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Totally Guy
2010-02-16, 03:36 AM
I was thinking about D&D and there's something I just don't understand. Every time a character takes a class level his potential to be good at something different falls.

There was an episode of Lost I saw recently where the physicist character had a flashback where his mother told him off for playing the piano because that was a skill unrelated to being a physicist. As the audience I sympathise with the boy and disagree with the mother.

But lets say the physicist was actually a wizard. And his mother caught him trying to take a level of bard. Then from a D&D optimisation view point she'd be right. You can't do both.

It seems that more doors close than open as you gain levels. This opposes my view on reality.

Rixx
2010-02-16, 03:49 AM
Since there's no cap on your progression, there's no such thing as wasted time. Sure, a Wizard 2 / Bard 1 may not command the eldritch might of a Wizard 3 - but you're still better than a Wizard 2 or a Bard 1. Plus, versatility is often discounted as worthless, but I don't think it is.

Temotei
2010-02-16, 03:53 AM
Since there's no cap on your progression, there's no such thing as wasted time. Sure, a Wizard 2 / Bard 1 may not command the eldritch might of a Wizard 3 - but you're still better than a Wizard 2 or a Bard 1. Plus, versatility is often discounted as worthless, but I don't think it is.

Versatility is never discounted as worthless. Versatility is what makes a wizard tier one and a sorcerer tier two.

Wings of Peace
2010-02-16, 03:55 AM
Could we please use an example that is not the Wizard? Since in 3.5 the Wizard may as well have his picture in the dictionary next to the word versatility among other things.

Temotei
2010-02-16, 03:57 AM
Could we please use an example that is not the Wizard? Since in 3.5 the Wizard may as well have his picture in the dictionary next to the word versatility among other things.

It wasn't me who brought it up. :smalltongue:

Example: Warblade versus fighter. The warblade has more versatility in terms of abilities--especially early on. The fighter has more versatility in terms of feats, which may eventually overcome the maneuvers of the warblade. Taking one level of warblade and three levels of fighter, on the other hand, is probably less effective than taking four levels of warblade.

Math_Mage
2010-02-16, 04:49 AM
Someone with a part-time job doing physics and a part-time job playing the piano is unlikely to be as competent in each area as someone with a full-time job doing one. It's not just D&D that encourages specialization.

bosssmiley
2010-02-16, 09:56 AM
It seems that more doors close than open as you gain levels. This opposes my view on reality.

Reassess your view on reality.

From the moment you're born, nay, the moment you're conceived, choices are closed off to you. Sometimes this is for your own good. You know your hands start as flippers and then certain cell growth pathways shut down to allow other groups of cells to form the fingers, right? Restricted growth = greater utility there.

Ditto with intellectual or physical pursuits. Choose a certain degree (law), and you get to follow one path (law), but not another (medicine, physics). Just as the law student generally doesn't end up as a physicist or surgeon, the pre-med or physics student - as a rule - doesn't get to be a High Court Judge in later life. Forgo any of those options to train obsessively as an athlete, and you have a shot at Olympic gold that none of the above do.

Excellence requires commitment (and a neglect of other areas of endeavour), and specialism is the sign of a mature culture. The world is too big, rich and complex for one man to be a master of all things, so we cunning little monkeys invent comparative advantage and division of labour.

Mile wide and an inch deep, or mile deep and an inch wide: pick one. :smallwink:

Totally Guy
2010-02-16, 11:18 AM
That what my mum told me when I said I'd started playing role playing games every saturday.:smalleek: I wouldn't amount to anything.

Beowulf DW
2010-02-16, 11:42 AM
"A jack of all trades is a master of none," is a saying that is older than D&D by far. Life is always a matter of choice: to choose one thing is to deny yourself somethingelse. We only have so much time in this life, so there is always a limit to our choices. In a way, this makes our choices that much more important. The rewards become so much sweeter, and the penalties become so much more bitter.

By choosing an English Major, I have denied myself many things that I may not even be aware of. If you choose to be competent at many different things, you may never actually master anything.

