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Neverwinter Nights seriesFemale Character Ability Score Modifiers(29 posts)(29 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted December 03, 2018
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temps: So you want more balance by providing bonuses that are unrealistic?
That's how the games work. There has to be some balance achieved. Do you consider realistic the fact that you can take many sword hits and still be able to fight? Or the fact that heavy armor provides a higher chance to avoid enemy hits (avoid hits, not provide greater damage resistance)? Or do you consider elves, dwarfs, gnomes races realistic? Real life is right there, behind the window. We're playing games because they're not realistic in most cases.

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temps: I don't see why a balance between genders of player characters matters. Tbh, the game would be more realistic and immersive having the people swinging swords on the front lines being nearly all men anyway.
I really don't see a point in talking about realism in a fantasy RPG game.

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temps: Why should I care if none of them are playing female characters? You could still have women in cities, villages, etc. And you may still have a few in adventuring parties playing characters that aren't on the front-lines. Isn't that more like how things actually tended to be during medieval times?
What's the point in taking a female character (even if it's not on the frontline) if she gets only penalties? Even if I take a rogue or wizard, I'd prefer a rogue or wizard with the +2 strength bonus. Besides it's important that female players feel equal as male ones. Why do you want to discriminate women that are playing this game?

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temps: If you want to give women a corresponding buff, I think giving them something like +5 to persuasion checks would make the most sense.
Once again, it's not balanced enough. This bonus is not meaningful.
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Sarafan: There's a problem with this. The bonuses for ability scores apply every two levels. So it wouldn't change as much, if the bonuses and penalties were 1.
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TheLoneRaven: Okay, I don't follow now...
You get bonuses to your skills for every two ability points. If you have 12 dexterity, you get +1 to every skill that relies on this ability (hide in the shadow, lockpick etc.). If you have 13 dexterity, you still get +1. If you raise it to 14 however, the bonus is now +2 and so on.
Post edited December 03, 2018 by Sarafan
Posted December 03, 2018
D&D, and by extension NWN, is a power fantasy. Having females being inherently weaker than males would detract from the power fantasy of playing a mighty female warrior. In a game where you can throw fireballs from your bare hands, realism for the sake of realism has no weight, what matters is the fantastic characters you can create. The actual realism of strength difference between the sexes is irrelevant, because attempting to model that would directly interfere with the game experience that's being created.

On the other hand, there's also the issue that strength in D&D as it applies to martial combat is not represented very well, and the importance of strength is massively overvalued to most fighting styles. The reason goes back to what I talked about previously: power fantasy. It's not about realistically representing the intricacies of combat with medieval weapons, but about feeling powerful, so the game's math massively over-rewards strength while downplaying other more important factors. In reality slight differences in the quality of weapons and gear are vastly more important than the specific strength of the wielder. But that doesn't play into the power fantasy, so the math downplays weapon quality and puts much more emphasis on strength instead. In a more realistic system, physical strength wouldn't be nearly as important to begin with.
Posted December 04, 2018
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Darvin: In a game where you can throw fireballs from your bare hands, realism for the sake of realism has no weight, what matters is the fantastic characters you can create.
NWN/D&D creates a medieval fantasy world that seems at least loosely based on the medieval world and maybe some other myths or fantasy stories from similar time periods. Yes, there are wizards who can shoot fireballs and things like that, but people in the medieval period believed wizards were real things, so what you seem to view as unrealistic (wizards shooting fireballs) is actually being true and realistic within the game's framework as a medieval fantasy world. Making female characters equal in physical strength to male characters is not.

If all that matters is the characters you can create, how about we add in the ability to play as little green aliens who fly down on spaceships from another planet and shoot orcs with laser guns? After all, you claim realism and immersion into the game world doesn't matter, right?
Post edited December 04, 2018 by temps
Posted December 04, 2018
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Sarafan: You get bonuses to your skills for every two ability points. If you have 12 dexterity, you get +1 to every skill that relies on this ability (hide in the shadow, lockpick etc.). If you have 13 dexterity, you still get +1. If you raise it to 14 however, the bonus is now +2 and so on.
Oh, you mean the modifier. Okay, now I get how the stats increase the skills, I just knew the higher the stats the more the related skills increase, not the exact mechanics behind it.

