D&D General When Was it Decided Fighters Should Suck at Everything but Combat?

[soviet]

The problem with niche protection is that it enforces fairly rigid party structures. You gotta have a fighter, a cleric, a wizard, and a thiefrogue because that's how you cover all the niches. The ranger need not apply unless all the niches are covered because they can't fight as good as a fighter and they can't sneak as good as a rogue (not to mention they can't deal with traps and stuff). It's even worse when expanded to secondary areas ("Tracking is a ranger thing so everyone else has to suck at it").

4e tried managing this by codifying the defender, leader, striker, and controller roles, thus ensuring you could have a number of different classes fulfilling each role. I think this was a good start but it could use some work and could expand to non-combat applications as well. I'm thinking something along the lines of:

• Each class has a primary and a secondary combat role. For example, both the fighter and the paladin are primary defenders, but the fighter is a secondary controller (by limiting the options of nearby opponents) while the paladin is a secondary leader (because of healing/buffing abilities).
• In some cases, the secondary role can depend on subclass. Clerics are primarily leaders, but some mix it up in melee with heavy armor and are secondary defenders, while others stay in the back laying down holy AOEs and thus become secondary controllers.
• In addition to primary and secondary combat roles, characters also fill a number of non-combat niches, e.g. worldly lore, natural lore, arcane lore, infiltration, stealth, subterfuge, charming, leadership, etc. Some of these could be class-based, some background-based, and some optional. These should ideally be wider competencies than current skills, and should have a focus on allowing the whole group to overcome challenges in that area. For example, an Athlete shouldn't just be able to get themselves to the top of a wall, but help the whole group get there.

Good post.

I think it also contributes to the excessive optimisation of ability scores. In TSR editions you could have a fighter with a high INT or a high CHA and think OK, here is an additional way I can contribute to the game, a second string to my bow. Now it's more like 'the other classes already have high scores in those stats and a load of relevant special abilities and feats, having a high INT or CHA is just a waste'.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Good post.

I think it also contributes to the excessive optimisation of ability scores. In TSR editions you could have a fighter with a high INT or a high CHA and think OK, here is an additional way I can contribute to the game, a second string to my bow. Now it's more like 'the other classes already have high scores in those stats and a load of relevant special abilities and feats, having a high INT or CHA is just a waste'.

At least back in the OD&D days, a high Int for a non-spellcaster was effectively useless barring houserules, because there was no mechanical application of it at all.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I understand that, but it only works as long as everyone you're playing with is coming from the same perspective.

Not sure what you mean here.

 

[Mannahnin]

At least back in the OD&D days, a high Int for a non-spellcaster was effectively useless barring houserules, because there was no mechanical application of it at all.

Aside from bonus languages?

And some folks read the xp bonus rules as meaning that you don't actually swap points to increase your prime requisite (the text seems to indicate that the actual scores don't change, unlike in B/X and BECMI where you literally reduce other scores to increase your PR) but that they count at the specified rate as "virtual" points toward your PR for determining your XP bonus.

So, say, a 1974 Fighter with rolled stats of 12 Str, 13 Int, 12 Wis, 10 Con, 8 Dex, 9 Cha could count their Int points above 9 on a 2/1 basis toward their Strength and Wisdom points above 9 on a 3/1 basis, giving them a virtual Strength of 15 for xp purposes only, qualifying them for the full 10% xp bonus.

No actual specifics are given for adjudicating "Strength will also aid in opening traps and so on" or "Intelligence will also affect referees' decisions as to whether or not certain actions would be taken", but the intent seems to be that referees use them in adjudicating action resolution.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not sure what you mean here.

I mean as soon as you have someone who's paying attention to the probabilities involved and cares, its still going to be what I said in the prior post regarding it, and unless you're micromanaging their play there's nothing you can do about that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean as soon as you have someone who's paying attention to the probabilities involved and cares, its still going to be what I said in the prior post regarding it, and unless you're micromanaging their play there's nothing you can do about that.

