# The Niche Protection Poll



## Ahnehnois (May 4, 2014)

Does the term "class" imply an exclusive niche? Vote away.

"Exclusive" means something that is only accessible by taking the pertinent class (or a class within the pertinent group). For example, a bonus to base attack bonus/THAC0 is not exclusive, because all characters receive some level of improvement to this commodity. Conversely, sneak attack/backstab is exclusive because it requires membership in a particular class to make any use of this ability at all.

A "group" of classes would represent something like the four categories that 2e used to divide classes (warrior, rogue, priest, mage; IIRC) or would correspond roughly to 4e power sources. That is to say, classes within the group might share their niche abilities freely, but classes outside the group would not have access to them.

For cases where some classes should have exclusive abilities but others should not, the obvious example would be magic being the exclusive thing and the nonmagical classes not having anything exclusive. Not the only example, necessarily.


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## Morrus (May 4, 2014)

Eh?


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## ForeverSlayer (May 4, 2014)

I would like for everyone to have access to certain types of abilities that don't require a specific class such as perception, jumping, climbing, acrobatics, etc.. Other such abilities such as fighter only feats, for example, should remain fighter only.


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## Ahnehnois (May 4, 2014)

Morrus said:


> Eh?



Is the jargon not clear? I would hope that the poll options would make it clear enough what I'm getting at.


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## Crothian (May 4, 2014)

I like each class to have unique abilities. If any class can do anything then I would prefer to play a system that would better support that.


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## howandwhy99 (May 4, 2014)

I choose option 2. Groups could be considered groups of subclasses in D&D. 

Is option 4 an actual option for a class-based game? I mean, isn't it "characters pick abilities and classes don't exist"?

My understanding is every character can do any of the things any of the others can, but they are less capable in doing so. HP and To Hit are high for Fighters because that's those stats are from combat, the game system they get XP in as the player masters it. Clerics have divine abilities to affect people more than the abilities most classes have. Magic-users have more ability to engage with magic than other classes. Everyone can fight, relate to people, and use magic, but the abilities are better for the classes focused on them and in turn are defined by the activities.


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## Ahnehnois (May 4, 2014)

howandwhy99 said:


> Is option 4 an actual option for a class-based game? I mean, isn't it "characters pick abilities and classes don't exist"?



I'm trying to cover all bases here. I terns of D&D, I would think that most versions are #2 or #3, so #1 and #4 are pushing the boundaries. Perhaps if you go back to the fighting man and magic user, it's #1.

#4 is essentially your 3e fighter, used for every class. Which is to say, each character gets some freely spent resources, and some that he's forced to spend towards a particular goal, but ultimately you can make any choices you want with those free resources. I'd call it "class-enabled" rather than class-based.

With a full range of supplements, 3e begins to approach option #4, because various ACFs/substitution levels/other variants make it difficult to discern that any particular class has a monopoly on anything of consequence.

For example, take the rogue. A fighter can trade his feats for sneak attack. Evasion is available as a ring and monks and rangers get it. Barbarians get trap sense and uncanny dodge. UMD is not an exclusive skill in 3.5. A boatload of prestige classes can duplicate these abilities, as can various monsters and spells. The only thing that could be considered exclusive, really, are (some of) the rogue special abilities, and the trapfinding ability.


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## The Crimson Binome (May 4, 2014)

I think it's okay for some classes to have unique abilities that aren't available to any other class, and for some classes to have only abilities that are shared by other classes, but no class should have unique access to something that would be considered critical to a large number of games - i.e. clerics can't have a monopoly on _all_ healing, and thieves can't be the _only_ ones capable of getting past a lock or trap.


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## DMZ2112 (May 4, 2014)

Straight up: if a class does not have unique abilities, it is not a class.


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## GSHamster (May 4, 2014)

I would actually phrase it as the inverse:

Every class should have things that it _cannot_ do.

Restrictions are more important that niche protection.


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## The Crimson Binome (May 4, 2014)

DMZ2112 said:


> Straight up: if a class does not have unique abilities, it is not a class.



A unique combination of abilities is, itself, a unique ability.


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## DMZ2112 (May 4, 2014)

Saelorn said:


> A unique combination of abilities is, itself, a unique ability.




I just don't see it that way.  This is the whole of my issue with the new Pathfinder Advanced Class Guide.  It's a whole book of mashup /somethings/, but they're not classes.


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## The Crimson Binome (May 4, 2014)

DMZ2112 said:


> I just don't see it that way.  This is the whole of my issue with the new Pathfinder Advanced Class Guide.  It's a whole book of mashup /somethings/, but they're not classes.



Would they be classes, if the base classes didn't exist?

I get what you're saying, but it seems like a lot is hinging on perspective. Classes are bundles of abilities, and it doesn't always make sense that a character with one ability should necessarily have another one of those abilities. Who is to say that one way of arranging those abilities is better than some other way of doing it?


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## Starfox (May 4, 2014)

GSHamster said:


> I would actually phrase it as the inverse:
> 
> Every class should have things that it _cannot_ do.
> 
> Restrictions are more important that niche protection.




Agree with this. Since 3E, there really have been no abilities exclusive to one class, but there certainly has been classes that lacked access to certain kinds of abilities, and got more of other abilities as a tradeoff.

Voted #4

Then again, I like classless systems, if they're well done. To me, that means that they have synergies that encourage certain avenues of development, without being classes.


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## Li Shenron (May 4, 2014)

I prefer strong niche protection as the starting point, then adding options to lessen the niche protection as much as you want. I think D&D has always been an archetype-based game with classes, so I like it to stay that way, but then it can offer more and more flexible options with no limit.

5e looks like it's going to handle this quite well for my tastes. For example, each class having several unique features, but then having flexible multiclassing rules, guidelines to mix subclasses, feats which grant another class' features, and an option to freely pick your skills and tools proficiencies.

The system is also such that with a small effort you can take this one step further with pretty simple house rules, such as letting a PC freely pick 2 saving throw proficiencies of choice, or deconstructing a subclass benefits and let another class take them (when applicable).


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## Bluenose (May 4, 2014)

howandwhy99 said:


> Is option 4 an actual option for a class-based game? I mean, isn't it "characters pick abilities and classes don't exist"?




Rolemaster (and MERP, of course) did it, at least the early version. A character could spend the points they got when levelling up wherever they liked, though different classes got skills/abilities for different costs. 



GSHamster said:


> I would actually phrase it as the inverse:
> 
> Every class should have things that it _cannot_ do.
> 
> Restrictions are more important that niche protection.




Personally I'd like to see a mix of this and the approach of each class having something unique they can do.


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## DEFCON 1 (May 4, 2014)

Voted #1.

So long as multi-classing exists... classes should have unique abilities so that multi-classing actually has a purpose.  If you are a Fighter and want to be more of a holy warrior that can turn the undead... that's when you multi-class into Cleric rather than just be able to pick up Turn Undead as a feat (or whatever methodology the game might include).

If you can cherry-pick class abilities, then there's no reason to have multi-classing.  So you should eliminate either one from the game-- endless cherry-picking or multi-classing.


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## Starfox (May 4, 2014)

DEFCON 1 said:


> If you can cherry-pick class abilities, then there's no reason to have multi-classing.  So you should eliminate either one from the game-- endless cherry-picking or multi-classing.




I feel this is what is happening in Pathfider, with the array of archetypes replacing multiclasses and prestige classes.


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## Ahnehnois (May 4, 2014)

DMZ2112 said:


> I just don't see it that way.  This is the whole of my issue with the new Pathfinder Advanced Class Guide.  It's a whole book of mashup /somethings/, but they're not classes.



Mashup somethings are a pretty old idea, though, aren't they? Ranger, bard, paladin, those are mashups. The 2e approach to classes was that you are your class, but there are so many options that your class/multiclass can have all kinds of different combinations of things. There are tons of characters with thief skills, cleric spells, weapon specialization, etc.


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## Ahnehnois (May 4, 2014)

GSHamster said:


> I would actually phrase it as the inverse:
> 
> Every class should have things that it _cannot_ do.
> 
> Restrictions are more important that niche protection.



I'm not entirely sure what that distinction means. I think that's probably true in just about any version of D&D.


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## Starfox (May 4, 2014)

Multiclassing never worked well in 3E. In 1E and 2E, the investment gave a reasonable return, but in 3E it just didn't work well, especially for spellcasters. So mashups became a logical next step, even if they existed in 1E and 2E they only flourished in Pathfinder. This returned the game to its roots.


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## Ahnehnois (May 4, 2014)

Starfox said:


> Multiclassing never worked well in 3E. In 1E and 2E, the investment gave a reasonable return, but in 3E it just didn't work well, especially for spellcasters. So mashups became a logical next step, even if they existed in 1E and 2E they only flourished in Pathfinder. This returned the game to its roots.



PF's approach (don't know how roots-y it is) is essentially build your own class, which is fine, but which results in very little niche protection. There is quite often an archetype that will get you into another class's shtick, and if not that, these mashup classes may do it.


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## Ahnehnois (May 4, 2014)

Li Shenron said:


> I prefer strong niche protection as the starting point, then adding options to lessen the niche protection as much as you want. I think D&D has always been an archetype-based game with classes, so I like it to stay that way, but then it can offer more and more flexible options with no limit.



I don't know about "always been". To me, 3e and PF are option #3, trending pretty strongly towards #4. 4e, OTOH, seems more like option #2 (with various types of things being associated with a power source).


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## DMZ2112 (May 4, 2014)

Saelorn said:


> Would they be classes, if the base classes didn't exist?




In a global sense, I can't say, because they do.  D&D isn't one game out of a field, it's the genre origin.

In a more specific sense, however, where we ask if these new classes would be classes _in a given game_ where the original classes did not exist, I find that when an MMOG gets "creative" with its class design -- perhaps in order to avoid emulating D&D or WoW, perhaps not -- the results cause me substantial cognitive dissonance.  

Here's a great example:



			
				rift.wikia.com said:
			
		

> The *Tactician* adds deep and situational versatility to the *Rogue calling*. Offensively, the Soul combines *bolts of withering energy* with a *devastating set of elemental torrents* that erupt in arcs of fire, ice, and death. The Tactician’s *group healing skills* are just as enviable, as are its fire-and-forget cores and *robust support abilities*.




...What?

A counter to the Rift phenomenon is Lord of the Rings Online, where the classes are not drawn from D&D, but each represent a single archetype from a low-magic world well.  Admittedly, some resemble renamed D&D classes, but for the most part they represent unique concepts with little overlap between primary roles.

So in both the global and specific cases, I would ultimately say no, they would not be classes, because the very name "class" suggests that they are designed to be categorical.  To lead a category, a class must simultaneously be specific and inclusive.  A fighter fights, a cleric calls upon miracles, a thief steals (in all senses of the word), and a magic-user uses magic.  It is difficult to imagine a category that is defined by, say, the Pathfinder Bloodrager, who fights like a fighter, rages like a barbarian, uses magic like a magic-user, and casts spontaneously like a sorcerer.  It is highly specific, but also very exclusive.  It represents a category of one.



Ahnehnois said:


> Mashup somethings are a pretty old idea, though, aren't they? Ranger, bard, paladin, those are mashups. The 2e approach to classes was that you are your class, but there are so many options that your class/multiclass can have all kinds of different combinations of things. There are tons of characters with thief skills, cleric spells, weapon specialization, etc.




From my perspective, the bard is only a mashup when executed poorly, and the paladin and ranger should probably not be classes.

I think the AD&D2 approach was excellent, apart from the continuation of racial limitations on class and leveling.  Indeed, I have no complaint with multiclassing -- in my opinion, a class should make you feel like your character belongs to a tradition, but multiclassing should make you feel like he breaks from that tradition and becomes his own man.

One of my greatest joys in D&D3 was how much it encouraged multiclassing, and one of my biggest complaints about Pathfinder is how thoroughly it discourages multiclassing.


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## Ahnehnois (May 4, 2014)

DMZ2112 said:


> From my perspective, the bard is only a mashup when executed poorly, and the paladin and ranger should probably not be classes.



I'd have a hard time imagining D&D without the ranger; perhaps the most popular and distinctive class in my experience. Paladin I wouldn't miss. But okay.



> One of my greatest joys in D&D3 was how much it encouraged multiclassing, and one of my biggest complaints about Pathfinder is how thoroughly it discourages multiclassing.



Interesting. To me, the main things that PF does to discourage multiclasing are improved 20-level viability among the base classes, and archetypes. To me, those are both good things in and of themselves. I do think you're right that multiclassing has become less popular; it has for me since I started using many of the PF classes as a base.


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## Minigiant (May 4, 2014)

I like classes to be very niche protected BUT allow character to spend other resources to grab a new niche.



For example a fighter shouldn't be able by default to get the lockpicking, sneak attack, and stealth of a thief but a goblin fighter can take the Goblin Cutter feats/subclass/kit/ACF to get them closer for those of a equal level thief.


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## DMZ2112 (May 4, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> I'd have a hard time imagining D&D without the ranger; perhaps the most popular and distinctive class in my experience. Paladin I wouldn't miss. But okay.




That's kind of fascinating to me, that you'd miss one and not the other.  I feel like the ranger is just a ranged fighter with wilderness lore, and at that point you might as well make the wilderness lore feats available to any class.  Why can't I have a rogue ranger, or a cleric ranger? 



> Interesting. To me, the main things that PF does to discourage multiclasing are improved 20-level viability among the base classes, and archetypes. To me, those are both good things in and of themselves. I do think you're right that multiclassing has become less popular; it has for me since I started using many of the PF classes as a base.




Oh, don't get me wrong, I enjoy Pathfinder a great deal, and the things you've listed are definitely system improvements over D&D3.5.  I just lament the passing of multiclassing, and I do not feel like a whole book of pre-multiclassed kludge classes is a good solution.


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## I'm A Banana (May 4, 2014)

How does 3e-style multiclassing fit into this distinction?

You can call a barbarian's rage a unique class feature available only to the barbarian, but if any Tom (the fighter), Dick (the wizard) and Mary (the cleric) can take a level of barbarian whenever they want, it's not like it's a tight silo -- exclusive to the barbarian, maybe, but functionally available to anyone who wants it.


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## Ahnehnois (May 5, 2014)

DMZ2112 said:


> That's kind of fascinating to me, that you'd miss one and not the other.  I feel like the ranger is just a ranged fighter with wilderness lore, and at that point you might as well make the wilderness lore feats available to any class.  Why can't I have a rogue ranger, or a cleric ranger?



Classes aren't synonymous with exclusive niches. If we look at classes as instead being packages of abilities that either go well together mechanically or are popular, than ranger makes a lot of sense. A lot of people want a dip in thief skills, good combat ability, and a little healing after the battle. If D&D were a point buy game, a lot of characters would look like rangers, some like fighters and wizards, and very few would look like paladins or bards.

Also, we already have a cleric ranger, that's called a druid.



> Oh, don't get me wrong, I enjoy Pathfinder a great deal, and the things you've listed are definitely system improvements over D&D3.5.  I just lament the passing of multiclassing, and I do not feel like a whole book of pre-multiclassed kludge classes is a good solution.



I think it's always been problematic that spellcasting isn't a d20-based commodity, and it doesn't work the way d20-based stuff works, and thus casters don't multiclass well.

If I wanted to multiclass ranger and rogue, for example, the skills that they share would retain their full advancement, their BAB would stack and thus be in between a straight ranger and a straight rogue. With spellcasters, you just get crap spells and no stacking. That's not going to change as long as magic looks anything like what it looks like.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> How does 3e-style multiclassing fit into this distinction?



It interacts with the question I'm asking, but doesn't fundamentally change it. To get rage, you have to take an actual level in barbarian. That has significant implications distinct from rage being available as a feat or through some other means to every class. If you're a caster in particular, you give up a level of spellcasting to get it. Depending on what scale your campaign is on, that one level in barbarian may divert a large portion of your conceivable advancement. By the rules, it also risks a multiclass penalty.

Thus, 3e rage is more exclusive than the fighter's bonus feats; the fighter's only really exclusive ability is a small number of optional, but not particularly powerful feats that simply add numerical bonuses.


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## Minigiant (May 5, 2014)

Well one of the reasons why 3e and Pathfinder had niche protection for magic spellcasters was because they had BAB as core but magic rating was a rarely used variant rule. Playing with magic rating (which is like bab for casting) really lowers niche protection a whole lot.

As for rangers, they exist because of the niche protection. A wilderness character to survive in the powerful wild of most fantasy settings needs strong skills to avoid or track the monsters, strong combat to fight the ones he can't avoid or must weaken, and healing to patch up later. All three of these were in protected niches of different classes and multiclassng at the time never gave them in enough strength. Loner fighter/rogu/clerics didn't work that well often.

And that brings up a point.

If you have access to a class feature of another class but at a very low capacity, is that niche protected?
Does it count as niche protection if anyone can get access but only a few can actually be good enough to utilize it? A dip in wizard doesn't make you team caster at level 7.


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## Ahnehnois (May 5, 2014)

Minigiant said:


> Playing with magic rating (which is like bab for casting) really lowers niche protection a whole lot.



IIRC, this rule, at least as presented in UA, did not advance spell access in any way, just caster level. It's basically Practiced Spellcaster for free. Helpful, but not that big a deal.



> If you have access to a class feature of another class but at a very low capacity, is that niche protected?



I suspect the more you care about niche protection, the more your answer is yes.

The topic is coming up a lot lately. Going back to the PF thread where I pointed out that if you really wanted to cherry-pick a useful spell for one isolated situation, a rogue would be as good as a wizard because both of them can use scrolls. This was dismissed essentially on niche protection grounds, as if the rogue is doing something wrong if he does this. And yet, no one's saying the rogue's typical action in combat would be to cast a spell; he simply matches the lauded problem-solving capacity of the various spellcasters through his lowly UMD. Likewise, the ubiquitous wand of CLW certainly treads on cleric turf, but is hardly duplicating the full range of playing a cleric.


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## Minigiant (May 5, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> IIRC, this rule, at least as presented in UA, did not advance spell access in any way, just caster level. It's basically Practiced Spellcaster for free. Helpful, but not that big a deal.





True. The UA version was just caster level and basically practiced spellcaster. 

But if you expanded it to spell caster level (which I did in my games), it really changes up things.


> I suspect the more you care about niche protection, the more your answer is yes.
> 
> The topic is coming up a lot lately. Going back to the PF thread where I pointed out that if you really wanted to cherry-pick a useful spell for one isolated situation, a rogue would be as good as a wizard because both of them can use scrolls. This was dismissed essentially on niche protection grounds, as if the rogue is doing something wrong if he does this. And yet, no one's saying the rogue's typical action in combat would be to cast a spell; he simply matches the lauded problem-solving capacity of the various spellcasters through his lowly UMD. Likewise, the ubiquitous wand of CLW certainly treads on cleric turf, but is hardly duplicating the full range of playing a cleric.




