pnp rules for shorties

[Mayhem]

So - you think we should strip away all size related penalties *and* bonuses, to level the playing feild?

[Blackwill]

So - you think we should strip away all size related penalties *and* bonuses, to level the playing feild?

[sarcasm]
Even better, let's just get rid of all racial bonuses so that it's all balanced beter. No wait, let's get rid of races all together.
[/sarcasm]

[HDB]

No no no..I got..its been my brain child since........

Classes......all of them...and I mean all......can add any skill/feat/proficiency,.......and I mean from anywhere.........the same for alignments, abilities,...........anything can go with anything.........the Races....they will all be a beige skinned, pointy eared, beings......and of course,...they will have a spliced version of all racial abilites from planars to kobolds..........
...........................Oh oh oh..........to top it off........bleed time dry.....break free into a boundless, played and burned out realm..............were elves were horses who built time.............wraiths that ruled over warring pixie primes and colluded all into extinction, for the love of a set of artifacts, orginally designed to wipe out draconic interferance, ending planar conflict


I like diversification....and infact would keep it around........just seems the the expanding edge of our game has perpetually lost it more and more as each new company took over.


.........HDB.

[Dorn]

So - you think we should strip away all size related penalties *and* bonuses, to level the playing feild?

Interesting point.

[Mulu]

So - you think we should strip away all size related penalties *and* bonuses, to level the playing feild?

No, I think we should not add penalties without also adding benefits, because it *unlevels* the playing field to do so, which is exactly what adding short stature move rates without any concomitant evade ability would do. This should be a rather obvious point in any balance argument.

Slowing down short folk is beyond just a nerf, it actually makes you unable to avoid a hostile, ever, without really good stealth. And I assume that racial speeds will stack with armor speeds, so that a dwarf fighter (or hin cleric for that matter) in full plate is effectively walking in jello? I know what I'm not going to play....

I also know who is *not* going to be invited to come along on any patrols.

Now, throw in fatigue so that if they jog to try to keep up they end up with constitution and strength penalties (which then triggers encumbrance and slows them down even more). Then have their weapon break when they try to defend themselves against the hostiles they can't avoid. Then make them rest for 3 RL minutes for realism (or 53 minutes if you really want to make it realistic).

Then watch all ALFA servers show 0/20, permanently. This is my aforementioned path to gameworld death. Make it unpleasant enough, and people will choose to play elsewhere. I know I would, since I've done it before. What seems "cool" on paper oftentimes is disastrous in game, and is really only "cool" for a very small subset of pure simulationist gamers anyway. You know, the kind who don't get out much.

[Mayhem]

So - you think we should strip away all size related penalties *and* bonuses, to level the playing feild?

No, I think we should not add penalties without also adding benefits, because it *unlevels* the playing field to do so, which is exactly what adding short stature move rates without any concomitant evade ability would do.

+1 to Hit.
+1 To dodge
+4 To Hide

Those are the bonuses you get specifically for being small, compared to the penalty of -10 to movement. These bonuses, as you request, have been added to short characters as a balance for their reduced speed.

A reduced speed that is identical to all their medium buddies in anything greater than medium armour, btw.

At the moment, you are getting the pros without the cons.

As for the "I'll never be able to run away" thing - well, by rights pretty much anything on 4 or six legs should be faster than a human, too, so none of us should be relying on being able to run away all the time.

And I assume that racial speeds will stack with armor speeds, so that a dwarf fighter (or hin cleric for that matter) in full plate is effectively walking in jello? I know what I'm not going to play....

You assume incorrectly, for 2 reasons.

1) In 3.5 its a racial schtick that dwarves suffer no movement speed penalties from armour or heavy loads.

2) For Hin and Gnomes in medium or heavy armour, the movement speed is 15, only 5 feet slower than their heavily armoured buddy.

And because of the size rules, assuming 3.5 armour rules, BTW, a Hin in the best (non-enchanced) light armour, a chainmail shirt costing 100gp, will have EXACTLY THE SAME AC AND MOVEMENT SPEED as a medium sized character in either of the best two types of medium armour, which both cost more, have worse Max Dex bonuses, and much worse skill-check penalties.

