Various role-playing RPG game stuff not deserving its own thread

[Lhynn]

Wonder where are all the stealth mages. Feel like instant death at the tip of your fingers and nonexistent armor noise would make it a natural combo. Unless spells are really that noisy? Don't think they should be unless it's an explosion spell though.

Invisibility is a 2nd level spell. That said, generally speaking mages forego those kinds of spells because they eat up slots and are not as powerful as other forms of damage mitigation.
Mages get spells that make them tankier than fighters, often also allowing them to damage whomever attacks them, hiding seems kinda ******** at that point.

[Rand]

...and if you read the text immediately before the terrain examples it says:

► Show Spoiler

Tier and Terrain Effects: Throughout these examples, the term “per tier” is
used to show how an effect scales. Multiply the per tier value by 1 for heroic
tier, 2 for paragon, and 3 for epic. For instance, if a terrain feature grants a
+1 bonus to attack rolls per tier, the bonus is +1 at heroic tier, +2 at paragon
tier, and +3 at epic tier. Similarly, some terrain effects call for skill or ability
checks. The DM usually chooses an easy DC from the Difficulty Class by
Level table (page 126) to set a DC that’s appropriate to the creature’s level.
Terrain effects are scaled in this way scales so that the terrain stays challenging
as adventurers and monsters gain higher skill modifiers and more
hit points. For instance, the cave slime found in the deeper reaches of the
Underdark is thicker and more slippery than the thin sheen found in higher
dungeon levels, so the Acrobatics DC to avoid falling prone is higher.

Oh? Which of the (at least) three versions of the explanations in the 4th edition books does that come from?

[Valter]

Wonder where are all the stealth mages. Feel like instant death at the tip of your fingers and nonexistent armor noise would make it a natural combo. Unless spells are really that noisy? Don't think they should be unless it's an explosion spell though.

Invisibility is a 2nd level spell. That said, generally speaking mages forego those kinds of spells because they eat up slots and are not as powerful as other forms of damage mitigation.
Mages get spells that make them tankier than fighters, often also allowing them to damage whomever attacks them, hiding seems kinda ******** at that point.

Tank mages are not common either. Oh and I don't know about DnD rules I'm just talking video game RPGs in general. You get your mage party member it's either a DPS, a debuffer or a healer, or a mix of either of these. Very formulaic.

[Lhynn]

Wonder where are all the stealth mages. Feel like instant death at the tip of your fingers and nonexistent armor noise would make it a natural combo. Unless spells are really that noisy? Don't think they should be unless it's an explosion spell though.

Invisibility is a 2nd level spell. That said, generally speaking mages forego those kinds of spells because they eat up slots and are not as powerful as other forms of damage mitigation.
Mages get spells that make them tankier than fighters, often also allowing them to damage whomever attacks them, hiding seems kinda ******** at that point.

Tank mages are not common either. Oh and I don't know about DnD rules I'm just talking video game RPGs in general. You get your mage party member it's either a DPS, a debuffer or a healer, or a mix of either of these. Very formulaic.

This isnt true, in almost every rpg the mage will have a tanking option and it will be absolutely viable all the way to endgame. Its actually hard to think of a game where mages dont have the option to be tanks.

[J1M]

...and if you read the text immediately before the terrain examples it says:

► Show Spoiler

Tier and Terrain Effects: Throughout these examples, the term “per tier” is
used to show how an effect scales. Multiply the per tier value by 1 for heroic
tier, 2 for paragon, and 3 for epic. For instance, if a terrain feature grants a
+1 bonus to attack rolls per tier, the bonus is +1 at heroic tier, +2 at paragon
tier, and +3 at epic tier. Similarly, some terrain effects call for skill or ability
checks. The DM usually chooses an easy DC from the Difficulty Class by
Level table (page 126) to set a DC that’s appropriate to the creature’s level.
Terrain effects are scaled in this way scales so that the terrain stays challenging
as adventurers and monsters gain higher skill modifiers and more
hit points. For instance, the cave slime found in the deeper reaches of the
Underdark is thicker and more slippery than the thin sheen found in higher
dungeon levels, so the Acrobatics DC to avoid falling prone is higher.

