What character classes do you gravitate to?

Dr Zaius

Chief Defender of the Faith
Joined
May 1, 2001
Messages
8,902
Reaction score
408
Location
The Forbidden Zone
First name
Don
Country
llUnited States
Everyone has their favorite types of characters and character classes, and most people have a few they never play as well. Do you tend to stick to certain character classes all the time, or do you play lots of different types?
 

Aries

Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2002
Messages
4,187
Reaction score
5
Location
Earth
Country
llCanada
I shy away from usage of magic, I find I rarely do a decent job of getting the best use of the system.

And as difficulty level is based on ALL your capacities, and assumes you will use them, I often think I am in over my head with magic using PCs.

Not that I don't like using magic as a DM, but as a DM, I can get away with fudging dice rolls, and making **** up :)

Otherwise, I usually can be assumed to play just about anything.
 

Boonierat

Biệt Ðộng Quân
Joined
Aug 7, 2002
Messages
1,065
Reaction score
4
Location
Grenoble
Country
llFrance
The basic one: Fighter (or Warrior, Soldier, Street Samurai, whatever...:smoke: )

 

Whizbang1963

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 27, 2005
Messages
2,582
Reaction score
107
Location
USA
Country
llUnited States
I'll try any class at least once..

but change this up..what races won't you play or do you play most consistently?

I prefer playing
Half-Elves
Elves
Humans
Dwarves
 

Aries

Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2002
Messages
4,187
Reaction score
5
Location
Earth
Country
llCanada
I like to play humans, when the guy running the game realises, there HAS to be a downside to not being human.

Otherwise, who wants to be human and not get perks.
 

M Faulkner

Disgruntled Democrat
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
1,451
Reaction score
510
Location
Formerly The Ghetto
First name
Michael
Country
llUnited States
I like the stealthy kind. a Rogue or Ranger.
I am currently playing a Druid/Ranger. (Don't tell the guys in the ASL forum!)
 

M Faulkner

Disgruntled Democrat
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
1,451
Reaction score
510
Location
Formerly The Ghetto
First name
Michael
Country
llUnited States
The basic one: Fighter (or Warrior, Soldier, Street Samurai, whatever...:smoke: )

I played Shadowrun in college. 1st edition had some problems (with magic) that we had to freelance, but I still think it was/is one of the best games. (or at least I had the most fun playing it).
 

Whizbang1963

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 27, 2005
Messages
2,582
Reaction score
107
Location
USA
Country
llUnited States
Pete,

Of the guys (and women, two of them) that I am gaming with, at least 3 others play wargames and that includes ASL.

That's very cool...I'm finding it harder and harder to find paper and pencil gamers..I'm spending more time playing WOW and LOTR because I can't get folks to sit at a table or around the living room to play a boardgame or do some roleplaying...it's a damn shame really...
 

M Faulkner

Disgruntled Democrat
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
1,451
Reaction score
510
Location
Formerly The Ghetto
First name
Michael
Country
llUnited States
That's very cool...I'm finding it harder and harder to find paper and pencil gamers..I'm spending more time playing WOW and LOTR because I can't get folks to sit at a table or around the living room to play a boardgame or do some roleplaying...it's a damn shame really...
It was kinda cool to start playing D & D again. Most of the group is around 40ish (two are in their 30s). We had all played RPGs in the past and were being nostalgic and decided to play. We have been having a blast. Our party name is the SBR Gang. (Not trying to offend anyone)!! SBR is the abbreviation for "Short Bus Riders." Our rolling (as a group) was so pathetic, and still is.
 

jwb3

Just this guy, you know?
Joined
Feb 21, 2007
Messages
4,393
Reaction score
260
Location
Pittsburgh, PA
Country
llUnited States
It was kinda cool to start playing D & D again. Most of the group is around 40ish (two are in their 30s). We had all played RPGs in the past and were being nostalgic and decided to play. We have been having a blast. Our party name is the SBR Gang. (Not trying to offend anyone)!! SBR is the abbreviation for "Short Bus Riders." Our rolling (as a group) was so pathetic, and still is.
Huh. Sounds, errrmm, vaguely familiar. :)

My local gaming group, which started out as die-hard ASLers and then slowly got tired of "All ASL, all the time!", decided to try role-playing again sometime after D&D 3rd came out. We'd all been RPGers at some point in our pasts, but I was the only one who still did it regularly, and I'd mostly switched to LARPs.

Personally, I like D&D 3rd better than 1st or 2nd because it's a relatively tactical, "wargamey" system. They absolutely hated it. Combat was too complex, which took out the drama for them. And there were too many things that were different... for example, the fact that some spells changed their names was a big issue to some.

And as a group, we were just completely incompetent. Almost every fight was won with half the party unconscious and making stabilization rolls. One time in a dungeon the party wandered in something like three different directions, ended up opening about five different doors in the space of a game-minute, and had to fight off half the dungeon's monsters in one battle. Putting out a big red button with a sign saying, "Danger! DO NOT PUSH!" was absolutely guaranteed to have one result... :rolleyes:

Eventually they all declined to play 3rd Ed any more, and we moved on to Hackmaster. Don't get me started about Hackmaster... :mad: But they're my friends, so I play anyway.

