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Author Topic: Broad generic classes vs skill-based  (Read 7384 times)

Lunamancer

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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #15 on: February 04, 2023, 08:55:43 AM »
Frankly, a class based system that then uses skills, like D&D 3e-5e, I find annoying as it is the worst of both worlds.

^^^ This.

I was put off by 3E by how rules heavy it is (and how silly I find a lot of the rules). I think 5E is a really good system. But it left me wondering why it didn't just go full-on skill-based.

For me, doing classes well means hitting four key points:
1. There are enough classes that they provide a satisfying variety of choice in character, but few enough that you can have encyclopedic knowledge of all their features. Mileage will vary when it comes to the magic number or magic range. BECMI's 7 classes seems fine. I really like 1.0E's 10 classes and subclasses. I don't like the classes added in UA, but I don't think the total number of classes was overwhelming at all. Once you get 20+, I think you have to start asking why isn't this just a skill-based game.
2. There are no, or minimal in-class variations such that you know what it means when a character is a "Cleric." The class acts as an effective short-hand. There can still be a lot of variation in individuals. There's a real difference between a fighter in AD&D with 18 DEX and 12 STR compared to the other way around. But the class features themselves remain identical.
3. The classes are not simply game abstractions but tie to the game world. You can imagine an army of fighters, a guild of thieves, a school of magic-users, and a church of clerics. A fleet of tanks or a book of strikers make a lot less sense to me. Without this tie, you run the danger of classes being nothing but abstract gobbledygook. With the connection, you always have an explanation for why so many individuals would have so many identical skills and abilities in common.
4. It should go without saying, but the classes should be interesting and fun to play. It's not automatically bad for there to be something like a sage class or a merchant class. "NPC" classes can be a fine short-hand for GM use. I just don't regard them as part of the game's proper class system. Those proper classes should make for good PCs.


If a game's class system isn't hitting those points, it should probably just be a skill-based system.
That's my two cents anyway. Carry on, crawler.

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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #16 on: February 04, 2023, 09:53:12 AM »
I am really torn on this issue, and flip flop periodically. Personally, I slightly prefer skills-based over classes and especially if character creation involves those skills being the result of a prior career (ala Traveller). On the other hand, in practice, I have been very frustrated with many of my players as a DM when using skill- based game systems, because players will too often tend to play the character sheet rather than the character, and will waste time scouring their sheet for the best number and which skills they can use. ...

Frankly, a class based system that then uses skills, like D&D 3e-5e, I find annoying as it is the worst of both worlds. Enough skills that you need to decide between them, but not enough such that you need to fall back on the class distinctions. I prefer using something like Traveller or CoC, on the one hand, or a more OSR-style class system, on the other, and not mix the two.

I know the Grognard's round here ain't altogether keen on yon vidja-game-fiddlers...

But I would offer that ES: Skyrim could offer a path forward on this issue.

Just after escaping from your execution due to an abrupt dragon attack, you run off with the first friend you meet; he's going to the nearest town. Of course, Skyrim is a kind of sandbox game, so you don't really have to follow the road with this other guy at all; if you do, you will encounter a set of three standing stones tied to each in-game skill tree: Warrior, Mage, and Thief. Should you touch any one stone, it channels astrological powers into your character's soul, mechanically resulting as experience bonuses for using the skills associated with that archetype.

For the Core D&D game, you might add a Priest standing stone in like manner to your own game--but it doesn't have to be exactly a standing stone as such, maybe each player finds a unique shrine altogether or is even visited by supernatural forces during dreams or hallucinations--as long as the player chooses a destiny for that character to be a great hero in that vein. Nothing otherwise stops you from learning and improving on new skills from other destinies, you just don't get experience bonuses towards using them since they count as cross-class skills. Everything else can be varied by your region (equipment) and background (sub-class), with skill sets being a combination of those two starting points.

