[Intelligence Check] Death of a Die Roll

[Alzrius]

In the latest entry of Intelligence Check, we talk about the difference between the game-play styles of Pathfinder and older editions, and how those differences are laid out right from character creation.

We also lay out a series of proposals for playing Pathfinder in an old-school style, including bringing back ability score prerequisites for character classes!

Find all that and more over at the latest post: Death of a Die Roll

[Cheapy]

I've been thinking about the same thing as one of your points. Point buy lets you fine-tune to get the character you want, whereas random (4d6 drop lowest, reroll ones is what I've usually seen) can be limiting.

Maybe a hybrid approach is possible? Point buy 3 abilities, roll the rest. Hmm...

[Shadewest]

The whole point of the article is to get an old-school feel. The article is dead-on, to me. the oldest old school ability score generation is 3d6 in order. There was some provision to buy your prime requisite up at the cost of other ability scores, albeit at a 2/1 or 3/1 basis, depending on the class and scores.

Then we changed it to best 3 of 4d6.
Then we decided to re-roll 1's
Then we decided to allow players to arrange as desired.
Then we decided to give a mulligan if scores were still too low.

No, Best 3 of 4d6, reroll 1's, arrange as desired, is more than flexible enough for old school.

[Lathiira]

My one fear would be that high level characters couldn't handle challenges thrown at them of appropriate CRs. The ideas definitely have the old school feel though. Maybe that was part of the feel, that feel of getting mauled by pit fiends, balors, and dragons? :)

[Shadewest]

Lathiira wrote:

My one fear would be that high level characters couldn't handle challenges thrown at them of appropriate CRs. The ideas definitely have the old school feel though. Maybe that was part of the feel, that feel of getting mauled by pit fiends, balors, and dragons? :)

Yes.

Or a Demilich.

In a more serious line, it was a larger part of the DM's job to know what his players could handle. Even now, CR is best used as just a guideline. Old school challenged players, not just their characters.

[Lathiira]

I remember those days well, have no fear! And you're right, I forgot about the demilich :p

[Alzrius]

Hey guys, thanks for the kind words!

I initially thought of touting the old "3d6, scores applied in the order rolled" method of generating ability scores, but abandoned that idea because of how spellcasting works now. Namely, to cast spells of a given level, you need to have a casting ability score of X + that spell level.

That meant that only in rare cases would most PC spellcasters who survived to high-level play would get access to their highest-level spells (even if you kept the ability point every fourth level, it'd be difficult), and characters definitely shouldn't be punished for surviving into the higher levels.

There's also something to the idea of being too stringent, in that if you use the ability score prerequisites along with that method of rolling ability scores, it's quite possible to end up with a character that can't take levels in any class that you were hoping for. Some adversity in character design is, I think, a good thing, but it can go too far.

That said, I think that (as Shadewest noted) a good GM will make sure that the PCs are appropriately challenged. Presuming that ability scores are kept from being min-maxed, then I think the impact in any given encounter will be so small as to be undetectable (not having an extra point or two of damage per attack, or having spell DCs be one or two points lower than they'd otherwise be, does add up if you look at the entire campaign, but rarely makes a big difference in any single encounter).

The change with the most impact will be the rate at which magic items are acquired (and not allowing PCs to just shop for/create the items they want). But again, a good GM will take that into account and not let it ever truly hamper the PCs (and, if necessary, tweak the challenges they'll be facing to make sure they don't get absolutely slaughtered).

And I'm of the opinion that having the players getting mauled by demons, dragons, demi-liches, and more is part of the feel of the game no matter which school you subscribe to. >;-)

[Ksorkrax]

Basic problem is that one roll decides if you suck or own the whole game along. Tough the idea of some randomness, away from "max main stat/stats" sounds nice.
At the age of computers, why not programming something that gives out balanced but random stats? (that is, only generating stats that, for example, would cost 20 pts in a point buy, maybe with higher stats even more expensive and intermediate stats more cheap)(question is what distributions one wants...)
Maybe with some sort of loose assignment (for example: the stats are pre-assigned to the abilites but you can make two swaps)

To balance this out, I'd lower or remove some feat stat requirements - like the Combat Expertise Int 13 req

[clff rice]

I think attribute requirements are built in because of the dependance of each class on primary stat.

I do like the magic items being not so common though each magic item should have a history and there should be no such thing as a "+1 sword"

[Chris Kenney]

One nitpick - while your flavor for it is good, the Oracle's a charisma based caster, not a Wisdom-based one. Given that all of the other caster prerequisites match their primary casting stat, you may want to look at that.

[Alzrius]

Chris Kenney wrote:

One nitpick - while your flavor for it is good, the Oracle's a charisma based caster, not a Wisdom-based one. Given that all of the other caster prerequisites match their primary casting stat, you may want to look at that.

B'oh! I looked at that when brushing up for this article, and then completely forgot. Thanks for bringing it to my attention; I've switched it to Charisma.

clff rice, wrote:

I think attribute requirements are built in because of the dependance of each class on primary stat.

That's true to the extent that it's difficult to play an effective member of a given class if you have a low ability score in that class's prime requisite attribute. But the purpose of the prerequisite ability scores in that article are to provide baselines for players randomly rolling a PC's ability scores (and to serve as something of a limiter on multiclassing). In other words, if you put that 16 into Strength, a 14 into Wisdom, and only a 12 in Charisma, you'll need to switch something around if you want to play a paladin.

[Cheapy]

Ksorkrax wrote:

Basic problem is that one roll decides if you suck or own the whole game along. Tough the idea of some randomness, away from "max main stat/stats" sounds nice.

At the age of computers, why not programming something that gives out balanced but random stats? (that is, only generating stats that, for example, would cost 20 pts in a point buy, maybe with higher stats even more expensive and intermediate stats more cheap)(question is what distributions one wants...)
Maybe with some sort of loose assignment (for example: the stats are pre-assigned to the abilites but you can make two swaps)

To balance this out, I'd lower or remove some feat stat requirements - like the Combat Expertise Int 13 req

27-25-23 kinda does this. It forces the abilities to total up to a set number, but within that range, it's random.

[Orange D20 of Death]

In the game I just started up a few months ago I harkened back to the days long ago for some inspiration for how I wished to generate ability scores this time around. When I first started playing (in Advanced D&D) my GM gave us 3D6 and we would shoot the rolls right down the ability score block, in order, starting at Str. and working your way down the scores. I kind of missed the method, though I was looking for a way to make sure that the characters came out a bit more on the powerfull side, saying rolling a 3 sucks! (ha!) What I ended up doing was two sets of 2d6+6 fired out "old school", as said above. Then they took the better roll for each attribute and that became their final scores. I wanted to push the players to maybe try a diffrent class they have maybe not played before and it brought back the fun of being a GM and looking at a set and saying "With those scores you would make a good...(fill in the blank)."
As far as class requirements; having the abiltity scores laid out for the players prior to picking a race and class yet lends to an idea that they would be talented in a class that uses their higher ability scores, not to mention a whole can of worms I don't care to crack open. That was one of the better things I like about the newer versions of the worlds greatest table top game is the openness and ease to make what ever you like, even if what you made would suck out loud.