Oh? Which of the (at least) three versions of the explanations in the 4th edition books does that come from?

Rules Compendium. p305

[J1M]

Invisibility is a 2nd level spell. That said, generally speaking mages forego those kinds of spells because they eat up slots and are not as powerful as other forms of damage mitigation.
Mages get spells that make them tankier than fighters, often also allowing them to damage whomever attacks them, hiding seems kinda ******** at that point.

Tank mages are not common either. Oh and I don't know about DnD rules I'm just talking video game RPGs in general. You get your mage party member it's either a DPS, a debuffer or a healer, or a mix of either of these. Very formulaic.

This isnt true, in almost every rpg the mage will have a tanking option and it will be absolutely viable all the way to endgame. Its actually hard to think of a game where mages dont have the option to be tanks.

World of Warcraft
Wizardry

[Rand]

...and if you read the text immediately before the terrain examples it says:

Oh? Which of the (at least) three versions of the explanations in the 4th edition books does that come from?

Rules Compendium. p305

Please feel free to find the other two in the books that contradict that, and each other.

[J1M]

Oh? Which of the (at least) three versions of the explanations in the 4th edition books does that come from?

Rules Compendium. p305

Please feel free to find the other two in the books that contradict that, and each other.

Maybe they had to spell it out in errata and future versions because people with no imagination or reading comprehension skills pretended they would play the game if they did.

[Valter]

Invisibility is a 2nd level spell. That said, generally speaking mages forego those kinds of spells because they eat up slots and are not as powerful as other forms of damage mitigation.
Mages get spells that make them tankier than fighters, often also allowing them to damage whomever attacks them, hiding seems kinda ******** at that point.

Tank mages are not common either. Oh and I don't know about DnD rules I'm just talking video game RPGs in general. You get your mage party member it's either a DPS, a debuffer or a healer, or a mix of either of these. Very formulaic.

This isnt true, in almost every rpg the mage will have a tanking option and it will be absolutely viable all the way to endgame. Its actually hard to think of a game where mages dont have the option to be tanks.

I am most familiar with RPG fantasy mages from Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Fire Emblem, several 2010s MMORPGs... Also remember a game I played a lot where you'd pick between a two-handed staff or a wand + spellbook. Can't remember the name of it tho
Of all of these, only on Elder Scrolls I can remember having a damage reduction spell or something alike so you are not wrong, but it did not seem anywhere near as optimal as just strapping on 30kg of armor. And on the stealth mage matter, it does allow you to cast stuff while hidden, but I really hated that daggers got a 3x increase on stealth or whatever stupid **** that was. Well why shouldn't my rock spike not deal 50x damage? It's 50x heavier than a dagger! The discrimination is endless!
I also played the Pathfinder video games and it is true that you have many more options there, but I do not recall any of the spellcasting companions you get being specialized in any form of tankiness when you get them. I actually think one of them was an Arcane Trickster or something alike as @UltraFan123 mentioned, so kudos for that game.

Also the core question here, regardless if we're speaking of tank or stealth mages, is not whether they exist, but rather "why are they not more common?". Of course these archetypes exist, fiction is very creative, but go search for images of a Mage or a Sorcerer and it's all very similar.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Certain Trails games allow you to build tank mages. There are arts which increase your defensive stats (crest, which can be stacked three times), arts which grant HP shields like Earth Guard, arts which can block an incoming attack once (Earth Wall), arts that increase evasion by 50% like Crescent Eye. You can stack a lot of HP and defense quartz on the character, and there are Master Quartz like Magius which increase your arts damage the less HP you have. There are several characters the caster aesthetic like Tio, Altina, Olivier, Agnes, etc, who have weapons with longer reach (including orbal staves which shoot magical orbs), meaning that if you build them as evasion tanks, they can almost always counterattack. (The counterattack mechanic is paradoxical in Trails. If melee martialist evasion tanks evade an attack, the enemy might be just out of range and thus you can't automatically counter attack. So it makes more sense to build your ranged character as tanks).

