Quote from: Batman;989761Someone who bargained for supernatural powers that isn't evil or isn't in correspondence with nefarious beings could certainly be an archetype.

Edit: also unfortunate to see one true way-ism isn't dead yet

Okay, so we're clear that you like silly classes. Now quote where I said I don't. Gee, you can't . Does the landing  hurt after you jump to conclusions? I just acknowledge D&D has morphed into innumerable silly classes that  are by no means archetypes. Hurts your feelings?

Quote from: Dumarest;989841Okay, so we're clear that you like silly classes. Now quote where I said I don't. Gee, you can't . Does the landing  hurt after you jump to conclusions? I just acknowledge D&D has morphed into innumerable silly classes that  are by no means archetypes. Hurts your feelings?

Yep, super hurt. Honesty I'm not sure how I'll go on?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;989591I agree about the cause; hence "Gronan's Three Laws of Gaming" (per Asimov)

1)  The rules can't fix stupid
2)  The rules can't fix asshole
3)  Anything that happened when you, or the referee, were 14, does not constitute a need to change the rules.

But it's amazing how people hold on to things.

Any time somebody brings up the specter of a GM who is both stupid and an asshole as a reason why some rule is necessary, I always wonder, "Why would I waste an afternoon playing games with a stupid asshole? Life is short. It's just a game."

Quote from: Lunamancer;989827Is permutation creative? No. Is there any evidence in history or pop culture that this is an archetype the audience is going to identify with? No. But damn, does it make the game nice and symmetric.

Yeah sword-wielding warriors who use mystical arts that people identify with.....I mean are you familiar with Jedi and the Star Wars universe? And what about Elric? Wasn't he an accomplished sorcerer and wielded a pretty awesome sword that enhanced his combat prowess. Nope no pop culture references there. Yeah we'll go with symmetry

Quote from: Lunamancer;989827I see the "muh opinion" non-response is still alive and well, too.

The thing about archetypes is, one person's opinion doesn't make them or break them. We have stories or myths of all sorts with all sorts of characters. Some of these stories and characters are loved. Some are not. And people have made observations--even done serious studies--about certain recurring patterns that seem to resonate with audiences. And those observations are just that. Observations. They may be observations about opinions. But they're still observations. Not opinions as such. And sure. Opinions can and will vary. But from a bird's eye view, there's still an apparent pattern to it. You can stomp your feet all you want, hell can even get a t-shirt that says "Not My Opinion" but that doesn't change the simple fact of reality that it's there. Some things resonate and some things don't. It's a thing.

Now I happen to think that all the way up to AD&D 1st Ed, the game line did a pretty good job looking at myths, legends, folklore, and fiction and pin-pointing things that just popped to include in the game, whether it was character types, or magic items (how the nature of the magic synced up with the object enchanted with the power), and so on. Maybe not perfect. But a pretty decent job. What I find unfortunate about the evolution of D&D after that point though is, it seems to me the standard was no longer "Does this resonate?" but rather it became "Does this fit neatly into a formula?"

Take paladins. There was an archetype that popped. The ultimate knight in shining armor. You can find the knight in shining throughout all sorts of stories. It resonates. Then what? "Ga'huk, well if they can be super good, why not have the exact same thing only super evil?" and "Hey, guys, did you know we have 9 alignments and only 2 paladins? We can have like... seven more different paladins if we just apply the idea equally. Ain't I a creative genius" and finally, "Duhhhh... ya know, what's so special about divine magic? Why can't we also have a character who uses arcane magic instead?" and now we have Eldritch Knights.

Is permutation creative? No. Is there any evidence in history or pop culture that this is an archetype the audience is going to identify with? No. But damn, does it make the game nice and symmetric.

I assume you're not including UA with classes like Acrobat? Hardly an archetype that 'pops.'

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;989591But it's amazing how people hold on to things.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;989084Well, the whole field seems rather abstruse to those of us used to "Roll 3d6 in order six times and get on with it!"

Champions debuted in 1981, and is widely acknowledged as the first game to use a point-buy character creation system. Point-buy has been a standard in hundreds of games since then.  

Abstruse means obscure or difficult to understand.

You find something to be abstruse that has been a standard in the gaming industry for thirty-six years.

So, yes, pot, that kettle is fairly black...

Quote from: Lunamancer;989827Take paladins. There was an archetype that popped. The ultimate knight in shining armor. You can find the knight in shining throughout all sorts of stories. It resonates. Then what? "Ga'huk, well if they can be super good, why not have the exact same thing only super evil?" and "Hey, guys, did you know we have 9 alignments and only 2 paladins? We can have like... seven more different paladins if we just apply the idea equally. Ain't I a creative genius" and finally, "Duhhhh... ya know, what's so special about divine magic? Why can't we also have a character who uses arcane magic instead?" and now we have Eldritch Knights.

