There Is Only the Adventurer Class

[Username17]

Compare that to something like Exalted, where high system mastery is required just to figure out what a viable build even is, never mind to actually make a party composed of relevant and functional characters.

Oh definitely. A game has a responsibility to tell you what challenges the players are expected to face and what types of characters they can make as individuals that will help the team face those different challenges as a group. I feel that I fell well short on this exact point for After Sundown. But a lot of games don't go there at all.

Exalted is a good (bad) example. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ is pretty much all you can say as to what the individual or the group should be capable of doing in any context. I don't know what challenges you are expected to face, and I don't know what abilities or skill numbers you'd need to contribute on any axis to completing them. And most damningly of all, even the actual authors of the books can't answer that question.

In any skill based system, you're going to have a weird time explaining to the players what skills they are going to need as individuals and what skills the group is going to need one (or perhaps some other number) of the team members to have. Sometimes, you'll plain get it wrong, like when Eclipse Phase levels with the players that they are all going to need to put ranks in Fray, even though that is in fact totally not true. And this is all necessarily going to take longer in the book and at the table to do right than "Someone plays a Cleric."

There are advantages to skill based systems. It allows players to settle in to secondary and tertiary roles in a manner that they find pleasing and appropriate to the characters they want to play. But there's also real advantage in layering some fucking archetypes onto that like Shadowrun does so that you know whether your team is operating without a Street Samurai before you commit to starting the game.

-Username17

[Occluded Sun]

Regarding Mage: if easily-accessible magic is so vastly superior to 'natural' healing that no one ever bothers resting and healing up, and access to that magic is perceived as a necessity, then there's no point in even having rules for natural healing in the first place.

Including it is a design failure.

[virgil]

Including it is a design failure.

Hey look, you're wrong about something. This is my surprised face. A substantial majority of the setting in fact does not have access to magical healing, and the Awakened actually interact with them on a regular basis, frequently without using magic on them. It's also a common start to a campaign for players to have their first adventure be as mundanes who don't get magic until the end.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, it's generally a mistake to build your system with only the needs of PCs in mind. If anything you probably want to start out with the extreme top and bottom end of the play space you want to support and then build PC capabilities with those endpoints in mind.

[PhoneLobster]

Yeah, it's generally a mistake to build your system with only the needs of PCs in mind.

You see now this is why people can't have nice things including a sane discussion about role protection.

Because of fucking course the needs of the PCs is the only fucking game in town. You are designing a game for people your role protection at a design level is nothing but the game designer wanking off if it doesn't have any (productive) relevance to role protection at the table in actual game play.

If you do NOT have the RULE that players cannot select the same classes/options as each other then no matter what role protection you wanked over in your design space, the actual players playing your game are NOT experiencing a game with role protection in it.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, it's generally a mistake to build your system with only the needs of PCs in mind.

You see now this is why people can't have nice things including a sane discussion about role protection.

Because of fucking course the needs of the PCs is the only fucking game in town. You are designing a game for people your role protection at a design level is nothing but the game designer wanking off if it doesn't have any (productive) relevance to role protection at the table in actual game play.

If you do NOT have the RULE that players cannot select the same classes/options as each other then no matter what role protection you wanked over in your design space, the actual players playing your game are NOT experiencing a game with role protection in it.

Learn to fucking read idiot, they were talking about desinging the game without having challenges in mind.

[PhoneLobster]

Bite me it was a good bit of text to jump off from to make the point I wanted to.

If you have a problem with that point then feel free to explain how all the design level role protection in the world totally provides role protection at the table without a hard rule enforcing unique diversity in player choices. Better yet also explain how something rather clearly stupid like "must have exactly 1 cleric to ride this roller coaster" gets to be a good idea for your game design without also being a hard rule for the players.

On a mostly unrelated point. The whole "but how do you reconcile this view with your unique individuals/race rules views!" It's straightforward and about understanding the difference between players at your table and npcs in your setting. Players should be able to have their smart weak orc wizard who is "unique" in setting but at no point do I expect that sort of thing to be unique among PCs, exceptional individuals should be run of the mill among PCs, smart weak orc wizards are very much expected to be a dime a dozen among the characters players choose to play and that fact is not expected to inhibit the player's enjoyment of playing the orc they wanted to play without their choices being arbitrarily limited in order to conform with needlessly constrictive NPC stereotyping.

It's the same thing again, design space vs play space. Game designers need to understand there are differences.

[Kaelik]

I am an idiot who strawmans people.

This is why you people are always wrong, because you care more about strawmanning people than anything else.

What, you mean to say the fact that you didn't say the thing I am claiming you said undermines my entire argument? No shit Sherlock.

[PhoneLobster]

In that case I think we can safely say Kaelik concedes my point 100%.

