rrwoods
2016-03-14, 07:09 PM
Does there exist a line of handbooks on playing certain roles in the party well? As opposed to class handbooks (which are for the most part pretty great!), what about a handbook for "I want to be the striker" or "I want to be the buffer/leader" etc.
The way I typically build a character (or help a player build a character) is to start by asking and answering general high-level questions about personality and mechanics (which, to me, are very interrelated, but that's a subject for another thread). Things like "I want to defend the party"/"My might upholds the weak", or "I want to strike from the shadows"/"I don't trust anyone but myself" etc. Some of those things suggest classes (e.g. Paladin or Crusader for the first, Rogue maybe for the second, etc.) but reading those class handbooks lead you to other things those classes are good for as well.
I want to stress that I think the various class handbooks that exist are pretty awesome and a wonderful asset to the community, but I don't see a ton of material on playing specific roles, which I think would also be pretty awesome. There's a scout's handbook (as opposed to a Scout handbook) that I've seen, but is there a striker's handbook? A buffer's handbook?
I feel like these types of handbooks probably end up looking like collections of the "usual suspects" so-to-speak, like "Crusader is a good class for a tank because it's (one of) the only class(es) in the game that can actually draw aggro", and "Travel Devotion is good for a melee class because it lets you move and full attack". Which probably has a lot to do with why these types of handbooks don't exist (yet); the community as a whole probably knows a lot of this stuff already. But as much of this stuff as I know for some of the roles, I don't know it for lots of others. Further, I think those types of resources would be great jumping-off points for someone new to the game playing under a DM permissive enough to grant access to all the books (or at least common subsets, like "all the completes", etc -- hell, even in core there can be a dizzying array of options if you're a spellcaster).
So, who's with me? I'd love to help contribute to such a project. (I'd love it even more if I could be proved wrong and pointed to all the stuff I'm saying is missing!)
The way I typically build a character (or help a player build a character) is to start by asking and answering general high-level questions about personality and mechanics (which, to me, are very interrelated, but that's a subject for another thread). Things like "I want to defend the party"/"My might upholds the weak", or "I want to strike from the shadows"/"I don't trust anyone but myself" etc. Some of those things suggest classes (e.g. Paladin or Crusader for the first, Rogue maybe for the second, etc.) but reading those class handbooks lead you to other things those classes are good for as well.
I want to stress that I think the various class handbooks that exist are pretty awesome and a wonderful asset to the community, but I don't see a ton of material on playing specific roles, which I think would also be pretty awesome. There's a scout's handbook (as opposed to a Scout handbook) that I've seen, but is there a striker's handbook? A buffer's handbook?
I feel like these types of handbooks probably end up looking like collections of the "usual suspects" so-to-speak, like "Crusader is a good class for a tank because it's (one of) the only class(es) in the game that can actually draw aggro", and "Travel Devotion is good for a melee class because it lets you move and full attack". Which probably has a lot to do with why these types of handbooks don't exist (yet); the community as a whole probably knows a lot of this stuff already. But as much of this stuff as I know for some of the roles, I don't know it for lots of others. Further, I think those types of resources would be great jumping-off points for someone new to the game playing under a DM permissive enough to grant access to all the books (or at least common subsets, like "all the completes", etc -- hell, even in core there can be a dizzying array of options if you're a spellcaster).
So, who's with me? I'd love to help contribute to such a project. (I'd love it even more if I could be proved wrong and pointed to all the stuff I'm saying is missing!)