[Quests] Why People Never Pick "Fighter" or "Thief", and Should Anything be Done About it

Also realistic, unless you are the son of a powerful summoner style wizard and get to inherit all of his contracts and knowledge on what to summon, you should have to work and Experiment your way to cosmic power. I mean, you could learn some Basic stuff from a Wizarding stuff or Magic library, but wizards are a secretive bunch. There is no Logical reason why they would give out extensive lists with explanations on how to summon highly powerful demons to any random guy with enough skill to pull it off. It should also be more dangerous if you do try to just get something big. This is often done in various pieces of fiction, where summoning something that you cannot control and having no way to appeasing it can end with you becoming the summons fodder.

 

"Spellcasters" is merely a subset of "characters with flexible magic powers". For example, Panacea from Worm is not a spellcaster, but she does have very flexible magic powers.

I don't think anything "needs to be done" about people not picking pseudomundane classes like "fighter" or "thief", other than authors ceasing to assume that people will do so.

Now, on the other hand, characters who use swords but have cool powers, or thievery-themed magic-users are a different story.

 

Why "but have cool powers"? Why not "and therefore have cool powers"?

Fighters need cool toys, but they shouldn't be cool toys that supplant being a fighter, they should be ones that come from being one. Like those sword-singers from Elder Scrolls. Instead of saying "It's Magic, I Ain't Got To Explain Shit", you go "he's just that good."

 

Anything significant that isn't fighting is, probably, supplanting "being a 'fighter'". That's why 'fighter' is a lame character concept outside a combat-centric game/story/setting.

"Thief" has way more potential, because it can do things like stealing the idea of clothing or someone's inhibitions without crossing into "that's not a thief!".

Classes like "Knight", "Samurai", and "Kung Fu Master" are similar, because the first two are more of "being a noble" than "being a stabby guy", and the third gets "Anything Goes Martial Arts", and can thus do almost anything as long as she strikes a posestance first.

 

Well, you could invoke animism and allow a "fighter" to do get just about anything done by beating up the spirit of an appropriate concept until it agrees to do what they want.

This has several implementation problems:

1. A large fraction of Quests are fanfiction, and most fandoms people are into don't have such things for you to interact with, so you need to be a special-snowflake shaman to be able to interact with them -- i.e., you're a "shaman" or something, not a "fighter"
2. Even when quests aren't fanfiction, something like this kind of animism is rarely given as an up-front property of world.
3. You still usually wind up having to play out the fight, whereas the other characters generally just use their abilities and get results.

 

1: Compare "A character who materializes concepts into humanoid form and then beats them up until they do what she says" vs "a character who materializes concepts into inanimate objects and puts them in her pockets."

I think it's mainly the implicit extensibility in "materialize concepts into humanoid form" that makes it a more dominant character trait than "materialize concepts into inanimate form". They're still both special-snowflakes, but the "into humanoid form" feels way more like a "complete" character for me than the other gal.

2: Is really more "1b" than a full bullet point.

3: "Picking something up and putting it in your pocket" vs "beating someone up until they do what you want".

• Basically all the precedent in games and whatnot seems to be that beating people up takes lots of screentime and putting things in your pockets doesn't.
• Peopley things generally get more screentime than objecty things
• The "beating the spirit up until it does what you want" requires the spirit in question to realize and accept its defeat. The "putting an inanimate object in your pocket" doesn't require this.

 

I don't object to characters with cool powers and a side-order of fightering, but this topic is not (supposed to be) primarily about those characters. (We may have gotten off onto a tangent; another tangent is that I don't like things being mislabeled)

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One other thing: the shortcomings of "soldier" and "thief" characters tend to diminish as a game goes more sci-fi, because, generally, everyone implicitly gets access to "advanced technology", whereas even in the crazy-high-magic-item setting that is "any reasonable D&D game", it's much harder to get "advanced technology" (in the form of magic items)

 

*sigh*
You don't need magic to extrapolate how Fighter can have other utility, you know? Let's stay on 'Fighter can stab you REAL GOOD'. Thus, fighter makes people nervous. Fighter get bonus to Intimidate people around him/her.

