New Legends and Lore: Live Together, Die Alone

[I'm A Banana]

Whats the point of having classes if everyone just does everything as needed?

D&D classes have always been about defining archetypes. If every class is a utility infielder then how can you really distinguish the classes. Everyone defending, healing, sneaking, and dealing damage is really a classless system in function if not form.

Class != Role

Clerics still are divinely powered. Rogues still sneak and stab. Fighters still take point. Wizards still cast the spells that make the people fall down. There can still be significant differences in the quality of being able to fill the role, and differences in how it is done. Clerics can still be the bestest healers, they are just not the ONLY healers. Fighters can still be the highest AC in town, but they are not the ONLY characters who can take a blow. Rogues can deal the highest damage, but "striker-level" damage doesn't REQUIRE that someone have a certain class (or group of classes).

You are thus not forced into choosing a certain role in order to balance the party. Someone who really likes helping others can still gravitate toward the cleric, but if no one in the group is particularly inclined for that, no one is FORCED to be the healer, since everyone can accomplish some baseline healing.

This is a strategic element to the game. It adds flexibility in encounter design, party design, and round-by-round tactics.

Sometimes no one wants to be the support guy. For those circumstances, EVERYONE should have to share the burden of being a support guy.

Not to mention that this helps mitigate the eyesore of 4e's "An entire class for every power source and role!" when all that you might need to play an Ardent-style character is actually just a mechanic to turn your psion into a leader for a round.

 

[Dausuul]

One thing to keep in mind is that there are different forms of "support." I like playing a support character, but I find clerics incredibly boring because all they ever do is cast transmute small number to big number. I prefer tactical support--the wizard who cuts off half the monsters with a wall of force so the party can tackle them piecemeal, or the warlord who maneuvers everyone around the battlefield and gives out free attacks to allies at the opportune moment.

Just a thing to think about when discussing support options. Numeric buffs are not the only way to help your buddies.

 

[Kaodi]

I think that ideally every character would have the things they need to be self-sufficient. What a class would do is specialize you in one of the general abilities needed for self-sufficiency.

Maybe, in a way, classes could work like they do for monsters in 4e: they are templates to overlay on top of a base. For characters though, the base should be self-sufficient. In fact, I think it would be interesting if you could in fact play " classless D&D " by simply using the base and forgetting about classes, though that would not be the default option.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I know it has several major drawbacks, but I can't quite shake the thought that D&D would work better if the default was that every character was built on 3 classes.

The classes would necessarily need to be somewhat more narrow than they typically are. Otherwise, you'd end up with something that might as well be a point-based system, or the derived math would quickly become ridiculous.

Build multiclassing as the default, and you can get to the equivalent of single class fairly easily. In the complete game, if you want the traditional experience, then the "fighter" becomes a "fighter, knight, barbarian" while the "rogue" is a "rogue, thief, acrobat". But if you want well-rounded characters, then you might have players build to exact concepts. The "fighter" is maybe a "fighter, paladin, ranger" or even a "ranger, barbarian, bard". You can get as exotic or not, as you want.

When you have only 3 players, they easily divy up the responsibilities that they want to cover. If you have 8 players, the extreme number of possible class combinations is far greater than the class list. So you get some "concept protection" easily rendered in mechanics, even if simple niches are overlapped.

For the "basic" version of the game, you have alternate rules for dropping to two classes, or even one--for something that plays a lot more like Red Box. (The DMG would need guidelines on adjusting adventures and challenges.) "Companion" characters are also of this nature.

You can easily have classes that don't do well in combat. These are "companion" NPCs or meant to be used as the last class chosen for a PC to round out a concept. They are marked as such. So the group knows not to build a character on nothing but these--unless the group is experienced and comfortable enough with that, to handle it.

And perhaps best of all, we don't get wonky, half broken, half wimpy, half goofy multiclass rules built on a single-class chassis.

If we absolutely must have something easier to choose for "quick start", then I suggest some classic "archetypes" already put together out of the three classes, through the whole level range. That would be fairly close to existing classes now.

