A support character gets less "spotlight" and is likely considered significantly less powerful on the CO boards.
Mine don’t seem to get less spotlight time. Perhaps that is because our group acknowledges things like “I would have missed if I didn’t have that extra bonus” or “he missed you by one” linking to “good thing you Evil Eye’d his attack rolls!” Direct damage is not the only way to contribute, by any stretch.
One can also take the spotlight out of combat, assuming non-combat challenges are also presented and resolved by the characters possessing the appropriate skills and abilities. Here again we have an opportunity for bias to show – if my bias is towards combat, combat, combat, then “town” is just a place to rest and reprovision, NPC’s are stick figures and we won’t have challenges that are resolved by social skills or other non-combat abilities (or perhaps they will be resolved by player, not character, abilities). That being the case, such abilities are devalued and players move further to warrior-type characters.
Well lets see. He expected to be mocked to some extent (really, this guy was a guy who played bards regularly, so there was an ongoing series of jibes). He liked the concept, and he stuck with it. Next campaign, he played a fighter. From my perspective, he seemed to enjoy the latter more, but I don't speak for him.
So he seemed to really like Bards, he played one in your game, was roundly mocked for it, and he hasn’t played a Bard since. There’s no message we can take from that, is there?
As to the last point, that was quite a few years ago. It's only for an upcoming campaign that a player again expressed interest in a bard, and I wrote a specific variant bard for him. He specifically wanted to play an attache (i.e. sidekick), and the campaign details I provided suggested that social skills would be particularly useful.
First, I’m curious if he was around to see how the last Bard worked out. Second, only where his skills will specifically be exceptionally useful is the possibility even considered (and even then it must be a custom designed character), and third only someone wanting to play a sidekick would make such a choice. Nope, no bias there!
In general, my players have developed the approach that the best character is a living character. They know that I am likely to throw the kitchen sink at them, and subject their characters to a wide variety of unpredictable effects from all kinds of sources. They value hit points, fort saves, and Con, which bards suck at. They value armor, which bards have limited use of. They generally make their characters without a lot of advance knowledge (unlike the exception above). They also don't generally like spellcasters or other special abilities, and would prefer cold hard bonuses to a d20.
What I take from this, and your previous comments, is that your game leans to challenges best overcome by martial characters in melee combat. That may arise (in part or in whole) from your house rules favouring same, from your game style and selection of opponents favouring such characters, from your adjudication mechanisms favouring such characters, or what have you, but I suggest your bias to a game where such characters enjoy the advantage leads to their bias towards such characters.
That's an interesting way of putting it, but valid, I think. There are a number of character concepts in my games that are better or worse than in the core rules due to various setting constraints and houserules, all of which is part of my directorial vision. I don't think one needs to pull out the b-word for that, but whatever you want to call it, I think that customizing one's game is important.
I see nothing wrong with calling it a bias, but I don’t mean it as a negative. That’s what it is. Your game seems, from this outsider’s perspective, to favour martial/warrior classes. Obviously, you are OK with that, at worst, as you aren’t looking to make any changes. Your players are at least OK with it as well, choosing martial characters. That may reflect shared bias (with players not sharing your bias not sticking around or not joining in the first place), or an acceptance that “In Ahnehnois’ games, I’ll play warrior-types, since other classes are second class characters in his games. I’ll play those characters under a GM whose game doesn’t disincent non-warriors.”
If they were, why bother having classes at all? Why not just have one class, and simply make all characters be minor variants of it?
Yet it sounds like your game is quite similar to that. Your players don’t play spellcasters, they play warriors. If you have a full slate of classes, but the only ones ever played are Barbarians, Fighters, with a smattering of Rangers and Paladins (gotta have at least a d10 HD, full BAB and good Fort saves; don’t really care about spells or special abilities – seems like Fighters and Barbarians will be the main classes), then that’s really just one warrior class with some variants.
In a balanced game, the divine characters, arcane casters, rogues, bards, etc. would be equally viable, and equally common. In a game biased towards combat, not balanced with a diverse array of challenges, not so much. There’s nothing wrong with a group deciding that they want to play a pure dungeon delving hack & slash game, but let’s accept that this is a choice which is biased towards warrior types and away from many other character types.
That's patently not true. People often choose to play halflings because they think there's something fun to play about halflings even if they aren't the most optimal fit to be a fighter. Hell, I'm playing a halfling paladin in Pathfinder Society. He may not do the most damage in your average party, but he gets by and he's fun to play. Moreover, I recognize that I'm not going to do the most damage and am satisfied with that.
