Quote
Sure. But my main point was that the play pre-dates the print. ...

Now that you've mentioned it, the only obvious difference is that the Weapon Proficiency mechanics were added to Player's Handbook from the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide; what an expansion!

Quote
You've definitely said a mouthful there, and there are three separate points on how I address a lot of this stuff.
1) My way of handling rules lawyers ...
2) Players who want to game the system rather than play the game ...
3) I think players who don't want to break free from the matrix ...

Well, it can be a *crunchy* subject to digest!

On that last point, the superhero gig is probably to blame, and there's a huge disconnect between comic heroes like Spiderman and mythological heroes like Beowulf.

Most players now largely play games where their characters are already kitted out for a grand and epic adventure, but start off acting like nothing uncanny could possibly happen to them. The entire story is just hopping from place to place, looking for clues as to what the bad guy has been doing in the area just recently, then they fight something or someone that just happened to get in their way.

Rinse, Lather, Repeat... Doesn't seem like any growth happens to these characters at all beyond the numbers on their sheets.

(psst... By the way, what's "fidelity" mean?)

Quote
I look at it like this: There's rules. Then there's rules. And then there's rulings.
The rules establish the language and basic procedures of the game. ...
Then there's rules refer to rules of thumb. These are the guidelines. ...
And then there's rulings. ... The DM is expected to make sensible rulings.

Yeah! I've never been all too fond of the "Guess the Monster's AC" rigamarole, it's not exactly metagaming to tell your players that info ahead of time if they're going to find out through trial and error anyway. Wouldn't be metagaming to tell the DM how much hit points your character has left?

"NO, you HAVE to guess my hit points when I tell you that I'm not too fatigued but somewhat tired!"

UGH...

Now that you've mentioned it, historical armour was way less cumbersome and rigid than people assumed just by looking at the pieces on those stands. They were even far lighter than the replicas made today, because we can shape a much thicker gauge of steel now. In fact, you can do cartwheels in authentic sets of full plate fairly easily... just don't expect to sneak up on anyone while you're out on patrol!

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In old-school, magic-users could be rendered useless in close quarters. ...
... If you can look at your party makeup and realize it's going to be difficult for wizards to drop bombs in fights, then you memorize more of the miscellaneous spells rather than the combat spells. ...
It can be a problem if the game has different feats or subclasses for light armor fighters vs heavy armor fighters. Or magic-users that specialize in individual spells and to a lesser extent a school of spells. ...

It seems like most of these considerations are easily accounted for during the Great Session Zero proposed by The AngryGM (great guy, if a bit high in blood pressure...)

All you can do is roll with the dice and see what they come up with for your attributes, but that is also another big old-school feature as far as I understand it: the dice choose your class for you, which means that not every party was ever going to be "balanced" with all the roles filled right away.

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I'm fine with gold and glory as the motive and find it works with the monomyth. ...
Radical uncertainty fits the bill of the extraordinary world, the chaos, the underworld. Gold, or profit, is a fine fit for the ultimate goal, the treasure, the reward, the magical elixir.
... It's supposed to be the ultimate goal. The thing everyone wants. The holy grail. It needs to be something with a universal adapter, indifferent to however you designed your specific character. And if your character is unmoved by it, you're not actually joining in the playing of the game. Sure. It's possible the GM can choose too weak an elixir. GMs aren't perfect. But if they're putting in an effort and trying, so should the players. And if it still just doesn't work for your character, you should make a new one.

Speaking of which, it's funny that people think that a cleric couldn't possibly get a little bit excited about the *prospects* of coins by the pound, and chests by the pallet. After all, they do want to put their money where their mouths are and put their share to a good cause.

Plus, ornate vestments to tend to make an impression on potential converts, don't they?

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I think the core problem with the cleric can be summed up as: Too many players view the cleric as nothing more than a heal bitch. And perhaps this problem is exacerbated by attempting to ignore the religions connotations of the class in favor of it's function as a healer. Part of the problem is also the "meat shield" archetype. You get these barbarians with massive numbers of hit points. And they value each one of those hit points far less than, say, the magic-user who cherishes every last one of their hit points. So they blow through them more quickly, and that is really taxing for the cleric's healing ability.
... Meat shield as a strategy is worthy of winning a Darwin Award. ... Conan was fast as a jungle cat and wore armor when it was available. He was tough, but tough isn't a first line of defense. ... None of the inspirations of the Barbarian had "get sliced up then healed" as a strategy. It's just goofy game design to do a barbarian this way.

Indeed, Conan was never scared—of course he'd never run out of an ancient, subterranean crypt with his tail between his legs at the first sight of a magically intelligent triage of undead assassins!

