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Old 05-31-2018, 08:33 PM   #11
Kirk
 
Join Date: Feb 2018
Default Re: Is Attribute Bloat real?

TFT doesn't have 35 years of playtesting *changes* to the system, fundamentally just the system as it is. Various groups have house-ruled different things to suit their playstyle, but not systemwide.

If someone wants to try to overcome the inherit limitations in the 3d6 bell curve and make these changes available to a world-wide testing audience, that has about 0 years of playtesting. :)

50 points is about where we see a breakdown, consider a hero type, ST-16 DX-20 (14) IQ-14 character. He wears plate armor and has a bunch of talents, shoots a heavy crossbow every other turn, and handles a great sword with aplomb. He's 40 years old, and starting to feel it. He doesn't get along with his mom very well.

Guarding a magic scroll being transported to another high level wizard's shop, he is betrayed by his small security detachment of 36 point 30 something year old guards, being ??? in number, each of which has a standard 30 point guard wolf. They have all been promised a substantial sum for mis-delivery of this magical scroll, which they do not even dare to read, due to the rumored curse it holds.

How many security guard with wolf pairs would you think is necessary to prevent further attribute bloat with this character? Four? Three? Two? Maybe even just one pair?

As a GM, I've never had much problem with bloat, life just seems to put it to it, but that is just me...
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Old 05-31-2018, 09:27 PM   #12
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Is Attribute Bloat real?

My take & responses:

I think attribute bloat can be defined a few ways and goes along with a few other issues that deserve attention, but Rick's definition is pretty close to what I think of by attribute bloat:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick_Smith View Post
Attribute Bloat is when a character in TFT has such high attributes that they normally always make their to hit rolls, and most saving throws. Further, as the attributes rise, many characters tend to have 13+ in all attributes which makes them feel similar to many other experienced characters.

This first becomes noticeable around 42 attributes and is serious by the high 40's.
A re-stating of it is that as characters approach 40 points and beyond, they start to make almost all of their 3-die rolls, and they start to feel less like individuals and to overshadow lesser characters.

Another aspect of that is making powerful NPCs starts to feel gamey and weird. There are only so many ways to combine three attributes, so you can try to get creative with Talents, spells and equipment, but it just starts to feel kind of fake and weird.

Huge DX to wear armor. (Really?) Huge IQ to know spells, that means you make all other IQ rolls. (Really?) Huge ST for feats of great ST, including one-handed two-handed swords... (really?) or some mix... all seeming off and over-capable and dwarfing most normal people in the game. Add some magic and get some strong people like that in a group using decent tactics, and strength no longer really lies in numbers, and not even in a very interesting or credible way. Engage some normal warriors, line up and have higher DX, hit and kill them. If any manage to survive and hit you, they probably bounce off your armor. (Add healing spells, and the situation will arrive even sooner.)

And it's not just an issue at the point the PCs get powerful. Some strong NPCs in a self-consistent logical world will be at high levels from campaign start. And magic items and fine weapons can also boost stats.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Rice View Post
Of course it's real because it's an inherent feature of the game system. Whether it has become a problem in your particular games will be down to your own GM style so you may not have noticed it or it may not even bother you, but it's obviously there.

Since progression is by attribute increase and rolls aren't comparative but absolute, a system that works nicely at lower levels starts to unravel a bit later on. Once characters get to an adjusted DX of 14 they're succeeding around 90% of the time. We found that things weren't so interesting after 42 pts. This was why I introduced comparative rolls and later did away with attribute increase all together. ...
Yes.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirk View Post
Since everyone has already chimed in about fixing the GM, i.e. make sure that adventuring is dangerous enough, we can look at two things.

Assuming this "bloat" makes for a boring character that achieves all (see fixing the GM) one can either let the character age out, which it will almost always do, and retire him to the hall of fame, or "fix" TFT to somehow manage this "bloat".
No, that doesn't make any sense to me. It's not bad GM'ing if someone survives long enough to get to 40 points. And at 40 points, it makes little sense for someone to want to retire, because suddenly they're the cream of the crop. The problem is we wanted the game to continue to be fun and exciting, and instead it got predictable and bland. And we DID try starting new 32-point games, which was sort of interesting, but we still wished we could play the 42+ point characters and not be disappointed.