It really depends on how you vision a niche. If you see a niche as a group of features (cleric is healing, restoration, and buffs) then it is hard break into a niche. But if you see the aspects as niches (CLW wand as healing), then niches aren't protected at all in some games.


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## Lanefan (May 5, 2014)

In a broad sense, niche protection is vital.

That said, it's hard to vote on the poll mostly because some classes should have things that *only* they can do (e.g. only Rangers can track) while other classes might share abilities with others of their group (e.g. all Wizard types can cast arcane spells).

And there's different types of niche protection as well.  Some are obvious (only Cleric types can cast divine spells), some are less obvious (non-Warriors can use heavy armour but there are mechanical costs to doing so), and some are done in reverse, as restrictions (arcane magic cannot restore health).

Muitlclassing in any edition, with a few odd exceptions, has never worked for me.  I'll just chuck in another character if I want to play another class. 

But allowing anyone to dip into another class' abilities and cherry pick the ones they want?  No.

Lanefan


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## The Crimson Binome (May 5, 2014)

DMZ2112 said:


> That's kind of fascinating to me, that you'd miss one and not the other.  I feel like the ranger is just a ranged fighter with wilderness lore, and at that point you might as well make the wilderness lore feats available to any class.



I've always felt that a ranged fighter is distinct from an actual fighter, because the rules have promoted the idea that fighters should wear plate whenever possible, and the idea of plate + bow just seems really _weird_. To me, fighter = strong fighter and ranger = agile fighter.


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## DMZ2112 (May 5, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> If we look at classes as instead being packages of abilities that either go well together mechanically or are popular, than ranger makes a lot of sense.
> 
> *snip*
> 
> Also, we already have a cleric ranger, that's called a druid.




In my opinion the druid's niche -- what makes it a defensible class -- isn't divine spellcasting or wilderness lore, but rather its shapeshifting ability.

In partial agreement with your assessment of the situation, I don't necessarily think druids should not be divine casters, or that they should not have wilderness lore, because those abilities work well in tandem, but what makes the druid worth keeping around is that they shapeshift, not that they have significant overlap with the cleric and the ranger.



Saelorn said:


> I've always felt that a ranged fighter is distinct from an actual fighter, because the rules have promoted the idea that fighters should wear plate whenever possible, and the idea of plate + bow just seems really _weird_. To me, fighter = strong fighter and ranger = agile fighter.




I don't object to the idea of a class that brings ranged combat superiority to the table and allows the traditional fighter to focus more specifically on melee superiority.

But I think that in most editions, a specialized ranged-weapon fighter is going to be a better ranged combatant than a ranger, and for that matter a specialized two-weapon fighter is going to be a better two-weapon combatant than a ranger.  In most editions, the ranger does not bring combat superiority to the table.

He likewise does not bring stealth superiority to the table, or divine spellcasting superiority to the table.  Ultimately, what makes the ranger unique is wilderness lore and an animal companion -- and I feel pretty strongly that these are things that could be/should be available to any class that wants wilderness flavor.


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## Oldehouserules (May 5, 2014)

I'd say each class should have exclusive abilities, with the understanding that sometimes, that exclusiveness might indicate a unique _combination_ of powers...

That said, this _can_ be taken to far, and there should be limits lest classes (as a mechanic) become meaningless.


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## Dannorn (May 5, 2014)

I've never been a fan of niche protection, niche adherence in general, because I find it highly, and unnecessarily, restrictive.  With remarkably few exceptions any class should be able to do anything, some are just better suited to certain tasks.  I've always thought each class should have one or two things they're best at, but any character can do them.  Anybody can search for and follow tracks, but all things being equal the Ranger is always going to be better at it than anyone else.  This gives players more freedom to create characters with capabilities normally not associated with their class; smooth talking fighters, brawny rogues, etc.


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## Starfox (May 5, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Classes aren't synonymous with exclusive niches. If we look at classes as instead being packages of abilities that either go well together mechanically or are popular, than ranger makes a lot of sense. A lot of people want a dip in thief skills, good combat ability, and a little healing after the battle. If D&D were a point buy game, a lot of characters would look like rangers, some like fighters and wizards, and very few would look like paladins or bards.




I've been running a number of games in DnD-esque campaigns using point-be systems, mostly in my homebrew but also in other systems. I call these DnD-esque mainly becasue what much of what we played were convertedDnD advenures. I'll try to recall what roles we had. Overall, what most players played were warriors.

Kelandra, run in Steve Jackson's In The Labyrinth game (advanced melee/wizard). This is now around 20 years ago, and we changed over to 2E when the original rules felt constraining, but I will try to recall how it was prior to the change. In the labyrinth was sort of a class system, in that you were either a wizard or not. but was otherwise point bye. We had 2 melee warriors, one ranger-like with stealth and twf, the other more fighter-like with heavier weapons. We had one wizard who worked a lot of illusions. Another wizard was more like a DnD cleric anf focused on heal/buff. We had a dwarf fighter who was very tough but hit poorly. We had yet another fighter who eschewed armor and used a greatsword - lethal but glassjaw. As expected in a system with wizards on one hand and warriors on the other, people were either wizards or warriors.

Another game was in Malleus, an earlier homebrew based on Pendragon mixed Stormbringer (later Elric), WHFB, and Ars Magica. Not pure point-bye, but entirely classless. The system encouraged heavy armor, and we basically had two roles - knight and sorcerer, all characters were a mix of these roles. We had a knight with druid-like nature magic (fighter-druid), a sorceress of air and demons (sorcerer), a honorable knight without magic (cavalier), a champion of law with little magic (paladin), and a sorceress-warrior that was more celtic in feel and used less armor (magus).

The next example was in Dragonstar, a DnD setting in space, run in Action, my homebrew point system. We had a cleric who was also a detective (inquisitor), an elven thief (rogue), a orc martial artist (monk), a human "company man" who tooted guns and became the party face (fighter-bard), and a gadget-style wizard (wizard).

The next was the Shackled City adventure path, run in Mutants & Masterminds. We had a tiger-shapeshifter berserker (barbarian-druid), something similar to a shadowdancer monk (monk), and a big bruiser (fighter). No spellslingers but lots of magical special abilities.

The current game is a long-running Curse of the Crimson Throne, run in Action (the homebrew from above). We have a shapeshifting cat burglar (monk/bard), an elven healer/time mage (cleric), an utility caster (wizard), a lawman/martial artist (monk), and a big bruiser (swashbuckler).

These groups are not completely independent, there is some overlap between players, but represent a sample of a dozen or so people's choices. What strikes me is that almost every character has a bit of magic, often a focused ability like shapechange or a limited teleport. Real spellcasters are somewhat rare, partly because being a spellcaster in a system like Mutants and Masterminds involves a lot of bookeeping. 

I mapped the characters to their closest Pathfinder equivalent. I gave each character two "points" to account for multiclassing. This is the spread over classes. Very conventional, if I may say so, similar to what we have at our d20 tables.

bard 2
cavalier 2
cleric 2
druid 1
fighter 4
inquisitor 2
monk 6
paladin 2
rogue 2
shadowdancer 1
Sorcerer 2
swashbuckler 2
wizard 4


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## Ahnehnois (May 5, 2014)

[MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION]
Looks like your group basically likes monks instead of rangers. They are kind of similar, especially if you don't think in specific mechanics but general terms. Both light warriors with scouting skills and limited supernatural abilities. But yeah, that looks like a pretty plausible distribution.


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## I'm A Banana (May 5, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:
			
		

> It interacts with the question I'm asking, but doesn't fundamentally change it. To get rage, you have to take an actual level in barbarian. That has significant implications distinct from rage being available as a feat or through some other means to every class. If you're a caster in particular, you give up a level of spellcasting to get it. Depending on what scale your campaign is on, that one level in barbarian may divert a large portion of your conceivable advancement. By the rules, it also risks a multiclass penalty.




Interesting. So what, in your mind, is the distinction beteween 3e multiclassing, and some hypothetical D&Desque classless game where a character who gains Level X can choose between barbarian rage and increased spellcasting? Do they have roughly equal levels of "niche protection," even though the latter doesn't have classes? 



> Thus, 3e rage is more exclusive than the fighter's bonus feats; the fighter's only really exclusive ability is a small number of optional, but not particularly powerful feats that simply add numerical bonuses.




What about feats such as _Whirlwind Attack_ that are prohibitive in terms of prerequisites for most other characters?


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## Ahnehnois (May 5, 2014)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Interesting. So what, in your mind, is the distinction beteween 3e multiclassing, and some hypothetical D&Desque classless game where a character who gains Level X can choose between barbarian rage and increased spellcasting? Do they have roughly equal levels of "niche protection," even though the latter doesn't have classes?



If the system truly presents this as a dichotomous choice, then yes. If it's more skill-based, you'd never be making that choice. For example, a rogue never really has to choose between stealth and diplomacy. He can do both if he wants. There are limits on how he can spend his resources, but it's a pretty open system.



> What about feats such as _Whirlwind Attack_ that are prohibitive in terms of prerequisites for most other characters?



The fighter is really just getting early access. If you're thinking in terms of core only, there might be a significant difference in access, but once you start throwing in the broad range of 3e options, there are a lot of ways of getting those feats (and Whirlwind Attack isn't all that great anyway, but that's an aside).


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## Starfox (May 5, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> [MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION]
> Looks like your group basically likes monks instead of rangers. They are kind of similar, especially if you don't think in specific mechanics but general terms. Both light warriors with scouting skills and limited supernatural abilities. But yeah, that looks like a pretty plausible distribution.




Yeah, I was a bit surprised at this, more characters than I realized uses some kind of unarmed combat. Its actually 2 in my current group, versus one conventional weapon fighter, and yet I didn't think of us as martial arts heavy until now.


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## Oldehouserules (May 5, 2014)

Dannorn said:


> This gives players more freedom to create characters with capabilities normally not associated with their class; smooth talking fighters, brawny rogues, etc.




We can make a distinction between capabilities derived from ability scores (i.e., being fast or strong) and class abilities (like using magic).  The former are more innate, while the latter suggest formal (and sometime extensive) training, especially with magic.

The problem here is having prime requisites for a particular class, which was fine when it only added a small experience bonus.  But soon enough (as early as Greyhawk), it became increasingly impossible to function as a fighter without having a high strength or a magic user without intelligence, etc.  Add the ability to arrange to taste, and we had some pretty boring (and not too varied) characters.  The fighter was always strong, the cleric was always wise, etc.

I favor a somewhat structured class system (clericism and magic are learned at the expense of other things), with a more open, broad ability score system.  Players are free to attempt any actions not expressly reserved for class or obviously requiring specialized training, although subject to a governing attribute.  Our own Pits & Perils tries to accomplish this in its own way...


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## I'm A Banana (May 6, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> If the system truly presents this as a dichotomous choice, then yes. If it's more skill-based, you'd never be making that choice. For example, a rogue never really has to choose between stealth and diplomacy. He can do both if he wants. There are limits on how he can spend his resources, but it's a pretty open system.




I see. So in your mind a niche doesn't have to be labelled with "class" for it to be a niche? If, say, all wizards had to be specialized so that you'd have to pick one of D&D's 8 schools of magic, each school of magic would be a niche? Does 4e's concept of roles "protect" a niche (one cannot be simultaneously a leader and a controller, though one could be a leadery controller or a controllery leader)?


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## Ahnehnois (May 6, 2014)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> So in your mind a niche doesn't have to be labelled with "class" for it to be a niche? If, say, all wizards had to be specialized so that you'd have to pick one of D&D's 8 schools of magic, each school of magic would be a niche?



If there were no classes, there would be no wizards. But yes, if the system was structured so that it was effectively impossible to get more than one school, that sounds like a niche has been carved out. Since this is a D&D poll, I phrased it in class terms but it doesn't absolutely have to be.



> Does 4e's concept of roles "protect" a niche (one cannot be simultaneously a leader and a controller, though one could be a leadery controller or a controllery leader)?



If there are significant character abilities that are specific to each role (which I believe there are).


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## Starfox (May 6, 2014)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Does 4e's concept of roles "protect" a niche (one cannot be simultaneously a leader and a controller, though one could be a leadery controller or a controllery leader)?






Ahnehnois said:


> If there are significant character abilities that are specific to each role (which I believe there are).




Let me take an example. In an old X-men comic (forgot which one), Iceman loses his powers to Emma Frost. She immediately discovers a slew of new uses for his powers, all involving ice but doing things he never though of doing. In 4E terms, this is because Iceman is a striker and Emma Frost is a controller. When a controller gets hold of ice powers, she can do many more things with it than a striker can, but she doesn't have the punch a striker does.

To my mind, ice is the niche here, and Iceman and Emma Frost expresses this niche in different ways. But the roles are also niches - for example all leaders had a virtually identical heal power. Which of these niches "deserve" protection (if any) is a matter of taste.


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## pemerton (May 6, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Going back to the PF thread where I pointed out that if you really wanted to cherry-pick a useful spell for one isolated situation, a rogue would be as good as a wizard because both of them can use scrolls. This was dismissed essentially on niche protection grounds, as if the rogue is doing something wrong if he does this.



At least for my part, the concern was more the opposite: not that the rogue is treading on the wizard's territory, but that it seemed to be being suggested that the best way to play a highly viable and contributing rogue is to play the character as a type of item-dependent magician.


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## Neonchameleon (May 6, 2014)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Interesting. So what, in your mind, is  the distinction beteween 3e multiclassing, and some hypothetical  D&Desque classless game where a character who gains Level X can  choose between barbarian rage and increased spellcasting?




None  at all.  For all practical purposes in my opinion 3.X is a game of  packaged point buy rather than a class based game.  Classes should  represent things that are fundamental to the character; either their  approach, their mindset, or their position within the world.  (For  example on the latter, Apocalypse World has a class called Hardholder,  who runs the post-apocalyptic settlement.  They can change classes if  they get forced out - but it's so fundamental to who the character is at  that time that it's a class by itself.)


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## Ahnehnois (May 6, 2014)

pemerton said:


> At least for my part, the concern was more the opposite: not that the rogue is treading on the wizard's territory, but that it seemed to be being suggested that the best way to play a highly viable and contributing rogue is to play the character as a type of item-dependent magician.



What would be the contrary? PF does wealth by level. The standard 10th level rogue has a (very conservative, IME) 62,000 gp according to WBL charts. Are we to assume that he spends it all on a vacation home? Rogues tend slightly more this way because they have UMD as a class skill, but the plain reality is that every mid- to high-level PF or 3.X character is an item-dependent magician.

Again, if one doesn't like wealth by level or the range of items available, that's fine, but it's not a niche protection issue. Anything that is primarily accomplished by magic items is not a niche, because those are for everyone. Thus, a rogue who cherry-picks a scroll germane to the situation is not "playing a fake wizard", he is simply playing a real rogue.

As I've also noted, one doesn't have to be an item-dependent magician unless the game consists of challenges that involve bypassing thick walls in over a minute but not much over, and similarly contrived challenges that make spellcasting look essential.


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## pemerton (May 6, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Again, if one doesn't like wealth by level or the range of items available, that's fine, but it's not a niche protection issue.



In post 31 you suggested that some of those who didn't like a PF-style UMD rogue didn't like it because of niche protection issues. 

I said that, at least for my part, it is not a niche protection issue at all. Now you seem to be agreeing with me, so I don't understand why you are writing as if you disagree with me.

For clarity: the reason I don't like the UMD rogue has nothing to do with niche protection. It's because I don't like playing a rogue as a fake or quasi-magician. That has nothing to do with niche protection. It is about a rogue having the flavour of a rogue rather than of a wizard.



Ahnehnois said:


> every mid- to high-level PF or 3.X character is an item-dependent magician.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Anything that is primarily accomplished by magic items is not a niche, because those are for everyone.



This may well be true of PF. It is not true of D&D in general. For instance, in AD&D using magic items certainly is a niche - part of the power of various classes is their access to certain items. And in AD&D the most common magic items are items that confer static bonuses of various sorts, and using them is not really like playing a magician at all.


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## Ahnehnois (May 6, 2014)

pemerton said:


> In post 31 you suggested that some of those who didn't like a PF-style UMD rogue didn't like it because of niche protection issues.



That's one possible reason, and the one that was initially raised, in a ludicrously incoherent argument, by someone else.



> This may well be true of PF. It is not true of D&D in general.



And indeed this is one of my points here in this thread. Different versions of D&D treat niches differently. 2e breaks them to some extent, 3e more so, 3.5 more so, and PF even more. That's part of the "new school" direction of D&D. I would expect some people are not on board with that, which is fine.


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## steeldragons (May 6, 2014)

Disclaimer: Haven't read the thread yet. Just voted and commenting now. So, if these comments have already been discussed/covered, no worries, I'll see them when I go back to read after this.

I was torn between options 2 and 3. I ultimately voted 3 since it sounded like it kinda included the "groups get unique abilities" option...but I don't have trouble with some classes getting their own thing...or rather, I expect that individual classes will have their own exclusive abilities in addition to some of those shared with the class group/subclasses.

That is to say, just a few examples of what I'm thinking/meaning would look something like this...
"Warrior" classes (Fighters, Barbarians, Paladins, etc.) get X HD, all weapon options, and "unique" abilities like [not definitive or talking about any particular edition, just hypothetical examples] Extra Attacks: level # attacks v. 1HD creatures, Multi-attacks: extra attack per round every X levels, "Charge" attack, Athletics skill.

Then, within the Warrior classes: Fighters might also have A, B & C abilities. Barbarians don't get A or C but have B and an exclusive D. Paladins have A, not B-D, but their E, F & G (where, say, F might overlap with a cleric ability but they are the only Warrior class that can do that.).

The "[arcane] Magic-user/Mage/Wizard" classes have Y HD, limited weapon options, and of course their "group exclusives": Arcane Lore/training skill, arcane spell use, magic resistance, etc. With individual classes having some alterations, as above: "Wizard" mages have the abilities K, L, M. The Sorcerers have K & L, but swap out M for O and P. Warlocks get, maybe, K like Wizards, O like Sorcerers & Q instead.

I'd say as long as the general amount of abilities are roughly equivalent (in number, relative power, limitations swapped in for additional powers, etc...) it's all good.    

So, yeah, each group has their collective "own things" and then the individual classes have their separate abilities [What makes me a Paladin and not a Fighter...or Cleric? What makes me a Warlock and not a Wizard or Thief? etc...]


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## 1of3 (May 6, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Does the term "class" imply an exclusive niche? Vote away.




Obviously it doesn't. Otherwise the voting would be meaningless. It's also incredible hard to describe what "class" means in RPGs. The only pertinant answer is the type of character you play. Classes are the primary answer, when asked: "What character do you play?"

That doesn't actually lead to niche protection, even if the class has exclusive abilities. Imagine two people playing the same class.