There you go. Nothing magical, and now your Fighter is useful in social situation! And well, it's not hard to imagine how it progress so said Fighter can intimidate enemies during battle, lowering their morale. Or some other stuff, really.

 

I mean, it doesn't even need that much of a stretch or any kind of shamanism to have your fighter wage war against injustice or ignorance.

A fighter is skilled in battle, tactics, and war. Usually this is strength of arms, but their plans in all fields are top-rate. Boom, done.

 

Or their fame. You are Level 20 Fighter, known for slaying dragons and getting their loot and going on grand quest and shit. Your enemy is whole brigade of Level 5 Guards. Of course they'll piss their pants at seeing you.

There you go, you've done 'cutting their courage' without invoking animism or interact with spirits or what. 100% mundane.

 

Okay, but the fighter has ARRIVED at level 20 and slain all those dragons by being able to cut dragonfire in half, and being able to carve out a dragon's heart while in reach of the dragon's mouth and all four limbs.

 

Did you miss my explanation of why the two are different? Perhaps you need a link to it: http://forum.questionablequesting.c...thing-be-done-about-it.986/page-2#post-208919

It pretty much comes down to animate vs inanimate evocation and the relative amount of detail generally demanded of "I fight it" vs "I put it in my pocket"

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Even beyond that, VAH-tier "thieves" of equivalent "power level" generally have a more broad and interesting non-combat skillset than "fighters"

 

It's nice to see that you're ignoring my post, powerofvoid. I find it gratifying that you feel my points are too reasonable to be waved away by your nonsense.

 

But you don't have to materialize said concept. My previous example already illustrate it: You have enough reputation/fame to make other people fear you, they run away when you roar/appear. That's good illustration of 'cutting their courage', I believe.

It is also generally unnecessary. You don't need to know quantum physic to drive car, after all.

- Because 'putting things in your pocket' is the last part of the plan, the action. Your focus should be the planning section. The legwork. Negotiating with contact, scoping out the location, getting the map of the place, gaining special items so you can get past the obstacle, etcetera. After all that's been said and done, then you stroll and pick the items. If you need to do anything more than this, then chance are you are not a very good thief. Or the target is very hard to get.

- Obviously. You don't watch movies/read books/play games to stare at the objects, generally. You want to know what happens to the people. I don't see what's wrong with this.

- What, you spoke to the spirits and it tells you there is no way beating it won't make it accept it's defeat? Change the rule of your universe, man. You are the GM.

Back to the original point, I believe it is simply the fault of, say, GM (or writer) for making Fighter redundant. So the solution is: make them not redundant, or at least fulfill some kind of role. And make people wants to fulfill that role. The result will be them playing Fighter. There you go.

 

Spoiler

It was more that Nekraa's post was "low-hanging fruit", and yours actually takes some new thought.

"Manager" seems a quite reasonable character typse, but I would say a character like "Ruby Redd" from "Cross-/Crash: Quest" is not a "fighter". "Fighters" are the 'mons a manager sends out to clear up a zombie infestation so she can have a new swimming pool built.

Okay, so you can do VAH (Vanilla Action Hero) stuff.

What if you want to do something beyond VAH stuff, like visit a cloud castle, cure HIV, or whatnot?

Huh? The point of 1 and 1b is that in most quests you can't do these things.

In order to drive a car, quantum physics must not render cars impossible.

This person is sick. They're lying in bed right there. I pick up their disease and toss it in the garbage can.

A "Shaman" character is fine. It's also not a "fighter" character, at least as its primary class.

I'm assuming that it will accept defeat... after you've smacked it in the face a couple times and it figures out it can't hurt you.

