Why does 4th Edition have classes anyway?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, other than the powers and hp you get, what is the functional difference between being a level 2-8 fighter and a level 2-8 ranger?

That's crap. Past level 1, all your class does in terms of uniqueness is determine what powers you get. That's all fine and dandy, but if powers did something besides some combination of 'make these squares dangerous', 'adjust some d20 rolls', 'replenish your hp', 'inconvenience your foe', or 'do some damage' then this might mean something. The potential difference in function between a 3rd edition cleric and wizard were huge. I can't tell the difference between a cleric and a warlord, other than one's more skewed to healing and the other is more skewed to killing.

So, that's bullshit right there. Since LEVELS don't really matter once you strip away the power feature, how fucking different is a level 12 Astral Weapon from a level 12 Pathfinder? It's noticable, yes, but even by tweaking the small and weak multiclassing system already provided you can end up with a character that isn't that much different in theme.

So, why not just let characters select powers off of any list as long as they meet the level for it? Get rid of classes altogether. From on now, you have packages. You get to select two class packages at level 1. You freely mix and match paragon class features. Merry Christmas, you fuckwads.

[Psychic Robot]

I've been saying something along those lines ever since I stopped crying at what happened to D&D.

[Judging__Eagle]

Laundry lists of abilities are a good way to allow customized characters to exist.

[Username17]

I think that 4e should be looked at in terms of superheroes, because that's the only way it makes any fucking sense. The perspective you should take is that a 4e "power" is not a superhero "power." A 4e "power" is not super strength or super speed, it's much narrower in focus like "slapping your hands together and pushing people over with a wave of air" or "running around someone really fast and spinning them over." What 4e calls a power is what people in the superhero genre would call a maneuver. The superhero's actual power set is their class.

And that is actually valuable in the Superhero genre. Galatea, Starfire, and Blossom all have the same power sets, which means that they all have the same "class" in 4e parlance. They have different power levels, which corresponds to different levels. And of course, they do different stuff in battle, having different signature moves and combat options - which is what 4e calls a "power."

Just having players mix and match their moves would be stupid. Galatea uses her super strength to hold onto people and pummel them (a technique that converts potential knockback into more damage), and this constitutes a "power" in the 4e methodology. Similarly, a character with a different power set might have a power where the plants that they control wrap around people's necks and crush them. That's a "power" in 4e terms, but from the standpoint of a character it's just a technique that a plant controller happens to be able to use. And yet, if you could mix and match these techniques, you'd end up with a flying brick character who could also control plants but only for the purposes of having vines pop up and strangle fools. Or worse, giving someone super strength but only for the thing where you punch the ground and knock everything over.

The problem with 4e as it stands isn't that characters can't take techniques off the other lists, it's that none of the class lists actually constitute a power set that has any kind of distinctiveness that is worth saving. I can't tell the difference between a Paladin technique and a Cleric technique. I can't tell the difference between a Rogue technique and a Fighter technique. A thing where you punch someone in the stomach and then stab them in the face when they bend over could plausibly belong to Fighter or Rogue. Hell, that same description could appear as a Paladin or Warlord power with no irony or change in the text or mechanics. Even the Wizard's shtick is simply that they know a set number of prepackaged self-contained spells that are chanted and activated - given the self containedness of that spellcasting system, there's no reason why a character shouldn't know one or two while otherwise being a sword or bow guy.

The only thing in the whole game that constitutes a "power set" in superheroic terms that might be worthy of making a class around is the Warlock pacts - and the game falls down here too by making the technique lists abominably short and letting people poorly mix and match the different techniques between the three shticks anyway. If someone wanted to make a class that was just "Inferlock" where they got a bunch of inherent demon magic and blasted shit, that would be fine.

But they don't. They just make a bunch of arbitrary distinctions that have no legs.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Just having players mix and match their moves would be stupid. Galatea uses her super strength to hold onto people and pummel them (a technique that converts potential knockback into more damage), and this constitutes a "power" in the 4e methodology. Similarly, a character with a different power set might have a power where the plants that they control wrap around people's necks and crush them. That's a "power" in 4e terms, but from the standpoint of a character it's just a technique that a plant controller happens to be able to use. And yet, if you could mix and match these techniques, you'd end up with a flying brick character who could also control plants but only for the purposes of having vines pop up and strangle fools. Or worse, giving someone super strength but only for the thing where you punch the ground and knock everything over.

