Someone explain it to me, because I just don’t get it.

Matt
You bring up some good points. The first thing I’d like to make clear is that it does not have to be one or the other…it’s not “roll vs. role” for many of us. I’m an avid role player, as hopefully anyone who has played at a table with me can attest. I love the story, I want to achieve some goals within the world, and I want folks to remember my character in the next version of the Campaign in 5 years.

However, the adventures aren’t won on ‘story’ unfortunately. You can have the best Diplomatic, Suave, Troubled-Past Reluctant Hero RP going on, but at some point in the game, combat is going to break out. It’s inevitable and I’ve yet to see a module that didn’t have at least 1-2 tough fights. To succeed (and survive in many cases), characters need to be ‘effective’ when it comes to encounters. In the end, things come down to dice rolls and like it or not, all the great RP won’t turn that near miss into a hit (Fate will but that’s also a mechanic). That doesn’t mean every character has to be ‘optimized’ or ‘min-maxxed’ to be ‘effective’. As Josh correctly points out, a character should have 2-3 concepts to focus on, one they are great at, a few they are good at and the rest come along for the ride. Maybe the ‘great’ focus is healing, maybe it’s assisting your allies, maybe it’s casting spells with high CTN’s that obliterate your foes…but in the end it’s ‘something’.

This doesn’t mean the game is reduced to number crunching. Most players are going to choose characters and abilities that fit their concept, maybe tweak a few around based on the rules, and then fill in the gaps with other things. However, when it comes time to decide between two weapons, or two maneuvers, or two spells, a lot of times it may come down to numbers (or other mechanics). It’s been pointed out many times that all Talents, Weapons, Tricks, etc. are not created equal or even ‘balanced’ and this is by design. That’s fine, there are some strong options and some weaker options. Taking a mix of the two can still make an effective character. Taking too many weak options can really hurt your enjoyment if you continually fail at skill rolls, fail to hit, can’t use the talents you’ve chosen for your concept and the like.

Most of the analysis that I’ve been doing is to help characters understand their damage potential. Again, every adventure is going to have combat. If your characters want to survive in Tier 2 and beyond where things hit harder, have higher defenses, and better abilities, there is some analysis to do. We’ve already shown that Threat defenses/abilities progress at a higher rate than PC’s, so making the most out of what’s available to a character is key. That doesn’t mean characters need to sacrifice the cool ‘flavor’ or ‘concept’ choices, but for those choices that are being made as part of a character’s combat focus, it’s nice to know the options and how they shake out. For instance, if it really doesn’t matter to your character if you use a small or large shield, knowing the mechanical differences might help you choose.

Well that’s all for now, as I have some pork roast to cook I guess in summary, again I’ll repeat, paying attention to the mechanics and doing some analysis doesn’t mean that you can’t also play your concept how you want and enjoy the RP a lot. Kelb certainly isn’t ‘optimized’ from any perspective, but he’s a fun, interesting character to play. However, I do strive to make some good decisions when it comes to contributing in combat.

John

Everyone gets something different out of RPGs.

At the end of the day, the thing I most enjoy about any RPG is the tactical combat. Perhaps that makes me a ‘rollplayer’, but it is what I like. I do enjoy the entire experience, but my focus is mechanics based.

Like I said, I get that others have different aspects of the game that they prefer….and that is fine. There is nothing wrong with effectiveness. I love tactical combat as well. For me, the only “rollplayers” are the individuals who barely pay attention to what is going on and ask every now and then if we are in a fight yet. I bought one of the Agamassi Gladiators, for Pete’s sake….I will make him a bloody, snorting, killing machine. But there is no way in hell I am just going to sit back and wait for fights….I am going to be involved in every scene.

I just want to remind everyone that, especially with Arcanis, true character/story motivations should always trump “optimization”.

I wholeheartedly agree that ‘optimization’ is lame, though I will say that I am at least partially guilty of this myself. After all, I play a Val who built my character around the ability to knock out enemies in one or two hits. I built my character to Smite/Mighty Swing/Forward Stance, then I added Avalanche Runes to the mix. He is almost as effective at hitting and casting as I can make him.