Well I still stand by what I said. One isn't gonna be a big factor, and that's kind of the point. Women start out weaker than men, but that doesn't mean they can't become just as strong, if not stronger, than most men.
Posted December 05, 2018
I think age, gender, livelihood, parentage, nationality, political party, religion, and even sexual orientation could influence your stats. But that's the best thing about dnd - it's a game where you can be a member of the standout cast. So you can roll that girl with 18 strength and guy with 18 wisdom. But we all know there are very few people alive who could meet those stats as a young adult. But in DND, you just did. So go kill some dire rats in the basement!
Posted December 06, 2018
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temps: Different races in the game, such as half-orcs have ability score modifiers. For example, iirc Dwarves get +2 constitution and -2 Charisma, half-orcs get +2 strength, -2 intelligence, and -2 charisma, etc.

Question: should female characters get a -2 modifier to their strength?

Discuss.
I would go with "no". I note that the only version of D&D to have any rule along these lines (and the rule worked a bit differently) is 1st Edition; the designers realized that the rule was not good game design and dropped it in 2e.

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Sarafan: Even if so, they should get a +2 modifier to dexterity as well. I believe no one would complain if this kind of balance was achieved. As for -2 strength alone, definitely no.
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TheLoneRaven: You know... that does make sense. But thinking about it, two seems a bit much, for both strength and dexterity. One seems better for both.
The problem is that, in 3e and 3.5e, all ability score modifiers come at even values, so a +1 bonus might not have any effect.

For example, suppose that female human characters got +1 DEX and -1 STR. This means a max stat female human gets to have 19 DEX, but there's no advantage (except maybe some feat prerequisites) for that bonus, yet her STR is limited to 17, which actually does hurt her combat ability.

Incidentally, I think that, if you are going to have gender modifiers to stats (a mechanic that I disagree with), ho gender should be penalized; instead give each gender bonuses. (That is, give male characters +2 STR and female characters +2 CON, for example.)

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temps: I think a +2 charisma modifier makes more sense than +2 dexterity. I see no reason to think women have more dexterity than men. Then again, there are also lots of male leaders, and leadership is strongly associated with charisma... so maybe that doesn't make sense either. But -2 STR definitely seems logical.
So, I make a female sorcerer with the +2 CHA bonus. This allows her to start with 20 CHA, which in turn makes her spell DCs higher (allowing her spells to be more effective). This could be a balance issue, seeing as the developers went out of their way to keep spell DCs from getting too high; notice how none of the standard 0 LA races have bonuses to mental stats? (Not even elves, where such a bonus would make sense?)

(There's also the fact that ability modifiers of this sort make it more difficult for players who just want to go against gender roles, and the question of how to handle non-binary characters.)
Post edited December 06, 2018 by dtgreene
Posted December 06, 2018
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temps: If you want to give women a corresponding buff, I think giving them something like +5 to persuasion checks would make the most sense.
Actually, that wouldn't be realistic either; compare the number of men in positions of power to the number of women in similar positions, and consider how much a persuasion bonus would matter in democratic governments (as opposed to military dictatorships).

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temps: I don't see why a balance between genders of player characters matters.
I do; by favoring one gender over others, it scares people of the non-favored gender away from the game; this is particularly a problem if it's a gender that is already underrepresented in the hobby.

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Sarafan: There's a problem with this. The bonuses for ability scores apply every two levels. So it wouldn't change as much, if the bonuses and penalties were 1.
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TheLoneRaven: Okay, I don't follow now...
Consider:
15 STR: +2 to hit/damage
16 STR: +3 to hit/damage
17 STR: +3 to hit/damage
18 STR: +4 to hit/damage

Notice how 16 and 17 are the same? This is what Sarafan is talking about here.

Also, if you're looking for realism, I can point out a couple unrealistic aspects of D&D that are quite gameplay-altering, and would be moe worth fixing:
* Characters with heavy armor are harder to hit, but still take full damage when hit (logic would dictate that armor should make you easier to hit, but take less damage from each hit; it turns out that, quite often, it works best if armor provides damage reduction without any change in evasion chance (see Final Fantasy 2 for an example of a game that did this wrong).)
* Stronger characters have an easier time hitting their target. Dexterous characters don't when using melee weapons, unless they burn an extra feet for the privilege.

