Attribute Bloat 'Re-Deux'

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by JLV

One solution is to simply tell players that YOU will manage the XP stuff and they can safely ignore it. When they do anything, you figure up the XP on your "super-secret GM sheet" and then when they can advance, tell them they can add a spell or a skill or an attribute point or whatever. All THEY have to do is tell you what they want to gain or learn next; "I want to learn the Illusion Spell," or "I want to learn Two-Weapons," or "I want to add a point to my ST." That way they can focus on playing and you can focus on the mechanics for them. ...

Yep!

It's an approach I've used a lot for a long time, for many things (e.g. rations, coins, condition of equipment...).

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by Skarg

It's an approach I've used a lot for a long time, for many things (e.g. rations, coins, condition of equipment...).

I'll discuss with my players... give them the option to manage their own XP allocation or have me do it.

Now, however, I'd like to re-direct the discussion back to what I was thinking about when I kicked off the thread:

What are some of the ways that you long-suffering GMs dealt with high attribute parties back in the day? Specifically when individual stats hit 15, 16 or more?

[warhorse11h]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

What are some of the ways that you long-suffering GMs dealt with high attribute parties back in the day? Specifically when individual stats hit 15, 16 or more?

A variety of things were done.

1) A character who has ceased to be fun to play gets killed off. Usually on a suicidally dangerous quest. Happened with my favorite character and some of his friends. Somewhere in that version of Cidri there is a hoard of magical items and treasures, but it has a few more guardians.

2) He retired to his estates or to run his businesses or control of his fiefdom. After that, he might sponsor a group of new adventurers and outfit them to do his bidding, but took no active part in play. (NPCstatus).

3) They ascended (either taken to a higher plane by a deity, or whatever) or welcomed into the ranks of the Mnoren. Either way, they went away and their character sheet got wadded up or framed, depending on how his player felt about him.

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by warhorse11h

A variety of things were done...

All perfectly reasonable end-of-life solutions, but I was actually referring to how folks may have tried to re-balance the game or specific encounters in order to provide the appropriate level of challenge for the characters.

[tomc]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

What are some of the ways that you long-suffering GMs dealt with high attribute parties back in the day? Specifically when individual stats hit 15, 16 or more?

It's a matter of keeping things challenging. Characters that are nearly invincible tend to accrue power - military, political, social, etc. With that power comes new and different problems that can't be solved with an axe. Well, some of them can, but that leads to a new raft of consequences. :)

50 point characters don't dungeon crawl unless the fate of worlds hangs in the balance.

[hcobb]

At some point you're big enough to get a starting character goblin to summon a greater demon with a club to take your stuff.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

What are some of the ways that you long-suffering GMs dealt with high attribute parties back in the day? Specifically when individual stats hit 15, 16 or more?

The first way was there all along, and the main approach I have used, which is to make a game of the situation, and have that situation evolve as makes sense organically. That is, do not try to balance anything except by natural cause and effect. Don't disallow mixed-level parties including various numbers of NPCs, let players do what they want, and then game out the situations that are interesting and not the ones that are not, in logical ways.

The second thing I "tried" as a young newbie TFT GM, was to have the world have many similarly or even-more-bloated NPCs. That was surprisingly ok, but is also how I learned how I don't like attribute bloat. I would not do that now. I was a bit shocked looking back through my thousands of NPCs for my original TFT campaign, at how many of them had quite high attribute totals, that I would no longer dish out like that. Nonetheless they got massacred left and right, generally by large parties with many NPCs. My experience of running a world where lots of NPCs have quite high attributes etc, is that the more I did it, the more it felt artificial and unsatisfying, particularly because most "normal" non-high-attribute characters seemed like fragile and impotent human mortals in comparison to the super-powered others. The gameplay also became more predictable and more about powers than tactics. Maneuver normal humans to surround the hero and he just does a sweeping blow and mows down three of you per turn, and even if you manage to hit him your weapons almost always bounce off.

Mainly though I think it's OK to have some high attributes as long as it's not lots and lots of high attributes, where failing any roll is seen as a blunder, especially when combined with great equipment. (Which is a form of what I meant in my first point - there is a game in the campaign situation).

And I also think it's great if you can let players get some powerful characters and enjoy being powerful with them. When a GM feels the need to level up everything automatically to match the power level of PCs, that seems to me like one of the punishment levels of Purgatory, and makes no sense.

On the other hand, there are quite a few situations that can challenge powerful characters, and not just by having them face similarly-powerful adversaries. The situation is generally more important than the stats in TFT, with some exceptions. Strength mostly lies in numbers, up to a point, and again depending on the specifics.

As tomc pointed out, logical consequences do tend to elevate the situations powerful people face. Not in the automatic bloat sense I complained about, but just in terms of natural reactions from the powers that be, through reputation, promotions, accumulating enemies, politics, and/or the players themselves deciding to take on more significant challenges.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

What are some of the ways that you long-suffering GMs dealt with high attribute parties back in the day? Specifically when individual stats hit 15, 16 or more?

Well, I'll just say one word: "Retirement!"

Okay, actually that was only the case when the player felt that playing the character was no longer as "interesting" for that player. Which actually happened a surprising number of times.

In other cases, we shifted over to a more "realms" based campaign where political intrigue and such shenanigans had a much bigger role to play, but that didn't happen more than twice in all the years we played -- mostly because it becomes more of an intellectual exercise (weaving plots and sneaking around ball and throne rooms), whereas most of my players preferred a more "visceral" campaign (lopping the heads off Orcs and whatnot).

One thing I did NOT do, and that was arbitrarily kill off a "too-powerful" player character or anything like that -- whatever happened only happened with player buy-in and approval (and usually at that player's suggestion).

Of course that was all then, under the original rules. Under the new rules, I believe that it will take quite a while longer to reach that point in the game.

[JohnPaulB]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

I'll discuss with my players... give them the option to manage their own XP allocation or have me do it.

Now, however, I'd like to re-direct the discussion back to what I was thinking about when I kicked off the thread:

What are some of the ways that you long-suffering GMs dealt with high attribute parties back in the day? Specifically when individual stats hit 15, 16 or more?

I hadn't needed to worry about attribute bloat in my old TFT games because a lot of the time, we played one-offs that didn't bother with Exp and the times I did campaign, we never got to levels that weird.

However, you might introduce disease into the game.
I suggest an incurable disease that eats Attribute Points. It would be a disease that seems immune to magical healing. It would be a disease that the GM decides which stat is affected and what the symptoms are. Every 6 months the character notices a stat declines. If the PC does nothing, in 6 months it declines again. The PC will deteriorate if it does not start feeding XP to raise attributes. There is no none cure yet (except may a cure for Attribute Bloat.)

[larsdangly]

A single really high stat - even up to 30 - isn't really game breaking. Advances above 16 are useful but with diminishing returns and increasing costs. The thing I really didn't like about 1st edition attribute bloat is the fact that everyone understands what I just wrote, and so every character ends up having three identically high stats and is capable of everything. It's like playing D+D where everyone plays Fighter/Magic User/Thief characters. Add in a bunch of magic items and the whole thing is just not worth the bother. This is why I haven't regretted a minute of our campaign under the new XP rules, which really put a lid on all that stuff.