You know, I think I can see how those "e-sports" games wound up with such deconstructed character roles when you put it such a way that lines up better than the stars bearing some dire news... I can't bring myself to call those things "archetypes" or even classes when they feel more like stat machines with pixel skins for a more coordinated, button mashing drool-fest, to hear the way the younger kin talk about them.
Maybe a little bit of realism goes a long way to help player's make good choices, and not just for the verisimilitude.

You're correct though, it seems like the cleric and the barbarian were made for two completely different goals for campaign play, almost like you can't really have both in one party at the same time... Of course, we should be more fair, the cleric has also doubled as the "corpse spooker.".

On the other hand, such a warrior understands that he won't always be prepared for a fight, and if you get caught with your brigandine off more often than you'd like, you'd better make the enemy believe that was their mistake, like when Conan was freed from the dungeon by his bride-to-be, Zenobia.

Quote from: jhkim on February 06, 2023, 05:29:27 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 06, 2023, 04:37:35 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 06, 2023, 03:19:35 PM
For me, the worst part of the cleric is not having a clear archetype. "Healer" is not strong enough for an adventurer, "healer with a mace" even less so. "Religious warrior" or "monster hunter" is better but not what the cleric is about.

As Delta notices, clerics are barely present in the appendix N.

https://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2010/05/giants-in-earth-index.html

I have considered replacing it for a leader; it feels stronger as an archetype.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2020/06/replacing-cleric-for-leader.html

Change it to a Templar Knight, remove the weapon limitations and you have a Paladin.

War Priests wer a thing, the church did set such weapon limitations and they could only fight to protect themselves and the defenseless IIRC,

My problem with it is that it's a Christian thing that just doesn't translate to polytheism.

To Eric Diaz - I'm skeptical about "Leader" as a class, because leader is a social role among the players. Who the leader is varies tremendously in fiction and in RPGs. Even within a single story like the Hobbit -- Gandalf (wizard) was the leader for a while, until it passed to Thorin (fighter) and then to Bilbo (thief).

As far as war priests - Archetypes are useful only if they are still in the minds of modern players. D&D clerics correspond mostly to European Christian images. That's the archetype they are filling, even if they are technically polytheist. I think the most recognizable example of the archetype is Friar Tuck from Robin Hood. He's not very spiritual and not a healer, but I don't think that's the core of the archetype. He's a traditionalist of a sort, and has a similar archetype to Dr. McCoy in Star Trek.

I'll agree that "leader" is not a strong and distinct archetype like "fighter". Still, there are some leader "powers" that I could see working: heal allies of wounds and, especially, low morale. Lead others into action. I'm thinking not only Gandalf but especially Aragorn (as opposed to Boromir-  who had an hereditary role but not much leadership). Not sure how Bilbo fits the "leader" part.

This goes double for monsters - a monster boss and its minions is a very recognizable trope, and in AD&D IIRC stronger undead could protect lesser ones from being turned, which I find interesting.

You could argue that his is part of the "fighter" archetype - Conan certainly has leadership qualities, but other warriors do not.

Friar Tuck is a good example, but only one guy in hundreds of Appendix N characters. The trope is more common in modern fantasy (already influenced by D&D), I reckon. Also, maybe in modern settings they would be some kind of doctor or scientist? Think Van Helsing, who originated the cleric...

In short... warrior/mage/thief are still the strongest IMO. But I still think there is a place for a defender/leader/maybe healer type.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 07, 2023, 08:39:51 AM

Quote from: jhkim on February 06, 2023, 05:29:27 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 06, 2023, 04:37:35 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 06, 2023, 03:19:35 PM
For me, the worst part of the cleric is not having a clear archetype. "Healer" is not strong enough for an adventurer, "healer with a mace" even less so. "Religious warrior" or "monster hunter" is better but not what the cleric is about.

As Delta notices, clerics are barely present in the appendix N.

https://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2010/05/giants-in-earth-index.html

I have considered replacing it for a leader; it feels stronger as an archetype.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2020/06/replacing-cleric-for-leader.html

Change it to a Templar Knight, remove the weapon limitations and you have a Paladin.

War Priests wer a thing, the church did set such weapon limitations and they could only fight to protect themselves and the defenseless IIRC,

My problem with it is that it's a Christian thing that just doesn't translate to polytheism.

To Eric Diaz - I'm skeptical about "Leader" as a class, because leader is a social role among the players. Who the leader is varies tremendously in fiction and in RPGs. Even within a single story like the Hobbit -- Gandalf (wizard) was the leader for a while, until it passed to Thorin (fighter) and then to Bilbo (thief).

As far as war priests - Archetypes are useful only if they are still in the minds of modern players. D&D clerics correspond mostly to European Christian images. That's the archetype they are filling, even if they are technically polytheist. I think the most recognizable example of the archetype is Friar Tuck from Robin Hood. He's not very spiritual and not a healer, but I don't think that's the core of the archetype. He's a traditionalist of a sort, and has a similar archetype to Dr. McCoy in Star Trek.

