The Gaming Den

So, I am not going to pretend to be capable of doing those big "Anatomy of a Failed Design" posts. I am, besides, more interested in figuring out why someone would think something is a good idea, rather than merely withering away on the bad parts. So here I am going to look at the powers and their interactions with class roles in 4e. I suppose that's kind of like an Anatomy of a Failed Design post.

In 4e, the main way you actually acquire abilities that let your character do anything in the system are largely class-based powers, the skill system, and rituals. Of these, class-based powers are the most integral, and hard to get. They generally are things that supposedly only one class should have access to. Supposedly. Obviously the party heartily demands a leader (i.e. healer) in 4e still. But that discussion is for another thread.

4e has gone to extensive lengths to try to make it so that no one gets the powers of another class. Yet, they developed a system whereby you could select other class powers. I am right now sitting and staring at my own game design, and asking myself.. why? Why let ANYONE take another class' powers outright? If the class role is supposed to be so sacrosanct, why violate it?

But there are other parts to a class too. There are skills and rituals, and those deserve a note because they were made generically available. Off a broad list, they were made such, as far as I can tell, largely so that it would be easier to pick them up even if you weren't "properly" a person who would do that sort of thing. A certain amount of genre reinforcement predicates the idea to give free rituals to clerics and wizards, who, well, are supposed to be capable of doing such things, while denying others. Maybe not particularly fair, but there you go.

The main point of these, as far as I can tell, is to make these skills and rituals available to the party. Things that are useful to the party but should not necessarily depend on having a certain class available were categorized here. Things that also were largely fluff considerations went into the same bin, since ostensibly they are. Making these generally available is a good move for helping disassociate from requiring certain classes, a common complaint, but does not actually remove the need for a healer still.

Somewhere in between, later in 4e, they developed ideas such as "weapon paths" and similar that let you multiclass into something that had no connection to any existing class. It was explicitly a supplementary to the existing class. And I thought to myself, "aha." This makes a lot more sense, really, than allowing classes to pick off foreign ability lists. Many hybridized concepts could be represented a lot better by sticking to certain primary classes (albeit still numerous) and writing supplementary things. I would say paragon paths and such were always this thing, except in reality you could never do so.

It seems that, while 4e was a HORRIBLE example of actually integrating these systems, the basic premise is sound. Players get to pick not just their entree, but side dish and drink. Obviously, a chef can custom-craft a much better dish, but sometimes someone's desires call for their elegant steak to have a side of hash browns and a coke. But stuffing a turkey with a chicken and a duck is just weird, and those turn out weird results, like the ones in 3e, where no one really has any roles to play, at least within their class itself. However, if you lock down everything, including things that might be needed by the party, into classes, you result in a very old style "must have fighter, thief, cleric, magic user" combination. And while AD&D/OD&D/even BD&D (with copious houserules) is an alright game, it's neither ideal, nor is it something new to write... you could just go houserule pre-3e D&D if you wanted that.

So you're saying that 4e has an interesting idea of a strong protected class, with open gaps you're supposed to fill with unprotected choices from a menu of secondary stuff?

Yeah, I like the idea of rituals a lot, but Hasbro hasn't really managed to do them justice since they messed up in D20 Modern.

More or less. I was trying to contain my longwinded rambling a bit, but might have prohibited myself from getting to a point! Well, anyways. It also is of note how some of those secondary lists were explicitly supposed to measure up against main line powers, and some were not (in the case of skills/rituals, there being no real point of comparison, not that main powers are all THAT exciting either).