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View Full Version : Niche protection vs well-rounded characters



Quertus
2019-04-06, 09:42 AM
So, on the one hand, you want everyone to have their chance to shine, and to feel like they need their party members.

On the other hand, you want everyone to participate in the game, and don't want hyper specialists who cannot put their pants on without help.

At the one extreme, you have characters who literally cannot participate in others' minigames, so they get to shine no matter how bad / unbalanced they are. And everyone else sits there twiddling their thumbs while it's that character's turn in the spotlight.

At the other extreme, you have such generally competent characters that they can solo encounters, and are left wondering why they need the rest of the party. There's nothing that they cannot do.

And what if you're missing a player this session? Or what if it's an open table - does someone "have to play the healer" / dues the game fall apart if you don't have a cookie cutter party?

So, how do various systems handle this? How do you deal with these issues? And how do you think the "ideal" system would handle this?

DeTess
2019-04-06, 10:07 AM
So, on the one hand, you want everyone to have their chance to shine, and to feel like they need their party members.

On the other hand, you want everyone to participate in the game, and don't want hyper specialists who cannot put their pants on without help.

At the one extreme, you have characters who literally cannot participate in others' minigames, so they get to shine no matter how bad / unbalanced they are. And everyone else sits there twiddling their thumbs while it's that character's turn in the spotlight.

At the other extreme, you have such generally competent characters that they can solo encounters, and are left wondering why they need the rest of the party. There's nothing that they cannot do.

And what if you're missing a player this session? Or what if it's an open table - does someone "have to play the healer" / dues the game fall apart if you don't have a cookie cutter party?

So, how do various systems handle this? How do you deal with these issues? And how do you think the "ideal" system would handle this?

I think Shadowrun is a good example of the hyper-specialist system you described, with characters like Deckers and some mage specializations operating basically entirely separate from the rest of the party most of the time. Shadowrun also has (or should have, if you've got a halfway competent DM) way for dealing with lacking some of these specializations, as the system is generally wide open enough that you could find a way to do what you set out to without a decker,, or alternatively, it's quite possible for you to hire a decently competent NPC for decent pricing to do what you need to have done.

Overall though, I think such hyperspecialization is not a good thing in a system, as it means that the spotlight often only shines on one character while everyone else does nothing. I actually think something like DnD 5e is pretty well balanced between generalism and specialism. Every class has their own thing that makes them unique, but each adventurer is also generally versatile enough that they can contribute in most situations, especially if you spread out your skills known a bit (my general rule of thumb is to have at least one physical skill, one social skill and one exploration skill).

KillianHawkeye
2019-04-06, 11:29 AM
I think that a mix is good. Stay away from either extreme.

So you have characters that are somewhat specialized but also have one or two secondary skill sets that they can fall back on (or can use to cover for when a specialist in that area is not available).

I know there have been times in D&D games where my character hasn't invested in some skill like Spot/Listen/Perception, but it doesn't matter because somebody else regularly rolls in the 20s or 30s and spots everything. But then there were other times where I ignored a skill that another character would obviously be an expert in, and it hurts the party when that character isn't around.

I ran a short adventure for my group one time that was focused entirely on Fey creatures, and had a few things like centaurs, treants, dryads. Out of the three sessions that the adventure lasted, the Druid player only made it to the last one, so for the first two times we played there was NOBODY in the party with Knowledge (nature)! :smallsigh:

Pippa the Pixie
2019-04-06, 07:35 PM
How do you deal with these issues? And how do you think the "ideal" system would handle this?

I very much dislike the idea that the game ''must have" set character roles for players. It's bad enough when players get it in their head that they must force themselves to be a role or set character because the game demands it. And even worse is when a player or two makes whatever character they want...and then forces and bullies the other players into playing a set something.

When a player willing wants to make a very limited, one trick pony character, I do warn them that it's a bad idea. I do suggest that players make characters that can fit at least two or three roles.