I'll agree that "leader" is not a strong and distinct archetype like "fighter". Still, there are some leader "powers" that I could see working: heal allies of wounds and, especially, low morale. Lead others into action. I'm thinking not only Gandalf but especially Aragorn (as opposed to Boromir-  who had an hereditary role but not much leadership). Not sure how Bilbo fits the "leader" part.

This goes double for monsters - a monster boss and its minions is a very recognizable trope, and in AD&D IIRC stronger undead could protect lesser ones from being turned, which I find interesting.

You could argue that his is part of the "fighter" archetype - Conan certainly has leadership qualities, but other warriors do not.

Friar Tuck is a good example, but only one guy in hundreds of Appendix N characters. The trope is more common in modern fantasy (already influenced by D&D), I reckon. Also, maybe in modern settings they would be some kind of doctor or scientist? Think Van Helsing, who originated the cleric...

In short... warrior/mage/thief are still the strongest IMO. But I still think there is a place for a defender/leader/maybe healer type.

One could also just split the cleric's stuff up and give it to the main three. Buff the warrior's protective ability, give the buff/debuff via clever tricks/exploits to the thief and magic healing to the mage.

Allow half-classing; fighter/thief, fighter/mage and thief/mage; and maybe a jack-of-all-stats (red mage; fighter/mage/thief) and you've got more than enough combos for an average table to not need duplicates.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 07, 2023, 08:39:51 AM
I'll agree that "leader" is not a strong and distinct archetype like "fighter". Still, there are some leader "powers" that I could see working: heal allies of wounds and, especially, low morale. Lead others into action. I'm thinking not only Gandalf but especially Aragorn (as opposed to Boromir-  who had an hereditary role but not much leadership). Not sure how Bilbo fits the "leader" part.

This goes double for monsters - a monster boss and its minions is a very recognizable trope, and in AD&D IIRC stronger undead could protect lesser ones from being turned, which I find interesting.

You could argue that his is part of the "fighter" archetype - Conan certainly has leadership qualities, but other warriors do not.

Friar Tuck is a good example, but only one guy in hundreds of Appendix N characters. The trope is more common in modern fantasy (already influenced by D&D), I reckon. Also, maybe in modern settings they would be some kind of doctor or scientist? Think Van Helsing, who originated the cleric...

In short... warrior/mage/thief are still the strongest IMO. But I still think there is a place for a defender/leader/maybe healer type.

I need to say: if we must always defer the rigidity of the rules to DM rulings, then we shouldn't be so constrained by Appendix N. As mentioned previously, war priests were common at least during the Early Middle Ages, and I believe that role is a carry over from pre-Christian traditions in Europe. The paladin, however, should be a NPC class when applying this criteria, as the job description concerns that of palace bouncers, drawn away from military ranks where favourable, who've sworn an (additional) holy oath to the king he serves. You can't typically adventure when your job is to stand by the throne-gates all day, whereas the cleric has a more robust set of inspirations to draw from for his journeys.



"Leader" as a role sounds a lot like the deconstructed roles of striker, tank, and buffer, but I don't think you would settle for that.

Bilbo is not a leader at all, he's been thrust into his circumstances reluctantly, and his instincts and tactics are unheroic (hence Gandalf looking for one among the Tooks' line of expert thieves). I'd consider Bilbo more of a Fool, and for this he provides a foil, and perhaps also a semi-unreliable (i.e. cheeky) narrator, for the exploits of the expeditious Thorin Oakenshield seeking to reclaim his throne from the abyssal Smaug.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 07, 2023, 09:38:55 AM
One could also just split the cleric's stuff up and give it to the main three. Buff the warrior's protective ability, give the buff/debuff via clever tricks/exploits to the thief and magic healing to the mage.

Allow half-classing; fighter/thief, fighter/mage and thief/mage; and maybe a jack-of-all-stats (red mage; fighter/mage/thief) and you've got more than enough combos for an average table to not need duplicates.

This could just be the Bard, drawing his power from an inner duality as a jack-of-classes, whose subclassing options round out the party ranks:
Scout (f/t),
Skald (f/m; i.e. pagan war-priest), and
Shaman (t/m).

You wouldn't need the three-in-one option at all, spreads his features too thin anyway.

This thread is weird to me.

While everyone is talking about what a "class is" or "should be" - you're all dancing around what's already been said in meta-context of the thread. It's TROPES. So why not use a game that is skill-based, and you don't have to worry about defining a "class" since you're defining your trope based on the skills you choose. You can call yourself whatever the fuck your setting has allotted in-world.

Otherwise you're just playing the system-as-the-game. If by Class you need it defined to express a certain kind of play - that flies in the face of having skills at all. And I get some people like that. OSR exists after all.

