Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2093862" data-attributes="member: 172">[The capabilities of d20 have been more than a little stretched. But I thought we were talking specifically about D&D here, and all that entails. Certainly there are a wide variety of d20 variants; the better ones IMO recognize that there is a default adventuring model and, where appropriate, reforge there archetype selection to fit it. Midnight stands out to me as a grand example.I was, you recall, speaking about the central adventure model of D&D, or more generally, the campaign style of the GM (I am not necessarily saying just psuedo medieval dungeon crawls, but to be certain, the XP model itself betrays an expectation of combat, and the class layout is built around the "four pillars"). If the player has an array of options, you can no longer guarantee that the one that clicks with the player is one that is going to be a productive PC for the party. If it's not, then the player has not "made the right choice." His choice could either or both sidetrack the campaign or lead to the player feeling unneeded when his character's capabilities fail to be a good match to any situation at hand.Obviously, some manner of GM judgement can help guide the player towards a selection that will be functional in the context of the campaign that the GM has planned, but IMO this is so much the easier if the player can acheive what they want within a well known framework addressed at the adventuring model.You may not have, but I will hold my own position that if you can make a class cover as many closely related cases to it's archetype, that is much better than generating a variety of more disparate solutions for each one.Obviously, we have different definitions of "hew down the opposition" here. I am alluding to the sorts of capabilities that aren't even options until higher levels, and more commonly associated with powerful figures from legend that march into armies undaunted.I think how much they get used would be much more telling than how much the books which include them as just one option among many get purchased. Purchasing a book does not equate to use of all its parts.I'm not making any claims as to how broadly it is accepted, but I don't think you are on any better footing to be making such claims.As you yourself said "more fruitcart than bandwagon", I'm not so sure our views of the situation differ here.You recognize, of course, this is only one player with only one core option. Further, you bring up only the player. They player really only need concern themselves with the classes they actually use from game-to-game. When I speak of managing classes, I speak more so of the GM.I don't know how you are as a GM, but as for me, I find it prudent to regulate every supplemental class (prestige or core) allowed in the game, for game balance reasons, role reasons, applicability to the setting, etc.You may not, and that is entirely understandable. But there is a principle in software engineering called the 80% principle, which I think applies to game design. To wit, consider what 80% of the people want to do with your product 80% of the time, and make these your central design criteria. Consider the corner cases later.That said, as already stated, I beleive they could do a better job of covering their bases than they have. But at the same time, I think you should recognize and accept that by chosing to go off the beaten path in expected activities, you buy yourself more overhead in terms of managing the supplemental options and fit them together. Further, even considering your activities are different than the core adventuring model, I do think you would be wiser to limit the player options to those that play to the one you have selected, vice simply allowing any core class that strikes a player's fancy.I assure you it is not, and I fail to see why you would consider it so.This is not a non-issue to me at all. As I said posts ago, being funneled into a specific archetype from the beginning is a problem as it cuts of the possibilities for different directions the player may wish to take the character later.Actually, I find the latter to be a good example of what I am talking about. For one class, it might not be such a big deal. If you add many spellcasting classes and rely on many supplemental spells (using new spells is a much more common occurence in my game than using new classes), you have to evaluate which new spells go with which new classes for each supplement for each new class that you need to portray that may take advantage of. That seems no mean task to me.Now say your class has a list of bonus feats; every new splatbook with feats that comes out there is the possibility that there are good candidates for inclusion in the new feat list.You miss the point of my guidelines then. My guidelines are not there because they prevent these problems. Rather, because they minimize the number of times you will have to go through these issues by minimizing the need for the inclusion of further new classes while netting as many concepts as possible by only accepting fairly broad new classes. In other words, it doesn't prevent the management hassles associated with a new class, just the number of times you have to go through it.Further, splat books are far from the only support that are built of the existing core classes. I also have setting books, city source books, setting design sourcebooks, computer generation tools, NPC sourcebooks, and so forth, which are primarily written with the existing arrangement of character classes in mind. An example off the top of my head: races. The ironborn race, for example, has racial abilities written for the core classes; you chose a class like courtier, you won't fird a corresponding option for you (note that the courtier is a class I do use, so take well my point here that I am not saying these issues are not insurmountable, just that each one that crops up is a little more house ruling you need to do if you want everything to fit as neatly as they do the core class.)Again, then you fail to consider a lot of the support that is out there. There's more than just splat books.Well, if you ask a question and wait for an answer before you make assumptions about my resoning, I will be delighted to spell out my meaning for you. But I can fairly speculate on which aspect of my philophy you might be curious about. And surely, since you actually have more children than me, you can appreciate that I don't have all day to dedicate to one exhaustively complete post.But really, presuming to speak for me (a "strawman", if you will) is rude and does little to advance the debate but does much to inflame emotions.</blockquote>

Verification