Legends & Lore: Clas Groups

[SageMinerve]

That's not what I want. I want a game where storm shamans can also be pilots, where thieves can sometimes cast spells, where warriors might get their prayers to the war-god answered. I want a game where class is defined in terms of what you can do and not in terms of what you can't do.

IMHO you have it backwards: classes are defined first and foremost by what they can't do, not what they can do, because otherwise what's the point of having classes? Why don't we have fighters casting fireballs? Why don't we have rogues casting healing spells?

Any RPG has to put boundaries on how characters can be built: for D&D, it's classes; for GURPS / HERO and others, it's character points; still others, like FATE, it's a number of pick-and-choose items from various categories... Doesn't matter how, but you can't be anything you want and do whatever you want, otherwise there's really no point in playing (where's the fun in playing a God-mode PC with no weaknesses and access to every kind of power?)

As for the specific example of rangers using scrolls, it can (and does IMO) make sense story-wise: using a magic scroll requires to be familiar with magical scripts and language, arcane gestures, concentration... not things that typical rangers have training in.

After all, plenty of people can't make heads-or-tails of IKEA assembling charts IRL, and I for one would argue that those are a lot less complex than magical scrolls...

 

[Li Shenron]

I am viewing this from a simulation standpoint - people who tend to be good at stealth, know how to use an item that helps with stealth to it's optimum use. You seem to be viewing it from a game balance standpoint. Which I don't much care about, as game balance on this fine a level is simply not something I want from a game, and not something 5e is focused on.

Of course the stealth cloak is likely to be given to the guy good at stealth - just like the big two handed magic axe is likely to be given to the dwarf already using a big two handed axe, and the wand to the guy who already uses arcane magic with a wand, and the holy rod that kills undead to the guy who already uses holy items to kill undead. That's the whole point of classes to begin with - focused concepts which are different from other focused concepts. D&D is not a classless system, and the system is going to support the class-themed concept within the game.

Not so much about balance, rather I think I was viewing it from the point of view of opening up new possibilities.

Of course one way to go, is have the Fighter find the uber weapon, Wizard find the uber staff, Rogue find the uber cloak etc., so that the Fighter is even stronger at fighting, the wizard casts even stronger fireballs, the Rogue is even better at hiding...

It's not at all wrong per se, but what do you get in the end this way? Numbers creep, even higher probabilities of success... which maybe then have to be compensated by buffing encounters or increasing challenges so that the game is more or less at the same "sweet spot" of challenges.

What I had in mind, rather than balance, was tossing-in some additional options. Let the Rogue use a Wand of Fireballs, the Wizard use an Arrow of Slaying, and the Fighter use a Cloak of Invisibility, and each of them has one option to try out they didn't have before.

The point is, if magic items are only occasionally restricted (or are restricted in ways other than class i.e. restricted to those who are already good at something), you still have the choice whether you want to distribute them "right" or oddly. If restrictions by class are the standard (not that this is actually currently suggested...) there is no choice.

 

[DMZ2112]

That's not what I want. I want a game where storm shamans can also be pilots, where thieves can sometimes cast spells, where warriors might get their prayers to the war-god answered. I want a game where class is defined in terms of what you can do and not in terms of what you can't do.

I want a game that doesn't break if my fighter wants to use a wand of magic missiles just because she's not a "mage-group" character.

This is going to sound strident, and I apologize in advance:

It sounds like what you want is a game where classes are so customizable that their subclasses/variants/builds/what-have-you undermine the sovereignty of other classes. At which point I would echo [MENTION=6690511]GX.Sigma[/MENTION]: why have classes at alll?

Warriors don't wield wands because wielding wands is one of the things that makes a mage a mage (or a priest a priest, depending on the spell in the wand). And being able to make a skill check to wield wands is one of the things that makes a depickler a depickler. (It WILL catch on, dammit.)

 

[Li Shenron]

IMHO you have it backwards: classes are defined first and foremost by what they can't do, not what they can do, because otherwise what's the point of having classes? Why don't we have fighters casting fireballs? Why don't we have rogues casting healing spells?

Magic Items could be used exactly to "break" those limitations.

Maybe Gygax didn't want that to happen. After all, it's actually easier to balance magic items if you know who's going to use them, so a Wand of X in the hands of someone who anyway can cast X, can be abusive only by how many uses it has, while in the hands of someone else becomes more valuable but the value is harder to estimate.

