The Niche Protection Poll

[Tuft]

please ignore

 

[Ahnehnois]

Perhaps it might help if you defined what you think niche is.

Not my call to define a term for the community; I don't really have a clear one that jumps to mind for my own perspective.

A wizard with a handful of extra Hp and a decent AC is not going to be standing on the front line in melee. So in my mind he's not stepping on the fighter's niche at all.

Not the path of least resistance, but I've seen it happen when someone really splurges on defensive items and throws a Diplacement or something on top of it. More likely a wizard does that than uses a wand or crafts a scroll.

Which is why clerics are problematic because it is very easy for a cleric to stand in the front line in melee and do as much or more damage than the fighter. At least in 3.5e anyway.

I wouldn't call that easy, but yes, there's another niche that intentionally overlaps.

Wands I've seen used: extended range wand of fireball is devastating in an outdoor campaign. Extended range Unseen Servant pretty much replaces the rogue for trap finding. Wands of Charm person or Monster are fantastically useful. Wand of Ivisibility is a good one.

A wand of a spell that allows a save? With a standard item DC? That I certainly never considered. Unless you plan on using them against commoners.

I don't see how anyone would ever get 50 charges out of even a fairly nice extended range fireball (though if you did, it would have to be the result of some very good scouting). I guess the Unseen Servant thing could be helpful, but I've never seen enough traps in a game to be worth that kind of investment for such a niche usage. Invisibility could be a nice one, but again, it's gimped because of standard CL and low duration. Also, a ring of invisibility is four times more, never runs out, and anyone can use it. I use rings of invisibility all the time.

 

[Hussar]

Not my call to define a term for the community; I don't really have a clear one that jumps to mind for my own perspective.

Not the path of least resistance, but I've seen it happen when someone really splurges on defensive items and throws a Diplacement or something on top of it. More likely a wizard does that than uses a wand or crafts a scroll.

I wouldn't call that easy, but yes, there's another niche that intentionally overlaps.

A wand of a spell that allows a save? With a standard item DC? That I certainly never considered. Unless you plan on using them against commoners.

I don't see how anyone would ever get 50 charges out of even a fairly nice extended range fireball (though if you did, it would have to be the result of some very good scouting). I guess the Unseen Servant thing could be helpful, but I've never seen enough traps in a game to be worth that kind of investment for such a niche usage. Invisibility could be a nice one, but again, it's gimped because of standard CL and low duration. Also, a ring of invisibility is four times more, never runs out, and anyone can use it. I use rings of invisibility all the time.

I can get 200 charges worth of wands of invisibility, and I can make the entire party invisible if I want to. And if I take Craft Wand at 5th level, I can get 400 charges for the same price. For Forge Ring, I need to be at least 12th level. That's a HELL of a lot of wands of Invisiblity before you can guarantee having a single ring of Invisibility. Any time I want to and, really, as often as I want to, I can cast Invisiblity. As a standard wand, that's 30 rounds of invisibility. Well, I suppose 26 rounds if you invisibled the entire party. More than enough to bypass any encounter you want to sneak past.

Wand of extended range fireball is fantastic if you run any sort of naval campaign. Out ranges and far out powers any catapult. Niche, true, but, still very, very useful for outdoor heavy campaigns.

And if your campaigns feature so few traps that spending 4500 gp (assuming you don't just make the thing) isn't worth the wand of Unseen Servant, then the rogue in your party doesn't exactly have much to do either does he?

To me, it was standard that every caster spent about 10% of their wealth on consumables. Far more often, the rest of the party would chip in to add to that total because everyone recognised how good that option really was. Again, I think that it's fair to say that you have not really seen a player using a caster with a high degree of system mastery if you saw high defence wizards with displacement on the front line entering melee combat more commonly than casters carting around bags full of wands and scrolls.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I can get 200 charges worth of wands of invisibility, and I can make the entire party invisible if I want to. And if I take Craft Wand at 5th level, I can get 400 charges for the same price. For Forge Ring, I need to be at least 12th level. That's a HELL of a lot of wands of Invisiblity before you can guarantee having a single ring of Invisibility. Any time I want to and, really, as often as I want to, I can cast Invisiblity.

Well, I think that last one is what does it. 2nd level spells suck, and just memorizing Invis is usually a perfectly reasonable thing to do. So not much reason to use a wand at all.

