Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
Pretty sure it's "Hot Take".
Hot take: get rid of the "balanced party" paradigm
- Thread starter Desdichado
- Start date
Pretty sure it's "Hot Take".
TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
Heck, MOBAs formalized this role as "ADCs"/"Carries".
Scribe
Legend
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
I am a fan whether that is my character or not
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Yeah that's a great example, though Carry has more recently just become a term for basically any class which isn't tank or support in a lot of situations (I recently read a build guide for Rogue Trader which insisted on referring to all non-Officer characters as "carries").
I'm not saying that's not true, but if you largely play PCs who are beneficiaries of such a situation, then that's very easy to claim, even if you occasionally played ones who weren't. Unless we had a complete record of every single 3.XE/PF1 PC you played (which even you presumably wouldn't have), it would be hard to assess how meaningful a claim this is.
I know the two players I play with who didn't immediately like 4E much, fairly consistently played PCs who were major beneficiaries of LFQW in 3.XE, with the odd exception (which tended to be brief).
Desdichado
Hero
No, it's not a sandbox at all, it's just that the "narrative" isn't fixed and deliberately subject to character input. It doesn't lack focus and it isn't casual; the focus is on immersion and roleplaying rather than on narrative or dungeon-crawling. It's reacting to the same things that trad was originally reacting to, while also gaining the benefit of seeing early trad stumble around trying to find out what works and avoiding what doesn't.
Desdichado
Hero
I'm pretty sure hot take is what the cool kids were saying a few years ago, not today.
Willie the Duck
Hero
A discussion about the 1E/2E 'balanced across time' paradigm with regards to the balanced-party paradigm should probably mention that the 1E/2E thief was a quasi-mandated* role, starts out low-power, and ends up low-power (despite a favorable xp chart).
*not as much as a cleric, bashing in doors and throwing HP against traps is a viable strategy.
Speaking more generally, I am in favor of playstyles where a group gets to choose their role loadout, and then selectively curate the adventures they attempt based on their capabilities/what they want to do. If everyone wants to play a wizard or no one wants to play a cleric, choose adventures where that is non-suicidal. The game system has to play ball on this, as does the GM. Regarding the former, modern D&D has opened up some things (HP recovery, tracking, trap-finding), but other things (higher-level status removal like the greater Restoration-like spells) are still locked behind a few class options. The GM can address this by making sure potions/scrolls are available. To the later, a GM can set up a sandbox campaign, but if any direction you look there are challenges only a balanced party can reasonably accomplish, it leaves the locked role-requirements intact. This can be addressed simply by not doing so.
Trying not to stick with D&D-like examples, there's a wide variety in how much this issue arises. Few games have the level of mandatory role as various D&Ds with healer or even trapfinder classes, although that can depend on player's choosing activities like above (if you have no netrunner in Shadowrun/Cyberpunk, you choose jobs where it isn't a necessity). More often, it's closer to fighters vs wizards in D&D, where some tasks are simply harder (lack of tank, no area-effect against minion swarms, etc.). Traveller where no one has a military background or Star Wars where no one plays a force user can run into this (depending on iteration of the rules). Honestly, open-/build-a-bear games like Hero System can run into this kind of situation ('no one made a flier?' 'no one can breath underwater?') as or more easily than many of the defined-role games.
*not as much as a cleric, bashing in doors and throwing HP against traps is a viable strategy.
Speaking more generally, I am in favor of playstyles where a group gets to choose their role loadout, and then selectively curate the adventures they attempt based on their capabilities/what they want to do. If everyone wants to play a wizard or no one wants to play a cleric, choose adventures where that is non-suicidal. The game system has to play ball on this, as does the GM. Regarding the former, modern D&D has opened up some things (HP recovery, tracking, trap-finding), but other things (higher-level status removal like the greater Restoration-like spells) are still locked behind a few class options. The GM can address this by making sure potions/scrolls are available. To the later, a GM can set up a sandbox campaign, but if any direction you look there are challenges only a balanced party can reasonably accomplish, it leaves the locked role-requirements intact. This can be addressed simply by not doing so.
Trying not to stick with D&D-like examples, there's a wide variety in how much this issue arises. Few games have the level of mandatory role as various D&Ds with healer or even trapfinder classes, although that can depend on player's choosing activities like above (if you have no netrunner in Shadowrun/Cyberpunk, you choose jobs where it isn't a necessity). More often, it's closer to fighters vs wizards in D&D, where some tasks are simply harder (lack of tank, no area-effect against minion swarms, etc.). Traveller where no one has a military background or Star Wars where no one plays a force user can run into this (depending on iteration of the rules). Honestly, open-/build-a-bear games like Hero System can run into this kind of situation ('no one made a flier?' 'no one can breath underwater?') as or more easily than many of the defined-role games.
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To be fair, Call of Cthulhu scenarios tend to assume the party isn't going to survive at all.