(Upgrading to GURPS worked fine for us, actually...)


Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirk View Post
... So most would acknowledge that TFT works for characters to 50 points, and then begins to breakdown because of the 3 die roll and attribute system.
No, more like it starts to get weird at around 40 points, including NPCs you meet that are more powerful than the PCs, and you should also add points for fine weapons and magic items.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick_Smith View Post
And many of the suggestions which we have suggested are hardly extreme. I've suggested that a flat 50 experience points are given for making a job roll, and I've suggested that talents that give DX bonuses give some other sort of bonus.
Yes, the job table thing is a necessary easily-fixed thing but it doesn't remove the bloat issue.

Your DX-bonus talent idea is good. I like my idea of adding talents that give interesting abilities and use experience without raising attributes.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick_Smith View Post
Another good suggestion was dumping the attribute adder magic items.

(For $24,000 you can get a +3 attribute adder for all of ST, DX and IQ. Even if we pretend that attribute bloat is a non issue until 50 attributes, then people hit your limit at 41 attributes, with those items. For $48,000 we hit your 50 attribute limit at 38 attributes.)
Yeah, we didn't even use these at all because they seemed bland and cheezy and too good and whatever words we would've used to say they contribute to bloat and it also just didn't seem fun to have "I'm better" items. We also did not have Charms or industrial abuse of Wishes. We did have some fine and magical weapons. Characters started getting weird as they approached 40 points.



Quote:
Originally Posted by tbeard1999 View Post
And my campaign was fairly deadly. I explored the statistics in detail in another thread, but I think I estimated that it would take a year of weekly adventures to get in the attribute bloat range, if you strictly adhere to the TFT experience point system.
And we wanted to keep running the same characters after 5-6 years of TFT, and longer in GURPS (which is still the only unmodded RPG I really want to play), so 1 year seems like a pretty short interest-span-expectancy for an RPG to me.


Quote:
Originally Posted by tbeard1999 View Post
And if a campaign has a 5% attrition rate per session - in a 5 character party, an average of about 1 death every 4 sessions - a figure will survive for 50 weeks only about 7% of the time.
That seems like a very strange statistic to count on.



Quote:
Originally Posted by tbeard1999 View Post
That said, I think attribute bloat must be a real problem, since a fair number of people complain about it. These folks are credible for the most part, so I believe them.

However I personally think that most RPGs break down at high levels. This is a function of the typical RPG combat resolution mechanic - roll to hit, roll for damage. Also, if figures with average skill ratings succeed success rolls ~50% of the time (I.e., a 3 die roll requiring a 10- to succeed), any reasonable skill advancement system will get the skill to virtually 100% pretty quickly. In TFT, a mere +3 to an average attribute (10 being average) yields an 84% chance of success. That means 5 out of six times, the roll will succeed. (This is my complaint with the 3d6 (or 2d6) resolution mechanic - it’s way too sensitive to modifiers).

These problems can be addressed, or course, but the result would be a game that is manifestly NOT TFT. (The easiest fix is to use a d20 instead of 3d6. That would require an attribute of 17 to get the same success chance as an attribute of 13 with the 3d6 mechanic. But most TFT folks find this blasphemous.)

Anyhow, since I think that this problem is endemic to most RPGs, I don’t sweat it too much. I submit that it is the responsibility of the GM to properly calibrate his campaign so that it’s very, very hard to get to the attribute bloat point (whatever that is).
Well, yes... there are ways to address it (e.g. GURPS), and they won't be exactly TFT, but I think there are ways to address it where it's still closer to original TFT than not. Many people who've continued playing TFT have developed various house rules. One of the more common ones involves defenses, which also plugs the weird part of TFT where there's almost no avoiding getting hit, and almost no defensive effect of skill. Sure, it makes sense that experienced people will get good at making effective attacks - but TFT is missing effective defenses or effect of relative skill between attacker and defender.
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Old 05-31-2018, 11:07 PM   #13
Rick_Smith
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
Default Re: Is Attribute Bloat real?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirk View Post
...

Guarding a magic scroll being transported to another high level wizard's shop, he is betrayed by his small security detachment of 36 point 30 something year old guards, being ??? in number, each of which has a standard 30 point guard wolf. They have all been promised a substantial sum for mis-delivery of this magical scroll, which they do not even dare to read, due to the rumored curse it holds.