It follows that niche protection only works if the players cooperate in establishing it. Classes can help in this negotiation, even if they have no rules to tied them at all. Imagine a Shadowrun group. A player might say: "I'll be the Decker." You immediatley know what to expect, even though there are no formal classes in the game at all.

The archetypes in Shadowrun are in a way even more reliable than D&D's classes. That is because, if you do not know an archetype in Shadowrun fitting your character, you will probably try to communicate whatever your idea is. In D&D, fellow players might look at the character sheet and, having read the character class, do not even bother to ask.

But classes can serve other purposes, too. They can be starting points for imagining a future character. World of Darkness games are prime example. When you choose a clan or tribe or whatever, you can either play it straight or subvert it. Like you can play your Ventrue as ambitious upper class person or do the opposite. And community will not expect all Ventrue to by typical Ventrue. That would be boring.

The problem is that in D&D these too functions, helping in niche protection and establishing a baseline character to maybe deviate from, are conflated. WotC tried to adress this problem in 4e by establishing roles (Striker, Leader, Defender, Controller). That immediately changed the discourse in the community. Now, people were asking how to make good Leaders, Defenders etc. It didn't generally improve the discourse.

There is a game, though, that does a good job in establishing niche protection via classes: Old School Hack. The rules are this: 
[*] If you choose a class, no other player may do so. (Don't be a dick about it.)
[*] Each level you get a class ability.
[*] You may choose abilities from classes other than your own, but you can never have more cross-class abilities than abilities from your own.
[*] When a player plays the class that you want to take a cross-class ability from, you have get permission before taking the ability.

That actually works because it doesn't consider niche protection as fait accompli but as a form of negotiation. If the player who has a certain class ability on the list, but doesn't want it, and you think it's really necessary or fitting for your character, you can just ask.


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## Lanefan (May 7, 2014)

steeldragons said:


> Disclaimer: Haven't read the thread yet. Just voted and commenting now. So, if these comments have already been discussed/covered, no worries, I'll see them when I go back to read after this.
> 
> I was torn between options 2 and 3. I ultimately voted 3 since it sounded like it kinda included the "groups get unique abilities" option...but I don't have trouble with some classes getting their own thing...or rather, I expect that individual classes will have their own exclusive abilities in addition to some of those shared with the class group/subclasses.
> 
> ...



This is very well put; much better than I could explain it.

However, the usual and inevitable problem arises when some bozo wants to play a Wizard with abilities K and M but swap out ability L for Fighter ability A; or worse, keep all the Wizard abilities and tack A on as an extra.  If this is allowed (or even encouraged ) by the system then bang goes the class-based game.  But if it's not allowed then the whining begins, sounding very much like "the system won't support my character concept!".

I don't envy the designers here, as they have to build a game that can somehow make everyone at least vaguely happy.

Lan-"my character concept involves repeated violent application of a longsword to the faces of those who would be my enemy"-efan


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## Hussar (May 7, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> That's one possible reason, and the one that was initially raised, in a ludicrously incoherent argument, by someone else.
> 
> And indeed this is one of my points here in this thread. Different versions of D&D treat niches differently. 2e breaks them to some extent, 3e more so, 3.5 more so, and PF even more. That's part of the "new school" direction of D&D. I would expect some people are not on board with that, which is fine.




I'm curious why you say that 2e breaks niche. Take a thief for example. No one can open locks (well, without smashing them) other than a thief and the only way your character could gain this ability would be to abandon your current class entirely until your thief level exceeded your starting class. 

And no non human could do this at all. 

Only fighters get weapon specs. Full stop. 

On and on. Classes are extremely rigidly protected in 2e.


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## Ahnehnois (May 7, 2014)

Hussar said:


> I'm curious why you say that 2e breaks niche.



Less so than 3e as I mentioned, but we do have a number of those hybrid classes (rangers and bards getting some thief skills, those classes plus paladins getting some spells) as well as kits that sometimes radically changed a class to something outside its traditional role. Both of which are predicates to the new hybrid classes and the ACFs and archetypes that have become de rigeur through 3e and PF.

There are also a number of useful things that are shared from the get-go. Extreme strength and weapon specialization (the first bit, anyway) and bonus hp for Con are shared through the warriors. The spell lists of different casters overlap to an extent. NWPs are the same for everyone IIRC.

I came in at the end of 2e's lifespan, but it appears to me in retrospect that the niches were incrementally broken down over its lifespan. Certainly, people who really knew all the kits could make characters that, at the time, just felt wrong to me.


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## steeldragons (May 7, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> NWPs are the same for everyone IIRC.




Just a small nit...that doesn't really change what you're saying...in 2e there was a list of "General" NWP that anyone could take, but each class grouping (Warriors, Rogues, Priests and Mages) had their own NWP class lists to choose from. Some of these had overlap (both Priests & Mages could take things like Ancient History and a few other lores, for example, iirc). But for the most part they were separate options in line with the traditional roles/archetypes of the class group.


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## Ahnehnois (May 7, 2014)

steeldragons said:


> Just a small nit...that doesn't really change what you're saying...in 2e there was a list of "General" NWP that anyone could take, but each class grouping (Warriors, Rogues, Priests and Mages) had their own NWP class lists to choose from.



Makes sense. Not my area of expertise, obviously. You're right that it doesn't really change my underlying point though. 2e definitely feels a lot less niche protected than the '70's books hiding in my friend's parents' attic.


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## Derren (May 7, 2014)

I have yet to see any good reasons for classes. All they do is to restrict players. Archetypes like in Shadowrun are enough to explain the character system to new players, but for the most part I assume that a RPG player is invested enough in the game so that he doesn't need the rulebook to explain his character to him.

And as this certainly will come up as an answer, no I do not consider "every character must be combat effective and classes make sure of that" a valid answer as I disagree with the premise.


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## steeldragons (May 7, 2014)

Derren said:


> I have yet to see any good reasons for classes.




You mean other than, "D&D is a class-based game?"



Derren said:


> All they do is to restrict players.




No. What they do is give players a framework to design in. 5e, in particular, is going to have a bevy [a whole BEVY, I tell ya!] of ways to customize your character and still keep it in that class-based framework. 

There are loads of games that don't have class-based character design. I can not, for the life of me, understand why there is this cry that, "because I saw it in this other game, I should be able to do it in D&D." Go play that other game!!! If that's what's fun for you, BULLY! Have at it! I want everyone to have as much fun playing games as they want. That does not mean that because "XYZ RPG doesn't do it" D&D should follow suit!

(sorry for all the "!" but this is something that just burns my britches. Pet peeve, if you will.)



Derren said:


> Archetypes like in Shadowrun are enough to explain the character system to new players,




That's great! That's Shadowrun. Play that.



Derren said:


> but for the most part I assume that a RPG player is invested enough in the game so that he doesn't need the rulebook to explain his character to him.




And how does a class-based system do that in ways that other games don't? I am no afficionando of computer games, but do not a lot of them designate someone as a "tank" or a "healer" or a "mage/spellcaster"? Then let you add armor and weapons and loads of stuff that is available to anyone? Is making your character a "tank" not adhering to a class/archetype/motif/style of character and play?



Derren said:


> And as this certainly will come up as an answer, no I do not consider "every character must be combat effective and classes make sure of that" a valid answer as I disagree with the premise.




As do I. In a class-based...or non-class-based, for that matter...system there can and should certainly be character concepts available that are not "combat effective." Particularly for 5e in which they have made a concerted effort to establish combat, exploration, and interaction as the "3 pillars" of game play.


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## Derren (May 7, 2014)

steeldragons said:


> You mean other than, "D&D is a class-based game?"



That is not a reason, that is a statement and one that specifically gets challenged as part of the poll







> No. What they do is give players a framework to design in.




As I said I do not see why players would need a framework that restricts what they can do with their characters as opposed to a framework which only shows them what they can do, but leave them the freedom to do whatever they wants (Archetypes). What additional values has this restriction?

When someone wants to play a sneaky thief for example, he will make sure by himself that his character is stealthy and play him as a thief. He does not need a class to spell it out for him or prevent him from doing anything else than sneaking and stealing.


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## Ahnehnois (May 7, 2014)

steeldragons said:


> You mean other than, "D&D is a class-based game?"



That's a circular argument. (Is there a monster for that?)

Any number of "sacred cows" have been killed. Classes are not unkillable. The wisdom of doing so would be debatable, but classless D&D would be exactly that: classless D&D.



Derren said:


> I have yet to see any good reasons for classes. All they do is to restrict players.



That's what rules do, period. The question is whether the game that is silhouetted by those restrictions is a good one, better than it would be without them.

To my way of thinking the rationale for classes is that they provide an easy entry point to playing a character. Choosing between fighter and wizard is a much more comprehensible choice than trying to allocate a swath of resources among various magical and nonmagical abilities. This purpose does not require any amount of niche protection.

Obviously, some other people have (or think they have) a rationale for classes that does require niche protection, for which that protection serves some useful purpose that would be lost if we allowed more flexible character creation. That I'm not sure of; I don't know what the purpose of those limits is.


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## steeldragons (May 7, 2014)

Derren said:


> That is not a reason, that is a statement and one that specifically gets challenged as part of the poll
> 
> As I said I do not see why players would need a framework that restricts what they can do with their characters as opposed to a framework which only shows them what they can do, but leave them the freedom to do whatever they wants (Archetypes). What additional values has this restriction?




Well, let's see...for one: learning to work and be content within a restricted framework? Life, though no one likes to say it and certain cultures and ages avidly disagree, is not "do whatever you want." 

For two: Learning to exist in and deal with _consequences_. i.e. I'm a Fighter. I like to Fighter. I am good at fighting. AH, but now this situation arises and I want to cast a spell! Well, no. You can't. You _chose_ to be a Fighter. Or vice versa. I'm a mage, but now I have a dozen orcs barreling down on the town. I need armor!!!! No. You can't. You_ chose_ to be a Mage. Deal with the consequences. Which is not to say, "die honorably." But "come up with some solution that gets you out of the situation _without_ armor. Work with wutcha got!

Which, I suppose goes to a wider #3: Creative thinking. possibly meshing with "thinking outside the box." The "box" in this case being the limitations of your class.

So...there's three...or two and a half since I think 2 and 3 kinda go together.


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## Bluenose (May 7, 2014)

Derren said:


> I have yet to see any good reasons for classes. All they do is to restrict players. Archetypes like in Shadowrun are enough to explain the character system to new players, but for the most part I assume that a RPG player is invested enough in the game so that he doesn't need the rulebook to explain his character to him.
> 
> And as this certainly will come up as an answer, no I do not consider "every character must be combat effective and classes make sure of that" a valid answer as I disagree with the premise.




I'd actually go the exact opposite way, and say that classes can be useful because they define the areas where a character *isn't *going to be an expert. One thing I despise is the character who is a Jack-of-All-Trades and master of all trades too. Classes should make that impossible.


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## Derren (May 7, 2014)

steeldragons said:


> Well, let's see...for one: learning to work and be content within a restricted framework? Life, though no one likes to say it and certain cultures and ages avidly disagree, is not "do whatever you want."
> 
> For two: Learning to exist in and deal with _consequences_. i.e. I'm a Fighter. I like to Fighter. I am good at fighting. AH, but now this situation arises and I want to cast a spell! Well, no. You can't. You _chose_ to be a Fighter. Or vice versa. I'm a mage, but now I have a dozen orcs barreling down on the town. I need armor!!!! No. You can't. You_ chose_ to be a Mage. Deal with the consequences. Which is not to say, "die honorably." But "come up with some solution that gets you out of the situation _without_ armor. Work with wutcha got!
> 
> ...




All these arguments seem to assume that in a classless game everyone can do everything. But I have yet to see a game where this is the case.
In a classless system every character can theoretically get everything if he choses to spend his limited resources on it. But during play he will have a limited set of skills and abilities, the ones he chose at creation and levelup, and has to work with it.



Bluenose said:


> I'd actually go the exact opposite way, and say that classes can be useful because they define the areas where a character *isn't *going to be an expert. One thing I despise is the character who is a Jack-of-All-Trades and master of all trades too. Classes should make that impossible.




I do not see how this is a problem with having no classes. Its more a balance problem similar to having an overpowered class. As I wrote as response to steeldragons, even in a classless system a character will have a limited and defined skillset. The only difference is that the player chose this set instead of the designer.


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## steeldragons (May 7, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Any number of "sacred cows" have been killed. Classes are not unkillable. The wisdom of doing so would be debatable, but classless D&D would be exactly that: classless D&D.




While I generally agree with you and your posts, this is a dealbreaker. A "classless D&D" is a different game. I don't know what it is...and I do not deny they could certainly make such a game and slap a D&D logo on it. But it would no longer be the D&D we know...or I want to play.



Ahnehnois said:


> That's what rules do, period. The question is whether the game that is silhouetted by those restrictions is a good one, better than it would be without them.




Ah. Well, these are two different questions. The answer to the first is, "Sure. It could be a 'good one'." It wouldn't be D&D, but it could certainly be a "good game." The answer to the second is strictly a person-by-person preference, as "better" has no objective meaning.



Ahnehnois said:


> To my way of thinking the rationale for classes is that they provide an easy entry point to playing a character. Choosing between fighter and wizard is a much more comprehensible choice than trying to allocate a swath of resources among various magical and nonmagical abilities. This purpose does not require any amount of niche protection.




How does this not confer niche protection? If the fighter can cast spells and the wizard can wear armor...then where's the niche? By definition, a class-based system must provide classes with niche protection, to some degree.



Ahnehnois said:


> Obviously, some other people have (or think they have) a rationale for classes that does require niche protection, for which that protection serves some useful purpose that would be lost if we allowed more flexible character creation. That I'm not sure of; I don't know what the purpose of those limits is.




I...do.  I guess. I dunno. It seems very natural and obvious to me...even if I'm not describing or defending it clearly/well.


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## steeldragons (May 7, 2014)

Derren said:


> All these arguments seem to assume that in a classless game everyone can do everything. But I have yet to see a game where this is the case.




Is that not the case? Any character has the options of every other character. So, yeah. Those arguments are valid.



Derren said:


> In a classless system every character can theoretically get everything if he choses to spend his limited resources on it.




Soooo...??? Yeah, if he chooses to spend his resources he can be/do what every/any other character can do. How is this contradict what you just said?



Derren said:


> IBut during play he will have a limited set of skills and abilities, the ones he chose at creation and levelup, and has to work with it.




I'm still not seeing a difference.



Derren said:


> II do not see how this is a problem with having no classes. Its more a balance problem similar to having an overpowered class. As I wrote as response to steeldragons, even in a classless system a character will have a limited and defined skillset. The only difference is that the player chose this set instead of the designer.




Yes, but that "limited/defined skill set" can be the same as any other character. And how is a limited/defined skill set in a classless system any different or "better" than a system that already applies the limits/definitions for you? 

Because you/the player gets to choose them? That's your ace-in-the-proverbial-hole/reason for being? One (or several) less thing to choose in a class-based system. Easier for player entry...AH #4: ease of player entry....if you ask me.


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## Ahnehnois (May 7, 2014)

Bluenose said:


> I'd actually go the exact opposite way, and say that classes can be useful because they define the areas where a character *isn't *going to be an expert. One thing I despise is the character who is a Jack-of-All-Trades and master of all trades too. Classes should make that impossible.



That's a legitimate end, but I don't see why classes are necessary to achieve it.



steeldragons said:


> Well, let's see...for one: learning to work and be content within a restricted framework? Life, though no one likes to say it and certain cultures and ages avidly disagree, is not "do whatever you want."



There is a certain wish fulfillment aspect of D&D; it's not out of line to want to play larger than life characters. But okay, you do sometimes have to make choices. However, I think some versions of D&D's class system have done a better job of capturing those choices than others.



> For two: Learning to exist in and deal with _consequences_.
> ...
> Which, I suppose goes to a wider #3: Creative thinking. possibly meshing with "thinking outside the box." The "box" in this case being the limitations of your class.



You can get all that without classes as well though. Sometimes even more so. I frequently find in modern/future games that when I give players very open-ended prompts, they'll come back with characters that have virtually no fighting ability, or none of some other really important commodity. It's pretty hard to do that in D&D classes, where some basic level of competency is enforced. With more flexible character creation systems, it's so easy for players to gimp themselves that I have to very carefully disseminate what I expect of them to guide their choices. Even so, those choices end up being very impactful.


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## Derren (May 7, 2014)

steeldragons said:


> I'm still not seeing a difference.




You really do not see the difference between every character being able to become trained in horse archery during levelup and every character being able to shoot from the back of a horse with good accuracy?
Classless systems allow for the former, but when the party is on the run from the warg horde, only the ones which actually spend their resources on horse archery can shoot back while they ride away from them.







> Yes, but that "limited/defined skill set" can be the same as any other character. And how is a limited/defined skill set in a classless system any different or "better" than a system that already applies the limits/definitions for you?
> 
> Because you/the player gets to choose them? That's your ace-in-the-proverbial-hole/reason for being? One (or several) less thing to choose in a class-based system. Easier for player entry...AH #4: ease of player entry....if you ask me.




How are two characters with the same class different?
Me as player being able to do things opposed to a writer is to me the difference between playing an RPG and reading a book. So yeah, I do consider it quite an important part of RPGs.
Ease of player entry? Archetypes provide the same benefit without being restrictive.


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## Ahnehnois (May 7, 2014)

steeldragons said:


> While I generally agree with you and your posts, this is a dealbreaker. A "classless D&D" is a different game. I don't know what it is...and I do not deny they could certainly make such a game and slap a D&D logo on it. But it would no longer be the D&D we know...or I want to play.



To some people, there's another kind of niche protection; the niche that D&D occupies as being distinct from other rpgs. I don't believe much in that one either. To me, when I'm running CoC or Cortex (generally my non-D&D choices) or when I'm experimenting with something else, that's still "playing D&D".

To me, D&D is a creative medium; the sine qua non is the idea of a group of people with one in charge and the others adopting the roles of specific characters. Fantasy is part of the deal, but not essential. Killing things and taking their stuff is part of the deal, but not essential. Likewise, six ability scores, quasi-Vancian magic, and a fairly standard retinue of classes are part of the deal, but not essential. I'd miss the ability scores more.

Moreover, let's (oh joy) consider 4e. It establishes roles and creates new niches that didn't previously exist, carving them out more discretely than 2e or 3e. By doing so, it became, in the eyes of no small number of people, un-D&D. D&D classes often (always?) don't occupy one niche, and trying to force them into one seems more unnatural to me than losing them altogether.



> How does this not confer niche protection? If the fighter can cast spells and the wizard can wear armor...then where's the niche? By definition, a class-based system must provide classes with niche protection, to some degree.



In practice, it still does, but it doesn't have to.

