Reconciling character concept and stats

[jhunter]

Because there is simply no need for it.
[Edited to add] And you shouldn't really be worrying about stats or skills anyway.

[Vettrock]

Yes stats make a difference, but the effect of skills is much greater.  A five day warrior with crappy stats is going to kick the butt of a 2 day warrior with great stats.  Now if you have two 5 day warriors, the one with the better stats is going to win.

Basicaly bad stats suck, but they can be overcome with time, so I think the current system is just fine.

Why not do away with attributes entirely then? There's no need for them, according to you.

Of course, I disagree with your premise. I -know- attributes play a significant role, because I've seen it over and over again.

I would also like you to consider that this isn't just about who can kick whose butt. As was already mentioned, your stats influence a variety of things beyond your level of uberness. If that 5-day warrior is so weak he can't wear the standard armor in his clan, he has a problem.

You should be able to assign your stats.

[Vettrock]

Well I agree with you to some extent since my second character was a ranger who no matter how hard he looked couldn't find a bow that was weak enough that he could pull back the string.  In some cases you stats can cause you problems and in that case I guess you can mail the mud account. but in the 15 characters I've played on there that is the only one that had a "real" problem with his stats that effected the gameplay.

[wizturbo]

I think people misunderstood my suggestion.  I'll reword it.

SUGGESTION:

In the hall of kings, you get the opportunity to -order- the stats you'll get from greatest importance to the character concept to the least importance.

This is done -blind-.  You do not know what any of your stats will be yet.

For instance, in the hall of kings I state this:

order stats strength wisdom agility endurance

As I step out of the hall of kings my stats are rolled:

poor, average, average, below average.


These will be ordered as stated before they were rolled:
average strength, average wisdom, below average agility, poor endurance.
Thats it.  You can reroll one time per usual.

This will align stats at least in order of importance for a character concept.

Wizturbo, I think that's a great suggestion

[jstorrie]

Or, you could create a character concept based around personality, goals and aspirations, and not strength, agility, wisdom and endurance.

So what if your warrior is too weak to pick up that nice clan armour?  Deal with it.  Play around it.

[spawnloser]

If a ranger can't wear enough armor to do anything besides tavern sit...why did he ever decide to become a ranger/hunter in the first place?  Sometimes, stats are somewhat important to character concept...at least to some small amount.

[wizturbo]

Or, you could create a character concept based around personality, goals and aspirations, and not strength, agility, wisdom and endurance.

So what if your warrior is too weak to pick up that nice clan armour?  Deal with it.  Play around it.

There are two sides of a character.

Psychological and Corporal.

You can have any stats, and still have whatever motivations or psychological factors involved in your character.  Stats do not hinder this at all.

However there is more to this game then ONLY psychological.  It is a roleplaying intensive game, set on top of a coded stats/skills framework that tries to mimic reality.  If your character's background states they spent the majority of their life doing manual labor (and your not injured, sick or otherwise incapacitated), having strength as your lowest stat seems rather unrealistic.  This doesn't mean you should have AI strength, it just means,  having strength higher then say wisdom might make sense for you.

[UnderSeven]

SUGGESTION:

In the hall of kings, you get the opportunity to -order- the stats you'll get from greatest importance to the character concept to the least importance.

This is done -blind-.  You do not know what any of your stats will be yet.

For instance, in the hall of kings I state this:

order stats strength wisdom agility endurance

As I step out of the hall of kings my stats are rolled:

poor, average, average, below average.

This is a great idea, it shouldn't nessicarily mean you get what you want, say a wis could still be higher than a str and racial mod would be a factor, but it makes sense.

I think stats should be random, we shouldn't be able to set our chars up stat wise exactly how we want, but a little bit of control wouldn't be awful.  Maybe give us a random order option too.  

Lets face it, the char concept is more important than skills, stats and all of that.  Frankly if you are playing a char for what they can do, rather than why they do it, you're on the wrong foot.  But I don't see any harm in having some affect, at least in making the char fit the desc and background a little better.  

