Role-differentiation for low-level mundanes

[DrPraetor]

import Assume_were_playing_some_flavor_of_D&D
import DrPraetorsMindCaulk

with that of the way, you have an issue with role differentiation for fighters and thieves. Since magic can do whatever, and is part of what makes the setting fantastic, and because magicians also have thumbs, you're well-justified in slicing the conceptual pie small for magic knights and cloth wearers.

For mundanes, even at low levels, each character needs a bigger slice of pie. This means mundanes are going to be more redundant, but then you have to decide what's a "fair" way to spread out that conceptual space. Here's a stab at it, in that mundane heroes either:
[*] Triumph because they are mighty.
[*] Triumph because they are clever.
[*] Triumph because they are sneaky (or agile or graceful.)
These are all relative to the cloth-wearers, who are also (at least minimally) mighty, clever and sneaky as well, or the plot falls apart.
One issue with the 3E fighter is that he is mighty, but conceptually less mighty than the barbarian, and not clever or sneaky at all! That has to go:

Class	Is Mighty	Is Clever	Is Sneaky
Assassin	+		+
Barbarian	++
Courtier		++
Ranger	+	+	+
Rogue		+	+
Scout			++
Soldier	+	+

Is that workable as a starting point?

[MGuy]

I might guess what mighty means but I do not know what clever or sneaky means or how it acts with the other two. I'm asking mechanically because 'triumph' suggests there's a thing that a person with these categories are able to achieve something in the game that is related to these tags.

[DrPraetor]

These are meant to be more conceptual than mechanical.

Sneaky is well-defined in D&D in so far as the stealth rules exist; and the stealth rules do more-or-less support sneaking up on a guy in the middle of combat and stabbing him in the back, gaining sneak attack damage.

Clever is unfortunately not well-developed in D&D as currently formulated, but would include things like Feint attacks (which use the bluff skill), or I suppose the expertise feat and things in that chain.

But the idea here is to describe what a player expects such a character to achieve - and then produce mechanics which give the corresponding play experience.

[MGuy]

So like d20 Modern's Quick, Strong, Smart split?

[Grek]

Is that workable as a starting point?

Almost certainly not.

Let's start with the obvious:

The Ranger, according to this table, gets to do everything that the Assassin, Rogue and Soldier does all in one character. This either makes him Better Than You (if he gets to advance each ability at a level appropriate rate) or Literally The Worst (if he does not get to do that). There is also the problem that having a Barbarian in the party inherently makes Courtier superior to Soldier and Scout superior to Assassin, as it means you're not duplicating effort. Fundamentally, this reduces the 'actually good' classes to either three (if Ranger is trash) or four (even if Ranger is good, there is still some room for specialists).

And move onto the thematic:

You don't have monks. While 3.5 did not go a good job at representing monks, it is very clearly something that people want to see in their D&D game. Wire Fu is cool, martial arts are cool and seeing the ogre put into a headlock by a little old man is funny. It also doesn't cover cavaliers (people want to play a mounted knight) or the swashbuckler.

But let's also get into the more fundamental:

Mightiness and Cleverness are tent-pole abilities. Having one one person who can lift a two ton boulder overhead is useful. Having two people who can do that is redundant. Opponents are either tripped or not tripped and distracted or not distracted - once one player succeeds, the other can't really make them 'more tripped' or 'more feinted'.

Sneakiness is a floor ability. It doesn't matter if the Scout is a master infiltrator when the Paladin is wearing full plate and literally glowing. Here, you care not about who is most Sneaky, but who in the party is least Sneaky, since that determines how much (and indeed if at all) the party can sneak into places as a group.

And then into the most fundamental:

All of these are combat abilities. You didn't give any of them a way to contribute that isn't stabbing people. And since you're making the cloth-wearers mighty, clever and sneaky as well, you've just re-invented the CoDzilla wheel.

[Foxwarrior]

magicians also have thumbs

Get rid of this power and one mundane guy has role protection for an extra level or two.

Aren't might, cleverness, and sneakiness ability scores? (That was a joke, I know ability scores only exist for aesthetic reasons)

If everyone is going to become magic eventually, why not treat being mundane like being an Origin Story character in After Sundown?

Also, I agree with Grek.

[Whatever]

Rogues/Thieves are straight up garbage and should not exist in any sensible version of D&D. Let's look at all their possible justifications:

1) "trap remover" -- terrible mechanic, everyone else sits and waits while 1 person deals with a problem. Don't handle traps this way at your game, and that means no one gets to make a character for this role.

