Dirty Words in Gaming #5 - Min/Max (as a party)

If everyone in the party has specialized, how can they solve a problem together? If everyone has specialized, coming together to figure out a communal solution? If the bard can only talk and the fighter can only fight they are both a little out of water in different situations.

In 3.5, the problem to this is mechanically difficult to solve. Some classes are clearly geared to different situations. Fighters have no skill points and no skills. The best answer is to either work in skills or feats to offset the weakness or to role-play better. Everything on your sheet may say you are a fighting machine, skilled in murdering foes without breaking a sweat; but that doesn't define your personality or how you act out of combat.

In Pathfinder, things are easier. There are more feats handed out, so you can work in more combat ability and there is no penalty for taking skills outside of your class. So you are able to diversify your character much more easily.

The end result for both versions of the game is the same, you need to work with the party and accommodate differing playstyles and goals. If someone in the game wants to do social interactions, work some into your character. If someone wants to focus on combat, work some combat efficiency into your build.

Aligning Misconceptions #7 - Lawful Evil

We now venture out of the standard player alignments. These alignments can be played in games, but they require a bit more work for party cohesion and DM planning. The Evil alignments are much more suited for the villains of your games (obviously).

Lawful Evil is a great alignment for villains. They are the corrupt politicians and overlords. They take comfort and find safety within the system of laws, which they twist, coerce, and abuse to their own gain. These NPCs are very easy to hate. They tend to be in a position of power, legally granted, yet they care for no one but themselves, to the point of actively oppressing people.

When they make a promise, they follow through on it making them trustworthy, as long as they can benefit from the arrangement. They can provide great moral dilemmas for players, as they can very much be the devil to deal with.

They can also be a pscyhopath that happens to follow orders of their superior. Lawful does not necessarily imply a code of any kind, you can simply follow orders to the letter.

Darth Vader is a great example of Lawful Evil. He sought to bring order to the Galaxy, through evil means. He will oppress and torture without conscious, but he does so in the name of "Order."

Combat Roles #3 - Battlefield Control

This is in my opinion the most fun role to fill. Instead of worrying about doing damage or casting spells, your concern is the entirety of the battle and how it flows. The plan for this role is to disrupt the enemy while aiding your allies. This role is also fairly generic in how to fulfill it.

Spellcasters can prepare spells like Grease or any of the appropriate Wall spells to disable enemies or separate them from their comrades. They can do targeted spells like Ray of Enfeeblement or other weakening spells. Charm and Hold spells also work well. Effects that can cause Blindness or targeted disabling spells are also worthwhile.

Non-casters can accomplish much the same disabling/aiding as casters. Utilizing Trip, Disarm, and grappling (if you can stomach the rules) all can hinder your opponents. If you are focusing on a build that can't do that, you can always work the aid another action to help your friends. Feats such as Ranged Disarm and Ranged Pin even allow ranged characters to control the battlefield.

Alchemical items such as flasks of oil and smokesticks can allow non-casters to shape the battlefield. Clever use of terrain such as moving carts into the way or starting fires can work under almost any circumstances. Use the terrain around you to force the enemy to fight on your terms.

Dirty Words in Gaming #4 - Fluff/Crunch

This is more a personal rant, so please feel free to tune out if you don't like want to hear.

Fluff and Crunch are words that typically refer to source books and rules books. Fluff  involves setting or story elements and Crunch is game rules and mechanics. Books are evaluated on how much of each they provide. While I have nothing against books providing both, in fact I think they should, whenever people talk about fluff or crunch there seems to be a general shift in tone, implying that fluff is the end all, be all of gaming.

As far as gaming goes, crunch is slightly more important than fluff. Crunch provides the means for interacting with the world. Without it, you may as well be coauthoring a poorly written short story with a bunch of friends. However, gaming can exist without fluff. Enter the classic dungeon delve.

That being said, only combat is boring, so there needs to be something of a story driving it forward. A deep and enjoyable game really cannot exist without both. So I just really can't stand when people sound all high and mighty about fluff. Plus, I can't stand the words. What's wrong with just calling them setting/story information and mechanics?