Going the opposite direction, given the overreliance on the sheet because skills have a gravitational pull about them, you just nerf skills altogether, relying strictly on attributes as Gygax intended, but you can still get bonuses to doing things congruous to that destiny; this is a very Sword & Sorcery take on game design, however. If you added the occupation/background tables as found in 1E & 2E, you could try to negotiate for narrative reasons why your character can do X,Y, or Z, but they are typically not related to adventuring (e.g. baker) and would be more frequently used in settings that are "in town" to leverage their strengths there.


I was put off by 3E by how rules heavy it is (and how silly I find a lot of the rules). I think 5E is a really good system. But it left me wondering why it didn't just go full-on skill-based.

It would be an artform to learn what to ignore and approximate from 3E in particular.

Quote
For me, doing classes well means hitting four key points:
1. There are enough classes that they provide a satisfying variety of choice in character, ...
2. There are no, or minimal in-class variations ...
3. The classes are not simply game abstractions but tie to the game world. ...
4. It should go without saying, but the classes should be interesting and fun to play. It's not automatically bad for there to be something like a sage class or a merchant class. ...


If a game's class system isn't hitting those points, it should probably just be a skill-based system.

1. Mostly why I like hierarchies of forms like class & subclass & background, archetypes included (warrior, mage, priest, rogue). I don't think people who rely on archetypes really understand the concept as promoted by Campbell in his works on the monomyth, its mostly just a catch all word for every fantasy hero ever published for them, e.g. "Fighter" is too restrictive but "cc'ed Drizzt Do'Urden or Elric" isn't.
2. Of course we absolutely need new abilities at every level for every sub-class, dead-levels are scary!
3. Deconstruction is so fun though!
4. Agreed.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2023, 10:05:14 AM by ClusterFluster »

Persimmon

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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #17 on: February 04, 2023, 10:34:38 AM »
Probably since I started with B/X in 1981, I'm a strong advocate for simple class-based systems.  I think every class should have a few, preferably unique class abilities or features, but I can't stand the bloat of feats and stacking you get in later versions of D&D.  The only really mixing I've done is with MERP, which is fine once you gronk it, but it still gets cumbersome in character creation and level advancement.  My preferences are also why I still like games with race as class like OSE and DCC.

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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #18 on: February 04, 2023, 10:38:15 AM »
Classes are (or should be) good shortcuts for PC creation.

Skill systems are more flexible and are ideal for situations where niche is not clearly defined: e.g., all PCs are knights, they do not need distinct classes but different skills.
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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #19 on: February 04, 2023, 10:42:04 AM »
Classes are (or should be) good shortcuts for PC creation.

Skill systems are more flexible and are ideal for situations where niche is not clearly defined: e.g., all PCs are knights, they do not need distinct classes but different skills.

That's brilliant

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #20 on: February 04, 2023, 11:04:19 AM »
I don't get why they call them skill based when its really point buy.

Point buy has its own flaws in the form of min-maxing and complicated points structures.

Lunamancer

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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #21 on: February 04, 2023, 11:34:53 AM »

1. Mostly why I like hierarchies of forms like class & subclass & background, archetypes included (warrior, mage, priest, rogue). I don't think people who rely on archetypes really understand the concept as promoted by Campbell in his works on the monomyth, its mostly just a catch all word for every fantasy hero ever published for them, e.g. "Fighter" is too restrictive but "cc'ed Drizzt Do'Urden or Elric" isn't.

Yeah, the term archetype as used in D&D just isn't the same as how it's used in Monomyth. And there's a story of the early days of the game, I think I heard it from Tim Kask, that I think really illustrates it.

So the story goes that Gary originally thought no one would ever want to play a magic-user. And obviously in hindsight Gary was in fact wrong about that. But in trying to guess what his thought process was, why he'd say such a thing, I think he was maybe initially conflating the D&D archetypes with the monomyth archetypes.

