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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 8260254" data-attributes="member: 7023840">So the one thing I think is not quite correct here is that the TSR-era games (especially OD&D/1e) very much had the idea of protected areas within classes- what we refer to now as "niche protection."While it is certainly true that there was often no significant backstory (in zero-to-hero, the character's story was created through play, instead of created through a narrative prior to play), the creation of a party was a group activity. We all know/remember that a party needed a cleric, but because of the way the game worked, you would need some amount of balance between classes- some amount of meat/muscle, some amount of healing, some amount of spellcasting, and some amount of thievery. Like the A-Team, you wanted a balance of classes.We still see that today, but because the class-identity is so diffuse (no class is as weak in combat as the original MU, all classes have healing, any class can have stealth skills, traps are not omnipresent, most classes have access to spells (all classes if you consider feats and ancestry)) there is very little requirement of class diversity other than as a holdover from prior times.</blockquote>