've played an AI endurance half-giant. I ask because I don't know if an all agility elf would ever have to worry about wildlife hitting them, or an all strength dwarf build reeling megafauna or something.

Most point buy systems I've seen have diminishing returns as you pile more and more points into a single stat, I imagine to prevent this sort of scenario. Though truthfully, if they already allow a character to have maximum agility or strength from a roll, it shouldn't break the game anymore than it already is if you get to purchase it.

[X-D]

Here is the problem with point buy. In order to make it "fair", It is always set up so if you want one or more really high stats you have to sacrifice other stats. Normally they work (in arm terms) You start with the race min and you have x number of points to spend. Now if you spread the points evenly you normally end up with above ave across the board. If you want an AI then normally that means you have to have one or more stats at race minimum and maybe one at around average. This results in everybody essentially having the same stats. Which many do already because of stat ordering. Now me, I don't stat order, I hate the idea of saying Hey, str is more important then wis or agi is less important then con first off. I also hate every single PC of mine being the same stat wise. Along with every other PC.

In my 50 or so PCs, I have gotten g/g/g/g, vg/vg/vg/vg E/E/EG/E, AI/E/VG/AI, And also things like, BA/AI/VG/E, AA/VG/VG/AI, BA/E/AA/EG, BA/VG/G/G. All of those long lived PCs, all of them fun. Most of those I would not have gotten with stat ordering and Almost none of them with point buy.

As to having more rerolls...shrug, Sure, But take away reroll undo if you use more then one reroll. Otherwise you get everybody still having the same stats, If you ordered stats and got to pick say the best of five, the odds say so. Now, if you know that going past the first reroll means you HAVE to take one of the next 3...Heh.

[Dune Bunny]

I'm not a big fan of the idea, but I realize I'm not every player, and was giving this a little thought earlier. What if there was a starting shop vendor to take care of this?

>score
You are blah blah blah; character that chose a class with a buff to
strength. Everything else is below average, you n00b. You're also of
middle age, so there's no other stat modifiers.
Your strength is average, your agility is below average, your
endurance is below average, your wisdom is below average.

>Point #: You enter said starting shop.

All The Things In Life That Shaped You  |S SW N E NE|
This room has a description. It's pretty descriptive. If you read this
description, you'll know all about what this room looks like. There's
some stuff here. It's very stuff-like. There are no telephones though.

The buff, smart, durable, flexible trainer is here, ready to pomp yoo opp.

>inv
10 stat chits.
Some other stuff.

>list

The buff, smart, durable, flexible trainer has the following:
1. an above average strength vial for 2 chits.
2. a good strength vial for 3 chits.
3. a very good strength vial for 4 chits.
4. an exceptional strength vial for 5 chits.
5. an absolutely incredible strength vial for 6 chits.
6. an average agility vial for 1 chit.
7. an above average agility vial for 2 chits.
8. you get the point!
9. a classic stat roll w/ reroll/undo option for 10 chits.
10. a one time stat refund vial for 0 chits.

> buy #3
You give the buff, smart, durable, flexible trainer 4 chits for a very
good strength vial.

>use strength
You drink down the contents of a very good strength vial.
You feel buff!

>score
Your strength is very good, your agility is below average, your
endurance is below average, your wisdom is below average.

>inv
6 stat chits.
Some other stuff.

Obviously, prices would change depending on the stats. Having bought the very good strength vial, the next level would only cost a single chit. A refund vial would be a good rescue for people that mess up and need to redo said stats, because they bought the wisdom instead of the strength, and don't want wisdom.

Buying the classic stat roll would then roll your stats at it currently does, using the priority you set during creation, and would allow your single reroll/undo as it currently does. Buying the refund chit would have no effect on this method.  If someone leaves the starting shops without buying their points, they'll be automagickally given the classic random roll, with their reroll/undo option intact.

The classic roll should always have a chance to be better than those that use the point buy, as a reward for the chance taken, while the point buy will let people more keen on getting the prime stat they want for their class/description.

