That's a player choice, if you want to be good at one thing you make a sacrifice somewhere else, that seems completely reasonable to me. If combat isn't dominating game time any time it comes up like it does in 4e, then there isn't any reason to worry that Fred's character is a little better than yours at it, you'll be moving on to other stuff soon enough anyway. You should build characters to do the things your interested in. If you love combat and don't like talking, why should the guy who wants to do both things be just as good at combat as you and then get to shine during all the social bits too? These kinds of trade offs allow players to build to the expectations of campaigns (i.e. this campaign will be 60% combat, 30% exploring, and 10% social) and then it allows them to build to their interest within that framework. If a character can't participate in an area of the game, from the sounds of what we've heard so far, that will be their fault for purposely choosing to put all their focus in other places.
My question to you is, why shouldn't people be able to trade ability out of one area that they're less interested in for ability in an area they are more interested in?
Make things too regimented and your make a game that is stale and artificial feeling.
You know, I'm sympathetic to this view. But I can't help but think that this degenerates into something that doesn't match this vision. I don't have a problem with "Fred's character being a little better" than mine at any particular thing, regardless of the focus area. If
that were the only consequence, I would love it.
Sadly, I don't think that will be the case. Trading an ability in one area for an ability in another means that the natural differences are amplified, and the more customizable the characters, the worse this could be. This means that the promise that characters could always participate in every area of the game unless they make bad choices, which would be "their fault," is no promise at all. The player who makes a fighter and sacrifices everything for combat changes the combat game for everyone in the party. Sure, he can't talk to anyone because he frightens furry animals and small children by his very presence, and may have no ability to find his way meaningfully through the dungeon on his own, but he can throw that damage. And in the end, this means that the player of the bard character can't participate meaningfully in combat at all - and
meaningful participation is the only thing that matters. The DM must balance combat in ways that accommodate the fighter, and that ruins any initial balance that existed as a result of player choices.
It could have exactly the same kind of result as in 4E, where skill challenges were terrible (in part) because the best strategy was to have a single character make skill rolls in his best skill until he won for you. If "everyone gets the spotlight" means "one at a time, with the practical exclusion of others" then none of these parts of the game will be fun, because the need for a group is eliminated in all cases.
They've indicated that you should be able to swap the focus of characters about without too much fuss. Don't want a social bard, step up from the base rules a bit and swap out some things for more of a combat focus, or whatever. Seems like a much more elegant solution than having a bunch of vestigial junk on the character sheet you never intend to us, plus it models characters more accurately than having them being able to do all sorts of stuff that they just choose not to do.
It would certainly model characters more accurately, and it doesn't sound like it will be hard. But I don't think it would be good. The "vestigial junk" doesn't need to be something a player doesn't want. Wouldn't it be better to have each character class have the ability to work well in each play environment? I just don't see how it's better to relegate some characters to certain playstyles - that seems to be more of an imposition than giving all characters fun and interesting abilities in all areas, and making the "I just want a social character" player live with unused information on the character sheet.
Worse, the kinds of choices that get made about this are generally pretty poor. It reinforces the strongest limitations on character. This was, in 3E, one of the major problems - in some cases, like with the cleric, a player could trade out abilities they didn't like (such as "healing") for abilities they did like (such as "turning into a vessel of divine power and killing everything in sight"). The fact that clerics also had some skills that allowed them play the talky parts of the game and spells for exploration made them in all ways better, and more fun, than more liimited characters. Like the fighter, who got to have such "impressive" combat ability at the cost of being able to do other things, like talk to adults, get around in nature, or participate in the game at all past 6th level.
A more balanced game would help here, but my point is that I don't know why anyone would want to play the fighter - everyone would want to play the cleric. Even if they don't, what they really want to play is the fighter who is
like the cleric, in that he can participate, in his own way, in all the fun parts of the game.
The general concept of breaking down big or important actions into smaller steps is a fine one. The 4e implementation was wretched. The idea of setting up a multi step challenge ahead of time as 4e did, basically means you've dictated too much of how it should go, instead of letting player creativity decide that. I don't think the next iteration of D&D needs skill challenge rules, it needs DM advice on how to break down important story elements so they aren't reliant on a single die roll, but minus all the regimentation of primary and secondary skills and forcing participation and all the other junk that went with 4e's skill change system.
I agree with the poor implementation, but I think it needs better rules, not fewer. People who like combat-heavy games don't complain that the tactical rules are much of a straitjacket, and a more complex and rules-relevant social game would be more interesting, to me at least. A lack of rules in this area leads to one or two skills really dominating, and thus breaking, this part of the game - see 3E diplomacy. But I agree - a less fiddly way of allowing players to use character abilities in combination with creativity and open-endedness is the way to go, here.
I didn't really like multi-classing in 4e, I thought it was too resource intensive for what you got. The hybrid system was interesting, but unfortunately collapsed under the weight of the stat dependency of 4e and it felt a bit like a clunky kludge. I do appreciate a little elegance in my game design. 3e had a great many problems with it's multi-classing system as well, but the basic premise is pretty slick and I have very high hopes that tamping down the power curve will solve most of its issues.
I agree. I also don't think anyone dislikes elegance in game design. I don't know that tamping down the power curve will help much, except by tamping down character power enough that no one cares. The problem of 3E multiclassing - or at least, the most significant problem in terms of balance - is that characters at all levels had to be balanced with each other, which didn't happen. It wasn't possible, in most cases, to take "a little of class X" without dramatically diminishing power, except for martial style classes, in which case you had characters that all took levels of fighter, barbarian, ranger, paladin, and rogue, because of the front-loading. What I meant by 4E being on the right track is that it might best not to simply give the actual abilities of one class to your character when you multiclass, but instead to give something like the ability you are looking for, but in a level-appropriate way. So the fighter who wants to be able to use some lightning magic can multiclass, but what this gives him is not "sleep" and "shocking grasp" once a day, but some magic detection, the ability to add some lightning damage to his attacks, and a ranged lightning attack that does level-appropriate damage like his own attacks do. Or something like that.
I was just struck by how the 3E system of multiclassing seemed really great, but in practice was one of the most metagamey and game-breaking parts of that edition.
