pemerton said:
But the non-likeability of the antihero has an impact on social situations. It's a mode of contribution.
Sure it as an impact. My gnome's inability to figure out what other people are thinking has an impact, too. The impact is mostly negative -- it reduces the chance of successfully getting an NPC to behave the way our party wants it to.
I don't want to pass judgement on your gnome PC, but neither the dapper assassin nor the dumb muscle strikes me as ideal PCs for an RPG based on the so-called 3 pillars. If the dapper assassin is in a melee, something has gone wrong. If the dumb muscle is trying to make friends at the ball, likewise something has gone wrong. (In fiction, the dumb muscle generally would be a sidekick or a hencman.)
All these characters with strengths and weaknesses will inevitably enter a situation that features their weakness at some point. Otherwise, they functionally don't have weaknesses. For me, there's a lot of fun in having my gnome potentially screw up our social plans. It's not the best recipe for "winning the game," but chaos is awesome.
One approach - which has some merits, and is underexplored - is the lazy warlord from 4e. Another approach - which has been explored extensively, but only in the context of one archetype (the wizard) and has some issues but probably not insoluble ones - is the magical summoner. A third approach, which has also been explored but probably inadequately in the context of a contemporary D&D game, is the sidekick/henchman (eg why can't the dapper assassin have the dumb muscle take part in combat for him?).
Those all patch over the weakness - omitting the failure. The weakness
should be present. Sometimes, you should have to roll a dice that you will likely not succeed on. The failure needs to be present. The essence of drama is overcoming a problem -- tension rises (and creativity balloons!) when the odds aren't so great.
Well, here's where we discover (once again) that D&D, played straight out of the rulebooks, is not a generic fantasy system. If three out of ten core classes are about wilderness exploration, the game is going to have to be tweaked or drifted in some way to support urban intrigue. This isn't an issue for class design or the three pillars (a ranger, barbarian or druid can be as strong as you like in each pillar and still suck for an urban intrigue campagin). As you say, it's about setting the parameters at the start of a campaign.
Tweaking and drifting are supposedly part and parcel of this 5e project -- making the game into a game you want it, rather than making you play it like anyone else wants you to play it.
As long as the druid, ranger, and barbarian can meaningfully contribute to the occasional social interaction with a townsfolk (even at a C or D rank), it'll be fine in any campaign that features all three kinds of play (sucking once or twice a night isn't a problem; sucking constantly is). It's only when the campaign skews to one side that it'll skew the class selection.
It's FINE to me that barbarians aren't valid characters in heavily social campaigns (for example). They're still valid characters in standard campaigns featuring a fairly even distribution of the three challenge types -- and they'll weight the game a bit more toward the combat/exploration side of the game. Which is appropriate -- that's kind of the archetype.
pemerton said:
I don't think so. I'm not saying that it couldn't be done in such a game. But it can be done in a classed game also, provided that the classes are well-designed relative to the range of situations/challenges that the game expects players to confront via their PCs, and the GM has good mechanics (and advice on how to use them) for setting up those situations.
I'm just saying that if you want a character's traits to emerge through play rather than before they sit down at the table, it's probably better to have their play determine their traits rather than their pre-game choices determine these traits.
But what is the task? And I'm thinking particularly in the context of social interaction. Is the task wooing the maiden? Or scaring her?
It's either. Both. The task is the thing they want to achieve that has some significant chance of significant failure. Both of those tasks (wooing them or scaring them) fall under the heading of a social skillset.
But D&D has, for the past two editions, taken for granted that there is a difference between being able to make NPCs think you're sincere (Bluff), making NPCs think you're nice and/or worth treating with (Diplomacy) and making NPCs think you're scary (Intimidate).
Sure, but that's not much different from using an axe, a sword, or a bow. The goal is the same regardless of the tool used for it. And in this case, it's actually even all governed by the same ability score: Charisma.
My point is that a PC who is good at Intimidation doesn't play at all like one who is good at Bluff, across a whole range of social situations. Unless we are looking at very simple situations where either might do ("Do we lure the guard away with a distraction, or scare the guard away with our fierceness?"), we are talkiing about PCs who contribute to situations in very different ways, being good at pursuing different goals through social means.
Sure, just as bows and swords and axes all contribute in very different ways.
But you're looking too closely at it, I feel. The three pillars are broad things. I can imagine a character who is not good at using any weapon -- just as I can imagine a character who is very good at using almost any weapon.
So a character that isn't good at social situations is not great at any of those. Of course, maybe they can try for a successful Intimidate anyway, even when their chance of success isn't that great, or their effect isn't that strong. It's like a 4e character with only a melee basic attack. Useful, just not as useful as a character with more stuff.
The point I wanted to make was, from the fact that all PCs are able meaningfully to contribute to social situations, it doesn't follow that they are all the same, or that meaningful difference has been erased. The contrast between a maiden-wooer (say, your dapper assassin) and a maiden-scarer (say, a variant on your dumb muscle) is simply intended to illustrate that point.
Sure, but it should also be possible to have a character who sucks at ALL those things.
A druid who has spent her entire life in the forest isn't going to be good at any of those things, except perhaps with regards to wild animals (where she'll be VERY good!). She shouldn't be forced to pick a method to contribute if part of her archetypal weakness is that she CAN'T very effectively contribute to a social challenge. She can make a skill check like anyone else, but she's not as effective as the bard or the paladin or the cleric (who all have more options and varied abilities to use in that context).
I personally think that this sort of design actually makes for better play, because it puts the players into a degree of tension with one another, and (if they want their various skills to synergise) requires them to engage cleverly with the fiction (much as, in combat, players use a range of clever techniques to try and protect the squishies, bring their artillery to bear without killing their front-line fighters, etc).
I've found that for me, there is a distinction between major and minor encounters. Major encounters require the whole party to contribute something strategically. Minor encounters can be solved with about 2-3 quick die rolls. It's OK to have a character mostly sit out, suck at, or fail, a minor encounter of a given type. But they should have some way of contributing in at least a minor way to a major encounter.
Again, the druid above will not try and use her social skills on anyone most of the time. When she is required to help, she won't be as effective as the rest of the party (though she still has a baseline). That's part of the appeal of being a druid: you AREN'T good with people. It's your heroic weakness. It's fun to have.
TL;DR: the issue of homogeneity/entertaining failure is more-or-less orthogonal to the issue of "three pillars".
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And if the designers want to build a three pillars game, then I think it would be a mistake to permit the building of PCs who will not be able to meaningfully contribute.
Don't disagree with any of that.
However, "meaningfully contribute" isn't the same as "has an equal chance of success."
I think that 4e has shown that going this way is design catastrophe, because of the spread of bonuses (and hence need for DCs) that make simultaneous meaningful contribution almost impossilbe (the Essentials patch for this in the skill challenge rules is the under-explained system of "advantages").
Rerolls, or perhaps a broader range of aptitudes ("My guy can both woo maidens and scare them") seems a much better way to go.
A broad spread doesn't mean the whole approach is invalid. It just means you need to narrow the spread. 4e did a pretty lousy job of keeping skill bonuses in check, though it did a pretty GOOD job of keeping attack and defense bonuses in check. Just equate them, and use the same maths for them, and you're good to go.
It's part of character design to have a character who sometimes sucks at something that the party needs to do. It's a fun part of the game to fail in a way of your own choosing (as happens when you choose your class fully aware of what they're good at and what they're bad at), or to try and succeed despite low odds (looking for things like "advantage" or addressing the fiction or using special abilities to better those odds).
