Can you balance Combat against Non-Combat abilities?

[Brother MacLaren]

... IOW, to make a character who's good at one aspect of the game at the price of being less good at other aspects, you can max out Con, and dump Cha.

Right, but ability scores are only part of it.
Class selection is part of it -- choose a bard and you're likely good in social encounters, choose a rogue and you're good at lots of non-combat stuff, choose a fighter and at least you have the athletics skills.
Feat selection is part of it. Skill selection. Spell selection.

Are they going to silo all of these choices?

 

[Nifft]

Warblade -> 4 skill points.

Not only that, but Warblade can get some combat uses for Diplomacy & Intimidate (e.g. via Clarion Commander). So it becomes brutally unfair*. He's rewarded in combat for not sucking out of combat.

Cheers, -- N

*) "well designed"

 

[hong]

Right, but ability scores are only part of it.
Class selection is part of it -- choose a bard and you're likely good in social encounters, choose a rogue and you're good at lots of non-combat stuff, choose a fighter and at least you have the athletics skills.
Feat selection is part of it. Skill selection. Spell selection.

Are they going to silo all of these choices?

Nothing wrong with that. Giving everyone a minimum competency in all areas is not the same as making everyone identical. People seem to have trouble getting that.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Nothing wrong with that. Giving everyone a minimum competency in all areas is not the same as making everyone identical. People seem to have trouble getting that.

It's not that it will make everyone identical... it's that some will see being "forced" to take skills they don't want as unfair or limiting. It may just be my group of players.

One wanted a cleric who was entirely noncombatant for an earlier campaign. Even a wizard BAB was too much for her character concept -- she wanted a cleric with +0 BAB, all the time. Her husband, when creating a barbarian for my game, asked if he could go below 8 on the point buy for Int/Wis/Cha to get a higher Str. These gamers want total freedom in designing their character. They dislike the class system because it enforces a certain "minimum competency" on things like BAB, and had been trying to design a point-buy system to replace classes.

So... it sounds like the demand for well-rounded characters is at odds with the demand for more flexibility in character design. And I think it might be a good trade, but it's not going to please everybody.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Further thought:

A SWSE-like skill system will solve most of this. Half-level in every skill includes Gather Info, Diplomacy, Appraise, etc. And Skill Focus is good for +5.

That does a lot to ensure a minimum competency out of combat.

 

[Branduil]

That would be good enough, IMO.

Consider how many "fighters" are the leaders of their groups in fiction, then try to reconcile to the D&D roles.

Now, there are enough of a variety of non-combat encounters that to say "you, fighter - you can contribute in all of them!" would be a fool's quest, IMO. However, to give each character areas in non-combat where they can do things: fantastic.

Also see Siloing of spells, and apply the same to skills/feats if you wish.

Cheers!

I agree. In fact, I already made a thread on the issue of Siloing skills.

I had another thought: in 4e they will attempt to not only balance classes in combat by raw effectiveness, but by role. Therefore, shouldn't the concept of "roles" apply to out-of-combat situations as well? Trying to think of how it usually works out in 3.x, you have Rogues and Bards in the "Man-on-the-Street" role, finding info and secrets among the common people of the world. Clerics and Paladins usually fill the role of the "religious connection," giving the party an in with various powerful churches throughout the world. Wizards often have access to libraries and arcane universities full of useful, obscure knowledge. Barbarians, Druids, and Rangers serve as wilderness guides for the party. And then the Fighter crafts a handbasket.

 

[hong]

It's not that it will make everyone identical... it's that some will see being "forced" to take skills they don't want as unfair or limiting. It may just be my group of players.

For every player who complains about being forced to take a skill they consider limiting, I can point you to another player who complains about being forced to put all their ranks into skills that are "required" for their role. Or another player who strategically focuses on certain build aspects and neglects others to create a munchkinised god of war, who can't tie his own shoelaces. From what I've seen, these latter two create a lot more problems for people than the first.

So... it sounds like the demand for well-rounded characters is at odds with the demand for more flexibility in character design. And I think it might be a good trade, but it's not going to please everybody.

Yep.

 

[MerricB]

Iron Heroes takes the problem even further, IMO, with the Thief character. Between his limitless Skill Points (he can max out 3/4 of the skills in the game, easy) and Social Feat Masteries, he rules the non-combat situation. He's also pretty useless in combat (anything that challenges a Man-at-Arms or Weapon Master is straight deadly to him). Mearls has coined the phrase, in posts about balancing the "Fighter vs. Magic-User" in combat, "taking turns having fun."

Tell me about it. What was I playing? A 1st level hunter.

Cheers!

 

[Nifft]

As long as no-one is allowed to trade out their non-combat goodies to get more combat goodies, then there should be few complaints, I think.

In 3.5e, there's a definite arms race mentality. Eliminate the root cause, and the mentality will go away.

Cheers, -- N

 

[MerricB]

I agree. In fact, I already made a thread on the issue of Siloing skills.

I had another thought: in 4e they will attempt to not only balance classes in combat by raw effectiveness, but by role. Therefore, shouldn't the concept of "roles" apply to out-of-combat situations as well? Trying to think of how it usually works out in 3.x, you have Rogues and Bards in the "Man-on-the-Street" role, finding info and secrets among the common people of the world. Clerics and Paladins usually fill the role of the "religious connection," giving the party an in with various powerful churches throughout the world. Wizards often have access to libraries and arcane universities full of useful, obscure knowledge. Barbarians, Druids, and Rangers serve as wilderness guides for the party.

I think that it can inform it, yes - however, what you give there is actually pretty exclusive, and doesn't actually apply to much of actual play.

I think it'd be very, very useful to come up with a list of non-combat encounter categories, and then show how each character can contribute to the situation. Just thinking about some 3e encounters, I can think of...

* Must get past a guard without alerting the fortress.
* Encounter a poison lock.
* Encounter a room with swinging razor-sharp pendulums.
* Must find the thieves' guild in town.
* Must find the "History of Magic", a rare book.
* Must get in to see the King to warn him of an oncoming orc invasion no-one else believes in.

Now that we have those encounters - which is only a small fraction of possible ones - we could categorise and work out solutions for them. Consider:

Encounter a room with swinging razor-sharp pendulums
With the later Dungeonscape and Secrets of Xen'drik detailed trap plan, we get this as an entire encounter rather than one "Disable Device" check. Now, how could a party get past?

* The Wizard or Cleric could use magic to bypass the trap (so many possibilities!)
* The Rogue could disarm it
* The Rogue or Monk could Tumble past
* The PCs could Climb above the dangerous areas and past.

Must find the thieves' guild in town.
This can be a multi-encounter challenge. Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, or Gather Information (in 3e terms) can be used to discover it, but perhaps Knowledge (local)? Do you find it by talking to lowlife, to the "bribed" city officials, by exploring, by finding city maps and deducing where it is?

And then the Fighter crafts a handbasket.

Rubbish. They're learning how to climb in that time, so they can get as good as the Wizard!

(Due to the Armour Check penalty, the fighter, despite having Climb and Jump as class skills, spends the first few levels just overcoming the penalty of his armour. It's amusing, and possibly sad. )

Cheers!