Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing
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@The-Sands If you want to be literal about wording, then I would say sure your 5 Int +1 Medicine person is as good as a 3 Int 3 Medicine person. But by the description, only the 3 Medicine person would be certified as a MD. Ya?
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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Honest to God, if you wanted to try and 'fix' at least the majority of min-maxing in the WoD system I would do it this way:
Characters start with a 1 in all Attibutes and a 0 in all skills. They get assigned a lump of XP. They then chose their Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary attributes. What this means is they must spend at least X amount of XP in each category (with the most being spent in their Primary, the second largest being spend in their Secondary, and the smallest being spent on their Tertiary).
The same thing happens with their skills.
There's a fixed amount of XP that they must spend on either Merits or on their Power stat.
There's a fixed amount of XP they have to spend on their Disciplines, Contracts, etc.
Anything left over can be spent however they want or (possibly) banked for later.
Clever people may notice that there is no bonus to assigning one group of stats as Primary over another if they end up costing the same amount. It is simply a mechanism to try and make players decide that their character is more Physical or Mental or Social instead of being simply average all around. Likewise with skills. It would be entirely possible to throw out Primary/Secondary/Tertiary and instead say 'you must spend at least X on Attributes and Y on Skills and let people chose what works best for them.
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@misadventure No, because again the thing that says 'Medicine-3 is a doctor' is just fluff. If both characters went before the medical board and took their test they would have the exact same chance at succeeding. This is why the fluff is so pointless.
Now if you want to say it shouldn't work like that and the system should be written so that there is a quantifiable difference between someone with 5 Int + 1 Medicine over someone else with 3 Int and 3 Medicine I'm all for it. I'm not arguing that at all. I hate the idea that the person with 5 Int can become as skilled as a trained Doctor. However, that isn't the way the system is written.
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@the-sands
But would would be the incentive not to make the idiot savant and then use xp later to round out? You might not get a mechanical advantage, but coming out of c-gen with a 5 and a zero in two skills than it is to come out with a 2 and a 3 even if eventually getting both to a combined number later cost identical XP. -
@thatguythere It's not an issue that there is no incentive not to do that. The problem is that, as the system is written, there is strong incentive to do that.
In other words, if you have a system that removes min-maxing and someone wants to make the idiot-savant that then learns social skills they can. They aren't harmed by the lack of min-maxing and they can continue with their RP without any problems. If they want to stay the idiot-savant they will, in fact, always have the advantage (barring skill caps) because they started out ahead. They just have to make their initial 'sacrifices' permanent.
However, if you have a system that has min-maxing than the Generalist definitely is being punished. They are at a disadvantage forever. Even if the Specialist backtracks to pick up the skills they missed the Generalist is behind.
Maybe you think I'm against the idea of the super-specialized guy who is great at what he does. I'm not. I like that concept and have no problem with it. I might have issues if a game makes them overly powerful because they're specialists (e.g. basically no one else can hit the specialist swordsman because of the game mechanics making him completely unstoppable to anyone but another specialist swordsman) but I'm fine with the core concept. What I'm not fine with is 'I said I was a Specialist Swordsman but now that we've earned some XP I know everything the Generalist does and I'm still better with my specialist stuff'.
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@the-sands said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:
@misadventure No, because again the thing that says 'Medicine-3 is a doctor' is just fluff. If both characters went before the medical board and took their test they would have the exact same chance at succeeding. This is why the fluff is so pointless.
Now if you want to say it shouldn't work like that and the system should be written so that there is a quantifiable difference between someone with 5 Int + 1 Medicine over someone else with 3 Int and 3 Medicine I'm all for it. I'm not arguing that at all. I hate the idea that the person with 5 Int can become as skilled as a trained Doctor. However, that isn't the way the system is written.
Okay so Ive seen this example a lot the Int 5 Medicine 1 and the int 3 medicine 3. and you are correct, they both have the same amount of dice, but it's for a reason. Dismissing 'fluff text' out of hand is silly, because Fluff is designed to describe.
So the Int 5 medicine 1 doctor has those dice because they are THE SMARTEST PERSON IN THE WORLD, and with a little medical knowledge they can get by helping heal someone by using the enormous power of their brain. They would however, probably fail medical tests and wouldn't be a doctor because they lack the raw knowledge.
Meanwhile the other above average doctor with medicine 3 actually knows WTF they are doing and would pass those tests.
This is why the storyteller system has dice pool modifiers, equipment bonuses, and at least in table top they have ST's there to judge the nuances of raw attribute vs skill.
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@wretched said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:
So the Int 5 medicine 1 doctor has those dice because they are THE SMARTEST PERSON IN THE WORLD, and with a little medical knowledge they can get by helping heal someone by using the enormous power of their brain. They would however, probably fail medical tests and wouldn't be a doctor because they lack the raw knowledge.
