D&D PC ROLES: FROM PAST TO PRESENT TO FUTURE

[Kaelik]

Unlike Tome I don't assume things like infinite wish loops exist but aside from that it's fair game.

Tome doesn't assume Infinite Wish loops exist. It actually prevents all wish loops. There is no possible Wish loop in Tome D&D.

You can, if you can already get access to a Wish, do whatever it is a second time. But giving a Candle of Invocation (which don't exist as of Book of Gears) to a level 6 Rogue results in... A level 6 Rogue with one Wish, and no ability to get more than one Wish.

[Roy]

And while I don't go as far as JE in saying that a character needs to be the whole fucking party or they aren't trying, you had damn well have a valid means of contributing to solving any problem that comes up at least 90% of the time.

I'm not attacking you. I'm saying that you're pretty much saying the same thing I did.

I'm really noticing how this sort of play style affects my character generation and creation. I very much prefer to play characters who have a very specific ability, that gives them flexibility; or simply as many options as the system allows.

If a game has multiple power systems with their own Mini-games (ex. Alchemy, Combat, Magic, Psychic, Trade Skills), I prefer to play a character who has enough of each to gain benefits from engaging in that mini-game within the game.

Attack, saying I'm being silly, whatever. Point is I'm not taking it as far as you as I had that 'quad threat' speech in mind when I wrote that.

As for Tome and Wishes, um yeah. They do just assume you hit level x and you automatically get a bunch of wishes because you can cast Planar Binding now. They just changed it so one of the things you don't get is infinite wealth. But that's still different than something like 'No, fuck you. You can't Bind a Wish caster, or otherwise do that.'

[Kaelik]

As for Tome and Wishes, um yeah. They do just assume you hit level x and you automatically get a bunch of wishes because you can cast Planar Binding now. They just changed it so one of the things you don't get is infinite wealth. But that's still different than something like 'No, fuck you. You can't Bind a Wish caster, or otherwise do that.'

Yes, they assume that when you, as a high level Wizard, take several days off, you can get several wishes that don't require XP.

Oh wow, so special. The only in game effects is that at level 11, you can have any eight minor items you want.

[Roy]

As for Tome and Wishes, um yeah. They do just assume you hit level x and you automatically get a bunch of wishes because you can cast Planar Binding now. They just changed it so one of the things you don't get is infinite wealth. But that's still different than something like 'No, fuck you. You can't Bind a Wish caster, or otherwise do that.'

Yes, they assume that when you, as a high level Wizard, take several days off, you can get several wishes that don't require XP.

Oh wow, so special. The only in game effects is that at level 11, you can have any eight minor items you want.

+5 to all stats seems like an in game effect to me.

[Josh_Kablack]

I'm having trouble truly seperating what's "Role" and what's "Difficulty" and what is "Encounter Design"

In the Champions game last night, we had a rapidly put together session in which high seas pirates had stormed the yacht of a friendly-to-the-PCs, but not-exactly-a-good-guy character (who has the superpower to turn into a giant sea monster), taken his family and crew hostage and scuttled his yacht. The PCs get the call for help and an encounter that has multiple overlapping objectives develops:

• Infiltrate to locate and free the hostages
• Provide a distraction to keep the pirates from noticing infiltrating characters
• Once the hostages are clear, beat up the pirates
• Keep Cap'n Sea Monster calm enough that he doesn't go full monster transformation and start eating people indiscriminately
• Save the sinking yacht before it becomes irrecoverable
• Interrogate the pirates to find out who put them up to such a stupid hijacking and why

That's actually a pretty interesting encounter set up, and characters with different abilities have useful things they can do.

However, since this was a session in a game with a number of houserules to encourage horizontal advancement, pretty much the least diverse of the PC group was still at least competent to contribute to four of those six objectives. And since it was in a superhero game, success at any objective did not require that only the single most suited character pursue their best objective. And since it was in a long-running game, the players had enough camaraderie to accept when another player pursued a suboptimal or unexpected-for-their-character objective.

But had it happened instead in D&D, there are multiple character archetypes that would have been hard pressed to contribute to more than one of those objectives; there is an inherent difficulty assumption that pretty much requires one of the two most suited characters to pursue their best objective and the nigh-inevitable failure when the new player missed her cue to do the thing her character was best suited for would have bred resentment within the game group.

So which set up makes for a better game?

[Manxome]

That's how I feel. I'm fine with individual characters picking up a "role" as they identify a need in the party. I just don't like them being linked to classes in such a way that dictates what class the new player has to play when joining a game.

I don't think the problem there is really that classes are linked to roles, but that certain roles have been prescribed as mandatory for all parties. If the game is designed so that (for example) no party is viable without a dedicated healer, then you'll have arguments over who's going to be forced to play the dedicated healer, even if you can dedicated heal as any class.

