D&D 5E What if 5e had 2 types of roles

[catastrophic]

As opposed to suggestion, which makes so much sense? Or knock? There's nothing 'silly' about a fighter flexing to impress people, which is any sillier than casting 'alakazam, our thief and bard are irelevant!'

Nothing in 4e comes close to the absurdity of previous editions just straight up handing spellcasters, especially wizards, spells that could do everything entire other clases could do, only better.

If anything, powers like arcana mutterings and arcane sight give too much power to arcane casters already.

If 5e did go down the path of skill roles, one of the benefits is that you woulnd't have to step on one another's roles do cool 'skill' stuff with your pc. The system would be broad enough to give everyone a spot.

 

[KarinsDad]

As opposed to suggestion, which makes so much sense? Or knock? There's nothing 'silly' about a fighter flexing to impress people, which is any sillier than casting 'alakazam, our thief and bard are irelevant!'

Nothing in 4e comes close to the absurdity of previous editions just straight up handing spellcasters, especially wizards, spells that could do everything entire other clases could do, only better.

If anything, powers like arcana mutterings and arcane sight give too much power to arcane casters already.

If 5e did go down the path of skill roles, one of the benefits is that you woulnd't have to step on one another's roles do cool 'skill' stuff with your pc. The system would be broad enough to give everyone a spot.

If 5E goes down the path of skill roles, chances are that some other PC in the group will have the same or similar skill role as your PC and you will still be stepping on each other toes. That is one advantage of the current skill system. There is some overlap, but the skills are segregated based on some level of reasonable amount of training based on class.


The Fighter flexing his muscles already has a skill. It's called Intimidate.

The Fighter flexing his muscles shouldn't apply to a Diplomacy check, no matter how well chiseled those muscles are.

Also, I gave specific examples of using Athletics for Diplomacy, Endurance for History, or Bluff for Acrobatics. Adding utility powers so that any PC is good at totally unrelated skills by using a different skill bonus is lame (and I'm not too keen on how 4E suggestion works).

There are limits to how many different types of Melee Training rules that the game should have before it becomes a homogenized hodge podge of non-plausible silliness.

In fact, handing out the ability to do anything by anyone results in everyone stepping on everyone's toes, the very thing that you railed against in your earlier edition Wizard rant here.

 

[catastrophic]

Yes, that is my entire point. No matter what criticism you can make about people stepping on each other's toes in 4e, it pales compared to the outright niche destruction of previous editions, and yearning for the days of knock, charm person, and suggestions, while dissing a simple skill swap, is absurd.

The benefits of letting skills swap into different roles is that it alllows you to keep the basic skill mechanic balanced, at least in theory. In pratice, 4e skills are prone to inflation and skil monkeys tend to either dominate skill events, or get no utility from the build resources they spent on skills past a certain point.

Which brings us to the point. Put noncombat actions in their own, robust system, and you can put limits on how much the persuasive wizard, or the diplomatic bodybuilder can do to interupt other, more narritive uses of that design space.

For instance, arcane mutterings lets you use your arcana for social skils and iirc, it's an encounter power. But that doesn't really matter, you might have three skill rolls in a whole skill challenge, boosting one of those by that muhc is huge, and only mildly less viable than an 'at will' skill.

But in a more coherent, substantial system with it's own roles, you can have a power like that, but balance it with truly limited scope, or, for instance, greater risk or other factors. For instance, you could have your suggestion spell, but it comes with a chance of backfiring, or has a high 'heat' rating, meaning the group can only do a few such actions, before your opponents realise what's going on.

 

[KarinsDad]

Yes, that is my entire point. No matter what criticism you can make about people stepping on each other's toes in 4e, it pales compared to the outright niche destruction of previous editions, and yearning for the days of knock, charm person, and suggestions, while dissing a simple skill swap, is absurd.

One of the things I noticed when I was playing earlier editions is that most reasonable players did not actually do the niche destruction that everyone claims was possible.