I think he had a valid point in that players will want to play the role of the hero, not the wizard/advisor/mentor role. To use the original Star Wars trilogy as an example, you want to play Luke who's running around doing all these things. Not Yoda, who's just hanging around in a swamp and dying under a blanket. Yoda is the wizard in this. But Luke is not. Even though he is able to go around waving his hand and making things happen like magic, he is the hero, not the wizard.

Similarly, the PC mage in D&D is really just a hero archetype. The mage goes on adventures just like the fighter, fights bad guys just like the fighter. The difference is we replace the swinging of a sword with the slinging of the spell.

Here's the thing, though. In the older versions of the magic-user, they had fewer hit points, were pretty bad fighters, and had very limited uses on their spells which were counterbalanced by the spells being very powerful. It's like the fighter was useful 80% of the time where the magic-user was useful 20% of the time. The magic-user was more participatory than Yoda, but a far cry from the fighter.

So this changed over the years. Their hit points increased in later editions. They were allowed to cast more spells. But the potency of their spells decreased. We aren't quite there yet. We still have a ways to go. But the trajectory it's on is that they're converging to be identical to the fighter, just re-skinned so that we describe the things they do differently from how we describe the fighter.

But to me, this is supporting evidence that the original conception of the magic-user was to be the archetypal wizard, that's why we can see artifacts of that archetype more dramatically in the older versions of the game. And they're disappearing over time because, Gary was sort of right. No player actually wants to play that shit. They want to play a hero.

Of course sooner or later I have to circle back to making the case that RPGs peaked at early 1E and it's been all downhill since. I will grant, with the proviso that preferences will always vary and not even my own preferences necessarily agree with this, but I will grant that magic-users have been made more fun to play over time. Because they are better and better fitting for the role of hero. Because Gary was kind of sort of right. It really is the case that nobody wants to play the wizard archetype.

However, I think we have lost something in trying to make all classes "fun." And that is by having one foot in the unfun wizard archetype, the old school magic-user offers a completely different play experience from the fighter. That you're not going to be the steady-and-consistent guy with your class abilities. Rather you get your one moment, but in that moment you get to turn the entire game on its head. That 90% of the game, it entirely comes down to your wits. And it's going to be the most challenging test of wits as having the fewest hit points of all the classes, you are afforded the fewest mistakes. But you have the power to blackball a challenge entirely. For example, a 1st level magic-user cannot even make a single mistake. One hit and you're pretty much a goner. But a single sleep spell you can be like, "Fuck this room full of orcs," and just like that, 4d4 of them are dropped. No hit roll needed. No saving throw allowed. The entire encounter vetoed just like that.

Hey. I'm not claiming it's fun to be mostly useless. And I'm not claiming it's fun to delete the climactic battle at the end. I'm just saying that it's something different. It's an option if you felt up for something a little different than the standard fare. And there's gotta be some balance to it, sure, it's gotta be at least a little fun, and for me the right balance was struck in 1E. This post is of course all tangential to the main topic and is intended for the sole purpose of disentangling the concept of classes in RPGs from the monomyth archetypes.
That's my two cents anyway. Carry on, crawler.

Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito.

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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #22 on: February 04, 2023, 12:48:37 PM »
Yeah, the term archetype as used in D&D just isn't the same as how it's used in Monomyth. And there's a story of the early days of the game, I think I heard it from Tim Kask, that I think really illustrates it.

So the story goes ...

I swear I've recognized your voice in my head as I've read that, and your Star Wars reference gave it away.

If it's your podcast that you co-manage I might be thinking of, I've definitely realized just now how much I've missed it.

If not--HEY LOOK OVER THERE! *hides*

Regardless, this was masterfully done, and a good refresher for the fighter/wizard balance fight. I agree that the answer leans in favour of the older editions concerning a balance of specialized teamwork, and not that of parallel individual capabilities. I've bought OSE (and other OSR systems over the years, including just recently), but without having had a chance to play them I've had to rely on just such second-hand experiences from over the decades before my time--posted by grognards on stacks, forums, and blogs, or published in primers like the Principia Apocrypha. They turned out to be great marketeers, incidentally.

