#incorrect-dnd-classes

[doodlingcrayon]

I'm so sorry, I didn't have the spoons to draw this one beyond the outline but I remembering seeing this post from @incorrect-dnd-classes and almost hollered because it mapped perfectly to Lucy (fighter), Finley (warlock), and Edgar (wizard)

[the-haiku-bot]

Artificer: I’m

not only a wizard. I’m

forklift certified

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Artificer: I'm not only a wizard. I'm forklift certified

[spatteringstars]

"Mmm I think you’re underestimating the strength of human connective tissues but pop off I guess" - Dick Grayson at some point probably

[dndclassesquotes]

[incorrect-tmnt2012-quotes]

“What’s a little attempted murder between friends?”

— Karai, to April

[percabethlovebot]

the percy jackson characters playing dnd except only half of them understand how the game works and the other half either get upset about things that seem inaccurate (annabeth and reyna) or confused why their character doesn’t have the ability to have the specific powers they have (percy)

[tdc-incorrect-quotes]

SkekZok: I can’t believe you assassinated the All-Maudra! SkekVar: Well, “assassinated” implies it was politically motivated. I killed her cause she was a dick, so technically it’s just murder. SkekZok: SkekZok: That’s not better!!

[incorrect-dnd-quotes]

Artificer: “I can absolutely keep a hummingbird as a pet, bro. It's no different than having a parrot, or a parakeet. It's a bird, bro.”

Druid: “You really can't, and I'm not saying I agree with it. It's just that bird law in this country- it's not governed by reason.”

Artificer: “There is no such thing as bird law.”

Druid: “Yes, there is!”

Artificer: “I'm gonna get a hummingbird, and I'll show you.”

Druid: “Hummingbirds are illegal tender.”

Artificer: “I'm gonna get one.”

Druid: “You cannot.”

Artificer: “To spite you, I'm gonna get one.”

Fighter: “Hello? Where are we with gulls?”

[incorrect-sk-universe]

Up: So, Taz is no longer allowed to take the trash out at night. Why, you ask? Because I've caught her five times now trying to train the raccoons to fight.

Taz: You'll be thanking me one day when the third raccoon battalion saves your life

[ladyphlogiston]

Sorcerer: Nat20 for perception!

Dm: for what?

Sorcerer:.....to tell us whatever it is you've been hinting at

[incorrectneopetsquotes]

King Roo: I may not have any braincells, but I make up for it by having many heartcells.

[okaybutmakeitgayer]

Wizard, watching Fighter and Monk train: we could never pretend to be active, could we?

Sorcerer: nope.

Bard: I can grab an instrument and pretend it’s a weapon but that’s it

[renmackree]

Peter: Whenever Derek gets mad at me, I tighten all the lids on our jars so they have to ask me for help.

[sounds of glass shattering in the background]

Peter: It hasn't worked yet, but it will.

[incorrectcollectiveassrpgs]

Sorry, but you can't kill me. Sis specifically instructed me to have a good day.

- Cassian, probably

[devotedlyunlikelyshark]

Druid & Monk: Surprise! We're having a baby!

Bard: What?!

Druid & Monk: *pull out adoption papers* It's you!

[talenlee]

Primaries, Secondaries, Structure, and 4e DnD

Talking about Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons is challenging at times because I feel like I’m always coming at things from a preemptive crouch. My first draft of this started out describing a problem that people criticized, but realistically speaking, that was 10 years ago and it doesn’t really matter what people think about it now, especially because fundamentally it isn’t an incorrect thing to have noticed.

What I’m going to talk about here is structural form and it’s a thing that 4e has throughout. Honestly, you could make a reasonable model of the development of Dungeons & Dragons throughou

One of the areas where I would say that fourth edition really excels as a tabletop RPG is that its structure is rock solid. It’s not a game with tons of tables in it because most things that needed tables were instead handled by formulas and sometimes those formulas were very simple. This does make it sort of the anti-Rolemaster where, broadly speaking, you are managing a very small amount of information and the game doesn’t do a lot to generate things for you. This structure does mean that there are reliable ways that players can approach information with expectations and assumptions about how the game does work.

To be clear, I like this. It is not necessarily the best way for any game to be, but 4e is an enormous game that relies on its system being modular, familiar, and exclusionary. You know how the game works in a set of fundamental structures, and then you work out from that centre of generalities to your specifics. You don’t need to know how Barbarians work if you’re not playing one, but the fact that Barbarians work like how Wardens work like how Fighters work means that when you do pick up any of the Barbarian pieces, they are pretty familiar. This approach is a form of structuralism, and it’s really useful for making a big complicated thing handleable. Rather than having four or five versions of the same thing (like Spellcasting in 3rd edition), you can have a uniform structure that everyone recognises.

One example of a structural design in 4E is the way the game handles Primary and Secondary Stat needs for each class.

