The Niche Protection Poll

[Ruin Explorer]

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

Simply not true in the least. It's just that healing moves to being largely an in-combat tactical consideration from being pure resource-management, and total damage between long rests matters a lot for people who don't have a ton of Healing Surges (I do think 30% less HSes would have made a better game, though).

If that's what you mean, i.e. healing becomes tactical, not strategic resource-management, I agree. Of course in 3E, it was neither, once the wands of CLW started appearing.

 

[Ahnehnois]

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?"

I mean that healing is no longer an exclusive ability or part of a niche, as it pertains to this discussion.

Given some level of class distinctions and niche protection, a "balanced" approach to healing would connote, to me anyway, that some characters have this in-combat instantaneous healing, others do not have anything comparable and function in completely different ways, but all of them are equally useful. That is to say, that healing would be balanced relative to things that are not healing, like area damage, stealth, persuasion, or good old-fashioned bashing things.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I mean that healing is no longer an exclusive ability or part of a niche, as it pertains to this discussion.

Given some level of class distinctions and niche protection, a "balanced" approach to healing would connote, to me anyway, that some characters have this in-combat instantaneous healing, others do not have anything comparable and function in completely different ways, but all of them are equally useful. That is to say, that healing would be balanced relative to things that are not healing, like area damage, stealth, persuasion, or good old-fashioned bashing things.

The second bit is precisely what 4E has, so I am very confused by this. It literally sounds like you are describing 4E...

Plus healing in combat in significant amounts is pretty much exclusive to Leaders.

 

[Manbearcat]

I mean that healing is no longer an exclusive ability or part of a niche, as it pertains to this discussion.

Given some level of class distinctions and niche protection, a "balanced" approach to healing would connote, to me anyway, that some characters have this in-combat instantaneous healing, others do not have anything comparable and function in completely different ways, but all of them are equally useful. That is to say, that healing would be balanced relative to things that are not healing, like area damage, stealth, persuasion, or good old-fashioned bashing things.

The second bit is precisely what 4E has, so I am very confused by this. It literally sounds like you are describing 4E...

Plus healing in combat in significant amounts is pretty much exclusive to Leaders.

Ruin Explorer has written my thoughts exactly after reading your response.

In older editions, there were a few niches running around that roughly map to 4e's codified niches. Only a few differences exist and most of those are bound up in actual effectiveness at the niche their archetype is supposed to cover. However, instantaneous HP restoration, and only instantaneous HP restoration (including the raise dead variety of HP restoration), was the sole purview of the divine caster (except for a few very large outliers such as Monks). That was the only uber-protected niche. The rest of them could either be thumb-tacked + bubble-gummed/jury-rigged or asymmetrically approached to get the job done.

4e did away with this paradigm by giving all classes some access to surge-unlocking abilities (which could be customized to be greater than "some access" at the player's PC build discretion) while simultaneously (i) maintaining the prolific nature of Leaders' surge-unlocking capabilities and (ii) increasing the total number of Leader archetypes (from solely divine caster). Further, they decoupled Rituals from casters and tied them to the feat Ritual Caster and the skills of Arcana, Heal, Nature, Religion (primarily....there are some others), thus allowing anyone access to the (much more bounded and codified but still awesome, extremely useful, and thematically compelling) strategic resources that used to be the sole purview of spellcasters (that dominated play in prior editions).

In 4e, the things you mention in your last sentence [MENTION=17106]Ahnehnois[/MENTION] actually are balanced quite well against one another.

 

[Starfox]

My experience of 4E was that healing was something each character could manage pretty well by themselves - no real need for leader-type characters.

 

[Manbearcat]

My experience of 4E was that healing was something each character could manage pretty well by themselves - no real need for leader-type characters.

I agree and I suspect that most others would as well. Its curious because so many have said that 4e codified roles made it so you had to have Defenders and Leaders primarily or you can't progress (and certainly not excel). My small group just played a game 1 - 30 with neither a pure Defender nor pure Leader. At the Epic Tier of play, the Druid rebuilt to a hybrid (shaman then warlord then back to shaman) but that was a fiction-first initiative.

While you can build a group that synergizes ridiculously well with niche specialization, you can certainly do just fine (and then some) with a group that is rather incoherent with respect to the default role/niche setup. There are plenty more than one (two or even three) ways to skin the proverbial cat and there are enough extra-class PC build resources that you can diversify/dabble into multiple domains of proficiency.

 

[Starfox]

Then again, if you look at a typical Pathfinder adventure path, a tight team of experienced players can manage those without fulfilling the team niches or having any particular synergies either. It might be that challenges are set low by default. I kind of agree with that policy, as I feel role-play suffers if challenges are set to be too hard.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Then again, if you look at a typical Pathfinder adventure path, a tight team of experienced players can manage those without fulfilling the team niches or having any particular synergies either. It might be that challenges are set low by default. I kind of agree with that policy, as I feel role-play suffers if challenges are set to be too hard.

I don't know. Sometimes what makes for interesting roleplaying is failure, including preventable or unnecssary failure for reasons like this.

 

[Manbearcat]

I don't know. Sometimes what makes for interesting roleplaying is failure, including preventable or unnecssary failure for reasons like this.

On this we can definitely agree. As a GM, my favorite aspect of play is having my players' PCs fail at an objective that is thematically impactful to them and watching what comes out of it; seeing how their characters' ethos, outlook, relationships (with people, places, things) and/or goals evolve (or devolve perhaps) as a result of the fallout of the failure/loss. How it might put them at tension with their former selves or at tension with one another.

 

[Starfox]

On this we can definitely agree. As a GM, my favorite aspect of play is having my players' PCs fail at an objective that is thematically impactful to them and watching what comes out of it; seeing how their characters' ethos, outlook, relationships (with people, places, things) and/or goals evolve (or devolve perhaps) as a result of the fallout of the failure/loss. How it might put them at tension with their former selves or at tension with one another.

If you can manage to have a party of PCs fail and survive that's very nice, but its not my experience of how these things work. A part is more likely to die trying, or at least take casualties trying. And once PCs start to die and new PCs appear with any regularity, my experience is that roleplay suffers heavily and moves into pawn stance. Players refuse to engage emotionally and treat their characters as playing pieces. Particularly so if you are punished for dying by returning with a weaker character - this starts a vicious cycle of repeated deaths and increasing pawns stance, ending with the player quitting the game.

But really, this is an entirely separate topic. Been there on this forum, and its not one where we'll reach a consensus. Lets not go there again.