General Dealing with player-character imbalance

[infojunky]

Originally Posted by kilemall

Isn't summoning Cthulhu and building jump drives the same task?

Well both operating languages for those functions are base21... So pretty much yes...

[aramis]

Originally Posted by kilemall

Isn't summoning Cthulhu and building jump drives the same task?

In 40K it is.

[Tiikeri]

Yes.

[LeperColony]

Originally Posted by Enoki

Say you have a player that's supposed to be a highly skilled military veteran yet wants to do things that are clearly... putting it bluntly, militarily stupid... and will likely get the party killed or seriously in deep doo doo. To me this is playing the character contrary to their nature and background.

If the mistake is a basic lack of knowledge that their character should have but the player doesn't, I'm all for supplying the missing information and making a suggestion.

However, if it's a matter of bad judgment or questionable priorities, I don't think that's the same thing at all.

Plenty of people are bad at their jobs. Very experienced people planned the Bay of Pigs or Operation Eagle Claw. Every day trained medical professionals make mistakes that kill people, incompetent lawyers fail their clients, licensed cosmetologists give bad haircuts.

[« Ulsyus »]

Originally Posted by mike wightman

I find the idea of a player needing to know stuff for their character to be able to do it to be silly and not very logical.

How many players can summon a servant of Cthulhu? How many players can build a jump drive?

We play rpgs to do stuff we can not do in the real world...

What Mike said.

Originally Posted by LeperColony

Plenty of people are bad at their jobs. Very experienced people planned the Bay of Pigs or Operation Eagle Claw. Every day trained medical professionals make mistakes that kill people, incompetent lawyers fail their clients, licensed cosmetologists give bad haircuts.

Some of those things can simply come down to bad judgement calls, even in complex processes or systems where a single mistake then sets the direction for every right decision which is then predicated on the supposed validity of the bad call made earlier.

In games we can replicate this with complex tasks that require multiple rolls. If players rolled something horrendously catastrophic early on in the process, a ref could let them continue, the PCs oblivious to it, with the chance that a particularly good roll later on may pick up the earlier condition-setting error. My group has had that at least once - I recollect everyone either laughing or squirming in their seats as the disaster slowly unfolded before them roll-by-roll, their PCs oblivious of the oncoming doom...

[LeperColony]

Originally Posted by Ulsyus

What Mike said.
In games we can replicate this with complex tasks that require multiple rolls.

Systemic mechanics are one way to model this, but by no means the only way. If it works as a method for you, that's great. Personally, I'd tend to use more of a narrative, role-playing method. People make bad decisions, even if they should know better.

For instance, I don't expect my players to know how to repair a jump engine. If they see it's on fire and say "I want to try and repair it," then in my understanding, that's where a roll is called for. I don't ask for an exact breakdown of where they're going to put the flux capacitor.

But if they see the jump engine is on fire and decide to try and jump anyway, that's not a roll situation. That's just a bad decision.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by Enoki

So, how would you deal with a player, or even players, that have characters that are radically different from the player's own experience and background? I thought about this when another thread here brought up tactics.

Say you have a player that's supposed to be a highly skilled military veteran yet wants to do things that are clearly... putting it bluntly, militarily stupid... and will likely get the party killed or seriously in deep doo doo. To me this is playing the character contrary to their nature and background.

How do you deal with a situation like this?

I let the players do what they want to start with: we are talking about an RPG taking place within a shared imaginary universe with talking starfish and PC's flying starships.

The skill system will limit the players in my game. Skills provide all the DM's for success, and success is what this is about - not ideas. Someone can, in real life, come up with any number of ideas but if they lack the knowledge and experience (the 'skill') the idea probably won't work or end well. It works the same in the game.

For example, if a players wants to do something requiring electronics skill, but has none, then they ought to get a negative DM equal to the difficulty DM's for success someone with the skill would have to overcome. I he needs a Computer -2 to fix the computer then give him a -2 DM on his roll. If he fails he damages the system further, maybe now you'd need Computer - 3.

If he makes the roll then good for him - but he only fixed it somewhat and the thing may not run at full efficiency until fixed by an expert with at least Computer-1. Or maybe not - your mileage may vary.



I also have a rule in my game that a natural 12 is success on anything you try - but not always complete success, just enough to make it work at least once. A natural 2 means failure or 'fumble' and the weapon jams or the computer glitches to BSD or something. It's and east fix, but takes a round or something to do. Either way it allows players with no skill in something to at least try to help without everyone relying on the one guy with JoT all the time, or not being able to fix the M-Drive to get them off the hell world they are stuck on.

[Condottiere]

One of the advantages to the modular approach to character generation, you will have those assumed basic skills, like simple combat tactics for soldiers.

If it's a skill the character uses often, a little research by the player wouldn't be untoward.