The problem with non-linear growth and its push towards min-

[Dracos]

I'm going to admit at the beginning, I don't have a truly good solution to this and, for the most part, for those who don't instinctively twink or uninstictively twink, it's not too big a deal.  That said, it is something that struck me while I was pondering today most ponderously.

   Okay, the issue that I was considering is playing a general middle of the roader type in games, and at the time, I was thinking AD&D edition type rules.  I was pondering in the fact that there's sort of a real heavy push in them towards min-maxing characters.  On the first note, there's no distinguishing a character with precisely average (10 even across the board) and 13-14 even across the board stats, whereas despite being relatively less valuable pointwise, a character with a single 18 and all tens will completely trump the character with 13 across the board.  In addition, a character with one or two high stats has many more options for character choice than one without or one with relatively above average but not superb traits, giving a second sort of push in that direction.  In such a system, it seems nearly infesiable from a statistical standpoint to go with a middle of the road-er because, aside from simply not having a clear heroic archetype which he does singularly, he'd be left significantly underpowered in all things compared to the one trick pony.  This seems an odd sort of encouragement...but then that's one of the things they cleaned up in 3rd ed.

   There's also the inherent sort of percentile gain deal though that keeps it non-linear, when ideally the growth should be linear.  Well, maybe not so much the percentile gain but the whole bit that the success rates often are competition based means that generally, when using it to attack, you'll fail since the defense abilities don't tend to be linked with actual usage of the ability and when using it versus another attacking with it, you'll fail, since they solo'ed in it.  Mmm...  again, mentally focusing on 3rd ed a bit here.  The main thing I think that I am seeing is more just in a level system a trend towards a non-linear stat progression, even though it is, visually, linear.  A character with 18 wis is usually more than twice as good at those things than 14 wis.  Yes, this rightfully sort of maps out rewards for being high in an area, but at the same time, it tends to push towards min-maxing since it is still fairly more valuable to be lopsided than to be balanced.  Part of this I suppose is intentional, leaning from the intent of a balanced party and all, but at the same time it tends to feel that sans the party it is hard to picture these characters as particularly successful adventurers, but at the same time, piece to piece, a more balanced character would get eaten up.  This isn't so much the deal in skill based systems but then, I'm not too sure of that either.

   Generally, I think in any case where you have a greater than 50 percent fail rate for starting, this sort of environment is going to come up where in order to circumvent the fail rate, it is better to neglect several skills and have a few that obliterate that fail rate rather than balance out.  In contrary, where one can put a few points in and have a fifty or so chance of doing it, I think more middle of the road characters end up being made, with slight specialties.  In other words, as a thought to address this in assumption of being right, aiming on a system level to encourage a general success rate in doing things would in turn encourage more of a balance between middle of the road characters and characters with one or two top skills.

[Bjorn]

A point to consider is that in party-based systems, there's a real benefit to discouraging middle-of-the-road characters.  You want a bunch of specialists, since that makes it easier for characters to be distinct, and for each to have an opportunity to be the hero-of-the-moment.  

Conversely, if balanced characters can be equally as good, then you can often end up in the situation where you have a party of indistinguishable characters.  Equally as bad is the situation where a balanced character ends up being almost as good as a specialized character within the specialty, which greatly diminished any benefit, role-playing or otherwise.

[Dracos]

That's an interesting thought.  Whereas such characters would be useful for undersupported parties, a party full of them would have weak distinction outside of how people choose to roleplay.  

Mmm, I'll think more when my mind isn't pounding from a headache.

Dracos

[Anastasia]

I pretty much agree with Bjorn - a party setting like most AD and D games encourages specalists rather than all arounders. The system reflects this by and large, as it should. Wheather you like that or if you agree with it is something that's up to you, but I think the two concepts roughly compliment each other.

This makes solo AD and D a little interesting, though!

[Dracos]

On a few nights of sleep and rereading, I agree.  It is unbalanced towards them with the purpose of encouraging specialists strongly by making the middle-of-the-roader barely playable in comparison.

Dracos