On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, Bill Hamilton wrote:
> An example from The Princess Bride:
> Inigo was a combat-oriented character, while Fizzik was a formidable
> combatant. The character wasn't designed to be a fighter, but was capable
> simply by his physical nature.
>From a standpoint of the rules, I don't think there's a difference. And
in "point-balanced" games, you really can't be a formidable combatant
without that being the thing your character is best at... which was
actually Fizzik's case. He may not have trained for combat, but it was
still what he was best at.
And that is what I think most of us mean by combat-oriented... it's what
the character does best, sometimes at the exclusion of all else.
You can play games with combat-heavy characters that don't involve much
combat... you can take Superman and play a political or romantic campaign,
where Superman doesn't ever use his most "expensive" abilities, and still
have some fine roleplaying. But I think Superman, by his nature, is still
a "combat-oriented" character from the standpoint of what he's best at.
>From a GM perspective, especially when using a point-limit system, I tend
to assume that whatever a character is best at is what the player wants to
see the most for that character. Unless told otherwise, of course... I
mean, my cloth merchant was best at buying and selling cloth, but I told
the GM I wanted to see adventure. (But those characters weren't
point-limited, so I could take skills in lots of areas... but he still
didn't get combat skills.)
--
Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) GMAST List Owner
[ Phoenyx PBeM Roleplaying -- http://www.phoenyx.net/ ]
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