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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6376126" data-attributes="member: 2067">I'm going to try and simplify the replies into categories. I'll call what I'm advocating for (and what I think 5e may have done here) as "Role-less play," that is, play where you don't "need" to fill a particular party role in order to access some exclusive ability that no other group gets access to and that the game assumes you have if you want to access all of it's default content. They can't just TELL you about their assumptions![sblock]They know the game they're designing better than anyone else. If a clay golem can't be fought without a dedicated healer, they know that -- it was presumably a conscious choice on their part for some reason. Why not be explicit? Why leave it for System Mastery to discover?"It's OK to have a bad time playing D&D because that's learning how to have a good time!" is not a strategy I'm really interested in entertaining. Why would I play a game that doesn't make it easy for me to have a good time without having to jump through invisible and arbitrary hoops?[/sblock]Role-less Play Sucks![sblock]I should be able to because "A team of trained soldiers is asked to explore a forgotten ruin where ancient constructs of clay guard lost treasure" is not an adventure idea that should be off the table or require intensive DM effort to pull off in D&D. There's no good reason to arbitrarily exclude it or set the barrier for this particular story any higher than "a team of church functionaries is asked to explore a forgotten ruin where ancient constructs of clay guard lost treasure."In 5e currently, there's nothing in the rules about making characters that tells me that I shouldn't just make whatever I want to make. If they didn't want a party full of fighters, why not design for that intent? If they wanted to have certain roles met, they could make it explicit as they did in 4e. It's not like no one has ever done this before, we've had a game since 2008 that tells you why you shouldn't have a party made entirely of fighters in pretty explicit terms. I don't want to play 4e, I just want my party of fighters in 5e to be able to face a clay golem without me having to frickin' hold their hands. Class is not about niche protection, it is about archetypes, and archetypes are different with or without niche protection. You don't need homogenization, you just need a common baseline.I mean, just because every character class can take the Attack action doesn't mean that all attack actions are completely homogenous and identical, right? If every class could take the Heal Maximum HP Loss action at level 9, why would that necessarily produce any more homogenization and blandness? That action can have AT LEAST as many interesting variations as "roll to hit and for damage." Everyone being capable isn't the same as everyone being equal. This isn't a binary yes/no switch, it's a continuum. Even if your fighter could heal the clay golem's injury with the Medicine skill, it doesn't need to be the equivalent to or as effective as casting a spell. Yeah, but I should know when I'm getting into a TPK situation, not have one unexpectedly dropped on my head because I failed to read the minds of the designers correctly. There's a lot of room between "strengths and weaknesses" and "you must be X to participate."Strengths and weaknesses are awesome and add variety. I prefer the extreme ends of the bell curve.But those are still two points on the curve. I might SUCK at making melee attack rolls as a wizard, but I can do it. If I hit a magic-immune critter, I will not be at my best, but I will be doing SOMETHING.Versus, if I am a fighter in a party without a healer, I just cannot fight a clay golem unless I want to be permanently crippled. That is not a weakness. It is a prohibition. An unstated, secret, presumed prohibition that I'm just supposed to figure out by, apparently, having bad experiences until I learn. [/sblock]A DM Can Fix Everything![sblock]There's lots of ways to deal with everything, but there is a default assumption here. If that default assumption is "your party needs a dedicated healer," why leave that assumption un-stated? And why then advertise your game as being about creating your imaginary fantasy hero when that is not what the game really expects you to do (because it will punish you if you don't wind up choosing a specific kind of hero)? The issue then is that it doesn't state those assumptions. It just assumes them. It doesn't say "hey everyone, you need a healer!", it just assumes that you'll have a healer and SCREW YOU if you decided to let your imagination run wild and be whatever you wanted instead of thinking about party composition!And part of what I like about improvisational DMing is that I don't have to hold the game's hands and treat it like a precious little princess who feels this little pea behind her 20 mattresses, and pulling some contrivance out of my behindus as to why this damage doesn't stick falls into the category of being asked to remove that pea. I'd rather ask for the game not to be such a frickin' drama queen about the pea. [/sblock]This Whole Thing Might Be Moot[sblock]So it's not undesirable to have clay golem's attacks be healed by anyone. And it's certainly possible to have the clay golem's attacks healed by anyone. So why wouldn't that be what the game does? As far as rampant speculation goes, I do think it's possible that they require the ability to cast a spell to make an item containing that spell, but we already have the example of an herbalism kit making antitoxins and potions of healing (which, apparently, anyone can do with some crafting down-time, and not to mention feats like Healer), so there's precedence for mundane resources being able to create magical recovery. The DMG might have more robust crafting rules that require magic, but I could envision a world in which it doesn't necessarily require magic.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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