Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 5990879" data-attributes="member: 54710">Specialty is a better term than theme because &quot;theme&quot; doesn't actually provide any information about what that package of character abilities consists of.&nbsp; (&quot;Class&quot; is similarly problematic, but we've had it for decades...)&nbsp; Specialty suggests that it describes the specific manner in which the character does his or her thing.&nbsp; It's a smaller and narrower set of abilities than a character's class and - while a fighter with a magic-user* specialty is odd - so is that character choice.&nbsp; A fighter with a Survivor or Dual Wielder specialty makes a lot of sense.Specialties also serve a valuable service in feat design, because they force the designers to build the feats as part of a coherent character concept.&nbsp; That gives the feat some story weight, whereas they were becoming increasingly mechanical, particularly as 4e went along.Lastly, as noted above, specialties provide a fantastic way for campaigns to opt-out of character optimization.&nbsp; Speaking just for myself, I care a lot about keeping the characters in my campaign on the same power level.&nbsp; But, if I give full freedom to the players who have the bandwidth to optimize, then I - as a DM - have to spend time optimizing the other PCs.&nbsp; I'd much rather tell them to all just pick a specialty and end the practice of cherry-picking the best feats in the game.&nbsp; Obviously, I don't want to ruin the fun of the charopt folks, but I'm glad their efforts don't have to affect my game.-KS</blockquote>

[QUOTE="KidSnide, post: 5990879, member: 54710"] Specialty is a better term than theme because "theme" doesn't actually provide any information about what that package of character abilities consists of. ("Class" is similarly problematic, but we've had it for decades...) Specialty suggests that it describes the specific manner in which the character does his or her thing. It's a smaller and narrower set of abilities than a character's class and - while a fighter with a magic-user* specialty is odd - so is that character choice. A fighter with a Survivor or Dual Wielder specialty makes a lot of sense. Specialties also serve a valuable service in feat design, because they force the designers to build the feats as part of a coherent character concept. That gives the feat some story weight, whereas they were becoming increasingly mechanical, particularly as 4e went along. Lastly, as noted above, specialties provide a fantastic way for campaigns to opt-out of character optimization. Speaking just for myself, I care a lot about keeping the characters in my campaign on the same power level. But, if I give full freedom to the players who have the bandwidth to optimize, then I - as a DM - have to spend time optimizing the other PCs. I'd much rather tell them to all just pick a specialty and end the practice of cherry-picking the best feats in the game. Obviously, I don't want to ruin the fun of the charopt folks, but I'm glad their efforts don't have to affect my game. -KS [/QUOTE]

Verification