So, I really truly abhor niche protection. It reeks of an artificial construct that will totally knock me right out of my SOD. To that end, I created my own system that, more or less, dumps that convention. It is one of those items that sometimes works for me and sometimes against me with new players. Essentially, you can have a fighter who is the best thief, a thief who is the best fighter or a sage that can do it all. Some classes have advantages in their field but nothing that bars others, just enables them to be the best X possible.

So:
1. What games have you experienced that have the strongest niche protection? Weakest or none?

2. How was it accomplished?

3. Do you like Niche protection? Hate it? Indifferent to it in favor of other elements?

Thanks,
Bill

This statement:

Quote from: HinterWeltEssentially, you can have a fighter who is the best thief, a thief who is the best fighter or a sage that can do it all.

Conflicts directly with this statement (from the same paragraph):

Quote from: HinterWeltSome classes have advantages in their field but nothing that bars others, just enables them to be the best X possible.

Which is it? The second is niche protection, the first is not.

Quote from: HinterWelt1. What games have you experienced that have the strongest niche protection? Weakest or none?

2. How was it accomplished?

HERO SYSTEM depends upon the limits of the points for niche protection and advice to not allow players to built out of concept. Rather weak without a strong GM to enforce it.

Age of Heroes uses classes that are built such that they have the advantage in those areas key to them. However all skills are open to any class to a lesser extent.

For a player who doesn't wan't to be the best at anything, there's the Mundane class...

Quote from: HinterWelt3. Do you like Niche protection? Hate it? Indifferent to it in favor of other elements?

Huge fan of it, won't play a game that doesn't have it.

Note: a niche does not have to be combat focused.

Quote from: HinterWeltSo:
1. What games have you experienced that have the strongest niche protection? Weakest or none?

1st Ed AD&D was strongest. Weakest? GURPS. HERO.

Quote2. How was it accomplished?

Pure point buy.

Quote3. Do you like Niche protection? Hate it? Indifferent to it in favor of other elements?

Thanks,
Bill

I mostly dislike it, but accept it in some circumstances, like Fantasy. My games are about as far away from niche protection as yours, Bill.

-clahs

It's a mixed bag for me.

Shadowrun traditionally has had very strong niche protection. Especially for a [offically] classless system, point buy game.  I like that SR4 has reduced this somewhat though it's still there. But there are two ways this has come about, one of which I like and the other which I don't.

I like when characters can dabble in this and that. I like that a character can an effective a decker/hacker AND an effective mage.

What I don't like is extreme parallelism where their is a congruent copy of doing something in magic for doing it in hardware. Just to break down the niche.

I think the difference there is I dislike niche protection for characters, I like niche protection for particular actions of a discipline.

P.S. I think D&D suffers from the pressure of niche protection between characters (by forcing, to varying degrees, a single choice of discipline) resulting in a natural push to break down the walls between the discipline niches (arcane healing spells and so on).

1. What games have you experienced that have the strongest niche protection? Weakest or none?

All versions of D&D have more niche protection via character classes than many other games that don't have classes.  Hearing the designers discuss 4e it sounds like it has more niche protection (Striker / Tank / Leader / Controller) as a primary design goal.

2. How was it accomplished?

Usually character classes, but I could see anything where you have to choose 1 of several options (eg. Schools of Magic in a hypothetical Wizard School game)

3. Do you like Niche protection? Hate it? Indifferent to it in favor of other elements?

I don't mind character niches -- but I don't care for "all equal in combat, just *different*", "all equal in social, just *different*" and "all equal in magic, just *different*" because that spoils my Suspension of Disbelief.  I guess it's not the niches that bug me, but the artificial "balance" which makes it seem too gamey.

Quote from: gleichmanThis statement:


Conflicts directly with this statement (from the same paragraph):


Which is it? The second is niche protection, the first is not.

I think our definition of Niche Protection vary slightly. In my world, niche protection means that if you play a Fighter, you are the fighter for the group. If you play the Thief, you are the thief for the group. No one will be able to take that away from you by merit of you being the Thief or Fighter. My games might give you an advantage from a professional point but if you spend your experience in fighter skills, you will probably be surpassed by someone who is spending their points in thief skills.