I think you're getting the cart before the horse here.

Superhero games should determine the mechanic and THEN slap on the funfun flavor text. Someone getting the 'entangled' status might get it through Batman's net, Spiderman's web blasters, Mr. Fantastic stretching his pinky finger, Poison Ivy shooting out her vines, so on.

Otherwise you get silliness like not being able to have Super Mario and Kakyoin as viable characters.

[JonSetanta]

Trend towards classless, etc.

[Fwib]

If you just let people pick any power they wanted, You'd still have 'classes':
STR, CON, DEX, INT, WIS, CHA and their various multiclass combinations.

[rapa-nui]

Yes, but you can reasonably expect to have 2 high attributes, so it would be feasible to play a high STR high INT character that could effectively take Wizard, Warlord, Paladin, and Fighter abilities.

[JonSetanta]

If you just let people pick any power they wanted, You'd still have 'classes':
STR, CON, DEX, INT, WIS, CHA and their various multiclass combinations.

What do you propose for non-power factors such as HD type, skill points (or whatever passes for it in 4e), and feats that grant extensions to the basic and default "normal" classless character?
What's your baseline?

[RandomCasualty2]

If you just let people pick any power they wanted, You'd still have 'classes':
STR, CON, DEX, INT, WIS, CHA and their various multiclass combinations.

Only even that is bullshit. Because ability scores can be reflavored to use a variety of crap. A wizard using a web spell uses int, while a guy with a net might use strength or dexterity, and a cleric would use wisdom to cast a hold person, all of which do basically the same thing.

Attack stats shouldn't even exist. All that does is hose characters with gimmicks from multiple archetypes. There's no reason you always want the hulk to be better than spiderman.

[Username17]

Superhero games should determine the mechanic and THEN slap on the funfun flavor text. Someone getting the 'entangled' status might get it through Batman's net, Spiderman's web blasters, Mr. Fantastic stretching his pinky finger, Poison Ivy shooting out her vines, so on.

Only if you want to have people building their own powers like in Champions. Frankly, the 4e style of pre-built maneuvers doesn't want that sort of thing because the entire point is accessibility. You want the Super Strength powers to feel different from the Plant Control powers, and you want characters to have one or the other, and you want those maneuvers to come ready made. Not because that's the only way to do things, but because that's a perfectly valid way to do things and it happens to be what the playing card style of maneuver collection and use happens to be good at.

There are pluses and minuses to playing out like Champions does. And one of the disadvantages is that making a character is a lot of work, especially for those who are not algebraically inclined. If making a Speedster was as simple as announcing that you were a Speedster and then selecting a number of self-contained Speedster maneuvers off a list, then a lot of people could play the game in a pick-up style who would need an entire session to make a Champions character if they could make one at all. And yes, I say this as someone who can personally make a Champions character in a few minutes without even looking at the book - a level of game mastery which is probably essentially impossible for a 4e style game to generate.

Attack stats shouldn't even exist. All that does is hose characters with gimmicks from multiple archetypes. There's no reason you always want the hulk to be better than spiderman.

I completely disagree. To the extent that you have archetypes at all, you don't want people mixing and matching between them. D&D as it stands is a bad example of role protection because no one can do anything that falls into a category other than "Adventurer." Since everyone runs around doing essentially interchangeable stuff, there's no reason for anyone to have any protected abilities. But if you had anyone who could do anything meaningfully different from what anyone else could do, you would want a system that would categorize what people could do that would make in-game sense.

The Hulk should have Brick powers because he's a Brick. He can pummel and tear, he can shrug off damage with anger, he can crash through things - all classic Brick maneuvers. But it would be tactically useful for him to drop one of the more obscure Brick powers like grabbing a dude and hurling them helluva far and taking something like an Indirect Psionic Blast. That would be tactically very powerful, because it would cover a major hole in brick tactics. But it would also be stupid and insulting.