Wand of extended range fireball is fantastic if you run any sort of naval campaign.

I do recall being very concerned about those sorts of things when I ran a naval campaign. I don't think I ever had occasion to use ship to ship magic artillery simply because it was a short game. Still, I don't know that the wand would really be that helpful over simply memorizing the spell.

And if your campaigns feature so few traps that spending 4500 gp (assuming you don't just make the thing) isn't worth the wand of Unseen Servant, then the rogue in your party doesn't exactly have much to do either does he?

I feature plenty of things for which rogues are useful. Just not traps.

To me, it was standard that every caster spent about 10% of their wealth on consumables.

To me, it's always been standard that casters just throw consumable treasure into the bag of holding and sell it when they get the chance.

Again, I think that it's fair to say that you have not really seen a player using a caster with a high degree of system mastery if you saw high defence wizards with displacement on the front line entering melee combat more commonly than casters carting around bags full of wands and scrolls.

I think it's fair to say that my players and I have mastered the system pretty well. The way we mastered it is that we tried all those options when 3.0 first came out, realized that they didn't work, and moved on.

 

[1of3]

Not my call to define a term for the community; I don't really have a clear one that jumps to mind for my own perspective.

A niche is when there is a situation and everyone looks at you to solve it.

If you can hide in forests and there are no forests, there is no niche.

If whenever the situation comes up, you can locate object, that is your niche.

A character might have several niches. They are dependent on the campaign and specific characters.

They are not dependent on how you do it, innate or item. Nor on absolute quality. If no one else can heal at all, the Ranger with a wand of CLW is the healer.

 

[Greg K]

My preference is 3e's classes with UA style class variants to trade out features:

Unearthed Arcana's Arcane Sage, Divine Bard, Savage (add to this, I want a bard that gives up spellcasting for bonus fighter feats)
Unearthed Arcana's Crafty Hunter (trades rage for ranger's favorite enemy and fighting style)
Unearthed Arcana's Cloistered Cleric (trade all armor and BAB for increased skill points, additional skills, etc.)
Complete Champion's Champion variant that trades spellcasting for bonus feats
Unearthed Arcana's Martial Rogue (fighter feats instead sneak attack) and Wilderness rogue (skill swaps)

 

[Lanefan]

A niche is when there is a situation and everyone looks at you to solve it.

Not quite. A niche is when you are the specialist in something no other class can do nearly as well, or at all; regardless of whether or not that things you are specialized in is useful right at the moment.

If you can hide in forests and there are no forests, there is no niche.

If your class can hide in forests and no other class can, that's (part of) your niche. The immediate presence or absence of forests is irrelevant.

If whenever the situation comes up, you can locate object, that is your niche.

That's defining it to the individual-in-a-party level, which is fine, only the discussion is at the class-in-the-game-world level.

And by your definition it ceases to become your niche if and when another person with Locate Object joins the party. Here, we're after the niches at the class level, regardless how many members of said class happen to be in a given party.

Lan-"I niched myself while shaving"-efan

 

[Mistwell]

Because it's not D&D. And of course it has its own issues.

Classless isn't D&D either.

 

[1of3]

Not quite. A niche is when you are the specialist in something no other class can do nearly as well, or at all; regardless of whether or not that things you are specialized in is useful right at the moment.

That is apparently what most people here are trying to use. We see the following problems:

It doesn't quite work, if there is customisation besides or within classes. If my class could learn a spell but my character didn't, going by your definition, I play the game wrong, because I am supppsed to cast that spell by virtue of character class.

I don't thing that is a very healthy attitude for a playing group.

And by your definition it ceases to become your niche if and when another person with Locate Object joins the party.

Not quite. Why would such a character join the party? Because another player selected the spell.
There are two reasons for that. One good, one bad. Good it is, when the first player did not really like that spell and would rather do different things.

Bad it is, when the player likes locating objects. You then violated that player's niche.

Therefore, niche protection is not something the game does for you. It might help, but in the end you must do it at the table.

Also it works on the lowest level of customisation. In D&D that comes down to single spells.

 

[Hussar]

But a single spell should never be the entirety of a niche. A niche is something a given class does better than any other.

That doesn't preclude another class from being able to do that thing, but it should never be as good.