Legends & Lore: Clas Groups

[Wicht]

I mis-spoke - It's old testament, so therefore Judaism. I don't claim to be a religious scholar.

Sort of. Prayer was always something, even in the Old Testament individuals could do, but the priest served as the one who spoke to God on behalf of man, in regards to sanctification and propitiation. What both Old Testament and New Testament both affirm is that some prayers are more effective than others, depending on the spiritual qualities of the one doing the prayer. cf. Isaiah 59:1-3; James 5:16-18.

Most specifically though, its the miracles of the Old and New Testaments which provide an archetype for the powers and those miracles were always individually given so that only the select could do them.

 

[DMZ2112]

It's inaccurate to call this my opinion. It's the opinion of countless design professionals across genre and medium, one of the many ways they distinguish design from art. I'm merely an observer of that behavior and self-definition.

Okay. They are also entitled to their opinions.

 

[Warbringer]

Numenara has the right approach in naming this role "jacks" (as in jack of all trades)

 

[DMZ2112]

Numenara has the right approach in naming this role "jacks" (as in jack of all trades)

I love the crap out of this, but it's just as inaccurate as any other label. Still rooting for Depickler.

 

[Li Shenron]

Having magic items which work better for those who are better at doing the sorts of things those items help with, makes sense to me.

The opposite makes the same sense to me.

I mean, you have a Rogue in the party who's an ace at stealth, you let him find a Cloak that makes him even better, a super-ace!

In the other party, they have no Rogue, nobody's an ace at stealth, decent at the very best. They find the same Cloak, no one is still an ace at stealth.

It's not that this is actually particularly good for the game... you've done an extra favor to someone who maybe didn't even need it, and didn't help much someone you could have.

I'm not going to rip my hair out if they do this, but it's not an improvement on the game IMO. If anything, it encourages characters to boost what they are already good at, and discourages others to get good at something they are not, because you can bet that the Cloak won't go to the non-Rogue because it would feel "wasted" on them.

Note that both of these (boosting the best guy, and boosting the others) could be a good thing after all... it's just that if magic items don't provide new abilities but only makes you better at something you already normally are, at least we have one possibility less.

 

[GX.Sigma]

And now I have to learn multiclassing rules and deal with heaps of added complexity just because the designers wanted to throw up a pointless roadblock to stop storm shamans from also being pilots? FOR WHAT BENEFIT? All that rule is doing right now is making it harder for my players to play things that don't fit within the designers' preconceived and largely irrelevant notions of what "types of characters" exist at my table.

If you want a game where anyone can do anything they want, maybe a class-based game isn't what you're looking for.

Or, to put it another way: if you don't want to deal with restrictions imposed by the designers, you should just ignore those restrictions.

There's nothing to say there can't be an Orc Storm Shaman / Bomber Pilot / Marketing Manager / Computer Programmer, but it's a bit ridiculous to expect the designers to assume all storm shamans know C++.

 

[Mistwell]

The opposite makes the same sense to me.

I mean, you have a Rogue in the party who's an ace at stealth, you let him find a Cloak that makes him even better, a super-ace!

In the other party, they have no Rogue, nobody's an ace at stealth, decent at the very best. They find the same Cloak, no one is still an ace at stealth.

It's not that this is actually particularly good for the game... you've done an extra favor to someone who maybe didn't even need it, and didn't help much someone you could have.

I'm not going to rip my hair out if they do this, but it's not an improvement on the game IMO. If anything, it encourages characters to boost what they are already good at, and discourages others to get good at something they are not, because you can bet that the Cloak won't go to the non-Rogue because it would feel "wasted" on them.

Note that both of these (boosting the best guy, and boosting the others) could be a good thing after all... it's just that if magic items don't provide new abilities but only makes you better at something you already normally are, at least we have one possibility less.

I am viewing this from a simulation standpoint - people who tend to be good at stealth, know how to use an item that helps with stealth to it's optimum use. You seem to be viewing it from a game balance standpoint. Which I don't much care about, as game balance on this fine a level is simply not something I want from a game, and not something 5e is focused on.

Of course the stealth cloak is likely to be given to the guy good at stealth - just like the big two handed magic axe is likely to be given to the dwarf already using a big two handed axe, and the wand to the guy who already uses arcane magic with a wand, and the holy rod that kills undead to the guy who already uses holy items to kill undead. That's the whole point of classes to begin with - focused concepts which are different from other focused concepts. D&D is not a classless system, and the system is going to support the class-themed concept within the game.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If you want a game where anyone can do anything they want, maybe a class-based game isn't what you're looking for.