Aligning Misconceptios #6 - Lawful Good

Lawful Good is the last of the normal player alignments, as the Evil alignments are typically out of bounds for most campaigns.

Lawful Good is the "Crusader" alignment. You have your beliefs, ethics, and morals and you're sticking to them and you follow the law. This alignment is closely tied to the Paladin because they have to be Lawful Good. Lawful Good characters are often idealistic, believing in inherent goodness of everyone.

Part of this alignment is strictly following your code. How often can you violate it and still be true to it? How  flexibility to you have? Can a Lawful Good character lead a rebellion against a lawfully instated government that happens to be evil?

These questions are difficult to answer in the context of D&D, let alone real life. In the average situation, the choices are easy. You don't steal from a shopkeeper. You don't kill people without just cause. But what about the difficult choices? How can you deal if you're only immediate options are two evils? These instances are the ground for roleplay. Your character has to deal with the repercussions on a personal and interpersonal level.. If you have to slide, make it meaningful and give it life in the game.

The iconic example of Lawful Good is also a terrible example: Superman. Someone so powerful that he can never encounter a difficult choice. But he is called the "Boy Scout" for a reason.

Combat Roles #2 - Melee Soak

This role is all about the standing in a fight. You may not be dealing a lot of damage, but you can take the hits. This is a vital role to the party in combat since if you are designed to take hits, you will take them much better than someone who isn't.

There are two primary ways to fulfill this role: high armor class and high hitpoints (all the better if you manage to combine the two). High armor class keeps you from being hit while high hitpoints lets you sustain multiple hits.

This role presents has an interesting dilemma. You need to have a way to keep attention on you because if you're impossible to hit or are unfazed by any hits that do land, you're less likely to be attacked. The answer is you need to act as a source of some kind of threat for the enemies or disable their attacks. So either you deal damage so that the enemy can't ignore you, disarm them or otherwise nullify their attacks, or present yourself as the sole target by holding a choke point on the battlefield.

This role works most easily under any of the following circumstances: you have at least a d10 for hit points (although a d8 is workable, it can be rough), are able to wear heavy armor, are able to use a high dex score effectively, or have other means of ramping up your AC or hit points. Casters looking to fulfill this role should look into the Abjuration School of spells or any spells that add concealment or a miss chance.

Dirty Words in Gaming #3 - The Dump Stat

So you've got a character sheet in front of you an idea of what you want to play. You look at the stats you've rolled or the points you have to assign and you ask yourself, "What stat don't I need to worry about?" or "What stat is not crucial to my character?"

You've just asked yourself what your dump stat should be.

Dump stats are fairly self explanatory. They are the stat that you can put your lowest score into without harming your character. If you've rolled stats you can not worry about the lowest roll. If you're using a point buy, you can give yourself a few extra points by dropping the stat down to an 8 or 9.

Dump stats typically go like this: Melee characters dump mental stats, caster characters dump physical stats, and no one dumps constitution.

Is this a bad thing? Not really. It certainly can be taken to an extreme (see the fighter with 8 in Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma) Dumping on one stat is normal, dumping on all of them is severely limiting. D&D is not a game of extremes (usually), so dumping all of your mental stats makes you useless outside of combat and (usually) dumping all of your physical stats makes you useless in combat. Either of those will make you worthless in various segments of the game and that limits your fun.

Dumping one stat can actually lead to a good roleplay opportunity. A low wisdom rogue could be gullible and trusting; a low charisma wizard could be the most arrogant and off putting son of a bitch because he wields the power of the cosmos; a low intelligence sorcerer could just love seeing stuff blow up.

You don't need to dump a stat, but if you do choose to do that, give it life in your game. Don't dump intelligence and then play a brilliant character. When you create your character, you are creating the parameters that you will play with.

Aligning Misconceptions #5 - Chaotic Good

Chaotic good is the Rebel. Personal freedom for everyone, not just themselves, is paramount. Perhaps a touch undisciplined or unpredictable, they are the most dangerous kind of good because they are willing to step outside of lawful means to do what they consider is right.