However, if being a jack-of-all trades is what makes a person happy, then who can complain. Our society seems to value the kind of life that lets you take root, so to speak, i.e. one college degree, one career, one home, etc. But not everyone likes that kind of life. I've known people have held several jobs, changing companies and positions every few years or so, and they were perfectly happy with it, with no intentions of changing their life-style.

To be honest, nature seems to favor adaptability over specialization. Species that evovle to fit a special niche may be masters of what they do, but if conditions change they can't adapt. It's always the creatures that don't specialize too much (i.e. Humans, wolves, rats) that tend to be successful.

Starbuck_II
2010-02-16, 11:50 AM
I don't know Birds have certainly lasted a long time. And they specialize alot: what foods, when eat, etc.

In fact, we have to use Phylogenetic Species concept because Biological one didn't work for birds as well.
Birds think faster and see better than humans (they see UV, Infared, etc). If birds learned to talk (rather than just mimic humand like parrots): they might rule the world!

Tyndmyr
2010-02-16, 11:56 AM
Potential is meaningless. You do not have the potential to do all those things, you have the potential to do some of those things. You also have the potential to do absolutely nothing.

The potential you have is not really an asset...your actual skills and acheivements are.

Totally Guy
2010-02-16, 12:02 PM
The potential you have is not really an asset...your actual skills and acheivements are.

Well that's ok then. These guys were making me worried that if I went home and started reading a book unrelated to my field that I'd be pushing useful knowledge out of my brain.

lsfreak
2010-02-16, 12:02 PM
I don't know Birds have certainly lasted a long time. And they specialize alot: what foods, when eat, etc.
Birds as a whole have lasted a long time. Individual species are a completely different matter, and that's what you need to look at. Go to the Galapagos and introduce a plant that crowds out one of the finch's food sources in a matter of years, and that population dies off. Get a late snow in an area where hummingbirds are, they starve.

On the other hand, jays and crows are remarkable adaptable. House sparrows rapidly took over North America because they weren't anywhere nearly as picky about food and nesting as the native sparrows.

EDIT: There's a difference between your area of specialty and a casual interest in something else, and trying to master 5 different things as once. As frustrating as it is, you simply cannot do the latter.

The Demented One
2010-02-16, 12:03 PM
It's inherent to any game system where you develop in "trees"–in this case, going up levels, but also things like disciplines/gifts/whatnots in World of Darkness and charm trees in Exalted. If you invest resources in one class/path/tree, they're resources you can't invest in another tree. The class system just exacerbates this by consolidating everything into linear progressions.

Greenish
2010-02-16, 12:06 PM
To be honest, nature seems to favor adaptability over specialization. Species that evovle to fit a special niche may be masters of what they do, but if conditions change they can't adapt. It's always the creatures that don't specialize too much (i.e. Humans, wolves, rats) that tend to be successful.Humans haven't existed long enough to be considered successful. Come back in ten million years. (Wolves and rats are newbies too.)


The most successful life-forms on earth are archaea and bacteria (who are master specialists). Eukaryotes are an afterthought. :smalltongue:

Oslecamo
2010-02-16, 12:08 PM
To be honest, nature seems to favor adaptability over specialization. Species that evovle to fit a special niche may be masters of what they do, but if conditions change they can't adapt. It's always the creatures that don't specialize too much (i.e. Humans, wolves, rats) that tend to be successful.

The ant-eater would like to have a word with you. It eats only ants, and has survived more time than most other species.

Granted, that's probably because ants are one of the more sucessfull animals on the planet.

Specialization is quite usefull-as long as you specialize in something that won't change. Fleas, doing little more than drain blood and reproduce, have existed since the time of the dinossaurs, because there are always big creatures to drain blood from.

On the other hand, versatility may turn out fatal if you see yourself in direct competition for very limited resources, as versatility doesn't come free, and can't be used whitout oportunities.

When the going gets tough, specialists on the basic things are the ones who have more sucess, while adaptability shines when there's an overabundance of resources.

Mankind in particular specialized in a less-known task: long distance land travel. We can expand over mountains and rivers and deserts relatively easily while those kind of barriers stop other big mammals cold. This allowed us to reach a much bigger pool of resources to take advantage off.