Real quick for anyone not familiar, in most of 4E’s class design, characters were making attack rolls against defenses. There weren’t any saving throws against magical spells being flung around, and for the most part enemies didn’t have a lot of opportunities to avoid things beyond specialized layered defenses like ending stuns or dazes early. You had your Armour Class, your Fortitude Defense, your Reflex Defense, and your Will Defense. This design puts agency on the actor rather than defense posture on the target, and since players are the ones enacting the things the players want, that means the die rolls that matter are the ones they make.

Now, you may not like this, especially if you like fudging die rolls like some kind of a coward I guess, but the point is for now, the fundamental structure of classes in 4E was you were powers were making attack rolls against defenses. Because of that, everyone needed to be good at making attack rolls. This was a break from third edition where it was pretty much expected that attack rolls were only for a very small set of things that were considered attacks (and which were, largely, not very good). If you were a wizard, you could build the whole character as if you never had to make an attack roll. You could, there were spells that did it, but you didn’t have to. There was no inherent assumption wizards would be good at attacking. You would be very likely expecting to meet characters that didn’t have a good attack roll.

A complaint about this design is that because everyone is making attacks, characters all feel the same. This is a reasonable complaint that if you ignore all the things that aren’t making attacks, everyone is only ever making attacks. It is true that this made 4E a game where everyone wanted to be good at connecting and therefore, everyone wanted stats that made you best at hitting. That meant that Wizards all wanted Intelligence, the stat that made you better at hitting with Wizard powers, and Fighters and Barbarians all wanted a good Strength stat because that’s how Fighters and Barbarians hit things more often.

This was, again, a complaint: The system made it so that wizards wanted high Intelligence, and Fighters and Barbarians wanted high Strength. It’s true that if you don’t like this result that this is a reasonable criticism, that this is a thing the game encourages. It’s not a criticism I much care about, mind you.

“Doesn’t this mean every member of a class will have similar stats, and naturally gravitate towards the same best powers?” you might wonder, and no! No, they solved this problem through Secondary stats. Powers came in two flavours; one, powers that only cared about your primary stat, and they were usually pretty decent, solid 8/10 kind of things. But then there were powers that could have some benefit based on your other choices, like a Pact or a Boon or a Style, and those things looked at a stat of yours that was very deliberately not the stat used to make the attack roll. These were commonly referred to as your ‘rider’ abilities, and therefore, that stat effect was the rider on the main ability.

For example, Dishearten was an attack that used Intelligence to hit, dealt damage based on Intelligence, but the penalty it could impose on an enemy’s to-hit was based on your Charisma. To that end, if you did want this power, you might want a good Charisma as well, or, if you already wanted a character with a high Charisma, you might pick this kind of power to reward that build.

There’s another structure that lives parallel here. It’s not as common, but it’s still there; there were some classes that had one secondary stat for their powers, but had two different primary stats for their powers. That meant that the class might approach hitting with stats like Wisdom or Strength, but the followup to that hitting was always going to be (for example) Charisma. This meant that there was a common thread across all members of that class, but it was never their best thing; all Clerics had some people skills, but they might be a holy smiting, mace-swinging Cleric who had people skills, or a laser beam blasting Cleric who had people skills.

4E clerics were so cool.

The other classes that did this in the Player’s Handbook were the Warlock (Charisma and Constitution) and the Paladin (Charisma and Strength). The Warlock was a bit of an orphan child at the best of times, but the Paladin was so well serviced and ate so well that it wound up with multiple fully-fledged ‘standard package’ builds you could pursue with plenty of feat support under the names of Straladin (Strength Paladin), Chaladin (Charisma Paladin) or Baladin (Balanced Paladin). The Ranger also had the opportunity to be a Strength-based or Dexterity-based attacker, though the powers were mostly all the same powers, with ‘Strength or Dexterity vs AC’ kind of attack rolls.

Sometimes for some classes that weren’t super well developed, this meant that you effectively had one primary stat and two secondary stats. There aren’t any I can find that only have one secondary stat, even the most malnourished classes I found like the Vampire have two, and some classes like the Fighter and the Warden seem to have almost every possible stat supported as a secondary stat. Your best stat was probably going to be the one that you used to hit with and your second best stat was going to be the one that gave you secondary effects you liked, which meant that most of the characters in a particular form would have similar stats and probably express a similar-ish character. If you were a wizard who liked moving things around, you probably were very intelligent and pretty wise because those were the two stats you wanted the most.

Now this does create variety within a class, but you can probably just complain it kicks the can down the road. After all, if you’re playing a Bard, are you the Charisma-Intelligence Bard, the Charisma-Wisdom Bard, or the best Bard? It’s still narrowing options.

Thing is, to me, complaining about this seems dumb when I point out the Fighter. Because everyone seems to think it’s okay that all fighters are strong and hit things hard, because that’s what being a Fighter is. Suddenly that is okay when we’re talking about limiting the options of the poor Fighter, who had people back in 4e complaining their builds were too good, too interesting, and they did too much cool stuff, when the players would much rather than two combat options, have one.

Oh and fourh the May be with you or whatever.

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