2) "skills person" -- if you make "has skills" a role protected thing, then your Fighters and Barbarians will suck. All they have left is combat. That's unacceptable at every level. The solution isn't to get rid of the fighter, it's to get rid of any "skills characters" you have, so that everyone can at least have skills. Fighters will still go obsolete vis-a-vis magic at some higher level, but they should at least get to be real characters at first level.

3) "stealth character" -- subset of "has skills" as a problem, if you make this role protected, then half your characters can't play the stealth minigame anymore. Let barbarians ambush people. Let courtiers eavesdrop. Let fighters catch someone off guard in battle.

4) "solo recon" -- this is the same problem as "trapfinding" but in a stealth context. People have a huge incentive to split the party and send the sneaky characters in first, and that's just going to make your game worse every time. Or the group will soft-ban classes without stealth, which again compromises your game in an entirely avoidable way.

5) "clever" -- making this role protected is stupid. Conan the Barbarian is clever. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are both clever. "Using tactics" should not be something that only a handful of characters get to do, because that's the core of your combat minigame.

6) "DPS" -- this isn't a video game. It's fine to have characters with attacks that are situationally more effective, but having "strikers" is stupid.

Look, I get that there's a LOT of demand to play mundane characters who are not Knights. Light armor, clever quips, dashing duelist or back alley backstabber. That's fine. You should have all of that as character options. But you can do that without role protecting things that every mundane character needs to have.

[Grek]

As far as setups which would actually work, you want to give every mundane class the ability to sneak around; the ability to perform basic feats of athletics such as running, jumping, swimming and climbing; the ability to impress people with your bravery and charisma; and proficiency with at least one martial art of their choice (be it armed or unarmed) as a baseline. And then, on top of that, each individual class gets two out of the following:

• An Animal Companion, which can be a mount (such as a horse or riding dog), an unobtrusive scout (such as a ferret or a bird) or an allied combatant (such as a wolf or tiger).
• An affinity for Trickery, which includes feints, bluffs, swashbucklery combat maneuvers, larceny and poisons. Does not include stealth or being charming, as everyone gets that.
• Improved Mobility which involves some combination of super jumping/swinging, something like Evasion and a general loosening of the 'realism' requirements for feats of athleticism.
• Expert Tool Usage, which allows the player to retroactively declare their character either brought the ideal tool with them, or can improvise something out of whatever it is they do have.
• Incredible Strength, which works as a mood-agnostic super mode coupled with the ability to lift absurdly heavy weights and a limited ability to shrug off things that require Fort saves.

The Barbarian is Strength + Mobility. The Assassin is Tool Usage + Trickery. The Swashbuckler is Mobility + Trickery. The Ranger is Animal Companion + Tool Usage. Scouts are Mobility + Animal Companion. Cavaliers are Animal Companion + Strength. Soldiers would be Tool Usage + Strength. Monks are Mobility + Tool Usage. And so on and so forth.

When someone says that they want to play a Barbarian, this means that they have Strength and Mobility covered and that you would be better off picking some combination of Animal Companion, Trickery and/or Tool Usage. Which leaves three classes (Assassin, Ranger and Courtier) open without any overlap.

[Username17]

Role Protection isn't about what you are it's about what you can do. So 'being strong' isn't a protectable role, but 'lifting heavy objects' potentially is.

Sneaking is a protectable role, but it's shit and you shouldn't do it in a D&D like game. The party rarely splits up and it's generally bad if they do, so a character that can't sneak generally acts as an albatross that prevents other player characters from using their stealth ability. On the other hand, lockpicking, pocket picking, and disarming traps are actions that potentially a single character could do while the rest of the party watches. So it's not that there's no room for any of the classic Thief skills to be role protected actions, but Hide in Shadows certainly shouldn't be.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Everybody else only gets 2 +, Ranger gets 3 + so he is already by definition 50% better than everybody else.
Why?

[Username17]

Everybody else only gets 2 +, Ranger gets 3 + so he is already by definition 50% better than everybody else.
Why?

Not necessarily. The ability to have selections from multiple boxes isn't inherently meaningful without knowing how many selections are being made, how many selections are being made from each box, and so on and so on. Options are better than not having options, but the addition of things you "could have had instead" does not actually influence your actual character's power at all.

To use a Magic: the Gathering analogy, a deckbuilding option doesn't mean shit when you're at an actual table with your actual deck.