This is where I disagree. They wouldn't fail the tests because the tests still have to use the 'rules system' of the world. In other words, the tests are going to be an Intelligence + Medicine roll. The testing board doesn't have some super special way to only test the skill.
You can argue pool modifiers if you want but I have never seen a pool modifier that says 'penalty because skill is too low' (with the exception of being completely untrained). That would be almost akin to 'die penalty because pool is too small'. It's just not the way the system is written and if an ST tried to pull that I would probably walk out since I have no assurance they aren't about to throw down '-2 because I want you to fail'.
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@thatguythere The main thing was that Sword 6/Polearm 6 guy is really useful in both stages, a specialist would be relatively liable to get mauled as they attempt to fight armoured Demon Knights encased in Demon Steel using a sword, or trying to awkwardly wield a poleaxe in a narrow stairway against a Tentacle Demon, though presumably their amazing skill would not make them totally useless.
It is really hard to balance both character generation and system though to make a non specialist viable without turning everyone into some kind of omnicompetent demigod. I guess maybe why I am a fan of Exalted? There having somebody who is an Invincible Sword Princess but also a competent doctor is totally viable. At least if you house rule the idiotic linear chargen/exponential xp thing.
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@the-sands But that's the entire reason modifiers exist in nWoD. For situational advantages/disadvantages. They would still have the same dice pool for treating a gunshot wound, for the reasons I previously mentioned, but a test on the subject matter that the int 5 guy never actually went to school on, I would most definitely say he would take a -modifier for. That's not the ST being a dick, that's just looking at the situation and going 'yeah that is probably a factor in this roll' the same as doing parkour in an arena evenly coated with crisco.
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@the-sands IC certification is also just fluff.
Yes they have the same rolls, but until the one person has medicine 3 they don't qualify for the fluff.
In the end, I just design systems that are better described to get what I want. One of those details is that skill and talent do not act the same way in the system, and so it is clearer. Then things like Advantages are attached to it, like being a MD.
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You and I both have gone off the handle trying to explain to people that without modifiers, nWoD is nothing. Situational modifiers are the blood to the attribute + stat muscular structure.
Mind you, I'm sad that this thread has been mired back down into WoD-Centric discussion.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@thenomain THERE IS ONLY WoD. NOTHING ELSE MATTERS
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Hey guys how about them there wild talents based systems? I hear they're pretty balanc- Oh, wait, you guys wanted to talk WoD some more? I'll just see myself to the door.
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“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
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@misadventure
Super way late to the party, but this is what the new MET VtM does, just in reverse from what you've posited. You get one skill at 4, two at 3, three at 2, and four at 1. Then you get 30XP to spend. -
@thenomain Of course I'm suggesting ORE for online roleplay! I thought it was such a damn fine idea that I brought on coders to help make it happen! ORE is the way of the future, WoD is dead, long live ORE!
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@thatguythere I think this is partly a terminology problem. We've been using 'generalist' but in practice this doesn't usually mean 'Guy who does 4 things other people do as specialists, worse.' More typically it represents Utility characters who may have general expertise... in all the stuff the meathead cha 1 int 1 murderbots skipped. This is a specialty (or better, archetype) in and of itself, but its not a specialty represented by peak murdercraft (with 4 other murderkill merits), but rather at having many useful skills that, due to the nature of most RPGs, probably don't require quite as much razor-focus as combat to be utilized.
The important point is, this is an archetype, and it works perfectly well if they have niche protection, whether explicit or implicit from XP costs. Old shcool (1e/2e) D&D Thieves were precisely this kind of character: in an era before skills even existed, no one else could sneak, open locks, find traps, or even climb very well. Sure, they were pretty shit in combat outside of maybe one nice backstab, but had a purpose, and dungeon delving without one could be near-suicidal.
In a modern skill game, this could be the guy with the laundry list of technical, stealth, and related skills that could get you into a heavily guarded location without setting off every alarm in existence. And in my experience, that person will get taken along, because not even the combat brute wants to fail before the fight even starts. They only get left behind when, because of shitty XP design, the min-maxed combat brute also has all those skills... and also seduction 5 and a few other things because 'lol why did you waste so much XP in cgen, bro?'
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@bored Actually, in this context 'Generalist' means 'Someone who didn't jam all his point into the fewest things possible in CG'. In my example the Generalist bought the exact same skills (in the end) as the Specialist, and spent the same amount of XP, but because he didn't exit CG as a brain-damaged idiot-savant who would have been removed by natural selection before his 18th birthday the Generalist has fewer points in skills than the Specialist.
And I'm not saying min-maxers are brain damaged, I'm not saying they only play brain damaged characters. What I'm saying is the system is designed to encourage that type of character. Honestly, if you try and make a non-brain damaged Specialist (I bought a bare minimum of 'everyday skills' and then focused hard on just a couple of combat skills) the Specialist will be at a disadvantage to the 'I exited CG brain damaged but got better' character, not just immediately after CG but for the rest of their lives.