 

[Henry]

I guess I'm a voice of dissent -- "self-sufficient" to me implies "no reason to be a group." I might be self-sufficient in some respects -- I have a job, a car, a dwelling, can dress myself -- but I couldn't run a 100-person or even a 10-person company by myself; I need at the very least one qualified right-hand person to share or delegate with so that I don't lose my mind in day-to-day operations.

Contrary to US Army advertisements, there is no such thing as "An Army of One" -- we all need somebody to watch our backs or offer backup, because we can't do it alone, whether it's disaster relief, police duties, military operations, or food bank drives.

Relate this to adventuring -- one thing that bugged me in 3E more than anything was "prestige class dippers": Those people who successfully picked up three levels of this, four levels of that, to where they could fight, stealth-kill, heal and utility spell their way out of anything. I personally hate lone wolves in a PC group; more often than not they offer no reasons for interaction, no vulnerabilities to make life interesting, and no interest in anyone but themselves -- they might as well play the card game Solitaire as play in an RPG. I still remember one build I saw -- guy had levels of Fighter, Rogue, Bard, and of all things Termple raider of Olidammara- he could stand toe to toe, sneak attack, cast from a bunch of 1st and 2nd level wands, heal himself, pick any lock, bluff his way out of anything -- it passed ridiculous and into boring territory for me.

I like the group that has the biggest combat badass around -- but who would get overwhelmed by numbers if not for the wizard or sorcerer and who couldn't talk his way out of a paper bag. I like the group who has the ultimate skill monkey -- but who would get creamed in a straight-up fight and waylaid by a failed save. And I like the group who has a master of magic or divine intervention, unassailable by spell -- but who needs his friends if there's a mystery afoot or a sharp attention to detail.

It's how the game was set up since 1974, in part I think from its wargaming roots for the reason I mentioned above --wargames are made up of specialty units that work together, after all. Gimme a character who is a badass, BUT who still would think twice about adventuring on his own, because it's a dangerous world out there and he can't do it all. I want Justice League, not just Superman.

 

[nedjer]

There's kind of an existing mechanic for this. Drop four black puddings into any given encounter and players seem to come over all co-operative in no time at all.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Class != Role

Clerics still are divinely powered. Rogues still sneak and stab. Fighters still take point. Wizards still cast the spells that make the people fall down. There can still be significant differences in the quality of being able to fill the role, and differences in how it is done. Clerics can still be the bestest healers, they are just not the ONLY healers. Fighters can still be the highest AC in town, but they are not the ONLY characters who can take a blow. Rogues can deal the highest damage, but "striker-level" damage doesn't REQUIRE that someone have a certain class (or group of classes).

You are thus not forced into choosing a certain role in order to balance the party. Someone who really likes helping others can still gravitate toward the cleric, but if no one in the group is particularly inclined for that, no one is FORCED to be the healer, since everyone can accomplish some baseline healing.

This is a strategic element to the game. It adds flexibility in encounter design, party design, and round-by-round tactics.

Sometimes no one wants to be the support guy. For those circumstances, EVERYONE should have to share the burden of being a support guy.

Not to mention that this helps mitigate the eyesore of 4e's "An entire class for every power source and role!" when all that you might need to play an Ardent-style character is actually just a mechanic to turn your psion into a leader for a round.

I'm not interested in identical function being masked in a thin veneer of form. Power sources are.......lame. Healing is healing, it doesn't matter if it is divinely powered, from skill use, or it just happens somehow.

Your suggestion sounds like there is really only one class. The class has the basic abilities of hurt, shield, heal, and sneak. Everyone has a 10, a 7, a 5, and a 3 and chooses where to put each ranking. We can dress them up in different costumes and flavor the manifestation of the abilities to give the illusion of different classes. The "fighter" with a 10 hurt rating can do so via weapons, while the "wizard" would use spells.

 

[Plane Sailing]

It's how the game was set up since 1974, in part I think from its wargaming roots for the reason I mentioned above --wargames are made up of specialty units that work together, after all. Gimme a character who is a badass, BUT who still would think twice about adventuring on his own, because it's a dangerous world out there and he can't do it all. I want Justice League, not just Superman.

I think you are giving the wargaming roots more credence than they bear in these circumstances.

