Neither Straightjacket nor Sandbox – Role and Class

This stems from yet another big conversation that originated on Twitter. Feeling that my thoughts on the subject were far too expansive for 140 characters at a time, I put off discussing it for the most part until I could write a blog post about it. The focus of the conversation was about classes, class roles, how to play your character, and how you should be able to play your character. The thinking seemed to boil down to two sides. The first felt that your class role should completely define your character. If you’re playing a Defender, you are expected to defend. You’ll mark, you’ll take hits from enemies, you’ll keep the rest of the party safe. If you do anything else, it’s a bonus, but you’d better make sure you can fulfill that main role as best you can. The other school of thought was that you should be able to take any role with any class. If you wanted to play your Rogue as a Defender, there should be options for that. If your Wizard wants to be a Striker, she should be able to.

My thinking is that both of these lines of thinking are right. Which, of course, makes them both just as wrong. I think that classes and roles are guidelines, a path to lead you to your character. But they’re guidelines that have some reasonable flexibility in how you get there or even what your exact destination character will be. Your character can be the same role and class as what someone else has without being very similar in mechanics or in flavor.

The problem with the narrow interpretation is that it ignores that almost every class dabbles in some other role other than their primary. Many individual builds or powers dabble in secondary roles. It’s possible to build a Defender that has a lot of Striker feel to it and still be a reasonably effective Defender. Your Leader may have a lot of ways to venture into Controller territory and still be perfectly good at being a Leader. Some people will point out that a Defender who takes Striker-esque powers or a Leader who takes Controller powers won’t be as effective as a pure Defender or Leader, but I will disagree. It’s all about how you look at it. A Defender who can pump out a fair bit of damage gives monsters more reason to target them over other PCs. A Leader who can move people around the battlefield or buff/debuff can help PCs avoid taking damage in the first place (either through helping kill enemies faster or avoid attacks). It’s performing the same role in a different way.

So how do you deal with the situation where people expect you to go with a “pure” build? Talk with your group. Let them know that you’re going outside the narrowest view of the class or role. Explain what your goal with the character is and what you want out of it. Let them know what you ~can~ do so you can give them the chance to adjust their characters so that the party melds together well. For example, in one of my online Skype-based games, I’m playing a Dragonborn Swordmage with the Aegis of Assault. This is a character which is oriented more towards Striker than Defender. But within the group, another person is playing a Warden, so the group is okay with me being only a secondary Defender. It’s just as important to let your DM know as well so encounters and adventures can be tweaked to take into it account. For example, as a DM I might consider giving the party just a few extra Healing Potions if someone playing a Leader was also taking a few pages out of the Defender or Controller playbook. As with a lot in D&D or RPGs in general, the key is communication.

Other people will point out that you’re still limited and restricted. This is the second point of view, that you should be able to do anything you want with any class. Rules as written, you will have a really difficult time making a Fighter who is even a secondary Leader. A Fighter might not have enough power options to make a very consistent secondary Controller either. This is true. But it begs the question, if you really want to play a character who has Leader or Controller as a secondary role, why are you playing a Fighter? The restrictions help define what a class is. The limitations tell you as the player and the group you’re playing with a general idea of what they can expect when you sit down at the table and tell them “I’m playing a Fighter”. Which is important. D&D, as well as other RPGs, are about having fun as a group and if you play just any random thing or your character doesn’t perform like the group expects, you may be having fun but your group may not. So I think that classes and roles are a good starting baseline to let everybody know a general idea what to expect, if not a specific one.

So the question becomes, what do you do when you want to play one thing and the rules tell you that you can’t? What if you want to make that Fighter who can be a Leader as well? What if that Wizard who can dish out serious damage is your thing? There are options. The first is that if the class you’ve chosen doesn’t fill the role you want, look at the other classes. The second is that if the role you want doesn’t fit the class you’ve taken, look at the other classes. The third is that if the fluff you like doesn’t fit the role or class you’ve chosen, look at the other classes. You’re sensing a theme here at this point, I hope. There are a lot of classes out there and it’s entirely possible you can find something more suitable to what you want if you just look for it. That Fighter who wants to be a Leader? Hi, my name is the Warlord and I would like to have a chat. Oh Wizard who wants to deal out damage? My friend the Sorcerer would like you to have a look at her.

