The Sacred Cow Slaughterhouse: Ideas you think D&D's better without

[mattcolville]

A Thief class. Ditch it.

Weapon Specialization. Ditto.

 

[silverblade56]

No, it was horrible, because it destroyed the humanocentric world and made multiclassing useless except for a one or two level dip here and there. An improvement? If a square wheel is an improvement, then I suppose so.

Really? Not in my experience. I mostly played multiclass (demihumans) characters in 2E, and so did many others. They were simply better than straight class characters, the ability score bonuses were nice, the level caps were ignored or never came into play becuase the game never got that far. In 3E, we got a mechanical reason to play humans again, and I have mostly played humans since then. Humans in Pathfinder still seem to be the most common race. Plus the established camapign settings in 3.0 as well as Golarion, etc were/are still decidedly humanocentric
.

 

[pemerton]

If you insist that everyone is equally powerful in combat, the usual meaning of "balance"

Who says that is the usual meaning of "balance"?

I mostly see "balance" used to mean something like "equally, or at least comparably, mechanically effective in action resolution". If the only resolution system is combat then that might skew what people mean, but 4e has non-combat resolution, as do 3E and D&Dnext in slightly less elaborate form.

And if you look at most "caster vs fighter" threads, the balance criticisms tend to consist in pointing out that wizards are hugely versatile in combat plus hugely versatile out of it, and that druids shapedchanged into bears in the company of their bear friends are more physically potent than fighter, and pretty versatile out of combat also. These are not complaints that turn on combat as the sole measure of mechanical effectiveness.

 

[Campbell]

I think it's important to be mindful of the trade offs involved in every design decision. For instance, the more primacy you place in character build and things like having the right spell prepared the less important decisions made in the moment will be. Consider weapon specialization in AD&D which tends to mitigate the advantage of choosing a weapon which best fits the current situation. I'm not saying emphasizing character build is a bad design decision. There's a certain catharsis in testing a build after the fact. It is not all that satisfactory to me because my preference is to keep game play focused on the here and now which is why I favor the active abilities of 13th Age Races to the passive abilities found in AD&D and 3e Races.

 

[Bluenose]

Here's an example where using different levels doesn't work: Frank wants his fighter to be a combat monster. Bob wants his bard to be the go-to guy in social encounters. If you insist that everyone is equally powerful in combat, the usual meaning of "balance", then you don't get to have specialists who are better at social interaction, exploration, or other aspects of the game but weaker at combat. And there are plenty of people who would like to play such characters.

As [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] says, Balance doesn't have to mean solely combat balance. It's perfectly possible to have characters who are useful at different things, and if those things are broad enough to come up fairly frequently then they'll feel/be equally useful characters despite not having the same abilities. Where D&D has often done badly is in mixing classes who are One-Trick-Ponies, useful only at one part of the game, with classes that are Jack-of-All-Trades without the corollary of Master-of-None. Especially since one of the most efficient ways to have both versatility and mastery is through spell-casting, and some classes are designed entirely around that.

 

[pemerton]

I think it's important to be mindful of the trade offs involved in every design decision. For instance, the more primacy you place in character build and things like having the right spell prepared the less important decisions made in the moment will be. Consider weapon specialization in AD&D which tends to mitigate the advantage of choosing a weapon which best fits the current situation.

This can be an issue in 4e too.

The dwarven fighter in my game in fact is able to alternate between his polearm and his mordenkraad, but that is only because of the Dwarven feat that gives him advantages with both; and while the two weapons play quite differently because of the reach mechanics, Polearm Gamble etc, you still wouldn't say it's the most versatile weapon mastery of all time!

 

[Manbearcat]

This can be an issue in 4e too.

The dwarven fighter in my game in fact is able to alternate between his polearm and his mordenkraad, but that is only because of the Dwarven feat that gives him advantages with both; and while the two weapons play quite differently because of the reach mechanics, Polearm Gamble etc, you still wouldn't say it's the most versatile weapon mastery of all time!

This is something I was going to break out in a post in the spellcaster v fighter thread. Fighter versatility, predicated upon the value of "proficiency all", is something of a myth in actual play. It functionally serves as "mere color" as you are apt to put it. "Yeah, I can wear all armor and swing all swords/axes/polearms et al with the best of them" is irrelevant mechanically when it comes with no actual utility in play. If, for instance, it was mapped to the spellcaster model, then you would have something. I think a functional analogue would be if Fighters had various, effective active riders for different weapons and various passive riders for armor/shields. Then, much like spellcasters, Fighters would have decision-points based at each short rest and in combat (what armor to put on based on if they think they're fighting a horde, a BBEG, need mobility, et al) and what weapon to pull out mid-stream in combat. As it stands under the current paradigm, the decision-point (and accompanying utility) occurs at the vestigial stages of PC build (not in play), and as such, "all armor" and "all weapons" manifests as "mere color", if that (as when was the last time this was actually represented in the fiction in any fuctional way?). 4e's weapon mastery powers, weapon/shield-specific-riders and various feats made an effort at bringing this into the theater of play (and it was pretty good), but it could be extended further.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

The Great Wheel.

I hated that. Too many things just seems to be placed in the wrong places. I think D&D is definitely better off with this half-dead sacred cow.

 

[Hussar]

The Great Wheel.

I hated that. Too many things just seems to be placed in the wrong places. I think D&D is definitely better off with this half-dead sacred cow.

*breaks out the popcorn and awaits*

 

[pemerton]

This is something I was going to break out in a post in the spellcaster v fighter thread. Fighter versatility, predicated upon the value of "proficiency all", is something of a myth in actual play. It functionally serves as "mere color" as you are apt to put it

<snip>

If, for instance, it was mapped to the spellcaster model, then you would have something. I think a functional analogue would be if Fighters had various, effective active riders for different weapons and various passive riders for armor/shields. Then, much like spellcasters, Fighters would have decision-points based at each short rest and in combat (what armor to put on based on if they think they're fighting a horde, a BBEG, need mobility, et al) and what weapon to pull out mid-stream in combat.

I think the weapon thing is always going to be mechanically tricky in D&D, because of its action economy that is going to have to put a cost on that, in combination with its hesitation to have too much fiddly detail around weapons other than the damage dice. Not impossible, but tricky.

But the armour idea is excellent, and should be very easily able to be implemented. We should be letting [MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] know!