Armageddon by the Numbers: Character Attribute Generation
Sept 9, 2018 12:39:53 GMT -5
punished ppurg, sirra, and 3 more like this
Post by OT on Sept 9, 2018 12:39:53 GMT -5
Oh, the stat system is a travesty. I've had characters come out with AA/A/BA/A, and I've had characters of the same race/guild/age roll EX/EG/EG/VG. That's an insane level of variance. That second character is going to perform twice as well as the first one in all matters related to combat and survival. He's going to live through numerous situations that would each have killed the other. He's going to have whole new options enabled to him, like wearing silt-horror armor and using special weapons with better attributes. He'll be able to climb decently even without the skill, he'll be able to survive an additional room of falling, he'll be able to have barrier active without dropping below the threshold where a climb critfail or maxed sap knocks you unconscious. And most importantly, these things will determine his role in plots.
Contrary to what the GDB morons will insist (purely in order to humblebrag and look like altruistic roleplayers), stats absolutely will make or break a combat character. If you're sporting good strength, average agility and 96 health, your character will never become a powerhouse. I don't care if you miraculously live long enough to max all your skills out, you will never be doing wounding+ on every attack or surviving 5-room falls. You will never have undetectable stealth. You will never beat that dude who has the same skills as you but much better stats.
Look at agility. The difference between 14 human agility (G) and 19 (EX) is 10 points in the 'react' substat. That's +10 to nearly every combat roll, from parrying to reversing disarms. 10 points in parry alone is incredibly noticeable. The gulf in parry between rangers and warriors in the old class system was 15 points, and that was a class-defining difference. 10 points is half a skill category for most skills. It's the difference between being halfway into advanced and being a master. Oh, and the difference between average and AI human agility is 25 points to all stealth skills, from hide and sneak to steal and sleight of hand.
Look at strength. The difference between 14 human strength (G) and 19 (EX) is +4 points of damage per attack, in a game where weapons typically have a base damage of like 1-8. That's +50% damage, before the location multiplier! If you hit the head or neck, it's more like +200% damage. If you have exceptional strength, half your hits will be vicious and grievous. +4 damage is more than the difference between a bone and metal weapon. A dude with strength in the upper end of the spectrum and the worst sword in the game is more deadly than a dude with middling strength and the best sword in the game.
Look at endurance. If your human rolled good endurance, you'll be lucky to have more than 100 hp and stun. If you rolled exceptional, you could have as much as 130. In a game with essentially no form of immediate healing and dozens of things that happen to deal right around 100 damage - high backstab rolls, the biggest damage spells, critfail climbs, archery head/neck crits - a 20-30% difference in hp/stun is gigantic. It's the difference between dying to most of the game's particularly dangerous events and surviving them nearly every time.
It's fucking insane to let that kind of variance be up to pure blind luck. You would get laughed out of the industry if you proposed to have that sort of randomness in any other genre of gaming; but in one with permadeath and free-for-all PvP, it's apparently fine? Look at other comparable games like Shadows of Isildur, AtonementRPI and whatnot. They have total stat pools that are fairly static and let the randomness fall within that framework so that if you didn't roll high in one thing, you will in another. What are the negatives of such a system? None whatsoever, unless you're the kind of player who will suicide until you get a great roll and then jerk off to the advantage it gives you over others. The positives? Characters are not blindly rendered sub-par or superhuman from the start, and if you want special advantages, you have to actually earn them.
Armageddon's level of stat variance is not even realistic. It's right there in the documentation that Zalanthas is a world where only the best survive. There shouldn't be individuals who are far worse than the norm in terms of sheer raw potential, because they wouldn't make it. There shouldn't be Byn sergeants who aren't noticeably strong, quick, tough or smart; yet somehow, Armageddon has fostered this contrived OOC culture where praising bad stats is some kind of bizarre virtue, like it makes you a better roleplayer if you welcome an arbitrary disadvantage that you neither chose nor got anything in return for. This is the kind of inane nonsense you get in a community where people feel compelled to humblebrag and present themselves as morally superior because they eye an opportunity to gain karma from looking like good boys and girls.
