D&D/PF balancing: What if everyone is a reskinned cleric

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Sep 05, 2013 10:04 am

Imagine a game of D&D3.5 where everything is built on the cleric chassis. Every PC uses cleric rules. Every monster uses cleric rules.
Stuff like weapon proficiency is just granted, skills are open, and you can pick two good saves (any).

But... you explain your 'spells per day' through roleplaying. They are magical powers if they player says they are magical powers, and tokens of player narrative agency if the player says they are tokens of narrative agency. I think the PF clerics get a bunch of domain stuff like turning invisible, so that would be suitable for rogues.

Is this retarded enough to curve back into playable?
Do you think this acheives 4e's goals?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Sep 05, 2013 10:04 am

Imagine a world where OgreBattle stops posting stupid shit.

Mmmmmm. So much better than this one.

icyshadowlord · Post by **icyshadowlord** » Thu Sep 05, 2013 10:25 am

I wouldn't dismiss an idea until it's been properly analyzed.

Translated in the language of the Gaming Den; Kaelik, shut the fuck up.

Antariuk · Post by **Antariuk** » Thu Sep 05, 2013 10:25 am

There have various attempts to do that (theoretically), especially in places where people worship JaronK's idea of tiers. Also, yes, it achieves the same goal as 4E did: make almost everything the same. Why repeat it?

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Thu Sep 05, 2013 11:12 am

If you were going to do this, I would at the very least use some kind of variant cleric with a limited amount of Spells Known, to allow characters to actually be distinct.

If everyone has 90% of their abilities in common, only a night's rest away, that's far too samey.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Sep 05, 2013 11:14 am

It's traditional on gaming boards to note that Clerics can do anything you can do better. But that's only really true if you you buy into the "role" concept that people fap to. Clerics do indeed tank, dps, heal, and crowd control better than you. Indeed, a Cleric who prepares some self buffs, a Wall of Stone, a lesser planar ally, and a Doomtide can probably do all of those things better than you at the same time.

But that doesn't mean that Clerics actually do everything. It just means that the roles as envisioned are stupid, narrow, and too easy for a caster with a versatile spell list to poach. There are actually lots of things that Clerics don't do terribly well. They aren't great Illusionists, they don't have enough skills to really do "scouting" all that well (and Find Traps isn't bringing home the bacon there).

-Username17

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Thu Sep 05, 2013 1:04 pm

I'm having a hard time deciding if this is actually a worse idea than 4e or not.

Seriously, something like this completely destroys a large part of the point of 3e in my eyes.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Sep 05, 2013 1:24 pm

No. Why would you want everyone to be the same class in a class based system? The instant you start differentiating them you're essentially making new classes which you might as well just do anyway. Atually the longer I think about this idea the more questions I start asking. What DOES differentiate one cleric from another? Why go through explaining away all your powers? Are there any limits at all to keep people from just being the same damn thing?

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Thu Sep 05, 2013 2:39 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:[...]Clerics do indeed tank, dps, heal, and crowd control better than you. Indeed, a Cleric who prepares some self buffs, a Wall of Stone, a lesser planar ally, and a Doomtide can probably do all of those things better than you at the same time.

But that doesn't mean that Clerics actually do everything. It just means that the roles as envisioned are stupid, narrow, and too easy for a caster with a versatile spell list to poach. There are actually lots of things that Clerics don't do terribly well. [...]

My perception here is that what you're saying is that Clerics are amazingly spectacular at MMO-style dungeon-crawls, but pretty reasonable if those aren't a significant demographic.

Neon Sequitur · Post by **Neon Sequitur** » Fri Sep 06, 2013 6:44 am

Maybe I'm a little out of the loop on the terminology here, but...

WTF is a "token of player narrative agency" exactly?

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Fri Sep 06, 2013 10:56 am

I have no idea either. Outside of this I might guess that they are OOC tokens like fate points that the player can use to change the narrative by rewriting what has happened or is happening.

But here? I'm not sure.

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Fri Sep 06, 2013 7:05 pm

Basically what Parthenon said. "Narrative Tokens" can be spent to mechanically allow a player to rub his dick over the campaign, making him the DM for a short time; they allow the player to fiat favorable circumstances when spent. This was a proposed "non-magical" power source for dumb melee fightards to interact with the story in any way outside of melee combat, but was kinda dumb because it breaks immersion by being a clunky meta-game ability.

Sashi · Post by **Sashi** » Fri Sep 06, 2013 7:45 pm

Isn't this just a super lazy implementation of the "Spell slots for everyone!" thing that was being played around with for awhile?

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Sep 06, 2013 11:19 pm

I got overwhelmed with other stuff when doing "full casting for everyone" and was less interested in returning to it when I decided it was simpler to just give everyone clerics (i.e. super lazy implementation). In my wizened age, now I'd say make everyone a sorcerer because cleric casting is too variable day to day.

Slapping Sorcerer casting (spells known chosen from Bard/Cleric/Druid/Sorc lists) onto the non-full casting classes and you've got some decent classes.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Fri Sep 06, 2013 11:53 pm

On the basis of making a more restricted spell list (which isn't actually a terrible idea for most campaign worlds) this could definitely work. Basically, if instead of giving everyone full access to the 'cleric' spell list, you could have them choose a certain number of 'spells known'. Whether they cast them like a cleric (preparation) or a Sorcerer becomes a matter of preference.

So, yeah, this could work from a mechanical point of view.

But it's not going to really make everyone happy.

But if your group likes the idea, it just means that you're starting with the same chassis and skinning it differently. The 'cleric' with ranged weapon, stealth and wilderness skills and a few spells from the druid spell list becomes a Ranger. The 'cleric' with heavy weapons and a warhorse that casts a few healing and buff spells becomes a Paladin.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Sep 07, 2013 1:03 am

deaddmwalking wrote: But it's not going to really make everyone happy.

[quote="deaddmwalking in another thread verrrry recently]

Bill Cosby on theRPGsite wrote: “I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone.”
― Bill Cosby

[/quote]

I giggled.

And yeah, that's the idea. The Paladin can take a bunch of cleric spells, the Ranger can take some Druid spells.

Hell, the Druid even remains viable in this setup, as is the Wizard and Cleric. It really only invalidates the Sorcerer. nothingofvaluewaslost.jpg

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Sat Sep 07, 2013 7:37 am

Dude remember that the cleric is just a guide on average ability. The upper bound on ability usefulness is the wizard, and the lower bound is the rogue. But the part where a cleric of Heironeus is 99.9% identical to a cleric of Erythnul is BS; as Frank originally said, the wizard's ability advancement and acquisition system is better thematically while not being a strait jacket mechanically.