Okay, so what if you’re attached to the fluff or some other feature of a class that makes you reluctant to change classes? There are still options available to increase the range of things your character can do. In all the talk on Twitter on this subject, I was astounded to see that nobody ever brought up multi-classing. Though debatably not as flexible as previous editions of D&D, multiclassing can still add new dimensions to a PC. Even just the baseline multi-class feat can be quite useful or add flavor by way of a skill training or extra (albeit limited) ability, let alone getting into the feats that let you swap one classes powers for the others. If that’s not sufficient, there’s always the option of using a hybrid, which was also not brought up to my knowledge in the Twitter conversations. Hybrids are more complicated to build in some ways than a standard or even multi-classed character and the character might initially suffer from the jack-of-all-trades problem at low levels, but the flip side is that you can also make a character that’s closer to what you’d like if none of the other options are what you’re interested in.

I think no matter what side of the fence you fall on, what your thoughts on class or role, the important thing is to talk to your group. See what everybody wants and expects. If your group is happy with unusual builds and playing-against-type, that’s great. If your group likes people to play what their class or role indicates they should be, that’s great too. If some of your group is one camp and some is in the other, that’s okay too. So long as everybody agrees to do it that way and everybody knows what’s coming.

The whole point to D&D is to have a good time with your friends and what exactly that means can only be determined by you and your group. If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right. Whether you’re playing a Rogue/Fighter Hybrid with a cutlass, an eyepatch, and a parrot or you’re playing the most optimal healing build Cleric that can be pulled out of the Character Builder.

Pregens: Dragon's Rest

I, for some reason, end up making a lot of pregen characters. Maybe it's because I like making characters. Maybe because I like to be helpful and offer to make them for people who need them. Maybe it's because I like being ready in case I need to run a one-shot game or mini campaign. Either way, it's been recommended to me that I share my bounty of pregens for those of you out there. Use them for NPCs, use them for a delve night, make one of them your NPC, or whatever you need them for.

First up on the pregen slate are 6 that I created for my own home game for a story interlude which will affect the main party in (hopefully) big ways. They are all standard builds out of the Character Builder and I've included both a PDF copy as well as the character builder files so you can make adjustments. I've uploaded each character individually, as well as a zip file with all six.

The background for this group of characters is that they're all at a mountain fortress-monastery of Bahamut known locally as Dragon's Rest (which I'm working on writing up for the blog as well). They've all got different and diverse reasons for being there and equally diverse personalities and motivations. You obviously don't have to use Dragon's Rest in your game, it's just there as a unifying factor if you so choose.

Corrin, Halfling Druid (Download)
Riya, Deva Avenger (Download)
Garel-Kai, Genasi Swordmage (Download)
Keira, Human Cleric (Download)
Perra, Dragonborn Sorceress (Download)
Naram, Shardmind Invoker (Download)

Click here to download all six pregens.

Feedback and comments are, as always, welcome and encouraged. 

Quality Encounters, Not Quantity of Encounters.

When I was running my players through Rescue at Rivenroar, one thing that struck me as I did my session and campaign planning was the sheer number of encounters to be found in the adventure. Almost every room had a combat encounter and it turned into a grinder of predictable combat. My experience playing other adventures like Keep on the Shadowfell and Thunderspire Labyrinth were similar. Even more recent products and adventures have a lot of combats. Although 4e combat is fun and it's far easier to write an adventure with combat than it is to write one with roleplaying (because it's hard to predict how players will roleplay and what they will do), it can make for a dull adventure if not done well. I always knew that myself, but my time spent with Rivenroar reinforced the lesson like few other things could. So I want to share what I think about this aspect of encounter design.

Make Every Encounter Mean Something
One of the major problems a lot of modules have is that they have combat encounters that don't really mean anything. Either by themselves or in the context in which they're presented. Combat for the sake of combat is rarely a good idea. For that matter, skill challenges for the sake of skill challenges are no better. The better way to approach encounters is to have a point to them. Encounters should always add to the adventure in some way. It may be thematic (establishing an undead area by PCs running into some), narrative (the PCs are attacked by assassins from the Big Bad), strategic (the orc raiders have scouts out on patrol), environmental (the PCs have triggered an ancient magical defense system), reactionary (the kobold who fled a fight has set off alarms in the warren), climactic (the players face off with the mastermind of an evil plot), or whatever.

Ask yourself why the players might have this particular encounter. Ask yourself "why" as many times as you need to until you either have a good reason or no reason at all. If you can't come up with a good solid reason for it, you should reconsider having that encounter right at that point. And honestly? Sometimes the reason might very well be "Because it's a cool encounter and my players will like it." As long as everybody is having fun, you're doing it right.

