source: something called "tale of the silly bard"
Rivers of ink had been spilled over the eternal balancing of Magic Users and Fighting man on different games. For some reason, they never tap into the real problem: balancing them towards the Specialist. Not the thief; who is normally a DEX fighting man: I talk about the common folk who maximizes non-combat skills or it's equivalent.
I am developing rules to do what my table is already doing without the proper rules: Playing slow: not adventures all the time, but more doing a medieval life simulator that only sparingly does dungeon delving. I am really put to it now that autumn gaming vibes are high.
I want to have non-combatant, and not-magical classes to be playable. Most of those characters are, in world, hobbits or women; as most capable men are conscripted as level 1 warriors by birth. I don't want to twist their crafts into making them proficient in combat somehow, but rather make them a interesting to play by what they are, should anyone want to. Could it be done?
The basic answer to this shit is to reduce combat challenges through the game, and increase the challenges related to whatever profession the players choose. A plumber hobbit joins the party and suddently all the castles have a bad case of clogged drainpipes. Suddently you realize that fixing drainpipes is not very interesting to portray in game, and that even if it appears, it will be reduced to a downtime roll.
I think that a good approach is to buff specialists by giving them "meta" abilities: those that allow the player influence the game outside the actual capability of their character. Apocalypse World type games do this a lot. For example:
1. Meta-Autoemployment: When you advertise your profession in a place where it can be needed, roll skill (on my game, it works by rolling 1 to 3d6). For each success, choose 1. On a failure, you might get bad customers or none at all.
* An NPC you know or have heard about is seeking your services
* You get a chance to get some money from your work
* Your work is greatly appreciated
* Your work allows you to find a piece of accurate information about something you ask your GM.
Good things about this: It makes the game plot be about your profession organically, and in the measure you want to. It is also useful to the party as a whole in order to advance stuck plots. Appropiate for most artisan-type works such as tattoo artists, painters, the proverbial plumber or even poets, though also for therapists.
2. Quantum Pockets: this is a classic. Basically, you get to produce any object by saying you were carrying all along. It must be related to your profession at least slightly. In my games, this has saved many lives, by producing tons of antidotes for different poisonous monsters. A staple for healers, but for alchemists (with a much bigger array of tricks, though never explicitelly healing; more on them coming soon) it should work only with things they have produced previously.
3. Inspiring others: I have bards in mind. I could extend it to any kind of performers or maybe instructors; but also to courtesans and princesses. A success gives you the chance of deciding how a person in your audience feels, or the general audience instead; or the GM finds it too dissonant, he must give you an insight on why it didn't work. You can also choose this option on the Meta-Autoemployment list. This does not necessarily represent the Bard itself deciding how does the person feel, as if it was a spell; it can represent some serendipity which was maybe produced by the performance itself.
I'm sure I can scourge the Dungeon World compendium classes to find more ideas; will edit if i do. Apart from these meta-abilities, there are the classic ones
4. Actually performing your work: Roll skill to fix that broken ship, play a good song, do a nice dance... whatever. In my experience, this will happen once per campaign, but will happen eventually. The case of sailor PCs when the campaign finally sees water is specially relevant.
5. Generate items during downtime: This is where alchemists shine. To limit their powers, I had alchemists in my last campaign able to learn from 1 to 3 different "recipes". I will post a list of things someday, but I allowed them to make up whatever thing they wanted: the downside of having to stay with that recipe during the rest of their career was usually a good counterweight. Gunpowder (bombs and refilling ammo); acid vials, paint that changed color when wet, specific poisons, antidotes, smoke bombs, recreational drugs, greek fire, a freezing grenade, whatever that had any propierties that could be explained somehow without blatant magic. Not just for PCs use: the production could be sold for money or traded with other alchemists. Lowly professions such as blacksmiths can also do this for common items, though those must be boosted with Meta-Autoemployment
6. Intoducing magic into the profession: Non-wizards, in my game, can learn only one spell at most, and raising the magic attribute, AKA, "mana dice", is not very optimal. If you want, you can make your spell a profession trick and "cast it" by performing your job, using your skill dice. This prevents you from casting the spell in the normal way from now on. An alchemist knowing the invisibility spell, knows instead how to make an invisibility potion. A blacksmith knows how to imbue a spell into his work, or a dancer can cast through her dance. IDK, this seems the wildest of all the points but i'm willing to give it a try.
A NOTE ON NINJAS: as the game is more and more shamelesly based on Sengoku era Japan, I now have plenty ninjas. The kind of ninjas that are spies as much as thieves and assassins, and disguise as peasants, pilgrims or artisans; or adopt cover-up jobs. I like that now they can better play that facet; and all those moves (specially the Meta-Autoemployment) make great combo with infiltration, gathering information and all kinds of sabotaging. If you saw the last entry, you can check that there are two skill slots in case you want to be a good tattoo artist as a cover, and have a sword expertise at the same time.
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