Players should be able to get a vague understanding of how Brick powers work and what they do, and when they fight a Brick they shouldn't have to worry about the fact that he might have taken a maneuver off the fucking psionic list to puppet people around or shoot mind bullets around corners. Hard caps of power lists work to prevent that kind of ass hattery, but soft caps of attribute/attack attachment do so as well.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

The Hulk should have Brick powers because he's a Brick. He can pummel and tear, he can shrug off damage with anger, he can crash through things - all classic Brick maneuvers. But it would be tactically useful for him to drop one of the more obscure Brick powers like grabbing a dude and hurling them helluva far and taking something like an Indirect Psionic Blast. That would be tactically very powerful, because it would cover a major hole in brick tactics. But it would also be stupid and insulting.

Why is that?

I understand your dislike of schtick over from a mechanical perspective, because it leads to people playing a party of 3E druids. But why is it insulting from a flavor perspective?

How come it's okay for the Hulk to slam his fists together so hard that buildings shatter from the shockwave but it's not cool for him to emit a psionic blast from his brain? Maybe the energy from him releasing some of his hate and rage-based powers by calming down a little manifests itself into a psionic shockwave.

And a bigger problem than even that is that you risk having classic archetypes that are flat-out better from a flavor perspective. Or in worst cases, like in M&M, merchanical perspective. An earthbender gets transportation, defense, attack, construction, and detection. A firebender just gets attack powers. How is that fair?

But if you had anyone who could do anything meaningfully different from what anyone else could do, you would want a system that would categorize what people could do that would make in-game sense.

Why is that a good thing?

The fact that there was a demand for prestige classes that let hardened barbarians breath fire and cure wounds with the power of alcohol or gnome clerics that levelled forests with the power of rock music tends to make me think that while it's not good for the game, people want role overlap.

[Koumei]

I'm not so sure about superheroes, but for most games I'd certainly want some level of ability to overlap. Think of it, like with all things, from a Pokemon perspective:

Okay, so you have a Gyarados. Gyarados is awesome, and has Dragon Dance (to boost ATT and SPD) and Waterfall (to nail foes with an 80 POW physical move with STAB and make them flinch if it doesn't kill them). But it has a x4 Electric weakness, so you can be sure that your foe will switch an electric type in. What do you do?

You take Earthquake. It uses ATT (if I recall correctly), it has high power, and it's Ground-type, so it will nail the Pikachu, Raichu, Raikou, Jolteon or Electivire that tries to switch in on you (but Zapdos will be immune and get the OHKO).

For the last move, you probably take Ice Fang. Why? To take care of dragons.

That's how it seems to work - try to get one or two STAB attacks, but also remember that type-coverage is a good thing, especially against common types (Fighting for Skarmory and Blissey, Ice for all of those Flying Dragons, and Dark/Ghost for all of those Psychic types).

This is how D&D should often work - try not to be the guy who only throws fire, because eventually you'll have to fight fire demons or red dragons or whatever. But I can see it causing problems for Superhero games, where the genre being emulated specifically gives most people a niche, and when their weakness comes up, they're fucked/have to rely on teamwork which really means letting friends handle it while they sit down for a nap.

[RandomCasualty2]

Players should be able to get a vague understanding of how Brick powers work and what they do, and when they fight a Brick they shouldn't have to worry about the fact that he might have taken a maneuver off the fucking psionic list to puppet people around or shoot mind bullets around corners. Hard caps of power lists work to prevent that kind of ass hattery, but soft caps of attribute/attack attachment do so as well.

I disagree. That just leads to a lot of cookie cutter characters, and hoses people who want to play fighter/mages or mixed archetypes.

There should definitely be some difficulty in mixing archetypes, maybe something like power trees, where you can only get up a certain height without the prereqs and a fixed hard limit on powers.

So that the ultimate brick powers may require like 4 other brick powers to take, but you can still have a brick power and still take psionic stuff too. I think we do want some overlap. Superman is a speedster and a brick, for instance.

And especially whe you're talking about fantasy RPGs, people want fighter/mages, that's not even remotely a question, so we need some overlap, and I'm not really sure why it's a bad thing to bone people by making them split between strength and intelligence if they want both. All it means is that you take shit that doesn' require an attack roll for your spells. So you can't be a fighter/mage with a fireball, but you can be one who casts stoneskin, because your fireballs are weak, but your stoneskin is unaffected. That's bad.

