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Hawkins
Great Reader
USA
2131 Posts |
 Posted - 27 Mar 2012 : 21:26:30
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These Are Not the Rules You're Looking For, by Mike Mearls.
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Errant d20 Designer - My Blog (last updated January 06, 2016)
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back. --Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
"Mmm, not the darkness," Myrin murmured. "Don't cast it there." --Erik Scott de Bie, Shadowbane
* My character sheets (PFRPG, 3.5, and AE versions; not viewable in Internet Explorer)
* Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Reference Document (PFRPG OGL Rules)
* The Hypertext d20 SRD (3.5 OGL Rules)
* 3.5 D&D Archives
My game design work:
* Heroes of the Jade Oath (PFRPG, conversion; Rite Publishing)
* Compendium Arcanum Volume 1: Cantrips & Orisons (PFRPG, designer; d20pfsrd.com Publishing)
* Compendium Arcanum Volume 2: 1st-Level Spells (PFRPG, designer; d20pfsrd.com Publishing)
* Martial Arts Guidebook (forthcoming) (PFRPG, designer; Rite Publishing)
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Jeremy Grenemyer
Great Reader
USA
2717 Posts |
Posted - 27 Mar 2012 : 22:21:10
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"Character Roles: This one is bound to be controversial, but I don't think roles belong in D&D as specific, mechanical elements that we design toward. Instead, I think roles are a great tool to help players focus on how they want to play a character. Veteran players should be free to create the character they want, however they want, instead of feeling that they must take on a job to "help" the party."
Whoa, Mearls dared to go there! Do you hear the angry shouts in the distance? Can you see the flaming torches and pitchforks? Methinks the WotC Forums are about to crumble under the assembled weight of 4e Fan nerd-rage gone thermonuclear.
***
On a more serious note: I like the idea, in principle (principal? I can never remember) of removing strict class roles from the game. I don't agree with Mearls's idea that players should be able to make characters however they want without first thinking over what roles to fill, in the sense that the adventuring party is and always has been a team.
If the D&D Next rules can teach players in a simple manner how to build cool characters while also building a good party (here "good" means mechanically sound/able to cover its bases without all getting killed off in the first fight), then I think it will have succeeded.
Did I just contradict myself somewhat? |
Look for me and my content at EN World (user name: sanishiver). |
Edited by - Jeremy Grenemyer on 27 Mar 2012 22:22:51 |
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Tarlyn
Learned Scribe
USA
315 Posts |
Posted - 27 Mar 2012 : 22:27:49
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| The whole purpose of character roles concept "nerdrage" has been going on for weeks on WotC forums anyway. And I do not think that anyone is going to put those fires out anytime soon. |
Tarlyn Embersun |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 27 Mar 2012 : 22:35:45
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Of course an adventuring party, as a small unit of men going into dangerous and violent situations, must by necessity be a team.
And I've spoken before about the necessity of clear communication between gaming groups, before, during and after campaigns.
But 'tactical roles', enforced by rules, have always struck me as somewhat strange. It is not as if these are the most important part of forming an effective team or playing an interesting game.
What about the ties between the characters? How do they know each other?
What about the chain of command? What are their responsibilities in the group, how do they resolve disagreements, what are their goals, who is empowered to give orders, who replaces him if he falls, etc.?
What about dramatic roles? In any fiction with more than one protagonist, the characters are meant to play off each other, aid in the characterisation of each other, by contrasting qualities against one other and/or by allowing for interesting interaction between them.
All of the above are things that players also need to decide between themselves and which I would consider as important or more important than who fills what stereotypical MMORPG role, which is not even a real tactical role in most pen-and-paper RPGs but D&D.
If the campaign I'm running has the PCs as part of a team of special operatives, I do want the players to discuss how their characters came to be a team, why they remain that way and how they divide responsibilities between them, yes. I don't want any of that to involve the assignation of such roles as 'Striker' or 'Controller' to each other, as these don't tell me anything about their characters and the descriptions given in the rulebooks describe nothing I am familiar with from playing roleplaying games.