The numbers I used aren't concrete, of course, or even balanced. I'm not that smart of a designer! XD But I figure this might be a good example to go in line with the starting shops as they currently are.

[Greve]

I'm not sure the game benefits from an actual points-buy system. At the end of the day, it isn't Baldur's Gate. Tailor-made stats go against the nature of an RPI. But so does the extreme randomness of the current system, especially in a game that bills itself as being all about murder, corruption and betrayal, where these days you can barely sneeze in someone's general direction without incentivizing them to kill you. There is no noteworthy genre of gaming that did not realize this about twenty years ago, so a change is warranted.

Just make a static amount of points that is allotted to every character, and roll them with a degree of randomness. Let's say everyone gets 60 points, plus/minus race adjustments. You might get EX/EG/BA/BA or you might get VG/G/G/G. That feels fair enough. What does not feel fair is when one dude gets EX/EX/EG/VG and another gets G/AA/BA/P. Sometimes you'll get a character who's really strong or agile or whatever, but nothing special in other respects; and sometimes you'll get a character who's alright across the board. That seems good enough to me.

The documentation tells us that this is a world where only the well-adapted survive. If you're born weak, dumb and slow, you don't make it to the age of PChood. It's entirely reasonable to say that those of the Zalanthans who are represented as PCs are the ones who are not suffering from some massive stat deficiency. You're ever so welcome to play your PC as a simpleton or hopeless cripple if that's your character concept, but it should not be something that the code imposes on you. It should be a choice.

We haven't got one dungeon master for every four players whose job it is to sit there and make everyone feel relevant regardless of their stats. A raw diceroll stat system works when you do, not when you don't. We have to make our own way in the world, and it feels so discouraging when the first thing you're met with upon the commencement of your character is a shrugworthy statroll, and it frankly feels unfair when you're greeted with a "you're guaranteed to destroy the world" roll. This should just not be a factor. It's 2020. Arm is still a game.

[Heade]

For two decades, it's been a stinky, ornery elephant in the room that statrolls vary so much. This is a game where code matters, otherwise we'd be playing a MUSH. Why, then, is it possible (frankly common) for two characters of the same race, class and age to have stat rolls that vary by a total of 50% or more? Why do we have to accept that one character gets exceptional, extremely good, extremely good, very good while the next gets good, above average, average, poor? I don't see what purpose it serves, but there have traditionally been a number of arguments against curtailing the randomness of stats:

1) It's realistic
2) It adds "fun" variation between characters
3) Not everyone is meant to be great
4) ArMaGeDdOn Is NoT mEaNt To Be BaLaNcEd

As far as #1 goes, while there certainly is a lot of variation between individuals in real life, we're playing a game here. Also, people usually aren't born with exceptional strength or poor endurance. You could have genetics that favor certain 'stats' but almost all of it comes down to the life you live, barring extreme anomalies like Andre the Giant. If you work out a lot, you'll be strong and tough. If you grow up in an intellectually stimulating environment and educate yourself, you'll be smart. You could be born with an irreparably low IQ or a fabulous physique, but by and large, people aren't just destined for some unfixable stat roll IRL. In the vast majority of cases, you are what you eat.

As for #2, just go to hell. This is the kind of virtue-signalling garbage spewed by people who want to look like superior roleplayers. In many cases, they're the same people who quickly abandon badly rolled characters and cling on for dear life when they roll great stats. There is nothing inherently fun about playing a character saddled with useless stats, and it's profoundly uncool to make enemies or otherwise compete with someone who rolled all godlike stats. We might as well have a 10% chance for any given character to start out with master in a random skill. It serves no purpose in a game that has a heavy emphasis on PvP.

Next up is #3. Sure, not everyone is meant to be the exception. We can't all be Alexander the Great, otherwise it wouldn't mean anything. But why does this have to be determined by a diceroll? Shouldn't your level of greatness be determined by your actions in-game and by the character creation options available through karma, special applications and things like that? More importantly, a shitty statroll can absolutely prevent your character from achieving coded greatness. I would like it to be a game where the potential of my characters did not depend so heavily on mindless dice. If I can't be great, I want it to be because my character's life and actions didn't warrant greatness, not because I rolled above average strength on my fighter.

