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Rogue Warriors
May. 23rd, 2012 12:37 pmSince I made posts about wizards and clerics in A Wilder World, and alluded to the four classical D&D classes, I figured I might as well say a few words about the other two.
My main issue with fighters and thieves/rogues in D&D comes squarely back to the weakness of a class-based game that never fully embraced the idea of using them as broadly applicable archetypes. I remember the AD&D 2nd Edition PHB had a list of historical and semi-historical figures who would be considered to be members of each class, which was a nice touch, but the problem was...
Well, I remember hearing a question at a quiz bowl or trivia game or somewhere similar where the answer had to do with Martin Luther, and one of the clues was that if he had been a D&D character he might have been able to fall great distances without taking damage and kill with a touch.
I.e., he'd have been a Monk.
That's a rather extreme example, and I doubt a D&D book would ever have chosen to list Luther as an exemplar of their Monk class, but if you start with the idea that any fantasy hero or villain can be slotted into Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard, and a few other classes, those classes need to be broad and highly customizable, or you'll end up with situations like Martin Luther hammering the cathedral door with his the 95 Fists of Fury technique.
You end up with pickpockets who are also basically assassins simply because you can't be good at stealing without also being good at stabbing. You end up with most of the best fighters in the land fitting the same few molds that basically boil down to "big and tough, heavily armored, heavy weapon."
So, for rogues, my goal was to make a game that can handle characters in the style of Bilbo Baggins, the Gray Mouser, Moist von Lipwig, the Artful Dodger, and Artemis Entreri equally well. The whole flexible character creation thing is the framework, and I filled that framework by brainstorming all the thief/rogue/trickster/assassin archetypes I could think of. The idea that not everybody in the party had to be roughly equally proficient at combat stops the Lipwigs and Bagginses from getting loaded up with inappropriate assassination abilities.
There is no skill system per se, so the concept of "rogue == skill monkey" that's become enshrined in D&D doesn't quite exist. But playing a rogue-type character means you'll have more abilities that represent mundane non-weapon-related skills than a character whose schtick is magic or mysticism or martial prowess.
For warriors, I wanted a system that didn't restrict you to one defensive scheme (i.e., heavy armor) and channel you towards one weapon style (big and massive). I dispensed with a lot of heavy lifting on the latter point by simply declaring all weapons to be basically equally deadly (which is to say, all weapons are deadly)... a dagger is not a worse tool for killing a person than a broadsword, they're just used in different ways.
I mean, die rolls are used to dispense with the vagaries of chance and physics vis-a-vis things like angle of approach and the targets on a body that opportunity presents you with, anyway. A good die roll with a dagger means you found somewhere squishy and unguarded to stick it. A good die roll with a big heavy weapon means you were able to get off a good swing with a lot of power behind it in a spot that will make a satisfying sort of cracking noise. Both have the same essential potential to take a body out of a fight, and vice-versa.
The difference between weapon choices is more a matter of style than anything. That doesn't mean it has no in-game effect. If you're trying to do something besides just hurt the other person badly enough that they stop fighting, you have to be able to describe what you're doing. There are rules for adding an effect like stunning, distracting, knocking down or shoving an opponent to an attack (or attacking to do just one of those things in place of damage), and generally they're all available at all times, but you have to be able to sell it.
For example: It's not impossible to picture someone making someone go down with a quick use of a dagger (slashing low, or cuffing them on the head with the additional weight of the hilt in your hand) But compared to a dagger, something like a whip or a staff is probably a better choice if you want to trip an opponent up.
Having a weapon that's especially well suited for the task at hand gives a small but appreciable bonus (since it's a d6 system, though, they're all appreciable bonuses)... probably there will be some people who choose their weapon based entirely on a rubric of which effects are most advantageous to inflict in combination with the optimal abilities they've chosen, but eh...
There will always be power gamers. The actual mechanical impact of different effects on combat-by-the-numbers doesn't differ too terribly, not by enough to make a huge difference between someone doing what suits their character/the situation vs. what math says is the best choice most often.
And that's really a big part of the design philosophy here in a nutshell. I'm not striving for perfect mathematical balance or making a game that makes power gaming/min-maxing impossible. It's just a game that's more intended to fire the imagination. If somebody's got their character optimized for straightforward combat they may be able to blow through regular opponents like tissue paper... but if that's what excites the player, why not? As long as the game doesn't require everyone else to be able to keep up with the designated combat monster, it's not a problem.
