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

[Thomas Shey]

Which I'm totally fine with. But I really don't see how to do it in an analogous way to activities like swimming, or forgery, or recalling lore. Or...god forbid...lie detection.

Note I've carefully kept away from social or intellectual skills in this discussion, because that's been fraught, particularly in the D&D sphere, for a very long time. The justification has always been "That's because the game play is all about those". Its the fact some people seem to think adding things to resolve even physical actions was a mistake that I'm arguing about, because the logic for those and combat seems the same; they're a mix of physical training and knowledge in both cases, and you can't directly emulate the physical part just by narration, but to the degree you don't care, I don't see why they belong in different categories of whether one deserves mechanics and the other doesn't.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't see combat maneuvers as mechanics first, and I see no reason to assume the game designers do either. They are IMO attempting to model different styles of fighting. That's what it's about.

Yeah, I'd find it a particularly cynical view that mechanics for manuevers and actions were constructed in that sort of reverse-design way. It may well be there's massaging of the results for game purposes that isn't primarily about representation after the fact, but I'd be surprised if any designer didn't start out trying for that kind of representation, and then adjust, rather than dropping the mechanics in and come up with a rationale for them in-fiction afterwards. People who are going to do that aren't likely to go to the trouble of designing custom mechanics for that in the first place; you'll just see things that can stand in for them like Fate Aspects.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Two (related) thoughts while driving home just now:

A very common complaint is about monsters sometimes feeling like "just big bags of hit points" and combat consisting of trading blows until somebody falls over.

I have never seen a skill system (leaving out games such as Torchbearer or Blades in the Dark, which IMO are so distinct from D&D-like games that they are almost in a different category) that attempted to be more interesting by requiring multiple dice rolls that did NOT feel like "big bags of hit points".

There are all kinds of ways to do that though. Among other things, not every game just has amorphous blob hit points in the first place, and even if you do, you can have things where you trade off damage for various special effects and the like. But yes, D&D is prone to that because its damage model is so vague and broad (including baking most defensive ability into hit points) out the gate.

Second, I used to love the book-based game "Ace of Aces" (and really wish I still had my original copy). And I've long wished for an RPG combat system based on the same concept: you and your opponent simultaneously declare your next move, and the two actions are resolved concurrently. It would be awesome! (And maybe not achievable for anything except duels. Using specific weapons.)

There actuallly used to be a collection of game-book combat rules that were somewhat in that direction; I probably still have mine buried somewhere. I can't remember what they were called any more though, and since they were designed for standalone play, would probably be too in-depth for use in an RPG anyway (you'd need to factor character skill in in some way too, which they didn't do).

But you couldn't do the same for climbing or swimming or forgery...because those activities are not done against an opponent making difficult-to-predict decisions from a finite but known set of choices. Which is why I think skills are simply an entirely different beast that cannot be treated like combat.

Show me where, other than positioning, OD&D opponents made a bit of difference in their choices when you were attacking them, and I'll follow you. I don't believe you can short of GM intrusion (which is essentially baking in new mechanic in an ad-hoc fashion). As I said, with the vast majority of OD&D opponents, what mattered on their defensive side was AC and hit points. Nothing more. Once you've hit that level of abstraction, there's no real reason parallel skill approaches with other potential-hazard skill usage can't be done similarly. They just usually aren't.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Show me where, other than positioning, OD&D opponents made a bit of difference in their choices when you were attacking them, and I'll follow you. I don't believe you can short of GM intrusion (which is essentially baking in new mechanic in an ad-hoc fashion). As I said, with the vast majority of OD&D opponents, what mattered on their defensive side was AC and hit points. Nothing more. Once you've hit that level of abstraction, there's no real reason parallel skill approaches with other potential-hazard skill usage can't be done similarly. They just usually aren't.

Why are you constraining the example to just OD&D? Haven't D&D and it's derivatives evolved beyond the "bag of hit points" approach to combat for exactly this reason?

And, anyway, even in the very simplest games, opponents still have some choices to make, even if it's just which PC to attack, or when to surrender/flee (which is possibly an interesting choice from the players' perspective, because it makes "end of combat" harder to predict).

Its not common, but you do see some of that in a few games, but usually only for other skill areas that are heavy focal points of games; the two I've seen happen more than once are hacking and magic (you see both of those in Shadowrun, for example). I want to say I've seen it for non-combat space piloting on occasion too, but I can't pull up an example so maybe I'm just conflating it with space combat in some games.