And then we arrive at #4. How can you be this dumb, Imaginary Person Who Said That? We're sitting here playing a game with permadeath in a brutally punishing world, with wildly volatile combat code, and with a story that has become so low-key that killing dudes with bone swords is the highest achievement that most players can think of. How dare you sully my post with such a weak argument! No but seriously, can we please get rid of the notion that in a game with a rigid and carefully designed class system, where the outcomes of fights routinely come down to single-digit variations in skills and stats, balance is somehow not a thing? Hear me out here. I'll have to go into multiple paragraphs with this.

It takes a long-ass time to build up a combat character. We all know this. It's RL months of your time that go into training up these skills. It's RL years that go into earning the karma for some of the more interesting options. Yet somehow, for no readily apparent reason, much of that can be rendered invalid by something as random and uninteresting as statrolls. You can spend two months sparring diligently in the clan of your choice, but some random three-day idiot with AI strength will one-hit you with a maul to the head. You can play the world's most accomplished climber, but if you have 94 health, you'll die from a four-room fall. You can aspire to be the greatest thief in Allanak, but if you rolled good agility, there's going to be about thirty other miscreants in the city who are just better at it than you. And why? Why should this come down to a toss of the dice?

We aren't playing tabletop here. You aren't my buddy, pal. When you roll insane stats and I roll shit stats, we're not going to have a chuckle about it over a beer. My playing a bumbling, incompetent idiot is not some comedic element that we bond over. Odds are that you'll be the guy who gets promoted before me because you're way better at your job due to those stats. Or I'll be the guy who murders you because my stats were better. We're not supposed to exchange this information on Discord, so it's just going to be a souring, demotivating experience for one of us. It doesn't add anything to the game. It doesn't make anything more fun for the one whose stats come out to an average of, well, average. It might be fun for the guy with three exceptionals, but it shouldn't be. That shouldn't be a thing.

Equalize stats. Make it so that when you roll up a character, you have a relatively static total pool of baseline points. If you roll awesome strength, you don't also get awesome agility and endurance. If you get alright strength, you should pretty good rolls in the others. Let's be real, the code is wildly unbalanced in some aspects and will make or break characters based on statrolls. Take two guys with the same level of slashing skill and everything else; one can deal literally twice as much damage over the course of a fight as the other if he had exceptional strength and the other had good. When the latter character is not given something with which to compensate for that disadvantage, it feels terrible.

And while we're at it, do something about how much strength matters in combat. Seriously. We all know by now. Strength has had its day. I mean, come on.

I disagree with pretty much everything you've said, here.

First, you don't know who has and has not suicided characters. So saying that the people who like randomness are the same people who suicide characters is a disingenuous statement at the very least.

I like the random element, and have never suicided a character. Further, the ability to be an Arnold Schwarzenegger type guy quite simply isn't in everyone's genetics, and I'm sorry, but if you're born with a low IQ, there isn't really a "fix" for that. In this way, the random element of character generation reflects the reality of life. People are not born with equal potential. That said, people with "average" stats can still become competent characters. And they add to the game world. They're a part of the living, breathing story that we all work together to create. And you already hit on the point of all this. Without average joes, being Alexander the Great means nothing. I don't mind playing a few average Joe's in order to have the opportunity for my Alexander the Great to mean something and be sort of a big deal.

I've stuck with Arm for so long BECAUSE of the asymetrical character power levels, and the interesting RP that can result from that. I've played the mundane characters with mediocre stats and no magick who try to take on the supermen of the game(templars/mages/etc), and have most often met with failure in the end. But, newsflash, we ALL meet with failure in the end, one way or another, unless we store. The game isn't about the destination. It's not about victory. It's about the journey. And flawed characters often have the most interesting journeys.

My favorite D&D character I've ever played was a rogue that my party nicknamed the trapfinder, because he'd always critical fail his find traps rolls and set the trap off. He normally survived the trap with 1hp left. Eventually, he died to, you guessed it, a trap. He was terrible at that whole trap finding business, but it was an incredibly fun journey playing the character, in spite of his failures.