But this doesn't mean a finer grain of play isn't achievable with skills defining what your PC does and giving it a shiny label to describe it as a profession. There is no functional difference unless the system you're playing expressly doesn't allow for it because the system takes more precedence AS the game vs. a closer granular (however meaningful) view of the PC's in the game.

And yes there are degrees to this. OSR games are *not* 4e. But the systems are still more removed from roleplay than skill-based games due to the construction of the systems.

Quote from: tenbones on February 07, 2023, 10:52:58 AM
This thread is weird to me.

While everyone is talking about what a "class is" or "should be" - you're all dancing around what's already been said in meta-context of the thread. It's TROPES. So why not use a game that is skill-based, and you don't have to worry about defining a "class" since you're defining your trope based on the skills you choose. You can call yourself whatever the fuck your setting has allotted in-world.

Otherwise you're just playing the system-as-the-game. If by Class you need it defined to express a certain kind of play - that flies in the face of having skills at all. And I get some people like that. OSR exists after all.

But this doesn't mean a finer grain of play isn't achievable with skills defining what your PC does and giving it a shiny label to describe it as a profession. There is no functional difference unless the system you're playing expressly doesn't allow for it because the system takes more precedence AS the game vs. a closer granular (however meaningful) view of the PC's in the game.

And yes there are degrees to this. OSR games are *not* 4e. But the systems are still more removed from roleplay than skill-based games due to the construction of the systems.

I think I get where you are going with this.  I've thought about it a lot, and this is my current thinking:

- Classes are too broad.
- Skills are too narrow.
- Professions are about right as far as the level of abstraction, but have other problems.

Specifically, I mean in the overall sense of where game meets setting, where simulation meets ease of use, etc.  Basically, the level of abstraction and what that abstraction is trying to accomplish as cleanly as possible while also having concrete details that invoke the experience you are trying to convey.  All, of course, in a shared, imaginative space. 

Humans are pretty darn adaptable.  We get around the problems in the abstractions all kinds of way. Which is why approached in the right spirit, all kinds of things can work. We say in a D&D B/X game (played as intended) that "fighter" has a whole lot of implied skills that go with that.  Which means that as an abstraction we are already halfway to "profession".  He's not a "fighter".  He's lord of the castle or head of the guard or Sergeant Jones of the ship's marines or whatever.  Where as, if we made those same characters with GURPS (played as intended), we'd package up whatever was appropriate. We'd expect the player to stick to the ballpark of a concept. We'd end up in about the same space, only from another direction. 

Naturally, people prefer one or the other depending on which way they'd rather edge, which drawbacks they don't mind, and how easy or hard it is to get the group to approach the game as intended.

I don't pretend to having a lot of experience with systems that go the overt Profession as game widget route.  But my experience with the ones that do, and what I've gleaned from what others have said about them, is that when the designer thinks in terms of "profession" what usually happens is we just get a weird mix of too broad and too narrow all at once, that doesn't necessarily play all that well.  Or the professions are merely templates tacked on top of a skill system.  About the only exception I can think of is Dragon Quest professions--which nail the abstraction perfectly--only to then immediately bury it in overly complicated mechanics.

For me, the sweet spot is something that is orthogonal to profession, still partially mechanical and partially embedded in the world, more narrow than class but broader than skills.  The hard part, is what you call these things and how they fit into the game/setting cannot be generic, because of that "partially embedded in the world" aspect.  In theory, you can divorce them (and a lot of people like it that way), but I find this the line where any system becomes too generic for me to enjoy (for a variety of reasons). 

Quote from: tenbones on February 07, 2023, 10:52:58 AM
This thread is weird to me.

While everyone is talking about what a "class is" or "should be" - you're all dancing around what's already been said in meta-context of the thread. It's TROPES. So why not use a game that is skill-based, and you don't have to worry about defining a "class" since you're defining your trope based on the skills you choose. You can call yourself whatever the fuck your setting has allotted in-world.

Otherwise you're just playing the system-as-the-game. If by Class you need it defined to express a certain kind of play - that flies in the face of having skills at all. And I get some people like that. OSR exists after all.

But this doesn't mean a finer grain of play isn't achievable with skills defining what your PC does and giving it a shiny label to describe it as a profession. There is no functional difference unless the system you're playing expressly doesn't allow for it because the system takes more precedence AS the game vs. a closer granular (however meaningful) view of the PC's in the game.

And yes there are degrees to this. OSR games are *not* 4e. But the systems are still more removed from roleplay than skill-based games due to the construction of the systems.

One issue worth noting in favor of classes is "niche protection."

One issue I've always seen with skill-based system is a tendency for anything cool to be knicked by others in short order so your character loses their uniqueness relative to the others. This is particularly true in games with caps on performance. Once you've established that 10 levels is the max for a skill you're going to hit a point where everyone can fight equally well, cast equally well and skill monkey equally well. It gets especially notable in specific genres where a few key skills/attributes are just so much more important than the others... ex. Mecha piloting in a mecha game.

