Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6233708" data-attributes="member: 5143">I've posted this before, but during our games NO one wanted to be a Thief in 2e.  3/4 of the game was fighting and they were so poor at it as to be useless.  Everyone else could contribute relatively equally when the fighting started(except maybe Bards, but no one wanted to play them for the same reason).  Thieves were needed for dungeons, so we always had one...but they were always multiclassed so they didn't have to roleplay hiding under a table for an hour long battle(normally while they wandered into the other room to play SNES games).The idea was supposed to be that Rogues were also cutthroats, swashbucklers, assassins, dirty fighters, etc.  A fighter looks for any opening in their opponents defenses and strikes there in order to land any blow they can.  A rogue sneaks up behind the enemy while they are looking elsewhere and slits their throat.  It might take a fighter a couple of hits to defeat an enemy because his attacks only manage to hit arms, small cuts in torsos, shoulders, etc...because their enemy is guarding all of their vital organs with their own defenses.  A rogue doesn't fight fair.  He tosses powder in people's eyes and when they drop their defenses sticks them in the kidney killing them in one blow.In movies, you see the differences in the archetypes.  A fighter shoots a bow at someone and hits them in the shoulder, arm, and middle of the torso with 3 different arrows in rapid succession.  A rogue type character aims and throws a dagger directly into someone's throat, killing them immediately.Essentially, they are both "fighters" in the same way that so are Rangers(fighters who use bows, two-weapons and know how to track), Barbarians(fighters who get angry and come from primitive societies), Paladins(Fighters we also worship gods), and a host of lesser classes who also fill the description of "fighter" from 3e and 4e.The key is, every class needs to be valuable in every fight.  Making any class that is "bad at fighting" or "bad at fighting multiple common classes of creatures" is not good design.  These people would not be going on the types of adventures that D&D is about at all.  Because they'd die...or would have no desire to ever go on them.I've started with this assumption in every game I've ever played in or ran since I started playing 20 years ago.  Haven't ran into any problems with it yet.  We've ran into problems a couple of times when players decided to purposefully create characters who were not heroes and did not want to be heroes.  Those characters either died quickly or bored the players so much that they rolled up new characters and we moved on with the game.You can't just say "You are the heroes, you win".  In the same way that when you sit down to watch Lord of the Rings, you KNOW that they are going to defeat Sauron because it likely wouldn't be a great story if Sauron won and all the characters were enslaved or killed.  You however, don't know HOW they will win.  You don't get to see the plot twists as they happen.  You know that when their friend secretly turns out to be working for the enemy that they'll manage to defeat their turncoat friend in battle and win the day.  But it's not nearly as interesting as being there for the reveal of the secret.When I ran the boxed set of the Rod of Seven Parts, it went without saying that the PCs would find all 7 parts of the Rod.  That was the point of the adventure and there was only 2 ways it could go: They'd find all the parts or they wouldn't.  If they didn't find the parts, the adventure was over and we'd stop playing.  Since no one wanted to stop playing, we knew the other option was guaranteed.  It was just a matter of how and when.  They also liked discovering what they were searching for, where the pieces were located, and why they needed them during the game.Basically, many people play for the How, When, Where, What, and Why.  They want questions answered and had fun traveling the path to get to the end.</blockquote>

Verification