@Dexai, Ixal : I'm using the definition of roleplaying and power-gaming that I spelled out above.
Originally Posted by Drath Malorn
Roleplay is about treating the character as its own person, with their story and evolution within the adventure and fictional world. In particular, making the character act in-character, and not according to the mood or knowledge of the player. Power-gaming is about making the character mechanically good, especially at doing what their class is supposed to be doing. This usually implies starting with 16+ on your main Ability Score. Min-maxing is a particular case of power-gaming, where one boosts all the useful Ability Scores and dumps the others.
By these definitions, roleplaying and power-gaming are independent. One can engage in neither, one but not the other, or both.
If you have different definitions, which imply that not all roleplaying is compatible with all power-gaming, that's fine. I really regret taking about increased roleplay opportunities, because you both focused on that, and nobody (you or anyone) has yet given any reaction to my statistical arguments.
You keep insisting on that yet that's not something I've ever said, and it has no bearing on anything in this discussion.
Originally Posted by Drath Malorn
So if you don't mind me rail-roading, can you (or anyone else really) tell me :
a) Do you agree that the standard rules allow for the creation of an Elf with Strength 17 and a Half-Orc with Strength 16 ?
b) Do you believe that the lore of Elves means they are biologically limited in Strength, and that there should be mechanical limitations to the Strength of an Elf, however exceptional that Elf and their story could be ? (It would work the same with Orc and Intelligence, I'm just sticking to my example. But maybe there's a difference for you. I don't know.)
First of all -- the Elf with Str (and other races with Int etc) are not limited. He can be just as Strong as every other race who doesn't get a bonus to Strength. The Orc with Str is advantaged. That is a huge difference in perspective here that shows of which people are power gamers and which aren't. To the power gamers, not having every single advantage is a "limitation" and "makes the character bad". People who don't power game don't view the baseline as "limited" just because one or a few options happens to get advantages within particular fields.
Secondly -- Orcs are biologically stronger. Baseline races have to work harder and longer to reach the same results. You're already exceptional when you start with a 14 or 15. You become exceptionally exceptional over your adventure. What you are asking for is to already start out as exceptionally exceptional at first level. It is the attributional equivalent of people who write character backgrounds about how their level one characters are already the best swordsmen in the world, have slain dragons, are arch-mages, or gods/angels, and so on. I'm sure there's RPGS out there that allow you to start as that. But that's not the journey DnD is set up to create.
