Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Arthur Dayne 01-25-05, 02:53 PM	I think this might be more of a philisophical debate than a mechanical one but... Whenever I play a warrior class lets say; fighter, I like to play overly masculine guys who really do want to be the baddest guy around. I see this as equivelant to gun nuts always wanting the newest most powerful guns that fire the most rounds per second, etc. Also Im sure this in an old debate, but if you were adventuring into a world fulll of dragons and so on, wouldnt you too want to be the most powerful person you could be? Lets say you were a sort of norse warrior type of guy, with a flavor theme along the lines of "cold and mountains" and you got a +3 cold greatsword. Sweet!!! But If I also get a +4 keen flaming greatsword, it might not be my favorite on a sentimental level, but it increases my chance of survival, so Im going to use it more often. So am I just trying to rationalise my munchkinism, or am I making sense?
Draco Strang 01-25-05, 03:14 PM	thats not really munchkin, just using what's available to you to get the job done. Unless your character had sworn an oath against flaming weapons or something it doesn't sound like a bad idea.....relax man
Arthur Dayne 01-25-05, 03:19 PM	Mmph, maybe the gaming community at large isnt as judgemental about his sort of thing as the people I know personally. Thats good to know. The more I read the board I realise people really arent as anti power as I thought they would be, but Id like to see what some more people have to say before i jump the gun.
ThatDarnCat 01-25-05, 03:33 PM	It's nature, not nurture... In a game where skills and role playing take second place to raw power, it's not improper to use the only effective character design specs fir building fighters. D20 is not designed to create realistic fighters, only combat monsters of 3 basic varieties. The game does not engender creativity nor does it even promote role playing. This isn't just a fault of D20, it extends to all level based games where combat abilities are directly tied to level progression and character class. Palladium is just as bad, thought the selection of skills is much better and their default world curbs Grewhawk in the back alley of the gaming world. Since skills and non-combat feats are totally useless for a Fighter based on how the game is presented you can only expect people to twink out the fighters till there are only a few premutations that are really effective as combat monsters. If you wish to be creative you need to try different games. Point based games. The authors and tanatical supporters of D&D et all scream Ballance from the rooftops, but completely ignore that fact that the classes presented are lame as hell and only limit real creativity by forcing players into poorly designed and arbitrary rules sets that stiffle a players talents. "You're a fighter, what would you know about religion". I've been both a professional soldier and a professional minister. I know a hell of a lot about both saving souls and sending them to the next life. You certainly can't create such a character in D20, at least not without deluding yourself into thinking the thng you create is beleivable. erf... I know how hard it is to create an interesting and yet potent fighter. The class system doesn't support it and the rules restrict it. D&D, helping you create the anti-renaisance man for 33 years. PS: if you don't get the Renaisance man reference I pity you.
e-z0r 01-25-05, 03:51 PM	My fighters tend to be the quiet, proud and stern type, almost always. Sort of distant and unmoving types. I figure if you're the kind of guy who lives from the battle (and you're not a berserker like barbarians), you have to have immense calm to be good at what you do. And that's what my fighters are like. Unwavering men who stand fast and stare the enemy right 'tween the eyes, ready to fight what comes up, no matter what it is or how tall it stands. Unless you make yourself a weapon which means something to you (like a family relic handed down from father to son, or a tribal treasure given to you when you were outcast so you could take it to the world to redeem yourself by acts of great bravery and blah blah yap yap), I don't think you need to hold on to a weaker weapon 'cause it fits your character a little better than another one.
The Shaman 01-25-05, 04:10 PM	Storytelling and roleplaying are not dependent on rule mechanics. Character optimization is.
eRaz0r 01-25-05, 06:41 PM	Storytelling and roleplaying are not dependent on rule mechanics. Character optimization is. While I'm glad you believe that, deep in your heart, it's naive to think so. Play a game of Call of Cthulhu, then a game of Paranoia, then some Vampire:tM and then a game of Feng Shui, then come back to DnD and tell me that the rules have no effect on your roleplaying. The fact is, rules concentrate on modelling things differently. If a ruleset encourages spectacular Action Hero stunts (e.g. Feng Shui), you're going to see PCs do those stunts. If a ruleset cripples characters when they attempt to perform actions outside their specialties, (and this just gets worse the longer the game goes on), then you'll see a different kind of roleplaying.
