What's a rogue to you? Question on the relevance of a class.

[Doug McCrae]

The whole idea of unbalancing classes along combat / exploration / interaction needs to go die in a fire.

Fighters only combat? Rogues only exploration? The Wizard laughs at both of you. Isn't it funny that Fighters and Rogues are supposed to sit around and watch if their non-special element comes up, but Wizards are never required to do that? WTF?

You have a point. The problem is the wizard, and the other main Vancian casters - the cleric and druid - have too many spells to select from. So they can go all exploration on an 'exploration day' and all combat on a 'combat day' and be better than the rogue or the fighter.

This is one reason why I prefer the sorcerer style of casting - it forces the casters to be 'this' and not 'that', to be about as limited as the fighter and rogue are, and so have to rely on their team-mates. Another advantage is that it makes each individual caster a lot more flavorful. Sorcerers are really what specialist wizards should be, but aren't.

I've lately developed a particular dislike, when playing/running points-based rpgs such as Mutants & Masterminds, of players creating characters who can do everything. Sadly this is all too easy in M&M, by means of alternate powers. They'll go for a very broad theme, which justifies being able to excel at every aspect of the game - combat, movement, healing, investigation, npc interaction - they can do it all, and sometimes better than a character who can only do one thing, due to the vagaries of the system.

It is possible, I think, to create balanced classes that are unbalanced on the triple axis - AD&D fighters and thieves are reasonably well balanced against one another for example. It's the 'one-man party' characters that need to die in a fire, in my view. I hates them!

 

[Akaiku]

I've lately developed a particular dislike, when playing/running points-based rpgs such as Mutants & Masterminds, of players creating characters who can do everything. Sadly this is all too easy in M&M, by means of alternate powers. They'll go for a very broad theme, which justifies being able to excel at every aspect of the game - combat, movement, healing, investigation, npc interaction - they can do it all, and sometimes better than a character who can only do one thing, due to the vagaries of the system.

This is a player style disconnect problem. You players (assuming for 'they') are simply picking which parts of the game they want to not be bad at. They are obviously not interested in having weaknesses. You should either embrace that or find players that do like such things.

 

[mkill]

You have a point. The problem is the wizard, and the other main Vancian casters - the cleric and druid - have too many spells to select from. So they can go all exploration on an 'exploration day' and all combat on a 'combat day' and be better than the rogue or the fighter.

No! You got it backwards! It's completely fine that Wizards and Clerics can choose between combat, exploration and interaction spells. The problem is the attitude that fighters and rogues are supposed to "balance each other" by having one suck in combat and the other out of it.

It would be mildly annoying in a game with only fighters and rogues, but with spellcasters around, it's ridiculous.

The answer is to give the Rogue a combat role as the sneaky spike damage guy, and the fighter enough skills (or whatever the equivalent is in the system) to be useful in both exploration and interaction.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The answer is to give the Rogue a combat role as the sneaky spike damage guy, and the fighter enough skills (or whatever the equivalent is in the system) to be useful in both exploration and interaction.

That seems like a good approach, yes. I prefer the 3e rogue to the AD&D rogue. If we imagine a 3e game that has only sorcerers and rogues, that would be reasonably well balanced, though sorcerers, even though they are weaker than wizards, clerics and druids, would still became too powerful around 8th to 10th level, when they get 4th and 5th level spells.

Another alternative I've seen suggested is to combine the fighter and rogue into one class.

 

[Mircoles]

A dex based fighter with "locksmithing" skills, among other such skills..

 

[Remathilis]

Here's the REAL problem of D&D, every class in every edition can be boiled down to two classes: Spellcaster-guy and fighty-guy. In D&D, this is the wizard and fighter. Barring the arcane/divine magic split (which forces a player to choose between two spellcaster-guys; nuker or healer) every class could be replicated with these two classes or some mixture therein and a good talent/skill system.

Therefore, asking ANY class to justify its existence is a fool's errand, because my caster/not-caster classes could replicate all of them with sufficient flexibility. Any class; be it the iconic Thief/Rogue or the much more recent Warlord is really "fighter, but with X and Y customization.

However, I think most players would dislike a two/three class game with a couple dozen "talent trees" or "skill packages" to recreate rangers, rogues, assassins, monks, etc. So I think its counter-productive to argue one class is not necessary, since in reality they're almost ALL not needed.