Also, I could point out that, in 3.x, dwarf might be a better race for a wizard than elf. (Elf gets a relevant bonus and a relevant penaltyy; dwarf gets a relevant bonus (more HP and Concentration is always nice for a mage) but no relevant penalty (Cha doesn't affect wizard spellcasting).
Post edited December 06, 2018 by dtgreene
Posted December 06, 2018
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Sarafan: Besides it's important that female players feel equal as male ones. Why do you want to discriminate women that are playing this game?
I second this point.

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Darvin: In a game where you can throw fireballs from your bare hands, realism for the sake of realism has no weight, what matters is the fantastic characters you can create.
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temps: NWN/D&D creates a medieval fantasy world that seems at least loosely based on the medieval world and maybe some other myths or fantasy stories from similar time periods. Yes, there are wizards who can shoot fireballs and things like that, but people in the medieval period believed wizards were real things, so what you seem to view as unrealistic (wizards shooting fireballs) is actually being true and realistic within the game's framework as a medieval fantasy world. Making female characters equal in physical strength to male characters is not.
Don't forget about the Amazons from Greek mythology; perhams some settings will have tribes such as those, and some players might want to play such characters. In the context of myths like these, it certainly does make sense for female characters to be equal in strength to their male characters. (Note: I first typed "mail characters", but I don't think it would be realistic to allow characters to be sent by mail in-game.)

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temps: If all that matters is the characters you can create, how about we add in the ability to play as little green aliens who fly down on spaceships from another planet and shoot orcs with laser guns? After all, you claim realism and immersion into the game world doesn't matter, right?
The reason such things aren't allowed in d&d games is that they don't fit the genre. In other settings, such characters might certainly exist, and if one can find a sanely balanced rules that includes such rules, we could allow players to play such characters without issues.

(I actually *have* played a game where shooting orcs with laser guns is in fact possible; namely SaGa 2. Incidentally, a TRPG in the style of the SaGa series might be an interesting game to see, and I have thought about rules for such a game.)
Post edited December 06, 2018 by dtgreene
Posted December 06, 2018
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dtgreene: (Note: I first typed "mail characters", but I don't think it would be realistic to allow characters to be sent by mail in-game.)
Maybe you had "chain mail characters" in mind? ;)

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temps: If all that matters is the characters you can create, how about we add in the ability to play as little green aliens who fly down on spaceships from another planet and shoot orcs with laser guns? After all, you claim realism and immersion into the game world doesn't matter, right?
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dtgreene: The reason such things aren't allowed in d&d games is that they don't fit the genre. In other settings, such characters might certainly exist, and if one can find a sanely balanced rules that includes such rules, we could allow players to play such characters without issues.
I might surprise you, but there is a D&D setting, which allows for space travel. It's called Spelljammer and it was created for the second edition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelljammer. After being abandoned in the third D&D, it has returned in a limited form in the next two editions. A very interesting thing, but not everyone likes it. Personally I think Planescape fits the system a lot better. Both provide a bridge between different settings, but Planescape feels more natural in it.
Posted December 07, 2018
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dtgreene: * Characters with heavy armor are harder to hit, but still take full damage when hit (logic would dictate that armor should make you easier to hit, but take less damage from each hit;
I'm surprised that someone who obsesses over mechanics and stats like you seem to would say something like this. In a long battle, barring armor damage or per-strike effects, there is no difference between missing 10% of the time and 10% damage reduction. Thus, AC accounts for all reasons damage might be reduced, not just missing. If CRPG developers had called most of the AC-related "misses" "blocks" when the AC is mostly due to shields and armor, maybe most of the complaints about too-frequent missing would disappear (perhaps to be replaced by complaints about too-frequent blocking). Doing that in general might also have led to D&D changing its oversimplification to account for DR and per-strike effects when such things became common.

I'm also surprised that I'm defending D&D, since I play D&D games in spite of the D&D stupidity, rather than because of it.