But there's other ways to break the limitations, first and foremost multiclassing. In 5e we additionally have subclasses that mix with other classes' features, and feats for "light multiclassing". It's strange that in an edition with so many ways to mix and expand your character abilities, they want to add a restriction to magic items, which is the are of the game that more than anything else we were told was going to be optional and in the hands of the DM.

 

[I'm A Banana]

There is a basic assumption in your posts that certain magic items will be unusable by certain classes, as opposed to simply more useful in the hands of someone specialized in the thing that magic item is about. That assumption has been questioned, repeatedly, with many examples at this point as to how it might work differently than your assumption. So, why are you continuing with the assumption?

Your assertion of my assumption is false. I merely regard the difference between "can't use it" and "can't get a special benefit for using it" as largely irrelevant, because the part I'm interested in is the can't. As I explained above, there's still no virtue in making this distinction that is fundamentally unconnected to the actual play of a particular character.

IMHO you have it backwards: classes are defined first and foremost by what they can't do, not what they can do, because otherwise what's the point of having classes? Why don't we have fighters casting fireballs? Why don't we have rogues casting healing spells?

I don't share your view of the purpose of classes (I list five reasons to use a class system there, and I wouldn't rank "stops you from doing other things" among those virtues). We can have fighters casting fireballs and rogues casting healing spells, just like we can have wizards using swords and clerics using thieves' tools. While I wouldn't expect these to be the default, I would expect the game to enable me to swap out whatever fighters get at level 5 for the ability to cast fireball if it made sense for me in my game. If that change is going to suddenly make the character not a warrior or also a mage, because now that character needs to be able to use a wand of fireballs....yeah, that's hugely unnecessary.

As for the specific example of rangers using scrolls, it can (and does IMO) make sense story-wise: using a magic scroll requires to be familiar with magical scripts and language, arcane gestures, concentration... not things that typical rangers have training in.

But if my ranger is a 1e-style ranger with wizard spells, that's not something the system should be able to handle?

It sounds like what you want is a game where classes are so customizable that their subclasses/variants/builds/what-have-you undermine the sovereignty of other classes. At which point I would echo @GX.Sigma : why have classes at alll?

Again, I can think of at least five reasons, and none of them are prohibitive, because forbidding things isn't really the point of a class, as far as I can see. Rogues don't generally know healing magic because rogues generally have no reason to learn healing magic, not because the game would be abandoning all semblance of a class system if they learned it. Maybe the thieves in my campaign are theives of life who steal years from others and give them to their allies, and they belong to a guild that opposes the dominant church of death and light where shimmering knights of undeath defend the realm from outsiders. The game should make it easy to do that. Inventing and imposing meaningless class groups is a completely unnecessary barrier to that kind of localization, because suddenly that staff of the necromancer would make a lot of sense in the hands of the warriors of my world despite being designed for "mages" and the Healer feat reserved for priests wouldn't be able to be enhanced by my "rogues who know some healing magic," because they're not technically priests.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

Numenara has the right approach in naming this role "jacks" (as in jack of all trades)

I also love the term "jack", and I think Numenera benefits from its clean slate and having just the three classes: glaive (warrior), nano (mage), and jack (trickster).

And sure, I'll throw some more trickster alternatives into the ring:
Opportunist
Troubleshooter
Fixer

 

[Mistwell]

Not so much about balance, rather I think I was viewing it from the point of view of opening up new possibilities.

Of course one way to go, is have the Fighter find the uber weapon, Wizard find the uber staff, Rogue find the uber cloak etc., so that the Fighter is even stronger at fighting, the wizard casts even stronger fireballs, the Rogue is even better at hiding...

It's not at all wrong per se, but what do you get in the end this way? Numbers creep, even higher probabilities of success... which maybe then have to be compensated by buffing encounters or increasing challenges so that the game is more or less at the same "sweet spot" of challenges.

They're aware of this going in, and are using bounded accuracy to deal with it. It's not like you could avoid this to begin with: any system that depends on both classes and levels will have numbers creep, and either a plan to deal with that, or not. This game has a plan to deal with that. Now, there are classless and level-less systems out there, but they're just not D&D.