speeblefreak 01-25-05, 09:17 PM	Even if you are going for role-playing over sheer power, you can still pick the flaming greatsword. Most cold-climate monsters have cold resistance/immunity, but many are vulnerable to fire. If you take the +4 flamer, you might be making a statement about yourself in that you prefer a fighting style focusing on the weaknesses of your foes. By the way, your thread is misnamed. I am the munchkin lord! :D
SnowbearK 01-26-05, 12:50 AM	Ok, saw a few things I'd like to address: Firstly, the class system in D&D works very well for the "timeframe" most campaigns are set in, that being a psuedo-medieval world. Typically a person couldn't afford to learn more than one trade/career/whatever, because he would be either: 1) dead by the time he mastered a single trade; 2) dead due to disease, starvation, or war; 3) lack of local teachers (in college I drove almost 20 miles each way every day, that's at least a two-day journey for the average medievilite) who were willing to apprentice such a misfit. In the fantasy millieu however, it's possible to live to great ages, master many skills, travel across a continent in a blink, etc., but the daily grind we face every day doesn't really fit into the fantasy world "timeframe." So it becomes harder for D&D to accurately portray that using the current class system -- UNTIL you remember that the average level of a commoner in a great metropolis is still about 3rd-4th level. And these are people who've been doing their daily grind every single day, not adventuring or travelling to exotic places, and so on. Even a 2nd level Bard, Cleric, or Wizard is typically better educated and more skilled than those same commoners, by virtue of their experiences, travels, studies, etc. Adventurers are supposed to be the exception, not the rule. Your average soldier is a 1st-4th level warrior. Two commoner levels = 1 class level according to the CR, which is how encounters and thus XP are judged. So if you're an 8th level character, with 4 levels in Fighter and 4 levels in Cleric, you're just as qualified an expert as a mid-level soldier or minister. It's all a matter of who you're comparing yourself to. The d20 system does a fine job for what it's supposed to represent. If you want a more modernized system, there does exist out there (if I could remember the link atm I'd post it, sorry :( ) a D20 Modern-style ruleset for D&D (essentially, all the D&D skills, classes, etc with the D20 Modern rules style). D20 Modern represents very accurately the leap across the Renaissance timeframe where people started to really live long enough, have the free time, and find the opportunities to learn additional skills with enough mastery to make it worth something. For the original Poster though, it's not necessarily munchkin, unless the ENTIRE reason you decide that your character will axe his whole reverence for cold and mountains is because the keen flaming weapon is statistically better. That's munchkinism. If your character keeps his traditional weapon and breaks out the flaming one when his traditional one fails or decreases in effectiveness drastically (such as against the undead, an Ice paraelemental, or other such foe) or if it's of obvious advantage (really, let's think, fire or cold against a evil Treant?) then it's not munchkinism. It's entirely possible he may come to favor the new weapon over the old, but it's a gradual transition, not instantaneous. If the old weapon holds any kind of attachment to him, a name, a history, his personal symbol (imagine what folks would say if Arthur tossed Excalibur away and instead picked up a Club +10 of Pimpslapping for no tangible reason), that kind of thing, then the transition should take a while. If it doesn't, then the transition should be shorter, say, half a dozen fights where each weapon is involved (just a number, no real significance) because eventually, he's going to come to realize that the keen flamer is better on average than his cold greatsword - he strikes with more accuracy, inflicts more damaging wounds, cuts deeper, and so forth. The difference between the weapons isn't that noticeable though, +1 hit/damage and a doubled critical, aside from the obvious cold/fire difference, so there should be that period of adjustment. If it were say, a +5 keen flaming greatsword vs a +1 cold greatsword, then the adjustment should be proportionately shorter. I'm kind of babbling now, so I'll just hit submit reply and start blinking my eyes again. :D
The Shaman 01-26-05, 04:01 AM	Play a game of Call of Cthulhu, then a game of Paranoia, then some Vampire:tM and then a game of Feng Shui, then come back to DnD and tell me that the rules have no effect on your roleplaying. I think comparing not only different game systems but entirely different genres is like comparing the time of sunrise to the weight of a melon to the number of revolutions of a bike wheel in one mile - it may be entertaining, but I doubt one can make much sense of the results. A better approach, IMHO, is to compare different versions of the same game. Having played Call of Cthulhu in both the original and d20 versions, it was my experience that the mechanics had little to do with the feeling of dread and hopelessness and the ultimate demise of my respective characters' grasp on reality, tenuous thought it was. I haven't played Traveller T20 yet, but I did thumb through the rules, and I didn't see anything that would make me believe that the experience of playing the d20 version would be dramatically different from the original "black box" rules - same universe, same races, same ships, same assumptions, different mechanics. Character optimization does not limit roleplay, IMX.