The Niche Protection Poll

[Ahnehnois]

I support sneak attack being static instead of a sumtiplier - it allows rogues to fight with tiny weapons to great effect. Blowguns, anyone?

That can be positive, but it's a patch. The way D&D awards damage doesn't really reflect skill that much, and rogues really shouldn't be the one exception.

Sadly, sneak attack damage just doesn't seem to be sufficient. Compare it to the cavalier's challenge - challenge works regardless of the situation, does increase on a crit, and does 57% as much damage. It is easy to get several challenge-enhanced attacks in a round, but hard to get several sneak attacks.

In some cases it isn't enough. But getting multiple sneak attacks is not that hard. The whole TWF thing that 3e introduced gets cheesy. It's not that hard to deal SA damage four or five or more times in a round given appropriate circumstances, which can quickly become too much damage rather than not enough.

 

[Lanefan]

OK. Let's get a few steps back. What is this about? Niche Protection. What is niche protection? Niche Protection is an indirect form of Spotlight Management. What is Spotlight Management? Spotlight Management is the idea that each character should shine once in a while and how we can make sure of that.

There are several ways to manage spotlight. You can make NPCs, location and plot elements that are tied to a character's background or interests. You can hand out equipment earmarked for a character. Those are fairly direct methods.

Niche Protection makes the following further assumptions: The PCs go adventuring. During adventuring certain tasks and problem wills arise. These situations can be split into certain types of standard problems. These types are called niches. A character is said to "have a niche", when he or she is qualified to solve that type of problem and expected to so in usual circumstances. When a problem arises that fits a characters niche, the character therefore has spotlight. Therefore niche protection is a form of spotlight management, but less direct then the methods above.

So far I can sort of get behind what you're saying...but then...

"Divine magic" is not a niche, because characters cannot overcome divine magic. Closed doors, invisible enemies, negative energy effects those are things you can overcome. And you can specialize in overcoming them. So the problem is not that niches have to presented in "plain English", "negative energy effects" certainly would not qualify.

...you say this, and get it all backwards again.

The niche is, to follow your example, divine magic; because divine magic is the broad-brush tool that this particluar class can use to overcome whatever the game throws at it, and is a tool that other classes don't (usually) have access to.

Where the spotlight bit comes in is that sometimes the answer to a situation lies in divine magic. Sometimes the answer is a hammer. Sometimes it's a fireball. And sometimes it's stealth and subterfuge. These, in a broad sense, are niches - things that particular classes tend to excel at and-or are the only ones capable of doing it at all.

Lanefan

 

[1of3]

So far I can sort of get behind what you're saying...but then...

​

...you say this, and get it all backwards again.

The niche is, to follow your example, divine magic; because divine magic is the broad-brush tool that this particluar class can use to overcome whatever the game throws at it, and is a tool that other classes don't (usually) have access to.

Tying the concept to character classes incurs the following problems:

- You cannot have Niche Protection, if you have two members of the same class. Which is obviously not the case. You can have characters with the same class that are very different.

- If two different classes use different mechanics, by your reasoning, they have different niches, so they won't compete for spotlight. That is not the case. You can either use thief skill to scout a dungeon, or hit it with divination spells.

- Assuming that niche = class, also means that you cannot choose abilities within a class. Because once you choose a class feature, you will lack certain others. Therefore you cannot possibly "fill" your niche.

- Also you cannot account for different campaigns and play styles.

If you believe that niche protection is on a fundamental level tied to classes, you have to disbelieve my whole argument right from the beginning, because then it does not reliably serve spotlight management.

 

[Hussar]

Tying the concept to character classes incurs the following problems:

- You cannot have Niche Protection, if you have two members of the same class. Which is obviously not the case. You can have characters with the same class that are very different.

But, even then, those two characters will almost always share the niche. Two 2e fighters will be damage kings, unless the players deliberately avoid their own niche (perhaps by gimping stats and ignoring things like weapon specialisation, for some reason). 2 3e rogues will be the skill monkeys in the party, even if they have somewhat differing skill sets. One might be specialised in scouting and the other in talky bits, but, at a guess, there will be a fair degree of overlap.

- If two different classes use different mechanics, by your reasoning, they have different niches, so they won't compete for spotlight. That is not the case. You can either use thief skill to scout a dungeon, or hit it with divination spells.