If arm switched to a pure point buy system in the name of balance, I'd probably lose interest in the game. Average joes, unlucky Lue's, and Amazing Moe's should all exist to create the ideal RPing environment. And with time, persistence, and patience, most players should be able to play all of these, and have a good time with each of them.

these days you can barely sneeze in someone's general direction without incentivizing them to kill you. There is no noteworthy genre of gaming that did not realize this about twenty years ago, so a change is warranted.

Finally, I do agree that a change is warranted, but I don't think changing the stat system is the solution to this. There are many other reasons that this is the case right now that I have touched on in other threads. Other options, aside from murder, have been taken away over the years. If we reintroduce more alternatives to PK, I think people will use them to create more RP and less immediate character death, and we may even draw back some players who have left the game because they didn't like the changes.




TL;DR - I like the stat roll system how it is.

[Greve]

First, you don't know who has and has not suicided characters. So saying that the people who like randomness are the same people who suicide characters is a disingenuous statement at the very least.

It's certainly an observation I've made over the years. People who want to and know how to get good statrolls have a vested interest in protecting that advantage. You can argue until you're blue in the face that this is not the case, but I've known quite a few players who would post here that the stat system is fine while letting several consecutive characters wade into the silt sea until they got a satisfactory roll. That's what you get in an environment where you benefit from sounding like you think all is well while knowing that it isn't.

I like the random element, and have never suicided a character. Further, the ability to be an Arnold Schwarzenegger type guy quite simply isn't in everyone's genetics, and I'm sorry, but if you're born with a low IQ, there isn't really a "fix" for that. In this way, the random element of character generation reflects the reality of life. People are not born with equal potential. That said, people with "average" stats can still become competent characters. And they add to the game world. They're a part of the living, breathing story that we all work together to create. And you already hit on the point of all this. Without average joes, being Alexander the Great means nothing. I don't mind playing a few average Joe's in order to have the opportunity for my Alexander the Great to mean something and be sort of a big deal.

Stop it with that nonsense. We don't saddle people's characters with the realization at the age of 30 that they suddenly have breast cancer or asthmatic bronchiitis. Huge coded disadvantages should not be something that's sprung on players in defiance of their character concepts. You have all the right in the world to play an average Joe if that's what you want, but people should not be forced to play an average Joe because their statroll told them it was their turn to do so. When another Alexander the Great emerges from the general populace, it should be becase his actions warranted greatness, not because he was luckier with the dice. And Amos the Perpetually Average should not arise from similar circumstances.

I've stuck with Arm for so long BECAUSE of the asymetrical character power levels, and the interesting RP that can result from that. I've played the mundane characters with mediocre stats and no magick who try to take on the supermen of the game(templars/mages/etc), and have most often met with failure in the end. But, newsflash, we ALL meet with failure in the end, one way or another, unless we store. The game isn't about the destination. It's not about victory. It's about the journey. And flawed characters often have the most interesting journeys.

This is the kind of virtue-signaling nonsense that I tried to warn against yesterday. You're trying to tell people of an online and deeply impersonal game that they have a duty to spend some portion of their time pursuing some pointless, hopeless endeavor that they're meant to fail because of a diceroll. Why? What purpose does this serve? There are enough advantages stacked in the favor of certain character types that a blind statroll should not play a part in that. If someone wants to play a certain role, and spends both their own time and the time of reviewing and supporting staff in the pursuit of that endeavor, they should not be barred from doing so because their 3d4 came out 3.

My favorite D&D character I've ever played was a rogue that my party nicknamed the trapfinder, because he'd always critical fail his find traps rolls and set the trap off. He normally survived the trap with 1hp left. Eventually, he died to, you guessed it, a trap. He was terrible at that whole trap finding business, but it was an incredibly fun journey playing the character, in spite of his failures.

Good for you. I'm so very glad that was an enjoyable time for you. Can you point out any reliable in-game Armageddon scenarios where such an experience could be had under the same circumstances? Where being terrible at something that was supposed to be your character concept led to an objectively enjoyable experience? I wager you can't. I fully expect you to now come up with some conconcted story to the contrary, but yet again I call BS.