It'd be much better to say that you can't get Inferno blast until you've go at least 3 other fire spells or something like that, but make everyone's attacks fixed. Because seriously, all attack stats do is force you to wait until they publish a class that has your particular attack stat mix. Like the swordmage has int melee attacks, so there's no need to make a fighter/wizard anymore cause you can just go swordmage/wizard. But that's stupid, we shouldnt' even have to wait for that.

If you've got an attack, you should be competent at it. We don't need a stat to be good at casting fly, invisibility or stoneskin, so why is fireball any different?

[Username17]

I think it important to remember that none of the D&D roles are particularly interesting or in need of protection. I mean shit, of the "big four" two of them are "guy who stabs fools with a sword" and two of them are "guy who casts spells" and let's face it: "guy who stabs with swords and casts spells" has been an accepted archetype since before Dungeons and Dragons had hard bound books. Really there's only one accepted D&D archetype and that's "humanoid adventurer." It's a humanoid who adventures and has some number of sword techniques and spells. Really extreme characters have only sword techniques or only spells, but it's still the same character archetype in every meaningful way.

Basically every D&D character is ported into Smash Brothers as a Link skin. None of them are Bowser, Samus, or Pikachu - and it is for this reason that "role protection" seems so fucking insulting in D&D. If you were actually allowed and expected to play things that were genuinely different like Minotaurs, Golems, Dragons, Pixies, or Will O Wisps, then asking for role protection would make a little bit more sense.

But when you're talking about Superheroes, which in 4e you should be, then role protection does make more sense. Heroes are different one from another because there is no single sword/spell axis that everyone fits on. Characters have their own expectations, their own physics that they interact with. It's a genre in which some characters are legitimately not supposed to sneak or even manipulate physical objects. Some characters don't have thumbs and role protection makes a lot of sense.

----

There are basically two ways to do it: one is the City of Heroes way in which everyone picks a role, a major power set and a minor power set; and the other is one in which people just take a power set. There are advantages and disadvantages in both.

In the first option, you make a Brick like The Hulk or The Thing by taking Super Strength as your major and Invulnerability as your minor. n the second option, Brick is simply one of the selectable archetypes.

And a bigger problem than even that is that you risk having classic archetypes that are flat-out better from a flavor perspective. Or in worst cases, like in M&M, merchanical perspective. An earthbender gets transportation, defense, attack, construction, and detection. A firebender just gets attack powers. How is that fair?

Oh balls to that. The entire point of the card selecting maneuver system is that every character gets the same number of cards at the same power level. So while Terra can indeed open walls up and block attacks with stones and so on; Johnny Storm can fly around by jetting flame, welding metals together, deflecting bullets, and illuminating areas. While it may very well be true that the "Fire Powers" archetype has less non-attack powers on its choosable list than he "Earth Powers" archetype does, the fact is that characters get the same number of choices off their respective lists. So at most that means that two Fire Characters step on each other's toes more than two Earth characters do.

But in the standard superhero team you have only one of each, so that hardly matters.

What people want is for their characters to be different from other characters. And as long as everyone is just a pale rip on the same concept as everyone else, that's not really possible. People demanded Prestige Classes in order to do things that were genuinely different from what other characters were doing - something that was always an empty promise as long as "spells" could do fucking anything. If the Cape (like Starfire or Galatea) is genuinely different from the Brick (like Juggernaut or The Thing), and genuinely different from the Speedster (like Quicksilver or The Flash), and from the Psychic, and from the Blaster, and so on and so forth, then people can have characters that don't do what other characters do. And then they don't even fucking need prestige classes and crap.

---

But you are going to want some weird cross-selectable powers. For example: Bubbles and Starfire took super linguistics and Blossom and Galatea took Ice Breath. I genuinely don't think that either of those powers are Cape specific powers even though clearly all four characters are Capes.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, here's a quick question:

Why do we even want role protection? I know this is what 4E is going for, but why is this an admirable design goal? What is the advantage of role protection other than having everyone be adventurers and then just making the game be about them exercising tactical options?