On the other hand, even if there's only one class that can be a dedicated healer, and dedicated healing is the only thing that class is good at, I don't think that's necessarily a problem if the party can just do without one. It's arguably even a good thing, if it makes building your character easier and the game still supports a reasonable range of character concepts.

[Lokathor]

And if you look at a different game like Shadowrun, you'll see things like different roles just meaning different minigames (everyone shuts the fuck up when one guy is working the Matrix, etc). This also happens in D&D (shake the Bard at it, anyone?) but not as often. But in Shadowrun, everyone is sneaking in, and shooting fools in the face and so forth.

Ultimately this shows that not only do most people not want to be trapped in a little box, that they will actively go out of their way to be broadly competent, to ensure participation in as much of the game as possible.

My player group is sadly the opposite. The Face just boosts up more talking things, the gunners just get bigger guns and gattling guns and crazyness, the mages just keep on pumping the magic, the hacker just keeps pushing his hacking to the limit. "Diversification? fuck that nose."

Makes it hard to give them a hard time without just killing them over and over. I guess maybe I should stop going easy on them and just kill them over and over until they get it. That's always a dick move though.

[Josh_Kablack]

Makes it hard to give them a hard time without just killing them over and over. I guess maybe I should stop going easy on them and just kill them over and over until they get it. That's always a dick move though.

No, worse, it's counterproductive. They will most likely conclude that they died because they didn't have big enough numbers and respond by specializing HARDER.

You'd have a better shot of acheiving your ends by going EASIER on them and having more diverse, but time-critical challenges with difficulties low enough that non-specialized characters could achieve them.

Of course SR4 is set up with multiple rules systems to punish generalists (linear attribute cost at chargen + triangular advancement, cyberware reducing essence, etc) so it might not be the best system for such

[Roy]

My understanding of Shadowrun is entirely limited to seeing people talk about it here and elsewhere. But I've always been under the impression that everyone is supposed to have certain job critical skills, and there are still specialists. So while everyone can break in and shoot droids in the face, only one guy can disable the security system, and a different one guy can convince the guard it's not worth it and pretend he didn't notice and so forth.

As for role, difficulty, and encounter design, they're all interlinked. The difficulty sets the minimum threshold of competence for a role, and if you're lower than that don't bother. Encounter design determines what roles matter. If there's no computers, there is no place for hacking as a role.

If you're playing D&D the encounter design favors diverse, but powerful characters, which is limited to spellcasters. In Shadowrun diverse characters are favored, but not all tasks require a specialist in that field. Obviously the latter opens the door for more archetypes, and more accurately models actual professionals. After all, a specialist doctor isn't going to be completely clueless at general practice. Quite the opposite. He's just really fucking good at whatever he chose to specialize in.

[hogarth]

However, since this was a session in a game with a number of houserules to encourage horizontal advancement, pretty much the least diverse of the PC group was still at least competent to contribute to four of those six objectives. And since it was in a superhero game, success at any objective did not require that only the single most suited character pursue their best objective. And since it was in a long-running game, the players had enough camaraderie to accept when another player pursued a suboptimal or unexpected-for-their-character objective.

But had it happened instead in D&D, there are multiple character archetypes that would have been hard pressed to contribute to more than one of those objectives; there is an inherent difficulty assumption that pretty much requires one of the two most suited characters to pursue their best objective and the nigh-inevitable failure when the new player missed her cue to do the thing her character was best suited for would have bred resentment within the game group.

So which set up makes for a better game?

Without knowing what particular house rule you were playing with, I'd say it's not really a different set-up from 3.5E D&D. Presumably in your game, you could still have a character who is strong and invulnerable, and only strong and invulnerable (spending all of your points on stuff like flash defense, power defense, various advantages to Strength, etc.). But the players in your party chose not to.

In effect, you all chose to be "clerics" or "wizards" or "eldritch knights" instead of straight "fighters", for instance.

[xechnao]

Abilities: A, B

Roles & their ability performances
Role 1: A=4, B=2
Role 2: A=3, B=3
Role 3: A=2, B=4

Action:

*You roll initiative for roles and they act in its order (round).
*You want to succeed in a difficulty test to make your opposition lose resource points. Tests have two parts: part A & part B. Both parts need to be successfully completed for the test to be met with success. There are three different tests a role may opt for. These tests & their difficulties are:
Test 1 (A=3, B=1)
Test 2 (A=2, B=2)
Test 3 (A=1, B=3)
* A role player may take one part of a test by himself and wait other players to aid him (+1 ability performance for each extra helper) on the other part of the test.
*A player that has allready acted may want to help on another test if he pays 1 point of ability performance for each extra test he wants to aid with. If you have allready used an ability you can't pay for aiding with it.
*If the team succeeds in the same round on two different tests (fe test 1 & test 2) the team gains 1 resource point.
*If you succeed in a test you make opposition lose a resource point. If you drive your oppossition at negative resource points you win.



