stat abilities versus skills and saves

[Gunther]

Sorry, I edited my post to get at what I was stating a bit more clearly.

[Rowana]

I'd like to add some thoughts on this as well, from the GM perspective. One of the issues that we've got going on here in the perspective of fairness rests solely on development. And in some cases having a +80 to something won't win out over the little guy who only has a +25. Lemme 'splain...

Player X submits Wizard in 2004. We'll call him Wizard X. Wizard X gets in with a band of chums and levels up to 20 on or around the preferred year time frame, generally good fun character to be around etc etc. All is generally well.

Player Y come in and submits Wizard Y in 2010. Player Y is a very casual player and even in 2012 only is 15th level. Wizard Y however, has invested his time in some CDQs along the way. Wizard Y has a forte as established by that CDQ or series of CDQs.

Quest time on Saturday. X and Y are both present. Situation comes along that falls squarely into Y's forte. Both wizards roll. X = 14+80, Y = 14+24 (yeah, don't analyze the accuracy of those numbers, the level and spread of final result is what's important here). GM tells X some details about the situation. GM tells same details to Y, but also some little niggly details that may or may not be important to the situation. X is a little ticked off that they didn't get that extra information because they feel their stats should have given them access to all the information.

The focus of the server is development/RP. It's already been stated above that the players should focus on role play rather than roll play and for a lot of new players this has been something of an issue. Even for long time players this is something of a consistent issue. When it comes down to it guys, development is going to win over stats numbers. And frankly, when we gve out information to players, it can be anything. It can be a red herring, it can be fun flavor, it can be an extra tidbit as a bone toss to acknowledge a player's effort, or it could be vitally important to the quest. Part of the point of questing is the whole puzzle process (with various levels of severity depending on your GM).

Do we acknowledge that level 20+ characters are potentially specialized experts of their field? Yes, absolutely. Do we acknowledge that players can get to 'expert' before level 20? You betcha. Does all development into a forte have to come via CDQ? No, it can come on regular quest too, but you get out what you put in to this. That means the player who dives in and gets involved and PMs before and/or after the quest, tries to do the extra work isn't bird dogging and trying to show off or take over or any other negative thing, they're doing what we what them to do. And yeah, some characters have access that others don't because of their development and some don't. Sometimes we need you to lean on one character or another but that doesn't mean characters won't all be afforded a moment to shine.

Roping this back around to the OP question and general angst over using stats vs skills, and allowing GMs to retain the flexibility to call it on the spot per their overview of things. I'm going to use the situation in question, and I'm gonna make some stuff up to illustrate my point because I'm not privy to the exact details.

Player X, big, big strong character tries to shove aside much less strong and lower level character to get on his way to something. This happens somewhat on surprise and on the surface maybe seems cut and dry. Str v str and really no chance of big, big strong character losing out unless you have a GM that operates on the 1s and 20s principle (which I do btw). It should not be a foregone conclusion that bigbigstrong just gets away with what he's trying because he's inconceivably stronger than the other lower level character. Lower level character may have something that gives him initiative (ie insanely high listen adds, and has a chance to hear it coming, or premonition spell up and GM allows for the player to act etc). Maybe lower level player wants to get out of the way rather than take on what is nothing short of a charging bull. Maybe lower level character wants to stop bigbigstrong but isn't going to be so silly as to out strength him. Maybe he has a spell ready, maybe he wants to stick his foot out and trip the guy (at the risk of breaking his own leg in the process), maybe he wants to put a 'kick me' sign on the guy's back as he passes because he's a Shadonite. It's really never, ever cut and dry. The more people you add into the mix the more layered every single situation becomes. Incidentally this is why quests with higher turn outs will always go over. It's not about GM's miscalculating content, it's about GMs not anticipating the amount of player element that's going to affect things. Anyway, total side tangent.

So, when it comes down to it on these things it's about trust and good chemistry between players and GM(s). There is an underlying current on this server that GMs are 'out to get us/you'. There is, similarly, an undercurrent of players jumping at every perceived inconsistency as proof of that or the other elephant ghost, favoritism. (Or as I call it, the F word.) We (the GM team) totally don't have a problem with being asked about a result or a process. We don't have a problem with being wrong or having made a poor snap decision. We do have a problem with not being trusted and we do have a problem with having our freedom to be creative as the situation calls for put on ice.

We generally tend to follow most of the same paths into how we handle things, and that's in part an unconscious lining up of our methods in the time we work together. You'll find that GMs in a similar time zone, when they work together a long time (or even a shorter time if there's a new GM who's got little GMing experience) tend to have the same processes. In that, I think there's a natural flow of consistency between GMs already. If there is ever a situation that needs to be understood or sorted out, it absolutely should come to light in some way and be discussed between player and GM and if necessary there should be a long discussion about it so we can make the best, fairest decision possible for the community. As a team. As a whole community team. Just bring your facts to the table and we'll get it sorted out with as much fairness as possible.

