Why are game designers so obsessed with making small races viable in combat when their main niche should be infiltration, espionage and sabotage instead?
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Why are game designers so obsessed with making small races viable in combat when their main niche should be infiltration, espionage and sabotage inste...
Because Yoda vs Dooku was hype as frick.
I was there, the theater fricking erupted. It was grand, and my asian friend's first time going to the movies.
How did Lucas frick up everything about the prequels except for the fight scenes?
>movies are made by one person
Yes.
Correct, Lucas played every role while directing and operating the camera. He also crafted all the props and did all of the post-production.
same exact reason they try to pass off women as equal to men in battle
if you can accept that, then theres no logical reason to not accept hobbits as combat effective
>Why are game designers so obsessed with making small races viable in combat when their main niche should be infiltration, espionage and sabotage instead?
because if small races aren't viable against medium creatures it's very hard to justify medium creatures (the vast majority of pcs) being viable against large enemies (the vast majority of monsters past rusty shanktown)
if a halfling can't shank a human why is a human shanking ogres?
These. You can force hobbits and goblins to be sneaksy thieveses if you really want, but your game will suck. So no system you've heard of bothers.
Players like to be capable of participating in all aspects of the game.
That's why Shadowrun sucks so much.
>the majority of interaction is combat
>pcs are always intended to be outliers/exceptional individuals and not a random nobody of x race
>pigeonholed roles are boring because you just end up with boring homogenity where everyone of x race besides humans is always x class
>>the majority of interaction is combat
If this is true your DM is shit. Even in the most combat-heavy RPG combat should still be less than half of what the PCs actually do.
You're partly right, but first the book should probably have at least some fricking decent god damn rules for what to do that is not just combat, and the players should probably have some kind of functional abilities besides almost exclusively combat abilities.
And you can blame the DM all you want, but the DM is using a book for a reason.
Not even shitposting, what game are you running right now?
Name ten such games
5 editions of D&D
4 editions of WFRP
Pathfinder
>4 editions of WFRP
In context of melee I call bullshit. Cuz if you read cerefully rules for small creatures (I know, it's spread in book so it's easy to miss), they have quite big disadvantage and human can easly one/two-shot a hafling. But if said hafling use range weapon they can be very efective in combat.
Pro tip. use rules from Up in Arms for group advantage with some tokens.
>1) Battle of the Night
>2) Swords, Wands, and Everything in Between
>3) A Space Fantasy
>4) Yet Another World
>5) Ants and Wasps
>6) Goblin Killer
>7) S.L.A.P.S
>8) Roll for a Good Time
>9) Act Before You Think
>10) Sweets: The Nano RPG
Because combat is the only thing that matters in both games and in life.
>making (thing) viable in combat when their main niche should be (not combat)?
I figure like using the net in Shadowrun, you end up in the situation where players are stuck sitting on their hands while they wait for their turn for relevance. Waiting for your turn in order of initiative is kind of boring but not that bad, waiting for combat to end so that you can force all the other players to wait on you as you frick around for a half-hour some being sneeki breeki, it's better just to have all players be involved.
Of course, I'd argue that said sneaky character classes should be reserved only for stealth-focused campaigns, with the GM disallowing them from character creation.
Why is an off-brand Hello Kitty character standing next to Astolfo's wiener?
>off-brand Hello Kitty
Sanrio owns both Hello Kitty and Aggretsuko. Can you rip off your own intellectual property?
>Be OP
>Play shitty games like D&Dogshit or Mathfinder
>Non-roleplaying games games based 98% around combat
>"Why is X and Y viable in combat?!?"
Bro, are you being fricking serious right now?
nogames comment
People who say "nogames" say infinitely more about themselves than anyone else.
OK nogames
It is nice that we agree.
I do hope you find yourself a group soon.
Play WFRP
shut up gay
Because those games are primarily designed around combat.
Subversion of expectations can be entertaining. A frick-huge minotaur assassin doesn't make sense, nor does a diminutive gnomelet murder machine - you will get mad at these concepts if for some reason you really suck at suspending disbelief, but possibly delighted if you don't.
Also, in worlds of fantasy, scifi and magical frickery, why would you ever want to obsess over physical stature having to make absolute sense?
>A frick-huge minotaur assassin doesn't make sense,
What about a wereboar?
Subversion takes a good degree of tact to pull off effectively, though. A frick-huge minotaur assassin wont make sense if the definition of an assassin is 'Rogues from World of Warcraft', but a minotaur assassin who shoots a guy from a mile away? Or laces the kings meal with poison? or just goes to a guy's house and fricks the guy up? Those are example assassin's too.
Likewise, a gnomelet murder machine could be an explosives expert, or a VC with all the fricked up spike traps and shit, but even in tradfantasy, a tiny guy is harder to hit, and can weave between people's legs and kill their ankles and balls enpassant.
Subverting expectations is not just doing the opposite of what makes sense, but rather getting as close to not making sense while still making perfect sense. You still have to account for grounding and reasonability.
See
Yoda fights by flipping all over the place. He uses his smaller size to his advantage, becoming harder to hit by virtue of being a tiny, constantly moving target, and could reasonably go on the constant offensive as a result. Also, it's Star Wars, so The Force exists, which is unfortunately the easiest way to hand wave it all, but it would explain how Yoda, in his old age, could still be so nimble, Force assisted agility and all.
But if you really, really want a sneaky Minotaur, disguise him as an entire french dresser. That'll scare the shit out of 'em.
Now that I think about it, I think the only system I know of that tries to stat out super tiny characters is Hc Svnt Dracones, the furry RPG. If your sparkledog is from the correct family you can take the Micro morphism which causes your PC to grow to the 'correct' scale instead of human scale like they're supposed to. I think if you choose the Lateral morphism (where you're basically just playing an uplifted animal) you can get the same effects if you chose a family that's naturally small, like Rodentia.
I forget what all mechanical consequences this had off the top of my head. The obvious one was that you could fit into small places, and I think micros treat small guns as large guns and have an upper limit on what they can wield in their hands. You also have to pay extra for gear since almost no one makes functional combat armor at barbie doll scale. It also applies hard maximums for certain physical stats.
The big advantage of taking Micro is kinda the most obvious one, you're tiny which makes you a pain in the dick to shoot. But there's the tradeoff of being limited to smaller guns. Not sure how this would play out in practice since I've not run the game myself though.
Reminder that the most badass warrior of the last 3 generations was a 5 foot 3 pudgy mexican.
Mad Jack was British.
>Mad Jack
never jumped from an helicopter only armed with a machete to save some friends he spotted 40 feet below, did so, got found later surrounded by the corpses of ~30 enemies with a dozen bullet wounds and over 30 stab wounds, got declared dead, evac'd as a corpse only to surprise everyone by spitting in the face of the coroner as he was zipping up the body bag.
And that's after getting paralyzed for life, which he beat in 6 months.
That man was undying rage made manifest.
Because combat tends to be the bulk of most ttrpg games since few systems include procedures for anything beyond that.
And as such, all there is to do in a game is either combat or freeform roleplay guided by the DM, so characters that cant combat are effectively useless
Ninjas may have primarily focused on stealth, but they could still fight when needed. Not to mention that the small races would need to fend off attacking monsters that want to eat them.
i don't really care about this thread i just want to say that fenneko should be married and impregnated by a human man
Because ”equality”