Ttrpg desing questions

Do you think that in rpgs, in general, a minimally skilled character should have a chance of winning over a maximally skilled character, without criticals or exploding dice or that kind of things, just by a pure roll?

Depends on the circumstances.

A maximum skill Gambler and a minimum skill Gambler playing a single hand of poker? Skill gives a slight edge in playing the odds and building a decent hand, but even then it's only going to be a bit better then a coin toss who wins.

I think so but there is a point in which power levels become pretty much unavoidable.

>but there is a point in which power levels become pretty much unavoidable.
What do you mean?

Maybe at the lowest 'levels' or level equivalent of the game, otherwise fuck no, one of the worst feelings in any RPG out there is having something you specialized your character in shit the bed while someone with no training or talent manages to beat you. There's a reason this kind of thing is an extreme longshot in systems like Shadowrun and GURPS.

There is a point in which the idea of someone beating someone tremendously more skilled at something than they are wihout the help of ludicrously extraordinary condistions to give him the upper hand becomes ridiculous.

what if you want to discourage too much character specialization, or min-maxing?

a bump in hopes of a few more opinions

There's no way any of us will ever beat Lebron in a 1v1 basketball game.

No, they shouldn't. A good TTRPG rewards system mastery and should therefore reward those who seek to study certain specific builds and combo's with better general effectiveness. Only things like crits and pure luck should be able to tip the balance (much like how I could technically take out The Rock with a lucky punch to the throat).

This entire question is moot however, as the problem with powergamers isn't that they're more effective than more casual players. The problem is twofold in many systems (especially D&D 3.x):
1. Lack of system mastery is punished severely. There are so many trap options that you can't just pick a character, slap on some feats/skills that sound cool and go to town. Woe to the 3.x players who thought the monk sounds cool.
2. Powergamers aren't just more effective than casual players, they make almost everybody else in their party redundant.

There's a mathematically negligible but not non-existant chance that I could 1v1 Lebron if I get really lucky throws and he gets really shitty ones. But like I said, mathematically negligible.

to represent the hilarious odds of a granny sucker punching bruce lee in the face with her purse?
sure, go right ahead

there is always that million to one chance that that the air really was in the path of their arrow

What is your design philosophy?

>2. Powergamers aren't just more effective than casual players, they make almost everybody else in their party redundant.

As far as 3.X is concerned, that's wrong. An optimized martial is nowhere near as campaign breaking as even a badly played druid or wizard.

>Implying the powergamer choses a horribly underpowered class that even all the goodwill in the world can't help improve
>Implying newbies want to play something as micromanage heavy as a druid or wizard
Admittedly the druid is the only fool proof class in the game (with clerics a close, falling just short) but most guys don't want to study the intricacies of a complex casting system from day one.

The ideal newbie class would be a not-shit ranger. You spend the first few levels as a pure martial, and by level 4 (when you probably mastered melee combat) you can dabble into spellcasting.

Regarding this topic?
I don't personally think the barely skilled character should by pure roll beat the expert one. If you have criticals/explosive dices/etc. then maybe those could give the chance.
I'm a retard though, that's why I made this thread to see some insight to the topic, and see if my thoughts on the topic was really retarded

Way I see it if a character excelled in one field they should best those who don’t have the same skill level in that regard

Then a specialist should face the threat of situations they are unskilled at whereas a jack of all trades would not need to worry

>system mastery
Fuck off Monte.

I say that most cases yeah. If you are tring to get info they don't have, or convince them that something they know to be true isn't you fail a speech check against them. If you have guns in your game skill, levels, and other factors might to matter when confronted with a bullet. If you take time as a factor your skill might not help you preform an act fast just well. Perhaps it can't be done fast and its simply luck who wins.

>No, they shouldn't. A good TTRPG rewards system mastery and should therefore reward those who seek to study certain specific builds and combo's with better general effectiveness.

That's a very weird criteria to have for a "good TTRPG".

I'd go ahead and say that the majority of TTRPGs don't fit that criteria (though some of the most popular ones happen to).

No such thing as mastering a game I run. No amout of points in charisma gets you anywhere if you just drop questions or commands on npcs. They and I as a GM are human. I have had sever that guys walk out on games when they use their in game skill to try and fuck a female npc and i try and make em roleplay it out.

Depends on the system and situational things that could give the poorly skilled character an advantage

Not OP but since this thread is here I might as well not make a new one. Trying to make a tabletop game that centers around choosing 3 heroes and pitting them against another persons 3 heroes. But my question is what are some good ways of tracking buffs and debuffs? Like say a characters gets poisoned or maimed that reduces their movement? What are good ways of tracking this info especially if the slow is only for 2 turns or something like that? Should their be cards with counters or something? Anyone have ideas?

If you require a roll from someone then there should be a chance for success. In fact there should be a palpatable chance of success, otherwise it's a waste of time to roll and allowing a roll with an infinitesimal chance of success is essentially a roll under the assumption of guaranteed failure just to avoid the confrontation born from denying the roll outright, only with the added risk of breaking the scene via comically unlikely success.