For simplicity's sake, let's say we have a new skill-based system, where attack bonus, hp, saves, AC, and caster level have been subsumed with skills and feats. A character starts with 10 points. One could design a "fighter" that automatically spends eight points in the stuff fighters do, attack, saves, health, whatever, and then two left unspent for the player's choice. The player could spend those last points on the good ol' Intimidate and Swim just like a 3e fighter does, or he could spend them on picking up thief skills or magic.

And the class itself might be optional, functioning much like a starting kit in 3e. If you want to trade in some of the fighter stuff, you simply subtract points in the things you decide you no longer want, and add them elsewhere.

3e is almost like this, but not quite, because there are some things that are not available as feats and skills. For those parts of the game that are (which include some things that used to be class-specific), 3e/PF works exactly as I described.



> I...do.  I guess. I dunno. It seems very natural and obvious to me...even if I'm not describing or defending it clearly/well.



I can imagine several possible rationales, but I can also imagine tearing them down pretty easily. To me, the real reason we use classes is the same as the reason we do many things in life, the reason why we eat the diets we eat, do the work we do, treat people the way we treat them.

Habit.


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## steeldragons (May 7, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> There is a certain wish fulfillment aspect of D&D; it's not out of line to want to play larger than life characters. But okay, you do sometimes have to make choices. However, I think some versions of D&D's class system have done a better job of capturing those choices than others.




No argument there. 



Ahnehnois said:


> You can get all that without classes as well though. Sometimes even more so. I frequently find in modern/future games...




Annnnd, I'm gonna stop you right there. That's those games. Those systems. And that's WONDERFUL...for those games/systems. Give me one reason why "bescause they do it D&D should too."



Ahnehnois said:


> With more flexible character creation systems, it's so easy for players to gimp themselves that I have to very carefully disseminate what I expect of them to guide their choices.




That would seem to be a reason to not play those systems.



Ahnehnois said:


> Even so, those choices end up being very impactful.




I'm not questioning that. I'm questioning why that should, then, become something for D&D?



Derren said:


> You really do not see the difference between every character being able to become trained in horse archery during levelup and every character being able to shoot from the back of a horse with good accuracy?




I've reread this several times...and no. I see no difference here. If they're trained in horse archery...why can't they shoot from the back of a horse with good accuracy?



Ahnehnois said:


> Classless systems allow for the former, but when the party is on the run from the warg horde, only the ones which actually spend their resources on horse archery can shoot back while they ride away from them.




Why would that be? Both have horse archery. And every character can do that...I'm clearly missing/misunderstanding something.



Ahnehnois said:


> How are two characters with the same class different?




Seriously? Is this serious question or should I be reading it as sarcasm? I've had a [Caution: hyperbole coming] HUNDREDS of mage characters, rogue characters, cleric characters...ok, maybe only dozen or so Fighter characters, but still...ALL of them are different characters. Personalities. Fighting styles/tactical preferences. Spell choices that lead to different styles of play/character concept. Deity choices (which lead to spell and RP choices) that lead to different styles of play. I have NO problem whatsoever making different characters...even if almost all of the abilitiy & skill choices are the same. THAT'S playing a ROLE-playing game. My character is not my class. He/she may be largely dictated as to what he/she can do. But the characters are HARDly "the same." I have no problem whatsoever imagining "two characters with the same class" being vastly different.



Ahnehnois said:


> Me as player being able to do things opposed to a writer is to me the difference between playing an RPG and reading a book. So yeah, I do consider it quite an important part of RPGs.
> Ease of player entry? Archetypes provide the same benefit without being restrictive.




I think we will just agree to disagree here. As with practically everything in D&D, it's a matter of preference and play style. I will not see the attributes of your preferences and play style as "better"...and you won't see mine as "better." And that's OK!


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## Derren (May 7, 2014)

steeldragons said:


> I've reread this several times...and no. I see no difference here. If they're trained in horse archery...why can't they shoot from the back of a horse with good accuracy?




Thats the point. Some are not trained in it. They just had the option to train it unrestricted by a class choice made at character creation. But unless they spend limited resources on something they can't do it just because there are no classes.


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## Ahnehnois (May 7, 2014)

steeldragons said:


> Annnnd, I'm gonna stop you right there. That's those games. Those systems. And that's WONDERFUL...for those games/systems. Give me one reason why "bescause they do it D&D should too."



Same system. CoC d20 isn't that different from D&D.



> That would seem to be a reason to not play those systems.



Not under your "consequences" mantra above. I like that you can choose to play a completely noncombatant character, I just think it requires some more active thought to play a game where this is the case. The kind of thought I want people doing when I'm playing D&D: thoughts about  "what if".


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## Hussar (May 8, 2014)

If you want to play classless D&D, why not play Savage Worlds?  I mean, that's pretty much it right there.  IIRC, there are Savage hacks out there for playing exactly this.  

To me, classes absolutely should have specific abilities that no one else gets.  That doesn't mean that every ability has to be specific to one class, but, each class should get something.  So, sure, the ranger gets a couple of thief abilities - stealth in 2e IIRC (hide in shadows and move silently) but the only class that gets Open Locks is the thief.  Sure, a bard might get a couple of cleric spells in 3e, but, clerics certainly don't get inspiring song.  Wizards get fireball and magic missile.  

Even in 4e, niche protection is pretty strong.  The comment was made that all leaders heal exactly the same way.  That's not true.  An alchemist, for example, has to "charge up" healing by getting characters to sacrifice healing surges before hand and can then spend those in different ways depending on different powers.  Which is completely different from a Warlord.  A cleric's healing word and a Warlord's are pretty different in play as well.  Never minding the fact that clerics get surgeless healing and warlords don't.

I'm a pretty big tent kind of guy, but, even I wouldn't recognise classless D&D as actually being D&D.  It shocks me, to be honest, to see the most strident 4e critics like Derren and Ahnehnois claim that a better D&D would be classless.

To be fair though, if you look at the poll, 2/3rds consider niche protection to be pretty important.


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## Ahnehnois (May 8, 2014)

Hussar said:


> If you want to play classless D&D, why not play Savage Worlds?



Because it's not D&D. And of course it has its own issues.



> I'm a pretty big tent kind of guy, but, even I wouldn't recognise classless D&D as actually being D&D.  It shocks me, to be honest, to see the most strident 4e critics like Derren and Ahnehnois claim that a better D&D would be classless.



To be strict, I'd say that a classless D&D would be better. A better D&D wouldn't have to be classless. I haven't ditched them from my game yet, after all. I just think they're more sacred cows then pillars of roleplaying.



> To be fair though, if you look at the poll, 2/3rds consider niche protection to be pretty important.



Not that surprising, but also kind of hypocritical. The first option I wrote is something that hasn't existed at least since AD&D; wherein there are many classes that share abilities and several hybrid classes. Even 4e is not that restrictive. So that makes me wonder where exactly people get this idea that niche protection is part of the game or important on that level; they didn't get it from playing the game itself.

Unless of course, they're all hearkening back to something older than that where there were only a couple of classes and they really were distinct. Quite a reach from where we are today.


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## Lanefan (May 8, 2014)

Derren said:


> I have yet to see any good reasons for classes. All they do is to restrict players.



To some, this is a bug.  To others, it's a feature; and a good one.


> Archetypes like in Shadowrun are enough to explain the character system to new players, but for the most part I assume that a RPG player is invested enough in the game so that he doesn't need the rulebook to explain his character to him.



That's a bi-i-ig assumption.  I assume a RPG player is invested enough to show up to the game every week, as I am, and will know her character as a character rather than as a set of rule interactions.  Those can be looked up in the rulebooks when (hopefully not frequently) required.


> And as this certainly will come up as an answer, no I do not consider "every character must be combat effective and classes make sure of that" a valid answer as I disagree with the premise.



Neither do I.  In fact, I maintain the opposite is true: that in a solidly-designed class-based system some characters will intentionally *not* be as combat-effective as others in some or all situations; but instead will shine at other times.

Lanefan


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## Starfox (May 8, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> T frequently find in modern/future games that when I give players very open-ended prompts, they'll come back with characters that have virtually no fighting ability, or none of some other really important commodity. It's pretty hard to do that in D&D classes, where some basic level of competency is enforced. With more flexible character creation systems, it's so easy for players to gimp themselves that I have to very carefully disseminate what I expect of them to guide their choices. Even so, those choices end up being very impactful.




I find that this is the major effect of a class system. That is, the class sets a *minimum* amount of competence as well as a maximum one. In 3E, even a wizard gains 1/2 BAB and 1d4 hit points - you are not allowed to spend less than that on combat ability. A cleric has 2 skill points per level - you are not allowed to spend less than that on skills. A fighter at lvl 20 has +6 Will save - you are not allowed to spend less than that on spell defenses. 4E went further on skills - every character increased all skills by one point every other level. The way we play Pathfinder, with lots of archetypes and other customization options, I feel the *minimum* investment is just as important as the maximum investment. In a point bye system, a wizard may spend *nothing* on physical attack skills, and never ever make a physical attack. This can create a problem when the GM assumes a certain baseline competence. Say a barroom brawl, where the use of any weapon or spell is overkill. I feel this is an advantage to class systems.


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## Bluenose (May 8, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Same system. CoC d20 isn't that different from D&D.




On the other hand, my CoC-fan friends say the D20 version really isn't much like CoC. And I'd say exactly the same about T20, which really never managed to seem like playing Traveller instead of 3e in a SF setting.



Lanefan said:


> Neither do I.  In fact, I maintain the opposite is true: that in a solidly-designed class-based system some characters will intentionally *not* be as combat-effective as others in some or all situations; but instead will shine at other times.




That requires discipline from the designers not to provide more and more magic spells/items that allow the characters with access to those to shine any time they want to. Given that Forgotten Realms is the first setting and the apparent desire to provide plenty of support for settings, I don't see that happening. FR is probably the least likely setting for restricting magic that D&D has ever provided, and I'm including Eberron's magitech society in that.


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## Tuft (May 8, 2014)

Starfox said:


> In a point bye system, a wizard will spend *nothing* on physical attack skills, because there's no incentive to do so and hell never ever make a physical attack. This can create a problem when the GM assumes a certain baseline competence. Say a barroom brawl, where the use of any weapon or spell is overkill. I feel this is an advantage to class systems.




On the other hand:

When I think of a barroom brawl in a movie, there are always minor or major characters that do stuff like scrambling under the tables to avoid the fighting, or sit untouched in the corner and watch, cooly rescuing their drink just before the table is smashed to splinters in front of them, or act all shocked scream-queen, etc, etc... Not all characters enter the fight swinging their fists, and I find it more character-defining to give people options like these, rather than enforcing a minimum fisticuffs competency.

An enforced minimum competency, especially when it is auto-raised, also can give the feeling of rampant inflation, and make all rising numbers feel meaningless.


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## Hussar (May 8, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Because it's not D&D. And of course it has its own issues.
> 
> To be strict, I'd say that a classless D&D would be better. A better D&D wouldn't have to be classless. I haven't ditched them from my game yet, after all. I just think they're more sacred cows then pillars of roleplaying.
> 
> ...




But, even within hybrid classes you have very strong niche protection. Sure rangers got spells at 9th level but that's hardly their niche. They have always been the only class with some sort of Favored enemy ability. That's their niche. 

A class doesn't have to be 100% unique to protect its niche. That would be ridiculous.


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## Starfox (May 8, 2014)

Hussar said:


> They have always been the only class with some sort of Favored enemy ability. That's their niche.




 I always thought favored enemy was a nuisance, and that being a warrior with skill points was their niche. 



Tuft said:


> An enforced minimum competency, especially when it is auto-raised, also can give the feeling of rampant inflation, and make all rising numbers feel meaningless.




I agree, that is a problem. This is a complex situation with no clear best solution. A class presupposes the world will look in certain ways and that players will look for certain kinds of solutions. But so does any rules system; that 3E has a chapter on combat and one page on Diplomacy tells us what kinds of solutions are expected to prevail. We much just chose a degree of direction and rigidity that works for us.


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## Dannorn (May 8, 2014)

Oldehouserules said:


> > This gives players more freedom to create characters with capabilities normally not associated with their class; smooth talking fighters, brawny rogues, etc.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Exactly, niche protection demands optimization, that's why I don't particularly like it.  If you're the Fighter you have to be the Fighteriest Fighter you can be because that's your niche, that's what you do, and no one else can.  You can't be wasting ability points on Charisma or skill points on Bluff/Diplomacy because A) that's not your job meat shield and B) that's the Bard's niche so back off.

In my mind class shouldn't define what I'm able to do (skills, spells, and feats cover that) but the tools I have to work with (magic, weapon and armour proficiencies, etc.), and I should be able to pick up new tools (within reason through feats) as I go.  Yeah as a Fighter I'm probably not the best candidate for trying to Bluff past the guards, but that doesn't mean there should be game mechanics that keep me from even trying.



Oldehouserules said:


> I favor a somewhat structured class system (clericism and magic are learned at the expense of other things), with a more open, broad ability score system.  Players are free to attempt any actions not expressly reserved for class or obviously requiring specialized training, although subject to a governing attribute.  Our own Pits & Perils tries to accomplish this in its own way...




Pretty much this.  Give classes abilities that make them better at certain tasks than pretty much anyone, but don't say they're the only people who can do those tasks.


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## pemerton (May 8, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> The first option I wrote is something that hasn't existed at least since AD&D



In my 4e game most of the PCs has a significant ability that is exclusive to it in virtue of class: the ranger-cleric has twin strike, plus clerical healing; the fighter has Come and Get It (well, Warrior's Urging) plus a heap of other fighter melee control abilities; the paladin has lay on hands and divine challenge. The sorcerer plays very distinctively at my table, with all these high-damage modest-control AoE attacks (plus sending everyone flying on an attack roll of 1), although a wizard could probably be built that had a similar feel in play. The invoker-wizard occupies a very distinct niche at the table - he is the ritualist and sage - but a wizard or even warlock could probably be built that also emulates this role.

In choosing the 1st option, as is often the case with these ENworld polls, I went with the general thrust rather than the literal wording: I think classes should make it easy for a group of players to build characters that will be noticeably different, but still mechanically effective, in play. If some classes are trap choices, they're not doing their job. If the natural pathway for PCs of different classes is to end up converging on certain common sets of abilities, then they're not doing their job either - at that point you may as well just drop classes and go with point buy.

Of course, if the players in a class-based game don't _want_ to be different, then they're not obliged to. In my experience with classic D&D, this can work particularly well for all-thief parties. At high levels (ie when they have enough spells available to compensate for their physical frailty), all-mage parties can be very effective also.



Starfox said:


> In a point bye system, a wizard may spend *nothing* on physical attack skills, and never ever make a physical attack. This can create a problem when the GM assumes a certain baseline competence.



I've GMed a lot of Rolemaster, where the typical wizard even at very high levels is vulnerable to being taken down by a single good hit from a weapon or attack spell; and is virtually helpless in physical combat.

It creates a different play dynamic from D&D, but if you're playing a game like RM then typically that's exactly what you'd be looking for, I think.


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## Ahnehnois (May 8, 2014)

Starfox said:


> This can create a problem when the GM assumes a certain baseline competence.



It can, but then again, it doesn't have to be a problem. If a 15th level wizard gets in a barroom brawl, to me he either needs to start casting spells or get beat up. I don't see any reason why he needs the same BAB as a 7th level fighter.


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## Ahnehnois (May 8, 2014)

Hussar said:


> But, even within hybrid classes you have very strong niche protection. Sure rangers got spells at 9th level but that's hardly their niche. They have always been the only class with some sort of Favored enemy ability. That's their niche.



I'm on board with [MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION]. I'm not even sure that favored enemy would constitute a "significant" ability in the way I meant when I wrote the poll. To me, a ranger is a mishmash of classes that does not have a distinct niche; its martial prowess, skills, and even limited spellcasting are more important than this one unique ability.


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## Hussar (May 8, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> I'm on board with [MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION]. I'm not even sure that favored enemy would constitute a "significant" ability in the way I meant when I wrote the poll. To me, a ranger is a mishmash of classes that does not have a distinct niche; its martial prowess, skills, and even limited spellcasting are more important than this one unique ability.




Really?  

Favored enemy is the one constant across all editions that rangers have appeared in.  

Rangers as giant killers is quintessential to me. 

Then again, I'm thinking that your opinions are limited to 3e. After all, skills wasn't a thing in AdnD. 

3e is the edition that greatly weakened niches. I hope 5e reverses that trend and it looks like most people would like to see that too.


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## Ahnehnois (May 8, 2014)

Hussar said:


> Then again, I'm thinking that your opinions are limited to 3e. After all, skills wasn't a thing in AdnD.



Didn't rangers get Hide and Move Silently in 2e? And wasn't favored enemy much more limited than in 3e? I remember the 2e ranger for its combat prowess, occasional healing, and the fact that you could multiclass it with cleric for some reason.



> 3e is the edition that greatly weakened niches.



That it did.


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## Starfox (May 8, 2014)

Dannorn said:


> Exactly, niche protection demands optimization, that's why I don't particularly like it.  If you're the Fighter you have to be the Fighteriest Fighter you can be because that's your niche, that's what you do, and no one else can.  You can't be wasting ability points on Charisma or skill points on Bluff/Diplomacy because A) that's not your job meat shield and B) that's the Bard's niche so back off.




I am not refuting your point, Dannorn, I am merely making an observation. 

This is a bit funny in that in our 4E game, everybody seemed to create as self-reliant a character as was possible. Few if any feats and very little gold as spent on items on the very expensive specialist  options. Mostly, people improved their defenses and got themselves utility. Everybody was already so good at their role that getting more peak competence there seemed futile. I've seen similar developments in other games, but nothing as extreme as in 4E.  On the other had, skill-wise 4E had 6 classes, one for each attribute - if an attribute was the favored attribute of your class, those skills were your good skills, no matter where you spent your points. Other DnD games has this to a lesser degree.

This is not true in all games, for example Rolemaster was much better at this kind of niche protection. Out-of-class options were simply prohibitively expensive.

Point-bye games also differ from each other in this regard. Some have synergies that give benefits for putting many points into one area, but most are the opposite way; escalating costs make high levels in a focused area a waste of points while a broader, more even level of competence is promoted. GURPS is the second way, Hero System the first way. It is pretty easy to see what differs between them; GURPS has increasing xp costs, while Hero has constant costs, each point is a skill or attribute costs the same regardless of your current score.

Each of us should look for a system that fits your preferences. Or at least an acceptable compromise.


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## Tuft (May 8, 2014)

Starfox said:


> I am not refuting your point, Dannorn, I am merely making an observation.
> 
> This is a bit funny in that in our 4E game, everybody seemed to create as self-reliant a character as was possible. Few if any feats and very little gold as spent on items on the very expensive specialist  options. Mostly, people improved their defenses and got themselves utility. Everybody was already so good at their role that getting more peak competence there seemed futile. I've seen similar developments in other games, but nothing as extreme as in 4E.