And I'm far more concerned about them grasping the concept of the division of dramatic roles than I am about their division of tactical roles, as an entertaining game where their characters fail is still a success, but a boring and uninspired one where they suceed is a failure. |
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!
Forgotten Realms fans, please sign a petition to re-release the FR Interactive Atlas
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Ayrik
Great Reader
Canada
7989 Posts |
Posted - 27 Mar 2012 : 22:40:05
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| Not daring enough in this article, I think. As he points out many times, game rules are routinely ingnored or enhanced selectively by every confident DM. He touches on setting elements but doesn't actually dare to mention the most controversial and pertinent details - things like the timejump, Spellplague, RSEs in general, the list goes on - everybody has opinions about these details but regardless what these opinions are the fact exists that these things are an endlessly churning hotbed of violently stubborn controversy and relate very intimately to D&D's flagship setting. These things at least deserve some mention, better yet they should be addressed in separate article, because if the setting cannot be "fixed" in ways which pleases everybody then a million improvements in the rules will still never build a successful D&D product based within that setting. |
[/Ayrik] |
Edited by - Ayrik on 27 Mar 2012 22:40:56 |
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Diffan
Great Reader
USA
4458 Posts |
Posted - 28 Mar 2012 : 00:20:19
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*sigh* well lets get started....
quote:
Originally posted by Mike Mearls
I am going to 100% promise you that, especially if you are a veteran player or DM, we will include stuff in the next iteration of the game that you will ignore. In fact, I'm going to come out and say that we want you to ignore parts of the game.
Granted, but the question is...how much? In v3.5 I didn't like confirming critical hits, espically when a natural 20 is involved. Instead, I made nat. 20's auto-matic and I also left out the idea critical failures because 1). they're NOT in the rules and 2). they're mostly dumb. If I DO use them, it's normally *BAM* "Your Flat-Footed for a round." But things like Turning undead....while I don't like them much I'm NOT going to scour the internet for alternative rules for this with this particular edition nor am I going to full revise them from scratch. That's what I'm paying THEM for. Same with alignment requiremnts, yea they were out like day 2. But if those rules he mentions aren't super integral to the actual mechanics of the game, then I think I like what he's saying. If it's a core fundamental aspect like Feats or how magic is used and they DON'T provide alternative options....why am I paying for this then??
Next...
quote:
Originally posted by Mike Mearls
Adventure Design Guidelines: Stuff such as XP budgets, treasure tables, encounter charts, and so on are there to make it easier to create adventures and build your campaign. If you are a veteran DM, it's quite likely you won't use any of this stuff.
Right. I like this because I do enjoy custom crafting certain stuff BUT I hate dishing out magical treasure for specific characters. It's almost like I'm giving away stuff that specifically helps one person (like a holy avenger to a palaidn, a nature staff to a druid, or a +5 slaying bow to a Ranger). It's just too.......planned out for them specifically. So if I can pick and choose what to add, even as a vet. DM, then I'm ok with this.
And...finally:
quote:
Originally posted by Mike Mearls
Character Roles: This one is bound to be controversial, but I don't think roles belong in D&D as specific, mechanical elements that we design toward. Instead, I think roles are a great tool to help players focus on how they want to play a character. Veteran players should be free to create the character they want, however they want, instead of feeling that they must take on a job to "help" the party.
I'd much rather see roles cast as advice that highlights some basic strategies that players can follow. For instance, the advice for the cleric might explain how the class excels at healing. If you're playing a cleric and want some guidance on what to do, that advice can suggest some spells and abilities, along with tactics for use during the game.
In a game as open as D&D, this sort of advice can be tremendously helpful to a new player. More importantly, it helps show a player the sort of interactions that exist between characters. A new player doesn't have to worry about doing the "wrong" thing or letting the group down.
I'll admit that I have no use for roles. I like creating a character based on an image in my head, not a to-do list. I want roles to take the form of advice to help players learn the game, not a straitjacket that works against the freedom and flexibility offered by RPGs.