Granted, most people would be frustrated with waiting away most of their game night for their big opportunity (I sure would be), but the solution should be to figure out how to expand the scope of opportunities for just such a mage to impact the encounter, without flattening the unique talents of the other classes or dispelling his own risks entirely. I'd introduced the idea of first level spells functioning as thief skills on Reddit up to ten years ago to some interest, but in hindsight, perhaps that doesn't quite accomplish this end, and likely leaves others wanting.

The thing is, the thief managed to sneak off without getting any criticisms of his own risks and weaknesses pointed at him!

How did he get away with that?!
« Last Edit: February 04, 2023, 06:08:12 PM by ClusterFluster »

Steven Mitchell

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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #23 on: February 04, 2023, 01:41:57 PM »
...

Hey. I'm not claiming it's fun to be mostly useless. And I'm not claiming it's fun to delete the climactic battle at the end. I'm just saying that it's something different. It's an option if you felt up for something a little different than the standard fare. And there's gotta be some balance to it, sure, it's gotta be at least a little fun, and for me the right balance was struck in 1E. This post is of course all tangential to the main topic and is intended for the sole purpose of disentangling the concept of classes in RPGs from the monomyth archetypes.

I think the issue is that what's fun for the player in the moment versus what is satisfying for the player in the long run, are not the same thing. Partly, of course, that comes down to those preferences you mentioned.  It's akin to the difference between a cakewalk, being challenged, or a blood bath in the way the environment of the game is set up.  Everyone says they want the challenge, but they don't all mean it the same way, or to the same degree.  (And some of them are lying when they say it.  And some of them really do prefer the cakewalk or the bloodbath, and will tell you so if you push.)

So with characters, when you can't find a class to do what you want, that could be good or bad or both.  Ideally, the classes are limited enough that the limits matter, and the player can get long term enjoyment out of working around those limits however they need to do it.  The classes are open enough that the player gets to do some of what he wants right now.  And the game runs long enough for the long term to matter.  All a skills-based game does is take the responsibility and authority for accomplishing this off the game designer and put it onto the players, or at least the GM (which is why games like GURPS and Hero System have advice on the GM putting limits.)  In capable hands, that's amazing.  In less capable hands, it's anywhere from drudgery to a train wreck. 

Normally, I'm entirely in agreement that classes and skills don't mix.  Yet, my class/skill game is working a whole lot better than my all skill game. When thinking about why, I realized that it's because my classes aren't really classes.  Instead, they are character frameworks, which is too much of a mouthful--so I say classes despite it not being entirely accurate.  Anyway, my classes supply mostly limits and long term decisions.  If you play class A you get clear feature X that no one else has and you don't get the other class things, and critically, there's nothing in the skills and other abilities you can do to change that.  You have to commit, then live or die with it.  Whereas the skills are other abilities are more open--easier or harder to get, or more or less useful depending on what you already have, but there's room for you to play.  You can make your character the way you want.  You can screw it up.  However, you can only screw it up so far.  My classes are acting as a break on bad decisions, but not a fail safe.  You can screw your character up, but you have to work at it. 

I'd rather police that kind of thing with the game system than do it on a case by case with the players and the campaign.  Plus, I'm sick of telling players "No" for their own long term good when it comes to character building.  I don't mind it in the game, but for character concepts, it gets old.  A huge list of classes is one way to accomplish what I want, but I find it aesthetically displeasing and annoying to manage/communicate, too. 

Mileage not only may vary, but has and does and will until the end of time. :D





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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #24 on: February 04, 2023, 06:15:31 PM »
I think the issue is ...

The ideas you've presented are very familiar as well, though with significantly less censored cussing and the lack of an overwrought sense of self-importance for dramatic effect...

Eric Diaz

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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #25 on: February 04, 2023, 09:05:20 PM »
Classes are (or should be) good shortcuts for PC creation.