My main issue with fighters and thieves/rogues in D&D comes squarely back to the weakness of a class-based game that never fully embraced the idea of using them as broadly applicable archetypes. I remember the AD&D 2nd Edition PHB had a list of historical and semi-historical figures who would be considered to be members of each class, which was a nice touch, but the problem was...
Well, I remember hearing a question at a quiz bowl or trivia game or somewhere similar where the answer had to do with Martin Luther, and one of the clues was that if he had been a D&D character he might have been able to fall great distances without taking damage and kill with a touch.
I.e., he'd have been a Monk.
That's a rather extreme example, and I doubt a D&D book would ever have chosen to list Luther as an exemplar of their Monk class, but if you start with the idea that any fantasy hero or villain can be slotted into Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard, and a few other classes, those classes need to be broad and highly customizable, or you'll end up with situations like Martin Luther hammering the cathedral door with his the 95 Fists of Fury technique.
You end up with pickpockets who are also basically assassins simply because you can't be good at stealing without also being good at stabbing. You end up with most of the best fighters in the land fitting the same few molds that basically boil down to "big and tough, heavily armored, heavy weapon."
So, for rogues, my goal was to make a game that can handle characters in the style of Bilbo Baggins, the Gray Mouser, Moist von Lipwig, the Artful Dodger, and Artemis Entreri equally well. The whole flexible character creation thing is the framework, and I filled that framework by brainstorming all the thief/rogue/trickster/assassin archetypes I could think of. The idea that not everybody in the party had to be roughly equally proficient at combat stops the Lipwigs and Bagginses from getting loaded up with inappropriate assassination abilities.
There is no skill system per se, so the concept of "rogue == skill monkey" that's become enshrined in D&D doesn't quite exist. But playing a rogue-type character means you'll have more abilities that represent mundane non-weapon-related skills than a character whose schtick is magic or mysticism or martial prowess.
For warriors, I wanted a system that didn't restrict you to one defensive scheme (i.e., heavy armor) and channel you towards one weapon style (big and massive). I dispensed with a lot of heavy lifting on the latter point by simply declaring all weapons to be basically equally deadly (which is to say, all weapons are deadly)... a dagger is not a worse tool for killing a person than a broadsword, they're just used in different ways.
I mean, die rolls are used to dispense with the vagaries of chance and physics vis-a-vis things like angle of approach and the targets on a body that opportunity presents you with, anyway. A good die roll with a dagger means you found somewhere squishy and unguarded to stick it. A good die roll with a big heavy weapon means you were able to get off a good swing with a lot of power behind it in a spot that will make a satisfying sort of cracking noise. Both have the same essential potential to take a body out of a fight, and vice-versa.
The difference between weapon choices is more a matter of style than anything. That doesn't mean it has no in-game effect. If you're trying to do something besides just hurt the other person badly enough that they stop fighting, you have to be able to describe what you're doing. There are rules for adding an effect like stunning, distracting, knocking down or shoving an opponent to an attack (or attacking to do just one of those things in place of damage), and generally they're all available at all times, but you have to be able to sell it.
For example: It's not impossible to picture someone making someone go down with a quick use of a dagger (slashing low, or cuffing them on the head with the additional weight of the hilt in your hand) But compared to a dagger, something like a whip or a staff is probably a better choice if you want to trip an opponent up.
Having a weapon that's especially well suited for the task at hand gives a small but appreciable bonus (since it's a d6 system, though, they're all appreciable bonuses)... probably there will be some people who choose their weapon based entirely on a rubric of which effects are most advantageous to inflict in combination with the optimal abilities they've chosen, but eh...
There will always be power gamers. The actual mechanical impact of different effects on combat-by-the-numbers doesn't differ too terribly, not by enough to make a huge difference between someone doing what suits their character/the situation vs. what math says is the best choice most often.
And that's really a big part of the design philosophy here in a nutshell. I'm not striving for perfect mathematical balance or making a game that makes power gaming/min-maxing impossible. It's just a game that's more intended to fire the imagination. If somebody's got their character optimized for straightforward combat they may be able to blow through regular opponents like tissue paper... but if that's what excites the player, why not? As long as the game doesn't require everyone else to be able to keep up with the designated combat monster, it's not a problem.
