Indeed, “at least one” is correct, because here’s another:
Determine what would be an interesting character to roleplay as, given the game setting.
Anticipate upcoming challenges.
Create statistics for this character that reflect the fictional character’s fictional background and goals, as well as result in the highest possible* expected probability of beating these challenges.
Play, and win**, while having fun.
(1 and 2 can be reversed, as well.)
*Or as high as you like; perhaps you wish the character to be less than optimally effective at beating some or all expected challenges. If so, build the character to whatever specification (i.e. expected probability of beating challenges) you like.
**Or possibly lose. See previous footnote.
P.S. In general, the idea that roleplaying and game-mechanical effectiveness trade off against each other is well known as the Stormwind Fallacy.
Create statistics for this character that reflect the fictional character’s fictional background and goals, as well as result in the highest possible* expected probability of beating these challenges… … the Stormwind Fallacy.
You have not adequately addressed the issue of tradeoffs, as I described them in my previous post. Strictly speaking, in most gaming systems (including D&D/Pathfinder) you can be a maximally effective combatant while still ropleplaying to the fullest… But only as long as your character concept is along the lines of, “maximally-effective combatant”.
As I said above, however, each time you spend a single point on a non-combat ability, you are sacrificing a point that could’ve made you a more effective combatant—assuming, that is, that you are actively employing the game’s built-in non-combat mechanics. You don’t have to do that, depending on what your GM will or will not allow. For example, in Pathfinder, if you are roleplaying as a diplomat who is trying to charm his way into the Grand Vizier’s good graces; but your character is a Fighter with 20 Str, 7 Cha, and 0 ranks in Diplomacy or Bluff; then your GM may still allow you to succeed based on roleplaying alone.
While there’s nothing wrong with this playstyle, it does require the GM to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the rules (which, again, is always his prerogative). A GM who followed the rules would make you roll a Bluff or Diplomacy check, with a high DC, which you would make at a fairly high penalty. You might succeed, but you will be far more likely to fail.
Furthermore, if your character sheet is indeed supposed to represent your character’s upbringing in some way, then one might question how he graduated from the Diplomacy Corps with 0 ranks in any non-combat abilities.
Thus, I still maintain that, due to the tradeoffs, a character built for roleplay will always perform worse in combat (on average, that is) than a purely combat-oriented character, unless one of the following is true:
Your gaming system provides few, if any, non-combat mechanics; these are supposed to be taken care of through free-form roleplaying,
Your GM chooses to disregard the rules (as is his right), thus reducing your system to (1), or
The character concept that you are roleplaying is explicitly centered around nothing but combat.
Note that I said that your character will “perform worse”, and not “fail utterly”. This is an important distinction.
Thus, I still maintain that, due to the tradeoffs, a character built for roleplay will always perform worse in combat (on average, that is) than a purely combat-oriented character, unless one of the following is true:
You seem to be equating “roleplay” with non-combat capabilities (social interaction skills, specifically, it seems; I note that there are other sorts of non-combat capabilities...). That’s unwarranted. Roleplaying is not the same as, nor directly tied to, nor dependent on, being strongly effective at social-interaction mechanics. They are, in fact, largely orthogonal, except insofar as any particular character concept should* be mechanically supported. (This orthogonality is indeed the subject of the Stormwind Fallacy.)
*”Should” in the sense you outline, i.e. your character sheet representing, ideally, your character.
Strictly speaking, in most gaming systems (including D&D/Pathfinder) you can be a maximally effective combatant while still ropleplaying to the fullest… But only as long as your character concept is along the lines of, “maximally-effective combatant”.
This is just false.
Finally...
a character built for roleplay
is a fairly nonsensical concept. Perhaps you meant “a character built for prowess in social interaction”, but that’s not the same thing.
is a fairly nonsensical concept. Perhaps you meant “a character built for prowess in social interaction”, but that’s not the same thing.
Social interaction is just one example; I picked it because it is the most common. That said, I would argue that making a character with zero social skills (in order to put those points into more combat) would restrict you to a fairly narrow subset of roleplaying opportunities.
