Are character roles over-specialized in a lot of games?

Are character roles over-specialized in a lot of games?

This doesn't apply to all settings or all games, of course, but there are quite a lot both with an idea of "professional adventurers", or that at least have bands of people with such skills sticking together for long periods of time. In a lot of those, the game mechanics reward specialization. If you're a wizard, all your gains are about becoming a better wizard, if you're a fighter you become a better fighter, et cetera. Either that's the way it naturally goes, or doing anything else is suboptimal. More than that, we then get setting-related materials (novels, comics, etc.) where this specialization is reflected.

But is it believable? That doesn't seem how life would actually work in those settings.

If you have a classic mage, fighter and rogue team who go on a lot of adventures and spend a lot of time with each other, wouldn't they naturally pick things up from each other? There's always a lot of downtime, and people get bored and talk, and everyone wants to learn things that could be useful to know. Wouldn't the fighter tell the mage how to swing a sword right, or talk enough about battles they've been in for their partners to pick up some basic tactics? If the mage and the fighter watch the rogue search for and disarm traps enough, won't they start being able to watch for the most basic/common types themselves?

I feel like in any setting with professional adventurers, high-level pros would all pick up general adventuring skills in addition to their personal specialization. There are systems where this sort of thing happens, but it doesn't seem to be common.

Well of course. It's a failing of the mechanics driven nature of many games.

>But is it believable? That doesn't seem how life would actually work in those settings.
Are you telling me a military band should not have a dedicated medic, a dedicated scout, a dedicated heavy weapons operator, etc.?
In any case D&D allows you to do so (and let's face it this is a D&D thread), it just takes a great deal of time. During a 6 month down period, sure you can train with each other and the Fighter will get the Magic Initiate feat and the Wizard will get proficiency with a couple martial weapons or armors of his choice. Nothing stops you from doing this except for finding the months to do so.

Because of the group design of rpgs, it's better to be great at your niche than be worse at everything. No need to know about traps if the rogue already knows.

Wouldn't 90% of the military be just grunts though? The same would be true for 'adventurers' except that wouldn't be much fun for the players.

A few systems do that - D&D 4e being one that comes to mind, mostly due to 1/2 level being an almost constant modifier. That said, in all honesty the main issue is that you need to practice a shit ton. Fencing is an extremely complex sport, for example, so the fighter might tell the mage how to hold a sword and how to properly stab with it, but the fighter has months and months and months and months of practice. The wizard might have a week tops.

The average grunt is bundled in a fireteam group, which is generally a rifleman, an automatic rifleman, a grenadier and a designated squad leader. They have "roles" of sorts in that sense. The squad, generally made of 2 to 3 fireteams plus an NCO will generally have even more specialization, with designated drivers, for example.

It is mostly just grunts, but ultimately, yeah, there will be specialization within those grunts.

This is ultimately a symptom of player choice which is reinforced by a combination of the system's tendencies and a lack of communication from the GM. It's mostly a non-issue.

>Overspecialized
Only if you mean to the exclusion of generalist skills or traits, which is usually not the case. Niche protection is a valuable thing in games. It's just that the generalist stuff is much lower skill or competency than their core niche stuff. There's nothing stopping you or your players from taking cross-class skills.

>...fighter tell the mage how to swing a sword
It's kind of lame how it is handled, but you can think of gaining levels as the mechanical application of this. The wizard does have a BAB, it just increases at a slower rate than the dedicated weapon-in-hand classes. I think there are rules for teaching skills and learning skills by paying for them, but that's heavily dependent on the players actually thinking of doing this in game. If the players don't think of it, that interaction between characters doesn't happen.

>Is it believable?
If you're that worried about it, make your players take some levels in Survival or Dungeoneering, etc. Otherwise, yeah, it's pretty easy to suspend disbelief for that purpose.

Unless the system specifically makes class skills the only skills you can pick up, you're making mountains out of molehills. Talk to the players, talk to the GM, talk about what's believable to you. Introduce a houserule that each level you get adds some amount to your rolls for "generalist" skills.

>Only if you mean to the exclusion of generalist skills or traits, which is usually not the case.