Skill systems are more flexible and are ideal for situations where niche is not clearly defined: e.g., all PCs are knights, they do not need distinct classes but different skills.

That's brilliant

Thanks!


1. Mostly why I like hierarchies of forms like class & subclass & background, archetypes included (warrior, mage, priest, rogue). I don't think people who rely on archetypes really understand the concept as promoted by Campbell in his works on the monomyth, its mostly just a catch all word for every fantasy hero ever published for them, e.g. "Fighter" is too restrictive but "cc'ed Drizzt Do'Urden or Elric" isn't.

Yeah, the term archetype as used in D&D just isn't the same as how it's used in Monomyth. And there's a story of the early days of the game, I think I heard it from Tim Kask, that I think really illustrates it.

So the story goes that Gary originally thought no one would ever want to play a magic-user. And obviously in hindsight Gary was in fact wrong about that. But in trying to guess what his thought process was, why he'd say such a thing, I think he was maybe initially conflating the D&D archetypes with the monomyth archetypes.

I think he had a valid point in that players will want to play the role of the hero, not the wizard/advisor/mentor role. To use the original Star Wars trilogy as an example, you want to play Luke who's running around doing all these things. Not Yoda, who's just hanging around in a swamp and dying under a blanket. Yoda is the wizard in this. But Luke is not. Even though he is able to go around waving his hand and making things happen like magic, he is the hero, not the wizard.

Similarly, the PC mage in D&D is really just a hero archetype. The mage goes on adventures just like the fighter, fights bad guys just like the fighter. The difference is we replace the swinging of a sword with the slinging of the spell.

Here's the thing, though. In the older versions of the magic-user, they had fewer hit points, were pretty bad fighters, and had very limited uses on their spells which were counterbalanced by the spells being very powerful. It's like the fighter was useful 80% of the time where the magic-user was useful 20% of the time. The magic-user was more participatory than Yoda, but a far cry from the fighter.

So this changed over the years. Their hit points increased in later editions. They were allowed to cast more spells. But the potency of their spells decreased. We aren't quite there yet. We still have a ways to go. But the trajectory it's on is that they're converging to be identical to the fighter, just re-skinned so that we describe the things they do differently from how we describe the fighter.

But to me, this is supporting evidence that the original conception of the magic-user was to be the archetypal wizard, that's why we can see artifacts of that archetype more dramatically in the older versions of the game. And they're disappearing over time because, Gary was sort of right. No player actually wants to play that shit. They want to play a hero.

Of course sooner or later I have to circle back to making the case that RPGs peaked at early 1E and it's been all downhill since. I will grant, with the proviso that preferences will always vary and not even my own preferences necessarily agree with this, but I will grant that magic-users have been made more fun to play over time. Because they are better and better fitting for the role of hero. Because Gary was kind of sort of right. It really is the case that nobody wants to play the wizard archetype.

However, I think we have lost something in trying to make all classes "fun." And that is by having one foot in the unfun wizard archetype, the old school magic-user offers a completely different play experience from the fighter. That you're not going to be the steady-and-consistent guy with your class abilities. Rather you get your one moment, but in that moment you get to turn the entire game on its head. That 90% of the game, it entirely comes down to your wits. And it's going to be the most challenging test of wits as having the fewest hit points of all the classes, you are afforded the fewest mistakes. But you have the power to blackball a challenge entirely. For example, a 1st level magic-user cannot even make a single mistake. One hit and you're pretty much a goner. But a single sleep spell you can be like, "Fuck this room full of orcs," and just like that, 4d4 of them are dropped. No hit roll needed. No saving throw allowed. The entire encounter vetoed just like that.