A much greater emphasis on early D&D was in emulating fictional heroes, and that was certainly what drew me to it. The opportunity to play Conan, or Ged, or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Pretty much the only 'adventuring party' in fiction in those days was Lord of the Rings, and even that quickly split up into small groups. Most fantasy fiction had a single protagonist and that was the touchstone which D&D latched onto. It happened that people entered into dungeons in groups, but in most peoples minds they were Conan, or Merlin or Aragorn etc.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm not interested in identical function being masked in a thin veneer of form. Power sources are.......lame. Healing is healing, it doesn't matter if it is divinely powered, from skill use, or it just happens somehow.

I don't really dispute any of this. (I don't think power sources are lame, but eh, opinions.)

Your suggestion sounds like there is really only one class.

I don't follow.

The class has the basic abilities of hurt, shield, heal, and sneak.

Not at all. Just the idea that each character can contribute in multiple ways, rather than each character only contributing in one way.

The main ways of contributing to any "race to 0" resolution scheme (like D&D combat) is to take the enemy's points, and to protect (or restore) your own points. You can expand it to "enhancing" how quickly you take points, or how well you are at protecting or restoring your own points. That's just the nature of the mechanic.

That's not mandating any more similarity than saying that every class can make attack rolls and roll damage, and has an AC and HP. There's clearly a lot of diversity within those bounds.

Everyone has a 10, a 7, a 5, and a 3 and chooses where to put each ranking. We can dress them up in different costumes and flavor the manifestation of the abilities to give the illusion of different classes. The "fighter" with a 10 hurt rating can do so via weapons, while the "wizard" would use spells.

I don't understand what you're talking about.

If everyone has some mechanic that lets them heal some ally's HP and gives them a little buff, that doesn't mean that the mechanic is the same for everyone.

To perhaps clarify, the flattening of the roles that I'm talking about would be something like giving any 4e character one leader ability, one striker ability, one defender ability, and one controller ability.

Maybe my fighter chooses Inspiring Word, Hunter's Quarry, Combat Challenge, and a first-level Hunter at-will like Rapid Shot.

Then he chooses in a given round which one he can do. His class features and powers enhance his Defender and Striker qualities solidly, so he's still a very good defender. And his power choice in no way needs to overlap, say, the party Wizard (who took Rune of Mending, Chaos Power, Psionic Defense, and Hypnotism).

Clearly, that doesn't exactly work out as it is, but the concept is that no one person needs to do just one thing.

We can also differentiate based on the challenges that the party faces. Perhaps Fighters excel at combat, Clerics excel at personal interaction, Rogues and excel at exploration, and Wizards are excel at information-gathering. We can also differentiate based on environment: the first four are good in "dungeons," then we have Rangers (exploration - wilderness) and Druids (information - wilderness) and Barbarians (combat - wilderness) too.

I'm really not saying that we need to go classless even a little bit, and I haven't the foggiest notion about where you're getting that from. Unless perhaps you're choosing to define classes based on what they CANNOT do instead of what they CAN do?

 

[Slander]

I agree that the character's role in the group should be a choice independent of class selection. To use 4E terms, I think there is plenty of design room to allow for effective Rogue Defenders, a Rogue Leaders, or Rogue Controllers.

But the requirement for me is twofold a) player choice b) the "or". I'm not particularly fond of "generalists" in DnD. The idea of a group of players each great at one thing, kinda good at everything else, or worse, pretty good at everything doesn't appeal to me at all.

I strongly believe parties should be made up of interdependent characters, an interdependency based the need for a variety of skills and not simply a need for greater numbers. We're not talking about characters being dependent on other people to make it through day to day life. We're talking about characters who have made a life choice to face some of the most extreme circumstances their world has to offer. No character should be comfortable walking into any given situation.

And that is not to say the system shouldn't allow generalist characters to be created. But generalists should be the result of player choice, and not a property automatically built into each class.

Unless perhaps you're choosing to define classes based on what they CANNOT do instead of what they CAN do?

Not classes ... characters. Characters are defined equally by what they can and cannot do. The "can" defines their contribution to the group, and the "cannot" defines why they even put up with the group to begin with.