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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6031091" data-attributes="member: 42582">OK, now I'm starting to see a bard without spells!Assuming the game as a whole is coherently designed, buffing the sage is the same as de-buffing the wizard, because the overall mechanics will be designed to fit the sorts of PC builds the game permits.Well, I'm a stickler for the action resolution and scene-framing rules matching the PC builds that the game supports. Suppose WotC actually design some Lore resolution mechanics, framed around certain spellcasters as the "sage" PCs, just as the melee combat mechanics are framed around fighters and rogues as the "swordsman" PCs. I can't really envisage them then publishing an option with a mechanically better sage than those casters, adding a caveat "If you use this PC, the play of our Lore mechanics will break."Of course, as I said above, I may be wrong in this respect. If they're prepared to publish options that break their game, that's their prerogative. My concern is them designing a game that assumes the mechanical and story space, without breaking, for such PCs.If they're prepared for those options to just hang there, not fitting into the design of the action resolution and scene-framing mechanics, than I'm agreed (though, as you say, some warnings would be good!). That is the Rolemaster Companion approach to design. But it's a bit lazy, isn't it? Imagine an optional duelist class who gets a better to-hit bonus than the fighter, but can't wear armour. Is that opening up modular design space? Or just building a class that is broken relative to the core mechanical framework of the game? My intuition is that it is the latter, and I have somewhat the same feeling about the mundane sage.My personal preference is for a tighter approach to design, where they have a clear sense of the parameters for viable PC abilities, clearly stake those out (fighters for melee, bards for social, the "intellectual" caster classes for scholarship, etc) and then design within them. The mundane sage would then be no better than the wizard in effectiveness, but might perhaps have meta-abilities (whether along the lazy warlord buffing line, or something else) to substitute for a lack of spells. I'd do the duelist the same way, I think - their fighting is the same as the fighter, but they get other abilities to compensate for no armour - perhaps a tumble to add active rather than passive defence, and maybe more hit points to give them a meta-defensive resource that the fighter lacks. (Though this would interact oddly with non-melee dimensions of hit point loss - maybe a bonus to parrying dice could be a viable alternative.)</blockquote>

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