Made you feel rather superflous as a leader in that game... "Oh, so want to heal me? Nah, I've already triggered a surge of my own with this power/item..." The fighter almost got killed in the final boss fight of the entire campaign, because I had so gotten out of the habit of using any heals...  

Fighter, Swordmage, always-hidden Rogue and defenderish-houseruled Bard variant - all optimizing their builds for defense vs pre-MM3 monsters. Mandatory item on everybody's wishlists was something we called the "awesome cap"(1) - a helmet whose official name I've forgotten, but that aided your defense as long as you stayed undamaged - and that could be quite a while. 

But I'd say that Defense belonged to everyone's class niche in that campaign, except the rogue, who had the close substitute Stealth..  


(1) The player of the Fighter was the big 4E fan, and had the habit of exclaiming "awesome!" at everything 4E:ish...  This was of course a long time before the Lego movie.


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## Hussar (May 8, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Didn't rangers get Hide and Move Silently in 2e? And wasn't favored enemy much more limited than in 3e? I remember the 2e ranger for its combat prowess, occasional healing, and the fact that you could multiclass it with cleric for some reason.
> 
> That it did.




So, two thief skills, out of eight or so, and thieves no longer have a niche?  Note, the ranger's skills were halved as soon as he left natural surroundings.  More niche protection.  And, let's not forget the nature empathy - another power that no one else got.  Cleric spells didn't kick in until 8th level, so, not really stepping on the cleric's toes too much.

Again, how unique does a class have to be to be considered "niche protected"?  I mean, in core, rangers got two weapon fighting, for free, which no one else could do without pretty serious penalties.  That right there makes rangers considerably different from other fighter types.  They had several unique abilities that no one else got like animal empathy, some serious (and I mean serious) followers, bonuses to a specific type of creature (a watered down ability from 1e where it was a much broader ability - something 3e brought back) and tracking with bonuses.

How much more does a class need?

I look at it this way.  Mechanically, in 3e, you could make a fighter/cleric that was pretty darn close to a paladin.  Might be a bit off, but, not too far.  Certainly close enough for government work.  Yet, it wasn't a paladin, because it lacked a couple of very key elements - Paladin's Code would be the big one for me, and the paladin's warhorse.  Both are class features that no other class gets.  

Barbarian's rage.  That's what they do.  That's what distinguishes a barbarian from a really hairy ranger.  To me, that's fantastic.  I want that differentiation.  If I wanted to play point buy systems, I would.  There's a ton of really good ones out there.  

Niche protection isn't a sacred cow in need of slaughter.  It's a core, defining element of D&D.  It's the one thing that has never, ever changed throughout all the editions.  Each class has unique goodies that no one else gets.  

And that's a good thing.


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## Ahnehnois (May 8, 2014)

Hussar said:


> Again, how unique does a class have to be to be considered "niche protected"?



Very, to some people. Recall that an objection over Use Magic Device started this line of thought. 



> Niche protection isn't a sacred cow in need of slaughter.  It's a core, defining element of D&D.  It's the one thing that has never, ever changed throughout all the editions.  Each class has unique goodies that no one else gets.



I think there's a lot of overlap between the terms "core, defining element of D&D" and "sacred cow".

And of course it's been present in some form, but has changed radically throughout the editions. After all, I'd argue that perhaps the most salient example has been that instant healing is strictly limited to characters with divine magic (and bards, who are ambiguous in where they fit in), but of course 4e tore down that particular one.


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## Hussar (May 9, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Very, to some people. Recall that an objection over Use Magic Device started this line of thought.
> 
> I think there's a lot of overlap between the terms "core, defining element of D&D" and "sacred cow".
> 
> And of course it's been present in some form, but has changed radically throughout the editions. After all, I'd argue that perhaps the most salient example has been that instant healing is strictly limited to characters with divine magic (and bards, who are ambiguous in where they fit in), but of course 4e tore down that particular one.




Yes, but, that's because you've insisted on misinterpreting the line of thought.

You claimed that using a wand wasn't actually using magic, because the rogue had to use a skill first.  To me that's like saying casting a spell isn't using magic because the wizard has to move his hands and say words first, none of which are inherently magical.

The point that you continuously missed was the fact that the way you were keeping the thief on par with the other casters was by having the thief CAST SPELLS.  How he cast those spells wasn't the issue.  The issue was that he was casting spells in the first place.  A fighter with a magic sword isn't terribly different from one without.  He's still swinging a sword, dealing direct damage.  A thief using scrolls or wands is doing things that a thief absolutely cannot do without those items.  A thief cannot cast Ray of Frost without a magic item that gives him the ability to cast Ray of Frost.  

The issue, again, was never about how the thief can use that item, but the fact that he has to use that item to keep on pace with the other characters.


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## Ahnehnois (May 9, 2014)

Hussar said:


> The issue, again, was never about how the thief can use that item, but the fact that he has to use that item to keep on pace with the other characters.



Yes, but of course that's just obviously wrong. A wizard without items is equally useless. Even if one makes allowances for a spell book and components, wizards are completely dependent on certain magic items, just for different reasons (in PF, this would be the might Int item, a resistance bonus, and probably a bunch of AC boosting items). No character in the 3.X framework is complete or functional without equipment.

The difference in the rogue's case that his class skill enables him to use spell completion items on occasion in addition to other items is not fundamentally different. Moreover, someone else brought up a similar objection to adamantine weapons, which aren't wizardly at all.

And in any case, it took a fairly contrived example to even necessitate having a wizard/rogue with scroll. How good characters are at getting through thick walls in exactly 66 seconds is not really that big of a deal.


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## Hussar (May 9, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Yes, but of course that's just obviously wrong. A wizard without items is equally useless. Even if one makes allowances for a spell book and components, wizards are completely dependent on certain magic items, just for different reasons (in PF, this would be the might Int item, a resistance bonus, and probably a bunch of AC boosting items). No character in the 3.X framework is complete or functional without equipment.
> 
> The difference in the rogue's case that his class skill enables him to use spell completion items on occasion in addition to other items is not fundamentally different. Moreover, someone else brought up a similar objection to adamantine weapons, which aren't wizardly at all.
> 
> And in any case, it took a fairly contrived example to even necessitate having a wizard/rogue with scroll. How good characters are at getting through thick walls in exactly 66 seconds is not really that big of a deal.




But, the wizard items you mention don't change the fact that he's still a wizard.  All it does is make him a better wizard - harder to hit, harder to resist his spells.  It's the same as a fighter with strength boost items and magic weapons - he's a better fighter.

A rogue using wands and scrolls isn't a better rogue.  He's a caster now.  If the reason he's hitting is because he's using a wand with a touch attack spell, that fundamentally changes what that character is.  He's no longer just a better rogue because of his items, now he's aping other classes.

A wizard with a spell book, spell component case, an Int Boost item and bracers of defence is still very much a wizard.  Without knowing the class first, how would you distinguish a wand using rogue from a wizard?


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## Ahnehnois (May 9, 2014)

Hussar said:


> A wizard with a spell book, spell component case, an Int Boost item and bracers of defence is still very much a wizard.



A wizard with bracers of armor, an amulet of natural armor, and a ring of protection is getting sort of fighter-y with all that AC there. A Con item makes him seem more so.

Part of the wizard archetype is frailty, part of the warrior archetype is toughness. Casters use magic items to move from the former towards the latter all the time. Clerics are the healers, but other people pick up wands of CLW. Likewise, part of the wizard archetype is picking out situational spells to solve problems, and some other characters encroach on that niche sometimes. It doesn't mean they've sold their souls to do so. It also doesn't mean that this action is somehow illegitimate, or doesn't count when comparing different classes.

Perhaps you believe strongly in niche protection and you think wizards should remain wussy, rogues should remain stealthy fast-talkers, and never the twain shall meet. Either way, the rogue using a wand is not different than any other magic item use.



> Without knowing the class first, how would you distinguish a wand using rogue from a wizard?



The wand. Wizards hardly ever use wands. Also, the fact that the rogue is wearing armor. And the rogue is probably better looking.


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## Hussar (May 9, 2014)

Wizards hardly use wands?  Really?  I don't think I've ever seen a wizard who didn't pick up at least one wand and use it regularly. Pretty standard IME.


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## Ahnehnois (May 9, 2014)

Hussar said:


> Wizards hardly use wands?  Really?  I don't think I've ever seen a wizard who didn't pick up at least one wand and use it regularly. Pretty standard IME.



I can't remember the last time I saw that happen in a game. I throw them in to treasure every now and then, but they sell them right off.

Wands are not unheard of with clerics and other divine characters, not just CLW but also occasionally higher level healing spells and LR. Those are the things that make the most sense to do in wand form because caster level is not that important (even less so in my more recent games that use vp/wp), but you'll want to cast them over and over again. Quantity over quality.

With wizards, I'm not really sure what spells are wand-worthy. Knock, maybe, but you have to run into fifty locked doors that you can't otherwise bypass to make that worthwhile.


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## Hussar (May 9, 2014)

Perhaps it might help if you defined what you think niche is. A wizard with a handful of extra Hp and a decent AC is not going to be standing on the front line in melee. So in my mind he's not stepping on the fighter's niche at all. 

Which is why clerics are problematic because it is very easy for a cleric to stand in the front line in melee and do as much or more damage than the fighter. At least in 3.5e anyway.


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## Hussar (May 9, 2014)

Oops double post.

Well since I double posted I might as well use the space. 

Wands I've seen used:  extended range wand of fireball is devastating in an outdoor campaign. Extended range Unseen Servant pretty much replaces the rogue for trap finding. Wands of Charm person or Monster are fantastically useful. Wand of Ivisibility is a good one. 

That's off the top of my head.


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## Lanefan (May 9, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Didn't rangers get Hide and Move Silently in 2e? And wasn't favored enemy much more limited than in 3e? I remember the 2e ranger for its combat prowess, occasional healing, and the fact that you could multiclass it with cleric for some reason.



I ever played 2e, but in 1e Rangers could climb, outdoors; and had a chance of moving silently, outdoors; I don't remember if they got any sort of hide capability (outdoors).

3e really opened up their favoured enemy options.  In 1e they were better against Giants and Humanoids, period.

1e also allowed for what I call "heavy Rangers", essentially plate-clad tanks with woodsy skills.  Later editions kinda forced them away from that, into lightly-armoured scouts (which they could be in 1e too, but weren't forced to be).

To me the Ranger's "niche" is the woods skills - plant knowledge, direction sense (outdoors), tracking, etc. - the physical stuff, as opposed to the metaphysical in nature which is, of course, best left to the Druids/Nature Clerics.

Lan-"the first character I ever played was a 'heavy Ranger'"-efan


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## Tuft (May 9, 2014)

please ignore


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## Ahnehnois (May 9, 2014)

Hussar said:


> Perhaps it might help if you defined what you think niche is.



Not my call to define a term for the community; I don't really have a clear one that jumps to mind for my own perspective.



> A wizard with a handful of extra Hp and a decent AC is not going to be standing on the front line in melee. So in my mind he's not stepping on the fighter's niche at all.



Not the path of least resistance, but I've seen it happen when someone really splurges on defensive items and throws a Diplacement or something on top of it. More likely a wizard does that than uses a wand or crafts a scroll.



> Which is why clerics are problematic because it is very easy for a cleric to stand in the front line in melee and do as much or more damage than the fighter. At least in 3.5e anyway.



I wouldn't call that easy, but yes, there's another niche that intentionally overlaps.



> Wands I've seen used:  extended range wand of fireball is devastating in an outdoor campaign. Extended range Unseen Servant pretty much replaces the rogue for trap finding. Wands of Charm person or Monster are fantastically useful. Wand of Ivisibility is a good one.



A wand of a spell that allows a save? With a standard item DC? That I certainly never considered. Unless you plan on using them against commoners.

I don't see how anyone would ever get 50 charges out of even a fairly nice extended range fireball (though if you did, it would have to be the result of some very good scouting). I guess the Unseen Servant thing could be helpful, but I've never seen enough traps in a game to be worth that kind of investment for such a niche usage. Invisibility could be a nice one, but again, it's gimped because of standard CL and low duration. Also, a ring of invisibility is four times more, never runs out, and anyone can use it. I use rings of invisibility all the time.


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## Hussar (May 9, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Not my call to define a term for the community; I don't really have a clear one that jumps to mind for my own perspective.
> 
> Not the path of least resistance, but I've seen it happen when someone really splurges on defensive items and throws a Diplacement or something on top of it. More likely a wizard does that than uses a wand or crafts a scroll.
> 
> ...




I can get 200 charges worth of wands of invisibility, and I can make the entire party invisible if I want to.  And if I take Craft Wand at 5th level, I can get 400 charges for the same price.   For Forge Ring, I need to be at least 12th level.  That's a HELL of a lot of wands of Invisiblity before you can guarantee having a single ring of Invisibility.   Any time I want to and, really, as often as I want to, I can cast Invisiblity.    As a standard wand, that's 30 rounds of invisibility.  Well, I suppose 26 rounds if you invisibled the entire party.  More than enough to bypass any encounter you want to sneak past.

Wand of extended range fireball is fantastic if you run any sort of naval campaign.  Out ranges and far out powers any catapult.  Niche, true, but, still very, very useful for outdoor heavy campaigns.

And if your campaigns feature so few traps that spending 4500 gp (assuming you don't just make the thing) isn't worth the wand of Unseen Servant, then the rogue in your party doesn't exactly have much to do either does he?  

To me, it was standard that every caster spent about 10% of their wealth on consumables.  Far more often, the rest of the party would chip in to add to that total because everyone recognised how good that option really was.  Again, I think that it's fair to say that you have not really seen a player using a caster with a high degree of system mastery if you saw high defence wizards with displacement on the front line entering melee combat more commonly than casters carting around bags full of wands and scrolls.


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## Ahnehnois (May 9, 2014)

Hussar said:


> I can get 200 charges worth of wands of invisibility, and I can make the entire party invisible if I want to.  And if I take Craft Wand at 5th level, I can get 400 charges for the same price.   For Forge Ring, I need to be at least 12th level.  That's a HELL of a lot of wands of Invisiblity before you can guarantee having a single ring of Invisibility.   Any time I want to and, really, as often as I want to, I can cast Invisiblity.



Well, I think that last one is what does it. 2nd level spells suck, and just memorizing Invis is usually a perfectly reasonable thing to do. So not much reason to use a wand at all.



> Wand of extended range fireball is fantastic if you run any sort of naval campaign.



I do recall being very concerned about those sorts of things when I ran a naval campaign. I don't think I ever had occasion to use ship to ship magic artillery simply because it was a short game. Still, I don't know that the wand would really be that helpful over simply memorizing the spell.



> And if your campaigns feature so few traps that spending 4500 gp (assuming you don't just make the thing) isn't worth the wand of Unseen Servant, then the rogue in your party doesn't exactly have much to do either does he?



I feature plenty of things for which rogues are useful. Just not traps.



> To me, it was standard that every caster spent about 10% of their wealth on consumables.



To me, it's always been standard that casters just throw consumable treasure into the bag of holding and sell it when they get the chance.



> Again, I think that it's fair to say that you have not really seen a player using a caster with a high degree of system mastery if you saw high defence wizards with displacement on the front line entering melee combat more commonly than casters carting around bags full of wands and scrolls.



I think it's fair to say that my players and I have mastered the system pretty well. The way we mastered it is that we tried all those options when 3.0 first came out, realized that they didn't work, and moved on.


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## 1of3 (May 9, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Not my call to define a term for the community; I don't really have a clear one that jumps to mind for my own perspective.




A niche  is when there is a situation and everyone looks at you to solve it. 

If you can hide in forests and there are no forests, there is no niche.

If whenever the situation comes up, you can locate object, that is your niche. 

A character might have several niches. They are dependent on the campaign and specific characters.

They are not dependent on how you do it, innate or item. Nor on absolute quality. If no one else can heal at all, the Ranger with a wand of CLW is the healer.


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## Greg K (May 10, 2014)

My preference is 3e's classes with UA style class variants to trade out features:

Unearthed Arcana's Arcane Sage, Divine Bard, Savage (add to this, I want a bard that gives up spellcasting for bonus fighter feats)
Unearthed Arcana's Crafty Hunter (trades rage for ranger's favorite enemy and fighting style)
Unearthed Arcana's Cloistered Cleric (trade all armor and BAB for increased skill points, additional skills, etc.)
Complete Champion's Champion variant that trades spellcasting for bonus feats
Unearthed Arcana's Martial Rogue (fighter feats instead sneak attack) and Wilderness rogue (skill swaps)


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## Lanefan (May 10, 2014)

1of3 said:


> A niche  is when there is a situation and everyone looks at you to solve it.



Not quite.  A niche is when you are the specialist in something no other class can do nearly as well, or at all; regardless of whether or not that things you are specialized in is useful right at the moment.



> If you can hide in forests and there are no forests, there is no niche.



If your class can hide in forests and no other class can, that's (part of) your niche.  The immediate presence or absence of forests is irrelevant.



> If whenever the situation comes up, you can locate object, that is your niche.



That's defining it to the individual-in-a-party level, which is fine, only the discussion is at the class-in-the-game-world level.

And by your definition it ceases to become your niche if and when another person with Locate Object joins the party.  Here, we're after the niches at the class level, regardless how many members of said class happen to be in a given party.

Lan-"I niched myself while shaving"-efan


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## Mistwell (May 10, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Because it's not D&D. And of course it has its own issues.




Classless isn't D&D either.


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## 1of3 (May 10, 2014)

Lanefan said:


> Not quite.  A niche is when you are the specialist in something no other class can do nearly as well, or at all; regardless of whether or not that things you are specialized in is useful right at the moment.




That is apparently what most people here are trying to use. We see the following problems:

It doesn't quite work, if there is customisation besides or within classes. If my class could learn a spell but my character didn't, going by your definition, I play the game wrong, because I am supppsed to cast that spell by virtue of character class.

I don't thing that is a very healthy attitude for a playing group.




> And by your definition it ceases to become your niche if and when another person with Locate Object joins the party.




Not quite. Why would such a character join the party? Because another player selected the spell.
There are two reasons for that. One good, one bad. Good it is, when the first player did not really like that spell and would rather do different things.

Bad it is, when the player likes locating objects. You then violated that player's niche.

Therefore, niche protection is not something the game does for you. It might help, but in the end you must do it at the table.

Also it works on the lowest level of customisation. In D&D that comes down to single spells.


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## Hussar (May 10, 2014)

But a single spell should never be the entirety of a niche. A niche is something a given class does better than any other. 

That doesn't preclude another class from being able to do that thing, but it should never be as good.


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## Starfox (May 10, 2014)

I feel we're discussing apples and pears here - a class niche is different for a character niche in a party. 

