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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wik" data-source="post: 4678669" data-attributes="member: 40177">First, Shadowrun is a great example of what I was getting at.  While it isn't class-based, but is instead a skill-based game, it does require players to choose their role in a game.  In effect, if you announce to the group "we're playing an investigative game", you'll have a variety of shadowrunning types to choose from.Personally, I don't think 4e allows this, yet.  I do think 4e has a better system "Under the hood", as it were, and that many aspects (such as trained/untrained skills, or the new feat system) would work well in an investigative game.  However, there just isn't enough mechanical variation among the character roles.There are only a few skills that would really be useful to characters in a 4e investigation game - Perception, Diplomacy, Bluff, Nature, Heal, Streetwise, Stealth, maybe Thievery, maybe Arcane, and maybe History.  That's ten skills, which may seem like alot... except that, in a group of even four characters, with four skills each, there will be quite a bit of overlap (each character could conceivably have half of the "good" skills).  Factor in that the only real non-combat abilities available to the characters are rituals (and a small smattering of utility powers), and I personally see a problem.  If rituals were broken down in some way (martial rituals, arcane rituals, divine rituals), there'd be less of a problem.  But as it is, an investigative game would encourage the spending of a feat on ritual casting - and, in practical play, once one PC found a ritual, every PC in the group would learn it.  Meaning, in 4e vs. 3e, the 4e characters are much more likely of all being capable of doing the exact same things.This may not be a problem for you, but I find it doesn't work out in my own games.  I want a group of specialists, not a group of generalists - and 4e does not encourage that style of play.  That being said, this is not a 3e vs. 4e debate, and I recognize that.  I'm just sayign that, personally, I don't think 4e facilitates mystery adventures very well.  I don't think most editions of D&D do it particularly well, with 3e Eberron being the only really "good" mystery setting (and I don't think 4e eberron would be a better choice, as of yet).  Were I to choose a setting to run an mystery campaign in, I could lean towards Shadowrun (if it were dumbed-down).  Earthdawn is a possibility (there is a variation in non-combat skills available to each character, and background skills are so wide as to be practically limitless).  Savage Worlds, with work, could do it (though it suffers the same skill fault as 4e, the perks could be expanded to allow for considerable character variation).  I wouldn't use the d6 system, even though I love it, because it really encourages broad characters (unless you use the point-buy special abilities, which I'm not a huge fan of).  Personally, I think d20 Call of Cthulu is a great system for mysteries.  While it may suffer one of the faults I mentioned earlier (the only way to differentiate characters is in Skills, and there isn't such a huge number of skills available that a character couldn't just take 'em all), in actuality, the game is sort of a mix of mystery and horror that a character that just specializes in the mystery side of things is going to be useless when he has to batter down a door to escape the elder crawling squid thingies.I think if you wanted to run a 4e mystery, that this would be the approach to emulate - make mystery only half the equation.  The other half in 4e should probably be combat (but it doesn't necessarily have to be).  that way, PCs have to split their priorities, and it becomes much harder to just dominate in one field.</blockquote>

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