All the other RPIs have had better stat systems. When D&D modernized, it adopted better stat systems. There is no fucking game devised since people started to understand what's appropriate that employs such a pants-on-head retarded stat system. There is no merit to the arbitrary nature of one's character coming out either pointlessly handicapped or supremely gifted based on total randomness. It serves no purpose, it's annoying, it affects gameplay in unnecessary ways, and it's so fucking outdated that anyone who defends the idea is someone who does not deserve to have their opinions taken seriously.
Contrary to what the GDB morons will insist (purely in order to humblebrag and look like altruistic roleplayers), stats absolutely will make or break a combat character. If you're sporting good strength, average agility and 96 health, your character will never become a powerhouse. I don't care if you miraculously live long enough to max all your skills out, you will never be doing wounding+ on every attack or surviving 5-room falls. You will never have undetectable stealth. You will never beat that dude who has the same skills as you but much better stats.
Look at agility. The difference between 14 human agility (G) and 19 (EX) is 10 points in the 'react' substat. That's +10 to nearly every combat roll, from parrying to reversing disarms. 10 points in parry alone is incredibly noticeable. The gulf in parry between rangers and warriors in the old class system was 15 points, and that was a class-defining difference. 10 points is half a skill category for most skills. It's the difference between being halfway into advanced and being a master. Oh, and the difference between average and AI human agility is 25 points to all stealth skills, from hide and sneak to steal and sleight of hand.
Look at strength. The difference between 14 human strength (G) and 19 (EX) is +4 points of damage per attack, in a game where weapons typically have a base damage of like 1-8. That's +50% damage, before the location multiplier! If you hit the head or neck, it's more like +200% damage. If you have exceptional strength, half your hits will be vicious and grievous. +4 damage is more than the difference between a bone and metal weapon. A dude with strength in the upper end of the spectrum and the worst sword in the game is more deadly than a dude with middling strength and the best sword in the game.
Look at endurance. If your human rolled good endurance, you'll be lucky to have more than 100 hp and stun. If you rolled exceptional, you could have as much as 130. In a game with essentially no form of immediate healing and dozens of things that happen to deal right around 100 damage - high backstab rolls, the biggest damage spells, critfail climbs, archery head/neck crits - a 20-30% difference in hp/stun is gigantic. It's the difference between dying to most of the game's particularly dangerous events and surviving them nearly every time.
It's fucking insane to let that kind of variance be up to pure blind luck. You would get laughed out of the industry if you proposed to have that sort of randomness in any other genre of gaming; but in one with permadeath and free-for-all PvP, it's apparently fine? Look at other comparable games like Shadows of Isildur, AtonementRPI and whatnot. They have total stat pools that are fairly static and let the randomness fall within that framework so that if you didn't roll high in one thing, you will in another. What are the negatives of such a system? None whatsoever, unless you're the kind of player who will suicide until you get a great roll and then jerk off to the advantage it gives you over others. The positives? Characters are not blindly rendered sub-par or superhuman from the start, and if you want special advantages, you have to actually earn them.
Armageddon's level of stat variance is not even realistic. It's right there in the documentation that Zalanthas is a world where only the best survive. There shouldn't be individuals who are far worse than the norm in terms of sheer raw potential, because they wouldn't make it. There shouldn't be Byn sergeants who aren't noticeably strong, quick, tough or smart; yet somehow, Armageddon has fostered this contrived OOC culture where praising bad stats is some kind of bizarre virtue, like it makes you a better roleplayer if you welcome an arbitrary disadvantage that you neither chose nor got anything in return for. This is the kind of inane nonsense you get in a community where people feel compelled to humblebrag and present themselves as morally superior because they eye an opportunity to gain karma from looking like good boys and girls.
All the other RPIs have had better stat systems. When D&D modernized, it adopted better stat systems. There is no fucking game devised since people started to understand what's appropriate that employs such a pants-on-head retarded stat system. There is no merit to the arbitrary nature of one's character coming out either pointlessly handicapped or supremely gifted based on total randomness. It serves no purpose, it's annoying, it affects gameplay in unnecessary ways, and it's so fucking outdated that anyone who defends the idea is someone who does not deserve to have their opinions taken seriously.