And to use another Magic: the Gathering analogy, the ability to cherry pick cards from different colors isn't an advantage if there aren't cards you want in the other colors more than the cost of splitting your lands. That actually has a D&D analogy in the form of multiple attribute dependency. For a 4th edition character, the ability to choose Strength related powers after you already have Dexterity and Wisdom related powers isn't even an advantage because you can still only have two level appropriate stats.

I have a number of objections with DrPraetor's concept here, but there's nothing inherently wrong with dividing up character abilities into three piles and then giving some jack of all trades character a number of selections from all three. Not only is that not inherently overpowered, there are many real historical examples of games where such a character is grossly and obviously underpowered.

-Username17

[LR]

Sneaking is a protectable role, but it's shit and you shouldn't do it in a D&D like game. The party rarely splits up and it's generally bad if they do, so a character that can't sneak generally acts as an albatross that prevents other player characters from using their stealth ability.

Is there room a for a Tactical role for each class, such that when that character is 'in charge', the party is assumed to be operating on cues from the current leader as a unit? While everyone has some Sneaky, when the Rogue is in charge, the entire party gets to use the Rogue's extra Sneaky actions.

[DrPraetor]

Monks are magic knights - they don't need to be smarter, mightier or sneakier than you are, because they are wrapped in a shield of blue ki energy, or whatever. You can give them whatever mundane abilities you want, if their magic is not as good as the other cloth-wearer.

Let me develop the thesis a bit better, using explicit examples.
Fitz is an assassin. He beats the Ogre either by sneaking up on it and poison-stabbing it (which, by the way, does not role protect the rest of the party from sneaking into the Ogre's *castle*), or just by being deadly with a blade and taking it out in a fight. If you play Fitz, you imagine that you are taking out enemies by both striking from the shadows and by just whupping them.

Groo is a barbarian. He beats the Ogre by - surprise! - being so mighty that he vanquishes it, bulging muscles and whirling daisho and all. If you play Groo, you imagine that you defeat enemies by dominating them in straight-up combat.

Bren Cameron is a courtier. He is not physically imposing, he vanquishes the ogre by being more clever than it is, and/or by simply having flunkies that can cooperate to take it out. If you play Bren Cameron, you imagine that you vanquish enemies by outsmarting them.

Aragorn is a ranger. He has no fixed idiom, you imagine him being clever, and also sneaking up on people (to stab them), and being a badass.

Bilbo, meanwhile, is a rogue. He could vanquish the ogre in a riddle contest (which he somehow convinces it to play), or he could sneak up and stab it in the neck. If you play Bilbo, you imagine that you vanquish enemies either by outsmarting them or by sneaking up on them.

I'm having trouble coming up with a character whose idiom is exclusively stealthy.

Louie the Rune Soldier is indeed a soldier. He might vanquish the ogre by figuring out it's weakness (fear of fire), or he might simply beat it in a fight. If you play Louie, you imagine that you vanquish enemies by outsmarting them but then if it comes down to a brawl you win anyway.

Now, I'm looking for role differentiation but strenuously avoided promising any role protection. Just for starters, "uses sneaking to beat up the ogre" is not the same as "only person who is allowed to sneak into the castle". Bren can have intelligent encouragement party buffs that stack with Bilbo's tricky riddles, while acknowledging your ability to do that is limited in that the well of "smart hero abilities" is limited and Bren and Bilbo are going to end up with a fair amount of overlap.

Balance is always a tough design problem, but I want to start from a point where the equivalent magical tea party would at least have similar contribution from the PCs. If you don't readily imagine Groo and Bren Cameron making equal contributions to the narrative at a purely conceptual level with no rules written down (but with the assumption that the narrative in question is essentially a D&D adventure), then your rules set is going to fail.

[Foxwarrior]

If you're talking specifically about the tactical combat portion of the game, why do you have three tactics for seven classes?

You could have a character who does the most damage by stabbing someone, moving to the opposite side of them, and stabbing them again. Or one who does more damage by grabbing two adjacent enemies and bonking their heads together. Or one who can only attack after moving a prime number of squares. One who does less damage but likes to throw people around. A guy who can only move in an L shape. Someone who's really good at taking AoOs, or at flanking, or at taking Overwatch potshots.

There are lots and lots of different geometric things you can do with a battle map, and if that's what you care about, then your formulaic approach only serves to limit the diversity of classes you make.