Make Every Encounter Unique
Sometimes even adventures with encounters that answer the question of "why" still end up feeling flat, dull, or boring. One possible pitfall is using too many of the same sorts of monsters. This can actually be a big problem, especially for someone like me who likes a strong theme to an adventure. You can very quickly run out of new monsters of the appropriate type to throw at the players and surprise them. Sometimes you want to broaden your theme or scope of the adventure to give yourself some leeway. To use my own game as an example, if I could have I probably would have just used goblins and hobgoblins for most of Rivenroar. But I would have found myself using the same enemies over and over. So I added in a reason to have undead around and I was able to better create encounters that all felt different from one another. Adding a different sort of monster from the ones that PCs have been fighting can be a breath of fresh air.

Another way to make encounters unique is the environment. An encounter can be drastically different in feel and result depending on where you place it. Add environmental effects like rain to cause penalties for ranged attacks. Let the terrain shape the battle by placing fields of boulders and rocks which count as difficult terrain. Put incentives and objectives like a magic circle which gives +1 to attack for creatures standing in it. Add in dangerous effects like a fountain which spews necrotic acid at random intervals. Add shelves that players can push over onto bad guys or to use as cover. If you make an encounter more than a simple straight up fight to the death, they're more likely to enjoy it.

Make Every Encounter Memorable
This can be both the easiest and hardest thing to do when making and playing encounters. Players should walk home from the game thinking about how fun, cool, or interesting it was. You want something they'll be talking about between each other for a while or that makes them want to go on a message board or Twitter to describe. Sometimes, making an encounter memorable can be nothing more than good roleplaying or description from the DM. Orcs who shout battlecries and taunts, mad necromancers who lecture and rant at the players, grim and silent assassins who use elaborate maneuvers and hand signals as they attack, feyborn creatures who laugh and sing as they draw blood, or whatever.

Altering the conditions of victory is another option to consider. If the players have to stop an evil ritual by destroying six magical idols while holding off mad cultists, that can be more fun than just going in to kill the cultists outright. Enemies who fight with hit and run attacks can leave the players excited to finally get the chance pin down and have it out with their tormentors. Encounters where players have to protect something can also be exciting and nerve-wracking. Put the players on the other side of the ritual example from earlier and have them defend a magical ritual from those disrupting it. Have the players fend off slavers trying to capture panicked townsfolk.

Throw the characters a curveball every once in a while, just to keep them on their toes and not take anything you present them for granted. A fight where high winds scream through the area, pushing people and knocking them prone every few rounds, can shake things up. Throw in an occasional fight in the air or under water where players have to think and act in 3D. Run an encounter where players are defending a town and have access to things like siege equipment or burning pitch but have to fend off enemies with ladders, ropes, and siege towers.

Conclusion
Are following these ideas guaranteed to get you awesome encounters every time? No. Sometimes even the best ideas and efforts will fall flat at the table. Sometimes what you thought was awesome, players will find boring. Sometimes your carefully crafted encounter will be undone in moments by bad DM rolls or good player rolls (or both). Sometimes either the DM or the players will be having an off night and end up with encounters that don't live up to their potential. However, I think that if you really try to incorporate these ideas into your adventures and encounter design, players and DMs alike are more likely to have a good time by eliminating flat or dull encounters that do little more to add to the adventure besides fill time and provide some experience and loot and replacing them with something which will hopefully be more interesting and engaging.

Guest Post: Random Me This

This is an awesome guest post that I'm happy to host here. My contributions can be found, but most of the credit is not mine. Comment and enjoy! - Aaron

Empty rooms and lint-stuffed pockets make for quite the boring D&D encounter. Snooze city, we say. Any RPG world setting has things worth keeping…whether they’re valuable or not. And nearly any item can be used to an adventurer’s eventual advantage if the player is creative enough.

The late great George Carlin said it best, “Everyone has their own pile of stuff. So, why in Dante’s Inferno would your monsters and NPCs be any different?

To celebrate and embrace the things’ obsession, we’ve created a helpful randomized common items table for your D&D gaming pleasure. You can download the 72 different choices in a single takeaway sheet here and a generic version here.

The initial instructions are rather straightforward: On a successful perception check of more than 12, the character then performs two different rolls on the chart for the result. Roll a d12 to first determine the item set. Now roll a d6 to determine the actual item found.

There’s real rhyme to every reason in this sheet. We’ve purposely picked common items that a gamer, who’s got his thinking helm on, can turn into his advantage. For example:

• Chalk: mark spots in the dungeon to increase your skill check on finding your way back.