This wouldn't mean your stats wuold be any better, or any worse, you could still get crappy roles your order might not even affect anything, would depnd on implementation, but ultimately I see no problem with this.

[flurry]

For instance, in the hall of kings I state this:

order stats strength wisdom agility endurance

As I step out of the hall of kings my stats are rolled:

poor, average, average, below average.


These will be ordered as stated before they were rolled:
average strength, average wisdom, below average agility, poor endurance.
Thats it.  You can reroll one time per usual.

There's a problem in that this doesn't account for age at all - which has a big effect on starting stats.    As it is now, a 13 year old is likely to have high agility but low wisdom, for instance.   But with this (unless some age factor were thrown in),  you could just as easily see high wisdom low agility 13 year olds.

[wizturbo]

There's a problem in that this doesn't account for age at all - which has a big effect on starting stats.    As it is now, a 13 year old is likely to have high agility but low wisdom, for instance.   But with this (unless some age factor were thrown in),  you could just as easily see high wisdom low agility 13 year olds.

I don't see this as a problem.  There are some 13 year olds out there that are more mature, and more intelligent then an average full grown adult.  The rest would go into the hands of the player not to make an unrealistic character.  For instance, if your playing a 13 year old choosing strength as your highest stat might not be very IC choice, under the current system you could still have AI strength even though your only 13!  This system would allow you to make that highly unlikely, by putting strength as your last or second to last stat prior to rolling.

[Stroker]

I've NEVER had an AI as any of my stats. From my experience, the younger the character, the poorer the stats in most cases. Under the current system, a 13 year old will never get AI strength.

[flurry]

Wizturbo -

Just trying to clarify in case I didn't explain very well.

What I'm saying is that HELP AGING would no longer be valid (at least the part that pertains to your stats roll), and in a way that I think is unrealistic.  Young adolescents being equally likely to be extremely wise as extremely agile, or quite old people also being equally likely to be extremely wise as extremely agile.  Basically it would allow people to work around the age factor in your stats roll.

[wizturbo]

Wizturbo -

Just trying to clarify in case I didn't explain very well.

What I'm saying is that HELP AGING would no longer be valid (at least the part that pertains to your stats roll), and in a way that I think is unrealistic.  Young adolescents being equally likely to be extremely wise as extremely agile, or quite old people also being equally likely to be extremely wise as extremely agile.  Basically it would allow people to work around the age factor in your stats roll.

I'm not 100% sure how age is incorporated into Stats, but I think this problem could be avoided through clever coding.  If it cannot be, trusting players not to do unrealistic things is an option.  I think some 13 year old character who assigned wisdom as their highest score is less of a problem, then having "the massive, mekillot-tattooed human" who is too weak to wield a longsword because of their poor strength.  Or "the frail, hunchbacked elderly man" who knocks you out cold from one punch because of their AI strength, and nimbly avoids your bash with his exceptional agility.  This just gives players an opportunity to order things in a fashion they think makes sense for their character.

Perhaps this option could be available for people with karma, if the trust issue is a problem...

[Angela Christine]

There are two issues here: getting the sort of character you were planning on, and getting an unplayble character.

I don't think there is a problem if your character doesn't turn out exactly as you expected.  I've often found that a character who turns out differently than what I had planned also turns out to be great fun to play.  Figuring out how the character can reach for his goals and how he evolves can make a much richer character in the end.


Then there is the character that is unplayable, this is a problem, but it is also very, very rare.  A half-giant mage with such low wisdom/mana that he cannot cast a single spell is basically unplayable, because he has no way to access his main skills.  If you cannot cast a spell you are not really a mage.  I've heard of this happening, and apparently a staffmember did boost his mana to the point where he could cast a spell.  Hurray.  