[Grek]

DrPraetor, challenges come first. Before you can figure out what abilities to give particular first level characters, you need to come up with about a dozen or so first level challenges. Drunk Ogre, Bandit Ambush, Gaping Chasm, Spooky Ghost, Hostage Situation, and so on based on your particular game's idiom.

Then, you want each character to shine in about 25% of these challenges (so that each player can have their chance in the spotlight), contribute well to another 50% of the challenges (so that everyone has something to do) and do poorly against the remaining 25% (to provide the thrill of danger and reasons to have a diverse party). You can adjust the exact percentages to taste, but there should be some explicit decisions about which character concepts are good against ogres and which are good against ambushes.

Only after you've done those first two things do you start assigning particular abilities to character concepts. If you've decided that Bilbo should be the one who is best at defeating Drunken Ogres and that he should do so through riddling, you give Bilbo a riddling power on his character sheet. And if you decide that would be dumb and that Groo should defeat it using RAW STRENGTH instead, you need to give Groo enough RAW STRENGTH (in whatever mechanical form that takes) to beat up an Ogre.

[DrPraetor]

In this case, I'm importing D&D, so the first level challenges are (for a party of 4):
- Four goblins (or equivalent humanoids)
- Two orc warriors
- One ogre
- Four giant rats (or bugs, or equivalent monsters)
- Two giant centipedes
- One giant spider
- Four skeletons
- Two zombies
- One ghoul

Other than that, yes - if Groo is going to beat up the Ogre (or at least melee the ogre, since at first level he's not expected to win on his own) while Bilbo is going to riddle the ogre, then eventually yes these will need to go on character sheets.

[Grek]

Looking at the list, we have:

• Three Large Groups (Goblins, Rats, Skeletons).
• Three Big Monsters (Ogre, Spider, Ghoul).
• Four Weapon Users (Goblins, Orcs, Ogre, Skeletons).
• Three Thumbless Animals (Rats, Centipedes, Spider).
• Three Poisonous Things (Ghoul, Spider, Centipede).
• Three Undead (Ghoul, Zombie, Skeletons).
• Two Trained Squads (Goblins, Orcs)
• Four Mindless Creatures (Centipedes, Spiders, Skeletons, Zombies)

Which says to me the matchups should be:

• Assassin: Good vs. Big Monsters and Poisonous Things. Bad vs. Undead. (1 very good, 2 good, 2 bad, 1 mixed, 3 neutral)
• Barbarian: Good vs. Big Monsters. Bad vs. Trained Squads. (3 good, 2 bad, 4 neutral)
• Courtier: Good vs. Poisonous Things and Big Monsters. Bad vs. Mindless Creatures. (1 very good, 2 good, 2 bad, 3 mixed, 1 neutral)
• Ranger: Good vs. Animals. Bad vs. Undead. (3 good, 3 bad, 3 neutral)
• Rogue: Good vs. Big Monsters, Bad vs. Undead. (2 good, 2 bad, 1 mixed, 4 neutral)
• Scout: Good vs. Large Groups, Bad vs. Big Monsters. (3 good, 3 bad, 3 neutral)
• Soldier: Good vs. Weapon Users. Bad vs. Big Monsters. (3 good, 2 bad, 1 mixed, 3 neutral)

In the initial pass, the Assassin, Barbarian, Courtier, and Soldier are the only ones without equal amounts of good and bad. We should adjust either the monsters or the class concepts to finagle this into balance, so we make a note to:

• Give the Spider poison resistance, flipping it from Very Good to Mixed for the Assassin.
• Give the Rats a Barbarian-screwing Swarming Attack, so that the Barbarian has one extra bad matchup.
• Give the Ghoul the same resistance to diplomacy as mindless creatures, flipping it from Very Good to Mixed for the Courtier.
• Give the Ogre the ability to fight quite well without a weapon, so Soldier is Bad instead of Mixed against it.

Now, obviously you could draw the lines differently. Maybe you think the Barbarian should be good vs hordes instead of single giant monsters. That is also valid. But the general process works like this.

[OgreBattle]

Conan, Link, Naruto, Cu Chulainn, Golgo 13, James Bond, a Calladooty guy, Sony Sad Dad, Mom with Toddler Under Car, Aragorn, Team Rocket, most protagonists do all of those things to varying degrees of risk. Why follow some paradigm set by a 70's tax dude

Don't like 'barbarian' as a class name, 'berserker' would be more fitting because of the specific rage mechanic and then people who sit on chairs can be berserkers too.

Is there any game system with coherent mechanics that are actually game mechanics, that put more stock in what the player's deciding to do at that moment rather than hyper specialization of character sheet stuff?