• Metal Toy Knights: A perfect bribe for streetwise information

• Rigged gambling dice: The possibilities are endless.

• Black Powder: Gather components for single spell working for or against you on a cast.

And for zestier randomization, we’ve added 2 heck-yeah items and 2 oh-no items:

• Whestone +2: To attack and damage for 1 encounter. It’s a classic.

• Potion of Healing: Can you ever have enough?

• Mold trap: Goop gets on your weapon for a -1 to attack/damage for a day.

• Pressure Gas Release trap: Sealed for too long – d12 damage ensues.

Finally, there’s a couple for a DM’s discretion:

•  Music box: Yes but what type of figurine is in there and why?

• Tiny hand-stitched doll: Who/what does that doll look like? What happens when poked?

We’ve purposely left the traps open-ended. You can increase the damage, add an effect, determine the range, etc. Flush these out how you deem fit. You could even put in a whizz-bang effect with no real damage (ya know – just spook ‘em).

The entire chart truly built for your flexibility. A 1 in 72 chance leaves lots of re-playability. You can easily swap ‘em out as time moves on. You can even describe them differently on a re-use. We wanted to ensure the sheet had some real legs.

For added fun, print out item descriptions from the WotC character builder and make cards to handout. Mix those with Paizo item cards for even more awesomeness.

Have fun with this one. Let us know how it goes. Share additional item ideas with us. If we get enough, who knows? You may just find a second sheet.

So about that dead monster, I search him and this room and I find…

- Ben

About the Guest Author
Ben Bertrandt is the co-founder of Gamers’ Inn in Mesa, Arizona. He also co-created and currently maintains Ben’s RPG Pile – a social network of D&D gaming goodness. You can enjoy his weekly blog of product reviews, watch a how-to video on YouTube and read his endless banter on Twitter.

Stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
Common Items Table
Blank Items Table
WotC character builder
Paizo item cards

Gamers’ Inn: http://store.gamersinnaz.com/
Blog: http://www.bensrpgpile.com/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/bensrpgpile2
Twitter: http://twitter.com/bensrpgpile

Continued Campaign Planning, part 2

So, when last I left off the campaign plan, the PCs will have just finished at the Remorhaz's Rest (aka, the Halfway Inn) and will probably head up the rest of the way to the monastery of Bahamut.

Warhammer Fantasy RPG impressions

Last night we were going to be short some players for our usual game. 2 of them would be off at a local con. I would have also probably been at the con, if it weren't for the fact that I'm going to an even bigger con up in Seattle next week (Penny Arcade Expo, for those of you wondering). I asked if everybody wanted me to run D&D as we otherwise would and the response was generally that they didn't, not with so many people gone. We threw out some of our usual options, like Talisman, Arkham Horror, and other board games. I had an idea though and suggested it to the group, who were also interested in the idea. Last night, we would be playing the latest edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. My friend had bought it and some extras for it like the Winds of Magic expansion and he's been wanting to run it, so he agreed to run a one-shot of it for us last night.

Mental Health and Gaming

This may be something of a more serious and personal post from me. I've wanted to talk about this for a long time, but I was never sure where to start or what to say. Even right at this moment as I'm typing away, I'm not sure how I'll really say what I need to say or if I'll be able to help people understand my situation. I'm not even sure why I'm writing it. Catharsis, maybe. A plea for people to be patient and understanding, perhaps. I don't know.

Dark Sun Campaign Setting impressions and info

Let me get this out of the way up front. I like Dark Sun. When it was announced as the next campaign setting being released from Wizards for 4e, I was excited. Dark Sun has been a wonderful almost post-apocalyptic counterpoint to the typical high fantasy that D&D usually embodies. It's dangerous, it's grim, it's black and grey as opposed to black and white.  There have been other attempts to emulate that same style, but Dark Sun was unique. Even if things veered into the weird, the silly, or the ridiculous at times with Dark Sun, it was a great setting. So I loved seeing it come up again for 4e and eagerly ran down to my FLGS when they told me that they had my copies in stock.

Note that this is not a review and I probably won't write one. As you may have determined by my Vor Rukoth review, I don't do things by halves when I'm reviewing something. It'd be dishonest of me to throw something out on the site having not done a thorough job. That said, as much as I might want to review this, I'd rather direct my efforts elsewhere in light of the fact that there are already more than a few good reviews up and I'd not like to be just another voice in the crowd. Vor Rukoth was different in that it was being drowned out by Tomb of Horrors and it needed the love.

Digression over. Time to dig in to Dark Sun.