But there are advantages as well as drawbacks. There’s more to a good character, at least in my books (and sticking to mechanics) than how much damage he can deliver in a round. The halfling has better AC (higher DEX and small size, plus CHA bonus when smiting evil), his STR penalty to hit is offset by his size bonus, his ranged combat is much better (enhanced by DEX bonus and size) and an extra +1 to hit when Smiting Evil. A CHA bonus enhances many of his Paladin powers (an extra Lay on Hands, better spellcasting). He has spectacular saves (+2 compared to a human Paladin, no slouch himself, from his CHA and racial bonuses).
I suspect that your feat and skill choices work in tandem with these advantages, and are quite different from the approach you would adopt with a larger, stronger Paladin – am I wrong in that?
That is potentially a problem. Then again, trying to "balance" things has also lead to the same criticism.
The only edition I’ve seen that issue raised has been 4e, where it seems like every character has similar abilities with different names. I try to avoid much discussion of 4e specifically, as I have not played 4e and am not overly familiar with that rule set.
This doesn't seem particularly bad. After all, in the TSR versions of the game, it was de rigeur to restrict races to choosing classes that were considered appropriate for them.
Something specifically targeted to change in the move to 3e, and maintained thereafter, so something I suggest the fan base values.
If anything, 3e fails somewhat in making the "by the book" combos as effective as they should be. Elves have wizard as their favored class, but they aren't very good at being wizards (barring some late-stage rules that boost them). PF changed this a bit by explicitly rewarding characters for sticking to their favored class.
While true, the player chooses that favoured class. The Elf could choose Wizard, but he can also select Barbarian or Cleric, or whatever class that Elf will favour. As such, there is no incentive from the base favoured class rules to select a specific race/class combination (some advanced options might bias the choice in wanting a specific racial favoured class option for the specific class).
That seems to create a sense of naturalistic play (i.e. it's easy to understand why half-orcs are often barbarians; because they're good at it), but the difference is small enough that it doesn't seem to have hampered creativity.
Half orcs, half elves and humans are about equally good at being barbarians in Pathfinder. Each gets a +2 bonus to one stat of their choice. They are also about equally good at being Bards, Sorcerers and Wizards, for the same reason. This is often cited as a change to half orcs that surprises a lot of players moving from D&D.
To be fair, there is a point where it's game breaking and needs to be fixed if you give a strength bonus high enough. But before that, there's a gray area where some choices appear to be better than others, but the others are defensible and at least have some merit. That's pretty much where D&D tries to live.
The point at which it is game breaking, IMO, is the point where that bonus is so advantageous that it renders all other choices second-class. The bonuses for halflings, for example, are different, but also allow billd91 to play, in my view, a viable, competent halfling paladin who is not a weakness to his party, but simply brings different strengths than a half orc paladin would.
This also relates to the idea of a player imposing his/her will upon the fiction via his/her PC. If a player is playing a barbarian, I would expect that "imposition of the will" would involve a fair bit of slaying. If a player is playing a bard, "imposition of the will" is likely to involve different things - persuading and tricking people, for instance. If a game system lets me make a PC that lends itself to pushing the fiction one way rather than another, I want the system to support me in that respect. Conversely, if a game lets me build a bard PC, but then offers me no opportunity for imposing my will upon the fiction via my PC persuading and tricking people - if, in effect, it makes me play my bard like a poor cousin to the barbarian - then it is not really a system I want to play.
This can be the game, or the GM. I come back again (ad nauseum, probably) to the GM who strictly applies the rules for combat activity, but bases success or failure in social skills on player speeches and his view of whether the NPC would be persuaded (generally, only if the issue doesn’t have any real impact). For example, the enemy warrior is going to try to conquer the neighboring county. He can be stopped by killing him in combat, but there is no way he can be persuaded to take a different course of action by social skills, or by trickery, or whatever else – either he dies or he invades.
Since only dealing damage will resolve the encounter, the warrior is the best character. If this is the structure of most/all challenges (either they can be stopped, effectively, by brute force, or the only way to stop them is brute force), then the warrior is the best character throughout the campaign. In a game run by a GM with that style, expect players (at least those who know the GM) to gravitate to such characters, and away from squishy spellcasters and tricksters.
Also, I'm with @
Hussar (I think) and @
Manbearcat : in a system with levels, a "sidekick" PC, or a "weaker" PC, is simply lower level. Otherwise, what do levels even mean?
Agreed.
Odysseus is cunning, a great fighter, and strong: he has a bow that only he may string. In 4e, at least, he's an archer warlord (INT or WIS secondary, take your pick).
As I said, I don’t agree with all the examples I plucked from various sources. Not playing 4e, of course, I’m not looking for a Warlord example. But nothing precludes a Bard having high STR and good archery skills, as well as a skill set that reflects a cunning fellow who resolves conflicts by his wits, not just by war. How many foes did Odysseus defeat in straight up combat, versus wins by cunning and planning (like poking out the Cyclops’ eye while he slept rather than engaging him in single combat)?