The only way to maintain those distinctions is essentially skill bloat and keeping the number of skill points low enough that you have to specialize. So you can't just have Piloting and Gunnery, you need Pilot:Humanoid, Pilot:Beast Mech, Pilot:Aircraft, Gunnnery:Ballistic, Gunnery:Energy, Gunnery:Missiles ... and to provide enough ways for those to be different that the specialization can be meaningful instead of just arbitrary (ie. if ballistics and energy weapons don't have real differences then its just an illusion of difference... the guy in the ballistic mecha and the energy mecha do the same thing with the same mods... they just have arbitrarily different skills.

Classes, when properly designed, mean no one will ever outfight the dedicated fighter, or outsneak the dedicated thief, or outcast the dedicated caster. Any hybridization becomes a tradeoff. If a fighter dips into mage they're not going to be as good a fighter as the one who didn't.

The only issue is when a poorly designed system makes dipping into other classes superior to the dedicated classes.

Quote from: tenbones on February 07, 2023, 10:52:58 AM
This thread is weird to me.

While everyone is talking about what a "class is" or "should be" - you're all dancing around what's already been said in meta-context of the thread. It's TROPES. So why not use a game that is skill-based, and you don't have to worry about defining a "class" since you're defining your trope based on the skills you choose. You can call yourself whatever the fuck your setting has allotted in-world.

Otherwise you're just playing the system-as-the-game. If by Class you need it defined to express a certain kind of play - that flies in the face of having skills at all. And I get some people like that. OSR exists after all.

But this doesn't mean a finer grain of play isn't achievable with skills defining what your PC does and giving it a shiny label to describe it as a profession. There is no functional difference unless the system you're playing expressly doesn't allow for it because the system takes more precedence AS the game vs. a closer granular (however meaningful) view of the PC's in the game.

And yes there are degrees to this. OSR games are *not* 4e. But the systems are still more removed from roleplay than skill-based games due to the construction of the systems.

Let me put it this way: it is certainly achievable to create a archetypal thief in GURPS or Runequest, but it is certainly EASIER to do that with B/X.

I used to play only skills systems because of this reason: they can do ANYTHING!

Nowadays I play an hybrid because it does THIS thing I want, and does it FAST, while ALSO allowing enough customization as you advance in levels.

To avoid mentioning my own game again, I'd suggest Shadow of The Demon Lord. Entirely class-based but you can do most fantasy tropes with it.

so my response to "niche protection" is the same as inverse of "niche protection" which is for lack of a better term, I'll toss this out there - "skill overload".

That response is: the system is demanding to be played "as the game", and it's up to you as the GM to buy into it or not.

OR...

You find a system that allows for mechanical options to tune up/down as a *feature* of the mechanics in service of the actual game. Niche-protection is very real. But it's very real because there is a set of optimizations to guide players to a specific kind of play that exists outside of the actual game. When you're a Fighter, before you even hit the ground running, your role is locked for *reasons* that exist outside of any context. Sure you have some variables you can toy with in game - types of weapons, how you go about being the "tank" in terms of your engagement with weapons.

But the goal of the system is to maintain those niches as *almost* indispensable from gameplay regardless of the setting conceits.

On the inverse side of this - a skill based system that wants to go full-bananas with microscopic resolution in trying to squeeze every possible skill into greater resolution for their setting... makes it a goddamn chore trying to make a character if the system is so spread out in terms of priority that a hundred skills is required to engage with it.

I suspect everyone already knows the middle-path is the best path. if that weren't the case multi-classing in D&D would never have been a thing. But again, we all know the truth - it's never been done well to the universal opinions of its players. Likewise we've seen people moan and groan about games that call themselves skill based systems - but people hyperspecialize into what they presume to be niches that will be prioritized in their skill-based gaming campaign, into what effectively *are* "Classes".

The only way to look at this is to engage in TTRPGs that are literally in the middle-path between the paradigms to see how they do it well. And until I thought it about it in responding to this very thread... it might explain a long ponderous path I've taken personally to end up playing the systems that I routinely engage in with my group, not only out of personal interest, but by their express desire and demand.

MSH - Are their "classes" - no. But there are roles that players "feel" should be filled. They want "tanks" to take the big hits. They want ranged blasters. They want skill-monkeys to do all the fiddly-technical shit. The reality is *none* of them are required. Unless you have a very focused game along a very narrow set of parameters. Supers gaming in general allows for the most diverse cast of potential PC types limited only by the bandwidth of the GM. The "skills" in MSH (and DCU) are only modifiers to the same task-resolution for everything else in the game. And they're very general. You don't need to outline every computer language known to allow Reed Richards or Tony Stark to riff any kind of code they need to break into a system or program a robot. There is no "multiclassing" because in supers, your powers can often fill in the blank as needed.