If arm switched to a pure point buy system in the name of balance, I'd probably lose interest in the game. Average joes, unlucky Lue's, and Amazing Moe's should all exist to create the ideal RPing environment. And with time, persistence, and patience, most players should be able to play all of these, and have a good time with each of them.

This I agree with. A point buy system is not something I want (as by my most recent post), but what I want to get rid of is the current situation where one dude's stats are just so much better that the other's that the latter has nothing to feel pleased about. Get rid of that shit.

Finally, I do agree that a change is warranted, but I don't think changing the stat system is the solution to this. There are many other reasons that this is the case right now that I have touched on in other threads. Other options, aside from murder, have been taken away over the years. If we reintroduce more alternatives to PK, I think people will use them to create more RP and less immediate character death, and we may even draw back some players who have left the game because they didn't like the changes.

Sure, but until that day arrives, I think the game would be a lot better off if each character's lot in life was not so heavily dependent on wildly random dicerolls that determine whether they're okay or fantastic. And I think you're arguing against this because you feel it makes you look like a good boy who thinks everything is fine as it is.

[triste]

First, you don't know who has and has not suicided characters. So saying that the people who like randomness are the same people who suicide characters is a disingenuous statement at the very least.

It's certainly an observation I've made over the years.

Your observation isn't accurate given all the people here to say that this is not the case. You can ask the Imms to look at my entire 60+ character history over the past 5-7 years and the evidence will show that you were flat out wrong to make a disparaging and inaccurate statement like this.

I've stuck with Arm for so long BECAUSE of the asymetrical character power levels, and the interesting RP that can result from that. I've played the mundane characters with mediocre stats and no magick who try to take on the supermen of the game(templars/mages/etc), and have most often met with failure in the end. But, newsflash, we ALL meet with failure in the end, one way or another, unless we store. The game isn't about the destination. It's not about victory. It's about the journey. And flawed characters often have the most interesting journeys.

This is the kind of virtue-signaling nonsense that I tried to warn against yesterday.  You're trying to tell people of an online and deeply impersonal game that they have a duty to spend some portion of their time pursuing some pointless, hopeless endeavor that they're meant to fail because of a diceroll. Why? What purpose does this serve?

Virtue signalling? How about you take it up with literature--nevermind, scratch that, I know you will just say "but this is a game"-- how about you take it up with any non-Resident Evil survival horror game ever made. Weak characters aren't "pointless" or "hopeless." In fact, games with weak characters would be 10000 times more boring if their protagonists were cookie cutter commandos. I like interesting stories, and variety, not boring stories told the same way every time with the same Rambo-Snake-Pliskin protag. "What purpose does this serve?" That's the purpose it serves: good story telling and variety in the stories told.

My favorite D&D character I've ever played was a rogue that my party nicknamed the trapfinder, because he'd always critical fail his find traps rolls and set the trap off. He normally survived the trap with 1hp left. Eventually, he died to, you guessed it, a trap. He was terrible at that whole trap finding business, but it was an incredibly fun journey playing the character, in spite of his failures.

Good for you. I'm so very glad that was an enjoyable time for you. Can you point out any reliable in-game Armageddon scenarios where such an experience could be had under the same circumstances? Where being terrible at something that was supposed to be your character concept led to an objectively enjoyable experience? I wager you can't.

Yes, I had a character so pathetically weak she could hardly lift things. I knew I was going to get a crap stat roll with this character given her age, and gave her a description to match, she had rickets, respiratory issues, etc. When she sparred, her dagger bounced off people and she could barely land a hit. People wrote her off as weak and useless. She ended up being one of the most prolific burglars in Tuluk, people hired her, and up until her dying day no one suspected her of anything. Again, there are strategies to "success" for a character that do not involve "max statz." You can even use a bad stat roll to your advantage.