IMO, party niche is much more interesting that class niche. But the discussion here is more about class niches, which is how this has traditionally been handled in DnD.

One reason I dislike class niches is because it make certain classes mandatory. The worst offender here is the healer - a party cannot function without a healer, traditionally the only healer is a cleric, and thus every party needs a cleric. As cleric is a genuinely unpopular class around here, this is a problem. Opening the healer niche up to more classes helps alleviate this, opening it up to anyone with a decent Use Magic Device does so further. When you do this, healer becomes a party niche instead of a class niche. Suddenly many characters have the option to learn how to heal, but some will still be better at it. If there is a cleric in the party, it is usually pure waste for the bard to learn hearing spells (known spells being a very limited resource), but having a _wand of cure light wounds_ might still be a good investment.


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## 1of3 (May 10, 2014)

You say "should". You might certainly have that opinion. It is not how DnD works. For this to work, there cannot be choice within character classes. There can also only be very few classes, because otherwise you cannot determine niches a priori.

You might want to be the Cleric the best "healer". But what does that even mean? The most eficient healer out of comat is the Binder. The best person to revive the dead is a Psion. The best healer in combat is one who can spontaneously cast Heal at range.


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## Hussar (May 10, 2014)

But, healer isn't the niche is it?  A cleric's niche is divine caster. Granted healing might be part of that, but that's not a cleric's niche IMO. Or certainly not all of it.


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## sheadunne (May 10, 2014)

Using 3x as a base, you can spread "healing" around, but the means and ability of that healing would differ based on class. Here's an example. 

Cleric - Cure line of spells (fast and powerful)
Druid - Vigor line of spells (slow and powerful)
Paladin - Lay on hands ability (fast and weak)
Bard - Some sort of singing ability (slow and weak)

Four different means of healing. No other class would get any of these particular abilities and none of the ability really replaces any particular classes ability. No other class gets cure spells. No other class gets Vigor.


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## 1of3 (May 10, 2014)

Hussar said:


> But, healer isn't the niche is it?  A cleric's niche is divine caster. Granted healing might be part of that, but that's not a cleric's niche IMO. Or certainly not all of it.




In that case you have a tautology: A cleric is a cleric. That doesn't answer anything.


  @_*sheadunne*_ : Yes. Uphtread, someone compared the Cleric and Artificer in 4e who behave in such a similar manner. Both do the healing but there are certain conditions where one is preferable.


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## Starfox (May 10, 2014)

I mentioned the cleric as the _traditional_ healer. By that I mean pre 3E. It was an example to illustrate the difference between class and role niche protection. Sure, there are now many classes that can heal - which I think is a good thing.


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## Lanefan (May 10, 2014)

1of3 said:


> That is apparently what most people here are trying to use. We see the following problems:
> 
> It doesn't quite work, if there is customisation besides or within classes. If my class could learn a spell but my character didn't, going by your definition, I play the game wrong, because I am supppsed to cast that spell by virtue of character class.



Uh...wha...?

There are dozens of spells out there to (potentially) learn, in all editions of the game.  In theory, provided I have the required level and-or stat score, I-as-caster can learn any of them that are allowed to me.  That I do or do not for each individual spell has nothing to do with niche and everything to do with a combination of player-as-character choice (do I want the spell?) and random chance (can I get access to it?).



> Not quite. Why would such a character join the party? Because another player selected the spell.
> There are two reasons for that. One good, one bad. Good it is, when the first player did not really like that spell and would rather do different things.
> 
> Bad it is, when the player likes locating objects. You then violated that player's niche.



You're really fine-tuning the character creation process if you select spells based on what others in the party can do.  And this assumes you get any choice on what spells you start with: divine casters mostly work off of pre-set spell lists, and arcane casters come in with a random selection of spells which they can then (try to) augment through purchase and-or discovery during play.

I play a character* in a game right now who absolutely loves flying; it's his schtick, as it were.  If something will get him in the air, he wants it; and he's busy in his adventuring downtime trying to invent some sort of quasi-mechanical flying machine.  But if another character in the party can fly (and at least one can) do I feel that my niche has been violated?  Of course not!

* - his day job is Cleric.

Lanefan


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## Starfox (May 11, 2014)

Lanefan said:


> and arcane casters come in with a random selection of spells which they can then (try to) augment through purchase and-or discovery during play.




Random arcane spells were last seen in canon in 2E, I believe. You can use them in your game, but they don't really belong in an argument, at least one about recent editions. Sure this is a General D&D thread, but...

Says the guy who 2 posts up said only clerics can heal.


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## 1of3 (May 11, 2014)

Lanefan said:


> You're really fine-tuning the character creation process if you select spells based on what others in the party can do.  And this assumes you get any choice on what spells you start with: divine casters mostly work off of pre-set spell lists, and arcane casters come in with a random selection of spells which they can then (try to) augment through purchase and-or discovery during play.
> 
> I play a character* in a game right now who absolutely loves flying; it's his schtick, as it were.  If something will get him in the air, he wants it; and he's busy in his adventuring downtime trying to invent some sort of quasi-mechanical flying machine.  But if another character in the party can fly (and at least one can) do I feel that my niche has been violated?  Of course not!




The character I played for the longest time collected magic shields. She had a whole trophy room. My current character maps ancient evils. Those are not nieches. It's not automatically a niche if your character can do, regularly does it or likes doing it. 


Even if your cleric _can_ restorate (is that a word?), if for some reason another party member can provide that service better, so you never prepare that spell, that other party member is filling the "removing ability damage and negative levels" niche. We had that particular thing. 
*Cleric pulling out a restoration scroll.*
Necromancer: "Don't bother friend, I will attend to their needs." 
Cleric: "You can do that!!??"
Necromancer: "Yes."

By that discussion, a niche was established. The "Necromancer" would henceforth bother with restoring people. That cleric, still saving his scroll, might do it at a time, when the "Necromancer" couldn't or was absent etc. That's called backup. The cleric was therefore the Backup Ability Damage and Negative Levels Remover. Now, that's a title.


There are also various tasks that will not become a niche during play. That might happen for practical reasons, because the commodity is so required that a single character cannot cover all the bases. Or it might happen because no character is significantly better at that stuff. Or it might happen because no one really want to do it. So even if a character _regularly_ performs a certain task, we cannot conclude there is a niche.


If a character _likes_ performing the task, has nothing to do with it either. It might be that your character hates adventuring in the first place, but will do so for some reason. You might still have several niches with that character. Neither can we consider hobbies - like inventing flying contraption or collecting magic shields - a niche, because this is not adressing a situation.


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## Hussar (May 11, 2014)

1of3 said:


> In that case you have a tautology: A cleric is a cleric. That doesn't answer anything.
> 
> 
> @_*sheadunne*_ : Yes. Uphtread, someone compared the Cleric and Artificer in 4e who behave in such a similar manner. Both do the healing but there are certain conditions where one is preferable.




Not at all. A cleric is someone who is the strongest divine caster. Other classes might get some access, but only clerics get access to the full range of divine spells. Which means a lot more than hit point restoration I hope. 

Their niche is similar to a wizard which has the broadest access to arcane spells. 

An artificer and cleric can both heal, it's true. But their approach to healing is very different. And, again, healer is not the sum total of a niche. At least it shouldn't be.


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## 1of3 (May 11, 2014)

But "divine magic" and "arcane magic" have no meaning by themselves. What does divine magic do? Maybe you have played the game for too long, so you don't notice. Think about it: "The Incarnate is best at Incarnate Meldshaping, the Totemist is best at Totemist Meldshaping. Other characters might do so, too." That's just as ridiculous a statement.

Things like spellcasting or meldshaping are only arbitrary class mechanis. Divine vs. arcane is even less, it's meaningless keywords. Such keywords might constitute a niche, but only in shutting them down. If you had a character specialising in unshaping enemies' Soulmelds that could constitute a niche. - If meldshapers made a significant portion in the campaign's villains gallery.


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## Lanefan (May 12, 2014)

Starfox said:


> Random arcane spells were last seen in canon in 2E, I believe. You can use them in your game, but they don't really belong in an argument, at least one about recent editions.



Yet another unfortunate development of the later editions...sigh... 


> Sure this is a General D&D thread, but...



Truth be told, in the 3e game I played the arcane spells were still somewhat randomly assigned.

Side topic: is uncertain spell access (as in, what you find is random, and you can't always get what you want) another way in which 0e-1e-2e arcane casters were reined in a bit more than their 3e-pf-4e counterparts?

Lanefan


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## Hussar (May 12, 2014)

1of3 said:


> But "divine magic" and "arcane magic" have no meaning by themselves. What does divine magic do? Maybe you have played the game for too long, so you don't notice. Think about it: "The Incarnate is best at Incarnate Meldshaping, the Totemist is best at Totemist Meldshaping. Other characters might do so, too." That's just as ridiculous a statement.
> 
> Things like spellcasting or meldshaping are only arbitrary class mechanis. Divine vs. arcane is even less, it's meaningless keywords. Such keywords might constitute a niche, but only in shutting them down. If you had a character specialising in unshaping enemies' Soulmelds that could constitute a niche. - If meldshapers made a significant portion in the campaign's villains gallery.




Why is it meaningless?  A cursory reading of the rules tells me the difference. Divine magic comes from gods and arcane doesn't. The two branches have very different capabilities as well.  

Now I'll cop to not knowing what meld shaping is, but I'm pretty darn sure that it isn't arcane or divine spells just from the name. 

Why can't niche be defined by the game itself?  Why must niche be defined by plain English?


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## 1of3 (May 12, 2014)

Hussar said:


> Why is it meaningless?  A cursory reading of the rules tells me the difference. Divine magic comes from gods and arcane doesn't. The two branches have very different capabilities as well.
> 
> Why can't niche be defined by the game itself?  Why must niche be defined by plain English?




OK. Let's get a few steps back. What is this about? Niche Protection. What is niche protection? Niche Protection is an indirect form of Spotlight Management. What is Spotlight Management? Spotlight Management is the idea that each character should shine once in a while and how we can make sure of that.

There are several ways to manage spotlight. You can make NPCs, location and plot elements that are tied to a character's background or interests. You can hand out equipment earmarked for a character. Those are fairly direct methods.

Niche Protection makes the following further assumptions: The PCs go adventuring. During adventuring certain tasks and problem wills arise. These situations can be split into certain types of standard problems. These types are called niches. A character is said to "have a niche", when he or she is qualified to solve that type of problem and expected to so in usual circumstances. When a problem arises that fits a characters niche, the character therefore has spotlight. Therefore niche protection is a form of spotlight management, but less direct then the methods above.

"Divine magic" is not a niche, because characters cannot _overcome_ divine magic. Closed doors, invisible enemies, negative energy effects those are things you can overcome. And you can specialize in overcoming them. So the problem is not that niches have to presented in "plain English", "negative energy effects" certainly would not qualify.

The niches you can specailize in are potentially indefinite. Whether they are useful in terms of securing spotlight, depends on the campaign. It doesn't matter if your character can do it unless there is the regular opportunity to say: "Oh, that again. Melissandra, they are all yours."

The fact that a character is a cleric can, of course, be used to spotlight him. There might be an old temple, filled with the magic of the gods. But that is not niche protection, but a fairly direct form of spotlight management.


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## pemerton (May 12, 2014)

Hussar said:


> you've insisted on misinterpreting the line of thought.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The point that you continuously missed was the fact that the way you were keeping the thief on par with the other casters was by having the thief CAST SPELLS.





Ahnehnois said:


> Yes, but of course that's just obviously wrong. A wizard without items is equally useless.



It's not obviously wrong to me. It's an accurate summary of my concern with Use Magic Device as a way of keeping 3E/PF rogues on par with spell-using classes.

A wizard who uses wands or staves or scrolls is being a wizard, in the core sense of that archetype.

A thief who uses wands or staves or scrolls is pretending to be a wizard, or playing at it. If that sort of "playing" is the only way the thief can keep up, something has gone wrong in my view. In classic D&D the thief's ability to read scrolls was a sidelight, a nod to the Grey Mouser and a trick that the thief could pull out when need demanded. If it becomes the mainstay of the thief's power then from my point of view the thief is no longer playing as a thief, but as a faux-wizard.

That is not about niche protection (in respect of which I like [MENTION=48555]1of3[/MENTION]'s discussion). It's about preserving the feel of fictional archetypes.



Ahnehnois said:


> Wizards hardly ever use wands.



Yet another way in which 3E/PF departs from its predecessors, then. In classic D&D wands are awesome for wizards, because they conserve spell slots. (And many wands are MU only, eg Wands of Conjuration, Fire, Frost, Illusion, Lightning, Paralysation, Polymorphing.)


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## Ahnehnois (May 12, 2014)

pemerton said:


> A thief who uses wands or staves or scrolls is pretending to be a wizard, or playing at it.



Only in the sense that the concept of the class was built around doing that. Rogues are versatile. Rogues improvise. Rogues dip into other niches. It's pretty much the definition of what a rogue is.



> If that sort of "playing" is the only way the thief can keep up, something has gone wrong in my view.



But of course it isn't. As I've noted elsewhere, UMD is precisely what it's meant to be: a niche ability that becomes useful in specific situations, not the rogue's most common action. Typically, simply being able to roll trained checks in 8+ useful skills and damage the heck out of people when they're not looking is better than whatever a wizard's repertoire of memorized spells is in a given day.



> That is not about niche protection (in respect of which I like [MENTION=48555]1of3[/MENTION]'s discussion). It's about preserving the feel of fictional archetypes.



An odd objection, given how the notions of a "striker" and a "martial power source" blatantly defy the feel of the original thief archetype. What archetype is worth preserving? I would think the improviser/jack of all trades is entirely worthwhile.



> Yet another way in which 3E/PF departs from its predecessors, then. In classic D&D wands are awesome for wizards, because they conserve spell slots. (And many wands are MU only, eg Wands of Conjuration, Fire, Frost, Illusion, Lightning, Paralysation, Polymorphing.)



That is an odd phenomenon. This feature of 3.X magic items are an epiphenomenon of the increased importance of caster level and the item pricing formulas. Wands and scrolls are almost always at the minimum caster level, and are quite expensive (and even more so if one tries to get one at a higher CL). Their usefulness quickly becomes compromised as they are unable to penetrate any competitive SR, saves against item DCs almost automatically succeed, and range, duration, and damage, are all low.

Wands are only useful for spells for which level-based variables are not of high importance, and for which repeated castings over a short period of time are likely to be worthwhile. Cure Light Wounds meets these criteria, and a few other spells are on the fringe of that level of utility, most of them cleric spells.

I do think it would be a positive move to have wands and other spell completion/trigger magic items reflect the power of the wielder, and thus become more useful for powerful spellcasters (rather than less useful).

In general, it's better to have the wizard buy a scroll, learn a spell, rest, and memorize it when needed. In the absence of that, there is a loss of efficiency as the party must either pay an NPC, or take the middle road and get a rogue to use a magic item. The ability to select useful spells without spending a lot of money is what makes the wizard function, but on the whole, there aren't many spells that are that important.


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## pemerton (May 12, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Only in the sense that the concept of the class was built around doing that.



I don't agree with this. Even within the context of 3E/PF, I suspect that it was an emergent rather than an intended feature. It is certainly not part of the concept of the rogue or thief as such.



Ahnehnois said:


> An odd objection, given how the notions of a "striker" and a "martial power source" blatantly defy the feel of the original thief archetype.



In what way? Look at discussions of the thief in early gaming magazines (in my own case, I'm thinking of White Dwarf c 1980). The thief as commando - striking hard from stealth - was one of the major ways known to play a thief. Gygax has an example of just this on p 105 of his PHB. And that is how thieves typically played in my classic D&D days, when it came to combat.


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## Ahnehnois (May 12, 2014)

pemerton said:


> In what way? ... The thief as commando - striking hard from stealth



Striking hard from stealth; not striking hard during an active battle when you're already been seen. Even the addition of flanking to sneak attack (one which I've backtracked on to an extent for my own games), as opposed to pure old school backstab which requires the target to be unaware of you, could be seen as a departure from that ideal. Let alone some of the various 4e thief powers and the increasingly broad definition of combat advantage.

The notion of a striker is a combat role, while the old school thief really didn't have role past the first round of combat. Even that commando's goal is to circumvent a battle, not fight one. In fact, that notion of strategic play is something that has been lost from the old school feel, to an extent.

The notion of a power source also contradicts the idea of improvisation. The thief/rogue is the perfect example of someone whose favored actions should be determined more at the table than at character creation; static, preselected powers don't make sense in that context.


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## Starfox (May 12, 2014)

Of the four old classes (magic user, fighter, thief, cleric) only the fighter and magic user really have niches of their own, as they are at the extremes of the martial/magic spectrum. 

The cleric was always a hybrid between a caster and a warrior. Allowed armor and some weapons, mediocre attacks but pretty good defenses. By excluding "real" casters from healing, an artificial niche was created for the cleric, but healer is not really a hero job.

The rogue was a hybrid between warrior and something else that no-one else even got close, and that is the quick-witted hero of most heroic tales. This is a role that fits pretty badly in  the tactical/resource management game that was important in old DnD and which I still feel is a part of old school. The classic hero of literature bypasses such concerns by wit and skill - he doesn't need to manage resources because he doesn't spend any. But he is not really a team player and his best adventures are solo. In a world of the other three classes, he fails as he doesn't have the room and lassitude to use the kinds of solutions he ought to be best at. "Rogue" situations really don't come up much in typical team play. Thus the rogue has become a trapfinder, commando, and magic item user. These are not really his roles, they are replacements to make up for that there is not room for true rogue adventures in team play.


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## Ahnehnois (May 12, 2014)

Starfox said:


> Thus the rogue has become a trapfinder, commando, and magic item user. These are not really his roles, they are replacements to make up for that there is not room for true rogue adventures in team play.



I haven't found that to be the case at all. Rogues work perfectly fine with or without those things.


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## Starfox (May 12, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> I haven't found that to be the case at all. Rogues work perfectly fine with or without those things.




You above said your rogues generally don't backstab past the first round. I guess your game contains a lot of exploration and intrigue, or what do rogues in your games do? Well, perhaps this is food for a new thread.


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## Ahnehnois (May 12, 2014)

Starfox said:


> You above said your rogues generally don't backstab past the first round.



I said that the good old 2e thief doesn't. In 3e, I see a fair amount of feinting and flanking.



> I guess your game contains a lot of exploration and intrigue, or what do rogues in your games do?



Regardless of whether we're talking rogues or not, there are a lot more skill checks than attack rolls in my game. Rogues get a lot of use out of stealth/perception and social skills in my game. Wizzards get a lot of use out of knowledge. I think the former amounts to more (though the latter is quite important).


