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Drop the rotating spotlight model of niche protection for 5e
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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5794254" data-attributes="member: 54877"><p>The idea of separate classes for non-combat abilities, roles, etc. has been suggested by many people over the last few years, and is hardly new, anyway. </p><p> </p><p>DragonQuest did that exact same thing with its "professions". If you developed "ranks" in "Ranger", then that said nothing about weapon ability, D&D-ish cure spells, or anything else that we might envision embedded in a D&D ranger class. All it said was that as you went up in ranks, you got better at sneaking around in the wild, avoiding being snuck up on in the wild, not getting lost, etc. It is fairly narrow, but obviously useful in combat and non-combat situations. (DQ being very old and a very wargaming-oriented RPG in its presentation, the actual mechanics are nothing to write home about--lots of highly fiddly percentage checks, basically.)</p><p> </p><p>All this really does is say that skills aren't these isolated things, but suites of themed abilities that people often want together. How many people want to be expert at spotting ambushes but don't care anything about sneaking themselves? Sure, you'll have a few, the same way you'll have wizards that want to use halberds--but you can satisfy most people with this setup. Compared to a skill-based game, you trade off a list of people a bit unsatisfied with this or that for far less complexity.</p><p> </p><p>It would take some careful design, because now skills are not cafeteria style. Heck, they aren't even scoped cleanly. Sneaking in the wild is different than sneaking in the city. And for this reason, you'll need some fairly wide-open and flexible multiclassing, so that people can go as wide or deep as they want. (DQ gets around this by given major XP bumps when sufficient depth <strong>and</strong> breadth are achieved. By tweaking these requirements, you can make the characters as specialized or general as the group prefers, and then each character is explicitly rewarded when they meet the targets.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5794254, member: 54877"] The idea of separate classes for non-combat abilities, roles, etc. has been suggested by many people over the last few years, and is hardly new, anyway. DragonQuest did that exact same thing with its "professions". If you developed "ranks" in "Ranger", then that said nothing about weapon ability, D&D-ish cure spells, or anything else that we might envision embedded in a D&D ranger class. All it said was that as you went up in ranks, you got better at sneaking around in the wild, avoiding being snuck up on in the wild, not getting lost, etc. It is fairly narrow, but obviously useful in combat and non-combat situations. (DQ being very old and a very wargaming-oriented RPG in its presentation, the actual mechanics are nothing to write home about--lots of highly fiddly percentage checks, basically.) All this really does is say that skills aren't these isolated things, but suites of themed abilities that people often want together. How many people want to be expert at spotting ambushes but don't care anything about sneaking themselves? Sure, you'll have a few, the same way you'll have wizards that want to use halberds--but you can satisfy most people with this setup. Compared to a skill-based game, you trade off a list of people a bit unsatisfied with this or that for far less complexity. It would take some careful design, because now skills are not cafeteria style. Heck, they aren't even scoped cleanly. Sneaking in the wild is different than sneaking in the city. And for this reason, you'll need some fairly wide-open and flexible multiclassing, so that people can go as wide or deep as they want. (DQ gets around this by given major XP bumps when sufficient depth [B]and[/B] breadth are achieved. By tweaking these requirements, you can make the characters as specialized or general as the group prefers, and then each character is explicitly rewarded when they meet the targets.) [/QUOTE]
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