D&D: No, you shut up
Feb. 11th, 2010 12:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mneme posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
labcatsOne problem I noticed a few days ago when mulling over character ideas for a friend's D&D 4e game is that if I want to be able to talk to people, I need to play a Charisma-based character. Because if I don't, I'm basically hurting the party every time I open my mouth. Notice one thing about Charisma-based classes? They barely have anything to do -except- talking -- and have a bunch of nearly redundant social skills, all based on Charisma. Intimdate, Bluff, Diplomacy -- all three basically do the same thing; get an NPC to do what I say. And all of them are based around charisma.
Sure, charisma is the social stat (except that it now does other things, like increase your Will defense and such). But that said, I do think this is a design flaw, and a case of some of the design lagging behind the concepts involved.
One of the big advantages to 4e overall is that it avoids marginalizing characters.
Everyone gets to fight. Unlike 3e, where Str and Dex were the fighting stats, in 4e, they may be the -default- fighting stats, but between classes with melee attacks based on every single one of the 6 attributes and the excellent feat Melee Training, everyone gets to play.
And, of course, skill challenges are conceptualized such that everyone gets to participate if they want.
Even in microcosm, there are some nice bits of pseudo-redundancy here. The mobility/stunt skills are Athletics (Str) and Acrobatics (Dex), so anyone with either stat can have a way to move around in non-obvious ways, even if the particulars are different.
However, in social situations, we're back to single-stat land again, unfortunately. Which is a big shame, given that what this means is that when you're in a social situation, the mechanics are telling you (if you're not playing a high-charisma character) to shut up and let the people with social skills talk--which in those situations is every much as bad as telling the 1e thief that this is a monster, not a trap, so he should sit back and let the fighter handle it, or to have everyone sit on their heels and let the rogue and druid explore the dungeon for a couple of hours. Yes, you can construct skill challenges that allow options other than talking -- and, of course, clever players can work Int-based knowledge skills into a conversation and try to substitute Arcana or History for Diplomacy or Bluff. But when you get down to it, players being left out of the conversation is still a very big deal--moreso when effectiveness in combat often means -not- putting any points into Charisma if it doesn't do anything for your build.
Moreover, having all three different (3, in fact) social skills under Charisma involves huge amount of redundancy. Clearly, the best of the skills for social situations is Diplomacy. It's nearly always applicable, and extremely flexible in approach. Bluff is a good complement -- and of course has some good combat applications. Finally, Intimidate is the social skill you don't want to have to use -- it's got several interesting (if usually to be avoided) combat applications, and has an entire set of fighitng abilities that require it, but both by flavor and typical challenge design, it's the narrowest and worst of the social skills.
So, what we end up with here is that anyone decent at social stuff has a high charisma and Diplomacy and/or Bluff--and nearly all builds with a high charisma have Dip/Bluff as class skills, and Intimidate is hard to get to a high level -and- is the weakest of the bunch.
Now, what if, rather than going with "Cha = social impact, so all direct social skills go under Cha", the three skills had been placed in different stat trees? Drop Intimidate in Str (or Con, as how "tough" you are), Bluff as Int (coming up with good lies as opposed to being generally likable) and keep Diplomacy under Cha. That way, nearly everyone would be able, if they wanted, to have a good score in a social skill -- but your class would constrain -how- you interacted with people rather than telling you to shut up please and let the charasmatic people talk.
An interesting alternative would be to have an even more direct parallel to the class structure (for AC/attack) -- have classes that get off-stat social skills often use alternative skills as basis for those skills. So fighters would get the feature "use Str as a basis for Intidmidate", Shamans would get to use Diplomacy via Wisdom, and so on.
Either way, it's a damned shame--and something that's going to constrain my choices whenever I'm not ok with playing characters that have to shut up and let the good-looking folks talk.
Sure, charisma is the social stat (except that it now does other things, like increase your Will defense and such). But that said, I do think this is a design flaw, and a case of some of the design lagging behind the concepts involved.
One of the big advantages to 4e overall is that it avoids marginalizing characters.
Everyone gets to fight. Unlike 3e, where Str and Dex were the fighting stats, in 4e, they may be the -default- fighting stats, but between classes with melee attacks based on every single one of the 6 attributes and the excellent feat Melee Training, everyone gets to play.
And, of course, skill challenges are conceptualized such that everyone gets to participate if they want.
Even in microcosm, there are some nice bits of pseudo-redundancy here. The mobility/stunt skills are Athletics (Str) and Acrobatics (Dex), so anyone with either stat can have a way to move around in non-obvious ways, even if the particulars are different.