Specialization in exotic things, like that bird who eats only one kind of flower wich is quite fragile by itself, now that's asking for trouble.

And then there's bacterias indeed, wich have survived untill today with stupidly basic systems.

Tyndmyr
2010-02-16, 12:09 PM
Well that's ok then. These guys were making me worried that if I went home and started reading a book unrelated to my field that I'd be pushing useful knowledge out of my brain.

What? Books? Reading books will make you dumb, obviously. Of course they do. Someone once told me they didn't, but I asked how they knew so, and they said they read it in a book. It's all so obvious, isn't it?

Kobold-Bard
2010-02-16, 12:17 PM
The ant-eater would like to have a word with you. It eats only ants, and has survived more time than most other species.

Granted, that's probably because ants are one of the more sucessfull animals on the planet....

Continued survival by mooching off the success of a superior species. Hmm, this plan has merit :smallbiggrin:

Venerable
2010-02-16, 12:21 PM
That what my mum told me when I said I'd started playing role playing games every saturday.:smalleek: I wouldn't amount to anything.

That might be true if all you want out of your gaming is fun. But you can use your gaming as a springboard into different subjects that you can use in other areas of your life.

For example, take optimization. Does weapon A do more damage than weapon B? To prove that, you've got to learn some algebra. How does a d12 die roll differ from 2d6, or how often do you expect to crit? Now you're into probability. What do you gain by taking feat X as opposed to feat Y? Now you're talking opportunity costs, which is a term from economics. (Not to mention how to calculate realistic falling damage, which takes physics.)

Or consider your fellow players. How do they get along? How are player problems resolved? What are the players' motivations, and how are those satisfied (or not, as the case may be)? If you observe and think about what's happening around you, you can learn some good lessons about group dynamics, problem resolution, and psychology.

Do you really like to role-play your character? Maybe an improv or acting class would be good for you. If you're playing a historical RPG, use it as an opportunity to study the period you're playing in.

RPGs can be just a game if that's all you want from them. But with an open, curious mind, they've got a lot more to offer.

(EDIT: Even though I sound like a teacher, I'm not. I've actually used some of these techniques, particularly the psychology and history.)

Greenish
2010-02-16, 12:23 PM
Continued survival by mooching off the success of a superior species. Hmm, this plan has merit :smallbiggrin:It's what everyone* who can't photosynthesize does.




*Except for chemosynthesists, who aren't dependent on silly sunlight, and those who eat them.

Kobold-Bard
2010-02-16, 12:25 PM
It's what everyone* who can't photosynthesize does....

True true. But I was thinking of somehow gaining superpowers by forming a symbiotic relationship with a virus of some kind :smallcool:

Dervag
2010-02-16, 12:29 PM
Well that's ok then. These guys were making me worried that if I went home and started reading a book unrelated to my field that I'd be pushing useful knowledge out of my brain.Nonsense. That's not how brains work. Over time, you may forget a skill you don't use, but you don't lose skills simply because you learn new ones.

All this talk about limiting potential only makes sense in one way- your choice to do one thing prohibits you from doing anything else while you are doing one thing. And so what?

Think about it: an hour spent doing X is an hour not spent doing Y. But either way you spend an hour, and you have a finite number of hours in your life; you can't do everything. So you end up having to make choices, some of which are wise and some of which aren't. No way around it. Maybe you do X for an hour and Y for an hour, but not Z; maybe you spend two hours on X because you love it that much, whatever. But you can't spend an unlimited amount of time on an unlimited number of things.

You can't do every single thing you could theoretically do, because that would require an infinite number of you's to do it all, or a single immortal you to find the time.

Beowulf DW
2010-02-16, 12:38 PM
The ant-eater would like to have a word with you. It eats only ants, and has survived more time than most other species.

Granted, that's probably because ants are one of the more sucessfull animals on the planet.

Specialization is quite usefull-as long as you specialize in something that won't change. Fleas, doing little more than drain blood and reproduce, have existed since the time of the dinossaurs, because there are always big creatures to drain blood from.

On the other hand, versatility may turn out fatal if you see yourself in direct competition for very limited resources, as versatility doesn't come free, and can't be used whitout oportunities.