It is the GM's job to deny rolls that cannot possibly succeed, but one must also consider that they are playing a game with character's that are not as strictly bound by the rules of reality, which is the intention behind playing, after all. How much realism the group wants in their game is up to the individual and thereby less of a concern for the game designer, as the game designer simply cannot make a comprehensive rule as to what rolls a GM should allow and what not.

>Do you think that [...] a minimally skilled character should have a chance of winning over a maximally skilled character [...] just by a pure roll?
Winning purely by chance? Fuck no.
Winning because you stacked all the possible advantages in your favor and it merely looks like random chance? Fuck yes.

This is all true, but I was thinking more from a game desing perspective. Should a game be desinged to allow the minimally skilled a chance at rolling over the maximally skilled.

If you're talking about a purely hypothetical situation, where there's a minimally-skilled character and a maximally-skilled character that do a thing, without any outside interference or interference from each other, then, no, the minimally-skilled character shouldn't be allowed to roll over the maximally-skilled one.

The thing is, if we're talking reality, there's a lot of things that can interfere, not necessarily improving the quality of work of minimally-skilled character, but rather sabotaging the maximally-skilled character's efforts.

That was what I was addressing? If there is a mechanic that allows a minimal skill character to roll against a maxed out one, then there should be a chance to succeed for the minimal skill one, or there would be no mechanic to begin with, because there could be no interaction, only performing a ritual of rolling random dice before announcing the foregone conclusion.

The trick for the game desinger is to gauge just how much a of a skill difference his system should accurately represent via it's mechanics, without the chance of success becoming so remote that the disadvantaged player would be too frustrated to partake. It is a balancing act between indicating a vast difference in skill and keeping the game interesting.

And again, if the skill difference is simply too large to be believable, then there simply should be no roll and thus no game mechanic will be involved.

As an example: A cavemen migt hit the modern soldier in a duel with firearms but he will never beat the scientist in a race to building a quantum computer.

Ah, thank you for elaborating, I thought you were talking more from the running side of things, as wether a player get's to roll or not is more from the side of GM communication than straight up rules telling you not to roll.

"The world's best swordsman doesn't fear the second best; he fears the worst swordsman, because he can't predict what the idiot will do."
As long as you are aggressive and unpredictable you should have a small chance. Though when it comes to fighting you are properly still goint to die, even when you get a lucky hit.

No. Criticals and exploding dice exist specifically to allow it, so there's no reason to allow it otherwise.

Should 2 minimally skilled characters be able to give a high-tier character a challenge given that they are all on equal footing, with equal equipment

Lebron could get a heart attack in the middle of the game.

I'd say not really, but it depends on how you want your battles to feel, what kind of game is this and the setting. If it's a gun fight, yes, they should, if it's a melee fight I'd say no, unless they're lucky or have some advantage, and in a magical fight I'd say they shouldn't.

I'm not sure why you think that has to happen via someone going full autist on a single skill.

>what if you want to discourage too much character specialization, or min-maxing?
Why would you do that?

Because the game isn't just a mob slaying grinder, and a more human-like character would be more rewarding in the system and it's narrative elements.

You say that as if humans don't specialize to be good at shit IRL. Hell, a properly min-max'd character wouldn't be too different than an idiot savant if taken to its logical conclusion.

A player most likely wouldn't take it to it's logical conclusion though.

That apply only in combat, and most encounter with an idiot result in the idiot death.

How so? Most people will outright dump INT and CHA unless they're playing classes that depend on those stats specifically.

But they most likely wont play crude idiots in the game.
Having something that requires you to stat your character in a certain way is retarded as hell though, especially if you want them to roleplay those stats. Really limits the kind of characters you can roleplay in something like dnd.
Dnd really isn't a roleplaying game though, it's a boardgame with some roleplaying elements shoved in.

>But they most likely wont play crude idiots in the game.
Okay? Being a poor roleplayer is a separate issue entirely and usually it only crops up when the GM isn't sure about whether he wants INT/CHA skills to be roleplay (which would make it dependent on the player's input) or gameplay (which would require a roll with the correct modifier).

I've been in games where the GM's focused on your argument rather than the numbers attached to your CHA, I've been in games where diplomacy required a roll, but even after playing for 5 years I've yet to see a consensus on which way is preferred until after we've already started, which is why I only focus on CHA/INT if I'm playing a class that actually uses it.

For the record, most games suffer the same issue.

Frankly, no.

If a first level character in D&D rolls a nat 20 to hit with a BAB of 1 against a cr5 mob with 25 AC, the natural 20 didn't mean shit. Fuck your "20's always hit" rule. Stats exist for a reason.

Now if a first level player with a sense motive of 3 rolls a nat 20 against a sixth level town guard NPC who has 14 points in bluff but rolls a 1, then fine, a first level character could see through a seasoned liars bluff, but that's dependent on both a decent success and a terrible failure, not one or the other.

Do otherwise normal people accidentally pull off amazing feats? Sure. Remember that time you tossed a balled up piece of paper into a wastebasket that was clear on the other side of the room? Dare you to do it twice in a row.

That's what we call balanced potential outcomes.

Can it happen? Sure.
Will it happen? Almost definitely not

Lebron's never never had an injury greater than a sprain. The man's built like a Greek god