Misused: Fighter Mage Thief

There are 13 stones and they are everywhere out in the world, the 4 different leveling stones are really scattered out there. And there are 18 different skill trees with absolutely no restrictions anywhere on what to use.

In no way does it qualify as this... and that is a thing the series prides itself on. If you want to RP as a class thats fine but its not something we trope.

In contrast say Dragons Dogma, you have the three starting classes Fighter, Mage and Strider◊ which you can hybrid later but even then your pawn can only be those 3.

Or Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance where you just have Fighter, Archer and Sorceress◊ available as classes.

edited 5th Mar '17 8:56:57 PM by Memers

Going back to snowclones for a minute, I may have accidentally stumbled into suggesting one. (Although looking at that page and its wicks, it's got its own problems with misuse or shoe-horning).

I think the root problem here is that the concept of classes is too varied. In some setups, a class is a rigidly specific set of abilities and skills that a character is bound to for the rest of their life. In others, you can change classes like clothes. And in other others, classes are broad umbrellas under which you can develop a character a number of ways. And in other other others classes are just packages of skills that you can take at the start or ignore in favor of building your character the way you want. And THEN there are the games that don't actually have classes but pattern themselves in a way that broadly resembles the traditional (so tempting to say classic here) classes, like Skyrim.

There's a reason my proposal didn't include the word classes. And this debate is convincing me more than anything that we need to avoid basing trope conventions on RPG classes whenever possible. So I'm in agreement with a strict approach: class-based tropes should only apply to games and RPG Mechanics 'Verse stories that use class-like systems, and we need one or more tropes that cover the broader concepts that the classes are based on without specifically mentioning classes.

edited 5th Mar '17 10:52:31 PM by TotemicHero

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

RE #22: Yes, thank you for reminding me. I guess I was just overthinking it.

RE #27: "the concept of classes is too varied"; something that compounds the problem is that the variation is group-able. For example, a pugilist, fighter, knight, and Templar are all very different but they are all "melee classes." But a Templar or a knight might sometimes have magic abilities (related to light or holiness, for example), and a fighter might be more agile or pragmatic like a Thief-class could be.

Currently, my understanding of relevant tropes is...

• Fighter, Mage, Thief: For classes. Was intended to be for three specific classes that are pretty common.
• Combat, Diplomacy, Stealth: For gameplay strategy. Was intended(?) to be for (potentially) common strategies for winning missions and quests.
• Damager, Healer, Tank: For "combat roles." I don't think this is much different from Fighter, Mage, Thief. It seems to be more like a (potential) Super-Trope, since "combat roles" of "Damaging Classes" is more general than "Melee Fighter"? The fact that "healer" is a name for a general group of classes and also a specific class doesn't help, but I haven't done a wick check for misuse.

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

There isn't really any overlap between Damager, Healer, Tank as Fighter, Mage, Thief. The latter all fall under the Damager category and if there are any tank or healer mechanics they are usually kinda minor.

Those are also party compositions and such while Fighter, Mage, Thief is mostly a single player pick your play style not role type thing.

edited 5th Mar '17 11:04:18 PM by Memers

Damager, Healer, Tank is known more as "MMO Holy Trinity" outside.

And btw, I get the feeling that

• Damager, Healer, Tank
• Fighter, Mage, Thief
• Common Character Classes
• An Adventurer Is You

...are simply different groupings of classes that are not even all-encompassing. Where one trope lacks, another one covers it, and vice versa.

Maybe merging them all would be good?

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

• Damager, Healer, Tank is NOT about classes it is about ROLES in a party. A damager which could be melee ranged or caster, a pure healers and tank classes that synergies to form a party or larger Raid. There could be 50 classes for each role, it doesn't really matter.

• Fighter, Mage, Thief is about the trio of options, a melee fighter, speedster/archer and Glass Cannon magic user.

• Common Character Classes this are just common classes like a paladin, knights, mage, geomancers and their common similarities such as mages use elemental magic. It exists as a a trope so we do not need a page on every single class like The Bard and White Mage and yada. Sci-Fi equivalents do exist for almost all standard classes under different names as Technology Is Magic.

• An Adventurer Is You is about you are just getting planted into an adventure, so like Skyrim and just go, these games can use class systems like Dragons Dogma or be completely free form Skyrim.

edited 6th Mar '17 4:02:50 AM by Memers

Common Character Classes, Fighter Thief Mage and the like need a rework into something similar to Cast Calculus and the tropes linked from there: a good reference page about the subject that contains links to common options. Currently we have a mess of several pages dialing with same subject that partially overlap/.