I'm also surprised that I bothered to post in this thread, when I ignored similar posts in so many other threads, as I don't really care one way or the other about the main topic and any post will likely just incite flames. I'm sure I'll regret posting this, in any case.
Posted December 07, 2018
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dtgreene: * Characters with heavy armor are harder to hit, but still take full damage when hit (logic would dictate that armor should make you easier to hit, but take less damage from each hit;
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darktjm: I'm surprised that someone who obsesses over mechanics and stats like you seem to would say something like this. In a long battle, barring armor damage or per-strike effects, there is no difference between missing 10% of the time and 10% damage reduction. Thus, AC accounts for all reasons damage might be reduced, not just missing. If CRPG developers had called most of the AC-related "misses" "blocks" when the AC is mostly due to shields and armor, maybe most of the complaints about too-frequent missing would disappear (perhaps to be replaced by complaints about too-frequent blocking). Doing that in general might also have led to D&D changing its oversimplification to account for DR and per-strike effects when such things became common.

I'm also surprised that I'm defending D&D, since I play D&D games in spite of the D&D stupidity, rather than because of it.

I'm also surprised that I bothered to post in this thread, when I ignored similar posts in so many other threads, as I don't really care one way or the other about the main topic and any post will likely just incite flames. I'm sure I'll regret posting this, in any case.
There actually is a difference. If a character's max HP is roughly equal to the damage inflected by the enemy's attack, and the player can heal a living character more easily than they can revive a dead character (not always the case!), then the 10% damage reduction is more useful. The 10% DR will allow the character to consistently survive the enemy's attack, while the 10% evasion will not.

Also, in most of the RPGs I play, most battles tend to be short; it's only boss fights that are long.

The frustration issue is mainly due to the fact that attacks randomly have no effect, so if you get unlucky, you could fail to make progress toward winning the fight, and then have an enemy get lucky and kill you through no fault of your own. It feels unfair when you lose a fight due to bad RNG (as opposed to bad strategy or being underleveled). Changing the terminology would not solve the frustration issue.

I note that, in AD&D, beginning characters miss about half the time against beginning monsters (and vice versa). By contrast, in Dragon Quest 1, the enemiy with the highest evasion can only evade attacks about 1/4 of the time, and the player never evades attacks, making combat more consistent. (Note that Metal Slimes don't actually dodge your attacks that often; rather, their defense is so high that you only have a 50% chance of doing 1 damage (to an enemy with 3 HP).)

By the way, maybe further discussion about this topic should go into a side topic, one that is less likely to attract downvotes and less likely to have the OP "low rated". (Having the first post in a topic "low rated" makes it harder for those interested in the topic to follow it, as it will always appear as read even if there are no new posts in it.)
Posted December 07, 2018
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dtgreene: There actually is a difference. If a character's max HP is roughly equal to the damage inflected by the enemy's attack, and the player can heal a living character more easily than they can revive a dead character (not always the case!), then the 10% damage reduction is more useful. The 10% DR will allow the character to consistently survive the enemy's attack, while the 10% evasion will not.
Wow. Exactly the response I expected, to the point that I had originally prepared a response to that in my post, but removed it. In short, if your opponent has the ability to do enough damage to (nearly) kill you every hit, then it's not a simple, short combat, even if you have the ability to one-hit-kill your enemy as well. This is a balance issue, and an edge case. Having a lot of battles evens out the overall damage in the same way that long battles do, assuming they are truly weak enemies. Yes, I play a lot of games with this balance issue, especially jRPGs. In fact, I was just recently paying Deep Sky Derelicts, where killing all or at least most of the enemy party before the enemy has a chance to move was the only way to survive most battles at all. Again, this is just poor (but common) balance design.

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dtgreene: Changing the terminology would not solve the frustration issue.
Which is why I said, "to be replaced by...". However, I think you'll find that having more than one "reason" for not making progress feels a little less frustrating than just one. It's also more entertaining to watch and hear the characters making contact but blocking than it is to just always hear "swish" and see a miss. It also provides more information about the enemy: did I not do damage because the enemy evaded, or because the enemy "absorbed" the damage? (For humanoids, this is usually obvious, because you can see their armor, but it's hard to tell if some monster is hard-skinned or lithe.) Of course some games just play the same combat animations and sounds regardless.