Hey. I'm not claiming it's fun to be mostly useless. And I'm not claiming it's fun to delete the climactic battle at the end. I'm just saying that it's something different. It's an option if you felt up for something a little different than the standard fare. And there's gotta be some balance to it, sure, it's gotta be at least a little fun, and for me the right balance was struck in 1E. This post is of course all tangential to the main topic and is intended for the sole purpose of disentangling the concept of classes in RPGs from the monomyth archetypes.

Awesome post!
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Eric Diaz

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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #26 on: February 04, 2023, 09:08:16 PM »
Elaborating it a bit further:

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2023/02/class-x-skill-some-quick-thoughts.html

It is a discussion almost as old as RPGs: is it better to have distinct classes (fighter, mage, thief, etc.) or different skills (combat, magic, stealth, nature, etc.) that everyone can access?

There are also hybrid approaches - my Dark Fantasy Basic, for example, uses classes as a "shortcut" for certain skills and feats. Elthos has classes that allow you to become better with certain skills. D&D 5e has skills that basically anyone can pick with the right feat, but certain classes get more/better skills.

It is a matter of taste, of course, but each method has its pros and cons.


Class-based games are great when your group is a "Fellowship of the Ring", where everyone has different abilities that are clearly defined by their archetypes: the warrior, the mage, the ranger, and even the elf, the hobbit, etc.

Skill-based games excel in a "Knights of the Round Table"* scenario. Everyone has similar abilities**, but some are more skilled than others. It is also perfect for teams of detectives, soldiers, criminals ***, etc.

* I've found a similar comparison reading "Of Dice and Men", which inspired this post.

** Notice that Arthurian knights are also archetypes - but maybe these archetypes are less obvious, and also maybe not as strong as the "knight" archetype that includes all of them.

*** And elves! If you have an "elf" class, a band of elves can become too uniform; it would be better if they had different classes or skills. If you have a single elf in the party, however, it can be an archetype in itself.

Skill-based games seem suited for realistic games - because in real life, archetypes are vague and abstract, while in myth they are much stronger. In any case, archetypes are incredibly useful to create characters - even in skill-based games, it is good to have some archetypes to play with (which justifies hybrid approaches).

In theory, you could use professions or specialties instead of archetypes to create a team: say, a quarterback, a running back, a receiver, a kicker, a punter, etc. However, this cannot be "classes" in most games because a profession or job is insufficient to describe a real person - unlike archetypes, that are much broader. In other words, even games that have "profession" as an important part of PC creation usually include skills.

On the other hand, one should be careful to avoid creating a boring/weak class system by adopting classes do not represent strong archetypes. For example, archetypes such as "Strong Guy" or "Half-caster" might make sense within the rules, but are not by themselves strong enough to represent a class.  A "Witcher" class, on the other hand, is only a strong archetype because it has been drilled into our mind through books, games and the TV series. Likewise for paladins (D&D), Night's Watch (ASOIAF), etc. They are familair enough to represent archetypes of their own. If you do not have specific in-universe archetypes, considering falling back into more recognizable ones: "Arcane Warrior", Holy Knight, Ranger, etc.

My preference? As suggested above, I like the hybrid approach. Start with an archetype that suggests some skills (and feats, etc.) and then add as you go. This allows quickly PC (and NPC) creation while also leaving room for customization. This is the approach I used with "Old School Feats".
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Aglondir

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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #27 on: February 05, 2023, 01:19:58 AM »
Classes are (or should be) good shortcuts for PC creation.

Skill systems are more flexible and are ideal for situations where niche is not clearly defined: e.g., all PCs are knights, they do not need distinct classes but different skills.

Agree with that, and I would add that "build with skills" works well if everyone knows the genre's archetypes (Star Wars, LOTR, etc.) but classes really help with original or obscure settings.


Lunamancer

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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #28 on: February 05, 2023, 01:20:41 AM »
I swear I've recognized your voice in my head as I've read that, and your Star Wars reference gave it away.

If it's your podcast that you co-manage I might be thinking of, I've definitely realized just now how much I've missed it.

