Class Roster

[virgil]

I was thinking about a list of 'archetypes' to make as a minimum list for a game with the goal of being able to fill the following: cliche party, reverse cliche, two oddballs, two gishes.

A cliche party would be the usual fighter, mage, thief, cleric. How would one design a mirror opposite party, class wise, ignoring the goatee application? What are iconic gish archetypes; paladins and fighter/mages? What are good oddballs to consider for the list?

[PoliteNewb]

Not sure about opposites, but for oddballs, monks and bards both tend to be pretty odd (as in, do not fill a regular niche). Other oddballs include (if you use any of these) Dragon Shamans, Spellthieves, Spirit Shamans, Factotums, or Totemists.

[fectin]

Druid, Beguiler, Assassin, Dread Necromancer? All tomb-tainted/undead.

[Archmage]

The first lengthy D&D 3.5e campaign I ran started off with a party of blackguard, rogue, sorcerer and favored soul--just a slight tweak there, but it was completely unplanned and kind of entertaining.

I think the question here is how to vary from the archetypes while maintaining the roles, and that's most fun in my mind if the group has a distinct flavor. For example:

Wilderness: Barbarian or Ranger, Druid, Scout, Wu-Jen
Asian: Samurai, Spirit Shaman, Ninja or Monk, Shugenja
Dark Heroes: Blackguard, Warlock, Assassin, Dread Necromancer
Arcanists: Duskblade, Warmage, Beguiler/Bard/Spellthief, Artificer
Psionic: Psychic Warrior, Psion or Erudite, Lurk, Ardent

[Username17]

The minimum number of classes you can make do with in a game is one. You could have the "adventurer" class, that is allowed to select various abilities from various lists so that it can cover all the bases. If you wanted to make a game like 4e, where each class was an incredibly narrow concept that had a specific role, power source, and handheld objects, then you'd need to make about 60 classes (you need to have more roles than expected players, so 6, you want at least five power themes, and you want at least two equipment assumptions for each combination of role and theme).

And of course, you could put the slider of selectivity anywhere you wanted. You might have an "Arcanist" class that could be a mook summoning Necromancer, a human artillery Pyromancer, or a telekinetic swordsman Jedi. There are advantages and disadvantages to making any class broader or more narrow.

-Username17

[Eikre]

Well, it seems like he put his slider right where he wanted it, so that much consideration, at least, is already over.

A cliche party would be the usual fighter, mage, thief, cleric. How would one design a mirror opposite party, class wise, ignoring the goatee application?

I find the mirror opposite party most compelling because, though people do tend to like bifurcation and duality, it's pretty hard to settle one what the fuck an "opposite" is without just sort of going down the list and asking you if it feels like an inverse.

For example, I could make a case for the inverse of Fighter, Mage, Thief, Cleric being.... Fighter, Mage, Thief, Cleric. But written in a different order. Each of the classes is arranged at one pole of a two-axis thematic system; one axis is obviously magic against the mundane, and the other is upstandingness/heroism versus esoterica/antiheroism, which pits the cleric and the fighter against the mage and thief.

But that's all highly unsatisfying and not really that cogent anyway so I move on to wondering what the purpose of the mirror party is. If they're meant to be antagonistic foils to the cliche party then I guess I could try to work with that.

The Fighter is opposed by a Monk. Where the Fighter is decked out and pretty straightforward in his methodology of lumbering immutability and superior might, the monk seems to be mostly naked and is a little bit more aggravating as an opponent because even if it seems like you could make short work of her by pinning her down and beating the shit out of her, that eventuality never seems to materialize. The fighter will try to hold on for as long as he can to mundane before we give him the hyperbolic feats that he may eventually need to keep up (for we will of course choose to keep him in line with other adventurers instead of trying to chase an empty dream in higher-powered games), but the monk gets some of her weird stuff up-front. Mythical vs. Mystical.

Mage is opposed by, like, I don't know, a Psion. Still mulling this over since I don't know how appreciated the psionic deal is around here. The mage's craft is somewhere between esoteric art and science. It requires collaboration, analysis, and planning, and the fruits of these habits are made obvious in his high tower and contingencies. Perhaps he is as mighty as he seems, but it's also true that he frequently checks over his shoulder, mindful of the fact that his vocation is a volatile one and his martial qualities tend towards the frail side. One misstep, one gap in his prepared defenses, that's all it would take. The Psion doesn't have that sort of discipline, but in truth, he doesn't really have those problems, either, so even though you can get close enough to hit him, when you do it probably won't be that big of a deal. Everything is natural to him: He is healthy, he is rapidly insightful, and of course, he has an array of fantastic powers that took as much effort to cultivate as it did to learn to walk. The magician taps into something great beyond the imagination and larger than us all, but the psion's power comes from within. Also for some reason Magic uses medieval or fantasy words to describe things (Flame, Frost, Alchemy, Soul, Elements, Venom, Summon, ) and Psychics use enlightenment or modernist words to describe things (Endothermic, Metabolism, Gravity, Dimension, Quantum, Collapsing the Wave Function)

Rogue is opposed by the Agent. First of all I'm glad they found a different name for "thief" because mine don't seem to steal any more or less than everyone else in the party, so I'm going to call them that instead. Second of all it's sort of difficult to just steal a name from the typical D&D stock to evoke the image I need for the inverse, so I guess the bias you should be feeling right now looks a little like Burn Notice. My fist inclination was to oppose the Thief with the Trapsmith but the trap thing seems like a remarkably specific thematic niche, so instead you get these guys. I guess they're still pretty alike, and you could even make them the same class and call it Spy vs. Spy, but I'm running with it: The Rogue is on his own and relies on as little as possible to maintain his survival, where the Agent is nested, and approaches his goals with malice of forethought. The rogue is the tougher of the two and uses stealth extensively, vanishing and reappearing in combat. He's solid, reliable, and straightforward if a little flighty. The Agent uses considerably more duplicity and spycraft. He lays down traps and sabotages anything and everything. He recruits spy networks to automatically receive information on opportunities and threats, and makes sure when they show up he's in position to have the first strike. Some of this guy's game mechanics should be retroactively activated so that he's actually in a better position or said something more convincing than his player seemed to direct him to, because the agent is just that fucking good.

Finally the cleric foiled by who cares, gods are boring, this one writes itself because it's already just the evil-cleric option in D&D. Cleric guy gives everyone else buffs, but not himself, unless you have a really good spellcasting minigame like where every spell is a short-term tactical option that does something to contribute now and may affect what you do next, instead of just a way to of having a different character sheet depending on whether you had five minutes preparation or not. But I'm not banking on that. Other cleric guy causes status effects. Since the white-cleric's nominal role is to fight corruption, black-cleric has something where he can cause it and therefore spreads plague/zombification/mushroomizing. Or, since I guess black cleric could also be the good guy, nirvana/conversion/nature.


edit: I disclaim that I feel this exercise is anything but weird symbolic faffing about, I don't actually think this is very good basis for game design.