Classes should primarily be force multipliers for others.

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Lago PARANOIA
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Classes should primarily be force multipliers for others.

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

As anyone who has kept up with late-edition 4E D&D mechanics can tell you, the Warlord is like the best class in the game. Having one on your team will make you kick that much more ass no matter who everyone else is doing as long as you are picking your powers correctly.

However, there are two things to note about the class:
[*] The first thing is that while the Warlord is clearly the best class, it ranks pretty low on the lists of classes that create jealousy.
[*] Even compared other leader classes (or classes that break the role barrier for the mold anyway, like the Invoker), the Warlord doesn't create as much jealousy as a Fighter creates among Paladins and Wardens. That's because they have a specific form of force multiplication specialization while the other non-shitty leader classes bring something else to the table. Clerics are hands-down the best at healing, bards are great with cynical status buffs, etc.


This has led me to think that all classes for a new edition of D&D should completely forgo crap like the Defender and Striker and instead behave in one of two ways. They should either rely on other classes to give them big-time knockout attacks or enable classes to use big-time knockout attacks. For example:

Cleric: They throw out the lion's share of cynical heals and buffs. They dabble a bit in other roles, more than other classes, but that's mainly what they do.
Paladin: They grant extra attacks and bonuses to their buddies when they're hit with attacks. They have ways to draw fire to themselves.
Artificer: They lay down summons and equipment on the board which give people one-shot special moves that different classes will be able to use better. You know, shit like magic weapon armories, Magi-Tek armor, soforth.
Wizard: Wizards lay down positive battlefield control that locks down monsters and makes them easier for teammates to hurt. They are also a 'dabbling' class.
BarbarianThanes: Thanes flip-flop between two states. When they're unhurt, they provide passive defense bonuses to everyone but themselves and act as melee interdicters. When they are hurt then the passive defense bonuses end and they explode in an orgy of violence.
WarlockNecromancer: The necromancer summons undead that act as blockers and performs asymmetrically better when they're backed up by other party members. Not very hard, because that's how summons perform anyway.
Rogue: Rogues get massive bonuses for attacking enemies that are unengaged or hindered in some fashion. They also can render wide swatches of enemies hindered with shit like covering fire and smoke bombs and glyphs of warding. They can't do both at once, though.
DruidElementalists: Elementalists work like element benders from TLA/LoK. Except that they get two schools and/or there is more diversity within the schools like water benders also getting to manipulate acid. Haven't decided yet. They provide random escalating bennies from a grab bag to the party that fails and starts from scratch when they 'lose the bending momentum', which typically means that they're not attacking enough or getting hit too hard. However, they themselves start to take penalties if they stay in a particular style too long, so they need to switch it up.
Psion: Psions generate a pool of Telepathic Bonds and Inspirations that they provide to the party to create weird extra actions (like flying in the air and blasting people with a barrage of mind bolts) with some refreshing scheme I haven't though of yet. The party gets to pick which ones that they want to follow, which makes them unavailable for other people.
Mystic KnightBard: Bards generate Melodies packaged with Crescendos on a round by round basis. Melodies are passive granted abilities/bonuses. Crescendos are active bonuses that you can activate if enough people hearing them do what the Crescendo tells you to do. For example, if at least people hearing the Marching Waltz move a total of 50 squares, minimum 3 different contributors with 5 squares minimum movement, the bard can activate a Crescendo which lets everyone who participated take an additional move action.

I also wanted to through the Warlord and Monk/Kensai up onto that list, but I am too lazy. There's ten classes though and you get the idea.

