Primary ways to dungeon crawl

[GMMichael]

I'm setting up a dungeon crawl one-off and want to offer some pregenerated characters to reduce setup time. They'll have a touch of room for customization, so I'm hoping I can get away with some generic pre-gens and not, you know, 21 different sheets to proofread.

My first three shots at the dungeon crawl archetypes are: fighter, sneaker, caster.

These line up with Elder Scrolls Online's take on basic classes, but are there other ways to dungeon crawl? I suppose there are Talker and Singer too, but those two are likely to get axed after they alert the first dwarven sphere to the party's presence. Does the Caster really need to break down into Fireballer and Healer? According to the White Box, the answer to that is "yes." Is it critical to have Final Fantasy 1's blends of these, the Black Belt (fighter/sneaker) and the Red Mage (fighter/caster)?

 

[payn]

Look to inspiration!

 

[ichabod]

In terms of breaking down caster into artillery and healing, I think it's system dependent. How important is healing to the system, and how does the system provide healing? For 5E, I'd say you want a healer. Other systems? I don't know. Talker depends on the dungeon. Is it just a kill fest, or are there going to be opportunities for a talker to talk?

 

[Mannahnin]

I'm setting up a dungeon crawl one-off and want to offer some pregenerated characters to reduce setup time. They'll have a touch of room for customization, so I'm hoping I can get away with some generic pre-gens and not, you know, 21 different sheets to proofread.

I like your thinking. More broadly re: a one shot with pre-gens, here are a few other IMO best practices to speed matters:

1. Have players roll off for choice order using a d20 or something rather than losing time to the "you go ahead", "no, please, you first" politeness.
2. Have race/class and optionally name and character portrait in BIG PRINT (readable across the table) at the top of the sheets. Make it so everyone can see at a glance with the sheets lying on the table what the options are, without having to individually pick up and read them.
3. Optionally, don't even give the players the sheets. JUST a card with that info above. It saves time if they can just pick based on the most high level details and review the actual sheet once they have the character. IME there can be a tendency for one or two players to really want to look carefully at all the options, and this can cost a lot of time for little to no benefit.

 

[Celebrim]

Talker is part of the Sneaker skill set.

Really, if you are talking about the purpose of archetypes, the idea is to allow every participant to play a unique role. So how many roles you have really depends on how many participants you see as being the maximum provided for the game.

Typically, after generating Fighter, Sneaker, Mage the next proliferation is over offensive minded (DPS) or defensive minded (Sustain) where the offensive minded archetypes try to end the fight quickly while the defensive minded intend to lose the fewest resources possible in the fight. Obviously, ending it quickly is one way to sustain conflict, but offensive minded characters tend to suffer when they can't end fights quickly and defensive minded characters tend to suffer when you need to end a fight quickly (because the foe ramps or scales or is a glass cannon).

So you might break that three into like Berserker, Bastion, Hunter, Rascal, Conjurer, and Priest.

Further proliferation occurs when you start multiclassing to take parts of the concept from two classes and merge them. For example, "Paladin" is a Bastion/Priest and Bard is a Rascal/Priest. How free you want to allow for multiclass archetypes is up to you, but I'd suggest probably only like/like pairings - no multiclassing offensive minded with defensive minded archetypes. You want to avoid "Jack of All Trades, Master of All/None" combinations. And that would get you from 6 to 12: Paladin, Bard, Paragon (Bastion/Rascal), Slayer (Berserker/Hunter), Witch (Berserker/Conjurer), Ranger (Hunter/Conjurer).

 

[GMMichael]

In terms of breaking down caster into artillery and healing, I think it's system dependent. How important is healing to the system, and how does the system provide healing? For 5E, I'd say you want a healer. Other systems? I don't know. Talker depends on the dungeon. Is it just a kill fest, or are there going to be opportunities for a talker to talk?

Well, it's a contest, and character death means a seat opens up for another player. So healing is important to the PCs, but not to me! Players will want a healer around, but not when it comes to determining the contest winner.