Okay, I am half asleep so this whole thing may be sucking a barrel of cocks

[Josh_Kablack]

Without knowing what particular house rule you were playing with, I'd say it's not really a different set-up from 3.5E D&D. Presumably in your game, you could still have a character who is strong and invulnerable, and only strong and invulnerable (spending all of your points on stuff like flash defense, power defense, various advantages to Strength, etc.). But the players in your party chose not to.In effect, you all chose to be "clerics" or "wizards" or "eldritch knights" instead of straight "fighters", for instance.

You can find the houserules on the IMO forum if you dig, but rather than discuss them now, let's go with your suggestion and look at how a how a dude who is just "Strong and Invulnerable" interacts with that encounter. Despite being a two-trick pony, there are still 2 or 3 of the objectives that a character who is "Strong and Invulnerable" can contribute to.

Obviously he participates in the "beat up the pirates" slugfest with superstrength. And while maybe not ideal for the job, he's passable as a distraction by using a feat of strength to draw attention and invulnerability to soak gunfire and he can also be a failsafe if the party fails the "calm Cap'n Kraken" objective as he uses his invulnerability to soak the attacks of the monster.

So that whole encounter is set up such that even characters with limited areas of competence have multiple ways to participate meaningfully.


To contrast: more straightforward encounters with fewer and narrower objectives are more likely to lead to situations where characters with narrow areas of competence are less likely to be able to participate. StrongToughOnly Guy does fine in a straightforward punch-em-up, but needs help if there's a followup encounter where " now you have catch up to the fleeing pirates in their speedboat" and he is an outright detriment if the initial encounter is set to "the PCs MUST sneak in and free the hostages first, because if anything at all fishy happens the bad guys just start shooting folks"

To further contrast: higher difficulty encounters are more likely to require
the correct type of specialist. If say it's not a sinking yacht, but is instead navy ship with a damaged reactor, you NEED to have StrongToughOnly Guy's immunity to radiation, and If say the pirates all have cloaking devices or magical rings of invisibility then you NEED to have someone who can See or Dispel Invisible


And that's why I'm having trouble evaluating 4e-style ROLEs independent from other game considerations

[hogarth]

You can find the houserules on the IMO forum if you dig, but rather than discuss them now, let's go with your suggestion and look at how a how a dude who is just "Strong and Invulnerable" interacts with that encounter. Despite being a two-trick pony, there are still 2 or 3 of the objectives that a character who is "Strong and Invulnerable" can contribute to.

Obviously he participates in the "beat up the pirates" slugfest with superstrength. And while maybe not ideal for the job, he's passable as a distraction by using a feat of strength to draw attention and invulnerability to soak gunfire and he can also be a failsafe if the party fails the "calm Cap'n Kraken" objective as he uses his invulnerability to soak the attacks of the monster.

And presumably a fighter could contribute in the same way in the equivalent D&D encounters.

[Juton]

While roles may work in 4e (or not, I haven't played it in years) in 3.5 and most other systems I don't think in terms of roles but in jobs. In 3.5 there are in combat jobs, and there are out of combat jobs. For instance in-combat jobs include stuff like doing damage, battlefield control and buffing/debuffing. Out of combat jobs are things like stealth-infiltration, NPC interaction, healing and utility casting.

Some jobs only require one party member for the group to function, some benefit from having multiple participants. So you only really need one utility caster in a group if he's played well, but you may want your whole party to be able to sneak to make infiltration a viable tactic. The problem is in 3.5 at least you have one class of character (prepared casters) which can do every single job, often better than specialized non-casters.

[Roy]

You can find the houserules on the IMO forum if you dig, but rather than discuss them now, let's go with your suggestion and look at how a how a dude who is just "Strong and Invulnerable" interacts with that encounter. Despite being a two-trick pony, there are still 2 or 3 of the objectives that a character who is "Strong and Invulnerable" can contribute to.

Obviously he participates in the "beat up the pirates" slugfest with superstrength. And while maybe not ideal for the job, he's passable as a distraction by using a feat of strength to draw attention and invulnerability to soak gunfire and he can also be a failsafe if the party fails the "calm Cap'n Kraken" objective as he uses his invulnerability to soak the attacks of the monster.

And presumably a fighter could contribute in the same way in the equivalent D&D encounters.

Ignoring the mechanical weakness of that class, and the fact D&D is a more complex game yes. Otherwise no. I am also curious as to how you'd pull off the invulnerable thing.