Powergaming in itself is never a problem. Powergaming is simply the desire to have a character that's actually good at something. This does not necessarily conflict with great roleplaying and the GM can ALWAYS outpower even the greatest powergamer. Munchkinism is when the desire to have big numbers on your character sheet and always win trumps the roleplaying aspect. Munchkinism never occurs due to problems with the gaming system or rules, munchkinism occurs with poor roleplayers.

Ancient Defender said:

Some systems promote powergaming / min/maxing / munchkinism by their very nature. Not to bash it but 4E is an example of a system that by design promotes the concept of "dump stats" and, in all actuality, penalizes you if you don't build a character in an optimal way. 

I know several people who fall into the munchkin, yet good role player category. Unless they control themselves, seemingly at great effort, they do their best to squeeze out every advantage possible regardless of character concept, within the rules of the game.

There are plenty of ways to be good at something without powergaming your way to it.

ItsUncertainWho said:

I'm sure there are many systems that promote powergaming. My point was that these systems don't magically take away a players ability to roleplay.

A decent roleplayer could make an Inquisitorial storm trooper right off the bat with every advantage in the book and still have a five page backstory, listing his characters fears, hopes, likes, dislikes and ambitions, pivotal moments in his life and views on the rest of the group.

"There are plenty of ways to be good at something without powergaming your way to it."

I totally agree. Just like you can powergame and be good at roleplaying.

To sum up:
Powergamer: Your standard real life special forces soldier. Took every advance he could lay his hands on that would make him a better, more efficient fighter, neglected poetry and scholastic lore bureaucracy. Can still be a very interesting character, see Benicio Del Toro's portrayal of Aaron Hallam in The Hunted.

Munchkin: Since the 0-level DnD spell Prestidigitation has no spell resistance or saving throws, I use it to turn Elminster's heart into a potato. I then loot the body.

I quite like loose classes [ie Cyberpunk] where you can buy pretty much anything, but you have a small niche that is yours alone. I'd like to see something like that in play. Doing away with 'levels' can onyl be a good thing, in my mind.

I'll reserve reservations on the 'cheap Frenzy for Khorne' thing until I see it in print. How good it is will all be down to the implementation.

ItsUncertainWho said:

If you don't, I will!

I have no love of level systems and find them a bit weird as i have never leveled up in real life. However i get the worry about free systems, I have always been a lets see where it goes type and don't like planning as it dosn't feel organic to me, thus i had all the pistol groups and ascension came along with pistol mastery for very few points, lol!

Powergaming is ok if everyone gets to shine, munchkins however will love this sytem and will spend a lot of time looking over tables etc. What ever system you play you have the posibility that the yellow brick road will deposite it's hellish minions on you. Hell try Larp and watch for the 'can i have a lamy?' attidtude. The other side of course of all of this is the ever classic 'i know i just killed bobs character but i' a khornite and he was using magic, i was just role playing, oh what kit does he have on him by the way?'

jesusjohn said:

You leveled up in school didn't you?

The Munchkins will figure things out in any system though.

I always found it a bit pathetic the best shots in this entire trilogy (out until now) of games could be made at basically Rank 1... as Psykers!  That one power was brutal in play, sucked how our Psyker never missed in that game.  And they are the sorts of people who think Perils are just funny.

>Are there any systems where a planned character doesn't come out on top of a "let's see where this takes me" one in some way?

There is a difference between:
- My character is better or equal to yours in most areas. However you can do x, I can't.
- My character is better than or equal to yours in all areas. But you can fix that if you take the advances I've taken.
- My character is better than or equal to yours in all areas. You can never catch up unless I screw up.

The first is unavoidable, the second is only a tempoary issue, the third is the one I'm complaining about.

>Power Now versus More Power Later is IMO a quite valid mechanic.

What makes it a valid mechanic ?

All I see in it is a way to really discourage players that are new to the game. In the extreme case* new players have a choice between a character that sucks at first, a character that will suck later on, or a major investment of time before they create their first character.

Don't think you can avoid this by already knowing the system. Would you take the first or second type of character is the gm is new to gming (meaning you can't know how long the game will last) ?

*I doubt this will happen here. The only time I've ever actually seen it this bad was learning skills in Eve Online (which have been removed).

