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

Hi Henry,

Its interesting to hear your thoughts on this. I think the overwhelming majority of us are here for a deeper gaming experience than some of the “popcorn” mods we sometimes see in other living style campaigns. Like you we care about the Arcanis Story. And all its secrets. I for one am not leaving until I know the creation story of the val’Holryn. At the same time PCI has made game that is fairly complicated mechanically.

…snip… So now in Legends of Arcanis, we are faced with a situation that certain players are once again optimizing themselves and waltzing through combats. Writers hear about this and want to up their game and we have the Arms Race all over again.
J
…snip…

This is why I have been and will remain against the need to optimize characters for combat. It’s about the story, not how many points you did on average.

People need to get out of this D20/WoW mentality. The philosophy of the Arcanis system was that each and every character was a three-dimensional hero on his/her own. No one needs to specialize to be the Tank or the Healer; each character could theoretically be lifted from a group and be able to hold their own.
So – as I see it, we optimize at our peril because I just don’t see a way where we’re all winners in such an environment.

Henry I want to be respectful, but I think its possible that there some very mixed messages coming out from the campaign on this subject.

There is the prologue of the Codex of Hero’s … Which made me laugh when I read it, but is also an ode to the roll side of roleplaying. FTW indeed!

There is also your mod Desecration. My personal opinion is that it has the hardest final combat outside of the toughest scenarios in a BIs. And you also specifically tell judges that if they fudge the encounter to make it easier they should then award half xp to the players. Again its my opinion, but I can see a party lacking a couple of very competent fighters getting creamed or TPK’d. And of course if you want full xp for the mod then you have a strong incentive to be able to bring the heat.

The fight with the Fiendish Huntsman could also be pretty ugly for a party of patricians.

Do you see these as incentives to look at the mechanical side of builds? Or have i misinterpreted these two examples?

I only offered my spreadsheet of stat combinations not for optimization but for making character generation quicker. Although, I do look at optimizations. I have a ss’ressen worked out to go down the Adherent of the Claw and be able to cast Path of the Drake in Tier 4, and able to use armor runes while in drake form. So, I am guilty of placing in the arms race. I take part in optimizing because I am not the only person there to play and have fun. And so far, I have never used this ss’ressen.

One of the incidents I hated back in the 3.x days, I tried to roleplay and instead was forced into combat. We were waiting for a ship to arrive at the docks. The ship arrived. I considered the plan to act as the dock master going to register the ship and ask about cargo and business. My character walks down the pier acting as this is normal business, and then combat starts. What happened to subtlety and procedures? Half way down, and the crew starts firing guns.

With softballing, I understand most sides of the situation. I even went through concepts of structuring a living campaign system, and all I can find is no ultimate solution. It comes down to respecting the balance. It is up to the GMs to reward XP. It sucks to cut down the XP and rewards because the party was not properly balanced for the module, even after how much time and effort the party threw into it. On the other hand, your characters did not succeed, so why should they have the good ending? I still remember the one game that lasted 15 minutes where the player who got Fleshreaper in the intro encounter misunderstood the curse and killed the primary NPC while the rest of the party was sleeping. Got nothing. Couldn’t replay the module. With current rules, can’t get full rewards if replayed.

If only there were perks for having a well-populated graveyard…

I have to admit I’ve been waiting for an opportunity….

From what I’ve seen Arcanis is the Anti-ROLE, Anti-ROLL RPG. No classes, so no roles. Thin but flexible crunch (compared to DnD and PFS) so ROLLS are not emphasized. Why not market this as the PCI strength?

“Arcanis: Putting Character in fantasy RPG’s?” (Or something to that effect)

As for me, I would have come back to Arcanis sooner if I’d seen Henry say this five years ago. As near as I can tell there are a LOT of folks in PFS land that are looking for just that. A character based fantasy system. So, with the new website, is there any chance we can get a short Youtube video of Henry talking about the very concerns he raised in this thread posted to the website main page? I think that kind of candor would be a great advertisement.
That sounds like a great idea to me.

P.S.
Pardon my ignorance, but what’s ‘PFS’?