They are in complete service to the greater good, and with regards to that the ends will almost always justify the means. Steal to fund a righteous war against tyranny? Perfectly ok. Torture the agent of a warlord who plans on assassinating a just king? You'll do it, but it won't make you feel good.They will fight to remove an evil or unjust government from power, but they aren't at all interested in ruling it afterwards.

Chaotic good characters won't buck any and all governments though and they do abide by laws in general, unless you want to play them as extreme anarchists. But restrict them in a way they find unreasonable or quash someone else's basic rights and they will be up in arms.

Robin Hood is the easiest character to pin as Chaotic Good. However, one thing to remember is that just because you believe in an idea (stealing from the rich to give to the poor) doesn't mean you will follow it stupidly or blindly. If you're invited into a castle as personal guests of the king, no matter how reach he is or how poor the peasants are, you probably aren't going to steal everything that isn't nailed down. (though you may help yourself to a few things if they'll won't be noticed or can be traced back to you)

Combat Roles #1 - Melee Damage

This is perhaps one of the two most basic roles in combat: that of being able to hit something consistently. At low levels, this is a critical role, as the spellcasters don't have enough spells to output enough damage to end combat quickly. In later levels, you turn into a consistent and constant source of damage.

There are two subset roles of this: infrequent swings for huge damage or frequent swings for less damage. Either tactic is completely viable, but they do require specific builds to do well. Both provide a different sort of drama to the combat. The flurry of strikes, bleeding away hit points over time, each one adding up over time, yet each attack possibly missing or the giant swing, cleaving through enemies but lacking in number.

Your feat selections will go a long way towards making the character. If you swing frequently, you want to to focus on being sure you hit every time. If you swing infrequently, you want to make each swing count so you want to improve your damage or effects.

The iconic classes that fit this role are the barbarian and the fighter; each providing different options for flavor. The basic requirements for this role are to have a good BAB, preferably full but 3/4 is certainly workable. The class needs to have a decent Strength score synergy.

If the class you are picking doesn't have the above, you can still function as the Melee Damage; however, it takes work. You need to focus on being able to hit reliable, either with spells or weapons and your damage needs to be decent.

Dirty Words in Gaming #2 - Optimization

Scheduling snafus have made this post a day late. My bad.

Last time we talked about Min-Maxing and how I think it is an ok practice since it does mimic life to an extent. But what happens when you take it too far? You cross the line into Character Optimization.

By name alone, Character Optimization doesn't sound all that bad. You are simply optimizing your character to excel in a few areas. That may be what the words mean, but that does not adequately describe the practice. Character Optimization is truly described as "what-if" thought experiments.

The practice results in character builds of ridiculous power. Characters such as Pun-Pun, The Terminator, and The Omniscificer. If you look over those characters, most likely you won't understand the way they work beyond a surface level. That's because Optimizing Characters requires a ridiculous knowledge of rules and bizarre interactions.

These characters are clearly not meant to be played as they win. However, the same techniques used to build them can be used on playable characters. This results in builds that generate near infinite attacks per round, do near infinite damage on one attack per round, cast spells with insurmountable DCs. These builds are far more subtle than the linked ones which makes them dangerous, since DMs may not be able to catch them before the game starts.

These builds are also designed to "win" at D&D. If you can do an infinite amount of damage on one attack er round, then the game isn't fun since combat will last for N rounds where N= number of monsters. Infinite attacks are just as unfun since each round you will kill one monster. This might make the game fun for the player playing the Optimized Build, but makes it incredibly boring for everyone else.

Never allow a truly optimized build in your games. You will regret it. Never play a truly optimized build in a game. You will regret it. It won't be fun, people will get bored, and feelings may get hurt.

Aligning Misconceptions #4 - Neutral Good

So we walked the line of neutrality, from chaotic to lawful and now we go into Good.

Neutral Good is the baseline for the good alignments. You are halfway between Law and Chaos, but what does that mean?

D&D calls this alignment the "Benefactor" alignment. You are interested in the "Greater Good." Laws are ok, but sometimes you need to step outside of them to accomplish aforementioned "Greater God." Freedom is important to you, but only as long as that freedom is not used to cause suffering or harm to others. There can be a touch of idealism in Neutral Good; however, this is the case with any Good alignment, since they all believe in the "Greater Good" to one extent or the other. If you can help someone, you probably will; however, that's not to say that you'll help a farmer till a field while on a quest to slay a dragon.