Why? You can achieve the same niche with different mechanics. However, if one is much better than the other, then that's problematic. Thus the issues with casters in 3e where you can step on other character's niches through spells. Clerics being able to out melee the fighter on a regular basis is a problem, not a feature.

- Assuming that niche = class, also means that you cannot choose abilities within a class. Because once you choose a class feature, you will lack certain others. Therefore you cannot possibly "fill" your niche.

That depends on what your niche happens to be. Niche can be very narrow or fairly broad. But, looking at characters with strong niches, like, say, a paladin, the base character fills the niche nicely. Everything else is just variations on the theme.

- Also you cannot account for different campaigns and play styles.

If you believe that niche protection is on a fundamental level tied to classes, you have to disbelieve my whole argument right from the beginning, because then it does not reliably serve spotlight management.

Sure, niche protection is in some ways tied to spotlight management, but, there has to be some presumptions about how the game is going to be played.

 

[pemerton]

The rogue was a hybrid between warrior and something else that no-one else even got close, and that is the quick-witted hero of most heroic tales. This is a role that fits pretty badly in the tactical/resource management game that was important in old DnD and which I still feel is a part of old school. The classic hero of literature bypasses such concerns by wit and skill - he doesn't need to manage resources because he doesn't spend any. But he is not really a team player and his best adventures are solo. In a world of the other three classes, he fails as he doesn't have the room and lassitude to use the kinds of solutions he ought to be best at. "Rogue" situations really don't come up much in typical team play. Thus the rogue has become a trapfinder, commando, and magic item user. These are not really his roles, they are replacements to make up for that there is not room for true rogue adventures in team play.

I don't know if I agree with all of this - I think it is possible to play a "rogue-ish" character, as you characterise it, in a team game. For instance, the CHA-sorcerer in my game plays that way, both in and out of combat (in combat, wit, flare and skill; out of combat, Stealth, Bluff etc).

But nevertheless it's a nice analysis. I think dungeon-style play is a particularly unhappy home for the roguish archetype you describe.

Making it easier to use than backstab was looks like a raw power increase, but it pushes the player away form all that planning and thought that was needed to get a true backstab. There just isn't the sense of being rewarded for setting up the perfect kill

Backstab was never that big a deal in my classic D&D games. You sneak up, typically combining invisibility with Move Silently, and then you attack. It didn't generally require a huge amount of set-up. The above-mentioned sorcerer in my 4e game plays with at least the same amount of planning and thought, relying on multiple ways to get combat advantage (Stealth, invisibility, drow darkness, etc) as part of his strategy to keep his to-hit chance up.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Backstab was never that big a deal in my classic D&D games. You sneak up, typically combining invisibility with Move Silently, and then you attack. It didn't generally require a huge amount of set-up. The above-mentioned sorcerer in my 4e game plays with at least the same amount of planning and thought, relying on multiple ways to get combat advantage (Stealth, invisibility, drow darkness, etc) as part of his strategy to keep his to-hit chance up.

That's been my experience too, 2E through 4E, too. Backstab was so mechanically weak that making it a big deal and hard to get seemed utterly perverse.

Really, if you have the perfect setup and so on, you should get an instant kill on anything that doesn't have a name, and severe damage or death on any humanoid of a vaguely similar level to the PCs. Monsters could be resistant to this, of course.

On the general subject of niche protection, I think there's a good rule of thumb for how far one could possibly go - if you're protecting the niche to the point that the game is basically not playable without that character being present, or is a drastically different game, you've probably gone too far (looking at the game's design holistically). D&D has certainly gone that far at times.

 

[Ahnehnois]

On the general subject of niche protection, I think there's a good rule of thumb for how far one could possibly go - if you're protecting the niche to the point that the game is basically not playable without that character being present, or is a drastically different game, you've probably gone too far (looking at the game's design holistically). D&D has certainly gone that far at times.

I agree with that goal, though I'm hard pressed to think of examples where it really has gotten to that point. The rote example is the cleric as the healer, but I don't think it's essential, nor is it all that exclusive (though the earlier you go, the more so it was).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I agree with that goal, though I'm hard pressed to think of examples where it really has gotten to that point. The rote example is the cleric as the healer, but I don't think it's essential, nor is it all that exclusive (though the earlier you go, the more so it was).