For any AC up to +5 (anything other than heavy armour, in other words), a Hin is actually better off than his human and elven colleagues!

(And a hin for whom heavy armour is actually worthwhile, due to their STR penalties and Dex Bonuses, is pretty unusual even if you don't take the movement speed into account.)

[sarcasm]
Even better, let's just get rid of all racial bonuses so that it's all balanced beter. No wait, let's get rid of races all together.
[/sarcasm]

"The con penalty for elven fighters is so inconvenient. Lets scrap it, but keep the dex bonus. "

"The RP disadvantages of playing a Drow in an ordinary town suck - I should get to play a drow with all their leetness without the inconvenience of everyone hating me."

"I like humans, but I think I should get the same ability to see in the dark as every other race"

How is that different from "I want all the advantages to being 3 feet tall but with none of the penalties." ?

[AlmightyTDawg]

+1 to Hit.
+1 To dodge
+4 To Hide

Those are the bonuses you get specifically for being small, compared to the penalty of -10 to movement. These bonuses, as you request, have been added to short characters as a balance for their reduced speed.

A reduced speed that is identical to all their medium buddies in anything greater than medium armour, btw.

At the moment, you are getting the pros without the cons.

The hit they take comes partially out of -2 to STR (which is, excluding weapon finesse, often considered the dual/advantage of hit and damage like DEX and CON), and partially out of reduced weapon capacities, which by and large is roughly a 20 - 33% damage rate reduction. Of course, this isn't necessarily critical to caster classes, but again things like carrying capacities and what not count as well.

It may not be a perfect balance, but it's not so bad that its's caused a flood of shorties - outside of the infamous hin rogue/ranger build.

As for the "I'll never be able to run away" thing - well, by rights pretty much anything on 4 or six legs should be faster than a human, too, so none of us should be relying on being able to run away all the time.

We also don't include things like morale, unhungry mobs, intimidation, escape capabilities, nor do we have a full party system. Couple that to low advancement and lots more random encounters per level and it's a decent up front balance. Personally I'm not amused with RP of people who expect to be able to run from dire bears, but I recognize where it's coming out of. I'm also not amused by people who expect to be able to make a three server hop and back to buy gear in the midst of a time-sensitive plot - that doesn't mean I think one can easily legislate against it. Some issues are just too minor to be worth the trouble of overdone responses.

[sarcasm]
Even better, let's just get rid of all racial bonuses so that it's all balanced beter. No wait, let's get rid of races all together.
[/sarcasm]

"The con penalty for elven fighters is so inconvenient. Lets scrap it, but keep the dex bonus. "

"The RP disadvantages of playing a Drow in an ordinary town suck - I should get to play a drow with all their leetness without the inconvenience of everyone hating me."

"I like humans, but I think I should get the same ability to see in the dark as every other race"

How is that different from "I want all the advantages to being 3 feet tall but with none of the penalties." ?

The only possibly unbalanced straight race would be dwarves. Half-orcs and half-elves tend to get a bit of the shaft for racial abilities comparatively, but every race has its own build preferences. There are relative balances already. The balance that movement might otherwise provide is grossly overstated for the format.

[HDB]

So - you think we should strip away all size related penalties *and* bonuses, to level the playing feild?

Take a step back for a second.............

Right from the red box set, thousand of game testers adn designers have tweeked and fiddled the dice system to harness the best all incomapssing game they could. Heck they even went overboard and added the so called optional ones of "tournament/core/canon" for fanatics.
For ALFAns to try to fiddle with it is at best foolish. We are RP, PnP devotees. should we not then be trying to trust their establlished balance and work it into our ACR.

.....................HDB.

[Mulu]

+1 to Hit.
+1 To dodge
+4 To Hide

Those are the bonuses you get specifically for being small, compared to the penalty of -10 to movement. These bonuses, as you request, have been added to short characters as a balance for their reduced speed.

This assumes that the NWN implementation is unbalanced in favor of shorties, since it doesn't have the reduced speed which you state as the only balancing factor for those benefits. But as TDawg pointed out, there are many disadvantages that you failed to consider.