In most systems, it's generally not a good idea to stick to one mechanical path. Often, after the first couple skills and abilities the bulk of the rest are not directly useful for the role or are just nice add ons.

The ideal system needs to be flexible, and not do the ''only ability X can do X". Though really this is more on the game play type of thing. No matter the system, the DM can craft a good game for everyone.

Mechalich
2019-04-06, 09:14 PM
Every game (or campaign, if using a universal systems like GURPS) is going to have some core circumstances that all characters are will encounter on a nearly constant basis, probably multiple times per session. Whatever those circumstances are, every character requires a certain minimum competency in those fields. They don't need to necessarily excel in those areas, but they need to be able to navigate a modest level of challenge in those areas.

In a game like D&D that set of core competencies is broadly grouped as 'adventuring.' The ability of a character to equip themselves, scout out a dungeon location, and then function in an expedition to raid and pillage said dungeon. In other games the competencies might be very different. In the oWoD, the core competency of a character was broadly the ability to function as a citizen in whatever country you happened to be living in the late 20th century. Characters need to understand how to use phones, computers, transportation, and to perform in typical social situations. Whatever the competency happens to be, the game system needs to be setup so that all characters have the relevant abilities at some minimum functional level, by default. Regrettably, few systems are set up this way, though early editions of D&D, where the core competencies mostly boiled down to 'hurting things' actually had it sewn up.

That's not to say that players can't build character who lack those competencies of their own volition, but it should be understood as a choice that brings very real disadvantages and should require party approval. This ought to be handled in the same way as building characters with obvious physical disabilities. Must tables intuitively understand that playing a character confined to a wheelchair requires special approval. Playing a strict pacifist in D&D should be handled the same way.

When it comes to specializations these should either take the form of being better at some particular core competency than others - the Face for example is simply a character who's much better at the 'basic social interaction' requirement than everyone else in the party - or access to some ancillary ability that is useful but not necessary to the core experience - a Druid's shapeshifting is a nice example - though it's important to make sure this new ability doesn't override all the traditional problem-solving methods which is a common problem when handing out open-ended specialty powers like 'magic.'

Spore
2019-04-07, 09:00 AM
As I started off roleplaying I always made specialists. I don't care if they can't even shoot a straight arrow they're gonna be so gooooood at stealing underpants. Like, I could steal a lich's underpants including its phylactery. Those characters were beaten down in combat, they sucked in social situations, and they literally never found the pants they sought for because poor perception.

Then I flung back to generalists. Suddenly the character became very meh, but in the context of other specialists I suddenly ran the gig. No one could disable traps? My half-assed attempt at it was the best the party could bring. The party did not have a doctor? Suddenly my teenager with basic knowledge of disinfecting wounds and bandaging was the king of doctors.

Nowadays I think I got it figured out.
My primary ressources go to being good at one thing and to create situations that make it possible to be good at my thing:
My tanky bruiser in an post apocalyptic game basically just picked anything he could to reduce damage so he wasn't twohit bit shotguns or rifles. My wizards usually take defensive measures to utility spells to actual offensive/damage spells in a ratio of 1:2:1. Tools to disable the enemy, tools to stay alive, and tools to avoid the awkward "the fighter fails to deal the last 2 hit points of damage dragging out the combat".

My secondary ressources go to cover up major weaknesses.
My melee monster would eventually learn to use guns OR be more diplomatic so he doesn't HAVE to break everyone's neck all the time. My wizard would be a good sneak to prevent combat I cannot win or have proficiency with thieves' tools to simply avoid problems with magic altogether.

I usually leave flaws within the personality of the character not mechanically anymore.
I used to give the DM a venue of attack that was surely cripple my character. My alchemist had terrible charisma and I rped the social ineptitude (so well that people actively were pissed off at some ingame choices). My Pathfinder oracle was virtually worthless in direct combat.

Cluedrew
2019-04-07, 09:58 AM
I think you can have both.