The key to my point, though, is something you said: your character sheet should, ideally, represent your character. This is less apparent in D&D, where most of the mechanics are combat-oriented; and much more apparent in other games, e.g. the old White Wolf system where you have explicit ratings in things like “Bureaucracy”, “Law”, “Resources”, “Contacts”, “Allies”, and even “Performance”, IIRC—alongside the more combat-worthy stats such as “Firearms” or “Dodge”.
However, even in D&D, there are ways to represent your character’s non-combat abilities which, unfortunately, compete for points with the combat ones. Here are some examples:
Story Feats
Feats and class/racial features whose parameters can be chosen suboptimally (in terms of pure combat). For example, consider the Ranger’s “Favored Enemy” ability, or a caster’s “Spell Focus” Feat.
Spells with little to no utility in combat, such as “Memory Lapse” or “Continual Flame”.
Skills such as “Profession” or “Perform”.
Stats besides those that directly influence your class abilities, such as Charisma for a Fighter.
Is your character a self-appointed prophet ? Well, then you should probably take “Spell Focus: Divination”, as opposed to something more battle-worthy. Is your character a skilled craftsman ? Then you should take a bunch of item creation Feats instead of going deeper into the “Power Attack” tree. Were his parents abducted by crab-people ? Then the crab-people are probably your racial enemy, despite being incredibly rare.
Are any of these tradeoffs crippling ? No, but they do add up, and while you are now better at crafting arms and armor and making money doing so, you are no longer as good at cleaving things or (e.g.) swimming as you could’ve been.
Of course, you could reply with something like, “only a fool would make crab-people a part of his backstory; just make your parents be abducted by humanoids, instead”. If you do, see my objection #3 in the previous comment.
Social interaction is just one example; I picked it because it is the most common. That said, I would argue that making a character with zero social skills (in order to put those points into more combat) would restrict you to a fairly narrow subset of roleplaying opportunities.
I disagree. (As a side note, it’s actually not very easy to put skill points, specifically, into “more combat”, with a couple of exceptions.)
Is your character a self-appointed prophet ? Well, then you should probably take “Spell Focus: Divination”, as opposed to something more battle-worthy.
No, I don’t agree with this at all, even granting the premise that you have decided to pick feats/etc. based on story. Unless, of course, you look only at the barest surface features of the options you’re selecting, without delving even a bit deeper.
Spell Focus: Divination is a feat that sounds like it generally “makes you better at divination” or some such. What it actually does (as you know) is make those of your divination spells that have saving throws harder to resist. Now, since most divination spells have no saving throws (certainly those spells most appropriate to prophecy, which are presumably most central to your character concept, do not), picking SF:Divination doesn’t make any sense mechanically. Would your character “select this feat” (i.e. work toward developing this capability)? I don’t see why. It’s not like the “feat” has this name “in-game-world”… and your character presumably knows the “feat” by what it actually does. Why would he work toward an ability that has nothing actually to do with his chosen vocation (prophecy)?
So in this case, selecting Spell Focus: Divination would only make sense if you were trying to build a character that, on casual inspection, sounds like he would be a good prophet. It would not make sense if you were trying to build a character who was actually good at prophecy, game-mechanically; nor, on the other hand, would it make sense if you were trying to “organically” build a character who, in-character, tried to be a good prophet.
Is your character a skilled craftsman ? Then you should take a bunch of item creation Feats instead of going deeper into the “Power Attack” tree.
This likewise makes very little sense, not least because it’s a rare character indeed who both would normally select Power Attack and its descendants (a selection usually made by martial characters), and would even qualify for item creation feats (which require one to be a spellcaster). Furthermore, item creation feats give you the ability to create magic items, i.e. imbue items with magic power; they have little actually to do with being a skilled craftsman, as such (that’s better handled by the Craft skill). Once again, you would only make this connection if you were going by shallow surface associations. (You may, of course, interpret a feat such as Craft Magic Arms & Armor as representing your skill at crafting the arms and armor in question, even in the absence of ranks in the relevant Craft skills. In such a case, my first objection applies. If, in fact, you are a martial (or semi-martial) character who does nonetheless qualify for item creation feats, then that means that they are probably not actually bad choices for you. That’s how the game is structured. Craft Magic Arms & Armor, by the way, is in most cases a more effective feat than Great Cleave is.)