Strict role protection tends to be maligned in other media and for good reason: it's contrived and makes characters feel limited. It's fine in an RPG that Rosa gets to heal and buff, Rydia gets to cast magic spells, and Cecil covers his teammates and hits things with a sword because you get to play all of the characters at once. But making one person Cecil, one person Rosa, and the other person Rydia sounds like a recipe for disaster when it comes to maintaining player interest.

[Username17]

Okay, here's a quick question:

Why do we even want role protection? I know this is what 4E is going for, but why is this an admirable design goal? What is the advantage of role protection other than having everyone be adventurers and then just making the game be about them exercising tactical options?

Role protection is about several things:

• Rational Expectations If I'm fighting a razorsaurus or whatever, I expect to want to put some distance between me and it. And when I've put some distance in and I'm plugging away with a crossbow, I don't want it to fucking start shooting lightning bolts at me that are bigger and better than its razor claws, because that's retarded. For tactical decisions o have meaning, one has to be able to have rational expectations of what things can do. And that means that things have to not do things that are outside their "role." If the Hulk starts indirectly mind blasting you that borks tactical discussion just as thoroughly as if someone started taking pieces sideways with pawns. If you can't know what things can and can't do, everything that anything does feels like cheating - and it is.
• Screen Time I make plans a lot faster than other people. That's not a boast, it's a fact. And if my character can do the same thing that everyone else's character can do, then I'm going to get a lot more screen time than they are. Heck, I'll probably get more time anyway, but if their characters can do things that mine can't it provides a way for those characters to get some screen time in edgewise. Indeed, Game Masters who are on the ball can throw in bones for characters who are otherwise underperforming by having those protected roles featured.

Role protection is good. Assuming for the moment that there is anything to protect. Frankly, in D&D there isn't. Everyone has thumbs. Everyone can throw a dagger. Everyone can twirl a cloak and teleport. Everyone can pop a healing potion. Everyone can talk. Everyone can hide behind a tree. There isn't anything that anyone can do that everyone can't do to one degree or another. Not conceptually, and not mechanically.

But there should be. People should have associated elements that limit what kinds of magic they can access or something such that you can actually give a flying rat's ass what roles people are supposed to have.

"Cleric" isn't a role that should be protected, because it's just a Fighter/Magic User/Adventurer. Like you know, everyone else. But players deserve to know what enemies are capable of. Players deserve to have things that they can do that other characters rely upon them for. D&D doesn't do that and never has. But it should.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

Why do we even want role protection? I know this is what 4E is going for, but why is this an admirable design goal? What is the advantage of role protection other than having everyone be adventurers and then just making the game be about them exercising tactical options?

Really the more I play 4E, the more I'm starting to get bored of the role protection, and see that it's totally unnecessary.

The only advantage to have a role protecting structure is that it helps newbies. I mean if you had them a big book of options like GURPS, they mentally lock up with too many choices. Hell, one of my groups has enough trouble wrapping its mind around how 4E powers work... at 1st level. And they only have 4 of them to choose from.

The main issue I think with role protection is that single class characters need to work well, all the time. A single class anything needs to be good, such that you CAN make multi role characters, but you never should have to. Otherwise the game isn't newbie friendly at all. A player really needs to be able to write down fighter 10 on his sheet and not suck ass.

[NoDot]

Am I the only one who thinks "Brick with Puppet People" is an interesting character concept?

[Gelare]

So role protection is, we could assume, a good thing, as long as there are roles worth protecting. But the superhero genre, for example, has been around for a while, and there have been so many multiclassed characters and prestige classes published that the only real reason not to have a character who does literally everything is that the character isn't high level enough. Often you have superheroes who have a certain shtick get timeported into the future to meet their future selves, who have by then expanded their one shtick to include beating on dudes, flying, teleportation, invisibility, making things explode, and cooking a mean lasagna, presumably by virtue of being higher level. And virtually all superheroes have something outside of their core power set.

Given that people want to multiclass, is role protection still valuable? And if it is, how are those two principles to be reconciled in a game?

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you can't know what things can and can't do, everything that anything does feels like cheating - and it is.

I understand exactly where you're coming from, Frank, but it's just time for me to admit that I don't want the same things you want in a game.