Several things to note from this proposal:
  • All of the classes synergize with each other in obvious ways. The classes also have a tendency to trip over their own dicks if you have too many of them of the same kind at the same time. Clerics provide redundant bonuses, paladins don't get attacked enough to make their bonuses worth it, artificers provide too many inventions for people to use, etc. Having two of the same class in a three to seven PC party isn't a big deal, but there starts to be problems with more than that. Some classes still do synergize like the Rogue and Wizard, but they're the exceptions.
  • Similarly, classes don't create party jealousy. Not just because a Paladin or a Bard are nowhere near as awesome without other people to appreciate it, but because Paladins and Bards create different kinds of bonuses under different conditions.
  • You have to put a limit onto how many bonuses people are throwing out at once. Because shit can get out of hand really fast if a Thane has to track the bonus a cleric is giving him, has to remember to do a jumping attack to advance the Bard's Crescendo bonus, has to decide whether he wants the Ghost Crusher Sword or the Storm Giant's Strength Potion from the artificer's workbench, and figure out a way to take advantage of the rogue garroting a hill giant.
  • After you've gotten the basic force multiplication schtick down, you can layer on additional crap to the class to make them more diverse and so you don't have the 'who's going to be the cleric?' problem. However, it's absolutely vital that you don't have the additional crap overshadow the primary focus of the class, which is force multiplication for other party members. Bards can and will also do swashbuckling and throwing out illusions and minor mind-control magic, but it can never be a bigger deal than their music. Artificers can fly around in fantasy power armor and shoot death rays from their blunderbusses, but they will ironically not be as good in their own power armor as Captain America or Wolverine would be in the power armor. And the class provides free suits of power armor.
  • I know I've come across really hard on the 'No Self Buffs' paradigm before but that's because almost all games that I've seen it get used in have classes that don't provide buffs at all. If everyone provides party buffs of some sort then it's not a big deal.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Fri Jun 21, 2013 11:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by John Magnum »

What exactly do you mean by "cynical buffs"?
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

You know, fire-and-forget crap like 'everyone has a +3 to defenses for one round' or 'on your next attack roll, threaten a critical hit'. Basically A.) passive bonuses that B.) require some or even no thought in how to use them.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by wotmaniac »

So, you're trying to encourage intra-party diversity, while simultaneously making everyone useful.

I fail to hate it.

The only potential "problem" I can see some people having is in the case of play groups having members that insist on keeping their bushes ....
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Post by Sigil »

The only potential problem I'd see is that you want to make sure you still give each class interesting attacks in addition to the force multipliers. Otherwise you end up getting bonuses and extra actions that you use on boring things.

Otherwise... I like it, and would be interested to play an RPG with this design decision implemented.
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Post by Corsair114 »

That's the direction I'm going with the RPG I'm working on. Specifically with an eye towards making sure ranged characters, from archers to shaman to wizards, are able to support and enhance melee characters in a manner that makes both desirable in the same party, particularly so, given the inherent tactical strength of being able to attack people from beyond their range.

There's also an eye towards avoiding dozens of floating +1's on everything from "your ally's next sword stab" to "your ally's next bowel movement." That shit in 4E drove me bonkers.
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Post by Username17 »

I really have no idea why people think "Thane" is a good class name. It means Servant for fuck's sake. Thane is a middling rank, granted to retainers of people of actual importance. You might as well call your class Družyna or Hird. Actually, those would be better because there is room to move up as a Hirdman.

If you thought Clerics were a dumb class because they channel power from gods who will eventually be the monster of the week, how much worse is Thane, where you literally draw power from a frickin Earl.

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Post by Voss »

Manages to keep the 'all berserkers are Norsemen' cultural baggage as well. Or whatever this class is trying to do, for whatever reason. Maybe their shiny new torc distracts opponents, but then they go Hulk when the enemy scuffs it, not sure.


I'm not really sold on this paradigm, either. There seems like an awful lot of bullshit to track for no real purpose, and some of it is inherently self-contradictory. Rogues get bonuses against unengaged and hindered people? Those aren't related states, they're almost directly opposite, in fact. And I have no idea why they'd be unable to throw smoke bombs and shank people.


The fundamental problem, though, ties back to why people don't give a shit about the 4e warlord being the 'best class.' Most people don't want to play that game. They want to do the cool shit, not just be the enabler.
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Last edited by Voss on Sat Jun 22, 2013 7:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Saxony »

FrankTrollman wrote:I really have no idea why people think "Thane" is a good class name.

...

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"Thane" sounds cool. That's really the whole reason, as far as I know. In any case, 99% of people have no idea what Thane's definition is. In common understanding, "Earl" has more relation to Pride and Prejudice than Vikings, so "is a servant to" relationship between thanes and earls will woosh over almost everyone's heads.

I would like to note that I don't have an opinion on "thane" as a class name, just explaining why some people like it, and why your Earl based argument is rather odd.
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Post by Saxony »

Also, considering the topic, I think it's a good idea. Maybe a great idea. Getting nerds to work together in a cooperative story game really needs to get baked in the cake. The point being that we won't do it on our own because of the lack of social skills.

The specific implementations, eh, I don't know.

Perhaps we should make things really simple. Like if the Fighter is helping a Rogue, the rogue gets +1d6 sneak attack. Simple and easy to understand what the bonus does.

