The Gaming Den

virgil wrote:Get off the wrong train, because there is tanking in D&D. It's just not a low-hanging fruit for character creation.

No there isn't. If at least some of your enemies are going to be other sentient creatures and not MOBs. If your game breaks when you assume that the world isn't populated by MOBs than your games is not worth playing. See also 4e which tried to make tanking be a thing in D&D.

Stop being such a 4rry.

virgil wrote:

Lord Mistborn wrote:

sabs wrote:If Spells took multiple rounds to cast.. that would make a difference. Alright, so the Melee Characters would basically be there to keep the horrible things occupied until Ultimate Magic! But that's better than not needing to show up at all.

Lay off the MMOs, there is no tanking in D&D.

Get off the wrong train, because there is tanking in D&D. It's just not a low-hanging fruit for character creation.

MMO's stole the role from D&D, not the other way around. Big heavy meat shields who take lots of damage, and are too dangerous to ignore, but not nearly as dangerous as the glass cannon we call a wizard has been in D&D since Red Box.

I guess you could make it so that Wizards have to build up something in order to be able to cast the bigger spells. Either multiple rounds of concentration, or needing to gathering power/mana, or even just having to cast a bunch of at will magic spells in order to enable higher level spells to be castable in the area.

If every spell cast, increased some mystic level in the area, and you had to cast X level A, before you could cast level B's.. then X level B's before you could cast level C.. etc.. You'd need time to build up to casting Meteor Swarm. Melee characters, etc.. on the other hand could ramp up more quickly. None of this encounter/daily bullshit. But if they had maneuvers that built on other successful maneuvers.. then everyone would take some time before they could unleash unspeakable power, and you wouldn't have the problem of I throw all my best abilities in the first 5 minutes of the day, lets rest till tomorrow.

See, what I would do, is I would give the tanks the dangerous moves that required setup and were interruptible, and make the glass cannon's moves not require setup.

This way, the enemy is incentivized to attack the tanks instead of the glass cannons.

You know, kind of like the Tome Knight.

Lord Mistborn wrote:No there isn't. If at least some of your enemies are going to be other sentient creatures and not MOBs. If your game breaks when you assume that the world isn't populated by MOBs than your games is not worth playing. See also 4e which tried to make tanking be a thing in D&D.

I guess your mother asked for an extra helping of stupid? It's not universally applicable, or the best use of resources, but it does exist. The only way you can be right is by pulling a No True Scotsman Fallacy, and that will deserve a thorough mocking.

I'm the Scotsman in the vicinity, so when a No True Scotsman comes up, I'll consider and render a verdict.

Drolyt wrote:Your problem seems to be with the 4e resource mechanic, which is indeed horrible.

OK, fair call, but it's also with having everyone on the same resource mechanic, because then they all have to be doing the same stuff to be balanced. And then you only really have the one class.

Loses the potential for things to seem awesome by comparison to other things. My at-will damage being awesome and your peak damage being awesome, rather than all our shit being middle-of-the-road.

It is a good thing for wizards to actually cast spells most rounds, and besides that by your own account wizards still have I Win buttons, they just spread them out more.

True. I happen to prefer crossbow/dart to at-will spells which are effectively the same thing, but not everyone does, and we can leave that choice up to each player.

Or you could just let fighters do interesting things and make sure wizards can't do game-breaking things?

Hey now, none of that.

[*] Fighters must be able to kill shit all day, at-will, that should go without saying. That is my interesting thing. Making the monsters die for daring to oppose me in a continuous stream of blood and gore. More monsters in each fight helps that.
[*] But Wizards must be able to win D&D, or some class. Wizards who just zap shit all day like a Fighter does aren't Wizards, they're Fighters in a frilly hat. The game needs a (not-round-one) win button, it's too open-ended and random to not have one (or it fucking well should be). May as well be the Wizard.

[*] Something though. Because occasional awesome, when it's needed, is a very good thing for everyone.

I'm not sure I agree with this. It gives nonspellcasters a purpose, but that purpose becomes "protect the wizard/codzilla so they can cast the awesome spell and win the game."

Even if that's true (which I would debate, but meh), if there's a genuine mechanical need for a non-spellcaster to be in the party past mid levels, that's a huge boost over 3e. And, as a Fighter playing type guy, that would seriously make me happy. As long as the monsters are dying when I'm hitting them, and there's a point to dragging me along to do that for a few rounds each fight.

See, when I want complexity and problems to solve, I sit in the DM chair. When I play, I veg out and use mechanically simple and direct characters with some RP bite to them.

