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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6746206" data-attributes="member: 4937">Why is that in any way obvious?  It violates the basic concept, and as you say yourself it moves the character into a wholly different concept that is already served.  The goal here is to have a character which does not normally excel at anything in particular (at least compared to other potential PC classes of the same level), but whether through luck, destiny, or just because the universe likes him so much he regularly saves the day.  This is a sort of character that occurs a lot in fiction, usually in the form of a comic sidekick.  It's a character which it seems the whole world could best, but which - when the chips are down - always comes through.  Currently there is no way to play that character using any D&D rules set I'm familiar with.  Since it is a wholly appropriate fantasy archetype, that's a whole in the rules IMO.And you can't just fill that whole with Rogue/Swashbuckler and similar sorts of things in every case.  The idea is to have a fresh faced lad or lass straight off the farm, who at first level isn't a useless class like Commoner, but proves to be useful to have around.  He's a Paragon.  He's not necessarily trained at something, he's just capable in and of himself and things tend to work out his way.No. It's not plot armor.  The hobbits are defended by things that are not as tangible and not as obvious as steel and muscle, but it's explained within the text.  Tolkien isn't stuck for a solution and coming up with things because he's written himself into a corner.  Tolkien is crafting the story this way on purpose to make a point.  The armor the hobbits have - their basic decency, their humility, their courage, their tenacity is going to serve them better against the real threats they face than Boromir's prowess at arms.  That's the point of the story.  The point is that the real challenges of life aren't things you can just swing a sword at.  The point of the story (well, a point, because it has a lot to say) is the Hobbits are extraordinary in ways that we don't normally admire people for being in extraordinary compared to our admiration of people who can hack off limbs, and maybe we ought to change what we are fantisizing being like just a bit.  Those are fighting words. Hit points are an example of something in the D&D game that amounts to plot protection.  For that matter, saving throws are often justified in the same way.  But yes, to a certain extent I agree that D&D's normal rules set doesn't provide a lot of hooks for creating this sort of class.  Mechanically, there is no reason you couldn't have a class that lacked spells and wasn't a great fighter, but which had through other sorts of class abilities many advantages.   For example, this 'lucky' character could have all good saves.  They just tend to escape harm.  The core mechanic I've been using for the class has been a stock of daily replenishing 'destiny points' that they can use to buy rerolls (or advantage in 5e terms), negate critical hits against them, buy bonus dice, and attempt stunts by way of attempting trained only skills as if they were trained or acting as if they had a feat of their choosing.  This is a rather different sort of skill monkey than a rogue, in that they have a limited resource like spells, that they can use to manipulate the game to simulate just being 'lucky' or 'destined' or being subject to divine providence.  That's ridiculous.  There is no reason that character's with this concept can't be as capable in their own way, and contribute as much to the team as any other (non-broken, balanced) class.  The point is not to have less grand adventures.  The point is to succeed in those grand adventures in a slightly different way.</blockquote>

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