How much magic in your game?

[Vortigern]

Who said anything about shining?

I'm talking about being relevant, i.e. contributing in some meaningful way.

In 'every' scene? That just seems like a tall order. To make 'every' scene have some kind of custom designed hook in it for every character?

I just let the story go where it is goes. Sometimes I stop and think about how things 'would' happen. Or how to throw something new or interesting into the plot. But by and large I'm a simulationist, and the way this feels as you describe it... it would feel contrived to me, both as a player and a gm.

 

[LilithsThrall]

Can a soldier be good in non-combat situations? Sure. Depending on the soldier I suppose.

But should he be as good as a noble? A noble who is staying true to his social focus? The odds are low that he will be in the same league as the noble in the social arena.

The soldier class just isn't optimal for developing a social character. It is designed with a combat focus in mind. A soldier with some levels on him who has some social focus put into him would to my thinking be a good sergeant or officer type. But that doesn't make them 'super-suave' like the politician-esque noble who is pulling strings to get the army sent on this or that campaign to begin with.

That is what I mean by different focus, with different realms of influence. That is why I think a social character, properly played and supported, can at times have a 'disproportionate' ammount of combat power. More than the 'combat' characters.

Does it really matter how good you are with your sword if the noble you are trying to fight has his two or three hundred followers ( it is hard to count them all ) squaring off against you with him? I don't think so.

Which isn't to say I think combat characters don't have their place or obvious advantages as well. But expecting them to be better or even equal to a social focus character at anything other than fighting is as illogical as expecting the social character to be their equal in combat. It breaks down the idea of character classes and their construction as it has been done in the game. Which is what I was trying to illustrate in my previous post, kind of.

It sounds like you prefer a play approach similar to the 4th Ed D&D approach where all characters are ultimately mechanically equal and everything else is basically flavor/concept?

Actually, I was going to suggest that it sounds like you prefer a play approach similar to 4th Ed in which role is fundamentally tied to class and how good you are at a role depends on which class you pick.

I prefer a play approach which is more open - one where you aren't forcefully shoe horned into a particular role based on your class. You're right, a melee focused class shouldn't be as good as a social-focused class in social skills. But by making that argument, you are dodging around the point I'm attempting to make - that there should be no such thing as a "combat focused class" or a "social focused class".

 

[LilithsThrall]

Who said anything about shining?

I'm talking about being relevant, i.e. contributing in some meaningful way.

I think players don't want to be in the spot light every single moment of every single role playing session.
Sometimes, it feels good just to kick back and watch someone else get the spot light for awhile.

 

[Ichabod]

You are both taking what I said to some extreme. Yes, it's not necessary for every character to equally contribute all of the time, which was never what I was suggesting.

It is a good thing when one avoids scenes where characters have nothing to do. Sometimes, it will happen (it's not so good to have too many party spokespeople, for instance), sometimes the player would rather grab a bite to eat, or whatever than participate in a scene. But, the problem I see far too often is one of irrelevancy. D&D has always been designed with the intent that combat was a group effort and the primary means of overcoming obstacles, so it and its knockoffs fairly well avoid the problem.

The comment I responded to, mainly because I love ranting about how awful the soldier is in this game, was taking a black and white approach to the issue. Somehow, a middle ground of characters being constantly engaged while retaining differing strengths keeps getting lost.

Rather than establishing scenes where some of the party serve no purpose, I believe it behooves a GM to try to create scenes and situations where the entirety of the party is engaged. Now, I think this is a lot easier by splitting parties up, easier for the players anyway, much less so for the GM. To avoid the problems that causes, I actually wonder how many articles have been written on how to create scenes that keep everyone involved.