Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
At the end of the day unless you are willing to meaningfully design the noncombat prowess of martial characters while explicitly defining the noncombat prowess of spell casters you cannot have meaningfully balanced classes because the game design is not finished. It will be designed in motion. That is not necessarily like a problem. It's just a thing.
I do find it somewhat strange that one of the constant critiques of Fourth Edition was that the rules focused to much on combat when many fans were desperate for more noncombat stuff for fighters and rogues who are now told they cannot have noncombat stuff. Not like wrong. Just strange.
This division feels pretty unique to Dungeons and Dragons. When I look to the rest of my library including some fairly mainstream games like Vampire: The Requiem and Legend of the Five Rings 5th Edition it is not like a thing at all to treat noncombat as so fundamentally different for just one set of characters. This might be one of those essence of Dungeons and Dragons things that is actually fairly universal.
I will say that in the instance of there not being meaningful rules for noncombat things I prefer to simply rely on fictional positioning instead of semi-fungible skills.
I do find it somewhat strange that one of the constant critiques of Fourth Edition was that the rules focused to much on combat when many fans were desperate for more noncombat stuff for fighters and rogues who are now told they cannot have noncombat stuff. Not like wrong. Just strange.
This division feels pretty unique to Dungeons and Dragons. When I look to the rest of my library including some fairly mainstream games like Vampire: The Requiem and Legend of the Five Rings 5th Edition it is not like a thing at all to treat noncombat as so fundamentally different for just one set of characters. This might be one of those essence of Dungeons and Dragons things that is actually fairly universal.
I will say that in the instance of there not being meaningful rules for noncombat things I prefer to simply rely on fictional positioning instead of semi-fungible skills.
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