D&D 5E Drop the rotating spotlight model of niche protection for 5e

[howandwhy99]

It's been said a hundred times before. Why don't we make this modular?

Some players do want a game where combat is not the central concern of the campaign. If everyone plays a Magic User, Cleric, Thief or variant, why would they necessarily have to be as good as a guts-n-glory warrior and seek out combat? Thieves actually make a living out of avoiding combat.

What I think could be included as a primary option are game systems that focus on magic, clericism, and thieving (as well as some subclass additions), so players can engage where they want in what they want.

This isn't to short change anyone who wants to play everything. It simply allows me, who has a weak STR PC to be weaker than your PC who has a high STR when STR comes into play. All 10s for all scores, HP, AC, and everything else, for all characters makes jack a very dull boy.

 

[Hussar]

Based on what D&D has been for every edition prior to 4E (and the latter days of 3.5 which led to 4E e.g. mystic theurge and other contrived classes with no archetype), I think to avoid needless complication maybe it may be time to look elsewhere for your fantasy RPG needs? In D&D done properly, class and archetype are synonymous. Deviating from that leads to meaningless class names and archetypeless classes like the mystic theurge or warlord, which are thematically rudderless, and dilute D&D's reflection of the fantasy genre.

Enough of that, I reckon. Maybe stick with 4E if that's your bag.

Guess I've been playing D&D wrong since 2nd edition. After all, I played a Cleric Monk from the Complete Priests guide back in about 1990. Played bards as warlords back in 2e too. My paladins were holy warriors, true, but, about as far from the "shining knight" archetype as I could make them (I was a big David Eddings fan at the time, sue me). Then again, that player back in the 80's when I played 1e whose ranger was based on The Gunslinger from Stephen King complete with six shooters would be right out in your game too.

I guess, I've just been doing it wrong for decades.

 

[hanez]

Guess I've been playing D&D wrong since 2nd edition. After all, I played a Cleric Monk from the Complete Priests guide back in about 1990. Played bards as warlords back in 2e too. My paladins were holy warriors, true, but, about as far from the "shining knight" archetype as I could make them (I was a big David Eddings fan at the time, sue me). Then again, that player back in the 80's when I played 1e whose ranger was based on The Gunslinger from Stephen King complete with six shooters would be right out in your game too.

I guess, I've just been doing it wrong for decades.

You haven't been doing it wrong. I love taking classes/archetypes and changing them to suit my needs. Thats the beauty of archetypes as classes, you have a strong idea that shapes and gives spirit to an other wise lifeless mechanical class, and players can STILL change that default archetype if they wish. Players who dont change the archetype, at least have the default archetype to help them roleplay/get into character.

I find this is MUCH better then having a class represent some tactical/mechanical methods on a battlefield and little else. What ends up happening here is some people craft a character, the same type of people who would have changed a strong archetype. But the players who don't think about that end up having bland, flavorless characters defined by powers because the rules don't nudge them in any direction.

Thats my experience at least. For example as much as my players hated alignment, it gave them something to roleplay and judge their actions, they discussed it and it often effected their choices. WHen it was removed, morals were NEVER an issue because there wasnt even a threat of any mechanical repercussions. This had a negative impact on my campaign because we saw one less non combat/roleplaying thing my players would talk about. Multiply this by all the choices to take fluff out of the game (less archetype driven classes, fluff left up to the players, divine powers not dependant on gods approval, weaker non combat niches, no alignment effects, powers as mechanics with one sentence of flavor) and you end up with players who forget that this is a roleplaying game and not a tactical minis game.

 

[SensoryThought]

To the OP, I agree almost entirely with your analysis, except I would argue the lack of focus or mechanics for non-combat in D&D has existed from day 1. As a fun exercise suggested by Geeknights, go through the D&D character sheet of any edition and highlight anything that relates to combat. I bet by the end, name, alignment, gender and in some cases nonweapon proficiencies or skills are the only things not highlighted. Same with the core rulebooks too.

In fact, when you look at the essential game, you only progress by getting xp and treasure that are awarded by killing monsters. So aren't the combat rules the crux of the system?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To the OP, I agree almost entirely with your analysis, except I would argue the lack of focus or mechanics for non-combat in D&D has existed from day 1. As a fun exercise suggested by Geeknights, go through the D&D character sheet of any edition and highlight anything that relates to combat. I bet by the end, name, alignment, gender and in some cases nonweapon proficiencies or skills are the only things not highlighted. Same with the core rulebooks too.

In fact, when you look at the essential game, you only progress by getting xp and treasure that are awarded by killing monsters. So aren't the combat rules the crux of the system?

Yeah, this being some sort of 4e characteristic has always mystified me. 4e is really no more combat focused than any other edition has been. What IMHO it has been is thankfully blessed with a lack of random artificial limitations like alignment restrictions and ambiguous and questionably valuable elements like 9-way alignment compared to any other edition. Rules like that don't create RP, rules just tell you what you CANNOT do, not what you can. IME nobody at any of my tables has ever cared about alignment. At best it was a way to say "my guy is EVIL!". Heck, I couldn't tell you the alignment of one PC from any of my old campaigns. I can tell you a lot about their personalities though.

I don't think hanez is wrong about archetypes in general, and I've always been more of a fan of fewer broader classes, but I think Warlord IS an archetype. In fact it is the one archetype that really hasn't been well represented by D&D in general because either it was force-grafted onto all fighters or just ignored entirely. It MAY be a narrow enough archetype that it can be relegated to 'sub-class' type implementation (along with things like witches, sorcerers, assassins, etc). I think 4e did do a pretty good job of making some of these archetypes really useful and exploring them far better than they were before.

 

[SensoryThought]

I also like the warlord both for the idea of a tactician and leader, but also as a healer that isn't loaded with all that faith baggage many players don't want to be lumped with. You can argue about the mechanics and execution (and many do), but I think the concept is a good one.

 

[Hussar]

AbdulAlhazred - I've long argued that the main problem with 4e is presentation. Like you say, I don't think 4e is any more or less combat centric than any other version of the game. SensoryThought's point about looking at the character sheet is well taken. However, the game that's presented is SO heavily combat oriented. The powers are all written from a point of view as to how they will impact combat. Even the utility powers frequently suffer from this.

Add to this a few rather poor choices in wording (skip past the gate guard) and you get a very strong sense that 4e is all about miniature combats.

 

[Number48]

Maybe I woke up on the wrong side of the bed or maybe somebody pissed in my Cheerios, but I've been a bit down since reading about the classes. Color me disappointed that WotC essentially took the idea of 2 classes and said, "Let's implement this in the worst way possible!" The concepts we've heard so far are clunky and restricting. You can take a fighter and give him the Noble package? Why not take ANY character and give him the Noble package? But no, WotC is trying so hard to not move in a new direction they're charging in reverse. I do still hold out some hope I'm proven wrong.

BTW, when I was designing my take on the 2-class system (here), I pictured taking a 4E character and removing everything non-combat and taking a PF character and removing everything combat as the starting point. Do you know what you get when you remove all the non-combat from a 4E character class? Pretty much the same thing you had before you removed it. That's why 4E is an unmitigated disaster for WotC.