How many security guard with wolf pairs would you think is necessary to prevent further attribute bloat with this character? Four? Three? Two? Maybe even just one pair?

As a GM, I've never had much problem with bloat, life just seems to put it to it, but that is just me...
Hi Kirk.
The high level player is alone with a bunch of strangers? Where is the rest of his party? This example is very alien to how my players work.

Your response to a player being successful is to manufacture an unfair fight to just kill her off? This example is very alien to how I work.


This example seems so arbitrary that it is hard to see what argument you are trying to support with it. I could invent a counter example, (Players are prepared, magiced up with items and spells, in defensive terrain, etc.) That fight would go a lot differently, & would be closer to the sorts of things that happens in my campaign - but what is the point? We are playing two very different games. You have a meat grinder, where as I'm looking for sweeping complex plots. A lot of sessions happen in my campaigns where there is no fighting at all. Players, talk, argue, plot, make deals, intimidate NPC's, solve puzzles & build alliances. You are happy with a campaign where people die and die. That is fine. There is nothing wrong with your campaign. But if that is ALL that TFT is CAPABLE of handling, it will be a niche rpg.

If the GM and players want to play in the 'end game', and TFT breaks down then, then they will leave and play some other rpg.

***

I've GM'ed several hundred 32 attribute figures. They are dull, and alike. I prefer advanced campaigns where the characters are experienced and players are fighting big, complex problems. (My current campaign has a leader of a small town trying to hunt down an Urr Lich which depopulated the area 80 years ago. The Urr Lich is allied with the Slaver Empire. Finally to make things more difficult, hostile dwarves, and a different group of humans want to invade this area since they don't believe the Urr Lich is back, and the low population means that they can't be effectively resisted.) A key job is tracking down what happened to the adventuring party which defeated the Urr Lich 80 years ago, and find out what happened to their magic and discover what tactics they used. (The players have learned that big masses of low attribute troops didn't do much back then.)

But fundamentally attribute bloat is not a problem for you. Your players die young. Congrats. But that is not the game I want to play any more. Characters do occasionally die in my campaign. But I prefer the deaths to be ... more meaningful.

“Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods."

Rick

Last edited by Rick_Smith; 06-01-2018 at 12:17 AM. Reason: Added more to my response.
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Old 06-01-2018, 08:44 AM   #14
Kirk
 
Join Date: Feb 2018
Default Re: Is Attribute Bloat real?

My point is that the GM can manufacture all types of "challenges" to address the breakdown of the system in TFT when characters begin to be superheroes.

Be it cancer, large falling rocks, harsh weather, or infection from an ant sting, everyone dies. Having a party become separated, either through natural living events (the party doesn't live together, breathe together, work together, necessarily) or a character do something solo isn't unusual at all in our campaigns.

TFT uses a 3d6 system, that total 18, and so breakdown naturally occurs at 45 plus, depending on other factors, of course. And that's fine by me. I don't think there is an easy way to "fix" that without destroying the fundamental way TFT works.
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Old 06-01-2018, 01:09 PM   #15
RobW
 
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Default Re: Is Attribute Bloat real?

THe amazingly successful formula for RPG, both video and pen and paper:

** Kill monsters, to gain XP and equipment, so you can become more powerful, so you can then kill more dangerous monsters

So I guess I agree with Rick. No matter how powerful a character becomes, there are infinitely many ways of challenging them, in TFT as in other systems.

I completely agree the bigger issue is that 32-point characters tend to have little in the way of personality. My name is Bob the Brave, I have a small shield, leather armor, and a cutlass. I can run, and woops, I died! Oh well. My name is Tim the Brave, I have a small shield, leather armor, etc... So it's nice to let them progress. You really need to get into the 40s before a wizard can use some of the interesting high IQ spells.
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Old 06-01-2018, 01:21 PM   #16
Chris Rice
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: London Uk, but originally from Scotland
Default Re: Is Attribute Bloat real?

Yes, but the silly thing is, it's easier for the experienced Wizard to cast his most difficult spell than it is for the less experienced Wizard to cast his easiest one. If the rolls were comparative, i.e. Against the IQ level of the spell, that would solve the problem, but it isn't. The system is just based on straight or absolute rolls (for the most part) and this becomes more obvious at higher levels.

