Role rigidity

[Pinotage]

I disagree. I couldn't care less about what the class field on my character sheet says, but I care a lot about building the character I want regardless of the classes I need to use to get there.

Unless the multiclassing rules are a lot better than they are currently, the easiest way to do that is to make powers and abilities more readily available regardless of class, not more closely tied to class. I'm already headed the exact opposite direction in my games; converting class abilities (especially from prestige classes) to feat chains right and left.

Couldn't have said it any better! I love versatility. Anything that takes away from it is a real turn-off for me.

Pinotage

 

[Aage]

But as it seems the multiclassing rules will allow you to pick talents from other classes while maintaining your original class. That'd make the system very versatile and your character would have loads of options, with the only real restriction being the number of talents you have.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I disagree. I couldn't care less about what the class field on my character sheet says, but I care a lot about building the character I want regardless of the classes I need to use to get there.

Yet this is the exact opposite of what drew me to D&D in the first place. My favorite part of D&D is that it is a team based game where people have to work together to accomplish goals. Sure, I like the story and I want to figure out what happens next, but the real part I look forward are those times that the group pulls together as a team to accomplish way more than they could do alone.

I like the fact that fighters can't heal themselves easily. I like that wizards are fairly weak in hand to hand combat. I like that clerics can't disable traps and open locks. I like that ever class has something they need other people for. I found that 3e started becoming too homogeneous. All characters could do anything they wanted to since the classes, feats, PrC, alternate class features, etc all allowed you to play a wizard who was a cleric, a rogue, and a fighter as well.

I love classes, I love class roles. I think there should be some wiggle room to make different types of characters within that role, but not to infringe on other people's roles. Too many times I've played in groups where someone decided to play a rogue because they really liked the idea of searching for traps, disabling them, unlocking doors, etc only to have someone else play a wizard with 1 level of rogue who was better at all the rogue skills than the pure rogue was. Or someone plays a fighter since they want to be the big bad, strong guy in the group only to have the druid or wizard become bigger and stronger than he is.

Everytime this has happened it has ended up with disappointed players who thought they were playing the best class for their role and instead found out that the best people for their role were classes that didn't seem like they should be. But you could only build the other classes that way if you had read all the rules and were really knowledgeable. The new players didn't have the ability to do that, so they were left out.

 

[Counterspin]

I am, admittedly, functioning under the presumption that multiclassing will include no xp penalties, and that the situation will be similar to the one in SWSaga, where multiclassing for class features is commonplace and expected.

 

[Desdichado]

Yet this is the exact opposite of what drew me to D&D in the first place.

Good for you! What drew you to D&D in the first place is exactly what pushed me away from it.

Well, one of several things. But a big one anyway.

 

[DreamChaser]

Hmmm...how to say this without sounding like I'm attacking a point of view...heck I'll just dive in.

D&D is, and always has been, a game of strict roles. From its origins where you were a fighting man, a magic user, a thief, or (later) an elf or a dwarf, you choose an archetype and ran with it. I find it worth noting that 2e pretty much died a terrible death with the implementation of Skills & Powers which largely deconstructed the class role system.

Now as 10 class roles has expanded to 66 with ever increasing overlap, we find ourselves on the dawn of a new edition.

GURPS and more recently BESM on the other hand are games designed to avoid strict roles and niches. Different structure, different play style.

I find it odd that self proclaimed niche / role haters have such an investment in the future of D&D, a game which is and has always been counter to their preferred style of gaming.

I think that clarifying class roles and forging some distinct boundaries around them is crucial to the survival of the game for a few reasons:

1) Novice players with little exposure to other games or fantasy will find it easier to jump in.
2) Experienced players will either stick with what they have (as many did with 3e) or change those aspects they don't like (as they did with 3e).

Even within this thread, there have been posts indicating concern over "increased" role rigidity followed by explanations of how that same problem was "fixed" in 3e. This, to me, is the simple reason that the game cannot be created for those of us who inherently change the game. They will never make us happy.

To make me happy, they would have to nix paladin as a core class (I lothe the concept as a starting character) and add gnome back in. . I'm not upset at them for leaving paladin in, because I know that they know that I'm the type of gamer who is going to change it anyway and most players LIKE the paladin and HATE the gnome.