To me urban Fantasy / Superheroics / Soft Sci-fi / Heroic Fantasy is all about things being more than meets the eye. A lizard being able to call down bolts of lightning or a dog teleporting through walls or a vampire being able to survive in sunlight with a special kind of sunblock is just part of the genre.

I just can't reconcile with this line of thinking. An otherwise ordinary monkey that summons skeleton demons with cursed bananas!! is just part of what makes these games fun for me.

Mind, I think Dragonball, the DCU, One Piece, and the Super Marioverse are awesome examples of RPG playgrounds and those settings. Take from that what you will.

[K]

Role protection is about several things:

• Rational Expectations If I'm fighting a razorsaurus or whatever, I expect to want to put some distance between me and it. And when I've put some distance in and I'm plugging away with a crossbow, I don't want it to fucking start shooting lightning bolts at me that are bigger and better than its razor claws, because that's retarded. For tactical decisions o have meaning, one has to be able to have rational expectations of what things can do. And that means that things have to not do things that are outside their "role." If the Hulk starts indirectly mind blasting you that borks tactical discussion just as thoroughly as if someone started taking pieces sideways with pawns. If you can't know what things can and can't do, everything that anything does feels like cheating - and it is.

But that can be handled by special effects. I mean, if you were fighting an alternate earth Hulk that had a skullcap that exposed his brain, you'd consider yourself on notice for possible psionic attack. By the same token, if you fought a dinosaur that has electricity where it's eyes or mouth was, then you'd expect some kind of lightning attack.

Role protection can also just happen in the details. If you really want one character to shine over the others you just make monsters vulnerable to that guy's thing like making sure the that the next enemies are more damaged by fire so the flame mage feels useful.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Or you can just, you know, structure the adventure around a character.

Even though Raven was a pretty ineffectual character in combat for most of Season 4 of Teen Titans, the Trigon arc was undoubtedly centered around her.

[Username17]

Mind, I think Dragonball, the DCU, One Piece, and the Super Marioverse are awesome examples of RPG playgrounds and those settings. Take from that what you will.

The thing about the Mario verse is that role protection is total even though it is weird. Sure, you walk into a new level and you're being attacked by maneating plants that pop out of sewer pipes and shoot fire out of their mouths, but that happens every time. Part of the game is that the wildly unfamiliar becomes familiar over time.

You know what a Shy Guy, a Hammer Brother, a Super Gumba, and so on all do, because they do the same stuff every time. When you go to a new level and see a monster for the first time it will do something unexpected, and then your character will fucking die. But that's OK in the computer game, because all that means is that you try again and this time you know what is coming. In a pen and paper role playing game that shit is totally unacceptable, and the learning curve is produced by reading the book rather than getting your ass beaten over and over again.

When the computer does something "unexpected" (which is to say: outside the established conventions of the game heretofore), that's not "cheating" because the computer is just running a single program dispassionately. But when David A. Hargrave throws you a curve ball it's literally just the DM being an ass hole. He knows what you're doing and what you're prepared for, so when he trots out a monster that is fucking with you, that's him fucking with you. My father played with that guy, and described the experience as infuriating.

Yeah, the Marioverse is surreal, but if you're playing it pen and paper you get to look up how Boos and Bullet Bills are statted in the game. You know what they are capable of. Just as thoroughly as if you'd run trial and error through the levels a few times to get the knack of it. In face to face gaming, you don't have time for dry run through bullshit to obtain system mastery, you have to let people read ahead.

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

Am I the only one who thinks "Brick with Puppet People" is an interesting character concept?

The problem with such a combination is that every addition of "Puppeteer" dilutes the "Brick" capabilities.
Unless some synergy can be found between both types of powers you end up with the same old Fighter/Mage crap; Suck/Suck all around.

So no I don't believe it works. It would be fun but as with any Magic card deck you must choose between a "theme deck" for yucks and frequent losses, or a "pro deck" to win, with any combination between. Anything that doesn't focus on efficiency and synergy straight-out relies on chance alone to win.
I don't like it either, but them's the breaks.

Even if you manage to get a 75%/75% ratio of effectiveness, or maybe dabble some 10% Puppeteer in a 90% Brick build, it will still never be as good a Brick or Puppeteer as 100% either way.