I'd say it reached that level in 2E AD&D, myself. In D&D, there was rarely an assumption of a player Cleric/healing/curing in adventure design or monster design, so it wasn't a huge issue. In 1E it started to become more assumed, and by 2E, a huge proportion of published adventures (and a lot of DMs) assumed that there had to be a Cleric/Priest/Druid in the party, and were extremely hard to run as written if not (requiring rejigging encounters, changing basic assumptions, and so on, imo of course - you could always just let the PCs fail, after all!). You started to see advice about how you could convince a player to be the Cleric, and I know I was aware of "nobody wants to be the Cleric!" as a trope long before the internet existed (ironically, I often wanted to be the Cleric - but I was a DM most of the time). There were Cleric-alternatives, but they were all either basically the same thing (Speciality Priests, fr'ex) or kind of horrible (Mystics), and they were virtually all god-botherers of various descriptions. That was kind of the big problem - unless you had a hundred weird sourcebooks, if the party wanted healing, you needed a god-botherer (or spirit botherer, maybe), and most players I knew (and indeed this continues to be true now and in MMORPGs and so on) had very little interest in being that - their dreams were of mighty warriors, powerful wizards, sneaky thieves, and silver-tongued bards, but not of, like faith healers in plate.

2E obviously could and was be played without a player or GMPC Cleric (resorted to the latter a few times), but it was a drastically different game, where the PCs had to frequently retreat for weeks or pay a lot of cash to churches (or the GM supplies vast quantities of healing potions, I suppose), and there's nothing wrong with that game, but it's a different game. Whereas missing a Thief or a Fighter or the like pretty much never had a similar effect that I saw (Wizard is debatable - but I literally never saw a party without at least a multiclass Wizard, so I can't speak from experience there).

3E weakened the niche protection a bit on healing, but assumed healing in an even more hardcore way, so you had this curious situation where people couldn't heal much without magic, and were expected to be on full HP all the time (by CL/EL stuff), but that magic could be a cheapo wand of CLW.

4E got the best balance here, imo - a Leader character is a tremendous asset to the group, but fairly rapid natural healing, the ability to use Second Wind and so on, means that the game only changes a little without them, and you don't typically need to re-write adventures, or re-jig encounters or the like. Plus you can have any flavour of Leader - not just different kinds of god-botherer.

I suspect that there are fair number of adventures out there that are completely different or non-viable without a Wizard or similar arcane spellcaster, too, in 2E/3E. Especially at mid-high levels. I know I've read adventures that assumed AOE spells would be used to deal with certain encounters, and had few solutions if not, or assumed ready access to fire damage and/or electricity damage.

Talking of Rogues/Thieves, one very curious element of niche protection is that D&D, up to 3.XE/PF, at least, has fairly zealously protected instant-death and save-or-suck-type stuff as the domain primarily of Wizard-types (occasionally Cleric-types), even though, in fantasy fiction, Rogue-types often instantly kill people (even serious people), and routinely horribly poison them and so on. It seems like it was seen as wildly overpowered if a Rogue could one-shot someone from full health (even if only when the stars aligned, or limited to once a day or the like), but fine if a Wizard could do it to multiple people per combat.

Similarly with killing a bunch of people in a single round (even when rounds were 1 minute!). Okay for a Wizard, not okay for a Fighter (unless they're 1HD or less, or not much more than that).

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'd say it reached that level in 2E AD&D, myself.
...
That was kind of the big problem - unless you had a hundred weird sourcebooks, if the party wanted healing, you needed a god-botherer (or spirit botherer, maybe), and most players I knew (and indeed this continues to be true now and in MMORPGs and so on) had very little interest in being that - their dreams were of mighty warriors, powerful wizards, sneaky thieves, and silver-tongued bards, but not of, like faith healers in plate.

You may be right about that. I suspect 2e is by far the edition that requires this the most because the healing rate is still low and healing is not all that widely distributed. Admittedly, my experience is colored by good ol' Baldur's Gate, wherein the protagonist character gains bonus healing magic, conveniently (and a cleric is still really important).

I did not so much see the issue of reticence to playing such characters, and you could at least try to hack it with a druid or paladin, but it did seem really important.