I played Wizards all of the time. Even if I had a Knock wand, I would let the Rogue do his thing for two reasons: 1) It was his niche. 2) I didn't want to use up the charges on my PC's wand.

Most of the time, if there was a Rogue in the group, I didn't even bother using up a single resource on Knock other than an emergency scroll. I wouldn't even own a Knock wand. If on the other hand there wasn't a Rogue or some other PC that could pick locks in the group, my Wizard had the flexibility to handle that chore without the game crawling to a halt as the players tried to figure out a way through a simple door.

But, enough people whined about how the Wizards could do everything that the 4E designers finally gave all of the PCs minor super powers and now every PC has the ability to step on other PC's toes. You want a Fighter with a Knock spell? Fine. One feat.

And PCs are now forced into certain niches that the players might not want. For example, the only way to resolve a combat now is by doing damage. Heaven forbid that a Wizard actually Charm a foe and we don't have to fight. An Enchanter Wizard is more or less out of the question in 4E. 4E Mass Charm? Move everyone around a bit and have them beat on someone else.

An Illusionist in 4E? That actually fakes out foes with an illusion, maybe so that the foes do not even know that the PCs are there? It doesn't typically happen in 4E. Illusion spells are merely another way to damage a foe. Illusory Wall is the closest thing 4E wizards have to an illusion and it's almost better to not attack foes with it than to do so.

There at least used to be some ways to avoid or win a combat without having to wipe the floor up with all of the foes. The closest thing now is to Dominate a foe and have him walk off a cliff. Oh yeah. That does damage too. snort

Seriously. How many players of Wizards actually have Feather Fall memorized in 4E unless they suspect that they will be in a falling situation that day? I used to have Feather Fall memorized by my Wizard PC all of the time. Just in case. But it has too little utility in 4E and combat is all about doing more damage or taking less damage, so it's no longer worth it. The spell slot is too important for other things because there are so few slots.

 

[KidSnide]

It's a challenge. On the one hand, you want each PC to be able to participate in every major encounter. On the other hand, you want each PC to have aspects of play in which they get to shine. And -- even more importantly -- non-combat roles have to enable the types of characters that are the basis of D&D.

I think allowing characters to specialize in certain types of challenges is necessary and desirable. Every character should be able to participate in an infiltration encounter, but some characters should be sneakier than others. (I think the TV show Leverage is a good example of non-combat niche protection. Each character participates in every escapade, but they each have their own specialties.)

-KS

 

[catastrophic]

I'm going to ignore the edition war and get back to the issue.

Kidsnide, as I said upthread, I think an idea solution to that would be to let people play various roles in noncomba events. I do think that you could have universal, static roles, but I feel like versatile roles could add something really special to a game- especially since if people wanted, they could play their preferred role most of the time, anyway.

Imagine if there was an explicit skill pecking order in the system. Whoever has the best skills, ie whoever wants to be the guy who's good at x, plays the 'expert' role for that challenge, and gets the spotlight.

Then you could have two intermediate roles- a lookout, and a grunt, ie, and information based controller type, and a grunt-work defender type.

Then we literally take the guy who isn't skilled in the area, and give him a special role- backup. It could almost be an in-game joke BUT- since he's the backup, he's the guy who has to deal with any wierd complications that arise, mainly by improvisation.

I think a dynamic like this could be really cool.

 

[Tony Vargas]

How many players of Wizards actually have Feather Fall memorized in 4E unless they suspect that they will be in a falling situation that day? I used to have Feather Fall memorized by my Wizard PC all of the time. Just in case. But it has too little utility in 4E and combat is all about doing more damage or taking less damage, so it's no longer worth it. The spell slot is too important for other things because there are so few slots.

I'm sorry, but you really degenerated into 'whaaa! my wizard isn't omnipotent anymore!' towards the end, there.