I honestly stopped reading once I saw weird ideas I couldn't parse quickly, so you may have done that. But on the whole, this (the topic title) is a good idea.
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Re: Classes should primarily be force multipliers for others.

Post by shadzar »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:late-edition 4E D&D
what does this even mean? is this including hundreds of splatbooks and additional rules or something?
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Post by Drolyt »

Saxony wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:I really have no idea why people think "Thane" is a good class name.

...

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No, he's completely right. The first thing that comes to mind when I here thane is Beowulf's fucking sidekicks*. No one wants to play a sidekick in a heroic fantasy game.

As for the OP, while I like the idea of the party working together and getting bonuses for teamwork I think each character should have a solo shtick in addition to their teamwork shtick. So if the cleric (for example) gets separated from the party they can still kick ass, just not as much ass. But at the same time your idea can apply, so if the cleric (or the fighter or the rogue) is separated from the party the party should feel it has lost more than just damage output.

*The second thing I think of is Macbeth.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Saxony wrote:Perhaps we should make things really simple. Like if the Fighter is helping a Rogue, the rogue gets +1d6 sneak attack. Simple and easy to understand what the bonus does.
It can't be that simple. Or rather, it can't be that simple across the board for all of the classes. While I definitely could see you having a couple of classes for which their thing is that the bonuses they provide are simple and/or class-specific (I proposed that the cleric does only the former) you can't do it like that for all other the classes for a couple of reasons.

[*] Writing new synergies becomes O(cN^2). If you're adding in 12 classes you need to do at least 144 writeups. If you're adding 20 you need to do at least 400. If you're adding 30 then you need to do 900. So on. If you design the classes so that they give bonuses that are indifferent to the rest of the party's makeup it becomes O(cN) difficulty, which is much, much more manageable.

You can cut down the space and work by providing repeats or templates (the Fighter always gives +5 damage to people with the 'Martial' Power source), but it creates another problem. See below.

[*] If the bonuses are too simple then you're right back at the jealous problem because you have classes tripping on each others' dicks. Going back to 4E D&D, the good leader classes (Bard, Cleric, Warlord) definitely had a pecking order but provided different kinds of non-overlapping bonuses. While a Warlord was better than a Cleric, you'd rather one of each than two Warlords. If they do stuff that's too similar then the classes start to become comparable in a rather direct way.
Drolyt wrote:No, he's completely right. The first thing that comes to mind when I here thane is Beowulf's fucking sidekicks*. No one wants to play a sidekick in a heroic fantasy game.
I'm not committed to Thane or anything; I just saw it in King of Dragon Pass and was all 'okay, DONE'. I just think that 'Th' sounds cool, I dislike classes that are composed of English compound words, want the primary classes to start with different letters, and I hate the class name 'Berserker' for the same reason I hate the class name 'Thief'. I'm okay with Barbarian, but apparently it's bad for certain reasons. I'm open to other suggestions however.
Drolyt wrote:As for the OP, while I like the idea of the party working together and getting bonuses for teamwork I think each character should have a solo shtick in addition to their teamwork shtick.
For this project to work then the solo schtick can't outshine the teamwork schtick. If it does then you have the 4E D&D Fighter/Battlemind problem. That is, while the class did various things for the party that people liked it was easy to build the character in such a way so that you could downplay the teamwork schticks for the class's personal awesomeness.

There are reasons why you wouldn't want this to happen anyway. Such as the setup allowing reasonably-leveled boss monsters. So give them a solo schtick, certainly, but having two classes working together should give noticeably bigger and more different bonuses than two or even three classes working apart. Less all-4E D&D Ranger teams, more 4E D&D Warlord, Invoker, Bard, Cleric, Runepriest teams.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Username17 »

I flat don't understand why you think Berserker is bad and Barbarian is good. Barbarian is bad for the same obvious reasons that Thief is bad, but Berserker is not. Berserking is a thing someone could do that has obvious utility and readily available scalability. And at the same time, it's a thing that not everyone does.

Anyway, if you want every character combo to interact differently, why not give everyone a way to synergize off their friends in addition to a way to boost their allies? The Rogue gets to invoke his big damage surprise pie if the Fighter has engaged the enemy or the Illusionist has stunned the enemy. Why can't the Paladin get a big defense boost when the Cleric blesses him? Why can't the Evoker burninate enemies extra crispy when his allies keep them from moving?