So, you may have some absolute definition but I was absent on that day in gym class.

Bill

I guess a game that defines classes as "Fighter" and "Thief" is different from one where you have a "Knight", "Barbarian", "Hunter", "Highwayman", "Acrobat", etc.

In a game where it's just "Fighter"... they probably should be better at fighting.

Maybe some of the recent misunderstandings stem from the current 4e developer´s usage of the ideas & terms "niche protection" etc.

The game I know with the least niche protection is Runequest II. Especially played "straight", there's no built-in character class and the amount of customization available by choice, at start of play, is pretty low. IMO this encourages more focus on who the character is than what the character is, if you get my drift.

However, for fantasy I'm always conflicted over the mundane/magical divide. The Fantasy Trip achieved the former by making you choose between being a hero and a wizard at start of play. From that point on you could still take any skill or spell, but the cost was much higher if you selected outside your specialty. Whatever niche-ification there was, was a product of synergies and tradeoffs in the system--between ST and DX--and IIRC a certain amount of "skill tree".

Let's see

1. Probably AD&D. I can't think of another game I regularly played with as strong niche protection as 1E AD&D (Tunnels and Trolls had fewer niches, which should make it stronger, but Strength mattered to both, which made the niches sometimes less notable)


The weakest is Hero


2)  Hero has no real limitations (GM sets them) on taking skills/traits/powers, and utilizes point buy. It also has a large number of attributes which dilutes niches even farther.

3) Honestly, I see niches in most fictions--comic book superhero teams, TV characters (A-Team), fantasy character in a group set up (not all fantasy has "group" basis--some may have groups but there are levels of importance involved as well.) The fact that I can boil down a lot of other media to those tropes means that I see it is fairly common, and doesn't bother my SODB. I like it when it makes games easier/faster, or otherwise says "this is a group who are all equally important, just focused on different things in play"

A well designed game can make the niche protection aspect shine. A bad one, just uses it as a crutch. I'd prefer a good one to do it, and give a reasonable reason for it (A game of Spec Ops may present highly skilled individuals but even they have specialties which role they assume in a group most often. )

Yet many of my own designs don't utilize this because while I think it can be done well and for good reason, there are also reasons why it should not be done--most often it should be the players choice to either adopt a niche for play (give them a specialty) or not.  The decision shouldn't be hardwired into a system unless the system has only one setup/purpose/campaign structure. (The aforementioned Spec Ops team, or a crew of a starship, etc.)

Problem is I like games that can do multiple campaigns/campaign styles. So I prefer non-inherent niche protection.  I do see good reasons for it though as well. For example I have had many games where one PC will step up to do something another PC really wanted to focus on--and niches are really a shorthand cheat for giving each PC spotlight time.  Yet encouraging each player to pick their own chance for spotlight time, and me as Gm helping that along seems more natural over all.

Quote from: HinterWeltSo, you may have some absolute definition but I was absent on that day in gym class.

I think yours is needlessly harsh, as by it I ofter no nich protection at all in my games.

And yet I know I offer less than original D&D, and far more than HERO or Deadlands to name but a handful of examples.

If your version of it is the one commonly held, then I need a new term.

Quote from: HinterWeltSo, I really truly abhor niche protection. It reeks of an artificial construct that will totally knock me right out of my SOD. To that end, I created my own system that, more or less, dumps that convention. It is one of those items that sometimes works for me and sometimes against me with new players. Essentially, you can have a fighter who is the best thief, a thief who is the best fighter or a sage that can do it all. Some classes have advantages in their field but nothing that bars others, just enables them to be the best X possible.

I think the difference is a matter of degrees.

Quote1. What games have you experienced that have the strongest niche protection?

2. How was it accomplished?

Various iterations of D&D - classes with narrow functions
Rolemaster - classes with prohibitive costs for out-of-class purchases

QuoteWeakest or none?

GURPS.

Hero 5e (4e at least had package deals that weren't just pregen characters.)

Quote3. Do you like Niche protection? Hate it? Indifferent to it in favor of other elements?

