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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1820542" data-attributes="member: 5171">How do you figure?  I can see the wizard as an advisor or the fighter as a general, but unless you're using house or variant rules to get additional class skills or some such, a single-classed fighter or wizard is a lousy choice for political power.  No Sense Motive, no Diplomacy, no Bluff.  Not a lot of intrigue potential there.  The only way a single-class core Fighter stays in power is if he's got a rogue or bard working behind the scenes to keep him there -- in which case, how much power does the fighter really have?  He's not in charge.  He's on the fast-track to Tragic Hero-land as soon as the bard/rogue decides that it's time for our glorious leader to become a martyr and change the tune.I mean, if we're going by fantasy fiction, yeah, lots of fighters and wizards in charge.  But in fantasy fiction, the fighters and wizards who are in charge are more likely to be multiclassed with a few rogue levels tossed in -- and are then a few levels higher than the PCs in order to be as powerful a wizard as the PC wizard while still being able to manipulate people and work the intrigue angle well enough to stay in power.Why is the rogue low-born and the fighter high-born?  That's one possible way to do it, of course, but by no means the only way.  If I'm playing a high-born noble who is used to working the political scene, ain't no way you're gonna get me to play a core Fighter.  Variant Fighter who loses heavy armor proficiency and first-level feat for more skill points, while trading Climb and Craft for Diplomacy and Sense Motive -- yes.  Core Fighter multiclassed with Rogue or Bard -- yes.  Core Rogue that I play as a cunning duelist rather than a hack-and-slash master -- yes.  Core fighter all by himself?  No.Agree here, definitely.  The difference is that the bard can do a lot of the same stuff, and he also gets skills that help more directly.  Of course, the wizard can do those things earlier and more often.  It's a tradeoff.But in a core D&D campaign, the big people in power are going to a) not be charmable, either because they ain't human or because they've got protective magic or wards; b) be able to detect enchantments on their minions, likely by having a circlet that continuously detects magic or a wizard advisor who notes that "the steward radiates enchantment -- our enemies have likely compromised him"; c) have access to magic of the same sort, or at the very least have social structures in place that make such magic very limited.If you run a game that you treat as low magic (ie, your castle is a historically accurate castle with no magical wards, the king's elite guards have no magical items or protections against enchantment, and the best detection you have against glamered or invisible people is trained watchdogs), your high-magic PCs are going to walk all over the kingdom.  A political intrigue game run with D&D definitely requires that the bad guys have enough magical mojo to block divinations and put out their own enchantments or illusions as necessary.I agree that wizards, clerics, and fighters aren't useless.  When I said "endgame", I was thinking, generally, of "once the course of action has been decided upon, and it's time to go on a mission".  That's not just every once in awhile -- that's pretty regular.  They're not useless by any stretch, and I apologize for misspeaking.  However, I'd stand by the notion that, unless the DM takes steps to keep them in the game, the core, single-class fighters, wizards, and clerics are likely to be the folks who respond to developments in the game, rather than the folks who uncover the developments or the folks who actually create those developments in the first place.That's a fine game role -- the party bard or rogue finds out about the conspiracy and says, "Here's the sitch," the party cleric does some moral thinking and comes up with a good solution, and the party wizard and fighter use tactical thinking to come up with the best way to get the result that the cleric wants, based on the information the rogue obtained.  (I put the cleric in front because he's got the direct line to the gods; if you want moral justification in a political intrigue game, the cleric is as good a justifier as anything.)</blockquote>

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