A great iconic example of Neutral Good is Luke Skywalker. He fights against a lawful government, goes out of his way to help others, yet disobeys orders and discards advice from his mentors/superiors.

New Schedule

As of today, I'm setting up a new schedule for posting. I have been doing one post a day per workday since I began. I'm switching to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. This will give me more time to develop the various ideas I have and help me structure what I post.

For the near future, I will be finishing my series on Alignments, The Metagame, and Combat Roles. After that, we'll see what ideas spring up.


Until tomorrow!

Combat Roles - Overview

So orcs ambush your party. Do you know what to do?

In general the answer will be "Kill the orcs." The true question behind that is how do you do that? How does your party do that? How do you help the party do that?

D&D throughout the ages has been based on the "well rounded party" of one rogue, one fighter, one wizard, and one cleric. In 4th edition, they've broadened the concept to Strikers, Defenders, Controllers, etc. These terms are derived from MMO terms, such as tank, healer and support.

3.5 exists between old D&D and 4th edition. The CRs and challenges are based off of the idea that you have a team of 4, each fulfilling their roles. But I believe that the roles in 3.5 are much more abstracted. For a party to be successful you need more than just generic roles. You need to have defined combat roles, not just class labels. Some of the roles are Battlefield Control, Ranged Damage, Arcane focus, Melee Damage, Melee Soak, Stealth/Recon, Support, and Healing to name just a few.

Some classes are clearly based off of fulfilling some of these roles. You'd be hard pressed to present a strong case that bards can act as Melee Soak. However, with the variety of feats, magical gear, and class combinations, you can fulfill any role with nearly any character.

These roles are purely abstract and completely open for debate. I'll be going over each role and as well as the theory as to why it is necessary.

Dirty Words in Gaming #1 - Min-Max

So the first topic to go over in the metagame series is about min-maxing.

But what is min-maxing? Strictly speaking it is minimizing your weaknesses while maximizing your strengths. People view this as a very negative practice in gaming. However, I don't think it is. I think that the practice can be taken too far (at which point you cross into optimization, which is a bad thing)

I think there is a fine line between min-maxing and optimization (and your definitions may be reversed than mine, so if it is, just switch the words and it'll work). The reason I don't think min-maxing is bad is because that is what we do in our lives. Very few people (relatively speaking) try to be good at everything. For any given person they will be good at some things and bad at others. In the realm of things they are good at, there are some things that they will excel at.

Knowing this, any rational person would attempt to use the skills they are good at or bring their good abilities to bear. If you are a physicist, why would you try to fix your own car? You excel at physics, not automotive repair. Even if automotive repair is a hobby, it will at best be something you are good at, not something you excel at.

And it is the same for characters. Your feat, skill, and gear selection will all tend towards what you've chosen to specialize in. As heroic characters you should excel. You should be the greatest swordsman, spell-slinger, or thief in whatever realm you are. If you aren't you wouldn't be a hero.

Aligning Misconceptions #3 - Chaotic Neutral

Chaotic Neutral has historically been a difficult alignment to play and to define. Agents of chaos, as likely to pay for a beer as they are to steal it and kick a baby in the process.

In all actuality, chaotic neutral characters are predictable in their unpredictability. In a list of ten life goals, personal freedom ranks 1-9. As long as they are free to do what they like they are happy. As soon as someone begins tightening the noose of restrictions, they will likely switch sides if offered more freedom.

They are not necessarily evil, they are self interested. They are not necessarily beneficent, they are selfish. They may work towards lofty or depraved ideals, but will always do so because it is convenient to them; and that is what separates them from chaotic good or chaotic evil. All three are rebellious but they can be distinguished by motivations. Fairness motivates good, malevolence motivates evil, and apathy motivates neutral.

An excellent example of chaotic neutral played to the hilt is Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. He plays loose and easy with his loyalties, he does what seems most beneficial to him at any given moment, yet he manages to work within a group for a higher goal (as long as the goal doesn't impinge upon his freedom).