Not at all against the notion of a barbarian whose rage bar goes off the chart and explodes everyone's head on round six or whatever, that's fine. Warlock as an at-will zap-zap magic guy is hunky-dory. All good. I'll play the at-will, you get the win button, whatever flavour you like. We cool?


@RadiantPhoenix: that sort of thing can be up to the players if you provide enough classes. You'd want the Barbarian and Warlock concepts I just shit out.



P.S. The Balor doesn't get to cast Blasphemy on round one either. No I can't immediately think of a mechanic for that which makes any in-game sense. Easy enough to just label individual spells and effects as "not before round 5" or whatever, but I'm too tired to even try to write fluff for that.

tussock wrote:[*] But Wizards must be able to win D&D, or some class. Wizards who just zap shit all day like a Fighter does aren't Wizards, they're Fighters in a frilly hat. The game needs a (not-round-one) win button, it's too open-ended and random to not have one (or it fucking well should be). May as well be the Wizard.

Non sequitur much?

Automatically winning has very little to do with not zapping things.

Unlike you, apparently, I do enjoy solving problems as a player, and making the wizard always win when they use their interesting powers means that using the powers well isn't a challenge.

sabs wrote:

virgil wrote:

Lord Mistborn wrote:Lay off the MMOs, there is no tanking in D&D.

Get off the wrong train, because there is tanking in D&D. It's just not a low-hanging fruit for character creation.

MMO's stole the role from D&D, not the other way around. Big heavy meat shields who take lots of damage, and are too dangerous to ignore, but not nearly as dangerous as the glass cannon we call a wizard has been in D&D since Red Box.

True. Back when a wizard who got hit lost the spell he/she was casting, no concentration check allowed, having someone to stand in front of the mage and keep the other side's brutes and minions at bay was a thing. They didn't have aggro mechanics back in the day, but that role was necessary.

It's a lot easier to "tank" in a world made out of 10 foot corridors than it is outside.

-Username17

Having multiple round cast times seems like you've got a boring game.
Where the wizard just plays a bit of smash bro, till he's done charging in combat.

Would it help the fighter if more of the spellcaster buffs are not single target only?
Say if a fly spell affected more than just one person.

It certainly wouldn't hurt, as a spellcaster then has no reason not to include the fighter in their self-buff routine, but it wouldn't be enough to make you prefer a fighter to another wizard in your buff range.

Maybe we need to go back to no concentration checks, or really hard concentration checks. Although, for those of us who like playing magic/melee characters.. thats' sad. And even then, the CoD is a better melee combatant than the fighter, which is a serious problem.

Wait, why have we gone from getting rid of the fighter to trying to shoehorn the fighter back in?

RadiantPhoenix wrote:Wait, why have we gone from getting rid of the fighter to trying to shoehorn the fighter back in?

because even the people who hate the fighter, are so emotionally attached to this pathetic excuse of a class, that they couldn't suffer its loss?

because you can't get rid of guy in heavy armor with weapons who runs around and kills things?
You don't have to call it a fighter, and you can totally have it get supernatural celestial powers in the end. But it kind of needs to exist.

sabs wrote:because you can't get rid of guy in heavy armor with weapons who runs around and kills things?
You don't have to call it a fighter, and you can totally have it get supernatural celestial powers in the end. But it kind of needs to exist.

you didn't read this thread, did you?

I did actually. And I agree with Frank's post in the 2nd slot.
Guy with (melee weapon) who (melee weapons) things to death is a workable concept. You just need to remove the lame, self limiting concept classes.

Fighter, Barbarian, Soldier, Butcher, Baker, Candlestick maker, are bad.
Sword Mage, Paladin, Berserker, Elemental Warrior, Tattoo Warrior, Eldritch Knight, Knight of the Void, Celestial Monk, are all workable.

The barbarian extends into high levels. You can either take advantage of the rage theme and go absolutely crazy with it (see Cu Chulainn) or take advantage of the tribal/ancestry theme. Back when we had the big ol' 13th Age thread, I actually rather liked the fluff of one of their high-level barbarian abilities - you summoned an army of ancestor ghosts. Now, the actual mechanics were you occasionally got to take an extra melee attack at range. But hey, the fluff was cool.

But yeah, I wouldn't even know what a fighter was supposed to be if it weren't for D&D. It is a vague and meaningless name for a role with no significant concepts attached to it. The term fighter should be struck from TTRPG lexicon.

That's why he listed berserker. Getting supernaturally pissed off at people has some wiggle room but calling them barbarians just makes people think of Schwarzenegger or a dude in a furry hat.

