Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
D&D is a Team Sport. What are the positions?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9177855" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>You are marrying two completely unrelated things.</p><p></p><p>I do not, and never have, wanted "everything to be optimized all the time." I care about mechanical effectiveness. There is a significant difference between those two things.</p><p></p><p>I do want, and essentially always have wanted, to play a cooperative, teamwork game. D&D explicitly indicates it is such a game. That means cooperating and aiming for the best interests of all, both as characters and as players. If that is one's aim, one should seek to do it as well as can be reasonably achieved; it is foolish in the extreme to have an aim and then blindly act without consideration for how well the actions will work, but by that same token, sometimes you must work the dough you have, not tomorrow's bread.</p><p></p><p></p><p>All that does is push people to game the system even harder. As you say, it's their job. Pile the mountain higher and people just work that much harder to circumvent, corrupt, or eliminate the obstacles. Over and over and over and over. It's a losing battle. Like trying to balance political power by making it so you have to do mind-numbingly tedious busy work for poverty wages for 20 years before you can become absolute autocrat. People will be lining up in <em>droves.</em></p><p></p><p>Much better to instead lean <em>into</em> "their job," as you say. To make it so the best, wisest, most effective course of action <em>is</em> to support your fellow teammates, to think in group terms instead of selfish terms, to make supportive play engaging and fun in and of itself. To genuinely make it exciting and engaging to play the game the way it's supposed to be played, rather than tedious, frustrating, or punishing to play it in ways it wasn't meant to be played.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Sure. And that is a distinct argument--one I would be quite glad to oppose. A mile-long list of classes is (at least!) as bad for the game as a list of merely 1-4 that now must house all possible archetypes no matter what. The former does disservice by spreading out work far too thin, diluting identity, and turning testing into something almost impossibly difficult. The latter does disservice by forcing every archetype into a tiny space, turning the 1-4 classes into generic blobs of nothing and leaving little to no room to explore mechanical difference. There is a sweet spot somewhere in-between (I would argue around 50% more than what 5e currently has), where there are enough big chunky archetypes to cover the space, but not so many that everything overlaps with a dozen other things.</p><p></p><p>Some examples of classes I would like to see get their own attention, without my usual semi-facetious repetition of one specific class: Warlord/Captain/Herald/etc., Swordmage, Avenger, Shaman, Summoner, Psion/Occultist/etc., <em>maybe</em> Assassin, and possibly a "monster" class (e.g., one class with subclasses like Vampire, Werewolf, Reanimated aka Frankenstein's monster, Mummy, Demonkin, etc.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9177855, member: 6790260"] You are marrying two completely unrelated things. I do not, and never have, wanted "everything to be optimized all the time." I care about mechanical effectiveness. There is a significant difference between those two things. I do want, and essentially always have wanted, to play a cooperative, teamwork game. D&D explicitly indicates it is such a game. That means cooperating and aiming for the best interests of all, both as characters and as players. If that is one's aim, one should seek to do it as well as can be reasonably achieved; it is foolish in the extreme to have an aim and then blindly act without consideration for how well the actions will work, but by that same token, sometimes you must work the dough you have, not tomorrow's bread. All that does is push people to game the system even harder. As you say, it's their job. Pile the mountain higher and people just work that much harder to circumvent, corrupt, or eliminate the obstacles. Over and over and over and over. It's a losing battle. Like trying to balance political power by making it so you have to do mind-numbingly tedious busy work for poverty wages for 20 years before you can become absolute autocrat. People will be lining up in [I]droves.[/I] Much better to instead lean [I]into[/I] "their job," as you say. To make it so the best, wisest, most effective course of action [I]is[/I] to support your fellow teammates, to think in group terms instead of selfish terms, to make supportive play engaging and fun in and of itself. To genuinely make it exciting and engaging to play the game the way it's supposed to be played, rather than tedious, frustrating, or punishing to play it in ways it wasn't meant to be played. Sure. And that is a distinct argument--one I would be quite glad to oppose. A mile-long list of classes is (at least!) as bad for the game as a list of merely 1-4 that now must house all possible archetypes no matter what. The former does disservice by spreading out work far too thin, diluting identity, and turning testing into something almost impossibly difficult. The latter does disservice by forcing every archetype into a tiny space, turning the 1-4 classes into generic blobs of nothing and leaving little to no room to explore mechanical difference. There is a sweet spot somewhere in-between (I would argue around 50% more than what 5e currently has), where there are enough big chunky archetypes to cover the space, but not so many that everything overlaps with a dozen other things. Some examples of classes I would like to see get their own attention, without my usual semi-facetious repetition of one specific class: Warlord/Captain/Herald/etc., Swordmage, Avenger, Shaman, Summoner, Psion/Occultist/etc., [I]maybe[/I] Assassin, and possibly a "monster" class (e.g., one class with subclasses like Vampire, Werewolf, Reanimated aka Frankenstein's monster, Mummy, Demonkin, etc.) [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
D&D is a Team Sport. What are the positions?
Top