Actually, if evocation forced enemies to hobble five feet in order to reduce the damage, it would be an obvious piece of synergy both directions. If you burn someone while they are engaged, they are presented with the ugly choice of burning more or having the Fighter gut stab them.

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Post by Midnight_v »

Berserker > Thane .... but the arguement has always beeen that the word "barbarian" didn't mean shit, and only existed because of Conan... So barbarian doesn't mean shit, or it means something negative about culture.

Thane makes people google what it means (or go play skyrim) and it isn't particularly descriptive.
I dislike classes that are composed of English compound words, want the primary classes to start with different letters, and I hate the class name 'Berserker' for the same reason
I think it'd be best if we move beyond personal dislike for things like that. The important thing is that the class is recognizable in what you're playing as to new-(ish) players. Fighter is the epitome of being a bad name...

Berserker is the best name because it frankly spells out exactly what to expect from that guy, and it spawns a lot of powers and interesting stories from it.


Still... naming conventions aside.

Its a pretty good idea, Lago, honestly, I never kept up with 4th and I'd assumed that the Warlord was a Warblade with the white raven school.

Its really interesting because in some ways it serves to codify why adventure parties have always been made of 4 dudes with different talents.
Also though it would make a lot of stories in D&D not make much sense, like any solo adventure ever.
The important part is that it seems one of those things that solve a lot of problems.

Or maybe... maybe I've learned better than to kill an idea in its infancy.

There are reasons why you wouldn't want this to happen anyway. Such as the setup allowing reasonably-leveled boss monsters. So give them a solo schtick, certainly, but having two classes working together should give noticeably bigger and more different bonuses than two or even three classes working apart. Less all-4E D&D Ranger teams, more 4E D&D Warlord, Invoker, Bard, Cleric, Runepriest teams.
Hmm... The first thing I thought was 4 classes of any 1 type is the natural conclusion that people will come to in set ups like this.
Rangers in forth edition, or any party in which: "You must be *this* stealthy to ride with us".

So far... paladin action abuse seems like the one that jumps out, but thats just an extension of "White Raven Tactics" abuse still being fresh in my head.
The specificity of that particular thing doesn't matter yet because the brass tacs aren't set BUT, what I'm asking is: "Are there potential drawbacks to having multiple dudes doing the strongest buff they can muster on each other?" Other than opportunity cost I mean, obviously.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Saxony wrote: I would like to note that I don't have an opinion on "thane" as a class name, just explaining why some people like it, and why your Earl based argument is rather odd.
Alright, so pretend Frank said "Ealdorman" instead of Earl and explain to me how things aren't still actually kinda retarded.

I mean, really, here's the things I think of before we get to bad ass vikings:

1. That dude from Mass Effect.

2. That city in India.

3. Macbeth, a Scottish dude known mostly for killing someone and then being way depressed about it.


So, yeah, count me in with the "Thane is completely terrible" crowd.
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Post by shadzar »

Midnight_v wrote:Berserker > Thane .... but the arguement has always beeen that the word "barbarian" didn't mean shit, and only existed because of Conan... So barbarian doesn't mean shit, or it means something negative about culture.
not really negative, just a lack of society like the nomads of china which came before Conan the Huns were barbarians. a society without rules or morals.

berserker jsut means a crazy fighter, it has no real meaning beyond that unless you seek viking definition.

barbarians weren't civilized, and berserkers were ones who went berserk.

like thief, those two have little meaning to describe ANYTHING useful.

Fighter is simple and to the point and includes all such as myrmidons, generals, brawlers, etc. it is someone who fights. warrior would be wrong as its root is WAR, which not every fighter takes part in.

berserker just doesnt work for someone that isnt fitting the viking craziness and acting like a savage beast. that is where the name comes from. English works, use it, learn it.

ANYONE could become a berserker including postal workers.. aka going postal. a term coined for the people when they jsut went berserker, crazy to the point of killing people.

barbarian is neither a race or class or skills, but a life choice like living in the trees versus a city.
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Post by Drolyt »

shadzar wrote:the Huns were barbarians. a society without rules or morals
What the fucking fuck, what was the point of that argument in the fighter thread if people are going to continue posting racist bullshit like this? The Huns had rules and morals you ass, the only reason they get painted as the bad guys is because the Romans wrote the history books. Also, how is
not really negative, just a lack of society like the nomads of china which came before Conan the Huns were barbarians. a society without rules or morals.
even a sentence? I'm not even sure what the hell you are saying, do you think the Huns were Chinese?
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

1. D&D has a long and proud tradition of idiotic class names.

2. Write this game or at least this set of classes for an already existent game and I'll have an opinion. The theory looks interesting, but I suspect filling in the blanks is problematically difficult, especially in the context of a level-based game.
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Post by ...You Lost Me »

Oh my god stop posting about history no one cares about and just ignore shadzar. If you want to call class names stupid there's a thread for it already. This is actually interesting and doesn't deserve to become a pissing match kthx.