[Thaluikhain]

Don't like 'barbarian' as a class name, 'berserker' would be more fitting because of the specific rage mechanic and then people who sit on chairs can be berserkers too.

That's a good point, "barbarian" (at best) means someone from not round here, and there's a zillion different ways to be not from here.

[Iduno]

In this case, I'm importing D&D, so the first level challenges are (for a party of 4):
- Four goblins (or equivalent humanoids)
- Two orc warriors
- One ogre
- Four giant rats (or bugs, or equivalent monsters)
- Two giant centipedes
- One giant spider
- Four skeletons
- Two zombies
- One ghoul

Other than that, yes - if Groo is going to beat up the Ogre (or at least melee the ogre, since at first level he's not expected to win on his own) while Bilbo is going to riddle the ogre, then eventually yes these will need to go on character sheets.

There are no non-combat challenges in your game, and none of the combats are "X, except Y"? The suggested drunk/sleepy monster is a cliché for a reason.

[Foxwarrior]

So how about first level challenges of:

- Two orc warriors in an open field.

- Two orc warriors guarding the far end of a rickety wooden bridge over a crevasse.

- Two orc warriors sleeping in a room with a locked wooden door.

- Two orc warriors playing poker in a crowded bar, who you've been paid to assassinate.

- Two orc warriors in a dark alley, ambushing you.

- Two orc warriors with bows at the top of a cliff.

- Two orc warriors who are starving and begging you for food.

- Two orc warriors running a potion shop who are good at haggling.

- One ghoul

[deaddmwalking]

I don't see how Bilbo beats the ogre in a riddle contest while Fitz is poison-stabbing it.

If Bilbo is satisfied with providing a distraction that might qualify as a cooperative game, but every way of defeating an enemy that doesn't involve doing hit point damage to them necessarily doesn't synergize with all the other ways people deal hit point damage.

It sounds like you're going to have each class spamming some type of 'save or defeat' but no synergy between those classes.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Conan, Link, Naruto, Cu Chulainn, Golgo 13, James Bond, a Calladooty guy, Sony Sad Dad, Mom with Toddler Under Car, Aragorn, Team Rocket

That's one hell of a fighting game roster there, friendo

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

With a list like that, I'm not sure which Cu Chulainn he's talking about...

[DrPraetor]

I'm coming back to this since I think the sibling hearbreaker-magic thread makes the conceptual issue clearer.

DDM makes a valid point (although I disagree), and he's talking in the space I want to work in.

A roleplaying game is a joint optimization problem - the shared story will have challenges in it, and the different characters want to contribute to solving those challenges, both in concert and taking turns flexing their competencies. So the characters have to fit the challenges and vice versa.
Frank makes a good argument that for game mechanics, you want to write the challenges first. Then you go back and fiddle with the challenges after you've made some character classes that can contribute, and maybe you add or combine roles that don't support enough screen time. But conceptually, this need not be your starting point - to take two examples that are floating around the board:
[*] With probability asymptotically approaching 1, you want to have a game available in which some of the characters are computer hackers. Therefore, you need to write a book of challenges that has good hacker challenges in it, and not the garbage we actually get.
[*] With probability asymptotically approaching 1, you have at least one high concept magic conceit that you'd like to incorporate into a game. Therefore, you need to write a book of challenges that has conceptually appropriate challenges in it, for your empaths or cat witches or whatever.

So forget the game mechanics - we're playing magical tea party.
Can Bilbo and Fitz meaningfully tagteam an Ogre with riddling and poisoning? I think they can: Bilbo cleverly distracts the Ogre. That scans fine to me, but it's the right worry to have.

The role I worry most about is Groo - who is only mighty and doesn't contribute anything else. Groo is comic-relief character for a reason. I think all mundane fighting types need something besides being fighty to contribute.
Fighting is generally a big part of things which are obviously D&D houserules, so you can fix this from a mechanical standpoint by filling Groo's level progression with bigger and/or better fighty advantages. But, from a conceptual standpoint, the role is stunted and boring.
Likewise for the character who only gets sneaking or only gets cleverness/talking. Even if you have flunkies or big enough stealth-derived combat minigame advantages to be competitive, you are conceptually too limited compared to someone who can sneak around in the shadows to meaningful combat advantage (note that this is not meant to preclude sneaking into the evil temple in order to participate in the climactic fight scene - everyone needs to be able to do that) and also distract the ogre with witty banter or lead flunkies.