the "outrageous attribute" problem

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

... So...if characters average (say) 100 EP per game session, and if the game sessions are weekly, it will take 5 weeks to get to 36 points, 15 weeks to get to 40 points, 65 weeks to get to 45 points and 215 weeks (!) to get to 50 points.

Now, I don't really know when "attribute bloat" becomes a problem. But if it happens at (say) 45 points, then I'm not overly concerned. How many campaigns (a) meet weekly for 16 months; and (b) have such low attrition that characters routinely survive that long?

And if attribute bloat happens at 50 points, then I am utterly unconcerned. Assuming that the GM doesn't hand EP out like candy, you'd need to play every week for 4 YEARS (and survive) to get to that level.

EP gain varies by what happens to the PCs, but your estimates aren't far off what I saw, or are actually faster. The longest campaigns I ran and was in went for maybe 80 to 150 sessions (?), and the two whole-thing-surviving PCs reached 42 and 46 points.

However, we did start to feel what I'd call attribute bloat issues, where the PCs, their NPC allies, and the foes who were on par, were expected to make most/all of their DX rolls, largely removing missing as a major element of play unless there were circumstances such as darkness, Aimed Shots, fighting on mountains of dead bodies, the Blur spell, etc. (but even then, those factors were largely overcome by high attributes). Sure, a trap expert is great for detecting traps, but so is the wizard with IQ 20+. Etc.

1) Unless your GM fudges his world so the players are always the best characters on hand, a self-consistent world should have highly-experienced characters in it from the start of the campaign. And as players gain experience and take on more challenging opponents and find more competent allies, some of those characters should naturally be better than the PCs, so you start to get other high-level characters in play with high point totals before the PCs get there.

2) Even worse than attribute bloat were magic items, especially strong self-powered ones that give major battle advantages. If those things exist in your world, it's natural for some of the tougher opponents to be the ones with them, and for players to want to get and hoard them and never take them off. Reverse Missiles and Stone/Iron Flesh, as well as Weapon/Armor Enchantment, are obvious ones that are the equivalent of (or better than) adding several attribute points. The ones that raise armor, particularly stacked with actual armor/shield and/or Warrior/Veteran Talents, and worn by a fighter character with good attributes (37+ - enough to do good damage, wear armor and hit reliably) starts to give characters that totally dominate most characters without magic and 36 points and under. That can either be met with magic, or bloated attributes... or else it will tend to slaughter lower characters very easily. And THAT starts to really make the straight combat game less and less interesting, because (much like in D&D) most people are suddenly almost zero threat to such characters (unless they do something not so satisfying, like abuse the HTH rules, or the peculiar weapon rules, or cast a spell like Freeze). i.e. The problem is the fun weapon combat game that exists for lower-powered characters starts to get removed by high-attributes and magic equipment.

3) But if all you want is a game that is great for a few years until the above elements start to detract from it, TFT certainly does that without need for modification. (For us it was a perfect setup to then want to play GURPS after TFT started to break down for us.)

4) Having seen what players who stuck with TFT have come up with for house rules, and having played a bit with them, I think there are some things that can be done to make it so TFT doesn't break down in those ways. I think there's an exciting possibility there for a game that is as great at high levels as it is at lower levels, which would be something I'd want to regularly play. I think the issues in the way are mainly attribute bloat, the no-defense/miss issue, and stacking armor from magic items that don't require powering, oh and the broken EP system - see point 5) below:

5) One of the things we did that helped extend our campaigns' lifespans (and probably why our point totals were lower than you projected) was we revised the EP system. Flat rewards such as the ITL system are severely bad measures how how difficult a fight is. 36 fighters tend to trump 32 point fighters, and 40 point fighters tend to trump 36 point fighters. And armor and fine weapons and strong talents all make a difference, too. When the EP rewards don't take that into account, PCs get massively more EP by trivially slaughtering weak foes than they do by fighting something challenging. We fixed that by assigning EP based on relative combat value of the opponent, but that took math, so no doubt it would be unpopular...

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

And in my opinion, allowing massive attribute increases from job rolls is indistinguishable from Monty Haul style gaming. And if job rolls are the reason for attribute bloat, then the obvious (and ridiculously simple) solution is to eliminate the +1 attribute for a successful job roll. It is completely unnecessary to rewire the entire TFT system.

That's just an easily-fixed detail to correct in the job rules, and not a core issue.