Category: DnD

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Classy

Soul of the Forest posted an interesting question: what class do you refuse to play? Their bette noir is melee DPS, which is a very reasonable position to take. Staying alive is the key difference in playing and contributing well and being a dead weight, and melee DPS is always bottom of the heal priority whilst being in the most danger of death. I stopped raiding on my Rogue because I used to die too much too easily, but I’ll still play melee DPS as long as I’m wearing plate or have some good self heals.

Armagon and Endalia responded, with tanking being the main thing they avoid (largely due to the pressure from other players), and I’m sure there are more thoughts out there too.

I’m quite happy playing tanks of all descriptions, and love playing a Hunter obviously. I haven’t played a lot of healers in an MMO, but in Overwatch I love playing Mercy.

The class or role I just can’t bring myself to play is a caster. Something about using magic just doesn’t gel with me, and I can’t find a way to make it work. Despite casters being essentially a Hunter with lightning or flame instead of arrows and bullets, they don’t work for me.

The same fear of magic applies in tabletop RPGs like DnD, some of which is down to the overwhelming spell tables, but it’s also just not a class I can roleplay at all. It somehow seems too passive, or that it’s not me doing the work, it’s the magic.

So I guess my characters have to have some element of physicality to them, something with heft or guile or a pet and a bow. I’ll leave the weaving of magic to the experts.

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Developing appreciation

It’s been nice reading the various Developer Appreciation Week posts on the Blaugust blogs, the surge of positivity is very welcome.

The obvious candidate for me is Blizzard. Warcraft has provided endless hours of entertainment, fun, laughter, obsession, joy, sorrow, and accomplishment, and continues to do so even now. Most recently I’ve discovered the cleverness of level scaling in dungeons, which has meant our lowbie guild can all be completely different levels but still play together – something that must have been very hard to implement into the creaking framework of old WoW code, and yet appears seamless to the player.

Overwatch is also a brilliant game, the perfect antidote to the long termedness of an MMO. Jeff Kaplan in particular is a great front man, communicating extremely well and obviously loving what he’s doing, but the entire team have achieved incredible things. The game is constantly evolving and updating, which is all due to the dedication of the dev team no doubt.

On a slightly different note, I’d also shout out to the team that have put out 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. Our tabletop group have loved the current version, which managed to simplify the rules somewhat and also introduce a bunch of great new mechanics like Inspiration – basically a free re-roll granted by te DM to a player for particularly clever role playing. It’s a simple idea that escalates the enjoyment instantly without bogging things down. They have also managed to make all the classes feel exceptionally heroic, with every class feeling powerful and different, and the official modules have been entertaining for DM and players both.

Finally I’d call out gaming bloggers again. So many great, enthusiastic, knowledgeable, curious writers who are passing on their love of a game, or many games, to all the readers out there. And through that enthusiasm they in turn highlight what a great job so many of the developers are doing. It’s a virtuous circle, and may it ever grow stronger.