Given that Hackmaster actively encourages incompetence (one of our characters has Short Term Memory Loss, another is practically blind...), you can safely assume that the competency level of our group did not go up with this change of systems! :D

So when our group of adventurers needed to come up with an official group name in order to register with the authorities of the Little Keep on the Borderlands, we ruled out name after name as sounding too... well... competent. Then somebody suggested, "We should call ourselves the Short Cart Society!" Agreement was unanimous, except for me who had absolutely no idea what they were talking about.

And once they explained it to me, I had to agree. It may be offensive (though that has never stopped us before...), but it's certainly appropriate!


John Brock
 

Aries

Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2002
Messages
4,187
Reaction score
5
Location
Earth
Country
llCanada
D&D 3.5 is a good game if you ONLY want to min max a killing machine. Sadly too many people think rolegaming is ONLY about killing things.

It takes a very superior DM to run a game, and not have it end up just being about killing things.

I tend to avoid magic users, because, if you ain't a total pro with the magic system chances are you are dead meat. Which is why I tend to gravitate to something that is very lethal with conventional fighting. Although having a good fighting type that knows some good minor magic is an advantage.
 

jwb3

Just this guy, you know?
Joined
Feb 21, 2007
Messages
4,393
Reaction score
260
Location
Pittsburgh, PA
Country
llUnited States
D&D 3.5 is a good game if you ONLY want to min max a killing machine. Sadly too many people think rolegaming is ONLY about killing things.

It takes a very superior DM to run a game, and not have it end up just being about killing things.
(I'll stick to 3.0, since that's the version we played. AFAIK there were no major philosophical differences between the two, though...)

I don't think that this has to be true, any more than it had to be true with 1st ed (where you only got experience for killing and for looting). Both 1st Ed and 3.0 are really just frameworks; what you build on them is up to you. In other words, IMO, there is nothing about 3.0 that makes it inherently more difficult to play all the other parts of the game (interacting with NPCs, exploring, developing interesting characters, and so on) compared to 1st Ed. Certainly, the 3.0 character I played was not especially about being a killing machine, even though that was essentially his only job in the party.

I do agree that 3.0 is a system that rewards min-maxing (for combat or for any other purpose) and I also think that it is possible for people to be dazzled by all the pretty lights of Spring Attack, Great Cleave, and all the other combat feats. But most of them are probably the same people who would have thought "rolegaming is only about killing things" anyway!


John
 
Last edited:

Aries

Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2002
Messages
4,187
Reaction score
5
Location
Earth
Country
llCanada
You are mostly right.

People that will min max, will min max.

Sadly 3.5 just makes min maxing so darn effectively nasty and easy.

As for difference between 3.0 and 3.5, they toned down some stuff in 3.5 that got out of hand in 3.0 (I can't point to any examples, I am parroting opinions of my gaming friends).
 

jwb3

Just this guy, you know?
Joined
Feb 21, 2007
Messages
4,393
Reaction score
260
Location
Pittsburgh, PA
Country
llUnited States
You are mostly right.

People that will min max, will min max.

Sadly 3.5 just makes min maxing so darn effectively nasty and easy.
I was very disappointed when, not too long after the release of 3.0, Dragon mag started running little sidebars in all their 3.0 coverage about different ways to min-max. I thought it set a horrible example, and never really understood why they thought it was a good idea.


John
 

Aries

Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2002
Messages
4,187
Reaction score
5
Location
Earth
Country
llCanada
The only thing I can think of, is that A. rolegaming is actually historically an extension out of table top wargaming, and thus logically it can be argued that of course min maxing makes sense, as all wargamers strive to dominate the battlefield routinely through superior tactics and B. it therefore makes "sense" to use wargamer thinking in a rolegame.

It just gets annoying, because ROLEgaming CAN be fun, and excessive ROLLgaming CAN in time suck all the fun out of a game by making it just a succession of hack and slash.

I once illustrated the whole futility of hack and slash to a friend when I took his Rolemaster design (uses percentile not d20 system) and made a template of the ideal Fighter ie killing machine for his game. What you do, is you pick out ONLY the skills needed to kill things brutally efficiently, and you determine ONLY the traits needed to make those skills shine. And you bluntly ignore virtually anything else. For instance, if Charisma has no worth to the template, then it gets given the worst stat, it gets no improvement whatsoever, and as a player, you simply ignore any action that requires Charisma, and you the player just act anything out as if your fighter didn't have a lame Charisma stat.

I recently played in a game where I had to 18 stats. I gave one to Dex (I wanted an archer) and I gave one to Charisma (I wanted him to be likable). Sadly though, I found that the game was just going to be hack and slash. My 18 Charisma wasn't worth squat to the group. It didn't contribute to monsters getting dead. No one ever wanted to let me use my dude in a way that his Charisma could impact the situation. Eventually the DM said I could rebuild the guy. So I put the 18 in strength and turned my archer into an even better killing machine.

I like Alternity much better. It's the only game I will run as DM. It rewards a player built with a brain. It penalizes harshly any player that has a glaring deficient stat(s). And the game also makes it easy to observe early on, if you insist on a combat encounter several times every game session, you likely won't be around 10 sessions later without extreme good fortune hehe.
In short, the game requires something better than just resorting to violence.
 
Top