An inanimate embodiment of someone's inhibitions doesn't need that, because it's an inanimate object you can pick up and put in your pocket.

Is what you're saying, "if combat isn't supposed to be the major focus of the quest, don't present a 'fighter' as a player character option"? Because that sounds like a reasonable position.

I think I've found some answers:

1. The kind of "fighter" and "thief" that are unpopular are "characters defined by lacking (flexible?) supernatural abilities"
2. People don't pick them because supernatural powers are generally cooler than VAH shenanigans.
3. Maybe
4. Option One: simply don't present such characters. Option Two: still don't present such characters, but instead present characters who do all that and have cool abilities. Like charisma, kung fu pressure points, or even just some class-appropriate spellcasting.

 

So are you saying that Roy Greenhilt is not an interesting character, or are you saying he's more than just fighter?

 

I'm saying that a "fighter" that gets the ability to evoke person-like embodiments of concepts to coerce and/or kill in a setting where that's not considered "natural" has gone much further beyond being a "fighter" than a "thief" who gets the ability to evoke inanimate-object-like embodiments of concepts to steal in a setting where that's not considered "natural" has gone beyond being a "thief".

I'm not saying a character who was a "fighter" can't get those abilities, I'm saying that once they do so, describing them as a "fighter" is inaccurate and/or misleading.

A shopper with 12 items in her cart can probably put a 13th item in the cart, but if she does, she can't use the 12-items-or-less express-checkout lane.

EDIT:

Before we proceed, please give some examples of Roy managing large-scale projects.

 

The characters are (potentially, depending on the details) of comparable level, but the concept-coercing "fighter"'s name doesn't reach as far in this direction as the concept-stealing "thief"

... regardless of whether that's correct, we've wandered off onto a tangent about terminology. Both characters are (probably) "solutions" to the "problem"

 

A fighter fights things. That is their entire definition.

The decision to restrict them from the field of social combat is an arbitrary one which you have decided to impose in order to enhance your claim that fighters are worthless. I do not understand why you are doing this.

Roy Greenhilt has made use of -among other things- Knowledge (architecture and engineering) checks to great tactical advantage. This shows he has a good K(arc&eng) check, which can be used (according to stormwrack) to arrange a team of people to build a ship from scratch. Is that broad enough for you? How about the fact that he's been leading a team of nutjobs and preventing them from killing each other? Heck, just his handling of Belkar shows that the fighter doesn't have to be boring.

 

A character whose primary contribution to problem-solving is leadership is no longer a "fighter-type" character -- or at least, that's no longer the primary descriptor of their character.

It's similar to how a "Wizard" character who does her most impressive and useful stuff by stabbing people in the face with a sword is not best described as a "spellcaster".

 

You are deliberately describing fighters as narrower than they are. The only reason I can see for you to do so is to win an argument in which you claim that they are worthless due to their narrow focus. The logic here is circular at best. I do not understand what you are trying to accomplish or the point you are trying to make.

I mean, if you're going to arbitrarily claim that fighters can't do anything but hit people and if they do anything else they're not a fighter anymore, why can't I claim that wizards just use magic missile, prestidigitation, and fireball, and anything else is some kind of non-wizard?

 

When you label a character something like "fighter-type", you are implying that "fighter-type" is the most important aspect of the character. (Although not the only aspect)

Consider the difference between the following two sets of choices:

#1

Pick a character type:
[ ] Blonde girl
[ ] Brunette girl
[ ] Bearded man

#2

Pick a character type:
[ ] Alexandria Package
[ ] Nonhuman Master
[ ] Tinker

A character can be more than their primary skillset, but when some other skillset become more important than the former "primary" skillset, the former primary skillset becomes just that: their former primary skillset -- the other skillset becomes their new primary skillset.

 

But you are repeatedly and deliberately claiming that things which easily define a fighter are not part of the fighter skillset. Are you trying to say that people shouldn't be allowed to call themselves fighters if they're competent?