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## Starfox (May 12, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Regardless of whether we're talking rogues or not, there are a lot more skill checks than attack rolls in my game. Rogues get a lot of use out of stealth/perception and social skills in my game. Wizzards get a lot of use out of knowledge. I think the former amounts to more (though the latter is quite important).




Considering the amount of skill use going on in games around here, one would think the rogue would be a popular class. Somehow, it is not.


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## Ahnehnois (May 12, 2014)

Starfox said:


> Considering the amount of skill use going on in games around here, one would think the rogue would be a popular class. Somehow, it is not.



I don't see a ton of rogues either. At least, not as much as I would like. I did a really substantial PF/TB/UA rogue rewrite recently and it's yet to see use as anything other than an NPC. I think the last rogue I saw was a rogue/warlock. If anything, I think the ranger is the one that overshadows the rogue, not the wizard.

I also saw a lot more rogues in the early 3e days (and thieves in 2e) than I saw later on in the 3.5 and post-3.5 era. I'm not sure if there's a macro-level reason for that or just a quirk of my group. Maybe people got jaded by so many things being immune to crits.


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## Ahnehnois (May 12, 2014)

pemerton said:


> The thief as commando - striking hard from stealth - was one of the major ways known to play a thief.



Also, just to go back to this notion and the role/niche for a second, this was _one of_ the ways to play a thief. Other ways did not include this notion at all. If anything, the rogue served to broaden the class's scope and further deemphasize the whole striking from stealth angle. The PF rogue has numerous archetypes, and 3e has numerous prestige classes, both of which spread out even farther.

There are some good combat rogue builds to be sure, but that's only one branch of the rogue tree. So a rogue as a "striker" is really a large departure from any previous iteration of the thief/rogue, simply in how narrow it is.


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## Starfox (May 12, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> I don't see a ton of rogues either. At least, not as much as I would like. I did a really substantial PF/TB/UA rogue rewrite recently and it's yet to see use as anything other than an NPC. I think the last rogue I saw was a rogue/warlock. If anything, I think the ranger is the one that overshadows the rogue, not the wizard.
> 
> I also saw a lot more rogues in the early 3e days (and thieves in 2e) than I saw later on in the 3.5 and post-3.5 era. I'm not sure if there's a macro-level reason for that or just a quirk of my group. Maybe people got jaded by so many things being immune to crits.




We used to have a lot of multiclass thieves in 1E and 2E. In 3E, not so much. And yeah, its the other skill classes that kill the rogue - monk, bard, ranger, and various house-ruled archetypes now in Pathfinder. Guess traps and sneak attack just doesn't make a very interesting character. Even tough crit immunity no longer helps against sneak attack in Pathfinder, few people seem to know that.


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## Ahnehnois (May 12, 2014)

Starfox said:


> We used to have a lot of multiclass thieves in 1E and 2E. In 3E, not so much.



The thief/illusionist and fighter/thief were both awesome. 3e never really duplicated them perfectly, I agree.



> And yeah, its the other skill classes that kill the rogue - monk, bard, ranger, and various house-ruled archetypes now in Pathfinder. Guess traps and sneak attack just doesn't make a very interesting character.



No, traps and SA in and of themselves aren't enough. I would have hoped that some of the PF changes would favor the rogue, such as being able to SA more things and some of the combat maneuvers, but they weren't implemented adequately.



> Even tough crit immunity no longer helps against sneak attack in Pathfinder, few people seem to know that.



Like I said, I think people became jaded to an extent. Fortification armor is also really inappropriate (I changed it to a bonus to AC against crit confirmation rolls).

But I also think that expanding SA to include flanking pushes the rogue away from that classic playstyle. Making it easier to use than backstab was looks like a raw power increase, but it pushes the player away form all that planning and thought that was needed to get a true backstab. There just isn't the sense of being rewarded for setting up the perfect kill, nor the same sense of consequence if someone does see you. I've tried to restore that, but it's a shame that it was lost in the first place.


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## Starfox (May 12, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> Making it easier to use than backstab was looks like a raw power increase, but it pushes the player away form all that planning and thought that was needed to get a true backstab. There just isn't the sense of being rewarded for setting up the perfect kill, nor the same sense of consequence if someone does see you. I've tried to restore that, but it's a shame that it was lost in the first place.




In 1E, a successful backstab could actually kill a "level-appropriate" monster. Combat was quicker and deadlier then. 3E gave everyone much more hp, making a big initial attack less useful. That said, we used to try and get backstab opportunities by flanking then too - monsters had to decide which way to turn, and you could move around them.


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## Ahnehnois (May 12, 2014)

Starfox said:


> In 1E, a successful backstab could actually kill a "level-appropriate" monster. Combat was quicker and deadlier then.



The idea of bonus dice also makes things much less swingy. Triple or quadruple damage was scary, and this was in addition to the potential for critical hits.

Moreover, while backstab rewarded base damage, SA actually deemphasizes it. This is good for halfling rogues, but in fact is really too good for them at the expense of everyone else. SA is one of those things that seemed cool at first but turned out to be a terrible idea, one that PF unfortunately didn't want to rewrite.


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## Starfox (May 12, 2014)

I support sneak attack being static instead of a sumtiplier - it allows rogues to fight with tiny weapons to great effect. Blowguns, anyone? Sadly, sneak attack damage just doesn't seem to be sufficient. Compare it to the cavalier's challenge - challenge works regardless of the situation, does increase on a crit, and does 57% as much damage. It is easy to get several challenge-enhanced attacks in a round, but hard to get several sneak attacks.


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## Ahnehnois (May 12, 2014)

Starfox said:


> I support sneak attack being static instead of a sumtiplier - it allows rogues to fight with tiny weapons to great effect. Blowguns, anyone?



That can be positive, but it's a patch. The way D&D awards damage doesn't really reflect skill that much, and rogues really shouldn't be the one exception.



> Sadly, sneak attack damage just doesn't seem to be sufficient. Compare it to the cavalier's challenge - challenge works regardless of the situation, does increase on a crit, and does 57% as much damage. It is easy to get several challenge-enhanced attacks in a round, but hard to get several sneak attacks.



In some cases it isn't enough. But getting multiple sneak attacks is not that hard. The whole TWF thing that 3e introduced gets cheesy. It's not that hard to deal SA damage four or five or more times in a round given appropriate circumstances, which can quickly become too much damage rather than not enough.


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## Lanefan (May 12, 2014)

1of3 said:


> OK. Let's get a few steps back. What is this about? Niche Protection. What is niche protection? Niche Protection is an indirect form of Spotlight Management. What is Spotlight Management? Spotlight Management is the idea that each character should shine once in a while and how we can make sure of that.
> 
> There are several ways to manage spotlight. You can make NPCs, location and plot elements that are tied to a character's background or interests. You can hand out equipment earmarked for a character. Those are fairly direct methods.
> 
> Niche Protection makes the following further assumptions: The PCs go adventuring. During adventuring certain tasks and problem wills arise. These situations can be split into certain types of standard problems. These types are called niches. A character is said to "have a niche", when he or she is qualified to solve that type of problem and expected to so in usual circumstances. When a problem arises that fits a characters niche, the character therefore has spotlight. Therefore niche protection is a form of spotlight management, but less direct then the methods above.



So far I can sort of get behind what you're saying...but then...



> "Divine magic" is not a niche, because characters cannot _overcome_ divine magic. Closed doors, invisible enemies, negative energy effects those are things you can overcome. And you can specialize in overcoming them. So the problem is not that niches have to presented in "plain English", "negative energy effects" certainly would not qualify.



...you say this, and get it all backwards again.

The niche is, to follow your example, divine magic; because divine magic is the broad-brush tool that this particluar class can use to overcome whatever the game throws at it, and is a tool that other classes don't (usually) have access to.

Where the spotlight bit comes in is that sometimes the answer to a situation lies in divine magic.  Sometimes the answer is a hammer.  Sometimes it's a fireball.  And sometimes it's stealth and subterfuge.  These, in a broad sense, are niches - things that particular classes tend to excel at and-or are the only ones capable of doing it at all.

Lanefan


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## 1of3 (May 12, 2014)

Lanefan said:


> So far I can sort of get behind what you're saying...but then...
> 
> ​...you say this, and get it all backwards again.
> 
> The niche is, to follow your example, divine magic; because divine magic is the broad-brush tool that this particluar class can use to overcome whatever the game throws at it, and is a tool that other classes don't (usually) have access to.




Tying the concept to character classes incurs the following problems:

- You cannot have Niche Protection, if you have two members of the same class. Which is obviously not the case. You can have characters with the same class that are very different.

- If two different classes use different mechanics, by your reasoning, they have different niches, so they won't compete for spotlight. That is not the case. You can either use thief skill to scout a dungeon, or hit it with divination spells.

- Assuming that niche = class, also means that you cannot choose abilities within a class. Because once you choose a class feature, you will lack certain others. Therefore you cannot possibly "fill" your niche. 

- Also you cannot account for different campaigns and play styles.

If you believe that niche protection is on a fundamental level tied to classes, you have to disbelieve my whole argument right from the beginning, because then it does not reliably serve spotlight management.


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## Hussar (May 13, 2014)

1of3 said:


> Tying the concept to character classes incurs the following problems:
> 
> - You cannot have Niche Protection, if you have two members of the same class. Which is obviously not the case. You can have characters with the same class that are very different.




But, even then, those two characters will almost always share the niche.  Two 2e fighters will be damage kings, unless the players deliberately avoid their own niche (perhaps by gimping stats and ignoring things like weapon specialisation, for some reason).  2 3e rogues will be the skill monkeys in the party, even if they have somewhat differing skill sets.  One might be specialised in scouting and the other in talky bits, but, at a guess, there will be a fair degree of overlap.



> - If two different classes use different mechanics, by your reasoning, they have different niches, so they won't compete for spotlight. That is not the case. You can either use thief skill to scout a dungeon, or hit it with divination spells.




Why?  You can achieve the same niche with different mechanics.  However, if one is much better than the other, then that's problematic.  Thus the issues with casters in 3e where you can step on other character's niches through spells.  Clerics being able to out melee the fighter on a regular basis is a problem, not a feature.




> - Assuming that niche = class, also means that you cannot choose abilities within a class. Because once you choose a class feature, you will lack certain others. Therefore you cannot possibly "fill" your niche.




That depends on what your niche happens to be.  Niche can be very narrow or fairly broad.  But, looking at characters with strong niches, like, say, a paladin, the base character fills the niche nicely.  Everything else is just variations on the theme.



> - Also you cannot account for different campaigns and play styles.
> 
> If you believe that niche protection is on a fundamental level tied to classes, you have to disbelieve my whole argument right from the beginning, because then it does not reliably serve spotlight management.




Sure, niche protection is in some ways tied to spotlight management, but, there has to be some presumptions about how the game is going to be played.


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## pemerton (May 14, 2014)

Starfox said:


> The rogue was a hybrid between warrior and something else that no-one else even got close, and that is the quick-witted hero of most heroic tales. This is a role that fits pretty badly in the tactical/resource management game that was important in old DnD and which I still feel is a part of old school. The classic hero of literature bypasses such concerns by wit and skill - he doesn't need to manage resources because he doesn't spend any. But he is not really a team player and his best adventures are solo. In a world of the other three classes, he fails as he doesn't have the room and lassitude to use the kinds of solutions he ought to be best at. "Rogue" situations really don't come up much in typical team play. Thus the rogue has become a trapfinder, commando, and magic item user. These are not really his roles, they are replacements to make up for that there is not room for true rogue adventures in team play.



I don't know if I agree with all of this - I think it is possible to play a "rogue-ish" character, as you characterise it, in a team game. For instance, the CHA-sorcerer in my game plays that way, both in and out of combat (in combat, wit, flare and skill; out of combat, Stealth, Bluff etc).

But nevertheless it's a nice analysis. I think dungeon-style play is a particularly unhappy home for the roguish archetype you describe.



Ahnehnois said:


> Making it easier to use than backstab was looks like a raw power increase, but it pushes the player away form all that planning and thought that was needed to get a true backstab. There just isn't the sense of being rewarded for setting up the perfect kill



Backstab was never that big a deal in my classic D&D games. You sneak up, typically combining invisibility with Move Silently, and then you attack. It didn't generally require a huge amount of set-up. The above-mentioned sorcerer in my 4e game plays with at least the same amount of planning and thought, relying on multiple ways to get combat advantage (Stealth, invisibility, drow darkness, etc) as part of his strategy to keep his to-hit chance up.


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## Ruin Explorer (May 14, 2014)

pemerton said:


> Backstab was never that big a deal in my classic D&D games. You sneak up, typically combining invisibility with Move Silently, and then you attack. It didn't generally require a huge amount of set-up. The above-mentioned sorcerer in my 4e game plays with at least the same amount of planning and thought, relying on multiple ways to get combat advantage (Stealth, invisibility, drow darkness, etc) as part of his strategy to keep his to-hit chance up.




That's been my experience too, 2E through 4E, too. Backstab was so mechanically weak that making it a big deal and hard to get seemed utterly perverse.

Really, if you have the perfect setup and so on, you should get an instant kill on anything that doesn't have a name, and severe damage or death on any humanoid of a vaguely similar level to the PCs. Monsters could be resistant to this, of course.

On the general subject of niche protection, I think there's a good rule of thumb for how far one could possibly go - if you're protecting the niche to the point that the game is basically not playable without that character being present, or is a drastically different game, you've probably gone too far (looking at the game's design holistically). D&D has certainly gone that far at times.


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## Ahnehnois (May 16, 2014)

Ruin Explorer said:


> On the general subject of niche protection, I think there's a good rule of thumb for how far one could possibly go - if you're protecting the niche to the point that the game is basically not playable without that character being present, or is a drastically different game, you've probably gone too far (looking at the game's design holistically). D&D has certainly gone that far at times.



I agree with that goal, though I'm hard pressed to think of examples where it really has gotten to that point. The rote example is the cleric as the healer, but I don't think it's essential, nor is it all that exclusive (though the earlier you go, the more so it was).


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## Ruin Explorer (May 16, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> I agree with that goal, though I'm hard pressed to think of examples where it really has gotten to that point. The rote example is the cleric as the healer, but I don't think it's essential, nor is it all that exclusive (though the earlier you go, the more so it was).




I'd say it reached that level in 2E AD&D, myself. In D&D, there was rarely an assumption of a player Cleric/healing/curing in adventure design or monster design, so it wasn't a huge issue. In 1E it started to become more assumed, and by 2E, a huge proportion of published adventures (and a lot of DMs) assumed that there had to be a Cleric/Priest/Druid in the party, and were extremely hard to run as written if not (requiring rejigging encounters, changing basic assumptions, and so on, imo of course - you could always just let the PCs fail, after all!). You started to see advice about how you could convince a player to be the Cleric, and I know I was aware of "nobody wants to be the Cleric!" as a trope long before the internet existed (ironically, I often wanted to be the Cleric - but I was a DM most of the time). There were Cleric-alternatives, but they were all either basically the same thing (Speciality Priests, fr'ex) or kind of horrible (Mystics), and they were virtually all god-botherers of various descriptions. That was kind of the big problem - unless you had a hundred weird sourcebooks, if the party wanted healing, you needed a god-botherer (or spirit botherer, maybe), and most players I knew (and indeed this continues to be true now and in MMORPGs and so on) had very little interest in being that - their dreams were of mighty warriors, powerful wizards, sneaky thieves, and silver-tongued bards, but not of, like faith healers in plate.

2E obviously _could_ and was be played without a player or GMPC Cleric (resorted to the latter a few times), but it was a drastically different game, where the PCs had to frequently retreat for weeks or pay a lot of cash to churches (or the GM supplies vast quantities of healing potions, I suppose), and there's nothing wrong with that game, but it's a different game. Whereas missing a Thief or a Fighter or the like pretty much never had a similar effect that I saw (Wizard is debatable - but I literally never saw a party without at least a multiclass Wizard, so I can't speak from experience there).

3E weakened the niche protection a bit on healing, but assumed healing in an even more hardcore way, so you had this curious situation where people couldn't heal much without magic, and were expected to be on full HP all the time (by CL/EL stuff), but that magic could be a cheapo wand of CLW.

4E got the best balance here, imo - a Leader character is a tremendous asset to the group, but fairly rapid natural healing, the ability to use Second Wind and so on, means that the game only changes a little without them, and you don't typically need to re-write adventures, or re-jig encounters or the like. Plus you can have any flavour of Leader - not just different kinds of god-botherer.

I suspect that there are fair number of adventures out there that are completely different or non-viable without a Wizard or similar arcane spellcaster, too, in 2E/3E. Especially at mid-high levels. I know I've read adventures that assumed AOE spells would be used to deal with certain encounters, and had few solutions if not, or assumed ready access to fire damage and/or electricity damage.

Talking of Rogues/Thieves, one very curious element of niche protection is that D&D, up to 3.XE/PF, at least, has fairly zealously protected instant-death and save-or-suck-type stuff as the domain primarily of Wizard-types (occasionally Cleric-types), even though, in fantasy fiction, Rogue-types often instantly kill people (even serious people), and routinely horribly poison them and so on. It seems like it was seen as wildly overpowered if a Rogue could one-shot someone from full health (even if only when the stars aligned, or limited to once a day or the like), but fine if a Wizard could do it to multiple people per combat.

Similarly with killing a bunch of people in a single round (even when rounds were 1 minute!). Okay for a Wizard, not okay for a Fighter (unless they're 1HD or less, or not much more than that).


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## Ahnehnois (May 16, 2014)

Ruin Explorer said:


> I'd say it reached that level in 2E AD&D, myself.
> ...
> That was kind of the big problem - unless you had a hundred weird sourcebooks, if the party wanted healing, you needed a god-botherer (or spirit botherer, maybe), and most players I knew (and indeed this continues to be true now and in MMORPGs and so on) had very little interest in being that - their dreams were of mighty warriors, powerful wizards, sneaky thieves, and silver-tongued bards, but not of, like faith healers in plate.



You may be right about that. I suspect 2e is by far the edition that requires this the most because the healing rate is still low and healing is not all that widely distributed. Admittedly, my experience is colored by good ol' Baldur's Gate, wherein the protagonist character gains bonus healing magic, conveniently (and a cleric is still really important).

I did not so much see the issue of reticence to playing such characters, and you could at least try to hack it with a druid or paladin, but it did seem really important.



> 3E weakened the niche protection a bit on healing, but assumed healing in an even more hardcore way, so you had this curious situation where people couldn't heal much without magic, and were expected to be on full HP all the time (by CL/EL stuff), but that magic could be a cheapo wand of CLW.



Not only the widespread wand usage, but also earlier spell availability for the tertiary casters, and a much higher natural healing rate.



> 4E got the best balance here, imo - a Leader character is a tremendous asset to the group, but fairly rapid natural healing, the ability to use Second Wind and so on, means that the game only changes a little without them, and you don't typically need to re-write adventures, or re-jig encounters or the like. Plus you can have any flavour of Leader - not just different kinds of god-botherer.