Finally, I do agree that a change is warranted, but I don't think changing the stat system is the solution to this. There are many other reasons that this is the case right now that I have touched on in other threads. Other options, aside from murder, have been taken away over the years. If we reintroduce more alternatives to PK, I think people will use them to create more RP and less immediate character death, and we may even draw back some players who have left the game because they didn't like the changes.

Sure, but until that day arrives, I think the game would be a lot better off if each character's lot in life was not so heavily dependent on wildly random dicerolls that determine whether they're okay or fantastic. And I think you're arguing against this because you feel it makes you look like a good boy who thinks everything is fine as it is.

You've got to stop this "if you like the status quo you're a bootlicker" narrative, though credit to you you used the term "I think" this time rather than outright blasting people with your false notion. I mentioned literature earlier, but went with a game example to avoid the whole "but this is a gaaaaame" retort... but I genuinely think a variety in concepts leads to good story telling. That's my motivation. Even some of the first protagonists devised by human kind, such as Gilgamesh, were flawed. If every protagonist in a book ever were some massively muscled, agile, sturdy, and witty alpha-chad I think it would indicate a species that could learn nothing about strengths, weaknesses, teamwork. We would be the two-dimensional cavemen in those stories. If all protagonists were the same, we wouldn't have literature or the nearly infinite number of narratives we have now. I like mixed narratives, not only because they capture different aspects of reality but also because they are more interesting.

Believe it or not, just because you want to play a character with "great stats" does not mean everyone wants what you want. And by the way, point buy doesn't result in everyone having great stats, it results in everyone having the same stats.

Here is the problem with point buy... [detailed explanation of how points end up being distributed]... This results in everybody essentially having the same stats.

John, Valeria, and others also elucidated this point, and several case studies describing this can be found for DnD and other games.

If we do point buy, you would have to make the leeway / number of points very limited to avoid homogenous min-maxxed builds.

[Heade]

First, you don't know who has and has not suicided characters. So saying that the people who like randomness are the same people who suicide characters is a disingenuous statement at the very least.

It's certainly an observation I've made over the years.

That's an anecdotal observation, and far from conclusive. You don't have access to enough data to know statistically.

Stop it with that nonsense. When another Alexander the Great emerges from the general populace, it should be becase his actions warranted greatness, not because he was luckier with the dice.

But the real Alexander the Great got lucky with exactly said dice roll. Otherwise, the world would be filled with them. Some people are born with the potential for greatness. Other's aren't. We can be sad about it, but it is what it is. And I like that Arm reflects that reality. Please don't refer to my opinion as nonsense. It's an opinion. We can disagree without being dismissive of the other person's thoughts on the matter.

This is the kind of virtue-signaling nonsense that I tried to warn against yesterday. You're trying to tell people of an online and deeply impersonal game that they have a duty to spend some portion of their time pursuing some pointless, hopeless endeavor that they're meant to fail because of a diceroll.

There is no "fail". We're roleplaying characters, and I find it insulting that you think the fact that I enjoy RPing is virtue signaling. I've played many underwhelming characters that had big goals and failed, but I still enjoyed playing them. I enjoyed the nuance of relationships and ambitions, both fulfilled and unfulfilled. I enjoyed playing the characters. And sure, some were "better" than others, stat-wise. But in the 20 years of playing this game, I've only had to ask for a stat adjustment once, and that was on a crafter who didn't have enough agility to hold 5 items to craft together, back before they allowed you to craft from items on the ground in the room with you.

Incidentally, that crafter was one of my two favorite characters I've ever had in this game. So, I guess the fact that my favorite character was a crafter with no extended subguild and no magic might give you some insight into what sort of things I enjoy as a player. I like RPing, so social characters are worthy, even if their stats are so bad you have to request an adjustment to them to be able to perform their basic skills.

Good for you. I'm so very glad that was an enjoyable time for you. Can you point out any reliable in-game Armageddon scenarios where such an experience could be had under the same circumstances? Where being terrible at something that was supposed to be your character concept led to an objectively enjoyable experience? I wager you can't. I fully expect you to now come up with some conconcted story to the contrary, but yet again I call BS.

I guess I already gave an example of this. No need for hostility. It's ok for different people to enjoy different things and play for different reasons.