As far as designing the classes based on roles goes, I'd rather make sure that we're living up to the advice we give on how to play a class. We should be able to quickly and easily explain why a class is a useful member of an adventuring party. The mechanics should support that. Classes that are significantly weaker than the other classesdefined as easily overshadowed in all the aspects of the gameneed a redesign.
Do you know what mechanically based roles did? It made sucky classes not suck. Case-in-point: The Ranger. In v3.5 he sucked, still sucked in Pathfinder (but a bit less so) and I don't want to talk about earlier versions. Why? Because he wasn't focused, he had nothing mechanically supportive, and his mechanics were all over the place and poor. Did he do lots of damage? No, less so than a Fighter or Rogue. Did he open locks or find traps? No, less so than a Rogue or a properlly equipped Cleric/Wizard. Did he do the nature thing well? No, even less so than an actual druid. And the funny thing is, you can literally take each of the other classes I mentioned above that wasn't ranger, take the feat Track and add in some ranks to Knowledge (Nature) or take 1 stinkin' level of Druid to grab an animal companion and write down Ranger on your character sheet and BE BETTER THAN AN ACTUAL RANGER.
THAT is why you need roles. Because you have un-focused, mechanically inept, and suck-tastic classes that can be beter emulatd by more superior classes.
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Lord Karsus
Great Reader
USA
3745 Posts |
Posted - 28 Mar 2012 : 15:28:14
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-Hmm...
Adventure Guideline Rules: No reason things like this shouldn't be there. If someone doesn't want to adhere to them, they don't have to. For people who aren't as well versed in balancing treasure, or EXP, or whatever else, and don't want to make it up on the fly, no reason this kind of stuff shouldn't be there. At most, it takes up a page or so in a book?
Character Roles: Kind of torn. I don't like the idea of identifying certain classes by role; 'tank', 'controller', 'blaster', 'swarmer', and/or whatever other things that people have come up with. I think it kind of shoehorns people into playing certain kinds of characters, or people feeling that in order to have a successful party, they need certain types of characters. As was stated, people shouldn't have to feel "that they must take on a job to 'help' the party".
That said, the mechanics of various classes are the reasons why they have become associated with 'tanks', or whatever else. A character that has a lot of hit points, a high armor class, and can dish out the damage as per how the class is constructed, he/she is a 'tank'. A character that 'controls' things however (spellcaster, I guess), he/she is a 'controller'. And so on.
I personally wouldn't put an emphasis on this kind of stuff, and have people associate various classes with their most common in-party roles, rather than how the player wants to play their character. I've played games where magic was limited, and magicians as a result did more melee combat than normal. I would've been hard pressed to define them as 'controllers', or 'blasters', or 'swarmers', or anything else. I think, generally speaking, that is how most people do it, though. In my own experience, anyway, we've always made our own characters on our own, without predeciding that our theoretical characters would become a team and that we'd all maximize our tactical abilities by forming the 'ideal' party, covering all the percieved as necessary bases.
Advice In General: Same thing with adventure guideline rules, no reason this stuff shouldn't be there. If you don't need it, fine. For the people that do, they have it. Advice should take up more than a page or so in a theoretical book, but so what? I've looked at the mock games that they've had in books, and advice, to see how my own games looked in comparison.
I'd like to see advice be applied heavily to how to run monsters. In Monster Manual books, in addition to stats and ecologies and whatever else, have an advice paragraph, going into more detail about strategies the monster uses, how to make it more challenging, how to make it less challenging, etc. |
(A Tri-Partite Arcanist Who Has Forgotten More Than Most Will Ever Know)
Elves of Faerūn
Vol I- The Elves of Faerūn
Vol. III- Spells of the Elves
Vol. VI- Mechanical Compendium |
Edited by - Lord Karsus on 28 Mar 2012 15:33:57 |
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Legends & Lore: These Are Not the Rules...