I note that beginning characters and monsters are generally less skilful, and probably should miss more often (and, yes, evade less often, but still be covered by natural defences). Unfortunately, this happens at the beginning of the game, turning most players off before "getting good".

I don't think it's perfect. As I mentioned, I don't actually like many aspects of D&D, and the oversimplification of armor mechanics is one of those aspects (I much prefer Fallout in almost every respect: armor mechanics, miss mechanics, stat purposing, "alignment", etc.). However, it's pretty clear what the intent was, and your original statement that it was about missing contradicts this.

Yes, I probably should have brought this up in a more appropriate thread. However, I'm here now because I'm waiting for Qt to fully update on my system so I can get back to working on my current toy. Now that it's updated enough to stop giving me library mismatch errors, I'll crawl back under my rock.
Posted December 07, 2018
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dtgreene: There actually is a difference. If a character's max HP is roughly equal to the damage inflected by the enemy's attack, and the player can heal a living character more easily than they can revive a dead character (not always the case!), then the 10% damage reduction is more useful. The 10% DR will allow the character to consistently survive the enemy's attack, while the 10% evasion will not.
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darktjm: Wow. Exactly the response I expected, to the point that I had originally prepared a response to that in my post, but removed it. In short, if your opponent has the ability to do enough damage to (nearly) kill you every hit, then it's not a simple, short combat, even if you have the ability to one-hit-kill your enemy as well. This is a balance issue, and an edge case. Having a lot of battles evens out the overall damage in the same way that long battles do, assuming they are truly weak enemies. Yes, I play a lot of games with this balance issue, especially jRPGs. In fact, I was just recently paying Deep Sky Derelicts, where killing all or at least most of the enemy party before the enemy has a chance to move was the only way to survive most battles at all. Again, this is just poor (but common) balance design.
I wouldn't call it bad design; rather, it is different design. Sometimes, games are meant to be challenging, or certain enemies in games are meant to be harder. It does, for example, lead to the situation where the player should decide whether to use powerful attacks to kill enemies quickly, or conserve resources and hope the enemy doesn't get too lucky.

Also, it's worth noting that:
* Characters don't always have comparable HP totals. A fighter might be able to tank a few hits from an enemy that could one-shot the mage; in this case, it might make sense for the player to find a way to boost the mage's defense or HP a little bit so she can actually survive being hit.
* Some enemies occasionally use deadly attacks, like critical hits. If defense affects criticals, extra defense can allow a character to survive a critical, making combat much safer (or at least providing a target for the next enemy's attack).
* Sometimes a game doesn't restrict you to areas where you're meant to survive. Perhaps the player finds a way into a late game area and decides to explore it, hunting for powerful treasure found within; in this case, defense might allow the character to survive a hit they otherwise couldn't survive, making the treck a bit more likely to be successful. (I am thinking of Dragon Warrior 1, where the (no-RNG-manip) strategy involves getting the sword from Charlock Castle at a low level to speed up leveling later.)
* There's also the case of games where it's easier to heal a dead character than a living one. (I have seen instances of this in Phantasy Star 3 and Lennus 2, both of which have free full revive effects (though PS3's is unreliable, but is at least usable outside of combat until it works), but neither of which have free full heals to living characters (unless you count effects that kill the caster). When a game is like this, the healing dynamics change considerably.
Posted December 16, 2018
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temps: If you want to give women a corresponding buff, I think giving them something like +5 to persuasion checks would make the most sense.
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dtgreene: Actually, that wouldn't be realistic either; compare the number of men in positions of power to the number of women in similar positions, and consider how much a persuasion bonus would matter in democratic governments (as opposed to military dictatorships).

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temps: I don't see why a balance between genders of player characters matters.
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dtgreene: I do; by favoring one gender over others, it scares people of the non-favored gender away from the game; this is particularly a problem if it's a gender that is already underrepresented in the hobby.
It's an effect that would be negligible for a lot of women characters (sorceresses, wizards, archers maybe, etc). And game immersion (of which realism is one aspect) should be given a higher priority than political correctness.

Also, a woman player wouldn't be harmed by this at all. They can (and often do) play male characters. And while I'm a man, I too sometimes play female characters.
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Neverwinter Nights seriesFemale Character Ability Score Modifiers(29 posts)(29 posts)
(29 posts)