Savage Worlds - No classes (yet you can have them if you want). Generalized skills "Fighting", "Shooting" - and if you want more granularity, you got mechanics to cover it. Multi-classing isn't necessary because the "niche" is cultivated, not assumed. The Tank is going to buy the abilities that fill the trope he's after in the exact manner of his choosing. If he wants to learn magic too - he *can*. And it doesn't take away from dedicated spellcasters since you're all on the same track of advancement, once you deviate, you're not ever going to be "as good" as the guy that stayed the course. HOWEVER... the mechanics of Savage Worlds is so tightly modular that you're never really disadvantaging yourself by hybridzing because the "tropes" all work arm in arm. Unless you're actively trying to make a stupid character that is ineffectual... but that would be disingenuous to the point of this post.

Talislanta - Niches? Sure. But the game is intentionally built around "the setting is the reality" so there are imbalances between the stats of the races, based on culture. There are skills - arguably too many, but easily managed. There are even editions where you have "levels" and "mini-class archetypes" which enforces niche-protection. But they're not necessary.

The larger point being is that I feel classes in the D&D sense are vestigial. I get people like the OSR aesthetic of simplicity. I suspect it's those that want a little more granularity that fall off that cliff into the Skill-based ocean, looking for that island of mechanical perfection that drives this conversation. I don't think anyone finds it until they understand the Niche protection/Skill-overload illusion dynamic. I don't think it's an either/or situation (but we all know we can come up with egregious examples where examples are plenty)

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 07, 2023, 09:38:55 AM
One could also just split the cleric's stuff up and give it to the main three. Buff the warrior's protective ability, give the buff/debuff via clever tricks/exploits to the thief and magic healing to the mage.

Allow half-classing; fighter/thief, fighter/mage and thief/mage; and maybe a jack-of-all-stats (red mage; fighter/mage/thief) and you've got more than enough combos for an average table to not need duplicates.

Or take a lesson from RuneQuest and have the religion being something you join:
If you follow the very strict restrictions of the Cult/Religion (don't eat meat on Wed during a full moon, donate 90% of your cash get the appropriate tattoos on your left hand) and you can Turn Dead, Cure Light Wounds, a few others cleric abilities. Slip in any obligation and not only do you lose the abilities but you lose the left hand or something else properly biblically harsh.

Quote
... 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. ...

... 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. ... 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.

I never played 2E but I do think a 2.5E that blended some of the kits into the core game would have been nice.

Broad classes with multiclassing turn into a effectively level based point buy anyways. When classes are part of a system, I like them to be exclusionary to represent competences that cannot be garnered during play. Does that mean a fighter shouldn't be able to take a level of wizard? If starting as a wizard represents years of apprenticeship and study, then no, a couple months campaigning and hanging out with a wizard is not same, and should not provide the same benefit. Overall, I prefer skill bases to assemble a set of skills representing my character concept and have it functional at start. The setting can always add exclusionary development tracks and quick builds can be accomplished by curating the options into a multi coarse menu. Randomization can be handled by randomizing a character concept and then stating it out.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 06, 2023, 10:30:52 PM
Most players now largely play games where their characters are already kitted out for a grand and epic adventure, but start off acting like nothing uncanny could possibly happen to them.

Could be. There was a time where "I only kill a PC if they do something stupid," was a near-universal mantra. Which of course really meant, "I won't let a PC die unless they do something stupid." And I always thought the problem with that is, once this sinks in, how else could you expect players to take it anytime something bad happens to their PC other than "Hey, are you calling me stupid?"

Quote(psst... By the way, what's "fidelity" mean?)

Fidelity: Faithfulness to obligations, duties, or observances. When I say fidelity to the world as a GM, I mean I care more about the world making sense than the rules of the game. Look, we (science) hasn't even figured out what the rules are for the real world. And even if we did, the mechanics would be too complicated for a game. So I've always rejected the idea of RPG rules representing the game "physics." They're a rough model at best, and sometimes when it matters the model misses the mark. I don't fudge to force the story or to save PCs asses. I do fudge in those instances when I think the rules are not matching the feel or reality of the game world.

QuoteYeah! I've never been all too fond of the "Guess the Monster's AC" rigamarole, it's not exactly metagaming to tell your players that info ahead of time if they're going to find out through trial and error anyway.

I'm not a stickler for keeping monster ACs secret. I am a stickler, though, for acknowledging the differences between risk and uncertainty as economist Frank Knight used the terms. Risk, you don't know the outcome, but you know (or at least can figure out) the odds. Uncertainty, you don't know the odds. You may not even know all the possible outcomes. One of the key consequences of the distinction is you can in theory do math on risk to formulate optimal decisions. Under conditions of uncertainty, that's not possible. You have to go with your gut.