But the biggest issue is this isn't PnP. Systems that are balanced for PnP may not be balanced in NWN, since they don't take into account the real time nature of combat and extremely limited options to a hostile encounter. I mean, lets face it, you can throw a rock behind a hostile to distract it in PnP. That simply isn't going to happen with a computer controlled hostile. Ultimately you are comparing apples and oranges by comparing what constitutes a balanced system of rules in PnP and what does in NWN. This is a point that most gamers seem to miss for some reason. Maybe it's the lack of PnP experience, though I don't want to assume anything.

A reduced speed that is identical to all their medium buddies in anything greater than medium armour, btw.

But not to their medium buddies not wearing heavy armor, obviously.

As for the "I'll never be able to run away" thing - well, by rights pretty much anything on 4 or six legs should be faster than a human, too, so none of us should be relying on being able to run away all the time.

OMG D&D is not supposed to be a simulation of anything realistic! How many chase scenes have you seen in movies where something with four or six legs is chasing humans, but never seems to catch them, though it comes very close? D&D is a fantasy roleplaying game based on fantasy fiction novels and movies, not a kinetic simulation of walking and fighting. It's about plot and character and fantasy, not calculated to the tenth digit after the decimal point movement comparison charts. Remember what it is we're debating here.

I should also point out, we don't have horses.

You assume incorrectly, for 2 reasons.

1) In 3.5 its a racial schtick that dwarves suffer no movement speed penalties from armour or heavy loads.

2) For Hin and Gnomes in medium or heavy armour, the movement speed is 15, only 5 feet slower than their heavily armoured buddy.

Well, that constitutes one reason, an "unrealistic" exception for dwarves. In the second, the conclusion is "yes, they do stack."

And because of the size rules, assuming 3.5 armour rules, BTW, a Hin in the best (non-enchanced) light armour, a chainmail shirt costing 100gp, will have EXACTLY THE SAME AC AND MOVEMENT SPEED as a medium sized character in either of the best two types of medium armour, which both cost more, have worse Max Dex bonuses, and much worse skill-check penalties.

Dex bonuses and skill-check penalties only matter if you are the type of character who is going to wear light or no armor anyway, so this isn't exactly a gotcha moment. It's more of a "in light armor they'll have the same move speed as bigguns in heavy armor." It still seems to overpenalize the hin cleric build. Guess they'll all be wearing light armor.

For any AC up to +5 (anything other than heavy armour, in other words), a Hin is actually better off than his human and elven colleagues!

If they are dex-based, they get a push. Otherwise, they are worse off.

(And a hin for whom heavy armour is actually worthwhile, due to their STR penalties and Dex Bonuses, is pretty unusual even if you don't take the movement speed into account.)

I can think of two in ALFA off the top of my head that I've played with in the last couple of months. Doesn't sound unusual to me.

How is that different from "I want all the advantages to being 3 feet tall but with none of the penalties." ?

The penalty proposed is moving slower than everyone else, a pretty hefty penalty in a simulationist real time combat environment.

However, I've now come to the conclusion that the hin in heavy armor would *always* be welcome to join the patrol. After all, you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the hin....

[HDB]

But the biggest issue is this isn't PnP. Systems that are balanced for PnP may not be balanced in NWN.

I guess to bond my arguement above, and adhere to the stream of thoughts.............

Sure ALFA isn't PnP. But if your gonna take that arguement too far then I'm going to call it Pixels and Keys. We have to collectively balance it, and I argue that we want what you can get only out of PnP. the Pixels and Keys hold us back.............US!? our imaginations do that.


...............HDB.

[psycho_leo]

However, I've now come to the conclusion that the hin in heavy armor would *always* be welcome to join the patrol. After all, you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the hin....

Next time the bear eats you....

[Mulu]

Next time the bear eats you....

As I recall, *last time* the bear came pretty close to eating us both.

[Creslyn]

Not going to happen.

[Dorn]

Whats not goinig to happen Cres?

Armour weight effects on speed which is entirely reasonable and improves diversification?

Or 'small' character speed effects which are PnP but may put some players at a disadvantage while soloing but give higher benefits in all other situations especially CvC (i'm assuming most groups would work to protect their members...most of those i've been in would)?

*yes the second question is loaded. But it still stands.

I hope people are not discounting a very good idea just because it is lumped with one slightly more controversial

[Creslyn]

As does my answer.