[Kaelik]

In that case I think we can safely say Kaelik concedes my point 100%.

No you idiot, I'm saying that if you want anyone at all to argue your point with you, start by not quoting someone talking about something completely different, and then whining about how it proves your point, because that makes your argument fucking shit.

[Occluded Sun]

A substantial majority of the setting in fact does not have access to magical healing

But they're rarely going to be played. The game system should concern itself entirely with the players and what they're going to be doing. If you want the system to represent normal people, normal people ought to be viable candidates for characters. That really doesn't describe any version of Mage. (Mages didn't play well with anyone else, actually, but especially normal mortals.)

[momothefiddler]

If you want the system to represent normal people, normal people ought to be viable candidates for characters.

This. After all, the only reason D&D includes stats for Balors is to accommodate people who want to play Balors. The same goes for squids, oozes, mindless undead, and so on. Player characters exist in a vacuum and only wish to interact with each other, and there's no such thing as a 'setting' - at best there's a backdrop.

[hyzmarca]

I'd suggest point buy skill trees. While they can be done terribly (I'm looking at you, White Wolf) they can also be done quite well.

If you're going to go classless/single class, then I'd suggest going with three or four skill trees that start with useful abilities that no one is going to secret buying. Then, as you move up the trees, they branch, and point costs increase, forcing specialization, while also making it viable to take the low-cost abilities from other trees, if you want to broaden your abilities.

I'd also suggest having limited access ability trees that can be used to further customize your character. For example, racial trees. Racial ability trees also have the advantage of letting you have monster races without level adjustment. You just require that Medusas spent points to unlock their petrifying gaze.

[Korwin]

D&D is supposed to be an good example of role protection?
Where multiple Clerics in the Party is good, especially if you are playing 5+ and the alternative to the second Cleric would be an Fighter?

[Mechalich]

3.X D&D is a decent example of role protection in theory, while being a fairly terrible one in practice. The idea is that the various classes match to something like: primary combatant; healer; support combatant/skill monkey; ranged blaster/magic monkey.

In practice that doesn't happen because the classes are terribly unbalanced and above a very low level point the standard tactical combat assumptions around which the game was built break down and full casters proceed to acquire all possible roles.

2e AD&D actually had much better role protection that 3.X does, largely because certain classes had essential abilities that other classes simply were not allowed to have - like thief skills.

[Jason]

The priority for functional adult non-dickwad gamers at a TTRPG table is that they get to make the choices they want to make, and that they get to be rewarded for those choices. The need for those choices to be in ANY way shape or form "unique" is of such low priority it barely registers as worth a mention.

The no true scotsman fallacy aside, you are wrong. In pretty much very regard.
RPGs are largely an escapist hobby. A way for Players to leave the boring dredge of their every day lives where they are nothing unique, Joe Average, if you will, and only see being rewarded for choices (like wages).
Players want to feel that they matter. They want to be able to contribute in a unique way, to bring something to the table, the others can't, to be important and relevant. To be needed.

Of course you can pick the few niche groups that play one-shots a couple times a year just for the company of each other, like the CoC crowd. But to assume that players participating in a long campaign, over the course of several years are complacent being just average or easily replaceable is ridiculous!

Face it: you are wrong.

[PhoneLobster]

RPGs are largely an escapist hobby.

Escapism does not require a unique experience. It never has. It never will. Your insistence it does flies in the face of all human experience what with pretty much all of humanity being so very used to not being unique to the point that they don't even really notice. People play D&D to play a game. The SAME game as all the other people who sit down to play D&D, in the same ways with the same classes and options. The same as with every other widespread escapist hobby where people do NOT demand that they have a unique latest book, movie or video game. You dumb ass.

Multiple fighters and rogues in the same D&D party are for inexplicable reasons utterly routine in this region and always have been, I severely doubt that you haven't observed similar routine double ups of SOME class or classes in your area. I'm fairly certain that the idea of the "perfect" party of 1 each of rogue, fighter, wizard, cleric is actually a relatively fictional fantasy that came late to the party some time around the 2nd edition era and never really materialized in real force at actual game tables.

And unless you actually ARE telling people to tear up their character sheets because someone else brought a wizard and you think that's a fun experience for them then you can fuck right off with pretending that players care more about your knicker twisting unique play experience bullshit than they do about feeling bad about not sharing nice things with their friends.

[Jason]

The same as with every other widespread escapist hobby where people do NOT demand that they have a unique latest book, movie or video game. You dumb ass.

So, you are comparing a group activity with a solitary activity and claim they are comparable. Congratulations!