Then again, I made a lot of ‘stupid’ choices in my character build. He is a Divine Caster/Initiate, which means I lose 1-3 Talents in my built. He is a war-priest, even though his Melee skill won’t keep up to Martial characters, meaning he will become ‘sub-par’ by Tier III. He uses a Flamberge, which is (according to number crunchers) the 2nd least effective weapon class (d10/6 Ticks). Hell, I put ranks into Perform: Singing–considered to be a useless skill–because one throwaway references (in I believe the Canceri sourcebook) said that Cancerese Nierites (of which he is descended) have a fairly strong bardic tradition of War Ballads.

I personally think that ALL players should make a character CONCEPT before they make their character. Even if you don’t have that much knowledge of the universe, there are several tropes that you can fill. I wanted to make a Divine Caster because as someone who has no religion (and is, admittedly, rather scornful of the concept of religion), playing a ‘True Believer’ is my version of playing the cartoonishly evil people a lot of people play in D&D campaigns. I made my character completely based on my old 3.5 Arcanis character, complete with backstory relating Nils val’Emman to Haakon Marcus val’Virdan before even the Quickstart Rules were released. I built a character, and then I fit the rules into that framework. Of course, I tried to make as effective a character as I could within that framework, but I still built on a character rather than a mechanic.

I actually think the best example of building a character who is remarkably useful despite taking a subpar path to get there was a guy named Kevin. He played 3.5 Arcanis before I did, but was never in it for more than a laugh. As such, he made a character that was focused on punching people in the face and being as chaotic as he could. He didn’t care about doing damage (really), nor did he care about being able to be the ultimate warrior. So, he chose a combination which made NO sense at the time (unarmed, mercenary, dark-kin, acrobatic, and going for Cat Burgler and Assassin), but when it came to combat, he was one of the most effective people at the table. Granted, this is because unarmed and daggers work REALLY well against low-armour, minion-level enemies that formed the majority of early mod encounters, but even taking ‘sub-par’ builds, he made an effective character.

Well as a specific response, I only started down the math things because I was interested and bored at work an (unfortunate) common occurance, and math is one of my strengths. I love the hell out of the story but i can’t make it my bitch like I can with math.

I’m trying to see where people are saying there are dips, from certain talents and such, but im not seeing them or havent looked in the right places yet

I’d be curious which ones you’re looking into. Maybe an extra pair of eyes or someone to bounce thoughts off of is needed.

let me know

John

I have no problem with players optimizing their characters. People should play however they want and if it meets the vision of a character concept in mind, more the power to them. However, my only bone of contention is the steady stream of forum posts knocking talents, weapons, combos, etc and emphasizing the ‘perceived’ flaws in the rules. When these posts come from those that should be promoting the game, it becomes somewhat of a head scratcher…because I wonder what is exactly being promoted. If I was a new player on these boards with one of those builds, I’d feel like my character would be impotent in play and perhaps come to the conclusion that this game is not for me and would need to look elsewhere for something simpler. Just a thought

I’m of two minds on this.

I get an immense amount out enjoyment on the character generation / building front, I view it as a super complex logic problem, where there are “optimal” paths that produce a more focused character, that’s good at a few things. So yeah they, are a bit more optimized than other characters BUT at character creation that means 1-2 more points in skills and maybe a talent that’s more in line with the characters focus.

The ARPG system is really good at starting people on a pretty even starting level, however like any systems its possible to create characters that don’t start at that average starting level, just as easily as it is to create characters that start above that level.

Delbert is optimized, and he is a Human Martial Templar of Hurrian, going along the Knight and Holy Champion Paths. I think that the most “optimized” characters are the ones that have the most material made for them.

On the other hand, I can see where its very easy to become less “focused” in character generation, or to become focused in something that’s not pertinent as often (as often as combat say) for example crafting is something VERY important to Dwarves, but hasn’t had any impact on the Arcanis campaign, that might be why we don’t have a lot of dwarves in the campaign, because the things they are fall into easily dont mesh with the campaign as much, and the ones we do see out there tend to be the outliers.

And I thought I had responded to Joe previously.

Joe you bring up some great points. You are right, and I’m totally listening.