Were his parents abducted by crab-people ? Then the crab-people are probably your racial enemy, despite being incredibly rare.
This doesn’t really follow; it may make sense, but then again it may not. The reasons why it doesn’t make sense have more, I think, to do with how story and world building is shared between the DM and the players, and so I think I will eschew this particular tangent unless you ask me to elaborate.
Thus far, I take your comments to be evidence against the claim that there are meaningful tradeoffs between roleplaying and effectiveness, not for it.
Actually, I should probably elaborate on this point. As far as I can tell, your planning goes something like this:
Anticipate upcoming challenges
Create a character with the highest possible expected probability of beating these challenges.
Win.
There’s nothing wrong with that, but there is at least one alternative:
Determine what would be an interesting character to roleplay as, given the game setting.
Create statistics for this character that reflect the fictional character’s fictional background and goals.
Play, and possibly lose while still having fun.
Indeed, “at least one” is correct, because here’s another:
Determine what would be an interesting character to roleplay as, given the game setting.
Anticipate upcoming challenges.
Create statistics for this character that reflect the fictional character’s fictional background and goals, as well as result in the highest possible* expected probability of beating these challenges.
Play, and win**, while having fun.
(1 and 2 can be reversed, as well.)
*Or as high as you like; perhaps you wish the character to be less than optimally effective at beating some or all expected challenges. If so, build the character to whatever specification (i.e. expected probability of beating challenges) you like.
**Or possibly lose. See previous footnote.
P.S. In general, the idea that roleplaying and game-mechanical effectiveness trade off against each other is well known as the Stormwind Fallacy.
You have not adequately addressed the issue of tradeoffs, as I described them in my previous post. Strictly speaking, in most gaming systems (including D&D/Pathfinder) you can be a maximally effective combatant while still ropleplaying to the fullest… But only as long as your character concept is along the lines of, “maximally-effective combatant”.
As I said above, however, each time you spend a single point on a non-combat ability, you are sacrificing a point that could’ve made you a more effective combatant—assuming, that is, that you are actively employing the game’s built-in non-combat mechanics. You don’t have to do that, depending on what your GM will or will not allow. For example, in Pathfinder, if you are roleplaying as a diplomat who is trying to charm his way into the Grand Vizier’s good graces; but your character is a Fighter with 20 Str, 7 Cha, and 0 ranks in Diplomacy or Bluff; then your GM may still allow you to succeed based on roleplaying alone.
While there’s nothing wrong with this playstyle, it does require the GM to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the rules (which, again, is always his prerogative). A GM who followed the rules would make you roll a Bluff or Diplomacy check, with a high DC, which you would make at a fairly high penalty. You might succeed, but you will be far more likely to fail.
Furthermore, if your character sheet is indeed supposed to represent your character’s upbringing in some way, then one might question how he graduated from the Diplomacy Corps with 0 ranks in any non-combat abilities.
Thus, I still maintain that, due to the tradeoffs, a character built for roleplay will always perform worse in combat (on average, that is) than a purely combat-oriented character, unless one of the following is true:
Your gaming system provides few, if any, non-combat mechanics; these are supposed to be taken care of through free-form roleplaying,
Your GM chooses to disregard the rules (as is his right), thus reducing your system to (1), or
The character concept that you are roleplaying is explicitly centered around nothing but combat.
Note that I said that your character will “perform worse”, and not “fail utterly”. This is an important distinction.
You seem to be equating “roleplay” with non-combat capabilities (social interaction skills, specifically, it seems; I note that there are other sorts of non-combat capabilities...). That’s unwarranted. Roleplaying is not the same as, nor directly tied to, nor dependent on, being strongly effective at social-interaction mechanics. They are, in fact, largely orthogonal, except insofar as any particular character concept should* be mechanically supported. (This orthogonality is indeed the subject of the Stormwind Fallacy.)
*”Should” in the sense you outline, i.e. your character sheet representing, ideally, your character.
This is just false.
Finally...
is a fairly nonsensical concept. Perhaps you meant “a character built for prowess in social interaction”, but that’s not the same thing.
Social interaction is just one example; I picked it because it is the most common. That said, I would argue that making a character with zero social skills (in order to put those points into more combat) would restrict you to a fairly narrow subset of roleplaying opportunities.