False right from the get-go in all editions of D&D to date.

>It's just that the generalist stuff is much lower skill or competency than their core niche stuff.

Yes, to the point of being absolutely useless, so why would you ever take the generalist stuff? I get that "roleplaying" is a valid answer, but someone who only roleplays by being an outright burden to their group is just as annoying as someone who never roleplays at all.

>There's nothing stopping you or your players from taking cross-class skills.

The degree of optimization required to actually interface with the mechanics as intended is.

>It's kind of lame how it is handled, but you can think of gaining levels as the mechanical application of this. The wizard does have a BAB, it just increases at a slower rate than the dedicated weapon-in-hand classes.

This is literally just increases in general fitness, not any kind of skill gain.

>I think there are rules for teaching skills and learning skills by paying for them, but that's heavily dependent on the players actually thinking of doing this in game. If the players don't think of it, that interaction between characters doesn't happen.

These rules tend to suck, be highly optional and buried, and are rarely referenced in setting for the vast majority of games. Furthermore, players often default to "I can't do this" instead of "I can do this" in D&D specifically due to the way the skill system works-- That is to say, the interactions of using their skills guide the rest of their in-setting interactions.

>If you're that worried about it, make your players take some levels in Survival or Dungeoneering, etc.

Or, y'know, play a non-shit system that rewards dipping into "cross-class" skills, such as Shadowrun.

Look dude, I get that you're happy with the way you game. Acknowledging flaws ain't an attack on that.

Your entire post reeks of min-maxer attitude. Valid way to play, sure.

>re: excluding generalist skills
I dunno, user. There is plenty of generalist skill overlap across the board, being supported as class skills for several classes.

>why ever take generalist stuff/ optimization
To be less useless at those tasks, duh. By definition, you have to make trade-offs between reinforcing your niche or being better generally. This should be obvious. This is one of the things I like about how PF handled skills: class skills just gave you a flat bonus to those rolls. Instead of some fuckery where you lose points if you don't optimize, you get a bonus if you do optimize.

It is my opinion(tm), that generalist skills should come up more often with lower DCs than niche-specific challenges. Dungeoneering, survival, indimidation, diplomacy, etc should have frequent low-intensity challenges for much of the party. Nickle-and-dime their resources for overland travel, for camping in the dungeon, for handling social stuff, etc.

>BAB is general fitness, not skill gain
Nope. The physical stats govern fitness; BAB is explicitly the skill in combat. 5e calls it a proficiency bonus, which is used for many skill situations instead of just combat, which is cool.

>rules for teaching tend to suck
Yep.
>Player psych
Also yes. D&D allows for many untrained skill uses, but players tend to narrow their view on what they can do at all, which is unfortunate. This is definitely a failing of the way the book is written and how the rules are presented.

>Play a non-shit system
>such as Shadowrun
kek. Shadowrun is notoriously skubby, user, and widely reviled. I don't think D&D is great, and I avoid GMing it in preference for other systems, but I still have fun.

However, I do think that the best way to handle skills is with a decreasing return on investment. Low levels of skills should be cheap.

Role overspecialization is a symptom of player psychology primarily.

>But is it believable?
Yes people specialize. A surgeon generally isn't trained in military insertion, a sniper isn't trained in hacking, an engineer isn't trained in flying a plane.

This is known as the obsession with game balance or also known as the "tyranny of game balance" in which classes can only do one role effectively, and suck at everything else.
Common in video games/MMORPGs.

That's why classless systems exist.

On a sidenote, some games have "under-specialized" characters, like Star Wars FFG (due to the focus on stats and the way special dice work). And having your hyperspecialized medic getting outperformed by the tech-specialist performing surgery isn't great design.

The vast majority of MMOs have various builds for each of their classes, allowing players to fill the DPS/tank/healer roles. Hyperspecialization isn't really a thing since WoW came out.

>To be less useless at those tasks, duh.

Except in the specific case of D&D, that's not how that works. You're still useless in the tasks you took ranks in, you just also are useless in the things you're supposed to be good at.

Like, the general theory of what you're saying is true, but mechanically, that is not how D&D works. It is why D&D is shit, in part.