Finally, I do agree that a change is warranted, but I don't think changing the stat system is the solution to this. There are many other reasons that this is the case right now that I have touched on in other threads. Other options, aside from murder, have been taken away over the years. If we reintroduce more alternatives to PK, I think people will use them to create more RP and less immediate character death, and we may even draw back some players who have left the game because they didn't like the changes.

Sure, but until that day arrives, I think the game would be a lot better off if each character's lot in life was not so heavily dependent on wildly random dicerolls that determine whether they're okay or fantastic. And I think you're arguing against this because you feel it makes you look like a good boy who thinks everything is fine as it is.

Trust me when I say that I have virtually no interest in looking like the "good boy". Staff can attest to the fact that I am very outspoken and don't hesitate to disagree with them. I'm actually quite well-known for being confrontational with staff on issues where we don't agree. I don't bite my tongue just because I have an unpopular idea. I think all ideas should be debated on their merit alone, regardless of perceived popularity. I have no sacred cows.

The fact is, I really do like the system the way it is, and the majority of people who responded in this thread have said the same thing. You can't really believe that over half the responders in this thread secretly want the system changed, but are trying to brown-nose to staff, and so they voice an opinion in opposition to their own self-interest. That's absurd.

[Strongheart]

I'm not sure the game benefits from an actual points-buy system. At the end of the day, it isn't Baldur's Gate. Tailor-made stats go against the nature of an RPI. But so does the extreme randomness of the current system, especially in a game that bills itself as being all about murder, corruption and betrayal, where these days you can barely sneeze in someone's general direction without incentivizing them to kill you. There is no noteworthy genre of gaming that did not realize this about twenty years ago, so a change is warranted.

Just make a static amount of points that is allotted to every character, and roll them with a degree of randomness. Let's say everyone gets 60 points, plus/minus race adjustments. You might get EX/EG/BA/BA or you might get VG/G/G/G. That feels fair enough. What does not feel fair is when one dude gets EX/EX/EG/VG and another gets G/AA/BA/P. Sometimes you'll get a character who's really strong or agile or whatever, but nothing special in other respects; and sometimes you'll get a character who's alright across the board. That seems good enough to me.

The documentation tells us that this is a world where only the well-adapted survive. If you're born weak, dumb and slow, you don't make it to the age of PChood. It's entirely reasonable to say that those of the Zalanthans who are represented as PCs are the ones who are not suffering from some massive stat deficiency. You're ever so welcome to play your PC as a simpleton or hopeless cripple if that's your character concept, but it should not be something that the code imposes on you. It should be a choice.

We haven't got one dungeon master for every four players whose job it is to sit there and make everyone feel relevant regardless of their stats. A raw diceroll stat system works when you do, not when you don't. We have to make our own way in the world, and it feels so discouraging when the first thing you're met with upon the commencement of your character is a shrugworthy statroll, and it frankly feels unfair when you're greeted with a "you're guaranteed to destroy the world" roll. This should just not be a factor. It's 2020. Arm is still a game.

100% my thoughts in this as well, Greves! I regret ever naming this point buy versus random when all I am saying is that the game shouldn't be so random with stats. This suggestion is my favorite thus far not gonna lie

Also, I feel like you two either missed or chose to ignore Greve's other post, Heade and triste. I'm not going to kid around, I've felt that the outright refusal of a new system to promote some semblance of fairness while retaining where points go with total points entact rather than the current system is disheartening when there could be such a great compromise!

[Strongheart]

And I disagree, there's been a chunk of the playerbase that desires a different/reworked system based off what I've heard over the years. Albeit they're afraid or feel it is pointless to speak up or haven't checked in on the GDB yet

[Strongheart]

If you consider what has been posted here, there's actually nearly an even split between changing the system or retaining it! A change does seem to be more in favor though.

[KittenLicks]

Hey, Greve, I really agree with most of your actual points, but I do wish you'd stop implying people that disagree with you regularly suicide characters. You're not going to convince anyone like that, you know?

We're all friends here (when we're not cutting each other up with bone swords).