Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Underman" data-source="post: 5975107" data-attributes="member: 6696705">A barbarian wanders the lands, slaying all who oppose him, conquering all obstacles. He is self-sufficient. He needs no one. He is independent.One fateful day, a shadow assassin stings him with a poison dart. As the poison inevitably heads towards his still beating heart, he hurries for help and collapses at the door of a medicine man's hut. His fate is now dependent on another.Fast forward to a brush with a flying dragon raining fire from the skies. Nobody is compelling him to destroy the dragon, so he's still fully self-reliant; he can flee, or hide and wait it out, dependent on no one for survival. If he chooses to kill the wyrm, he may need to quest for dragon-slaying arrows or a potion of flying (dependent on equipment) or he may need to climb a tree and leap to the dragon's back but only if the terrain is advantageous that way (dependent on the environment) or he may seek out the dragon's lair and kill it on his own terms (dependent on good timing and clever tactics).He may also seek out his wizard friend to help slay the dragon. The barbarian on his own may find it rather difficult to kill the dragon under all but certain circumstances. The wizard on his own may find it rather difficult (or swingy/unpredictable/dangerous) to try to kill the dragon at all. Together, however, they can kill the dragon under most circumstances. That interdependency may swing quite often depending on the situation. They also have rather different skill sets that synergise together. For example, the wizard can teleport into a dungeon alone, and be killed almost immediately. The barbarian is robust enough to wade through much of the dungeon on his own wits and grit, but it takes him a week of running to get to the dungeon. Together, the barbarian and wizard can teleport to the dungeon and kill and take everyone's stuff. The barbarian can bash doors that get in their way but not thru force walls. The wizard can't bash doors but can dispel force walls. And so forth.Thus the barbarian and the wizard are interdependent. Change the scope again and they may be completely independent of each other. Should they face something as epic as a titan or something as specialized as a sailing contest, then even together, they are dependent on the deus ex machina coming to their aid.In another story altogether, the barbarian is always self-reliant, dependant on no one, needs no one for healing any wound he suffers, can jump 100 feet into the air to kill flying dragons, can run anywhere in the world within 24 hours, and can cut through force walls. If he joins with the wizard, they are not interdependent in the context that their skill sets overlap almost completely and can accomplish the same tasks in different ways with effectively the same result.I believe that most (not all, but a significant majority of) traditional fantasy has a rich tradition of emphasizing interdependency, not independency. I believe the D&D genre has often does the same. Personally, I would like to see D&D Next mechanics that encourage the same -- not to the extent that classes are unbalanced or anything blasphemous like that, but to the extent that the differences between PCs are respected and complementary. I love the depth of synergy and interdependence. Independence is fine for solo adventures; otherwise it bores me.In your ideal version of D&D Next, how interdependent or independent are your PCs? All the time or within certain scopes? Do you expect to make tactical decisions (if/when/where/how to face an encounter) to change their inter/dependency? How responsible is the DM for setting up scenarios that encourage or discourage interdependency?</blockquote>

Verification