When the going gets tough, specialists on the basic things are the ones who have more sucess, while adaptability shines when there's an overabundance of resources.

Mankind in particular specialized in a less-known task: long distance land travel. We can expand over mountains and rivers and deserts relatively easily while those kind of barriers stop other big mammals cold. This allowed us to reach a much bigger pool of resources to take advantage off.

Specialization in exotic things, like that bird who eats only one kind of flower wich is quite fragile by itself, now that's asking for trouble.

And then there's bacterias indeed, wich have survived untill today with stupidly basic systems.

Creatures that are simple tend to adapt better because they're like blank slates, similar to the first organisms on this planet. They can adapt quickly because there is not as much to change, unlike more complex creatures. Creatures that are not simple, but are highly adaptable tend to survive by using multiple niches.

This is very much like how classes in all sorts of games work. The most basic ones are useful because they can turn into many different things (i.e. Final Fantasy III-fighter easily can turn into a knight, viking, dragoon, dark knight, etc.). Classes that are more "jack-of-all-trades" tend to succeed by working around the advantages of more specialized classes (i.e. some kind of caster/warrior combo might use what little magic they have to get close to a more specialized caster, and turn the battle towards melee).

Starbuck_II
2010-02-16, 12:43 PM
True true. But I was thinking of somehow gaining superpowers by forming a symbiotic relationship with a virus of some kind :smallcool:

You mean like humans? Yes, we have viruses in our genome. That was one of our traits that made us so successful (and our downfall if another virus learns to activate the dorment ones).

Kobold-Bard
2010-02-16, 12:46 PM
You mean like humans? Yes, we have viruses in our genome. That was one of our traits that made us so successful (and our downfall if another virus learns to activate the dorment ones).

Ok so I failed Biology. Thank you for pointing out my failure to everyone, it's appreciated :smallamused:

Eloel
2010-02-16, 12:49 PM
Then there are roaches. Those fricking roaches. They've been around for -very- long. How successful does that make them?

Oslecamo
2010-02-16, 12:56 PM
You mean like humans? Yes, we have viruses in our genome. That was one of our traits that made us so successful (and our downfall if another virus learns to activate the dorment ones).

Actualy, that is still in discussion. As far as we know, those virus may just be parasites wich we never managed to get rid off.

On the other hand, we have many bacterias inside our digestive system that do a lot of work for us.

Most plants have deep relations with microscopic fungus to help them get nutrients from the floor.

Eloel
2010-02-16, 12:59 PM
IIRC the 'human' as we know it, is just alot of cells 'leeching' off of each other. Aren't all cells 'living'?

Greenish
2010-02-16, 01:03 PM
IIRC the 'human' as we know it, is just alot of cells 'leeching' off of each other. Aren't all cells 'living'?Ah, but the cells are nothing but huge factories to help DNA to propagate. Because that's what DNA does.

Lysander
2010-02-16, 01:04 PM
In a sense yes, since it becomes harder and less pragmatic to start new classes. So it's hard to change your totality of being, who you primarily are, the types of things your good at.

On the other hand, you get skill points every level and can put them in whatever you want. It's never too late to start taking ranks in Perform (Piano) even if it is cross class.

Oslecamo
2010-02-16, 01:05 PM
IIRC the 'human' as we know it, is just alot of cells 'leeching' off of each other. Aren't all cells 'living'?

Not exactly. Some cells leech more than others.

The poor smucks that make the exterior of your skin and hair? They're dead as soon as they're born. They're there just to protect the other cells under them with their bodies.

The red cells in your blood live three months average, working nonstop. The white cells live some years, but can and will get killed by the droves fighting diseases if needed, to protect the other cells.


The brain cells? Those are the ruling elite. They live longer than any other cell in the body. Much longer. Your whole life actualy. While the rest of your body will be rebuilt several times during it. They drain a lot of resources for their mass. And besides shouting orders and taking care of paperwork, they don't really do anyting.

Starbuck_II
2010-02-16, 01:05 PM
IIRC the 'human' as we know it, is just alot of cells 'leeching' off of each other. Aren't all cells 'living'?