We had eldritch knights (or what they represent) since the LBBs--we called them elves.

Anyways, I'm not sure how we got here. I was suspicious that the original topic was just a SNL 'drunk uncle' routine about 'kids these days, with their caring about the system, and using the rules to win, what happened to trying to emulate a character (please ignore the bevy of threads around here badmouthing storygaming and how the true goal of RPGs is to excel within the ruleset, and not to tell a story, those are totally different)?,' but it actually appears to be based on a true sense of the game changing out from under the OP. I think it's a mistaken sense, this kind of thing has been around since the beginning, but that's neither here nor there. It's an honest reflection and I respect that.

This discussion of achetypes and classes (and frankly quite a bit just class nomenclature) seems to be the real tribal-oneupsmanship contest. And it is silly. Is a Fey Pact Warlock an intuitive concept? Not on the same level as 'illusionist,' and yes, 5e uses the term archtype a bit outside of what it truly means (not the first time that's ever happened). However, on a game where cranebump's B/X game could include the player statement, "My character is Zelf the Elf. I named him after the famous Melf the Elf. He's an elf so that is his race and his class. His favorite magic item is his Daern's Instant Fortess, which allows them to sleep without getting ambushed by Displacer Beasts, those are six-legged panthers with paralytic tentacles coming off their shoulders who always appear to be a couple feet away from where they actually are."-- the fey pact warlock is not the outlier.

As much as I love D&D--I think a game that can't quite abandon, say, the overlap between the heavily armored cleric and the paladin, or all rangers having spells, or similar D&D "traditions" that were tacked on more than archetypes--can hardly be used as the basis for arguing that certain options are or are not sensible.  It's crazy all the way down.  Sometimes a good crazy, granted, and largely what you make of it.

As for builds as mechanical things, whether 3E/PF style class bits or 4E style powers or any D&D equipment or Hero or GURPs or whatever:  I'm fine with a certain minimal amount for characterization, but there are diminishing returns.  Fairly quickly, the accounting overhead can suck all the fun out of the thing, if you aren't careful.  That's true even when the particular accounting you are doing is central to the game being played.  For example, if you are playing the dungeon crawl resource game, then encumbrance and equipment matters, but you probably still don't want to detail the exact composition of every food source or do a big diagram of exactly how the backpack is stacked.  To me, that's what 3E/PF accounting on characters is equivalent to.  Not enough payoff for the work.  For a sizable fraction of that work, I could do more, and more elegantly, in Hero or GURPS.

Char builds are a mini-game for when you cannot game. It's a fun mental exercise if you're very bored and won't get your RPG fix anytime soon, but it's always important to remember theoretical is not applied. I find, outside of discovering the Red Shift Event Horizons of any defined system, it's mainly mental masturbation that could be better applied to world building my campaigns instead. But no one ever accused masturbation of not getting you off, or discovering your functional range boundaries, so... :rolleyes:

Quote from: Batman;989845Yeah sword-wielding warriors who use mystical arts that people identify with.....I mean are you familiar with Jedi and the Star Wars universe? And what about Elric? Wasn't he an accomplished sorcerer and wielded a pretty awesome sword that enhanced his combat prowess. Nope no pop culture references there. Yeah we'll go with symmetry

So your two rebuttal examples are Elric, who isn't all that well known or popular to a broader audience, but who the creators of D&D were clearly familiar with and highly influenced by but yet chose not to include the archetype, and the Jedi whose existence is practically monastic and whose devotion to the force, the source of their power, is repeatedly referred to as a "religion"? What can I say. I guess you got me. I concede.

Quote from: Voros;989879I assume you're not including UA with classes like Acrobat? Hardly an archetype that 'pops.'

Yeah, I really am not fond of the UA material exactly for that reason. I don't get too hung up on the power creep. You actually can see the seeds of abandoning classic archetypes in favor of rationalized abstract categories. Previously, a ranger/druid character had not been possible because a ranger had to be good-aligned while the druid had to be true neutral. UA drew an exception to the alignment restrictions just to allow this combo. And elves who previously weren't allowed to be rangers now are. Why the changes? No apparent reason other than the druid, the elf, and the ranger all hang out in the forest and pick berries together.

Players don't spend a lot of time thinking about options when the game doesn't provide many, or the game's rules don't severely punish them for choosing "bad" options. This doesn't mean they're better players; it' means they're not playing the same game.