I would disagree, a Fighter, Mage, Thief is about the 3 different styles of gameplay and not necessarily following naming conventions or anything like it.

It's a related trope to Common Character Classes but not quite.

quote from the page

Most *RP Gs* offer the player a number of *classes or specializations* that they can choose. When you think about it, however, most boil down to *three major archetypes* for character specialization regardless of what they are called. These are the fighter, mage, and thief.

This is, according to page itself, about character classes or character specializations. Then, when we read Common Character Classes, we find Warrior,

Warrior
May also be called "fighter", "soldier", or some other variation of the theme "guy who fights". Their job is to hit the frontlines and engage in direct combat with the enemy.

Which sounds pretty damn like

Fighter
The Mighty Glacier if offensively-oriented, or Stone Wall if a defensive specialist. A physical powerhouse of prodigious strength, the fighter solves problems by dicing or smashing them to bits with weapons.

Similarly, Thief is a subvariance of Rogue from Common Character Classes and Mage is a variance of Nuker.

Fighter, Mage, Thief is just three of five Common Character Classes formulated for fantasy setting. (and the two missing classes actually pretty damn common in fantasy as well)

Combat, Diplomacy, Stealth is, indeed, about playstyle and definitely a separate thing

edited 6th Mar '17 7:38:50 AM by permeakra

Memers, what's the difference between "combat roles in a party" and "character classes"? If they are different, the name of "Damager, Healer, Tank" doesn't really help differentiate it. Is it about playstyle (and similar to Combat, Diplomacy, Stealth)?

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

In an MMO every party member will have a set role. The class may be able to spec into the role at will, such as World Of Warcraft's Druid which can be all 3 Damager, Healer, Tank and 2 different varieties of damager, ranger spell caster and melee Fragile Speedster. But generally once in that role that's what you are doing in the party.

If you sign up as a healer that's what you will be doing in the party, no matter the variety of healer, which in World Of Warcraft there are 5 healing classes all basically interchangeable.

A character class is an entity that exists in a tabletop RPG system or a game. it is a set of options to extend capabilities of a character in a specific way. Their numbers are many and many systems/games try to invent their own breeds.

Combat roles are specific tasks that a character fulfill. There is a rather limited number of them, especially if we limit ourselves to combat situation. Tanks are those who take hits to protect the fragile damage dealers and support characters. Support roles may vary depending on the system/game, but common options are healer, buffer and battlefield controller.

Play style is a personal preference to solve problems within a game in a specific way.

So, for example, Sniper in Team Fortress is a class, damage dealer is a role and camper is a playstyle.

edited 6th Mar '17 8:53:32 AM by permeakra

No, for Team Fortress 2 specifically there are 3 roles: Offense, Defense and Support (i.e Damager, Tank, Healer), each with 3 classes that handle the role differently. Playstyle in that game can be differentiated further with their unlockable weapons.

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

Wick Check

• Accel World: Kinda ZCE, but Thief has Flight, and Mage seems more supportive than offensive.
• Video Game/Aion: ZCE, and presents Priest to say this game has 4 base classes.
• Angry Birds Epic: 3/5 characters follow this straight, but the other two are Cleric and Pirate.
• Video Game/Battleheart: Starter classes are this though the game's classes are more divided into the Damager, Healer, Tank dynamic.
• Birds of Prey: Good.
• Boobs Of Steel: Pothole for the trope's image, explains the character dynamic fine.
• Bravely Default: More about stat progression with a fourth character having a Jack of All Stats dynamic.
• Castle Crashers: Misuse, talks about the four stats in the game.
• CLAMP School Detectives: ZCE with some potential shoehorning.
• Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z: ZCE with definite shoehorning for Thief and possibly Mage role.
• Digimon Tamers: Guns/artillery character shoehorned in for Mage role.
• Dokapon Kingdom: Good. Starter classes play this straight with several prestige classes.
• Final Fantasy Tactics: Just says "Yup and more!", so rather ZCE. It's also more of a physical/magical split of the Fighter-Rouge-Mage-Healer variety.
• Final Fantasy X-2: Shoehorns Yuna into Mage role, though she's a gunner by default in this game.
• League of Legends: Others: Misuse, shoehorns the Siege minion in for thief because of the melee and ranged minions.
• Luna Online: ZCE, though the three starter classes adhere to this.
• Maho Girls Pretty Cure!: Thief is actually Flight and Mage is kinda shoehorned, especially given the premise of this series being magician-based.
• Mega Man X8: Mage is kind of a shoehorned long-ranged damage-dealer, not necessarily magic-based.
• Mighty Max: I think the dynamic is there, but the Mage is just a seer.
• Ni no Kuni: Fighter and Mage are really just offensive and supportive mages respectively and there's a fourth Jack of All Stats character.
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Shoehorned examples for Thief and Fighter; the Shadow Sirens are really just Fire, Ice, Lightning mages.
• Spyro the Dragon: Characters described fit the archetypes, but they're the series antagonists, so you never play them.
• Video Game/Terraria: 3 + Summoner, and this describes the classification of the weapons you come across and which armors buff which weapon type.
• Bleach: Describes how three characters fight in one scene.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game F to J: Shoehorning, "Replace Thief with Monk" for a group of three characters.