However, in social situations, we're back to single-stat land again, unfortunately. Which is a big shame, given that what this means is that when you're in a social situation, the mechanics are telling you (if you're not playing a high-charisma character) to shut up and let the people with social skills talk--which in those situations is every much as bad as telling the 1e thief that this is a monster, not a trap, so he should sit back and let the fighter handle it, or to have everyone sit on their heels and let the rogue and druid explore the dungeon for a couple of hours. Yes, you can construct skill challenges that allow options other than talking -- and, of course, clever players can work Int-based knowledge skills into a conversation and try to substitute Arcana or History for Diplomacy or Bluff. But when you get down to it, players being left out of the conversation is still a very big deal--moreso when effectiveness in combat often means -not- putting any points into Charisma if it doesn't do anything for your build.
Moreover, having all three different (3, in fact) social skills under Charisma involves huge amount of redundancy. Clearly, the best of the skills for social situations is Diplomacy. It's nearly always applicable, and extremely flexible in approach. Bluff is a good complement -- and of course has some good combat applications. Finally, Intimidate is the social skill you don't want to have to use -- it's got several interesting (if usually to be avoided) combat applications, and has an entire set of fighitng abilities that require it, but both by flavor and typical challenge design, it's the narrowest and worst of the social skills.
So, what we end up with here is that anyone decent at social stuff has a high charisma and Diplomacy and/or Bluff--and nearly all builds with a high charisma have Dip/Bluff as class skills, and Intimidate is hard to get to a high level -and- is the weakest of the bunch.
Now, what if, rather than going with "Cha = social impact, so all direct social skills go under Cha", the three skills had been placed in different stat trees? Drop Intimidate in Str (or Con, as how "tough" you are), Bluff as Int (coming up with good lies as opposed to being generally likable) and keep Diplomacy under Cha. That way, nearly everyone would be able, if they wanted, to have a good score in a social skill -- but your class would constrain -how- you interacted with people rather than telling you to shut up please and let the charasmatic people talk.
An interesting alternative would be to have an even more direct parallel to the class structure (for AC/attack) -- have classes that get off-stat social skills often use alternative skills as basis for those skills. So fighters would get the feature "use Str as a basis for Intidmidate", Shamans would get to use Diplomacy via Wisdom, and so on.
Either way, it's a damned shame--and something that's going to constrain my choices whenever I'm not ok with playing characters that have to shut up and let the good-looking folks talk.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-12 04:16 pm (UTC)For instance, the fighting magic class (swordmages, unless you're thinking of something else -- which are actuallyd defenders, like fighters and paladins are) fight with a sword, have a "mark" that makes it harder for their target to get around them and attack other characters, and have a way to punish the target for violating this -- just like fighters and paladins.
But the mechanism for how this works in play is very different.
Fighters are all about positional control and getting in your face--they hit you, and then keep hitting you whenever you try to get away.
Paladins call out a challenge and have to show some bravery (like standing next to you, or throwing something at you or attacking you), but don't have to pay as much attention as fighters do--and they don't hit you for violating their mark, their god does this (unerringly) instead--and while they're not as good at controlling your movement as fighters are ("sticky"), they've got healing abilities to effectively let them retroactively protect their friends, and better defenses than fighters.
Swordmages enspell you, making a magical connection -- and then ignore you entirely, preferring to engage an entirely different group of foes with magical bursts of fire and lightning, as they teleport into the most advantagous position. But you're left between the choice of getting into trouble trying to follow them -- or violating their mark and having them either nullify your attack, teleport in and attack you, or teleport you somewhere convenient for them and inconvenient for you.
Similarly, the "striker" types are really only common in doing decent damage and having some way to make sure they can pick targets of opportunity rather than only engaging the front lines. Rogues and rangers use (to varying degrees) stealth, ranged attacks, mobility and flanking; sorcerers do good damage to multiple foes at once, barbarians charge madly about the battlefield and go into rages, warlocks pick a target and make their life hell, and enshroud themselves in shadow to make themselves less of a target.
Re flavor, I'm actually in favor of more crunch and less flavor, as I'm happy to provide flavor in play and read gamebooks for crunch and novels for fiction. But I'll note that wizards has been sliding the dial more towards flavor in the more recent splatbooks--Primal Power has lots of info on how the primal, nature-chanelling classes are intended to play on a flavor level; a big change from the early splatbooks that were all crunch and tactical advice.