Defining Roles

(This is a reprint.  This post was originally published on July 30, 2008.  I’ll be touching on the subject again — and on how it’s changed thanks to the new books that have come out since I first wrote this — in the near future.)

Over at All Your Dungeons Are Belonging to Us!!, Donny raises an interesting point regarding the difference between third and fourth edition D&D.  In a nutshell, he feels that character roles, for the sake of game balance, are enforced more strictly in 4e than they were in 3e, and his opinion is that this is a bad thing.  It’s the following passage that inspired this post, though:

I do not like being TOLD how my character SHOULD be played. It’s just like that. The great peoples (no sarcasm) over at Wizards have taken this edition WAY too far down the path of one-size-fits-all. The “tyranny of fun” argument was misplaced with the stupid cave slime example, THIS is where it lives. It is right at the heart of the system, not in some silly little table, buried in the middle of a book. Want to play a ranger? Good, you’re the striker. Just. Like. That. Even worse, where’s the customization? Everything that has been set aside for you in terms of powers are designed specifically to reinforce that role. Even within it’s own framework this has problems. You cannot fill any other role.

This is not entirely true, in my limited experience with 4e.  But it is largely true, especially of the ranger.  Most classes can, with some work, fulfill a secondary role — the fighter can put out damage almost as well as a striker, the paladin has some healing and buffing abilities like a leader, the warlock and the cleric bring some control to the table, and even the rogue can do a lot of sliding and pushing and knocking the enemy prone if he builds for it.  The ranger, though, is largely damage.  Future books might change that, as Donny notes later, but the core ranger is a striker.

Is this a problem?

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Last Week for the Carnival

Just a reminder that this month’s RPG Blog Carnival, on the subject of Humor and Gaming, will close at the end of the week (May 2).  Please try to link your articles by then.  The wrapup will occur some time next week.

Review: Arcane Power

Arcane Power

Following my positive experiences with Martial Power, I decided to pre-order Arcane Power, the new fourth-edition Dungeons & Dragons supplement that deals with additional options for the arcane classes:  bard, sorcerer, swordmage, warlock, and wizard.  Based on my initial reading, I feel pretty confident about saying that the Power line continues to display a pretty high standard of quality.  Class-based supplements have been pretty ubiquitous in D&D since the second edition, and their quality has varied, but like Martial Power, this book seems to fall toward the top of the heap.

Arcane Power is a 160-page book, and there’s a lot crammed into it; it felt a little longer than Martial Power to me, although it’s the same page count.  Physically, it seems similar to other fourth-edition hardcovers; its layout, binding, and so forth all seem decent.  Some people have reported problems with ink smudging in their 4e books; I’ve never experienced any such issues, but if you have, the ink and paper seem about the same to me, too, so that might be something to watch for.

Content is split up into five chapters by class, each of which covers new powers, builds, class features, and paragon paths for its respective class, and a sixth chapter including new feats, familiars, epic destinies, rituals, and a handful of magic items (tomes, for the new wizard build).

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Action!

(Since I’m working on the back end of my blog, and that’s cutting into my writing time, I’ll be reposting an article a week over the next couple of weeks.  The following article was originally posted on August 6, 2008.)

Action Points are one of the better additions to fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons.  We’ve seen their like in many other roleplaying games, to be sure — I’d venture that they’re a part of more modern RPGs than not.  This isn’t exactly innovation on D&D’s part.  Officially including them is a first for D&D, though, and a welcome one.  [Edit:  Apparently it isn't, as they were included in a 3.5e supplement.  This is still the first time they're part of the core system, though.]   They serve their purpose — rewarding the party for pushing on in the adventure, and making up to some extent for the loss of expended resources.  Better yet, they can have a dramatic effect on a combat.

But what if they could be more dramatic still?  Chatty DM has put forth that question, and the various commenters have answered it by providing a wealth of ideas as to how else action points might be used.  I’ve developed an addition to the system myself, which I present in more detail here.

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The Lighter Side

Last Saturday’s post wasn’t just a bit of silly fun.  It’s an example of something I might actually drop into my game on any given night.  Maybe that sounds strange — if you’ve been reading my blog, you know that I prefer heroic, cinematic games.  So how does a groaner like the Grape Jelly possibly fit in?

Surprisingly well.

Humor is a good way to enhance the feel of your game, in fact.  Some moderation is necessary — going all-humor, all-the-time tends to ruin the drama factor — but a little lightheartedness in the right places breaks the tension, aids the flow of the story, and helps create memorable experiences.  Puns, a little less so, but Dungeons & Dragons has a long tradition of them.  Consider the tarantella, a spider whose bite causes the afflicted to dance — and the sight of that dance may cause others to join in.  This blends an awful pun with folklore to create a nemesis for the party that’s silly from a metagame perspective yet still dangerous from an in-character standpoint.

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