D&D General When Was it Decided Fighters Should Suck at Everything but Combat?

[Thomas Shey]

Almost all of them outside of D&D. We're talking about existing characters out of fictional history. D&D (I'm sure there might be a couple others) is one of the only ones that actually has tried to turn a fictional character from other media into a D&D statblock, and that's mostly from the fans.

While, again, fan-based, I have to note this process is extremely common in superhero RPG fandom. To the point I've never seen a non-setting-specific superhero game with any fandom at all that didn't do it. I realize you were probably thinking specifically of fantasy RPGs, but it was still an overly broad statement.

 

[Sacrosanct]

While, again, fan-based, I have to note this process is extremely common in superhero RPG fandom. To the point I've never seen a non-setting-specific superhero game with any fandom at all that didn't do it. I realize you were probably thinking specifically of fantasy RPGs, but it was still an overly broad statement.

True, and point conceded. I was talking about fantasy because that seemed to be the context of what people were bringing up in their examples of fantasy/mythological characters.

 

[Thomas Shey]

True, and point conceded. I was talking about fantasy because that seemed to be the context of what people were bringing up in their examples of fantasy/mythological characters.

It isn't entirely true even in fantasy though; I've seen people do it before in a number of build systems as proof-of-concept things. It doesn't tend to happen in system made for specific settings, but I've seen it in GURPS, Fantasy Hero and Savage Worlds as examples.

 

[Sacrosanct]

It isn't entirely true even in fantasy though; I've seen people do it before in a number of build systems as proof-of-concept things. It doesn't tend to happen in system made for specific settings, but I've seen it in GURPS, Fantasy Hero and Savage Worlds as examples.

Mostly by fans, though, right? Not that the rpg itself was meant to replicate these mythological or fictional characters. Every instance of mention in RPGs that I'm familiar with is bringing up the heroes as inspirational sources, not to create actual stat blocks for them.

 

[Leatherhead]

In early days when the Thief wasn't very good at combat they didn't really tread on the Fighters' toes at all. Sure a Thief might get an occasional spectacular backstrike, but most of the time the fighting was left to the front-liners when-where possible.

When 3e turned Rogues into the party's primary damage dealer (by making sneak attack so easy that it might as well be always-on), however, Fighters got the shaft.

The exact problem was that they were trying to avoid stepping on each others toes. The artificial niches they ended up carving out so that the thief and the fighter could be separate classes made both of them worse. They should have always been just one "Hero" class who was good at combat AND skills. at the same time, from the beginning.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Mostly by fans, though, right? Not that the rpg itself was meant to replicate these mythological or fictional characters. Every instance of mention in RPGs that I'm familiar with is bringing up the heroes as inspirational sources, not to create actual stat blocks for them.

I agree its mostly fans, but I think if you think at least Fantasy Hero does not hold it as an ethos that they can at least get close to those specific characters (and I suspect that's true of the other two), you perhaps don't understand the purpose of a general purpose system of that sort.

 

[Corinnguard]

Rangers as a class shouldn't be spellcasters right from the start; in 1e they got spells in a minor way starting at 8th level, which is fine for a game intended to peter out around 10th.

Level Up has it where the Ranger class is a martial class right from the start. It has only one half-caster archetype, the Wildborn. Think of them as the Druidic version of the Eldritch Knight Fighter.

 

[kigmatzomat]

but for the game that D&D was when it was created, skills undermined one of the core tenets of play: the players' skill mattered most.

That is, IMO, the delineator between Tactical Studies Rules' fantasy wargame where players used heroes (and their hirelings/followers) to try and defeat dungeons created by referees and the emergence of the D&D role playing game where people play heroic characters that are more capable than they are in combat/magic/skills in a fantasy setting. Or play characters that are LESS capable. Role playing goes both ways.

You can probably trace that back to Dave Arneson and similar players using lateral thinking to defeat scenarios by not engaging with them in combat as intended by referees. Negative-space gaming invites people tasked with making consistent rulings to document the unknown, making it known and consistent.