Forked Thread: Should complexity vary across classes?

[blargney the second]

Also the point was more that: mechanically complex = longer turn resolution in addition to often being better. The combination of the two = extremely irritating.

Fair enough, I can certainly agree to all that!
-blarg

 

[Voadam]

Narrowing of complexity is a drawback for me.

People have different play styles and desire different levels of complexity and in different places. Some want complexity in character builds. Some want complexity in at the table options. Some want resource management and others do not.

I liked that in 3e/d20 you could play a mechanically simple warlock with always working or at will magical abilities or a resource management intensive and mechanically complex Iron Heroes martial character.

I dislike complex resource management tracking, daily powers, and at the table number shifting and decisions of whether or not to use up expendable resources. I generally prefer mechanically simple and straightforward at will constantly useable character options that are used. I can easily make characters in 3e that cater to my playstyle preferences thanks to the variable mechanical complexity in classes.

 

[RFisher]

It may be that the reason Fighter is my favorite class (and moreso the older the edition) is that I prefer to think more like “how could I approach this problem if I were really there” rather than “how can I use my PC’s abilities and the rules to approach this problem”.

I’m not certain the “narrowing of complexity” is on the money, but I do know that one of the things I’m not enjoying about 4e is that the experience of playing a fighter and the experience of playing a wizard are so much closer than they were in any other edition. And it’s not even that they made wizards play like fighters or that they made fighters play like wizards—they made both play like a mix of the two.

Which has really gotten me to rethinking whether I’ll actually enjoy a Risus game if I ever get to play it more than a one-off.

 

[Remathilis]

As I said, in a way, that's how I experienced it. Not that it's exactly the same.

We could extrapolate a scenario where this would be the case: let's pretend that attack, disarm, sunder, grapple and trip are all equal to each other for class X used under the right circumstances, which happen in a way always giving me "fair" opportunities to use them.
Class Y has only Attack. But it's 25 % better then my attack and can also be used under all circumstances.

I think you are recalling the two problems D&D has typically suffered.

* Specialization far outweighs diversity.
* Diversity just means you have more ways to suck.

In your case, you have a fighter who was capable in a variety of corner-case scenarios: A foe with a superior weapon, a foe who relies on grappling, a foe who is standing in a strategically poor place, etc. (In fact, only trip is universally useful, since most foes must stand to attack. This merely proves how Imp Trip was an annoying, if superior, tactic for shutting down most foes).

You are competing with a single-minded ally: she doesn't have as much diversity, but my god can she lay down the smack. In theory, you should be equal (diversity = narrow focus), in reality, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Sure, you might win a grapple against a giant, but the other fighter can just full-attack it and kill it. Ditto with sunder, bull-rush, disarm, etc. (Again, excluding the cheese-fest that is trip for a moment).

In theory, a bard is the most powerful character class: it can heal, deal sonic damage, fight with some skill, and use a variety of rogue skills. In practice...

So unless you fight a lot of foes requiring grapple, disarm, and bull-rush, those tactics < full attack with a +2 to hit, +4 damage. D&D rewards specialization of task so much that jack-of-all-trade classes (monk, bard) tend to fall short by not being good at anything. The same holds true for sorcerers who don't optimize spell selection or rogues who spread their skill points over too many skills, or fighters not focusing on a single weapon.

 

[Mort]

I think you are recalling the two problems D&D has typically suffered.

* Specialization far outweighs diversity.
* Diversity just means you have more ways to suck.

The problem is while this certainly applies to non-casters in 3e (the fighter example is quite apt); it's not as true for casters.

Designers in 3e love to make spells for nearly every occasion (while the spells themselves tend to be specific the more of them you have the more versatile you can be). This is one reason clerics can be so powerful (especially if you have 2 in a party so one doesn't have to focus on healing). It is also why a properly played wizard is so ridiculously nasty (and nearly impossible to fluster).

 

[I'm A Banana]

Classes with varying degrees of complexity does help the game appeal to different kinds of players. What needs to happen, though, is that degree of complexity shouldn't necessarily be tied to the archetype of the character. That is to say, it shouldn't be that the wizard is complex and the warrior is simple. Rather, there should be both a complex and simple wizard and a complex and simple fighter. How one would go about this, I'm not sure. The sorcerer in 3E was an attempt at this but didn't quite manage it.

Wins the thread.

Complexity should be an option that the player can turn on or off for any given character. In an ideal world, it would be something you can even vary between sessions, so that the night you're feeling particularly obsessive, you can trick out on stats, and the night after you just got a divorce and found out that she's getting the kids but goddamnit you need to be around friends right now you can be a bit more basic.