Wait a sec. So whereas I thought a flaw in my climbing example as that it applies only to this one specific skill and therefore doesn't solve for the skill problem in general, you'd be fine with doing this for every skill?

So it's not a combat system and a skill system, it's "combat is just one skill, and every skill has a subsystem that models it." Is that what you're advocating?

 

[W'rkncacnter]

If what you need is at the top of a mountain, no roleplaying it through will allow you to avoid needing to make whatever number of climbing rolls the GM decides (and that construct tells you there's a problem too, since that's probably not a decision that should need to be pulled out of thin air).

i remember in a campaign that's currently on hiatus we had to climb up a large cliff face in a hostile plane with flying creatures harassing us to reach an objective.

we didn't roll anything to climb the cliff face. we just slowly moved up it while we had a conversation between the party and some npcs travelling with us. it was kind of surreal. im pretty sure it was so the entire party could get to the top for the combat that was there, but still.

 

[Lanefan]

In early editions of D&D things had very defined roles, even having mechanics exclusive to those classes (% of the Rogue for example). D&D Basic (red box) even included species in the class, HeroQuest (boardgame) did it the same way... 2e added 'kits' to add some more variety, 3e went with a plethora of prestige classes to do the same.

But due to the strict role definitions in 2e, I most often played a Fighter/Mage/Thief multiclass character. And I suspect that if you wanted to build the mention 'iconic' fighters in 2e, you used kits and multi/dual class builds. 3e already had more options with the skill points, but it took a while before I stepped off the multiclass train in 3e. We skipped 4e. In 5e 2014 there was imho even less reason to multiclass, a lot was buildable without the multiclass aspect, but if you wanted, you could. 5e 2024 is even more of a Swiss Army Knife, you can do a LOT without touching multiclass. in 5e quite a few things can be done via background and feats. Will you have an optimal fighter build, no. But you can build a lot!

This points to a trend across the editions that I'm not fond of: the emergence and allowance of jack-of-all-trades characters who can, in a pinch, do everything.

In the early (as in, pre-2e) editions each class had a clear niche and multiclassing was difficult, thus soft-forcing a certain amount of inderdependence among the party as one character's strengths cancelled out another's weaknesses. Your F-MU-T, while versatile, still couldn't heal itself and needed someone else to cover off that weakness.

2e allowed much more by way of multiclassing, and since then niche protection has been steadily and drastically eroded through various design choices. Now, it's possible to build a character who really can do enough of everything to in effect be a one-person adventuring party, which while fine for that specific character is not IMO at all good for promoting interdependent group play.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Why are you constraining the example to just OD&D? Haven't D&D and it's derivatives evolved beyond the "bag of hit points" approach to combat for exactly this reason?

Because that was the context my participation came up in, when someone suggested that it was a mistake to have any skill functions beyond what existed with OD&D fighters. My argument was that you could, perhaps, from a certain perspective make that argument in those days about mental or social sphere things, but not physical sphere things. Everything I've argued since is derived from my taking issue with that point; anything beyond that are things others have dragged in that I've responded to.

And, anyway, even in the very simplest games, opponents still have some choices to make, even if it's just which PC to attack, or when to surrender/flee (which is possibly an interesting choice from the players' perspective, because it makes "end of combat" harder to predict).

They often don't even get to chose who to attack depending on layout, and I don't consider "Deciding when to run away" a meaningful tactical choice; its just acknowledgement that the fight has already failed out.

Wait a sec. So whereas I thought a flaw in my climbing example as that it applies only to this one specific skill and therefore doesn't solve for the skill problem in general, you'd be fine with doing this for every skill?

So it's not a combat system and a skill system, it's "combat is just one skill, and every skill has a subsystem that models it." Is that what you're advocating?

This is a case where my argument has wandered because of others participation and my responses. Let me re-present it to make where I'm coming from clear:

The argument from at least one early respondant at least seemed to be that no other skill beyond what was already present in the combat system was need, because the rest could be handled purely with narration. My counter was if you could do that with other complex and environmentally sensetive physical skills like climbing, swimming (and though less common riding and boating), you could just as easily do it with combat too (and noted I've been in games where that was how it was, indeed, handled). That in practice there is not a major self-evident difference where one deserves mechanical representation and the other doesn't. As you can see from my point of view, the differences you site in combat and the others are not relevant, because the D&D sphere, especially that early on (again, remember this was triggered by a comment about when skills first began to appear in one form or another), most of the theoretical differences were already being abstracted away anyway (and I'm not convinced in any significant fashion that changed up through D&D 4e at least).