The top layer of skin cells are dead on humans, but yeah they were at one time alive.
Can't forget how eukaryotes captured mitochondria and enslaved it back in the day (sure, textbooks say it was mutual relationship, but we know better).

frogspawner
2010-02-16, 01:19 PM
I was thinking about D&D and there's something I just don't understand. Every time a character takes a class level his potential to be good at something different falls.
I know this too, but not everyone understands it.

It arises from the Experience Points system. E.g. a 1st-level character puts in 1000xp worth of effort following his primary profession (class). Ding! They're a 2nd level Oojah (or whatever). BUT if they spend their 1000xp on multi-classing to Wotsit first, it's then going to take them 2000xp worth - twice as much effort - to reach the 2nd level of Oojah ability.

I recently suffered with this problem, when our DM 'kindly' made us all take a level of Racial Paragon. I explained I didn't want it - and that it'd then make it harder for me to reach subsequent levels in the class I'd actually chosen. But he just couldn't/wouldn't get it, just shaking his head at my ingratitude over his 'generosity'...

JoshuaZ
2010-02-16, 01:33 PM
I don't know Birds have certainly lasted a long time. And they specialize alot: what foods, when eat, etc.

In fact, we have to use Phylogenetic Species concept because Biological one didn't work for birds as well.
Birds think faster and see better than humans (they see UV, Infared, etc). If birds learned to talk (rather than just mimic humand like parrots): they might rule the world!

Parrots don't just parrot. It is unfair to parrots that we use the term to just mean "repeat mindlessly." Africa Grey Parrots for example, engage in overcorrection of irregular verbs when they first learn them just as little children do. For example, if they have heard the word "run" they will say "runned" rather than "ran." This is important. It means they are learning and applying general rules rather than just repeating words and phrases they've heard before. Parrots in the wild may very well be talking anyways. We have very little understanding of what African Grey noises mean in the wild. It isn't that implausible that they have something very near to a language in the natural enviromenent. And no, having language doesn't necessarily help them take over the world. While birds can build and manipulate tools, they aren't as good at it as humans (the best for this purpose are ravens and they clearly don't have language). Moreover, the general dominance of humans helps make it very difficult for another species to achieve equivalent dominance even if they have the brains and physical capabilities for it.

Draz74
2010-02-16, 01:58 PM
There was an episode of Lost I saw recently where the physicist character had a flashback where his mother told him off for playing the piano because that was a skill unrelated to being a physicist. As the audience I sympathise with the boy and disagree with the mother.
That mother has never heard of Richard Feynman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman), greatest physicist since Einstein. Forget playing the piano, he was obsessed with juggling, drumming, lockpicking, painting, hieroglyphics, biology, and pranking.

More broadly, that mother does not understand the nature of creativity in general. One could make the argument that Feynman and people like him (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_Musgrave) just had such superior minds that they could excel in their chosen fields in spite of their entertaining many distractions; but that seems extremely unlikely to me. It seems much more logical that lateral interdisciplinary connections (i.e. "synergy bonuses" in D&D terms) are an integral part of the true creative process, and that they're much more valuable to a person's mind and abilities than the mother on Lost has a clue about.

Someone mentioned "Jack of all trades, master of none" as a real-life proverb. That can be true, but ... "Renaissance Man" has none of the negative "master of none" connotations. And the only difference between "Jack of all trades" and "Renaissance Man" is whether you're really excellent at at least one thing.


It seems that more doors close than open as you gain levels. This opposes my view on reality.

I think the primary difference in D&D from real life, on this issue, is the expectation that the challenges one faces will scale so dramatically and predictably as one's career progresses. If PCs were going to be facing dire rats, wyrmling dragons, orcs, kobolds, lemures, and so on throughout most of their careers, I think specialization wouldn't be such a big concern. Jack-of-all-trades characters would be more popular, because there wouldn't be the sense of urgency of "in three levels, you'll start facing CR 11 monsters, so you'd better have 5th-level spells by then." (You'd also need to make it so that hyper-specialization, i.e. Batman wizard, wasn't also the best path to versatility. :smallsigh:)

This is one reason it bothered me so much to learn that 4e has adopted auto-scaling DCs, e.g. for Skill Challenges or the "when you're epic level, any Green Slime you run into should automatically be Astral Slime instead" thing. The obsession with CR-appropriate encounters had already gone too far in 3e, IMHO. I like D&D better when your low-level encounters sometimes include a dragon that you'd better run away from NOW, and your high-level encounters sometimes include a pack of goblins who you can beat in your sleep. More believable, and gives more of a sense of progress and character growth.

