D&D 5E Are you happy with the Battlemaster and Fighter Maneuvers? Other discussions as well.

[Derren]

I do not see any advantage in class based design. Unless your envisioned role aligns perfectly there will be a disjunction between the role your play and abilities the character has. The most strict the class based system is, the worse it becomes.

And classes are also not that much better for new players compared to archetypes in classless systems. Also, players do stop being new at some point. The longer they play, the more likely it is they look for something outside the rigid classes.

 

[Obryn]

I do not see any advantage in class based design. Unless your envisioned role aligns perfectly there will be a disjunction between the role your play and abilities the character has. The most strict the class based system is, the worse it becomes.

And classes are also not that much better for new players compared to archetypes in classless systems. Also, players do stop being new at some point. The longer they play, the more likely it is they look for something outside the rigid classes.

That's the experience I want and expect out of D&D though. If I didn't want classes to be important, I'd be playing Savage Worlds or something along those lines. It's the core feature of D&D as opposed to any other frpg out there.

Classes are powerful game design and story tools, if you use them right.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I do not see any advantage in class based design. Unless your envisioned role aligns perfectly there will be a disjunction between the role your play and abilities the character has. The most strict the class based system is, the worse it becomes.

To me it stops working when the rules and the reality of the game start diverging.

For example, in 2e you've got relatively restricted niches and limited multiclassing. If you want to play an enchanter, you play a mage, and presumably specialize in enchantment. There probably aren't any multiclasses available to you (maybe if you're an elf you can do fighter/enchanter or something; I don't recall). There are no other spellcasting classes that do this. If you want to be an enchanter, play one. Maybe there's a kit for you if you really want to go all out. You could try playing a bard this way, though it wouldn't really fit.

But in 3e, if you want to be an enchanter, you could be a wizard specialized in enchantment (possibly trading in your bonus feats for various special enchantment abilities), but you could also be a generalist wizard with various enchantment-related feats, you start as a wizard and then take a prestige class like master specialist, you could be a sorcerer (arguably more appropriate with the Cha stuff), you could be a beguiler, you could even play a cleric (or favored soul) with enchanting domain spells or a bard who shoots for one of the casting prestige classes or a warlock with charm invocations who then goes for the enchantment prestige class. You could even play one of the enchantment oriented fey as a monster class. At this point, what you're really looking at is no longer a class system; there are so many ways of achieving the concept of "enchanter" that the class by that name has lost most of its relevance.

I think it does work okay if you think in terms of strict in-game castes. For example, in Dragon Age, all the mages are in towers under a guild and they represent a specific group of people with inborn talent, so it makes sense to define them as one class. In a game as diverse as modern D&D, which doesn't have a setting or even a strongly implied setting, and where there are so many different mechanical subsystems, it doesn't make as much sense.

 

[Chaltab]

I do not see any advantage in class based design. Unless your envisioned role aligns perfectly there will be a disjunction between the role your play and abilities the character has. The most strict the class based system is, the worse it becomes.

And classes are also not that much better for new players compared to archetypes in classless systems. Also, players do stop being new at some point. The longer they play, the more likely it is they look for something outside the rigid classes.

From all my experience point buy systems are incredibly difficult to get right. It's far more difficult, if not impossible, to really balance characters when there are virtually infinite combinations of possibilities. Even the best of them run into this problem. I mean that's one of the primary reasons why 4th Edition made multiclassing as limited as it was: we saw what free and open Multiclassing did to the game in 3E and it was not pretty. Granted, 4th's multiclassing left a lot to be desired, but each class was functional enough and diverse enough within itself (save for a few, like Vampire) that you could easily make the archetype you wanted, within reason.

Now, strict balance is not that neccesary in a less crunchy game. Mutants and Masterminds works in part because superhero games tend to be less about combat crunch and more about creative problem-solving. Even if your Green Arrow-knockoff can't do anything to damage Doomsday, he can still perform other key functions like crowd control, or using his arrows as signals to other parties.

In D&D, though, most of the time if a party member isn't contributing to the main problem--whether that be a monster, a skill challenge, a social confrontation, or whatever--then they're not really doing anything. They're just there. Classes and niche protection ensure that no character is useless in a given scenario: that is the advantage of class-based design. It makes specialization the default so that no character, through player inexperience or poor DM planning, ends up being a jack of all trades.

 

[Ahnehnois]

From all my experience point buy systems are incredibly difficult to get right.

True, but are class systems any easier? I doubt it. If anything, adding on another layer of complexity makes things harder.

Classes and niche protection ensure that no character is useless in a given scenario: that is the advantage of class-based design.

Which presumes that you want to play a game where no matter what happens, your character is never useless. I don't really see that as being a default assumption in D&D.

 

[Derren]

That's the experience I want and expect out of D&D though. If I didn't want classes to be important, I'd be playing Savage Worlds or something along those lines. It's the core feature of D&D as opposed to any other frpg out there.

Classes are powerful game design and story tools, if you use them right.

And what exactly is "this"? You probably don't mean the disjunction between the role your play and abilities the character.

From all my experience point buy systems are incredibly difficult to get right. It's far more difficult, if not impossible, to really balance characters when there are virtually infinite combinations of possibilities.

There will always be minmaxers and there will always be optimal builds.
Rather than fighting a loosing battle to restrict them (and others as collateral damage) I rather have a system which allows people to play what they want (which also includes minmaxers).

 

[Obryn]

And what exactly is "this"? You probably don't mean the disjunction between the role your play and abilities the character.

I don't know what you're asking here.

 

[Derren]

I don't know what you're asking here.

Sorry, I should have written "that's".
You said "that's" the experienced you want from D&D and I have no idea what part of my post you mean.

 

[Chaltab]

True, but are class systems any easier? I doubt it. If anything, adding on another layer of complexity makes things harder.

Which presumes that you want to play a game where no matter what happens, your character is never useless. I don't really see that as being a default assumption in D&D.

I don't think class systems are any more complex. Not by default anyway. There are degrees of complexity within any design paradigm.

As for never being useless, even if it's not the default assumption it should at least be a goal in designing a system. I mean obviously your arcane casters are going to be better at Arcana checks than your martial fighters, and there are some athletics tests that Wizards should not even attempt, but if whole combats go by where you're mostly just zoning out or checking your email, it may be a problem with the design. Again, I go back to the 3.X fighter: using him as a 'default' next to the rest of the classes resulted in the fighter not getting much in the way of unique options, and those unique options it did get often required multiple feat taxes and very specific builds to get to function at a workable level. The 4E Weaponmaster and the Next Battlemaster avoid that trap by making unique options part of the character progression--though there are still other options, such as the Slayer subclass, for those who prefer a more simple build.

There will always be minmaxers and there will always be optimal builds.
Rather than fighting a loosing battle to restrict them (and others as collateral damage) I rather have a system which allows people to play what they want (which also includes minmaxers).

I'm not talking min-maxers, though. I'm talking about unintentionally gimped or overpowered builds.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I do not see any advantage in class based design. Unless your envisioned role aligns perfectly there will be a disjunction between the role your play and abilities the character has. The most strict the class based system is, the worse it becomes.

Class-based systems give the benefit of a more focused experience, at the cost of freedom. Every class comes with a bunch of baggage about what it means to belong to that class, and that's not always a bad thing, because it ties you more into the world that has been defined in the lore.

Class-based systems don't usually do "generic" very well.