I don't know if "balance" is the term I would use. Healing is simply no longer much of a consideration.



> I suspect that there are fair number of adventures out there that are completely different or non-viable without a Wizard or similar arcane spellcaster, too, in 2E/3E. Especially at mid-high levels. I know I've read adventures that assumed AOE spells would be used to deal with certain encounters, and had few solutions if not, or assumed ready access to fire damage and/or electricity damage.



This is easier to patch though, because you can just run away from a bad combat encounter, or deal energy damage through your handy magic sword.

Also, clerics and druids occasionally get area damage and various other effects that overlap with the big arcane stuff, and particularly in 3e, various different magic classes were introduced. A warlock covers that stuff just fine. At that point, it's really only necessary that someone in the party has magic, which is still of debatable merit, but is a pretty easy qualification to meet. The niche being protected here is just "magic".



> Talking of Rogues/Thieves, one very curious element of niche protection is that D&D, up to 3.XE/PF, at least, has fairly zealously protected instant-death and save-or-suck-type stuff as the domain primarily of Wizard-types (occasionally Cleric-types), even though, in fantasy fiction, Rogue-types often instantly kill people (even serious people), and routinely horribly poison them and so on. It seems like it was seen as wildly overpowered if a Rogue could one-shot someone from full health (even if only when the stars aligned, or limited to once a day or the like), but fine if a Wizard could do it to multiple people per combat.



I'm long on the record as saying that I'm not a fan of that at all; I always felt like SoD should be an integrated part of the game, not a function of exception-based design buried in a few spells. The 3e massive damage rule was an attempt to address this but is somewhat impotent; UA makes it a tad better but there's still an enormous amount of underutilized design space here.



> Similarly with killing a bunch of people in a single round (even when rounds were 1 minute!). Okay for a Wizard, not okay for a Fighter (unless they're 1HD or less, or not much more than that).



Another thing I think would be interesting to incorporate into the combat rules would be some kind of area damage option. Implementation would be even harder, but I definitely think it's doable.


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## Manbearcat (May 16, 2014)

> Originally Posted by *Ruin Explorer*
> 
> 
> 4E got the best balance here, imo - a Leader character is a tremendous  asset to the group, but fairly rapid natural healing, the ability to use  Second Wind and so on, means that the game only changes a little  without them, and you don't typically need to re-write adventures, or  re-jig encounters or the like. Plus you can have any flavour of Leader -  not just different kinds of god-botherer.






Ahnehnois said:


> I don't know if "balance" is the term I would use. Healing is simply no longer much of a consideration.




Could I get some clarification on this because I'm not sure if this could be more inaccurate (at least the way I'm reading your meaning...hence my request for clarification).  

4e combat has many distinct features (forced movement, dynamic mobility, well-defined role and potent capability within that role, force multiplication/group synergy, among others).  As notable as any feature (and possibly most notable) is the trope of "heroic combat" inherent to 4e play, which is almost entirely (but not completely) predicated upon the "healing" mechanics of the system.  

Unlike in prior editions, all classes can self-heal and heal party members, *in combat*, in real time.  This unlocking of healing surges is the ignition for the heroic comeback inherent to 4e combat.  Fighters can unlock their own surges and initiate their own combat turnaround/getting off of the canvass.  They can unlock the surges of clerics, turning battle momentum through daring, through inspiration, through a prayer, through mundane poultice application and any other number of things.  Theme, feat, skill, paragon path, and class powers cover all manner of heroic combat, tide turning tropes by unlocking the PCs own surges or unlocking those of their allies.  This is healing in 4e and it is more rampant, and more vested into the system, than in any preceding edition.

Perhaps you mean "healing is simply no longer much of a consideration" as in "the mandated cleric and his divine healing is simply no longer _a thing_?"


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## Ruin Explorer (May 16, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> I don't know if "balance" is the term I would use. Healing is simply no longer much of a consideration.




Simply not true in the least. It's just that healing moves to being largely an in-combat tactical consideration from being pure resource-management, and total damage between long rests matters a lot for people who don't have a ton of Healing Surges (I do think 30% less HSes would have made a better game, though).

If that's what you mean, i.e. healing becomes tactical, not strategic resource-management, I agree. Of course in 3E, it was neither, once the wands of CLW started appearing.


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## Ahnehnois (May 16, 2014)

Manbearcat said:


> Perhaps you mean "healing is simply no longer much of a consideration" as in "the mandated cleric and his divine healing is simply no longer _a thing_?"



I mean that healing is no longer an exclusive ability or part of a niche, as it pertains to this discussion.

Given some level of class distinctions and niche protection, a "balanced" approach to healing would connote, to me anyway, that some characters have this in-combat instantaneous healing, others do not have anything comparable and function in completely different ways, but all of them are equally useful. That is to say, that healing would be balanced relative to things that are not healing, like area damage, stealth, persuasion, or good old-fashioned bashing things.


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## Ruin Explorer (May 16, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> I mean that healing is no longer an exclusive ability or part of a niche, as it pertains to this discussion.
> 
> Given some level of class distinctions and niche protection, a "balanced" approach to healing would connote, to me anyway, that some characters have this in-combat instantaneous healing, others do not have anything comparable and function in completely different ways, but all of them are equally useful. That is to say, that healing would be balanced relative to things that are not healing, like area damage, stealth, persuasion, or good old-fashioned bashing things.




The second bit is precisely what 4E has, so I am very confused by this. It literally sounds like you are describing 4E...

Plus healing in combat in significant amounts is pretty much exclusive to Leaders.


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## Manbearcat (May 16, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> I mean that healing is no longer an exclusive ability or part of a niche, as it pertains to this discussion.
> 
> Given some level of class distinctions and niche protection, a "balanced" approach to healing would connote, to me anyway, that some characters have this in-combat instantaneous healing, others do not have anything comparable and function in completely different ways, but all of them are equally useful. That is to say, that healing would be balanced relative to things that are not healing, like area damage, stealth, persuasion, or good old-fashioned bashing things.






Ruin Explorer said:


> The second bit is precisely what 4E has, so I am very confused by this. It literally sounds like you are describing 4E...
> 
> Plus healing in combat in significant amounts is pretty much exclusive to Leaders.




Ruin Explorer has written my thoughts exactly after reading your response.

In older editions, there were a few niches running around that roughly map to 4e's codified niches.  Only a few differences exist and most of those are bound up in actual effectiveness at the niche their archetype is supposed to cover.  However, instantaneous HP restoration, and only instantaneous HP restoration (including the raise dead variety of HP restoration), was the sole purview of the divine caster (except for a few very large outliers such as Monks).  That was the only uber-protected niche.  The rest of them could either be thumb-tacked + bubble-gummed/jury-rigged or asymmetrically approached to get the job done.

4e did away with this paradigm by giving all classes some access to surge-unlocking abilities (which could be customized to be greater than "some access" at the player's PC build discretion) while simultaneously (i) maintaining the prolific nature of Leaders' surge-unlocking capabilities and (ii) increasing the total number of Leader archetypes (from solely divine caster).  Further, they decoupled Rituals from casters and tied them to the feat Ritual Caster and the skills of Arcana, Heal, Nature, Religion (primarily....there are some others), thus allowing anyone access to the (much more bounded and codified but still awesome, extremely useful, and thematically compelling) strategic resources that used to be the sole purview of spellcasters (that dominated play in prior editions).

In 4e, the things you mention in your last sentence  [MENTION=17106]Ahnehnois[/MENTION] actually are balanced quite well against one another.


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## Starfox (May 16, 2014)

My experience of 4E was that healing was something each character could manage pretty well by themselves - no real need for leader-type characters.


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## Manbearcat (May 16, 2014)

Starfox said:


> My experience of 4E was that healing was something each character could manage pretty well by themselves - no real need for leader-type characters.




I agree and I suspect that most others would as well.  Its curious because so many have said that 4e codified roles made it so you had to have Defenders and Leaders primarily or you can't progress (and certainly not excel).  My small group just played a game 1 - 30 with neither a pure Defender nor pure Leader.  At the Epic Tier of play, the Druid rebuilt to a hybrid (shaman then warlord then back to shaman) but that was a fiction-first initiative.

While you can build a group that synergizes ridiculously well with niche specialization, you can certainly do just fine (and then some) with a group that is rather incoherent with respect to the default role/niche setup.  There are plenty more than one (two or even three) ways to skin the proverbial cat and there are enough extra-class PC build resources that you can diversify/dabble into multiple domains of proficiency.


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## Starfox (May 16, 2014)

Then again, if you look at a typical Pathfinder adventure path, a tight team of experienced players can manage those without fulfilling the team niches or having any particular synergies either. It might be that challenges are set low by default. I kind of agree with that policy, as I feel role-play suffers if challenges are set to be too hard.


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## Ahnehnois (May 16, 2014)

Starfox said:


> Then again, if you look at a typical Pathfinder adventure path, a tight team of experienced players can manage those without fulfilling the team niches or having any particular synergies either. It might be that challenges are set low by default. I kind of agree with that policy, as I feel role-play suffers if challenges are set to be too hard.



I don't know. Sometimes what makes for interesting roleplaying is failure, including preventable or unnecssary failure for reasons like this.


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## Manbearcat (May 16, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> I don't know. Sometimes what makes for interesting roleplaying is failure, including preventable or unnecssary failure for reasons like this.




On this we can definitely agree.  As a GM, my favorite aspect of play is having my players' PCs fail at an objective that is thematically impactful to them and watching what comes out of it; seeing how their characters' ethos, outlook, relationships (with people, places, things) and/or goals evolve (or devolve perhaps) as a result of the fallout of the failure/loss.  How it might put them at tension with their former selves or at tension with one another.


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## Starfox (May 16, 2014)

Manbearcat said:


> On this we can definitely agree.  As a GM, my favorite aspect of play is having my players' PCs fail at an objective that is thematically impactful to them and watching what comes out of it; seeing how their characters' ethos, outlook, relationships (with people, places, things) and/or goals evolve (or devolve perhaps) as a result of the fallout of the failure/loss.  How it might put them at tension with their former selves or at tension with one another.




If you can manage to have a party of PCs fail and survive that's very nice, but its not my experience of how these things work. A part is more likely to die trying, or at least take casualties trying. And once PCs start to die and new PCs appear with any regularity, my experience is that roleplay suffers heavily and moves into pawn stance. Players refuse to engage emotionally and treat their characters as playing pieces. Particularly so if you are punished for dying by returning with a weaker character - this starts a vicious cycle of repeated deaths and increasing pawns stance, ending with the player quitting the game.

But really, this is an entirely separate topic. Been there on this forum, and its not one where we'll reach a consensus. Lets not go there again.


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## Neonchameleon (May 16, 2014)

Starfox said:


> I kind of agree with that policy, as I feel role-play suffers if challenges are set to be too hard.




I couldn't disagree more.  Monstsegur 1244 and Grey Ranks are _incredible_ RP experiences and part of the reason is that the challenges are set at Kobayashi Maru level in both and there's no way of hacking.  Both ask the question of who your PC is when the chips are down.

But this only works because the ways to eek out extra modifiers makes you more vulnerable.  I believe I've done the same in my Hunger Games RPG where the game is likely to fizzle unless you are being harried and having to spend stress - and to team up even knowing it gives them a free shot when they want to shiv you.  If you're playing something where the mechanics are about physics rather than emotions and engagement the way to handle heavy pressure is to slip into pawn play.


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## Lanefan (May 17, 2014)

Starfox said:


> If you can manage to have a party of PCs fail and survive that's very nice, but its not my experience of how these things work. A part is more likely to die trying, or at least take casualties trying. And once PCs start to die and new PCs appear with any regularity, my experience is that roleplay suffers heavily and moves into pawn stance. Players refuse to engage emotionally and treat their characters as playing pieces. Particularly so if you are punished for dying by returning with a weaker character - this starts a vicious cycle of repeated deaths and increasing pawns stance, ending with the player quitting the game.



Only if your players and-or characters are stubborn enough to keep banging their heads against the same adventure even though they've clearly become weaker than they were to begin with.

It ain't rocket science, guys - turning around and doing something else is always an option!

That said; in-combat healing is something that simply should not exist, period, without significant risk and chance of (possibly catastrophic) failure.  You heal after combat, not in the middle of it.

Lanefan


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## Zhaleskra (May 17, 2014)

I voted "some exclusive, some not".

The kind of niche protection I despise is the "you can't have more than one character of the same class in the same party". I actually have run into people like that. Really, just because Bob is playing a thief, Jake can't play a thief? Playing the same class is "stepping on your toes"? How about specializing differently: the backstabber, the "locksmith", the trapfinder? Characters die. Redundancy is not always a bad thing. Of course, this is but one example.


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## Lanefan (May 18, 2014)

Zhaleskra said:


> I voted "some exclusive, some not".
> 
> The kind of niche protection I despise is the "you can't have more than one character of the same class in the same party". I actually have run into people like that. Really, just because Bob is playing a thief, Jake can't play a thief? Playing the same class is "stepping on your toes"? How about specializing differently: the backstabber, the "locksmith", the trapfinder? Characters die. Redundancy is not always a bad thing. Of course, this is but one example.



Agreed; and to go one step further, there's nothing even wrong with having two full-on locksmiths in the party.

But the thief *class* still has locksmithery as a niche, regardless of how many PCs are trying to fill that niche at any given moment.

Lan-"no party can ever have too many characters in it"-efan


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## Ruin Explorer (May 19, 2014)

Starfox said:


> My experience of 4E was that healing was something each character could manage pretty well by themselves - no real need for leader-type characters.




That's intentional. There's no hard need in 4E for any single role. A balanced party will outperform an unbalanced one, given equal player skill and cooperation, but not by such a huge margin that it's unreasonable - this is precisely why we were confused by Ahnehnois' piece about how roles should be balanced with each other - in 4E, they largely are - if you lose a Leader and replace him with a Striker, the greater speed at which enemies fall will help to make up for the shortfall in healing. My main group is missing a controller (most of the time) and has a second leader, for example, and works very well.

There are places where certain roles shine, of course - unavoidable damage or really lengthy fights tend to benefit from a leader, swarms and large numbers of minions are harder to deal with without controller, and so on.

But _if _you believe leaders are any less essential than other roles (and I'm not saying you do!), then I think you are quite mistaken.



Manbearcat said:


> On this we can definitely agree.  As a GM, my favorite aspect of play is having my players' PCs fail at an objective that is thematically impactful to them and watching what comes out of it; seeing how their characters' ethos, outlook, relationships (with people, places, things) and/or goals evolve (or devolve perhaps) as a result of the fallout of the failure/loss.  How it might put them at tension with their former selves or at tension with one another.




Failure is certainly potentially interesting.

Failure _because no-one decided to play a specific class/role_, on the other hand, is absolutely the least interesting kind of failure (far less interesting than "bad rolls", even!), and may even put people off the game system entirely. It says more about the DM (in a more linear, story-centric campaign) and his encounter design, or the system (if certain scenarios require a certain class, even if more "real" logic doesn't dictate that they should), or occasionally the ability of the players to handle logistics, than it does about the characters or the like.

I know that I've seen failures in RPGs before that were solely related to this kind of thing - i.e. "We didn't have X class with us, so we failed" (8/10 X is a Cleric or very similar class), and the results were never character development or the like - they were universally disenchantment with a particular system, or recriminations between players (not characters).


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## Ahnehnois (May 19, 2014)

Ruin Explorer said:


> Failure is certainly potentially interesting.
> 
> Failure _because no-one decided to play a specific class/role_, on the other hand, is absolutely the least interesting kind of failure (far less interesting than "bad rolls", even!), and may even put people off the game system entirely.



Not true at all in my experience. There are always going to be less players than there are possible characters, and thus there is always the opportunity for "what if"-type questions. It's part of the game. What I've seen is players being analytical, looking at what worked and what didn't, and learning from it for the future.

However, it also depends on two broadly distinct DMing philosophies. In one, the game is catered to the characters. In this case, there are no worries about missing a role. If you're all playing wizards, and it becomes a wizard campaign (probably one spent researching mysteries without a lot of combat). If you don't have a cleric, you probably won't face a ton of undead or be forced into situations where you need a lot of rapid healing. Instead, you'll be challenged on your terms. In this kind of game, there is no real worry about failing for not having chosen the "right" type of character.

In the other, the DM runs an uncaring world that doesn't cater to the players. In this case, the party's ability to tackle all the roles is being tested. If you find yourself stuck in a maze full of traps and have no rogue, you're screwed. The thing with this type of game, is that for the right player, they enjoy the challenge. Trying to guess what abilities are going to be needed and cover them as part of your endeavor to protect yourself from the adversarial DM is where the strategy of the game manifests. Fortunately, it's a pretty dynamic set of roles that D&D offers, so this can create a working gameplay experience.


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## Starfox (May 19, 2014)

I realize I was part of the problem here, but lets try not to turn this into another edition war thread.


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## Manbearcat (May 19, 2014)

Ruin Explorer said:


> Failure is certainly potentially interesting.
> 
> Failure _because no-one decided to play a specific class/role_, on the other hand, is absolutely the least interesting kind of failure (far less interesting than "bad rolls", even!), and may even put people off the game system entirely. It says more about the DM (in a more linear, story-centric campaign) and his encounter design, or the system (if certain scenarios require a certain class, even if more "real" logic doesn't dictate that they should), or occasionally the ability of the players to handle logistics, than it does about the characters or the like.




I didn't elaborate enough it would seem so I think you and  [MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION] were thinking of a different sort of failure than I was.  D&D is such a combat as primary means of conflict resolution paradigm that I suppose its just a presupposition.  The fallout there is typically death or TPK.  This isn't the sort of resolution I was referring to and it wasn't the sort of fallout I was referring to.

I was referring to conflicts that produce loss or setback that does not include the death of a player or a TPK.  I was referring to fallout such as a parlay going haywire and therefore the PCs suffer from lack of alliance or someone/thing that is important to them is lost or terminally at risk (or outright executed).  Failing to protect an innocent (or innocence) from being collateral damage in a combat or failing to save them from a burning building, a forest fire, or an earthquake is an example.  Anything that compromises (makes their life more difficult and interesting) the PC from an intangible perspective (difficult ethos prioritzation for instance).  Sytems with robust noncombat conflict resolution, and fallout feedback, accomplishes this sort of thematic loss that I'm referring to.  Combat systems that have the metagame heft to produce this sort of non-lethal (to the PCs) scenario is what I'm referring to.  An example going on right now in my 4e PBP on here is the protection of a daughter (a minion) by her father and the PC as a tentacle beast attacks their vessel in the bay.  Its strategically important and emotionally important for the PC to protect this little girl but the odds of her herself dying from this attack are remote.


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