Mike Mearls on Combat vs Non-Combat roles

[Ahglock]

Unless the feats are complete garbage, I don't see the game living up to that statement.

And sadly, the way he puts it at the beginning- 'The idea is to make sure everyone can contribute in a meaningful way in a fight.' doesn't give me a lot of hope. The complete lack of the counterpart statement- 'The idea is to make sure everyone can contribute in a meaningful way outside a fight', makes me a sad panda.

So you can blow a lot of feats to do something the class isn't built to do. But gods forbid they include some non-combat options built into the class. No matter what it is. I'm sure rogues can do non-combat things innately, and rangers will probably
do woodsy things.

But to be a fighter and a do non-combat things, you do have to give up some effectiveness. Even if its not a lot, you're still losing out. And... there isn't any reason the fighter (or anyone else) has to be an idiot-savant by default.

That is how I read it as well, and I hope what I read was wrong. If you want people balanced in the fight, they ought to be balanced out of the fight as well. The fighter should have just as much crap to do outside of the fight as the rogue and the wizard if everyone can fight as good as him.

 

[Ahglock]

Honestly, what I would like? Classes have no defined skills.

Fighters, pick 4 trained skills.

Rangers, pick 6.

Rogues, pick 8.

Of course, you end up with the Fighter with Perception, Stealth, Diplomacy and Athletics, but hey.

I like the idea of no class skill lists, but if the fighter gets 4 skills and the rogue 8 in your example the fighter should be better in a fight since apparently the rogue is better out of the fight.

 

[Ahglock]

Social rules can be the antithesis of roleplaying, though. "I Diplomacize him. I get a 20."

Where as I think lack of social rules is the antithesis of role-playing. I'm sick of the 8 chr, no skill whats it acting like an ambassador. Also when someone is being a jerk in the speech and I don't want to screw the party I can say, shut up and roll. For example, one of my players last session was being a putz.

The party was getting hired for simple body guard work during a sale of stolen property. He opens up the negotiations with we want 70% of the take, then when the employer says um I get the 70% you can have the 30% he tries to twist the words to mean that the employer was agreeing to the 70%, and then he tries to bump it up to 80%.

No reasonable person is going to give some hired help most the money in a deal he set up and did all the work on. I could of had the guy walk, which is what I initially was going to do, but then everyone else gets shutdown on the adventure because one player is being a jerk and trying to see how far he can push me. Instead I just say fine you did your speach now roll and let the dice decide what you are getting, you can call it whatever % you want but you are only getting the money I'm going to give you as the DM.

At least his character was the face of the party so he should be doing the talking but still if I went by what was said instead of the rules he'd of lost the job for everyone the adventurer would of ended 30 minutes into the night, and his character concept of face would of been meaningless.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Mike Mearls has written this post on rpgnet where he talks about 4e combat and non-combat roles:

Good catch!

I find this

Hopefully, the end result is that you can build whatever sort of PC you want to roleplay, making choices with an eye toward character concept and personality, without losing out on your character's basic ability to fight. We aimed to remove the "an interesting PC or an effective PC" choices in the game.

That doesn't mean that your character's non-combat stuff is diminished. If anything, it means we have more room for idiosyncratic or personality-driven options, since you can take those without hurting your character's baseline, expected combat ability.

As an example, you can play a fighter but spend all your feats to take and improve social skills, but in a fight you are still an effective defender. You aren't saddled with a lower than expected AC, attack bonus, or whatever because you built a fighter who was also a diplomat.

The fighter who goes all out on combat feats and stuff will (obviously) be more effective in melee than you, but the distance between you is measured in, say, meters instead of kilometers.

Meanwhile, the wizard, cleric, and rogue are just as happy with Lord Harran, dashing envoy of the Iron Throne, as they would be with Killmore Headbuster, swordmaster. Both those guys are effective, frontline fighters. Harran's player didn't have to sacrifice his "fightery-ness" to become the best Diplomacy user in the party.

to be a wholly heartening approach. While it may not be perfect, while their reach may exceed their grasp, I think it sounds (in principle) to be better than the current situation in every respect, and I'm looking forward to seeing their implementation.

Cheers

 

[jasin]

From what this sounds to me, feats aren't the precious commodity they used to be.

Before, if your fighter spent all his feats on Skill-enhancing, then he was pretty much a Warrior (NPC class). Even though he couldn't spend his fighter bonus feats on that stuff anyhow.

Now, it sounds like your fighter powers/abilities will do the weight lifting, and feats allow you to expand your options, rather than go higher. "A Better Fighter" becomes "More more options or a little bump here and there".