I think most situations in real life resemble uncertainty rather than risk. In RPGs, because we use specific rules and dice and randomizers, it's skewed heavily towards risk over uncertainty. So I do feel some need to try and undo that when I can. And keeping AC's secret certainly moves the needle in the right direction. It's just not something I personally can get passionate about. Technically, you never know when or if the DM has a secret modifier in play, so you don't actually know the odds just because you know your opponent's AC. You only think you do.

QuoteNow that you've mentioned it, historical armour was way less cumbersome and rigid than people assumed just by looking at the pieces on those stands. They were even far lighter than the replicas made today, because we can shape a much thicker gauge of steel now. In fact, you can do cartwheels in authentic sets of full plate fairly easily... just don't expect to sneak up on anyone while you're out on patrol!

I've often heard gamers bring up D&D's wargaming roots as support for whatever opinion they held bashing the game. In this case, the wargaming roots actually are relevant. The movement rates I believe had their roots in the overland movement of armies. Yeah. You can have a dude do cartwheel in plate armor. But have him march in that armor for 12 hours. And a few hundred other guys, too. And measure by the slowest of them. Then compare that to the same people marching unarmored. There's more than enough evidence for knowing how equipment and the weight of packs and gear slows down troop movements.

When you get to the individual PC level, it's a lot harder to reconcile cartwheels with AD&D movement rates. But at the same time I don't see Usain Bolt winning races in full battle armor. Cartwheels in armor is a good demonstration why weirdo combat penalties, like limiting Dex bonuses for heavier armors in 3E, are kind of silly. It stands to reason that armor made for battle should allow you to remain functional in battle. But there's definitely some movement hindrance in both march-scale movement and short scale sprints.

In Gary's Lejendary Adventure RPG, the movement speed penalties are roughly half as harsh as they are in AD&D. But also Speed in LA is a stat that can vary, often times the speed penalty can be offset just by having a higher stat. I don't have any particular proposed houserule for doing something similar in AD&D.

I will say fast guy is a valuable role in a party. Although terrain is also a major factor, in a sufficiently open area, the faster party is able to set the range at which combat will occur. If they are also able to out-range their slower adversaries, they will be able to take out enemies much more powerful than themselves. For this reason, Beholders are basically useless outside of their dungeon habitat. The last thing you want as a PC is to be this powerful badass that can be punked by 0th level longbowmen or horseman archers. So it helps to have a fast ranged fighter in the party.

QuoteIt seems like most of these considerations are easily accounted for during the Great Session Zero proposed by The AngryGM (great guy, if a bit high in blood pressure...)

I'm pretty meh on session zero. Mike Tyson said it best, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

QuoteAll you can do is roll with the dice and see what they come up with for your attributes, but that is also another big old-school feature as far as I understand it: the dice choose your class for you, which means that not every party was ever going to be "balanced" with all the roles filled right away.

Eh. The dice determine the attributes. But you still get to choose the class. You only need a 9 to qualify for the four basic classes. And if you're using 3d6, the vast majority of scores fit sufficiently in the middle where there's no obvious best choice of class to lay. When you are blessed with higher scores, it's often the case that you create interesting and highly effective characters by not choosing the obvious class.

Got a super high Dex? Consider playing a fighter. There's the AC bonus. But also a high Dex can mitigate the two-weapon fighting penalties. Having that extra attack will go a long way towards making you a better fighter. Or consider the illusionist. A very high Dex is a class requirement. You don't get to play the class otherwise.

Think high Int is wasted on a fighter? Two things to consider. First, a high Int lets you know additional languages. If you also have a high Chr and plan on using it to raise an army, consider that the additional languages opens up the field as to who you can recruit. Second, a 17 INT is required if you ever plan on switching classes to a magic-user. Why not just play a magic-user in the first place? A few levels of fighter will give you a nice hit point buffer to get past those low MU levels, and you can still swing a mean sword when your spells run out.

QuoteSpeaking of which, it's funny that people think that a cleric couldn't possibly get a little bit excited about the *prospects* of coins by the pound, and chests by the pallet. After all, they do want to put their money where their mouths are and put their share to a good cause.

Plus, ornate vestments to tend to make an impression on potential converts, don't they?

Well, also clerics can start their own church. It's an explicit cleric ability. You even get discount prices on labor and materials, presumably due to all the true believers out there. But you still gotta pay for those things somehow.

Paladins are more restricted in terms of keeping personal wealth. But one thing that's almost entirely overlooked about Paladins. Hella clout. All of those restrictions a Paladin must abide by actually set the paladin up for stacking loyalty bonuses. It gets to the point where you can very quickly get rando mercenaries you hire to become so loyal that they remain "fanatic" even after witnessing your PC die. Their morale never breaks. So when Paladins get tons of gold and even more magic items than they're allowed to keep from adventuring, they start giving them away and generate even more loyalty further and broader. Yeah. It doesn't hurt to have excess to give away in your mission to convert the world.

