Quote:
Originally Posted by Andreas
There are narrative benefits to giving stats for such things. It helps keep their behaviour and capabilities consistent. In some works of fiction, they blatantly change depending on the direction the author wants the plot to go at the time, to the detriment of the quality of the work.
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Comprehensive notes are better than stats for this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andreas
Also, even if the players can't directly affect them through luck alone, stats would help you determine their chance of doing so if they spend dedicated effort on it.
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If they spend dedicated effort, that
really doesn't rely on stats, that's much more narrative. If they're going to invest time and effort, that's a role-playing exercise
not just a contested roll.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andreas
"If you give something stats the PCs will try to kill it." is just a matter of giving them appropriate stats. If you do, then the PCs wouldn't be able to kill things which should be far beyond their ability to affect.
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That's an awful justification. If something has listed statistics then the party can just get lucky and take something out, even by accident. Without listed stats, that becomes an impossibility.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl
Even if they do kill it, a properly designed threat can come back, again and again, until the PCs figure out a different response. Enemies with Unkillable 3, especially with the Cosmic modifer, are nearly impossible to permanently kill, and generally require different strategies (banishment, bargaining, imprisonment, etc.). In a realistic campaign, a threat might be an organization with tens of thousands of members, so killing individual members are a waste of time and resources.
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And enemies without sheets/stats don't have to justify any of this. Anything with game mechanics can be dealt with through other game mechanics. If you want someone or something to be
immune, you have to divorce the character from game mechanics.