Regards,
~row

[Script Wrecked]

Player X, big, big strong character tries to shove aside much less strong and lower level character to get on his way to something. This happens somewhat on surprise and on the surface maybe seems cut and dry. Str v str and really no chance of big, big strong character losing out unless you have a GM that operates on the 1s and 20s principle (which I do btw). It should not be a foregone conclusion that bigbigstrong just gets away with what he's trying because he's inconceivably stronger than the other lower level character. Lower level character may have something that gives him initiative (ie insanely high listen adds, and has a chance to hear it coming, or premonition spell up and GM allows for the player to act etc). Maybe lower level player wants to get out of the way rather than take on what is nothing short of a charging bull. Maybe lower level character wants to stop bigbigstrong but isn't going to be so silly as to out strength him. Maybe he has a spell ready, maybe he wants to stick his foot out and trip the guy (at the risk of breaking his own leg in the process), maybe he wants to put a 'kick me' sign on the guy's back as he passes because he's a Shadonite. It's really never, ever cut and dry. The more people you add into the mix the more layered every single situation becomes. Incidentally this is why quests with higher turn outs will always go over. It's not about GM's miscalculating content, it's about GMs not anticipating the amount of player element that's going to affect things. Anyway, total side tangent.

And this is where my beef is.

There are several contradicting statements in the above example which illustrate my point, the point being discussed in this thread, and not the half dozen interjected remarks saying this thread is about this and about that, none of which have done anything to address the point and only served to muddy the waters of this apparently very contentious issue. Keep to the point, people.

There is a consistent model that can be applied to the above situation which requires no adjudication by anyone and thus noone getting bent out of shape over.

Either the big guy has Surprise, or he doesn't. Full stop. Period. Boolean result.

If he has Surprise, then it is cut and dried. It is a straight Strength versus Strength, and unless the DM operates the 1s and 20s principle (which personally I think is worthwhile), then is all over, red rover.

If the big guy does not have Surprise, then we check for Initiative. If the little guys wins Initiative, then he gets to go first. Otherwise the big guy goes first.

Cut and dried.

By the way, Listen checks affect Surprise, not Initiative.

I hope this clears things up.

[Rowana]

I'm well aware how the system works. But I still don't get your problem.

This thread was started under the assumption that we NORMALLY roll stat vs skill. We don't. Lemme repeat. We don't normally make players roll stat vs skill (or the other way around). The GM made a bum call trying to save everyone some time and frustration. That has been stated about ten times over. The GM would not have had to make that snap decision if the player had stated his action and waited for what he should do. Double issue, both sides cleared up. They are, so far as I can tell, fine with the outcome.

What has come up however is that sometimes there are situations that don't have a cut and dried answer and we do use a modified skill vs stat (or the other way around) roll to handle it. So the initial situation was NOT the norm. It is regretted in spades. It will not likely be happening again in the future, mostly because we've kicked it into the ground, pulverized it and chased it to the opposite side of the world and back (US, Australia...). But we aren't going to say that we will never, ever have a situation where we have to use a stat and a skill as opposing rolls. We will say that we will never, ever give a PC an impossible roll in that situation but if it's highly unlikely (usually because the PC is trying to do something really crazy) we'll state it in some manner. I don't know how much more clearly this could possibly be said.

So what is the continued beef, Script? Why are we going back over this repeatedly when we've already stated the situation was atypical, it was done for a social reason (stress and frustration issues) and given the chance to go back and do it again, it likely would have been done differently by both sides. So again, where is the issue? Why is the question of stat vs skill NOT resolved for you? Where am I missing your point? If it is simply what you've stated in your previous post I see it as completley and totally addressed a number of posts ago by other people.

~row

[Gunther]

My posting was not intended to revive this issue in particular, however since its being discussed....

From my perspective, Gunther charged forward intending to kill an npc.  The lower level character apparently saw Gunther charging forward and discerned Gunther's intent.  Seeing said intent, the lower level pc threw himself in front of Gunther.

Gunther continued forward, the lower level pc stood there.  No other actions were taken, no kicks, no trips, no spells, no attempts to get out of the way, no Shadon signs, nothing.  At least not that I can recall, unless there was info being passed via tells that I wasnt privy to.

I dont disagree with the 1's and 20's principle, as per my recent post, there is the chance of tripping on a shoelace, falling, and breaking your neck.  I think it would be substantially less than 1 in 20, but thats the system we have.

I didnt actually have an assumption that we normally rolled stat versus skill, it was more intended to make sure (for my own peace of mind if nothing else) that we werent doing that normally.  It was something that I had seen in the past with the inevitable failure of the stat roller.  When I say past, I mean years ago, years and years.  Perhaps the GMs back then had these comparison charts which were mentioned earlier, but given the speed with which I recall decisions being made, I doubt it.  Of course appearance can be deceiving and maybe the chart was right there at hand, or the GM was so practiced in its usage that they barely needed to glance at said chart.  I dont know.

In either case, I'd really like to not discuss this any further.  You are all, of course, welcome to continue to do so, but I believe I will abstain from even looking at this thread in the future.

[Dorganath]

It seems like this has run its course and the original poster seems to have his answer.  It also seems like somewhere there's a breakdown, which I blame primarily on the text medium.

There is really little point in further dissection of what happened with this incident. It's pretty much been analyzed and acknowledged as a two-party mistake.

A mistake...and one not really worth 40+ posts.

It's been resolved.  Any further extrapolation is a pointless exercise.  I really am not trying to shut people up, but it's already been said multiple times that the incident is not ideal.  They messed up. So what?

Belaboring the incorrectness of this particular incident serves no further purpose except to raise emotions. My suggestion: let it go.

[Script Wrecked]

Discontinuing as I'm getting too many "I don't understand what you're saying" each time I state (and restate) my point. Seemingly, people are forgetting what they posted when I respond to it. When my posts are long, apparently they aren't being digested. When they're too short, I'm being snarky and nasty (as though that would be my intent).

Next time, I'll visit and we can discuss it over tea and biscuits.

I didn't have that Mandarin font on again did I?

[merlin34baseball]

If I had the power...... Lock Lock the thread....