The key to my point, though, is something you said: your character sheet should, ideally, represent your character. This is less apparent in D&D, where most of the mechanics are combat-oriented; and much more apparent in other games, e.g. the old White Wolf system where you have explicit ratings in things like “Bureaucracy”, “Law”, “Resources”, “Contacts”, “Allies”, and even “Performance”, IIRC—alongside the more combat-worthy stats such as “Firearms” or “Dodge”.
However, even in D&D, there are ways to represent your character’s non-combat abilities which, unfortunately, compete for points with the combat ones. Here are some examples:
Story Feats
Feats and class/racial features whose parameters can be chosen suboptimally (in terms of pure combat). For example, consider the Ranger’s “Favored Enemy” ability, or a caster’s “Spell Focus” Feat.
Spells with little to no utility in combat, such as “Memory Lapse” or “Continual Flame”.
Skills such as “Profession” or “Perform”.
Stats besides those that directly influence your class abilities, such as Charisma for a Fighter.
Is your character a self-appointed prophet ? Well, then you should probably take “Spell Focus: Divination”, as opposed to something more battle-worthy. Is your character a skilled craftsman ? Then you should take a bunch of item creation Feats instead of going deeper into the “Power Attack” tree. Were his parents abducted by crab-people ? Then the crab-people are probably your racial enemy, despite being incredibly rare.
Are any of these tradeoffs crippling ? No, but they do add up, and while you are now better at crafting arms and armor and making money doing so, you are no longer as good at cleaving things or (e.g.) swimming as you could’ve been.
Of course, you could reply with something like, “only a fool would make crab-people a part of his backstory; just make your parents be abducted by humanoids, instead”. If you do, see my objection #3 in the previous comment.
I disagree. (As a side note, it’s actually not very easy to put skill points, specifically, into “more combat”, with a couple of exceptions.)
No, I don’t agree with this at all, even granting the premise that you have decided to pick feats/etc. based on story. Unless, of course, you look only at the barest surface features of the options you’re selecting, without delving even a bit deeper.
Spell Focus: Divination is a feat that sounds like it generally “makes you better at divination” or some such. What it actually does (as you know) is make those of your divination spells that have saving throws harder to resist. Now, since most divination spells have no saving throws (certainly those spells most appropriate to prophecy, which are presumably most central to your character concept, do not), picking SF:Divination doesn’t make any sense mechanically. Would your character “select this feat” (i.e. work toward developing this capability)? I don’t see why. It’s not like the “feat” has this name “in-game-world”… and your character presumably knows the “feat” by what it actually does. Why would he work toward an ability that has nothing actually to do with his chosen vocation (prophecy)?
So in this case, selecting Spell Focus: Divination would only make sense if you were trying to build a character that, on casual inspection, sounds like he would be a good prophet. It would not make sense if you were trying to build a character who was actually good at prophecy, game-mechanically; nor, on the other hand, would it make sense if you were trying to “organically” build a character who, in-character, tried to be a good prophet.
This likewise makes very little sense, not least because it’s a rare character indeed who both would normally select Power Attack and its descendants (a selection usually made by martial characters), and would even qualify for item creation feats (which require one to be a spellcaster). Furthermore, item creation feats give you the ability to create magic items, i.e. imbue items with magic power; they have little actually to do with being a skilled craftsman, as such (that’s better handled by the Craft skill). Once again, you would only make this connection if you were going by shallow surface associations. (You may, of course, interpret a feat such as Craft Magic Arms & Armor as representing your skill at crafting the arms and armor in question, even in the absence of ranks in the relevant Craft skills. In such a case, my first objection applies. If, in fact, you are a martial (or semi-martial) character who does nonetheless qualify for item creation feats, then that means that they are probably not actually bad choices for you. That’s how the game is structured. Craft Magic Arms & Armor, by the way, is in most cases a more effective feat than Great Cleave is.)
This doesn’t really follow; it may make sense, but then again it may not. The reasons why it doesn’t make sense have more, I think, to do with how story and world building is shared between the DM and the players, and so I think I will eschew this particular tangent unless you ask me to elaborate.
Thus far, I take your comments to be evidence against the claim that there are meaningful tradeoffs between roleplaying and effectiveness, not for it.