If not--HEY LOOK OVER THERE! *hides*

Sorry to disappoint you. I've never been involved in a podcast. I'm open to doing one. I just wouldn't want to do it alone. I don't think I'd like the end product where it's just me talking. And all the cats I game with are the types who just don't like to put themselves out there. They don't even have social media accounts. So I haven't been able to recruit a cohost.

Quote
Regardless, this was masterfully done, and a good refresher for the fighter/wizard balance fight. I agree that the answer leans in favour of the older editions concerning a balance of specialized teamwork, and not that of parallel individual capabilities.

Glad it was well-received. Though again my intent was to illustrate the differences between classes and monomyth archetypes. As for Fighter/Wizard balance, there's a lot more to discuss than what I wrote there.

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I've bought OSE (and other OSR systems over the years, including just recently), but without having had a chance to play them I've had to rely on just such second-hand experiences from over the decades before my time--posted by grognards on stacks, forums, and blogs, or published in primers like the Principia Apocrypha. They turned out to be great marketeers, incidentally.

One thing I like to throw out there that you usually don't learn in old-school school is one huge difference back in the day is we couldn't just hop on line and order whatever books we wanted. And mail ordering when possible was often expensive and took a long time. We were mostly at the mercy of whatever was stocked on the shelf of the local game store. That made it a lot harder to put together complete collections of given edition.

To this day, I still literally use the exact same copies of the 1E Dungeon Masters Guide and Fiend Folio that my grandmother got me 35 years ago. Those original run books really are that durable. At the time I got those, I also had a falling apart second cover 1E PHB that I bought from my cousin for $20 along with 27 modules and a copy of the 1E Lankhmar supplement. It's important to note, I did not own a Monster Manual. So most of the monsters in my game world came from Fiend Folio and were not the classic D&D monsters at all. The only reason I had classic monsters at all in my world was because I also owned the 1983 Red and Blue boxes.

And this is really the point. That mixing editions was part of the old school experience. In fact, when 2E came out, that became my main PHB with the 1E PHB as a backup. I bring this up because if you read a lot of commentary or analysis comparing and contrasting the various editions, even though it may be technically correct and well-cited, it also tends to be false and inauthentic because in the real old days, the lines weren't so sharply drawn for all the reasons I mentioned here.

The other thing that's true even if we weren't mixing and matching editions is, in the days of 1E, for example, 2E didn't exist yet. We had no idea that one would exist or what would even be in it. And so nothing about authentic 1E is deliberately distinct or a reaction to 2E. Only after 2E exists is it possible to analyze and compare and contrast the two editions and declare the ways in which they are different from one another. Obviously at least some of the stuff that ended up in 2E was drawn from the wish list of 1E gamers. So it stands to reason a lot of that stuff was already being done in actual 1E play even if it doesn't appear in any of the 1E books, belying the differences between the two editions as found in the actual texts.

It's enough that sometimes I wonder how much serious history in much more important subjects is completely botched because academic standards demand documentary evidence when it can be specifically misleading when you think through some of the inherent truisms of chronology I'm highlighting here.

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Granted, most people would be frustrated with waiting away most of their game night for their big opportunity (I sure would be), but the solution should be to figure out how to expand the scope of opportunities for just such a mage to impact the encounter, without flattening the unique talents of the other classes or dispelling his own risks entirely. I'd introduced the idea of first level spells functioning as thief skills on Reddit up to ten years ago to some interest, but in hindsight, perhaps that doesn't quite accomplish this end, and likely leaves others wanting.

Yeah, when I hear the stories of Tenser the mage, starting out as a first level magic user, doing dungeon crawls, often in very small parties, sometimes even solo, starting knowing only Read Magic, it makes me wonder what must have been true of how the game was DMed back then that such a thing would even be viable. It really inspired me to think deeply on the subject, and maybe challenge my own approach to DMing. And I think I figured it out.

