Originally posted by bozzutoman:
I don't really see how metagaming an enemies' preferential target is any less of artificial 'parity' than initial character points. It also lets one player steal too much limelight.
Yeah I'll confess that I'm imposing artificial parity, but not that I'm letting one player steal the limelight. In fact, just the opposite -- if one PC's noticably more adept at combat than the rest and all opponents are essentially equal then you're going to get either 1) the uber-character taking out all the opponents single-handed while the other players sit back and watch, or 2) the 'normal' characters getting waxed and their players sitting back and watching, hoping their uber-companion can at least force a draw before they all bleed to death.
By cooking the books to provide an uber-opponent for the uber-PC and normal opponents for everybody else a balance of play-focus is maintained -- the uber-PC should require about the same amount of play-time and effort to defeat his opponent as the normal folks do to defeat theirs. Artificial? Definitely. As artificial as forcing all characters to be exactly equal? Perhaps, but certainly not to my feelings.
Also, how is forcing players to rely on luck to determine stats more liberating than letting them decide their own character's strengths and weaknesses? There's plenty of time in the actual game that lady luck will have her chance to screw the players.
I agree that a "good" player can even make the Skreetch character shine. But I'm not talking about them; they're self-sufficient. I'm talking about "average" players. The ones that don't necessarily demand they play Luke Skywalker but definitely don't want to play Porkins.
Both of these go back to my post on the first page of this topic where I mentioned my prefered method of generating character stats: roll up to 12 characters randomly and pick your favorite. With this many characters to choose from, the chance of anyone getting 'stuck' with Skreetch is vanishingly small. Usually by at most the 3rd or 4th set of stats everybody's found someone they can work with (unless they've trying to match a detailed predetermined concept or really NEED that super-character, in which case they keep going).
As for players being 'liberated' to determine their own strengths and weaknesses, that's fine if you've already decided exactly what you want your character to be like, but IMO the biggest fun of rpgs isn't in assuming some pre-defined dream-role, but in exploring, learning about, and developing your character naturally over the course of a campaign. IMO characters should grow and deepen organically as the campaign progresses and the players become accustomed to their quirks and idiosyncracies, not pop forth fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus.
When forced to choose and pre-determine everything before play begins players tend to fall back on the same sorts of 'comfortable' carbon-copy archetypes over and over, but when allowed to improvise and adapt to unusual or unforseen circumstances, great new discoveries can be made and, if you'll excuse my waxing philosophically touchy-feely, players have a better chance of actually 'learning' something from the game.
Of course it all comes down to matters of personal taste and play style, and in many/most campaigns expanding the players' minds falls right at the bottom of the priority-list, but I've found from ~20 years of play that for the types of games I prefer both to run and to play in a random/organic char-gen system fits much better than a predetermined/cookie-cutter one. YMMV, and for what it's worth I very much agree that for one-shots, tournaments, and other short mini-campaigns where there isn't enough time to organically develop a character from scratch, point-buy char-gen is definitely the way to go.
. Will there be one this week to feed my addiction?