WalkingTarget
2010-02-16, 02:15 PM
It arises from the Experience Points system. E.g. a 1st-level character puts in 1000xp worth of effort following his primary profession (class). Ding! They're a 2nd level Oojah (or whatever). BUT if they spend their 1000xp on multi-classing to Wotsit first, it's then going to take them 2000xp worth - twice as much effort - to reach the 2nd level of Oojah ability.


This is precisely my gripe with level-based games in general. Then again, I came to D&D the long way around (starting from CoC and detouring through Deadlands and various oWoD games first).

bosssmiley
2010-02-18, 11:10 AM
I know this too, but not everyone understands it.

It arises from the Experience Points system. E.g. a 1st-level character puts in 1000xp worth of effort following his primary profession (class). Ding! They're a 2nd level Oojah (or whatever). BUT if they spend their 1000xp on multi-classing to Wotsit first, it's then going to take them 2000xp worth - twice as much effort - to reach the 2nd level of Oojah ability.

Not quite. It arises from the "single accumulating XP track" mechanic of d20.

Old (TSR) AD&D was cleverer than new (WOTC) D&D in that each additional level in a class had XP requirements that doubled, up until 10th or so. Your character had one XP total, but two entirely separate sub-totals for "XPs spent on this class".

So you might get to, say, 7th level in one class, then switch to a second. In the time (and XP) it took you to get from 1st to 7th level in your new class your buddies would have only advanced a single level (7th to 8th) in their sole classes. Take a third class and by the time your buddy is a level 9 [foo], you're a 7[foo]/7[bar]/7[skub]. You both have the same XP total, you've just invested it differently.

Net result: multi-classing that actually worked.

Single classers and multi-classers could all play the same game, because the generalist/Renaissance Man was only a level or two behind his buddies in each class: what he lost in monofocal horsepower he mad up in breadth of versatility.
You could multiclass and not have to forgo high level power.
The XP system naturally modelled "easy to learn, impossible to master" without tying itself in absurd knots.

Aaaaah, them were the days... :smallamused:

frogspawner
2010-02-18, 12:21 PM
This is precisely my gripe with level-based games in general. Then again, I came to D&D the long way around (starting from CoC and detouring through Deadlands and various oWoD games first).
Ah, you've been spoiled by Skill-based systems. You'll never know true satisfaction again until you renounce XP-based foolishness and return to the fold! :smallwink:


So you might get to, say, 7th level in one class, then switch to a second. In the time (and XP) it took you to get from 1st to 7th level in your new class your buddies would have only advanced a single level (7th to 8th) in their sole classes. Take a third class and by the time your buddy is a level 9 [foo], you're a 7[foo]/7[bar]/7[skub].
Was that 2e? 'Cos in 1e it only worked that way for Bards (and I use the term 'worked' very loosely)...

WalkingTarget
2010-02-18, 12:28 PM
Ah, you've been spoiled by Skill-based systems. You'll never know true satisfaction again until you renounce XP-based foolishness and return to the fold! :smallwink:

Return to the fold? I've played in a grand total of 3 (short) D&D campaigns ever. I said I had a gripe with level-based, I never said that it didn't also influence my actual gaming practices. :smalltongue:

frogspawner
2010-02-18, 12:36 PM
Return to the fold? I've played in a grand total of 3 (short) D&D campaigns ever. I said I had a gripe with level-based, I never said that it didn't also influence my actual gaming practices. :smalltongue:
Good for you! It seems I need my own advice more... (Currently: Playing 1e-strict and 1e-variant; Running 3.5; Wanting BRP... Sigh) :smallsigh:

Dervag
2010-02-18, 12:59 PM
1E and 2E are so similar that they sort of blur together at the edges; in my first campaign we mostly relied on a 2E Player's Handbook... while the DM Guide and all our Monster Manuals were 1E.

tyckspoon
2010-02-18, 01:03 PM
Was that 2e? 'Cos in 1e it only worked that way for Bards (and I use the term 'worked' very loosely)...

