The Primary Colors: The Fighter

Hey all,

I thought now would be a good chance to take a look at the classes in tabletop gaming that I'd call the primary colors. The reasons should be obvious, there's three of them, and every other class can be described as one of these three "but" . . .

The three classes I'm talking about are, of course, Fighter, Rogue, and Mage. This is tabletop gaming, so these won't be the same as MMOs' "Holy Trinity" of Tank, DPS, and Heal. We'll start with the most straightforward of these classes: the fighter.

The fighter is what I'll call a blow for blow combatant. At the most basic level, these are martial experts who are intended to both deliver and receive the physical violence of the adventure. Their most important attributes in the OGL are Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. In d20 systems, the fighter is what we'll call the "feat monkey". Fighters collect feats, and feats make fighters more and more specialized for a specific form of combat.

The fighter's twin strengths are his defensive and offensive might. The fighter is difficult to best in head-to-head single combat. However, the fighter can easily become so specialized that they lose any battlefield versatility, and their lack of need for mental and social stats places those traits lower in their priorities. Fighters are not necessarily dumb and brutish, they simply often lack intrinsic motivation to improve mentally or socially.

The stereotypical fighter fills the party role of the muscle, the intimidator, the enforcer, and more often than other classes: the leader. They are commonly associated with traits such as: stoic, harsh, blunt, uncharismatic, tough, brutal, and disciplined.

Within fantasy, many variants on the fighter exist: the knight, the ranger, the barbarian, and the monk are some of the classic modified versions of the vanilla fighter. In other genres, the fighter is simply the blow for blow combatant who puts his faith in strength of arms. Soldiers, mech pilots, gunslingers, sheriffs, dockworkers, bouncers, prize fighters, raiders, gladiatorial slaves, and even some career military officers would best be played as variants of the basic fighter.

Now, on to the fun part: in a gag campaign, there are a lot of fun ways to add humor to the stereotypes and archetypes of the fighter. "Lawful stupid" is the classic, and it turns the fighter into anything from a penal-code spouting deputy all the way up to a raging inquisitioner.

Their inaptitude for all things magical opens up some opportunities to make mischief through ignorance. Just say "Oooo, what does this rune do?" in your best Deedee impression, and let the shenanigans commence.

Their hero complex can also be played for laughs. Zap Brannigan gets laughs for a reason, and JourneyQuest had one of the best lines, as the dim-witted Glorion boasted "Mercy? Perf, I'm far too brave to show you mercy!"

Finally, you can pick your airplane. B.A. Baracus from The A Team is a fighter in every sense of the word, and yet, his fear of airplanes not only draws a laugh, but humanizes his character amazingly well. Think of Indiana Jones and snakes. Think of Son Goku and needles. The classic humor route for the larger-than-life bringer of the pain is a major fear of a minor thing.

So, with that, we close for now on our discussion of the fighter. Did you agree with my thoughts on the fighter class? Do you have anything to add on what makes this "primary color" class what it is? Let's talk about that in the comments below, and until next time: happy gaming, all.

The Sovereign Sponge

Hey all,

Thought I'd share a little bit of gamemasterly insight with y'all today. So . . . storytime!

Today I was thinking about how swords don't tend to work well against gelatinous enemies in fantasy settings. Typically, dungeons will include some variety of mold, slime, or ooze that blindly devours all in its path: rubble, player characters, what-have-you.

Now, I don't know why this became a thing. I'd probably attribute it to Gygax, but I'll admit, that's just a guess. I can't think of anything like this in Tolkien, so Gygax is a fairly safe bet.

Still, it's basically a fight against a giant jello mold. Real-life jello isn't best dealt with using blades, but it's also not something you'd normally take care of with blunt force. All that really leaves is a sponge.

Enter, the sovereign sponge (and yes, the name is an homage to sovereign glue). Simply toss the sponge into an ooze, and it draws in the entire enemy into itself. Naturally, such an item would be fairly valuable to the right brand of adventurer.

Of course, this leads to the next question, what if someone drops one into the ocean? This lead me back to a fantasy theory I'd seen before. Someone once pointed out that the magical spell "create water" is worded in such a way that, so long as the water gets consumed, it remains in the world permanently. Based on that, the theory went, it makes perfect sense that flooding would one day become an issue.

How does that relate to the sovereign sponge? It not only explains how the world can survive a sovereign sponge dropped into the ocean (the sponges absorb water at a rate that offsets the average rate of water creation from the "create water" spell), it actually explains why the invention of the sovereign sponge was necessary. This was made as a magical countermeasure to the effects of a widespread, low-level magical ability.

With all of this, we've established a very tenuous balance in the natural world. This gives us plot hooks for a campaign built around the concept of the sovereign sponge:

-In drought conditions, a mage decides to calculate and carry out a ritual spell that will neutralize all existing sovereign sponges to raise water levels worldwide.

-As magic becomes more widespread, many coastal towns are putting out bounties for the reagents necessary to have more sovereign sponges crafted to deal with the rising ocean levels.

-The death of magic, in addition to everything else attendant on the trope, comes with a mad max style loss of the world's oceans, as the create water spell ceases, but the sovereign sponges carry on unabated.

-A golem constructed from sovereign sponges constitutes a world-ending threat, and sparks deep philosophical questions about a sentient being's right to exist.

- Guild secrets about the manufacture of sovereign sponges are both closely guarded, and pursued for the promise of lucrative rewards for anyone who can duplicate the technique.

These are just a few campaign hook ideas for the sovereign sponge. What would you do with the sovereign sponge in your own campaign worlds?

All Funnies and Games Update

Hey all,

Just to update the regular readers; thing have been branching out pretty far from the blog itself. My Youtube channel has been going well: with let's plays, game-related vlogs, unboxings, and more. I've been working on my twitter presence (slowly), and am looking at more content avenues in the future.

In the meantime, I do want to let everyone know that I'll be deleting the old Friday Funnies segments from the archive soon. I tried to link to the original content as often as possible, and, as a result, those posts are mostly collections of now-dead links. I'll probably be doing that in the next few days.

If you've been reading for a while, you probably have a good idea what this blog is all about, but I'd love to hear some feedback on the type of content you'd like to see moving forward. Leave comments below, or tweet them to me @JosephCoupal. I'd love to get my readers' feedback as I get ready to take this blog forward.

Thanks for reading, all.