Raise the bar of competence so that the default is everyone can do things just not particularly well. Then let every character pick a few things they can do particularly well. It should be roughly consistent regardless of which ones you pick (so one does not overwhelm the others), make rare things cheaper for even spotlight.

I suppose actually doing it is harder, but it is simple in concept.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-04-07, 10:13 AM
I think you can have both.

Raise the bar of competence so that the default is everyone can do things just not particularly well. Then let every character pick a few things they can do particularly well. It should be roughly consistent regardless of which ones you pick (so one does not overwhelm the others), make rare things cheaper for even spotlight.

I suppose actually doing it is harder, but it is simple in concept.

I like this. I prefer to have systems that presume competence. Where to be totally useless in, say, combat, you have to anti-optimize. Where you can get away without a dedicated Face or Healer, even if having someone skilled in such things makes certain situations easier.

It does make the "I did something no one else could do" type of spotlighting harder, but I prefer to fix that by moving the focus away from "me vs you" to "us". We did something, together, that no one else could do.

Mechalich
2019-04-07, 06:34 PM
If a competency is so crucial that every single character must have it by default, why not just assume everyone is able to perform whatever the competency allows them to perform without an explicit rule? For example, by default, everyone is able to walk. You don't need to have an explicit skill in walking to get started. You can make a character who's missing legs, or is a mermaid, but those are exceptions to the general rule of 'everyone can walk'.

Well, the competencies necessary for PCs may be very different for those of NPCs, even if they are built using the same system, which often means there are spaces on a character sheet that can be left blank even though a player really, really shouldn't do that.

For example, in the oWoD, if you don't put at least 1 dot in Computer, you can't use one (Knowledges can't be rolled untrained in that system), at all. This makes gameplay within a functional party extremely difficult, yet at the same time there are absolutely plenty of people in the modern world who have no idea how to use computers (and when the oWoD was published in the pre-smart phone era, it was actually a global majority), and it was also a significant plot point that major supernatural NPCs who might be hundreds of years old had real problems using technology.

This is actually a really common problem with skill systems in that players, especially players unfamiliar with the system or min-maxers seeking to optimize some particular build, will forget that they need to spend a certain amount of points at chargen on baseline things that most, but not all, everyday people can do. Being able to drive a car is a good example, you would not believe what proportion of pregen characters in oWoD splat books have no dots in drive and therefore can't drive a car (which can render your incredibly bad*** vampire warrior surprisingly useless if they get stuck on the wrong side of town).

Now, I do think it is proper design for all PCs to have a sort of 'PC-package' that covers essential skills, but if the game system isn't highly focused this is something the GM has to make up themselves. D&D is actually a pretty high focused system, all in all, it's about going on adventurers in dangerous places where you slaughter your way to the loot. Many other systems support much more variability and the skills necessary for a given campaign very quite widely. In particular, there are some systems where you could both a game that was almost 100% combat and one that included no combat whatsoever - Eclipse Phase for example. So I think it makes more sense for systems to a lot some measure of points at chargen to be placed in 'essential' abilities, with the GM being able to define essential according to need.

Max_Killjoy
2019-04-07, 07:06 PM
So, on the one hand, you want everyone to have their chance to shine, and to feel like they need their party members.

On the other hand, you want everyone to participate in the game, and don't want hyper specialists who cannot put their pants on without help.

At the one extreme, you have characters who literally cannot participate in others' minigames, so they get to shine no matter how bad / unbalanced they are. And everyone else sits there twiddling their thumbs while it's that character's turn in the spotlight.

At the other extreme, you have such generally competent characters that they can solo encounters, and are left wondering why they need the rest of the party. There's nothing that they cannot do.

And what if you're missing a player this session? Or what if it's an open table - does someone "have to play the healer" / dues the game fall apart if you don't have a cookie cutter party?

So, how do various systems handle this? How do you deal with these issues? And how do you think the "ideal" system would handle this?