Not 2e either, at least not the base game- there probably was a variant printed somewhere that worked roughly that way. In the main rules, multiclassing was not a choice you made at levelup. If you were a multiclass character, you were multiclass from level 1 on. If you were a human, you could not do what the system called 'multiclassing' at all- instead, you had the option of Dual Classing, which is.. sort of vaguely like 3rd Ed's multiclassing. Except you needed amazingly high primary scores for your two classes to do it, and you were severely penalized for using any abilities from your first class while leveling your new class.. if you decided to add Fighter to your Wizard, for example, you didn't get to be a Fighter who could use magic. You got to be a level 1 Fighter with a little more HP.

Chaelos
2010-02-18, 01:12 PM
Ditto with intellectual or physical pursuits. Choose a certain degree (law), and you get to follow one path (law), but not another (medicine, physics). Just as the law student generally doesn't end up as a physicist or surgeon, the pre-med or physics student - as a rule - doesn't get to be a High Court Judge in later life. Forgo any of those options to train obsessively as an athlete, and you have a shot at Olympic gold that none of the above do.

Excellence requires commitment (and a neglect of other areas of endeavour), and specialism is the sign of a mature culture. The world is too big, rich and complex for one man to be a master of all things, so we cunning little monkeys invent comparative advantage and division of labour.

Mile wide and an inch deep, or mile deep and an inch wide: pick one. :smallwink:

The fact that you used law for that example makes me smile. The entire idea behind a modern American law degree is that you can do anything you want with it. If anything, getting a J.D. opens doors--it doesn't force you down a narrow "mile deep" path.

Here's a dirty little secret about lawyers that people often don't bring up: being a lawyer is not about knowing the law. Nobody can know the law; there's simply too much of it out there. Sure, you're expected to know the basics of doctrinal law (contracts, torts, property, evidence, etc), the professional rules of your trade, the court procedures, and how to write legal papers, but when a client walks into your office and says "Here's my problem. What do I do?", nine times out of ten a lawyer is going to have to research before he can answer the question.

Lawyering, at its most basic, is all about potential. You become an expert on your client's question only when that question is asked.

Now, based on your conclusion, I'm sure you'd say that the most optimal "character sheet" for a lawyer would probably be something like Poli-Sci major 5/Communications major 5/Law student 10. That's a narrow, "specialized build" that focuses on analytical, political thinking and how to communicate those ideas more clearly. Indeed, many law students follow a similar path... but they're not at all necessarily "the best" lawyers, or even the best law students.

Me, I'm a law student now. Before that, I was a biology student and a creative-writing/English student at the same time. My "character sheet" would be the most unfavorable mismatch of "multiclassing" of all time--and yet, I've done quite well at all my areas of study. Summa ***-laude in undergrad, currently top 10 in my law class, that sort of thing. I intend to graduate a semester ahead of the rest of my class, and I'm already working on getting a job lined up afterward.

While it's true that I couldn't very well write an academic research paper on the very latest cutting edge stem cell study tomorrow, I've found that the perspective and knowledge base of being a much-maligned "jack of all trades" is incredibly helpful in approaching an issue within a professional context. Those of us who don't develop tunnel vision often can look at a problem more creatively than those who've spent their entire lives preparing to become lawyers.

I'm not putting down my colleagues at all; they're also (for the most part) very good at what they do, and many of them are also capable of creative analysis of a complex problem. But my point is that it's a false dichotomy to suggest that one must always either hyperspecialize, and excel, or study many areas, and fail at all of them. I'm no polymath, but many of the most successful and interesting people I know were Renaissance [wo]/men of one form of another.

I should also point out, obligatorily, that D&D is not life. Sometimes the model may hold true, sometimes it might not, but I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it either way.