It might be along the same lines, but what I want is "role protection" and "role definition".

When I say Role protection means that you have a place to shine, but that place isn't necessarily compulsory in the game's adventure design.

When I say role definition, I mean defining an activity that your character can support well, and that I can use to design adventures around. I don't mind characters that can do 2 things well; diffuse, unfocused characters who can only achieve part of a task that I can't depend on any other character in the group doing is a different matter, and a liability.

Spycraft's classes work pretty well this way (a soldier and a faceman suggests to me a different adventure than I might run for a wheelman and a scout). Spirit of the Century's skill pyramids also supports this by ensuring there are a few things your character is real good at, but falls far short of letting you master every activity in the game.

I also like "shtick protection". That is, if you have something that is really cool that you designed your character to do, but isn't necessarily the only way to achieve that activity in the group. Frex, any character in a spirit of the century group can make stealth rolls and sneak in places if they have a decent Stealth skill. But if you spend all your stunts on the man/woman of shadows stealth stunt chain, I've carved out a niche that defines my character pretty explicitly, and there's not much chance that anyone who wasn't thinking the same thing "accidentally" steals my shtick.

Oh, BTW I didn't answer the OP's question #2:

SR created niche of characters in a few ways:
1) The system tends to heavily favour specialists in a Skill or field of Skills.
2) The game play domain is huge with numerous avenues for specializing in. Because the game itself doesn't tend to center around playing one type of senario and because the game play is sliced up in the myriad of niches that exist in a modern technological society (with magic on top of that). EDIT: So it naturally promotes a team of PCs to cover different areas so the team as a whole can be much more rounded and deal with a wider range of situations.
3) Outright explicit exclusion of one path of a character if you take another. This has mellowed over time, for example mid-SR3 (IIRC) they added the ability to be both a Physical Adept and Magician in the same character. Something that wasn't allowed prior. But it still exists because you are not allowed to be both an Awakened character and a Technomancer (it appears to be a little of bit of a setting limitation and a games rule motivated limitation).
4) Prohibitively expensive. In SR3 and earlier to be a Decker worth anything at all you had to spend high 6-figures in cash, which made it next to impossible to be any sort of effective Awakened character during character build...and to come up with the copious number of Skills and cash in play? Erp. SR4 broke down that wall a fair amount, now most people can be passable hackers. Though there is definately an elite rank if you specialize in it.
5) The rules between the systems tended to not mesh. It was also hard to do one thing if you were doing another. For example to effectively Deck you had to be a limp noodle lying in a dumpster. Now in SR4 you can be a decent hacker walking down the street shooting Devil Rats. Although there are still some limitations they tend to be a lot softer.

Even point buy systems often have some degree of niche protection.  If you have to spend lots of points (relative to allotment) or prerequisites to get X, then you can almost guarantee that no one will be good at X without being decent at Y and Z.  
 
Any system where ability scores have a heavy weight and are difficult to buy/alter will have a different sort of niche protection.  You'll have the strong guy who is good at everything where strength is important, the agile and fine motor skill guy with high dex, etc.
 
I find AD&D level niche protection limiting in trying to model character concepts.  But D20 amounts of niche protection don't bother me.

Quote from: StuartI guess a game that defines classes as "Fighter" and "Thief" is different from one where you have a "Knight", "Barbarian", "Hunter", "Highwayman", "Acrobat", etc.

In a game where it's just "Fighter"... they probably should be better at fighting.

Stuart,
You can still have niche protection if you have a dozen different "Fighters". I just did not want to list all variants. Fighter, in my meaning, includes any fighter type.

The tough part is when you have types like "Highwaymen" combined with strong niches. Is he a Thief? A Fighter? The obvious answer is problematic, "a little of both" is not good for the strong niche system so you often get a thief who can use some weapons or a fighter with a few thief skills. Again, no problem with that but not my cup of tea.

As to having a "Fighter" class and the he "should" be good at fighting, well, I disagree. There are many types of fighters and some are great and some are passable but in the end, they are people and people tend to pick up what they need to know along the way. Again, my preference, but you could have started out a fighter and ended up a thief...or something that defies categorization.

Bill