If you want a mage good at stealth, give them the boots of stealth I mentioned. They won't be as good at sneaking as the rogue, and the boots won't help them sneak as well as the rogue, but they will be better at sneaking. If they REALLY want to focus on stealth, they just need to multiclass as a rogue. But you're not going to get the full effect of another classes key ability by picking up that single magic item anyway...so I am not sure how the result could be any better for the desire you have other than it does in fact make you better at sneaking.

What I had in mind, rather than balance, was tossing-in some additional options. Let the Rogue use a Wand of Fireballs, the Wizard use an Arrow of Slaying, and the Fighter use a Cloak of Invisibility, and each of them has one option to try out they didn't have before.

So a class-based system where magic items routinely break down the classes and anyone can be anything through magic items? Come on, surely you see the issues inherent in such a system. Why not just go for a class-less system if that's your intent?

The point is, if magic items are only occasionally restricted (or are restricted in ways other than class i.e. restricted to those who are already good at something), you still have the choice whether you want to distribute them "right" or oddly. If restrictions by class are the standard (not that this is actually currently suggested...) there is no choice.

If they can give you the class ability of another class, we know how they will be distributed as surely as we know how they'd be distributed under the currently discussed system. If the rogue only gets better at something he was already great at and never failed at anyway, but the mage instead gets a rogue ability they couldn't succeed at before, it's definitely going to the mage in that system. You have to choose which system you want, and I think the obvious choice is to have a class-based system that reinforces that system with magic items if there is a choice.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

There is absolutely no reason the class group should not be referred to as Rogue. They changed the class name from Thief to Rogue after more than half of the game's history (and iterations). What's the issue with changing it back?

I tend to agree, but here's why they won't do it. If you rename Rogue to Thief and Trickster to Rogue, then the class now called Thief is broader than its name. The problem is that "Thief" was never a good name in the first place.

 

[Mistwell]

Your assertion of my assumption is false. I merely regard the difference between "can't use it" and "can't get a special benefit for using it" as largely irrelevant, because the part I'm interested in is the can't. As I explained above, there's still no virtue in making this distinction that is fundamentally unconnected to the actual play of a particular character.

The system I mentioned, you CAN get special benefit from using it. It works for you just fine. However, it works BETTER for the guy whose class is experienced with such things. There is no "can't" involved.

Here it is again:

"Elvish Boots: When worn, rogues gain expertise in Dex (move silent) checks, others gain skill proficiency in such checks."
"Wand of Eldritch Rays: Fires a ray of energy at a target within 25', doing 1d6 damage, or 2d6 if fired by a Mage."
"Rod of Healing: This rod heals 1d6 hit points of damage to a target within 25", or 2d6 damage if used by a Cleric."
"Staggering Maul +1: This Maul deals 2d6+1 bludgeoning damage. Targets struck must succeed on a DC15 Constitution save or else are Restrained for 1 round. Fighters wielding this weapon may choose to Stun targets rather than restrain them."

In all of these examples, the item is usable by anyone, but it works better if used by a particular class which is naturally better at the sorts of things that item does.

It's not "fundamentally unconnected to the actual play of a particular character" because:

Members of some classes tend to be better at certain types of activities than members of other classes. So for example:

Rogue classes tend to be better at stealth than others.
Mage classes tend to be better at arcane magic than others.
Cleric classes tend to be better at receiving divine aid than others.
Fighter classes tend to be better at the use of unusual melee weapons than others.

Having magic items which work better for those who are better at doing the sorts of things those items help with, makes sense to me.

You've basically gotten the same response from many people at this point - what you want is, at it's heart, a class-less system. You want any class to be able to be any other class, through magic items. If you want that, it's better to do that through the class system itself, and multi-classing system and hybrid system. You're not going to get anyone using any item exactly to the same effect in every classes hands. That view simply doesn't work well with a class-based system, because it makes the class system much less meaningful and D&D players seem to like class systems.

I get it that you see no virtue in it. But others, like myself, do. And we've given you lots of examples of things this type of system helps accomplish. Things that people like, done in that manner.

 

[Mistwell]

I tend to agree, but here's why they won't do it. If you rename Rogue to Thief and Trickster to Rogue, then the class now called Thief is broader than its name. The problem is that "Thief" was never a good name in the first place.

At this point it doesn't matter if it was a good name in the first place, because it has enough goodwill surrounding it from tradition that it's now a good name for this game.