A Fighter with these stats in AD&D can be pretty interesting:
9 STR/12 DEX/11 CON/15 INT/7 WIS/17 CHA

Those stats are fucking garbage in 5e. And it's not because the players are different or all a bunch of munchkin min-maxers or the DMs are douchebags, it's because the rules don't provide Fighters with useful things to do with high INT or CHA, and kick him in the balls for not having high STR, DEX, or CON (in terms of the game's design, 9 STR for a 5e Fighter is like having an AD&D fighter with 3 STR, which isn't even legal). It's really that simple. You don't spend time thinking about "builds" when there is nothing to "build" and/or your "build" doesn't matter much.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;990037Players don't spend a lot of time thinking about options when the game doesn't provide many, or the game's rules don't severely punish them for choosing "bad" options. This doesn't mean they're better players; it' means they're not playing the same game.

A Fighter with these stats in AD&D can be pretty interesting:
9 STR/12 DEX/11 CON/15 INT/7 WIS/17 CHA

Those stats are fucking garbage in 5e. And it's not because the players are different or all a bunch of munchkin min-maxers or the DMs are douchebags, it's because the rules don't provide Fighters with useful things to do with high INT or CHA, and kick him in the balls for not having high STR, DEX, or CON (in terms of the game's design, 9 STR for a 5e Fighter is like having an AD&D fighter with 3 STR, which isn't even legal). It's really that simple. You don't spend time thinking about "builds" when there is nothing to "build" and/or your "build" doesn't matter much.

Yea, seriously... If I was playing in an OD&D campaign that used my house rules/clarifications, which is straight 3d6 down the line for stats, I'd seriously consider playing those stats as a Paladin. If he can manage to get one more point of Str somewhere, he would get a +5% XP bonus (the Int 15 gives him 3 more points of Str from the perspective of XP bonus, to a 12 with 13 needed for +5%), but that 17 in Cha is gold. In all my OD&D play since 2006, I've only seen 5 or 6 Cha 17+, and one of those was on a sheet of about 20-30 stats I rolled up as potential henchmen.

Frank

Quote from: fearsomepirate;990037Players don't spend a lot of time thinking about options when the game doesn't provide many, or the game's rules don't severely punish them for choosing "bad" options. This doesn't mean they're better players; it' means they're not playing the same game.

A Fighter with these stats in AD&D can be pretty interesting:
9 STR/12 DEX/11 CON/15 INT/7 WIS/17 CHA

Those stats are fucking garbage in 5e. And it's not because the players are different or all a bunch of munchkin min-maxers or the DMs are douchebags, it's because the rules don't provide Fighters with useful things to do with high INT or CHA, and kick him in the balls for not having high STR, DEX, or CON (in terms of the game's design, 9 STR for a 5e Fighter is like having an AD&D fighter with 3 STR, which isn't even legal). It's really that simple. You don't spend time thinking about "builds" when there is nothing to "build" and/or your "build" doesn't matter much.

I don't know it's true that build doesn't matter much. This fighter will be very different from one with a 17 STR and 15 CON. And what jumps out at me here is high charisma, great not only for loyalty and henchmen, but also the initial NPC reactions. And that's where the high INT is also a boon. More languages. It's a lot easier to parley when you know the other person's language.

There is a certain irony that a later, supposedly more refined version of the game, with tons more options and widgets, where there was more of a conscious effort to "balance" things is so terrible at providing a variety of viable options.

Quote from: Lunamancer;99007There is a certain irony that a later, supposedly more refined version of the game, with tons more options and widgets, where there was more of a conscious effort to "balance" things is so terrible at providing a variety of viable options.

Perhaps in 3e and 4e, yes. However, 5e has come back to it. If you use persuasion/deception/intimidation rolls (so like an optional reaction table rule), then there is still a place for a high charisma fighter character who talks their way out of fights they might be less good at fighting than a 18 strength fighter. The only real difference is that you do not see many strength 9 fighters, which is also the case for B/X or BECMI as well. Only really OD&D (where the scores barely mattered) or AD&D (where it had to be playable without a prime req. stat boost, since most of the boosts started at ~15) were there not more serious consequences to playing a low str fighter, low int MU, etc. (and in AD&D a low int MU was still pretty rare).

That Fighter would be a liability at any edition of D&D imo. Carrying 35 pounds max of gear before being encumbered. As a DM I do track otherwise players will take everything of value not nailed down. While taking a small penalty to saves against spells such as Charm Person. Con is OK nothing to write home about. Not a useless character but not one I would play.

%E has it's flaws at least with 5E Fighters can do more than "I swing and I hit" over and over unlike in Pathfinder.