Randomize your tech tree selections... interesting.

Do the same for building upgrades? That wouldn't make as much "sense", since those upgrades would be a conscious decision whereas tech research should have a bit of randomness to it. Would add another layer of challenge, though.

That's a very interesting idea... gives the game a bit more roguelike flavor to it.

And I disagree. Yes, IMO blocking options should be utilized to prevent the player from developing such a character if such a character can't possibly complete the game. I don't understand the big deal since most games do block certain mixes, so IMO if they fail to block a path that results in the game being unbeatable, they've failed at game design.

In other words, if the game can't be beat with a Mage with low intelligence, high strength, and low charisma with all of his/her skill points on Diplomacy and Detect Evil, then such a character should be forbidden from being made. I agree it can be a fine line in determining what's too difficult, but IMO it's kind of like what someone said about trying to define obscenity, one knows it when they see it.

I don't want to put in 200 hours into a game, and make choices the designer made available to me, only to discover the designer never intended for me to make those choices. If he didn't intend for me to make those choices, then prevent me from making them. Again, I don't see the big deal, almost all games utilize such a tool anyway.

And I completely disagree with you. Choices are part of makes up a game.

What if you choose to pass in all turns in combat because you want to play a pacifist? If the system allows it would it be wrong that you died?

Or if you are playing Mario and choose to run into the enemies. Is it wrong that the game chooses to kill you as a consequence?

Like in real life, choices have consequences and wrong choices have bad consequences. I see no reason why it should be any different in character creation or skill progression.

I'm totally ok, in principle, with games that allow playstyles that make the game impossible/difficult to finish. If in starcraft for example you're obsessed with only playing with marines, then you might have one hell of a time finishing the terran campaign, if you manage to at all. Or for example, playing C&C without building radars.. In such a case the player should notice that the playstyle is not working and try something else. It's part of the fun.

I think the issue you have though is that in an rpg it might be possible to invest a lot of time into the character only to ultimately realise that the skill/feat/attribute combination you used is making life very difficult/impossible for your character, which you then see as time wasted and poor game design. The reason I don't agree with you, is because of one game of which I love the character creation and leveling system: neverwinter nights. I lost track of how many times I restarted the original neverwinter nights because of being unhappy with the strength of my character. The thing is, it didn't and still doesn't bother me and I don't view it as bad game design. What I see is a character creation and leveling system that gives the player a whole lot of freedom, which allows a stupefying number of combinations, only a fraction of which are good, and a smaller fraction of which are excellent. Part of the fun for me is figuring out what would make a good character. Importantly, it's not like finding a needle in a haystack, because if you read up on the game mechanics you can avoid, I dare say, all of skill/feat/attribute combinations that would make the game nearly impossible to finish. This is in stark contrast to Diablo for example. I suppose it comes down to personal preference at the end of the day. Personally, I love make me a 5 coffees and figuring out an optimal character to finish neverwinter nights, but it's not necessary if you just want to create a character that can beat the game. In fact you would be totally safe in just picking a stock class and sticking to the recommended options at leveling each time. I suppose though that with the complexity involved it would've been bad game design not to include a 'recommended' option.

Have you played neverwinter nights? How do you find it?

Also, in your last paragraph you say ...almost all games utilize such a tool anyway. I'm not sure what you mean there with tool? Can you perhaps give some examples?

Sorry, by tool I meant blocking tool. The game blocks you from making certain choices. And yes, I played NWN, and in fact IIRC NWN blocked you from certain choices depending on attributes, but maybe I'm misremembering that as it was a long time ago when I played it.

But as to the example character in the post I responded to, almost all RPG's that I played blocked such a character anyway. If you had a low intelligence roll, for example, the mage class was usually blocked as a choice. If you wanted to be a mage, you would have to reroll to get whatever minimum intelligence/willpower/concentration or whatever attributes were required.

Most games block all sorts of possibilities, and if they don't block them, then one should be able to complete the game. For example many RPG's block entire skill trees depending upon which character class you choose. In Diablo II (IIRC), once you chose your character class, the other entire skill trees were blocked, and the only choices you had to put your skill points into were those of the character class you chose.

And that's okay if you're fine with it, everyone is different. I'm not fine with it. I'm not interested in putting hundreds of hours into a game only to discover the designer gave me choices to make but made it so certain choices weren't feasible. If they weren't feasible, the designer should've blocked them rather than expecting me to read a guide before playing (something I NEVER do) or playing all the way through again.

Not NWN1. For example: there, the minimum intelligence for a wizard was 10 (EDIT: 8 for some races). But you needed 11 INT to cast level 1 spells, 12 INT to cast level 2 spells and so on.
So you could build a wizard with INT 10 who wouldn't be able to cast any spells other than cantrips.

Except that you don't need a guide to figure out that such a wizard is a bad choice. It's there in the class description: "a base intelligence score of 10 + the spell's level is required to cast a spell".
That's why I said the game should be playable with all reasonable choices, but why block the unreasonable ones?
I personally know a guy who finished all of Icewind Dale with 6 level 1 characters. Not only that, he restricted himself to "midgets" (gnomes and halflings only), so certain classes weren't available. An almost impossible feat and he spent countless days reloading.
There are people who enjoy "impossible challenges". Maybe someone wants to try a spell-less mage for an extreme challenge too? He'd be pissed if such an option was blocked.

Yup. Precisely.

Yeah, it looks like we have to agree to disagree on this one.

In neverwinter nights there are many skills/feats/classes that have certain requirements, and so are 'blocked', if you will, if you do not satisfy said requirements at leveling. Like cleave requiring at least 13 strength and so on. In fact, the majority of feats existing in the game are blocked in this sense at any particular point. But it is still very possible to essentially throw away feats at leveling which will weaken your character, like choosing stealthy as a feat for a barbarian whille spending skill points elsewhere. It appears that you can create a 8 intelligence wizard as well. I'm not sure you could easily end up with a character that can't finish the game though, but you certainly could build one that would have a very hard time finishing the game. Incidentally, check out this awesome builder.
Also, I'm not sure I would call what Diablo 2 does as blocking because of the triviality of it. Each class has its own set of 3 skill trees, which you can explore however you want. A barbarian is blocked from using paladin skills in the same way he is blocked from using skills from neverwinter nights. But I agree that by design you absolutely can't create even a close to useless character in Diablo 2.

Is there some game you have in mind that exhibit bad design from this point of view? Neverwinter nights was the closest to what I thought at first you were describing.

edit: come to think of it I can think of one example where a game, that I otherwise adore, exhibited some bad design: Disciples 2 Undead campaign. If you didn't take the caster hero, then you were pretty much screwed, because at one point in the campaign you have to fight against undead groups, some units of which are immune to death and immune to weapon, and there is only one undead unit that does damage that isn't death/weapon, the caster hero. And I don't think you could at that point in the campaign nuke the particular groups with spells, especially if you didn't pick your leader type as a mage/caster either.

Here's my humble opinion on the RPG side of the discussion:

I think all skills/abilities should be viable in some way or form, but I also don't think all combinations for a character should be able to win or at least it should very very difficult in some cases. Why? Because otherwise the choice was meaningless. "Choose whatever, it doesn't matter, you're sure to win anyway." I consider that very wrong in an RPG.

I don;t see how removing strategic decisions could make a strategy game more fun. You can handicap yourself in other ways.
Athough I guess if it really forces you to chose one tech over another (not like in civ where you will get all of them afterwards) it could force you to adapt to crap.
Like playing uncreative in Orion 2.

Twist!

OldFatGuy is actually........................Two Face.

What would happen if "shuffle card incident".