"Needing" the other party members should be about more than what slot they fill in a list of Skills OR a list of Tropes.

Niche Protection, to me, just sounds like an excuse to have a checklist of characters off one of those "five man band" or "the ______ Ranger" lists on TV Tropes.

The sneaky one!
The magic one!
The healing one!
The bruiser one!
The ranged one!


Ugh. Ugh ugh and ugh.

Mr Beer
2019-04-07, 07:59 PM
I like niche protection because it helps to ensure everyone gets a chance to shine and also it's boring to have a party of clones adventuring together. At the same time, adventurers who can't put their own underwear on are annoying, so some core competencies should be common.

Spore
2019-04-08, 04:53 AM
I like niche protection because it helps to ensure everyone gets a chance to shine and also it's boring to have a party of clones adventuring together. At the same time, adventurers who can't put their own underwear on are annoying, so some core competencies should be common.

Sometimes niche protection can even derive from the experience.

"We need the [face] to talk even though his character has no business in this discussion."
can ruin the best RP situations.

"Come over, [brute], and remove this heavy obstacle. After all this is why we bring you."
feels incredibly derogatory.

But the worst offender imho is:
" So our plan involves the rest of the party doing nothing while [thief/infiltrator] goes solo into the enemy stronghold and steals [McGuffin]."

Thinker
2019-04-08, 10:49 AM
I like the way Scum and Villainy handles this (and probably Blades in the Dark, though I haven't read those rules as thoroughly). All characters have access to the 12 actions, which more or less equate to skills in other games. The player proposes how they want to approach an obstacle, the player and GM agree on which action that would be, and the GM specifies the risk and effect of the action. The risk is how likely and harsh are the consequences of failure on a three-point scale (desperate, risky, and controlled). The effect is how much the player can actually expect to accomplish from the action on a five-point scale (limited, standard, great, and extreme).

Effectively, this means that a player in a can propose different actions to try to overcome the obstacle, reducing an over-reliance on a specific ability. For example, let's say that there's a fight. You have two characters in a crew facing off against some foes: Samson and Jordan. Samson is a Muscle (a class that promotes fighting), while Jordan is a Scoundrel (a class focused on subterfuge). Samson will mostly be using the Scrap action, the primary action for fighting directly. This might be OK against a small group, but if it's more than a few enemies, Samson might have some difficulty with effect (the game punishes you for putting yourself in a poor position). Jordan might not have as many points in scrap, but is good at Command and Scramble. On his first turn, he might use Command to order a gang of roughnecks that he hired into the fight and hopefully improve Samson's effectiveness and/or his own. Basically, Samson's doing all he can to hold their position by himself, but now that he has backup, he can maybe go on the offensive. On the next turn, Jordan might try to find higher ground to take out his foes from safety - reducing his riskiness and possibly improving his effect as well.

Classes are designed so that Samson will get more out of Scrap than Jordan will, but by creative thinking, Jordan can contribute to the fight without as good skills. By that same token, however, Samson's niche is protected because he is straight up better at fighting than Jordan and doesn't have to think so hard to improve his chances at winning the fight. The game also encourages characters to have some points in actions besides their primary one. If Jordan doesn't put any points into an action he's attempting, he has to roll two dice and take the worse one so no matter how clever he is with position and effect, he still has to eventually scrap so he'll have to put something into that skill.

This example can extend to plenty of other scenarios from piloting starships to hacking a computer. You might try to mechanically override an AI sentry-turret, but probably wouldn't have the same success as someone hacking the software controls.

The game also has rules for group actions that help protect niches and not punish people for having low stats in those skills. For any action where more than one group member is taking part, the players will nominate a leader. Everyone who's taking the action rolls their dice. The group uses the best result. The leader suffers stress for every member who would have failed the roll otherwise (stress is a meta-currency normally used to reduce consequences for failure).

