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Is there a general theory of party construction?
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<blockquote data-quote="AtomicPope" data-source="post: 8544964" data-attributes="member: 64790"><p>Gygax covers this in his book "Rules Mastery" (or the other one) when he describes the development of D&D from being a miniatures based war game to an RPG. The Thief (skilled class) was the missing link. In a minis war game you had your medic (cleric), artillergy (wizard), and armored tank (fighter). Yes, Gygax does call the fighter a "tank". All of that is fine for a war game but D&D is much more than that. The first D&D adventure was breaking into a castle and fighting a dragon in a dungeon. From the beginning they saw that there was a need for two things: 1) every PC must have a vital role 2) a skill class is needed to fill a necessary role.</p><p></p><p>Over time the DMs were changing their ideas on what constituted a "campaign". Even Gygax got away from the dungeon crawls and with "Keep on the Borderlands" D&D started to look more like an open world RPG. Nowadays it's common to talk about "themed campaigns" where everyone plays a Wizard or Rogue, but that was being discussed in the earliest days of D&D. Gygax and company had their "Circle of Eight" which was just a bunch of Wizards getting stuff done.</p><p></p><p>The nature of the campaign will determine what is "needed". I'm currently running and Eberron Detective Noir that thematically resembles "Blade Runner" more than D&D or Steampunk. Warforged are more like Replicants (some look very human). Since there was no planned obsolescence, the Five Kingdoms passed a "Registration Act" whereby all Warforged must be registered, and their weaponry decommissioned, or be decommissioned. In this game no one is playing a Fighter, Wizard or Cleric. There's two Artificers, a Radiant Monk (who uses laser pistols), a Paladin/Warlock and a Changeling Rogue. This campaign doesn't have many "boss fights" since most of the work is skill based. The Paladin/Warlock has skill invocations and Disguise Self at will. This is a skill based campaign. The healing is minor and so are the number of fights.</p><p></p><p>One thing I do like about 5e is the Bounded Accuracy and Short Rests give both players and DMs a lot of leeway that didn't exist before. It does mean that Clerics are no longer a hard requirement for every campaign, and that's not a bad thing.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AtomicPope, post: 8544964, member: 64790"] Gygax covers this in his book "Rules Mastery" (or the other one) when he describes the development of D&D from being a miniatures based war game to an RPG. The Thief (skilled class) was the missing link. In a minis war game you had your medic (cleric), artillergy (wizard), and armored tank (fighter). Yes, Gygax does call the fighter a "tank". All of that is fine for a war game but D&D is much more than that. The first D&D adventure was breaking into a castle and fighting a dragon in a dungeon. From the beginning they saw that there was a need for two things: 1) every PC must have a vital role 2) a skill class is needed to fill a necessary role. Over time the DMs were changing their ideas on what constituted a "campaign". Even Gygax got away from the dungeon crawls and with "Keep on the Borderlands" D&D started to look more like an open world RPG. Nowadays it's common to talk about "themed campaigns" where everyone plays a Wizard or Rogue, but that was being discussed in the earliest days of D&D. Gygax and company had their "Circle of Eight" which was just a bunch of Wizards getting stuff done. The nature of the campaign will determine what is "needed". I'm currently running and Eberron Detective Noir that thematically resembles "Blade Runner" more than D&D or Steampunk. Warforged are more like Replicants (some look very human). Since there was no planned obsolescence, the Five Kingdoms passed a "Registration Act" whereby all Warforged must be registered, and their weaponry decommissioned, or be decommissioned. In this game no one is playing a Fighter, Wizard or Cleric. There's two Artificers, a Radiant Monk (who uses laser pistols), a Paladin/Warlock and a Changeling Rogue. This campaign doesn't have many "boss fights" since most of the work is skill based. The Paladin/Warlock has skill invocations and Disguise Self at will. This is a skill based campaign. The healing is minor and so are the number of fights. One thing I do like about 5e is the Bounded Accuracy and Short Rests give both players and DMs a lot of leeway that didn't exist before. It does mean that Clerics are no longer a hard requirement for every campaign, and that's not a bad thing. [/QUOTE]
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