If you find yourself in the position where you have an archer that can not find a single bow weak enough for you anywhere (including the blackwing trading outpost) or you can not wear your uniform (despite putting every unnecessary possession in the storeroom) then you may have a borderline "unplayable" character.  I'd suggest emailing your clan imm or the mud account with your problem and what you have done to try to deal with the problem.  The staff wants you to enjoy playing the game, so they will probably be willing to work with you.  That might mean a small stat boost, or something else.  In the case of the bowless archer, they could also check your strength and check the database to find a bow that your character -could- use, and set it up so you can order that bow from Salaar.  In the case of not being able to wear your required uniform and equipment, the clan imms could either give you a small stat boost (easily justified by your training and attempts to wear the uniform) or they might find that there is a scout uniform or other alternate uniform that is lighter than that the "standard" uniform, that has simply fallen out of use lately.

No stat ordering.  Reroll or bust!


AC

[Bestatte]

Sometimes stats are annoying to me, when they don't even come close to what I think my character -would- be like. I've been pretty lucky for the most part, though I remember one magicker I played with like - 90 mana and "average" wisdom. That was a real headache and incredibly frustrating to play the skill side of the character. The RP side of the character was fine - no complaints there. But when it takes a good 15 RL minutes to regenerate enough mana to cast a single spell, heh - kinda pointless to even hope to branch anything during the character's lifetime, ya know?

What really gets me though is that when you reroll, you take a dive on the "numerical" stats. Or at least I do.

I've rerolled only a few times - most times I'm satisfied with what I have, or at least not willing to risk a loss if I have one stat I really like.

But the times that I have rerolled, I'd lose -10- hps and -10- stamina points. In addition to taking a dive on 2 of the 4 stats. That just totally hurts. If I could put something on a wish list, that would be the thing. To not have to take a loss on numerical stats if your reroll results in a loss on your regular stats. It isn't bad enough for me to really gripe about, because so far nothing in my stats have ever caused me to have an unplayable character. It's just one of those little annoying things that you kinda get over after adjusting to the character a few days in.

[Angela Christine]

That is why I would like to be able to "unroll" a reroll if things go bad.  Nothing makes me lose interest in a character like rerolling and getting something really nasty.  It isn't so much the low stat, but that everytime I look at the character I'm reminded of my  mistake.

The downside is that almost everyone would reroll every character everytime, fishing for more acceptable stats because they would know they could undo it if they wanted too.  

It's a conundrum.


AC

[mansa]

I've had almost every stat range from every age.  An AI and a POOR for a 13 year old.  An AI and a POOR for a 65 year old.

I've had warriors with average and merchants with excellent.

I wish I could pick my favourite stat and ask for that one to be set as my 'highest' in the roll.

You do get bonuses for certain stats, depending on which guild you pick.  I think that's a pretty logical conclusion for a game such as this.

[sacac]

would you all be complaining if you made a concept where the guy was weak and argue that your stats had AI for strength?

I like it the way it is.
Why because Noone is perfect and ARm shows that part off
I totally agree with AC.

Actually, yes I would. It's usually a good idea to build a weakness into your character. My point is simply that we should be able to decide what those weaknesses and strengths are, according to the character we want to play.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

It won't change, likely. And in the end, it won't matter if it does. We'll still play Armageddon, bitch because it got put in or didn't...and life would go on.

But stat ordering, in the simple terms of saying which stat is the most important to your character concept, or even being able to say even them all out or not important.....this is quite simply a perfection idea.

And no. Contrary to popular beleif, not everyone is going to twink out and do this and that. This is a roleplaying game, and most of the folks, even the folks that the Immortals don't always like because of their flaming tactics or ingrained nastiness or preceived whateverthehell, tend to be serious about roleplaying. So stop tripping about twinking, and get on the stat-ordering band-wagon.

You know you want it.

I think stat ordering in the Hall of Kings is a beautiful solution. It creates a better synergy between character concept and stats, and is twink free, simple, and (hopefully!) easy to code.

[Carida]

Figured, I'd put my two 'sids.... I dont' pay attention to my stats... I just play...