FF11 has the ninja job that can be mained or equipped as a subjob. The main attraction is being able to cast shadow clones who take hits for you. That can be kinda caster like, though this will likely be paired with a martialist themed melee job rather than someone who appears to be wearing robes and wielding a staff.

[Lhynn]

Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Fire Emblem

Elder scroll games didnt really have classes. Only starting skill kits. That said, "mages" wearing heavy armor, or conjuring up armor with conjuration made them pretty tough.
Dragon Age had Arcane warriors, a mage specializacion with such ludicrous damage reduction that you couldnt be hurt on the highest difficulty, you could tank forever.
As for fire emblem, depends on which, but most mages had access to promotions like dark knight.

World of Warcraft
Wizardry

Yeah, those are good examples.

[J1M]

Tank mages are not common either. Oh and I don't know about DnD rules I'm just talking video game RPGs in general. You get your mage party member it's either a DPS, a debuffer or a healer, or a mix of either of these. Very formulaic.

This isnt true, in almost every rpg the mage will have a tanking option and it will be absolutely viable all the way to endgame. Its actually hard to think of a game where mages dont have the option to be tanks.

I am most familiar with RPG fantasy mages from Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Fire Emblem, several 2010s MMORPGs... Also remember a game I played a lot where you'd pick between a two-handed staff or a wand + spellbook. Can't remember the name of it tho
Of all of these, only on Elder Scrolls I can remember having a damage reduction spell or something alike so you are not wrong, but it did not seem anywhere near as optimal as just strapping on 30kg of armor. And on the stealth mage matter, it does allow you to cast stuff while hidden, but I really hated that daggers got a 3x increase on stealth or whatever stupid **** that was. Well why shouldn't my rock spike not deal 50x damage? It's 50x heavier than a dagger! The discrimination is endless!
I also played the Pathfinder video games and it is true that you have many more options there, but I do not recall any of the spellcasting companions you get being specialized in any form of tankiness when you get them. I actually think one of them was an Arcane Trickster or something alike as @UltraFan123 mentioned, so kudos for that game.

Also the core question here, regardless if we're speaking of tank or stealth mages, is not whether they exist, but rather "why are they not more common?". Of course these archetypes exist, fiction is very creative, but go search for images of a Mage or a Sorcerer and it's all very similar.

If you look at the history of RPG classes (there's a lengthy deep dive into the baseline classes here that I enjoyed listening to) the quirky ones can usually be traced back to a small number of specific characters that people were looking to emulate. For example, the Ranger starting as Aragorn (basically just a top tier fighter) and evolving into Drizzt (fighter with dual wielding, pet, nature magic).

There's probably an argument to be made that the Bard can trace back to The Hobbit character of the same name, and you even see this with something like the Demon Hunter class in World of Warcraft. It was just Illidan the class for a decade before they decided to expand on the broader concept of "consuming an enemy's power source to use it against them" with the introduction of a void specialization.

TLDR: To popularize swordfighting or plate wearing mages you need Harry Potter to don plate mail in book ten or a really popular character that does this on Game of Thrones. Without that, the Swordmage/Magus/Gish will remain a fringe element. Should Elric have been that breakthrough character? Maybe, and maybe he still could if it gets licensed into a film trilogy, but for whatever reason it didn't stick the first time around.

[J1M]

Used AI to create an infographic about fantasy power sources. It's getting nearly impossible to get AI to draw a picture. Even in something as innocuous as this I ran into the censorship algorithm multiple times.

• Added a halo just fine, but then refused to edit any picture with a halo
• Was fine drawing a sun to represent the heavens but would not draw anything to represent hell
• Added the compass and square only after many warnings about associating it with anything that might offend the masons
• Refused to draw even an abstract representation for the man's brain
• Refused to draw the man's heart multiple times
• Oddly had no complaints about the male nudity that I edited out later

[DemoGraph]

Refused to draw even an abstract representation for the man's brain
Refused to draw the man's heart multiple times
Oddly had no complaints about the male nudity that I edited out later

Brainless heartless penis owner completely rhymes with toxic feminism.