Is what I'm arguing about here a little clearer at least? (I'll freely admit I don't consider there being an intrinsic reason handling climbing and some other skills should have a less developed mechanic system that combat is required is necessarily true, but I'm also not arguing in favor of doing it, barring a game that's going to be doing things with climbing very regularly. But its not really what I'm talking about here in any case).

 

[Bill Zebub]

If what you need is at the top of a mountain, no roleplaying it through will allow you to avoid needing to make whatever number of climbing rolls the GM decides (and that construct tells you there's a problem too, since that's probably not a decision that should need to be pulled out of thin air).

@W'rkncacnter's post above made me look again at your earlier post.

I don't really agree that just because there's a mountain to climb there should be "climbing rolls"...unless there are difficult decisions to be made along the way. An example might be:
"A bird is flying straight toward the cliff. Bob, you're a druid and you immediately realize it's strange that an owl is out and about during the day."
"It's a spy! Is there any cover we get to?"
"Well, there are a few small, stunted trees sticking out the rocks. You might be able to use those, but it will take a Stealth roll. There's also big crack you might be able to scramble to if you hurry. I'll need a Climbing check; anybody who fails will slide down partway, will have to save to avoid a little bit of damage, and will lose one round of climbing time."

But I would never just say, "Ok, I'll need five successive climbing checks to get to the top of the mountain. For each failure (some consequence)." I just don't find that very fun or interesting.


Also, this is somewhat tangential to the thread topic, but something that occurred to me while thinking about all this that one reason that combat skill is separated from non-combat skills in so many RPGs is that so many games really are combat heavy, and if you to allocate the same points across combat and non-combat, most people are going to go heavy in the combat. So one resources goes into improving combat, and another resource is spent on skills.

It's really the same problem as with spell choices: first you load up on combat (offense, defense, support) spells, and then maybe you take some utility spells, that you may or may not end up using. (Ritual casting was one attempt to work around this problem.)

The ASI vs. Feat choice in 5e also has this problem. And even within Feats it's hard to choose the non-combat ones, or even the non-optimal-combat Feats. (Personally I love Mage Slayer.)

Not sure what the best answer is to any of these things, but just observing that it's a similar design challenge in all three cases.

I guess one reason I like Shadowdark is that I like its solution to all three (skills, spells, feats/ASIs) problems.

 

[Thomas Shey]

i remember in a campaign that's currently on hiatus we had to climb up a large cliff face in a hostile plane with flying creatures harassing us to reach an objective.

we didn't roll anything to climb the cliff face. we just slowly moved up it while we had a conversation between the party and some npcs travelling with us. it was kind of surreal. im pretty sure it was so the entire party could get to the top for the combat that was there, but still.

Well, that runs into the problem you can hit with a lot of physical skills in that they're enablers for getting some things done that all people are not equally capable in, and in fact, some of them may be outright incompetent in. It comes up most often with stealth, but can apply to riding, swimming, climbing or others. If anyone ever wants to know why there's significant combat capability in most D&Doids even on classes that don't automatically seem like they should have it, there it is right there.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, I expressed that a little bit snarkily: I suspect those kinds of things are not usually designed "mechanics first" (although sometimes). But I think the end result is the same: a highly abstracted mechanic that could have all kinds of labels attached to it.

And here's the thing: the reason it can't possibly actually model "Parry" (or any of a number of other real-life maneuvers) is that D&D...and most RPGs...are turn-based games. But IRL you don't take turns: you anticipate and react to your opponent's moves, and vice versa.

Maybe the answer is to somehow move away from a strict rotating turn-based system?

In 1e, in theory everyone declared their actions at the start of the round and then they all resolved at once. This came with its own issues, of course.

Rerolling initiative each round can help. Using a smaller die for initiative can also help. Allowing initiative ties and simultaneous actions (which WotC D&D seems to abhor, for some reason) is essential.

I suppose the same principles could be applied to non-combat activities but in many situations there the "opponent" (the cliff you're climbing, the secret door you seek, etc.) isn't actively fighting back, meaning the action is all on one side.