I'm going to plug the game Sentinels of the Multiverse here: it's a cooperative board/card game boss fight where you take down a supervillain as a set of (individually premade) superheroes. Every character, even glass cannons, are made with support abilities, and since the game is hand-based you eventually end up with support cards and then have to use em. Things I've noticed from it:

1) Buffs have to be better than most of your other abilities. In sentinels, damage came in chunks of 1 and no one had more than four copies of a card in the deck, so "draw a card" or "+1 damage" is always a good idea.

2) The strongest abilities need set up. This way players are encouraged to buff up while preparing for their ultimates, instead of just blowing those ultimates.

3) Enemies should keep players guessing. If you don't know whether or not the next move Drowzee uses is counter or hypnosis, it's in your benefit to use Vigor this turn.
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Post by ishy »

Looking at the original post, it seems like you're creating a lot of synergy and anti-synergy between the classes.

For example, an artificer is great in combination with a necromancer (lots of smaller actions), great with an undamaged barbarian (group buffs + item usage), bad with a damaged barbarian (since it just wants to stomp stuff). bad with other artificers.

And as another example, rogues want to team up with:
Wizards
Other rogues

And don't want to team up with:
Clerics
Necromancer

It is really hard to create classes that work in different ways, that synergize with each other equally.
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Post by Username17 »

ishy wrote: It is really hard to create classes that work in different ways, that synergize with each other equally.
True. But they also don't need to synergize in ways that are precisely equal. If the different characters are synergizing with each other to different degrees, that's totally fine if the characters are doing it in different ways and in different situations. And probably the best way to do that is to just have a bunch of different synergy things going on.

So let's consider the Rogue because he's conceptually simple and the ways he operates are easy to explain metaphorically. Let's get two abilities: the ability to sneak attack and the ability to slip around and strike at the wizards in the rear ranks. Both of those seem simple enough to explain, and like things that should probably be in the game.

So the sneak attack hits really hard, and it triggers when the Rogue can attack someone who is either engaged or stunned. That right away creates synergy both with melee artists (who create engaged enemies) and with controllers (who create stunned enemies). Meanwhile, the flanking action requires the Rogue to be unengaged, which again creates synergy with the front liners and with back-rankers. And the enemy can only counter that threat by keeping reserves, which automatically takes pressure off the other characters.

The point is that if you have lots of different synergistic things, and it's all synergy that points to other classes (to prevent Knights of the Round horseshit), then it doesn't really matter if there's some ideal party layout. The practical effect is still that you're going to be glad every other character is there.

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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

ishy wrote:For example, an artificer is great in combination with a necromancer (lots of smaller actions), great with an undamaged barbarian (group buffs + item usage), bad with a damaged barbarian (since it just wants to stomp stuff). bad with other artificers.
Correct. That's why a class will need to have a range of buffs that they can grant the party. For example, the Artificer's ethereal weapon rack might have a giant axe, a magic bow, an owl's insight potion, AND a fireball potion in it. The bard can either use the Marching Waltz song or the Battle Dance song or the Defiant Jig. The necromancer can make L4D style Hunters, Smokers, or Chargers depending on the tactical situation. So on.

That's part of why I'm sort of cold on the idea of 'Fighter grants rogue a +1d6 to sneak attacks'. That's definitely simpler, but also has a chance of creating anti-synergies or redundant synergies and also creates word bloat when you have more classes. Classes should support their buddies through generic tactics, not specific bonuses.

Yes, this mean that the combat, advancement, and resource management systems have to be structured around this premise ahead of time. It's not just something that you can slap on as an optional subsystem with D&D.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
jorgea
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In Humble Opinion

Post by jorgea »

This sounds like something that may improve the overall game.
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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants »

FrankTrollman wrote: The point is that if you have lots of different synergistic things, and it's all synergy that points to other classes (to prevent Knights of the Round horseshit), then it doesn't really matter if there's some ideal party layout. The practical effect is still that you're going to be glad every other character is there.
I'm not sure what the Knights of the Round part references. Is it stacking synergy or something?
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