QuoteYou know, I think I can see how those "e-sports" games wound up with such deconstructed character roles when you put it such a way that lines up better than the stars bearing some dire news... I can't bring myself to call those things "archetypes" or even classes when they feel more like stat machines with pixel skins for a more coordinated, button mashing drool-fest, to hear the way the younger kin talk about them.
Maybe a little bit of realism goes a long way to help player's make good choices, and not just for the verisimilitude.

Bad AI comes to mind. A couple of my brothers, total amateurs, were making custom content for Neverwinter Nights and the Unreal Engine. And all they did was set some very basic tactics using tools that were already available in the engine that completely changed which strategies work.

There were other things. Already built in, you can alter eye level, so that you could give a different play experience when playing characters of one of the short races. Already built in. Not used in commercial projects. There are tools for messing with the visual and audio to reflect different hearing and vision capabilities of different races. Not used in commercial projects. These, we can kind of see, okay, if you have to play test the game and have, say, 4 different races with 4 completely different experiences, that's 4 times the playtesting you have to do. We can understand those costs. But that doesn't explain why they don't do more with monster tactics.

I'm struggling to find a reason other than they're playing to their audience. And then you have to ask who is corrupting who? is the bad AI the result or cause of the bad gamer habits?

Quote from: jhkim on February 03, 2023, 01:54:59 PMIn all of these systems, I saw the class system as a holdover getting in the way. It seemed more straightforward to just go with a skill-based system like Savage Worlds or OpenD6."

I tend to agree with this sentiment, but when it comes to class-based systems I tend to prefer broad generic classes with customization sprinkled on top regardless. Because specialized classes tend to be overly specific variations of generic classes anyways that never seem to quite live up to their role, pigeonhole you along a predetermined path, and add to bookkeeping, particularly if you want to/have to express every single possible role in the game world as its own overly specialized class. Then you end up with dozens of variations of what are essentially Warriors, Mystics and Skill Monkeys that never seem to encompass every possible role or cover everything that those roles could potentially do.

That being said, I think that so-called "skill-based", or perhaps more accurately "Freeform" systems are superior when it comes to customization and defining specific roles or "class" types than classes themselves, because they can cover every possible variation (at least as far as what's mechanically defined within the system is concerned) in ways that specialized classes cannot. Even when the oft repeated criticism that players in freeform systems tend to end up recreating classes is taken into account, the reality still remains those recreated classes are never 100% the same as any specific class, and you're still allowed to branch out from that class-like starting point in ways that class-based systems would never effectively cover or allow, even with multi-classing—which tends to be clunky, inefficient and unbalanced as hell, and never seems to quite produce the type of role that you're aiming for. Just a weird amalgamation of different classes that other players then complain about, particularly if there are perceived elements of so-called "power gaming", min-maxing or mismatched classes involved. Then the bitching and whining about what other people dare to play knows no end.

But get rid of classes and turn everything into a skill or special ability (Feat, Perk, Edge, Advantage, whatever) that players need to spend enough points or whatever, and need to qualify for to get, and that bitching and looking at other player's character sheet largely ends.

As far as niche protection is concerned, I honestly don't give a crap—at least in terms of affirming any particular class roles. And I have never played a game where characters were able to max out every skill and attribute, outside of a few video games with RPG elements. And that's only if the player has enough time on their hands and the game has enough stuff to do, with enough XP awards (or whatever the game uses), to actually allow that to happen in the first place. But no actual TTRPG I have ever read realistically allows that, outside of pure whiteroom speculation scenarios, cuz the costs are almost invariably too prohibitive to get there. And if you've ever run into that, I call shenanigans on the GM or how that game group handles character progression, cuz maxing out every single ability in actual tabletop play is next to impossible in basically every major "skill-based" systems out there as far as I know.

Even to the degree that this is a valid concern (which I don't entirely dispute, just find it VERY unlikely to actually happen in practice) the way I'm handling that in the system I'm currently working on is to assign fixed Priority Ratings for core abilities (called Disciplines in my game, which are somewhere between an attribute and a broad skill) that limit how high each ability can get. The PR you've assigned to a Discipline grants a bonus to its level based on its rating (Primary +4, Secondary +2 or Tertiary +0), which can go above the max level allowed in the game through ability progression. So that the absolute only way to reach the highest possible level in any discipline is to have Primary rating on it. Another way to do it could be to have different level/score caps based on PR, but I opted for the more positive approach of treating PR like a bonus instead. That way you can have relatively freeform development while enforcing a certain degree of specialization and distinction between characters in the game.