Like, I honestly agree with most of what you're saying. It's just that I have never seen D&D work in regards to the game design theory you're talking about, and I've played enough D&D to grow to hate the brand in its entirity. If I sound like a min-maxer, it's because I'm talking about a janky ass system that utterly encourages it at all levels.

I think it's primarily a taste thing. In the systems I play the members of the party usually are fairly specialized in different sorts of things, but the group likes it for that very reason

I don't think D&D works that way on its own, but it is exceedingly easy to screw it up to make it work that way. The way it is put together does do a very poor job of presenting it in a way to avoid screwing it up. It doesn't avoid that player-psych trap which pushes players to overspecialize.

Yes, mechanically D&D is screwy as hell, but I don't think "role overspecialization" is one of the things it suffers from inherently or mechanically. It does lay on the niche protection pretty thick, though.

Again, it is a system which I avoid GMing if possible. I like other systems much more. I play it occasionally and I have fun with it in that context alone.

>And having your hyperspecialized medic getting outperformed by the tech-specialist performing surgery isn't great design.
We have this problem in my FFG Star wars game.
My mechanics with a very high intellect and one rank in medicine (taken at the start because of his career, didn't spend any point on it) has more chance to heal people than the focused medic with less intellect.

>Are character roles over-specialized in a lot of games?

Yes, becuase most popular games aren't point-buy. Also focusing in one thing AKA min-maxing is the naturally optimal thing to do. Mechanics that reward dabbling, and punish focusing can help balance it out.

The problem is a lack of diminishing returns. Normally you can only get so good at personal combat. After a certian point you can fuck up any normal combatant, the additional ability is only useful for fucking up similarly badass dudes. But most fighters you will be up against will not be at that level. So for many, when they've reached a certain point of ability they can be as good as they need to be in most situations and focus on shoring up weaknessess.
They might learn engineering, leadership, a veriaty of new forms of fighting and thus become a classic rounded hero. This would be aided by playing with creativity, tenacity and caution to make the character a proper great.

However many games have a constant, uniterupted progression not just of skills but of challenges. A rounded character fails because after a point you stop encountering normal enemies or normal checks. Of coarse the game needs constantly scaling enemies to justify constantly scaling stats. Stats then naturally need to be the best to meet the challenges.

If you'd ever been in the army you would think everything you just wrote is complete bullshit.

>shouts false at an objectively true statement to start the argument
I love autists!

Bands of adventurers aren't military personnel. They are independent groups who take care of and carry all their own equipment (or put it on a small horse, at most) and earn their livelihoods working for long stretches of time in places where they are removed from any support except their teammates and may or may not all manner of unpredictable dangers.

In the military, if your medic gets incapacitated or killed, you can get another one relatively easily. If you're an adventurer and your cleric goes down then a fighter who dabbled to become a paladin becomes very handy. Same thing with your rogue going down and maybe needing someone who can do something stealthy, or your wizard being paralyzed and maybe needing to identify what that weird rune means.

I don't think it's a huge problem unless the scope of specializations becomes absurdly narrow, with characters not having competency outside them (i.e. "I can pull my weight when using an assault rifle, but am near-useless with a pistol or shotgun" or "I can talk to people and am good for literally nothing else").

I think it's largely a question of how much players are allowed to minmax all their resources into a handful of narrowly-defined tasks, and to what extent that interferes with the intended game experience.

>Are you telling me a military band should not have a dedicated medic, a dedicated scout, a dedicated heavy weapons operator, etc.?

I think what he was trying to say was not that there shouldn't be a dedicated medic, but that after awhile everyone would be Combat Lifesaver qualified. Not there there wouldn't be a dedicated heavy weapons operator, but that everyone would eventually get qualified on all weapon systems.

Which is something we do strive for.

The thing about the 'real world' is that my becoming Combat Lifesaver qualified didn't hurt my M4 qualification or any other of my core combat MOS skills. 'Hurt' here being the same as 'I failed to improve'. Which is what happens if you have to blow a feat.

Hero System (Fantasy Hero) would be able to handle the issue rather easily.