That being said, nice pic, stolen. What did you use to draw it and is it free to use?

[J1M]

Refused to draw even an abstract representation for the man's brain
Refused to draw the man's heart multiple times
Oddly had no complaints about the male nudity that I edited out later

Brainless heartless penis owner completely rhymes with toxic feminism.

That being said, nice pic, stolen. What did you use to draw it and is it free to use?

I just used the copilot panel in Edge. Free to use with Microsoft account. Added the letters with Paint.NET.

[rusty_shackleford]

are there any RPGs where you learn talents by finding trainers and having them teach you cool (unique) abilities?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

are there any RPGs where you learn talents by finding trainers and having them teach you cool (unique) abilities?

I think Breath of Fire 3 and 4 did this.

[J1M]

are there any RPGs where you learn talents by finding trainers and having them teach you cool (unique) abilities?

Arcanum

[Tadeusz]

are there any RPGs where you learn talents by finding trainers and having them teach you cool (unique) abilities?

Underrail has this in limited capacity as some perks are available only in the game world (philosophy perk for example is available only from a certain character).
Planescape: Torment has the whole quest to change your class tied to certain characters so the player must find them first. Also Ignus can teach you some unique spells.

[Kalarion]

are there any RPGs where you learn talents by finding trainers and having them teach you cool (unique) abilities?

So did the Avernums from 4 onward.

I just want to add that Breath of Fire 3 did it the best I've ever seen, at least in my opinion. There were trainers all over the world, and you could apprentice yourself to them (only one at a time, but you could switch whenever you wanted to). Some of them you just needed to talk to them to make them available, others required you to bring them special items or pay them money or accomplish some objective. They would teach you new skills on their own schedule after a required number of level ups (one trainer might train you on his first skill after 2 levels, then the next after 3 more, then the final after another 5, for instance). But each master also modified your stats on level up! Some masters gave small bonuses to everything, some gave bonuses and penalties, and later masters gave massive bonuses to one or two stats while giving big penalties to others. Important to note that you couldn't lose stats as a result of this. It allowed for amazing amounts of customization of character growth, and it also turned leveling itself into a kind of meta-currency; since skills taught were based on levels gained, you needed to keep in mind both how long it would take to gain them and whether it would clash with attaining other skills at later levels (that you may never reach).

EDIT: added endorsement of BoF3.

[maidenhaver]

are there any RPGs where you learn talents by finding trainers and having them teach you cool (unique) abilities?

So did the Avernums from 4 onward.

I just want to add that Breath of Fire 3 did it the best I've ever seen, at least in my opinion. There were trainers all over the world, and you could apprentice yourself to them (only one at a time, but you could switch whenever you wanted to). Some of them you just needed to talk to them to make them available, others required you to bring them special items or pay them money or accomplish some objective. They would teach you new skills on their own schedule after a required number of level ups (one trainer might train you on his first skill after 2 levels, then the next after 3 more, then the final after another 5, for instance). But each master also modified your stats on level up! Some masters gave small bonuses to everything, some gave bonuses and penalties, and later masters gave massive bonuses to one or two stats while giving big penalties to others. Important to note that you couldn't lose stats as a result of this. It allowed for amazing amounts of customization of character growth, and it also turned leveling itself into a kind of meta-currency; since skills taught were based on levels gained, you needed to keep in mind both how long it would take to gain them and whether it would clash with attaining other skills at later levels (that you may never reach).

EDIT: added endorsement of BoF3.

I like this system, that you sacrifice stats to gain technique. An untrained, all-rounder vs a specialist.

[rusty_shackleford]

Hero's Adventure has a bunch of different martial arts schools you can join that require you to travel the world to find. Can't recommend the game highly enough 2bh

[J1M]

Wonder where are all the stealth mages. Feel like instant death at the tip of your fingers and nonexistent armor noise would make it a natural combo. Unless spells are really that noisy? Don't think they should be unless it's an explosion spell though.