Healing will be available from potions that have a random chance of appearing in treasure chests, and possibly from first aid kits of characters with some Healer skill and a safe, well-lit place to work. There will be only a handful of these such places. Also, each new adventurer brings a scrap of enchanted scroll that removes some damage from those who see its mystical content (i.e. surviving into the next round brings a partial heal as a reward). So, I guess a healer-character isn't mission critical.

Will there be opportunities to talk? Not for reaching the goal. But I'd love to see a bard try to hang out in the back, buffing with magic, and not get voted out when the next torch burns out.

 

[Celebrim]

Will there be opportunities to talk? Not for reaching the goal. But I'd love to see a bard try to hang out in the back, buffing with magic, and not get voted out when the next torch burns out.

This is a perfect opportunity to give an archetype group sustain moves like "Hey, guys, I found more torches."

 

[CreamCloud0]

i'd probably divide the basic roles of dungeoncrawling into the five following, the classes are just general suggestions on what i think would best fit:
-martial combat/frontline tank (fighter/barbarian) takes hits and deals them back out, the usual stuff.
-offensive and controller caster (sorcerer/warlock) consistent magic damage and enemy disabler.
-defensive and support caster (cleric/bard) keeps the party topped up, fighting fit and protected.
-knowledge skillmonkey, also possibly utility caster (bard/wizard/ranger) opens alternate paths and solutions through being able to provide additional information and context to the party.
-explorer/scout+lockpicking (rogue/ranger) able to get to/open paths to locations that the rest of the party wouldn't manage to and move about without being noticed to gather information on enemies.

while i do consider those last as two separate roles i do also think there's a good amount of overlap in characters that might perform them.

personally i think the 5e classes very much have the traditional dungeoncrawling roles hybridised across the various classes, there's not the clean division between fighter, mage, thief and cleric roles that there was in earlier editions and i might actively restrict what some of the classes are capable of to really lean into the party based dungeoncrawling aspect but that's just me.

 

[aramis erak]

I'm setting up a dungeon crawl one-off and want to offer some pregenerated characters to reduce setup time. They'll have a touch of room for customization, so I'm hoping I can get away with some generic pre-gens and not, you know, 21 different sheets to proofread.

My first three shots at the dungeon crawl archetypes are: fighter, sneaker, caster.

These line up with Elder Scrolls Online's take on basic classes, but are there other ways to dungeon crawl? I suppose there are Talker and Singer too, but those two are likely to get axed after they alert the first dwarven sphere to the party's presence. Does the Caster really need to break down into Fireballer and Healer? According to the White Box, the answer to that is "yes." Is it critical to have Final Fantasy 1's blends of these, the Black Belt (fighter/sneaker) and the Red Mage (fighter/caster)?

You're missing the Miner and the healer. Healer is a different role from general caster in most of the fiction I've read. Often not a caster... See also Aragorn in LotR... And in D&D, healers are ALWAYS clerics, not wizards - different low-overlap spell list - if you're doing this for D&D familiar players....

Miners are not always part of a group.... but I've seen three types - Dwarf with Pickaxe and possibly explosives, Wizard with Transmute Rock to Mud, and any kind of character possessing a Horn of Blasting or Portable Hole.

 

[Celebrim]

.... but I've seen three types - Dwarf with Pickaxe and possibly explosives, Wizard with Transmute Rock to Mud, and any kind of character possessing a Horn of Blasting or Portable Hole.

Nice lateral thinking there.

The Archaeologist class in Nethack is this. You start with the pickaxe and as such it's your primary problem-solving device until the midgame when the classes mostly start looking similar.

However, you could argue that "Miner" is a variety of "Sneaker" since it's about evading the problems rather than overcoming them directly. And the Archaeologist build in Nethack reinforces that in that your other class perks have to do with stealth, speed, perception and divination.

Nethack also has a dedicated "Healer" class that is distinct from the Cleric/Priest. It's basically a class that sacrifices a good deal of the clerical magic and fighting skills for a ton of general exploration sustain - food, money, potions, etc.