They can think what they want, but design intent for the rule would clearly be simulationist. If all you want to care about is the math, well, you do you.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Aside from bonus languages?

Fair, though how significant languages were varied--considerably.

And some folks read the xp bonus rules as meaning that you don't actually swap points to increase your prime requisite (the text seems to indicate that the actual scores don't change, unlike in B/X and BECMI where you literally reduce other scores to increase your PR) but that they count at the specified rate as "virtual" points toward your PR for determining your XP bonus.

So, say, a 1974 Fighter with rolled stats of 12 Str, 13 Int, 12 Wis, 10 Con, 8 Dex, 9 Cha could count their Int points above 9 on a 2/1 basis toward their Strength and Wisdom points above 9 on a 3/1 basis, giving them a virtual Strength of 15 for xp purposes only, qualifying them for the full 10% xp bonus.

I saw that too, but it still didn't directly effect your capability; just slightly ticked up your advancement. Given how much you needed once above the first couple levels, that could be pretty invisible, though.

No actual specifics are given for adjudicating "Strength will also aid in opening traps and so on" or "Intelligence will also affect referees' decisions as to whether or not certain actions would be taken", but the intent seems to be that referees use them in adjudicating action resolution.

I think the latter as phrased was more a case of "Will the GM let you make a choice that seems smarter than your PC seems to be" however, and and I can't say I ever saw a lot of GMs who wanted to get into that can of worms. In the case of the Strength thing there were actually some mechanics baked in from Greyhawk on (the "bend bars" thing for example) but even in Greyhawk Int really only mechanically impacted spell availability.

 

[Mannahnin]

Fair, though how significant languages were varied--considerably.

I understand that everything varied considerably in those days. Though I also remember being struck by an early article on languages and their use on OD&D which I first read in Best of Dragon vol. 1.

There were a lot of languages, and if they let you negotiate with monsters you otherwise couldn't do so with, that's pretty handy.

I saw that too, but it still didn't directly effect your capability; just slightly ticked up your advancement. Given how much you needed once above the first couple levels, that could be pretty invisible, though.

Yeah, but it's a mechanic.

I think the latter as phrased was more a case of "Will the GM let you make a choice that seems smarter than your PC seems to be" however, and and I can't say I ever saw a lot of GMs who wanted to get into that can of worms. In the case of the Strength thing there were actually some mechanics baked in from Greyhawk on (the "bend bars" thing for example) but even in Greyhawk Int really only mechanically impacted spell availability.

I've certainly encountered DMs who wanted to limit player choices based on character Int. A better way to go, IMO, is to reward the high-Int characters with hints on puzzles and such, which I've also seen.

Greyhawk did add a bunch more mechanics to ability scores in 1975, for sure.

 

[Staffan]

There's also a lot to be said for parties of more than four characters, including that having more allows expansion into the not-core-four types such as Ranger, Druid, etc.

The problem with that is getting a group of more than five players (including the GM) together to play on the regular. Five is hard enough. Six or seven is mythical.

This leads straight back to jack-of-all-trades characters, though. 4e codified the roles but then made them too wishy-washy (and got some of them outright wrong: the Fighter should be both a striker AND a defender) instead of doubling down and niche-protecting those roles.

I'm OK with the fighter being a defender, but in the best of worlds there should be another class that looks like a fighter but is more striker-y. But the 4e PHB already had two other martial strikers (ranger and rogue), so I can't really fault them there.

As for other areas of competency, the goal would be to have enough areas that overlap would, in most cases, be minimal. Just spit-balling here, but something like a total of 15 competencies with each character having like 5? That'd be 20 in a 4-person party which would mean that if you spread things out you have an overlap on 5 of them, which seems fine to me.

 

[soviet]

At least back in the OD&D days, a high Int for a non-spellcaster was effectively useless barring houserules, because there was no mechanical application of it at all.

'Make an INT check' was surely a more common thing than in the post 3e world, and being a d20 roll under meant that having a few points more than someone else made a genuine difference to the odds.