>As for the exact problem, there actually is a balance - the one who bought the Slaanesh power while he was unaligned will become aligned sometime later, thus he must have bought more Tzeentch powers for a non-reduced price. If the discount was as big as the extra cost, there would be balance.

Look at the two examples I gave eariler. Which discount would provide balance for both ?

jesusjohn said:

As opposed to a level-based system such as D&D, which all munchkins steer well clear of? You can munchkin any system. Loose, classless systems have a long history and are hardly more rife in 'optimisation' than anything else. 

As regards discouraging players new to the game, I don't really see that. At least not compared to things like 3.5, where if you don't plan your character 20 levels in advance, you'll suck now AND later on.

I've made good experiences with class- and level-less systems because they allow for more creativity in character creation instead of shoehorning people into just a dozen concepts the designers of the game came up with. It's always more fun to specifically tweak your character to perfectly suit the idea you had in your mind.

Powergaming/munchkinism is an issue, but as has been pointed out it exists in other games as well (example: dual-wielding boltguns or other basic weapons). In my opinion, an RPG shouldn't be geared towards munchkins (by making it harder for them) but towards roleplayers (by making it more enjoyable for them). If you have munchkins in your group, the GM can always deal with them himself, but that's no reason why a system should penalize normal players just because others want to be jerks.

 @BilateralRope

There is a difference between:
- My character is better or equal to yours in most areas. However you can do x, I can't.
- My character is better than or equal to yours in all areas. But you can fix that if you take the advances I've taken.
- My character is better than or equal to yours in all areas. You can never catch up unless I screw up.

The first is unavoidable, the second is only a tempoary issue, the third is the one I'm complaining about.

It only takes one "bad" advance to arrive at the third in most systems - most systems have some way of screwing yourself, like taking that one feat in D&D that provides a whopping 3 hp bonus. At that point, you're x XP behind the other player and won't be able to catch up to him even if you take his exact advancement order from then on, because he'll obviously be a step ahead. In some systems, you may turn this situation around to arrive at a type 1 by moving farther in the direction the scrappy advance hopefully opened up to arrive at a hybrid character.

What makes it [power now vs power later] a valid mechanic ?

Um... mainly the fact that it's rather hard to avoid. Take DH for example - a high level group usually won't continue using primitive weapons. Thus, any player who took primitive weapon training will at some point in the game find that he has an advance that doesn't benefit him anymore although it was worthwhile at the time he bought it. Is that truly unfair?

Look at the two examples I gave eariler. Which discount would provide balance for both ?

A flat one. Let's say you become aligned once you buy four aligned advancements more than the combined advancements of all other deities you got. Let's further say aligned advancements cost 50 XP less whle counteraligned ones cost 50 XP more. You could thus arrive at:

Tzeentch I
Tzeentch II
Tzeentch III
Tzeentch IV -> aligned
Tzeentch V (-50)
Tzeentch VI (-50)
Slaanesh I (+50)

versus

Slaanesh I
Tzeentch I
Tzeentch II
Tzeentch III
Tzeentch IV
Tzeentch V -> aligned
Tzeentch VI (-50)

If the discount was arranged like this, only the sheer number of aligned skills bought would count, not their placement - assuming you can't get unaligned, in which case you could have a clever back-and-forth tango to ensure you never get the discount, but always the extra cost if you buy the Slaanesh advance right after the Tzeentch IV, but that's probably obvious enough to avoid.

Cifer said:

However, you missed one  combination, albeit a stupid one, it does exist:

Tzeentch I

Tzeentch II

Tzeentch III

Tzeentch IV -> aligned

Slaanesh I (+50) -> unaligned

Tzeentch V -> aligned

Tzeentch VI (-50)

And this is not counting in the diffrences you can get if the discount is % based. Then, you can really mess up, or be really smart, only buying cheap advances untill you are aligned, and then buy the expensive ones, maximising the gain of alignment.

Another way to look at the whole schema is this...

Sure it might cost a bit more to take something earlier or not being aligned.  But the fact is you'll -have- it earlier.  And getting some things earlier instead of later and cheaper may very well make you the one having the easier time of it early on.

 @Nightsorrow

Reading the entire post, including the last paragraph, is highly encouraged. 

I just like that people are arguing mechanics of a game that hasn't been released yet.