I guess the 3.5 arcane trickster archetype never became mainstream enough.

I think it was quite popular given that it required an understanding of stealth, multiclassing, sneak attack, ranged touch attacks, and arcane spellcasting to use. It even might be the best-designed prestige class ever written for 3.5.

I think the reason we don't see more of it beyond that point is:

• It will never be the first class someone works on because it combines elements from Thief and Wizard pillars
• It can be approximated by multiclassing or certain skill choices (take stealth skill on the wizard)
• There was certainly the perception that sneak attack spells were too powerful, even if sneak attack was limited to once per turn instead of once per ray for spells that shoot multiple rays
• Its existence as a somewhat lame 5e rogue subclass will poison the well for anyone introduced to it that way
• Limited print space. Though it would be great in a book that assumed 4 basic classes instead of 12.

To elaborate on the last point:
Basic classes: Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Thief

Hybrid classes would be combinations of two of the basic classes:
Fighter + Cleric = Paladin
Fighter + Wizard = Gish (would be nice if we had a cool title for this)
Wizard + Thief = Arcane Trickster
and so on...

If it sells well, take it step further with an advanced book:
Fighter + Cleric + Thief = Ranger
Fighter + Cleric + Wizard + Thief = Bard

[rusty_shackleford]

Fighter + Wizard = Gish (would be nice if we had a cool title for this)

eldritch knight

[rusty_shackleford]

The AD&D demihuman multiclass rules were great, I like when they appear in other games too e.g., Deadfire has a similar system.

[J1M]

Fighter + Wizard = Gish (would be nice if we had a cool title for this)

eldritch knight

By cool title, I mean a single word like 'paladin' or 'ranger' instead of what we have today, which is [word for magic] next to [word for sword].

Many other such attempts.

Hexblade
Duskblade
Swordsage
Swordmage
Bladesinger
Echo Knight

[rusty_shackleford]

Fighter + Wizard = Gish (would be nice if we had a cool title for this)

eldritch knight

By cool title, I mean a single word like 'paladin' or 'ranger' instead of what we have today, which is [word for magic] next to [word for sword].

Many other such attempts.

Hexblade
Duskblade
Swordsage
Swordmage
Bladesinger
Echo Knight

eldritchknight

[J1M]

eldritch knight

By cool title, I mean a single word like 'paladin' or 'ranger' instead of what we have today, which is [word for magic] next to [word for sword].

Many other such attempts.

Hexblade
Duskblade
Swordsage
Swordmage
Bladesinger
Echo Knight

eldritchknight

I did say other attempts.

Forgot that Pathfinder decided the Magus would be a Gish class. I could live with that if it became popular. I'd also be okay if "Gish" ended up in a PHB some day, even though the etymology and phonesthetics of the word leave something to be desired.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/magus/

[rusty_shackleford]

By cool title, I mean a single word like 'paladin' or 'ranger' instead of what we have today, which is [word for magic] next to [word for sword].

Many other such attempts.

Hexblade
Duskblade
Swordsage
Swordmage
Bladesinger
Echo Knight

eldritchknight

I did say other attempts.

Forgot that Pathfinder decided the Magus would be a Gish class. I could live with that if it became popular. I'd also be okay if "Gish" ended up in a PHB some day, even though the etymology and phonesthetics of the word leave something to be desired.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/magus/

But what's wrong with eldritch knight?

[Irenaeus]

eldritchknight

I did say other attempts.

Forgot that Pathfinder decided the Magus would be a Gish class. I could live with that if it became popular. I'd also be okay if "Gish" ended up in a PHB some day, even though the etymology and phonesthetics of the word leave something to be desired.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/magus/

But what's wrong with eldritch knight?

The word dates back to the 16th century and may have its origin in the Middle English word elfriche, meaning “fairyland.” (The two components of elfriche—“elf” and “riche”—come from the Old English words ælf, “elf,” and rīce, “kingdom.”)