Another example: two DX10 fighters have a 50% chance to hit one another; that seems fair enough. But two DX18 fighters have over 90% chance to hit one another. Why? Did they somehow forget about defence as they got more experienced?

The system simply doesn't work as well once attributes get higher.
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Old 06-01-2018, 02:17 PM   #17
JLV
 
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Default Re: Is Attribute Bloat real?

Quote:
Originally Posted by larsdangly View Post
I have played more TFT than anyone I've ever met, and at least as much as anyone I've communicated with online, and I don't buy it. There are ways to 'game' the job system to increase your stat total once you have already reached very high totals (basically, you have to get to the point where it is impossible or highly improbable that a failed risk roll can kill you, and then take on a super high risk job). But barring this, the only way to produce obscenely over powered characters is to cheat. The XP costs of rising above 50 points are quite high, and the danger of death in combat is always significant. In my experience, this never turns the corner in the way it does in D+D, where a powerful character can 'mine' experience points without meaningful risk.
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but I completely disagree with you. Period. My experience has been different, and accusing me or my players of "cheating" just because you got a different result is not, perhaps, conducive to having your other opinions on the game treated with any respect.
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Old 06-01-2018, 06:53 PM   #18
Dave Crowell
 
Join Date: Jun 2012
Default Re: Is Attribute Bloat real?

Perhaps a poll is in order. I am still curious as to how many TFT games have reached the point where "attribute bloat" may or may not have become a problem and how long it took to reach that point.

It is easy to work the numbers and see that there is a point at which the numbers become wonky, but that point is moot if it is never reached in actual game play. If that point is reached within a couple of months of regular game play that is quite a different issue.
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Old 06-01-2018, 08:26 PM   #19
ecz
 
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Default Re: Is Attribute Bloat real?

Quote:
Originally Posted by RobW View Post

(...) No matter how powerful a character becomes, there are infinitely many ways of challenging them, in TFT as in other systems.
This.
besides:
If Characters becomes 45+ super heroes in my games it could eventually happen only after countless weekly gaming sessions and years of real life playing. Never in a few sessions, never (ab)using the job table, never killing tons of lesser kobolds of ST 8 and DX7 for easy exp.

If they are skilled and lucky to survive enough to reach this level, the quote applies: No matter how powerful a character becomes, there are infinitely many ways of challenging them, in TFT as in other systems. not counting that the game have already achieved its objective : tons of hours of fun


so, in conclusion, attribute bloat is not a concept in my book.Even the perfect DX18 hero will die if outnumebered in a gentle way.
And to be honest, I have heard about it for the first time joining this forum.

I have seen sometime the opposite: players unhappy because their 32pts starting heroes die too often and are weak. But this is another story.
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Old 06-01-2018, 11:05 PM   #20
larsdangly
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: Is Attribute Bloat real?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirk View Post
TFT doesn't have 35 years of playtesting *changes* to the system, fundamentally just the system as it is. Various groups have house-ruled different things to suit their playstyle, but not systemwide.

If someone wants to try to overcome the inherit limitations in the 3d6 bell curve and make these changes available to a world-wide testing audience, that has about 0 years of playtesting. :)

50 points is about where we see a breakdown, consider a hero type, ST-16 DX-20 (14) IQ-14 character. He wears plate armor and has a bunch of talents, shoots a heavy crossbow every other turn, and handles a great sword with aplomb. He's 40 years old, and starting to feel it. He doesn't get along with his mom very well.

Guarding a magic scroll being transported to another high level wizard's shop, he is betrayed by his small security detachment of 36 point 30 something year old guards, being ??? in number, each of which has a standard 30 point guard wolf. They have all been promised a substantial sum for mis-delivery of this magical scroll, which they do not even dare to read, due to the rumored curse it holds.

How many security guard with wolf pairs would you think is necessary to prevent further attribute bloat with this character? Four? Three? Two? Maybe even just one pair?

As a GM, I've never had much problem with bloat, life just seems to put it to it, but that is just me...
This is correct. TFT is intrinsically dangerous and 'swingy', even for high stat characters (god bless it!). 50 point characters get close to 'saturating' the value of further stat increases, but the are not invincible by any means. I'm sure everyone is debating the point in good faith, but I have a feeling that this is more of a 'white room' problem than an actual play problem.
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