This new edition is finally going to have an internal story and cosmology so that new players can jump in and have a concept to work with sans the extra investment to buy a campaign setting. They will have archetypes that they can relate to (elves, dwarves, dragon folk, demon folk for races; warrior, knight (paladin), wizard, warlock for classes).

Plus, recent experiments in multiclassing (Bo9S) tells me that they have their heads on straight for improving these rules.

That's my rant I guess. Anyone who dislikes the very structure of D&D will never be the target audience of any edition. Anyone who loves to tinker and change every system they get near will not be either. Casual gamers, new gamers, and experienced gamers who want something new are the target for 4e. Period.

DC

 

[Desdichado]

I don't know why you can say so authoritatively what the target audience for 4e is.

Those things you claim to "know" that 4e won't cater to? Well, 3e did very strongly, and was instrumental in bringing back many "prodigal son" gamers who had wandered away from D&D in the intervening years.

Maybe I haven't read every little snippet of news, but since when did 4e becoming more strongly archetypical and less suited for tinkerers become a design philosophy that...y'know, some of the actual designers have expressed?

Your whole post is a very thinly veiled "quit whining and go play GURPS" post. With an emphasis on "very thinly veiled."

 

[Reynard]

I find it odd that self proclaimed niche / role haters have such an investment in the future of D&D, a game which is and has always been counter to their preferred style of gaming.

I don't think it is the existence of roles that turns people off, it is the focus (combat) and the standardization of playstyle that 4E presents (combat).

Let's take, for example, 1st Edition AD&D with nothing but the three core books. There are 10 classes in the PHB and 10 roles to boot. There were no "strikers" in AD&D. Fighters were different than paladins and rangers and monks (all "fighter classes") and filled different roles in the game -- both in and out of combat. Wizards and illusionists were not the same in anything beyond the mechansims of spell prep and d4 hit diece; nor were thieves and assassins. The cleric and druid were also dissimilar in how they functioned mechanically, where they fit into the party structure and their place in the meta setting. 4E, by contrast, has 8 classes and 4 roles. The roles are geared toward the characters' place on the combat/encounter team (as evidenced by the fact of the mantra of "equal time" for all PCs in combat situations and the fact that even sweet fey who take your will with a stolen kiss get a ginormous combat form in 4E). These things are not equivalent. Saying that there's always been fighters in D&D is true, sure, but the nature and role of the various kinds of fighting men have varied within and between editions.

 

[Voss]

To this day I do not understand this attitude. If you can build a character that does all the things you want, then the game is flexible enough to accommodate your vision. The fact that you have to play a fighter, or a rogue, or a fighter/rogue to accomplish your goals shouldn't be important.

Not to knock you or anything, but traditional iajutsu masters and rogues are about as far apart conceptually as you can possibly get. You might be able to reasonably fake a set of mechanics, but I can easily understand someone having a hard time matching the honorable, disciplined concept of the iajutsu master with the sneaky, thief-like rogue stereotype. I could see some people taking it too seriously and being actually offended by the suggestion (not many, but I can see it, especially if the player is a RL kendo fanatic).


@Reynard- I think you're taking Role far too narrowly. I'd say there were 4 Roles in 1st edition, plus the monk. Its even broken down fairly well. Rangers and Paladins were specifically 'sub-classes' of Fighters, Druids of Clerics, etc. It wasn't defender, striker, leader, controller, but it was healer guy, melee guy (who sometimes also carried a bow), sneaky guy, and wizardy guy. There was a general conceit that you'd have one of each, to the point that most adventures with pre-generated characters would have one of each, and extras would either be a fighter sub-class or multi-classed characters (and illusionists almost never showed up except as multi-classed gnomes).

 

[Gloombunny]

Not to knock you or anything, but traditional iajutsu masters and rogues are about as far apart conceptually as you can possibly get. You might be able to reasonably fake a set of mechanics, but I can easily understand someone having a hard time matching the honorable, disciplined concept of the iajutsu master with the sneaky, thief-like rogue stereotype. I could see some people taking it too seriously and being actually offended by the suggestion (not many, but I can see it, especially if the player is a RL kendo fanatic).

This is precisely the attitude that Cadfan is decrying. You shouldn't care about the stereotype if the mechanics work for what you're trying to do.