That's not what I want. I want a game where storm shamans can also be pilots, where thieves can sometimes cast spells, where warriors might get their prayers to the war-god answered. I want a game where class is defined in terms of what you can do and not in terms of what you can't do.

I want a game that doesn't break if my fighter wants to use a wand of magic missiles just because she's not a "mage-group" character.

Or, to put it another way: if you don't want to deal with restrictions imposed by the designers, you should just ignore those restrictions.

I'm questioning the need for and benefit of these restrictions in the first place.

There's nothing to say there can't be an Orc Storm Shaman / Bomber Pilot / Marketing Manager / Computer Programmer, but it's a bit ridiculous to expect the designers to assume all storm shamans know C++.

Yep, it's much more reasonable to expect them to not design a game where my ranger can't use a scroll simply because "rangers aren't mages" and where my cleric of the god of thieves can't talk to the thief-king because "clerics aren't tricksters." Especially when there's no benefit to gain from it. Since that's what I actually want, my desires don't seem to be too unreasonable.

 

[Manabarbs]

Does the extra complexity that comes with making magic items work differently for different groups of classes really buy us enough that it's worth it? Imagine that we have two characters in a party. One is a rogue with +6 to stealth, and one is a paladin with +0 to stealth. (The exact numbers aren't important, of course.) This two-person party finds a cloak of +3 stealth. Either the party can have the rogue wear it for a total of +9 to stealth, or the party can have the paladin wear it, so he'll have +3 to stealth and the rogue will have +6. The first setup makes the rogue super awesome at solo stealth - using a magic item to augment what you're already good at - and the second is better if the group needs to sneak around together - using a magic item to (sort of) patch up a weakness a little. Is that a bad state of affairs? Does the game benefit in any way from the item being made more complicated? In a lot of cases, magic items that "should" be for a certain type of character naturally work out that way anyway. Do you want the +5 Awesome Longsword to be better for fighty-types than for wizards? It already is! You don't need to forbid non-warriors from using it; it's already correct for the fighter to take the sword because he or she is the best at using a sword. The item is naturally worse for a wizard because wizards are bad at using swords. (If a wizard is as good as a fighter at using a sword, that's a class design issue.) Making the item more complicated by making it give +5 to warriors and only +2 to everyone else is a pointless complication.

There's almost no such thing as a totally useless game element, but I think that this classification system comes preeeeety close. I actually don't mind the labeling as a purely aesthetic thing; that's basically harmless. I'm still profoundly unconvinced that it has even the slightest mechanical benefits, though.

 

[Mistwell]

That's not what I want. I want a game where storm shamans can also be pilots, where thieves can sometimes cast spells, where warriors might get their prayers to the war-god answered. I want a game where class is defined in terms of what you can do and not in terms of what you can't do.

I want a game that doesn't break if my fighter wants to use a wand of magic missiles just because she's not a "mage-group" character.




I'm questioning the need for and benefit of these restrictions in the first place.



Yep, it's much more reasonable to expect them to not design a game where my ranger can't use a scroll simply because "rangers aren't mages" and where my cleric of the god of thieves can't talk to the thief-king because "clerics aren't tricksters." Especially when there's no benefit to gain from it. Since that's what I actually want, my desires don't seem to be too unreasonable.

There is a basic assumption in your posts that certain magic items will be unusable by certain classes, as opposed to simply more useful in the hands of someone specialized in the thing that magic item is about. That assumption has been questioned, repeatedly, with many examples at this point as to how it might work differently than your assumption. So, why are you continuing with the assumption? You keep stating it as if WOTC declared the class system WILL be used to prevent certain classes from using certain items - with entirely zero support for that claim. It's possible, but it's also highly possible it's not that, and we have no word at all to confirm it one way or the other.

To put it another way - maybe your ranger can use a mage scroll, but a mage can get more use out of the mage scroll than your ranger (the spell on the scroll will work better for the mage than it will for the ranger because the mage knows how to get the most out of the spell, but it will work for both).

In that way, the class system can accomplish a useful goal of enhancing classes, without denying use of magic items to classes outside of that goal.