Edit: Sort of ninja'd.

DSMatticus wrote:The barbarian

I still think that this is in some ways a worse name for a class than fighter. Barbarian is a derogatory term the Greeks used to refer to people they consider "uncivilized". It is an offensive stereotype. Cú Chulainn is not a barbarian. The most general English term for a warrior that flies into a battle rage or frenzy is berserker and I think that is what the class should be called.

Barbarian should be a race subtype, or a background slot that gives you 'stuff'. Not a full fledged character class.

Besides, not all "barbarians" are conan berserker types. Amazon tribes, Huns, could all fall under barbarian and look nothing like the pseudo viking berserker that's in D&D

Whatever wrote:That's why he listed berserker. Getting supernaturally pissed off at people has some wiggle room but calling them barbarians just makes people think of Schwarzenegger or a dude in a furry hat.

Ahh. I'd actually missed berserker in the list (which is definitely better if you're going for rage demon, as everyone is pointing out), though I still think barbarian is salvageable and preferable if you're going for "martial character splashed with shaman themes."

Drolyt wrote:Barbarian is a derogatory term the Greeks used to refer to people they consider "uncivilized". It is an offensive stereotype.

"It was a slur used by a group of people who continue to exist in the modern day really only by name and a loose sense of heritage against a category of people with arguably even larger existential problems, and fell out of use some time before Christianity was that hip new thing" is not a basis by which you can declare something offensive today.

sabs wrote:Barbarian should be a race subtype, or a background slot that gives you 'stuff'. Not a full fledged character class.

Besides, not all "barbarians" are conan berserker types. Amazon tribes, Huns, could all fall under barbarian and look nothing like the pseudo viking berserker that's in D&D

I think even making them races or backgrounds runs the risk of being a bad idea. But then I'm not fond of perpetuating the "noble savage" archetype as a myth, and would prefer setting authors just state what the culture is like up front, without reference to "forwards" or "backwards" in the text, and let players decide if they want to call it "barbaric." Which isn't to say I think value judgements like that one are a bad thing. I just prefer setting material where it doesn't try to impose that value judgement on the reader, or alternatively explicates its norms.

Someone is totally going to call someone else a barbarian at some point. They may or may not have a reasonable justification for doing so. But it is a bit strange for any character to go "I wanna be a barbarian!" So asking players to do the same is a bit weird. This is not to say that players necessarily won't, but enough might decline for the reason of that name and portrayal, and not wanting to identify with that for reasons that go beyond "personal preference" and instead "wow, that's really dumb."

But that actually is a really small concern. There's another objection. We have, especially in modern fantasy, well-read "barbarians" who came from highly "civilized" cultures and their chief trait is going berserk and killing everyone in battle. Sometimes their anger is called righteous and they are portrayed as good, sometimes not. Heck, not even modern fantasy. Heracles should really be using the "Barbarian" class build because he is the archetype - strong, tough, thuggish, uses bigass clubs, habit of rage - and yet, as others have pointed out, he's a Greek of some tribe or another. He's the son of a king. If anyone would have been well-read, it would have been him. The notion of the powerful, virile hero being "dumb" or even illiterate outside of their rage-state seems to be fairly recent, and as a trope has little gameplay value unless every class starts off illiterate and we assume literacy rates are extremely poor rather than extremely high.

( Enter historical debate about literacy rates in Greece, completely missing the point of literacy being associated with social class. )

DSMatticus wrote:

Drolyt wrote:Barbarian is a derogatory term the Greeks used to refer to people they consider "uncivilized". It is an offensive stereotype.

"It was a slur used by a group of people who continue to exist in the modern day really only by name and a loose sense of heritage against a category of people with arguably even larger existential problems, and fell out of use some time before Christianity was that hip new thing" is not a basis by which you can declare something offensive today.

If you can't see the racist connotations of the term I don't think I can help you. The entire idea of barbarism is "my culture is better and more civilized than yours and you are bad". It is a Eurocentric concept that has little to do with reality. No actual primitive tribe looks a damn thing like the stereotypical fantasy barbarian.

Fuck the barbarian. I want to play a cosmopolitan, or a sophisticate.

Class names and comparative cultural definitions should not mix. It leads to unnecessary confusion. If anything, 'barbarian' should be a racial/background archetype, like Wild Elf or Sundered Dwarf, assuming it is required at all.

That way, barbarian culture is not limited to big guys with axes. It can incorporate hedge wizards, stealthy raiders and bone-rattling mystics across a spectrum of races and cultures.