D&D General The "Jack Of All Trades" is a cursed archetype in tabletop RPGs

[Yaarel]

The Rogue is the "jack of all trades" class, including partcaster subclasses.

 

[Scribe]

The Rogue is the "jack of all trades" class, including partcaster subclasses.

Disagree. If you want to muddy the waters with subclasses, most are hybrids at that point.

The D&D Bard has been the flex hybrid class for as long as I remember.

 

[Yaarel]

I prefer the "renaissance" term to "JOAT", however, because a bard learns what player apply to the build and generally does a little bit of everything but generally does a couple of things fairly well.

I prefer "renaissance" ... renaissance folk too. Maybe "polymath" (student of many things). As in the case of Leonardo, Newton, and others, these are superlative masters of some of their areas of expertise.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The thing is, the rules encourage you to specialize, and the assumed playstyle does as well. The DM and the players have to make a real effort to make a JOAT character feel equal to the rest of the party. Ultimately, it's a system issue.

IME, this is wildly untrue. I've never put any extra effort into any of the Jacks in my 5e or 4e games, and I didn't need any special effort from my DMs, either. I primarily played Jacks of all trades until a few years ago when I started to really get into more focused archetypes. It fits my ADHD and how I approach life, so it's natural for me to RP those characters.

Being able to help in every single situation, and being able to say, "oh no one else can do that at all? No worries I'm actually rather good at it." in a wide range of situations, is very helpful, and in some systems the Jack facilitates group tactics, making the entire team more effective most of the time.

This gets a bit into how I'd redesign the Ranger, actually, because I think it is a better conceptual fit for the Jack of All Trades than the Bard is.

In a discussion a while ago about rangers, someone claimed that Pass Without Trace makes the Ranger a better scout than the Rogue. I vociferously disagree with that, but it does make the Ranger really good at team stealth, and I think that is an angle that Ranger design should lean into. If you're using journey rules where everyone has a role and makes a check, the Ranger can make their role check and help another PC with their's. In their favored terrain, it's two other PCs. When climbing, they can go first and if they succeed by 5 or more on an athletic's check, they can give up to X other climbers a +d4. Etc.

Then, give them the actual Jack of All Trades feature, and the ability to grant half proficiency to the whole team on a group check X per day.

 

[rmcoen]

Seems like the easiest design of a JOAT might be something specifically intended to be 2nd or 3rd best at everything, and then have a pool of dice that can be added to skills. Not exactly Bardic Inspiration; this is meant as a limited pool of talent "surges" that bring you up to snuff at whatever task you're trying. so the Rogue might be Stealth +8 at 1st level with their expertise, while the JOAT is +5, but the JOAT can spend a d4 from her pool when she needs to really be Stealthy. The Wizard is +6 at Arcana while the JOAT is +4... plus that d4 for some obscure piece of lore they remember from research/rumor/song. But then the barbarian wants to go tree climbing, with his +6 Athletics, and the JOAT is only +3, and kinda tired from sneaking with the Rogue and item loring with the Wizard. "Have fun!" she waves from the ground.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Seems like the easiest design of a JOAT might be something specifically intended to be 2nd or 3rd best at everything, and then have a pool of dice that can be added to skills. Not exactly Bardic Inspiration; this is meant as a limited pool of talent "surges" that bring you up to snuff at whatever task you're trying. so the Rogue might be Stealth +8 at 1st level with their expertise, while the JOAT is +5, but the JOAT can spend a d4 from her pool when she needs to really be Stealthy. The Wizard is +6 at Arcana while the JOAT is +4... plus that d4 for some obscure piece of lore they remember from research/rumor/song. But then the barbarian wants to go tree climbing, with his +6 Athletics, and the JOAT is only +3, and kinda tired from sneaking with the Rogue and item loring with the Wizard. "Have fun!" she waves from the ground.

Mind if I steal this for my Ranger concept?

 

[MGibster]

The thing is, the rules encourage you to specialize, and the assumed playstyle does as well. The DM and the players have to make a real effort to make a JOAT character feel equal to the rest of the party. Ultimately, it's a system issue.

You are absolutely right. I don't think it's as bad in 5th edition as it was in 3rd edition but its still there.

 

[rmcoen]

Mind if I steal this for my Ranger concept?

Feel free! It's not entirely unique, although I wrote it as I thought it. In reflection, the fighter/rogue(scout) IMC uses something called Hunter's Sense to add a d4 to his Survival and Perception checks, which is a lot like this idea.

 

[rmcoen]

You are absolutely right. I don't think it's as bad in 5th edition as it was in 3rd edition but its still there.

I agree with this (not that I love 5e). With Bounded Accuracy as a concept across the board, my INT 12 sorcerer (+4 at 5th) who is proficient in Arcana is just not that far behind the INT 18 wizard (+7 at 5th). Both of us can reasonably frequently succeed even at DC 15 checks - although the wizard is obviously a lot more reliable at it! The INT 10 warlock in my game who fancies himself a detective doesn't feel worthless with his +3 Investigation checks (and though his Stealth check of +0 is a bit lacking, he can cast invisibility and hold still...).

In 3e and PF1, though, if you didn't have max ranks in a skill, don't bother putting in any. Heck, the recent Pathfinder CRPGs (Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous) just straight up assume you can only max-rank a couple skills, and thus just have you pick which ones you are maxing!

 

[UngeheuerLich]

In 3e [...] , though, if you didn't have max ranks in a skill, don't bother putting in any.

Here I disagree.
If you take vanilla 3e or even 3.5 there are only a few classes that need a skill at max (bard with performance and spellcasters will spellcraft and concentration). Everything else can be a lot lower, as soon as you as a DM use DC 10 to 25 usually and accept, that a rogue IS EXCEPTIONALLY competent in many skills. If you raise the baseline to the rogue, then everyone else feels very bad with just 2 base skill points.
Also if you take to heart, that taking 10 is often ok and taking 20 is the preferred method for many tasks (e.g. picking a lock) then suddenly everyon has a better game.
It is sad that it took me years to actually realize how the design butifully works.
If just cross class skills were explicitely called "normal skills" and class skills would be called "expert skills". And of course, the "required" skills were just removed...