Yes, 4e is balanced. Yes, there are certain things you can do in an imbalanced or badly-balanced game that you can't do in a balanced one - like easily ruin the play experience for everyone else with an overpowered (or non-contributing) character. Some miss that, some don't.

Anyway, non-combat roles would be a way of expanding the balance and inclusiveness that 4e brought to combat encounters to non-combat encounters, which'd be a great thing. If 5e tries it (and there's no indication at all that it will, really, indicators - like L&L - are running towards 5e being AD&D-like), it'll probably mean re-vamping the skill system, and definitely mean 'siloed' non-combat and combat abilities that can't easily or extensively be traded in for eachother.

 

[catastrophic]

Well, you could have rather abstract ones. For instance, one idea I had about feats would be that feats would only be used as dice tricks- so different ways you can cheat with the base d20 roll of the system.

One feat might give you a reroll, another might let you save a high roll, and all of this would be the type of stuff you only get from feats.

Of course, as long as both combat and noncombat use the same base mechanics, such feats would be able to cross over relativly easily.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm going to ignore the edition war and get back to the issue.

Kidsnide, as I said upthread, I think an idea solution to that would be to let people play various roles in noncomba events. I do think that you could have universal, static roles, but I feel like versatile roles could add something really special to a game- especially since if people wanted, they could play their preferred role most of the time, anyway.

Imagine if there was an explicit skill pecking order in the system. Whoever has the best skills, ie whoever wants to be the guy who's good at x, plays the 'expert' role for that challenge, and gets the spotlight.

Then you could have two intermediate roles- a lookout, and a grunt, ie, and information based controller type, and a grunt-work defender type.

Then we literally take the guy who isn't skilled in the area, and give him a special role- backup. It could almost be an in-game joke BUT- since he's the backup, he's the guy who has to deal with any wierd complications that arise, mainly by improvisation.

I think a dynamic like this could be really cool.

This is something like what I was suggesting.

For example you could have a fighter with the Power role. Fighters would have few total skills but massive bonuses to the ones they do have. The fighter would use his high Intimidate to scare off a guard.

The rogue and his many class skills would always be able to do aid another. The bard is also in the Support role and sing for more bonuses.

What's this? The guard is suspicious? He tries to use Bluff to delay the party until reinforcements arrive. Get past the cleric's high Insight, buddy. He can't since the cleric is the defender in conversations.

What the heck, fighter? You rolled a 4? Screw this. The wizard uses an illusion to steal all the fighter's bonus and rolls Intimidate. Of course the wizard succeeds. He looks like the fighter but doesn't say something stupid.

 

[KidSnide]

Kidsnide, as I said upthread, I think an idea solution to that would be to let people play various roles in noncomba events. I do think that you could have universal, static roles, but I feel like versatile roles could add something really special to a game- especially since if people wanted, they could play their preferred role most of the time, anyway.

Imagine if there was an explicit skill pecking order in the system. Whoever has the best skills, ie whoever wants to be the guy who's good at x, plays the 'expert' role for that challenge, and gets the spotlight.

Then you could have two intermediate roles- a lookout, and a grunt, ie, and information based controller type, and a grunt-work defender type.

Then we literally take the guy who isn't skilled in the area, and give him a special role- backup. It could almost be an in-game joke BUT- since he's the backup, he's the guy who has to deal with any wierd complications that arise, mainly by improvisation.

I think a dynamic like this could be really cool.

This is intriguing. Is the idea that, in each major non-combat encounter, the PCs choose their roles for that encounter? For example, to get through a trap-filled room, the guy with Thievery chooses to act as Expert and makes the primary skill checks. When you say "information based controller", do you mean someone who uses knowledge to aid? I don't get what "grunt-work defender" means. Is the Backup the guy who volunteers to be hit by the poison needle if the Expert fails?

Can you explain how this would play out in an actual encounter and how the dynamic roles relate to character abilities?

-KS