3E weakened the niche protection a bit on healing, but assumed healing in an even more hardcore way, so you had this curious situation where people couldn't heal much without magic, and were expected to be on full HP all the time (by CL/EL stuff), but that magic could be a cheapo wand of CLW.

Not only the widespread wand usage, but also earlier spell availability for the tertiary casters, and a much higher natural healing rate.

4E got the best balance here, imo - a Leader character is a tremendous asset to the group, but fairly rapid natural healing, the ability to use Second Wind and so on, means that the game only changes a little without them, and you don't typically need to re-write adventures, or re-jig encounters or the like. Plus you can have any flavour of Leader - not just different kinds of god-botherer.

I don't know if "balance" is the term I would use. Healing is simply no longer much of a consideration.

I suspect that there are fair number of adventures out there that are completely different or non-viable without a Wizard or similar arcane spellcaster, too, in 2E/3E. Especially at mid-high levels. I know I've read adventures that assumed AOE spells would be used to deal with certain encounters, and had few solutions if not, or assumed ready access to fire damage and/or electricity damage.

This is easier to patch though, because you can just run away from a bad combat encounter, or deal energy damage through your handy magic sword.

Also, clerics and druids occasionally get area damage and various other effects that overlap with the big arcane stuff, and particularly in 3e, various different magic classes were introduced. A warlock covers that stuff just fine. At that point, it's really only necessary that someone in the party has magic, which is still of debatable merit, but is a pretty easy qualification to meet. The niche being protected here is just "magic".

Talking of Rogues/Thieves, one very curious element of niche protection is that D&D, up to 3.XE/PF, at least, has fairly zealously protected instant-death and save-or-suck-type stuff as the domain primarily of Wizard-types (occasionally Cleric-types), even though, in fantasy fiction, Rogue-types often instantly kill people (even serious people), and routinely horribly poison them and so on. It seems like it was seen as wildly overpowered if a Rogue could one-shot someone from full health (even if only when the stars aligned, or limited to once a day or the like), but fine if a Wizard could do it to multiple people per combat.

I'm long on the record as saying that I'm not a fan of that at all; I always felt like SoD should be an integrated part of the game, not a function of exception-based design buried in a few spells. The 3e massive damage rule was an attempt to address this but is somewhat impotent; UA makes it a tad better but there's still an enormous amount of underutilized design space here.

Similarly with killing a bunch of people in a single round (even when rounds were 1 minute!). Okay for a Wizard, not okay for a Fighter (unless they're 1HD or less, or not much more than that).

Another thing I think would be interesting to incorporate into the combat rules would be some kind of area damage option. Implementation would be even harder, but I definitely think it's doable.

 

[Manbearcat]

Originally Posted by Ruin Explorer
4E got the best balance here, imo - a Leader character is a tremendous asset to the group, but fairly rapid natural healing, the ability to use Second Wind and so on, means that the game only changes a little without them, and you don't typically need to re-write adventures, or re-jig encounters or the like. Plus you can have any flavour of Leader - not just different kinds of god-botherer.

I don't know if "balance" is the term I would use. Healing is simply no longer much of a consideration.

Could I get some clarification on this because I'm not sure if this could be more inaccurate (at least the way I'm reading your meaning...hence my request for clarification).

4e combat has many distinct features (forced movement, dynamic mobility, well-defined role and potent capability within that role, force multiplication/group synergy, among others). As notable as any feature (and possibly most notable) is the trope of "heroic combat" inherent to 4e play, which is almost entirely (but not completely) predicated upon the "healing" mechanics of the system.

Unlike in prior editions, all classes can self-heal and heal party members, in combat, in real time. This unlocking of healing surges is the ignition for the heroic comeback inherent to 4e combat. Fighters can unlock their own surges and initiate their own combat turnaround/getting off of the canvass. They can unlock the surges of clerics, turning battle momentum through daring, through inspiration, through a prayer, through mundane poultice application and any other number of things. Theme, feat, skill, paragon path, and class powers cover all manner of heroic combat, tide turning tropes by unlocking the PCs own surges or unlocking those of their allies. This is healing in 4e and it is more rampant, and more vested into the system, than in any preceding edition.

Perhaps you mean "healing is simply no longer much of a consideration" as in "the mandated cleric and his divine healing is simply no longer a thing?"