The players want to have fun. That's the primary function of an rpg. To have fun, they need to achieve their personal goals within that game. Part of the social contract between the group is that they will support each other in doing just that and not to hinder that goal.
Thus, if a player wishes to be exceptional in his role (the great, hulking barbarian, the wise wizard, the wiley trickster, the hardened sellsword) the group needs to agree to protect his role, or he will be unable to achieve his goal, thus not having fun, failing at the primary function of the game to start with.

You only need one player in the group that wants to be exceptional to require role protection. Not as a hard rule, but as part of the social contract.

[MGuy]

Jason, what are you arguing with PL about? His rant boils down to "what if people want to play copy paste characters in the same group?". There's no arguing that that hasn't and won't ever happen. I've seen or heard of all kinds of crazy shit and a party with two sneaky people is not that unexpected of a thing. If you argue with him about that you justify his rant when you could just say "so what? Let them if they want" because none of his rant is actually an argument against having protected roles be part of the design process. As far as I can tell this is a rant about not writing in the rules that perhaps players shouldn't all show up as healers. I don't think that's worth arguing about. If someone writes that in their book it is such a minor thing that I really wouldn't care.

[PhoneLobster]

If you argue with him about that you justify his rant when you could just say "so what? Let them if they want"

"So what let them if they want" IS my rant. It doesn't actually hurt anyone, it happens all the time, the rules of even a "role protected" narrow class system do not prevent it, the rules should not prevent it and importantly for this thread, when writing your rules you should not worry about selecting mechanical options that do not prevent it.

It's OK, overlaps happen all the time, it turns out fine, panic merchants can stop hyperventilating about role protection priorities in rules design.

[Username17]

PL believes you should be allowed to have anything you want except predicates. So you can have a painting of three wolves and a moon, but you can't have the best painting of three wolves and a moon, or the first painting of three wolves and a moon, or the only painting of three wolves and a moon. Because the italicized things are all predicates.

That's the only way I can make his tangled logic be internally consistent in any way. And let's be honest: that's really fucking stupid.

-Username17

[Jason]

Jason, what are you arguing with PL about?

I am arguing that the stance of "let me do what I want just so I can have fun!" is a terribly selfish way to ruin someone else's fun.
I don't believe that role protection needs to be an element of game design (I expressly stated that), but I argue that it is a natural clause of the social contract formed by the group as a whole.

Now, if two players want to play the exact same role and they agreed to do that beforehand, then by all means, let them. Who would argue against that? But if Player A picks "a shadowbender" and player B then decides oh yeah, I'll play a "shadowbender" as well they are "stealing player A's thunder". They take away player A's unique contribution, their unique charateristic, in turn, spoiling or dampenign their fun. And that, I argue is selfish and disruptive.

[Foxwarrior]

Usually point buy systems result in characters with enough smaller distinctions that Shadowbender A and Shadowbender B are meaningfully different though. At least the ones that don't have obviously superior builds for that sort of thing. Class-based is more likely to result in every Shadowbender being pretty much the same, at least if Shadowbender is like Fire Mage and not like Sorcerer (because Sorcerer is more point-buy-like ).

[Jason]

Usually point buy systems result in characters with enough smaller distinctions that Shadowbender A and Shadowbender B are meaningfully different though. At least the ones that don't have obviously superior builds for that sort of thing. Class-based is more likely to result in every Shadowbender being pretty much the same, at least if Shadowbender is like Fire Mage and not like Sorcerer (because Sorcerer is more point-buy-like ).

No disagreement here. In a point buy system I would count two "shadowbenders" that are sufficiently distinct from each other as different roles, though. At least as long as "distinct enough" means fulfilling distinct group functions.

Edit: an example to clarify what I mean: In a group of 5 players, if 3 of them are playing wizards, whereas one is a blaster, the other a charmer and the third one an illusionist would still leave the three distinct enough from each other. If all three of them were blasters, we might start to run into problems at the table.

[hyzmarca]

Usually point buy systems result in characters with enough smaller distinctions that Shadowbender A and Shadowbender B are meaningfully different though. At least the ones that don't have obviously superior builds for that sort of thing. Class-based is more likely to result in every Shadowbender being pretty much the same, at least if Shadowbender is like Fire Mage and not like Sorcerer (because Sorcerer is more point-buy-like ).

You could go with a branching class system, which is rather similar to mandatory prestige classing.

At level 1, everyone is the same. At level 2, you have to choose between three options, meaning that there are 3 distinct versions of the class at this point. At level 3, each of those paths has 3 branches, giving you 9 distinct versions of the class. At level 20 you have 1,162,261,467 possibilities.

Since you presumably do not have time to write up 1,743,392,200 unique abilities, you'd probably have fewer branches than 3 per level. But the point stands. A branching class system can produce unique characters, unless there is one true build that's simply better.