Talakeal
2019-04-08, 11:28 AM
"Needing" the other party members should be about more than what slot they fill in a list of Skills OR a list of Tropes.

Niche Protection, to me, just sounds like an excuse to have a checklist of characters off one of those "five man band" or "the ______ Ranger" lists on TV Tropes.

The sneaky one!
The magic one!
The healing one!
The bruiser one!
The ranged one!


Ugh. Ugh ugh and ugh.

In my experience giving everyone a role on the team is more realistic, not less.

For example, US special forces teams tend to have a pair of weapon specialists, medics, engineers, communications, operations, and command. Making each team effectively two six man bands.

Max_Killjoy
2019-04-08, 11:34 AM
In my experience giving everyone a role on the team is more realistic, not less.

For example, US special forces teams tend to have a pair of weapon specialists, medics, engineers, communications, operations, and command. Making each team effectively two six man bands.


They're all first and foremost soldiers, and if they can't meet the physical, combat, and marksmanship requirements, they don't make the cut, regardless of whatever other skills they bring. They're often also cross-trained in case someone goes down.

Also, which specific units are you referring to?

Talakeal
2019-04-08, 11:48 AM
They're all first and foremost soldiers, and if they can't meet the physical, combat, and marksmanship requirements, they don't make the cut, regardless of whatever other skills they bring. They're often also cross-trained in case someone goes down.

Also, which specific units are you referring to?

Absolutely true.

Hard niche protection is stupid and unrealistic, but if you micromanage exactly what level of specialization is allowed / encouraged by the game you tend to get unhappy players who lose out on the feel if customization. Some players will want to cross train, others will not.

I am no expert, but from what google is telling me that seems to be te standard format for special forces ODAs across the united states armed forces.

Here is a link to the army description: https://www.goarmy.com/special-forces/team-members.html

And I am finding similar information for the other branches.

Friv
2019-04-08, 12:15 PM
If a competency is so crucial that every single character must have it by default, why not just assume everyone is able to perform whatever the competency allows them to perform without an explicit rule? For example, by default, everyone is able to walk. You don't need to have an explicit skill in walking to get started. You can make a character who's missing legs, or is a mermaid, but those are exceptions to the general rule of 'everyone can walk'.

You don't need an explicit skill in walking (and usually if you can't that is taken as a drawback of some kind in the mechanics,) but a lot of systems have stats to define how fast you are or how long you can run for.

The D&D equivalent is your Base Attack Bonus in 3.x and 4e, or your Proficiency Bonus in 5e. Everyone is considered to have a certain ability to swing weapons around if they're adventurers. You don't have to devote resources to "I understand how fighting works", because fighting is a core competency of adventurers. But you can have a gradiant from "capable in a fight" through "skilled in a fight" to "exceptional in a fight."

PhoenixPhyre
2019-04-08, 12:27 PM
You don't have to devote resources to "I understand how fighting works", because fighting is a core competency of adventurers. But you can have a gradiant from "capable in a fight" through "skilled in a fight" to "exceptional in a fight."

And you can have multiple gradients in different styles of fighting, if that's a significant part of the game. Or whatever else may be important.

A social-heavy game would have a proliferation of different ways to do social things, but everyone would have some basic ability. Being able to make a character who can't interact socially in a useful fashion in such a game isn't a strength, it's a trap.

A combat-heavy game has a proliferation of ways to engage in combat and presumes that all viable characters specialize in one or more such ways. Being able to make a pacifist in such a game isn't a useful feature.

A narrative-control-heavy game requires that characters all have tools to control the narrative. A helpless bystander isn't a valid character concept for such a game.

Personally, I find hard niche-protection/serial-spotlight games annoying. Each character can get involved at best 1/N of the time and are off-camera (or so outclassed as to be mostly useless) the other 1-1/N of the time. It also means that you have to provide every defined role. Don't have a X? You fail. Don't have a Y that can Z? You fail.



"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." --Time Enough for Love