This reminds me of something Mearls said on rec.games.frp.dnd, even before the 4E announcement.

In essence, fighters are shackled to a system of abilities (feats) that's supposed to serve as a set of customizations/toys that you can use to make your character unique and fun. It's usually bad to force a sub-system to take on two, radically different burdens.

Then, I thought the intent was that feats should be more like Empower Spell or Combat Expertise than Weapon Focus or Spring Attack: rather than giving you outright bonuses or powers, they should give you more options that aren't obviously more powerful that what you could've done without the feat.

Now I'm thinking that perhaps what was meant was that feats should be more like Dodge or Blind-Fight or Iron Will: smaller bumps that don't directly build on any class's powers, so they're mostly useful to everyone and going "out of class" doesn't set you as far back. If the melee fighter has Dodge and Toughness and the diplomat fighter might have Skill Focus (diplomacy) and Persuasive, and there won't be as much of a gap between them as if the melee fighter had Power Attack and Improved Critical.

Or maybe it's a bit of both?

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

Honestly, what I would like? Classes have no defined skills.

Fighters, pick 4 trained skills.

Rangers, pick 6.

Rogues, pick 8.

Of course, you end up with the Fighter with Perception, Stealth, Diplomacy and Athletics, but hey.

I wouldn't mind a compromise between this and the more traditional system. Each class picks X skills from a class list of Y skills and for every point of Int bonus can choose an extra skill inside or outside of that list.

 

[Steely Dan]

Now I'm thinking that perhaps what was meant was that feats should be more like Dodge or Blind-Fight or Iron Will: smaller bumps that don't directly build on any class's powers,

Yeah, I believe that have stated that feats will be less volatile, as in there won't be grossly underpowered and overpowered feats, they will be more even in power across the board.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

This reminds me of something Mearls said on rec.games.frp.dnd, even before the 4E announcement.


Then, I thought the intent was that feats should be more like Empower Spell or Combat Expertise than Weapon Focus or Spring Attack: rather than giving you outright bonuses or powers, they should give you more options that aren't obviously more powerful that what you could've done without the feat.

Now I'm thinking that perhaps what was meant was that feats should be more like Dodge or Blind-Fight or Iron Will: smaller bumps that don't directly build on any class's powers, so they're mostly useful to everyone and going "out of class" doesn't set you as far back. If the melee fighter has Dodge and Toughness and the diplomat fighter might have Skill Focus (diplomacy) and Persuasive, and there won't be as much of a gap between them as if the melee fighter had Power Attack and Improved Critical.

Or maybe it's a bit of both?

I think it might like choosing between the following "builds":
Devious Manipulator, Skill Focus (Diplomacy), Skill Focus (Sense Motive), Improved Trip
vs.
Improved Trip, Improved Disarm, Improved Sunder, Improved Feint, Skill Focus (Bluff)

Build 1 has more out-of combat options, but still he has a trick in combat.
Build 2 has more in-combat options, and will be good at them, but he also learned a bit that's useful outside of combat.
Either way, Build 1 won't "hurt" his group in combats, since he still is good at attacking and dealing damage, he just isn't as "flashy" as build 2.

Instead of chosing between:
Weapn Focus, Weapon Specaisliation, Power Attack, Ceave, Improved Critical
vs
Skill Focus (Bluff), Skill Focus (Diplomacy), Improved Feint, Improved Trip, Iron Will

In most combat situations, build 1 will be plainly better at attacking and dealing damage. He is still pretty "simple" in combat, because he has less options.
Build 2 is probably cool outside of combats, too, and he as a few options within combat, but he he still is considerably worse at attacking and dealing damage. Which means it's a worse character to have around in a party that is frequently exposed to very challenging combats.

 

[Rechan]

I like the idea of no class skill lists, but if the fighter gets 4 skills and the rogue 8 in your example the fighter should be better in a fight since apparently the rogue is better out of the fight.

They've said that Rogues are still best at skills.

But it doesn't say necessarily that a fighter is better in a fight than a rogue. The designers are trying to make sure that all the classes are equal in a fight. He's better at a one-on-one stand-up duel, and better at taking two threatening enemies on at once. But the rogue just has different options in a fight.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

Social rules can be the antithesis of roleplaying, though. "I Diplomacize him. I get a 20."

I keep seeing this, and I keep disbelieving that this is going to be a problem.

The people who will do this... do you think they were going to role-play anyway? Not in my experience. And the players who roleplay everything won't stop doing that just because they are suddenly given a rule like this to use.

The social rules are going to affect the people in between, however, by giving them mechanical incentives to make social characters and a rules framework to ensure those characters will be competitive. This will almost inevitably lead to increased role-playing.