I dislike complex resource management tracking, daily powers, and at the table number shifting and decisions of whether or not to use up expendable resources. I generally prefer mechanically simple and straightforward at will constantly useable character options that are used. I can easily make characters in 3e that cater to my playstyle preferences thanks to the variable mechanical complexity in classes.

I'll also agree with this from my personal POV. In general, I don't want to nerd out over fiddly bits. I just want to kick some ass. A list of one or two things I can do that I can always do and that are always pretty effective is much more fun for me than a ponderous deck of 12 things that I might be able to do at different moments at different levels of effectiveness.

I prefer to invest my effort in character development, personality quirks, interesting back story, and ridiculous accents.

 

[S'mon]

I have to admit that I just plain don't understand this line of thought and feeling. It seems to come up a lot from a lot of different posters on different boards (so I am not picking on GlaziusF here), but it still seems strange to me that people would get bent out of shape by their friends having fun, even if that meant you had to wait a couple minutes for your turn. Wizards vs. fighters. Thieves and traps. Paladins going on their warhorse quests. Every time one of these subjects comes up, someone comes at it from the perspective of having to have "equal time" (and, usually, "equal ability/power") in order to have "equal fun".

Waiting for the Wizard or Cleric to finish so I can swing my greatsword doesn't bother me. Having to choose effectively between 7 different ways to swing my greatsword would, though.

 

[Runestar]

Though I'm curious - what does "mechanically simple to run" mean? Are we just talking the charging barbarian? because then you run into the problem of my first post - your turn takes 30 seconds - the complex character takes 5 minutes - which to repeat is extremely irritating.

I feel it refers more to the complexity of the build, rather than the degree of skill needed to run it properly.

I think mechanically simple refers more to the class being more or less idiot-proof, in that it is hard to screw up. An example would be a 3e warmage, cleric or barb. However badly you screwed up with regards to inappropriate feat selections and the like, you could still function decently because your core competencies were more or less already locked in and pre-selected for you. Assuming you at least bothered to sink a decent score into your key stat, the warmage still has full access to his vast array of direct damage spells, the cleric can spontaneously cast cure spells how badly he opted to prepare his spells, and the barb retains rage, fast movement and dr.

Conversely, there are character builds which require a high degree of system mastery to play properly. One such example is the 3e fighter, easily one of the most complex classes to play. Why? Because you got nothing but bonus feats, and there are easily hundreds of feats he can choose from, but little/no guidance as on how to go about selecting them, and many of them are traps and not really worth the paper they are printed on. Unless you know exactly what you want for your fighter, it is all too easy to go haywire and end up selecting inappropriate feats, thus screwing him up. It can still be quite straightforward and intuitive to run in combat, only problem is building him that way.

I admit to liking 3e-style optimization for the intellectual challenge, even though they usually never end up seeing actual play. I don't know how to describe it - there is this inexplicable sense of immense satisfaction when I come up with a custom character concept, then go about thinking of how best to represent it mechanically using material from an assortment of splatbooks, and then finetuning/adding finishing touches to refine it.

Sometimes, I think I actually enjoy preparing to play the game more than actually playing it...

 

[Mort]

Conversely, there are character builds which require a high degree of system mastery to play properly. One such example is the 3e fighter, easily one of the most complex classes to play. Why? Because you got nothing but bonus feats, and there are easily hundreds of feats he can choose from, but little/no guidance as on how to go about selecting them, and many of them are traps and not really worth the paper they are printed on. Unless you know exactly what you want for your fighter, it is all too easy to go haywire and end up selecting inappropriate feats, thus screwing him up. It can still be quite straightforward and intuitive to run in combat, only problem is building him that way.

Your comment seems to shift in mid paragraph.

I agree with the later part but not the beginning: 3e fighters are difficult to build properly but usually not difficult to play. If I build an effective fighter and give him to you to play, you do not need a great deal of system mastery to play the fighter. On the other hand if I build an effective wizard, you will still need decent system mastery to play the wizard to full effect.

Also the complexity of the fighter, only stems from figuring out which options (feats for the most part) are garbage. Once you have that sorted out actual play is quick. Your turn will never approach the decision tree and/or the time element of a wizard, druid or cleric.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Your comment seems to shift in mid paragraph.

I agree with the later part but not the beginning: 3e fighters are difficult to build properly but usually not difficult to play. If I build an effective fighter and give him to you to play, you do not need a great deal of system mastery to play the fighter. On the other hand if I build an effective wizard, you will still need decent system mastery to play the wizard to full effect.

I think that might be partially because you can "rebuild" your Wizard every day. Each day, you can select a different sets of spells to prepare.

Of course, actually figuring out which prepared spell to use is also more complex. I think that part hasn't gone in 4E.