The key is to view all class abilities as icing. The cake, the core of the game, is it's about pitting players against the fantasy world armed only with their imagination. Sure. Sometimes you're going to have brain farts. And that's when your class abilities come into play to save your bacon. But it's your wits, not the game functions, that should be your first go-to.

So most of it is going to fall on the players' shoulders. But this means a couple of things for DMing style. It may require the DM to ere on the side of permissiveness. And it's probably going to mean being called upon to adjudicate more often. Now I'm a rules-as-written guy, and even I can manage to pull these things off. So it's definitely totally doable by any DM out there. It's just a matter of being comfortable with it.

Once you view it this way, you realize there's always plenty for the magic-user to do throughout the adventure. Plenty of ways to participate an d contribute. As a baseline, all characters are identical as far as that go. Where they differ is how they handle when things go bad.

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The thing is, the thief managed to sneak off without getting any criticisms of his own risks and weaknesses pointed at him!

How did he get away with that?!

Pretty sure you're just goofing around here, but I'll give my take where the thief fits in. I know some people have created this cute triangle where fighter, magic-user, and thief make up the corners and everything else is in between. But I think of it more like the thief is co-linear between the fighter and magic-user. Closer to the fighter end because you get the repeated uncertain use.

That's the thing. Both magic-user and thief have class functions that can solve "miscellaneous" challenges. It's just that the magic-user gets limited uses that always work, where the thief has no limit but theirs only sometimes works. Kind of like how a magic user's attack spell compares with a fighter's weapon attack.

Even when looking strictly at combat, the thief has the backstab. Now there's not a literal limit in daily use. But you're usually only going to get to do it once per combat. So compared to ordinary combat, it is more of limited use bomb drop. It's not as powerful or as certain as fireball. But it's definitely more than a few steps down that road between fighter and mage.
That's my two cents anyway. Carry on, crawler.

Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito.

jhkim

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Re: Broad generic classes vs skill-based
« Reply #29 on: February 05, 2023, 03:24:00 AM »
Class-based games are great when your group is a "Fellowship of the Ring", where everyone has different abilities that are clearly defined by their archetypes: the warrior, the mage, the ranger, and even the elf, the hobbit, etc.

Skill-based games excel in a "Knights of the Round Table"* scenario. Everyone has similar abilities**, but some are more skilled than others. It is also perfect for teams of detectives, soldiers, criminals ***, etc.

* I've found a similar comparison reading "Of Dice and Men", which inspired this post.

** Notice that Arthurian knights are also archetypes - but maybe these archetypes are less obvious, and also maybe not as strong as the "knight" archetype that includes all of them.

*** And elves! If you have an "elf" class, a band of elves can become too uniform; it would be better if they had different classes or skills. If you have a single elf in the party, however, it can be an archetype in itself.

Skill-based games seem suited for realistic games - because in real life, archetypes are vague and abstract, while in myth they are much stronger. In any case, archetypes are incredibly useful to create characters - even in skill-based games, it is good to have some archetypes to play with (which justifies hybrid approaches).

I feel like the outward similarity of characters isn't so obvious a division, as you underscore with your exceptions about a team of elves, as well as how Arthurian knights are archetypes. I'd add to these exceptions how Blades in the Dark handles teams of criminals. I haven't seen class-based Arthurian knights, but then there aren't many Arthurian RPGs in general. Sagas of the Icelanders does a similar genre where many of the playbooks are outwardly viking warriors.

Conversely, there are many cases where the characters have very different abilities - but class-based games haven't been very successful. Superhero games are a classic case of this - where there are class-based superhero RPGs, but many of the most successful superhero RPGs are skill-based. Space opera like Star Wars and Star Trek also often have a lot of differentiation, but class-based isn't clearly more successful.

To my mind, a vital point is how unique individual instantiations of the archetypes are. I think classes have worked better in fantasy because it has been an older, more repeated and structured genre. I've also been partial to the classes in Monster of the Week -- as I think long television series are more apt to have repetitive structures for classes, though not always.