Examples are kinda all over the place, but seems like there's a lot of shoehorning going on to fit Mage and Thief where it doesn't in addition to a few examples where there's more classes than just Fighter, Mage, Thief on equal footing.

edited 8th Mar '17 2:33:34 AM by YourIdeas

Objection: For Mega Man X8, the "mage" (X) has more varied attacks like a mage would, and deals the most damage, while the thief (Axl) only has simple ranged attacks.

And, well, maybe this shouldn't be limited to specific class/roles that the player uses so it can count non-player ones?

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

That suggestion seems too broad. We've already discussed a supertrope possibility, and the broader definition ought to go there, I think. Conversely, I think Fighter, Mage, Thief should be defined more strictly, where the "thief" can't be replaced with "defender" or "monk" or whatever. That said — responding to the wick check — I do think a gunner can be a "mage" so long as the attacks and abilities are treated as (fantastically?) magical rather than just skills and zipping around shooting enemies (in which case, it might be a shoehorned Thief with some magical abilities).

edited 8th Mar '17 7:23:55 AM by WaterBlap

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

A 'thief' can be a Strider, Rogue, Archer speedster and that kind of thing.

A mage needs to be a caster type glass canon with aoe abilities and such.

And yeah the page itself is worse than the wick check.

Which is your view, and not necessarily reflective of certain systems. For example, Dragon Age: Origins very clearly divides itself by the three base classes of Warrior, Rogue, and Mage - except that it's easily possible to build mage in a direction that doesn't meet your definition, by taking the Arcane Warrior specialization to be a tough melee fighter, and/or focusing on support and debuff spells without taking any AOE damage talents whatsoever.

At this point, I think the name Fighter, Mage, Thief itself may be unsalvageable as anything but a redirect, because too many people have their own definitions of what a thief or a mage can or can't be or do (both in game design and in playing said games).

edited 8th Mar '17 7:45:06 AM by TotemicHero

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

A mage does not need to be a Glass Cannon.

I think the problem here is that Fighter, Mage, Thief can be interpreted as applying to any or all of

• combat style: melee, range, stealth

or

• what their source stat (for lack of a better word) of power is: strength/con, wisdom/int, dex

or

• what they use as their primary attack: sheer physical power, magic, stealth/agility

edited 8th Mar '17 8:29:01 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Not really, the base 3 starting classes and their distinct play styles are what really matter. Evolving into Advanced Classes like Dragon Age and Dragons Dogma are a different trope.

• 2 Hand Melee or Sword And Board Melee
• Dual Wielding Fragile Speedster melee or Ranged Archer
• Caster

edited 8th Mar '17 8:38:17 AM by Memers

Yes. You just agreed with me by talking about both "the base classes" and "their fighting styles" as what matters. To fix this page we need to decide "what matters" — is it the base class? the fighting style? the source of ability? Some combination of those? Until we decide that we can't make any other meaningful decision about what the page is about.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Well IMO its base class, fighting style, and the specific source of power.

Its the standard stereotype to start with those 3 cookie cutter class types for a ton of RP Gs way back to before the NES era. It covers the base 3 types of play and expanded in Advanced Classes or sequels/expansions.

Its related to Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick without the gimmick in practice really but also playing to the stereotypes for each of the 3.

edited 8th Mar '17 10:52:15 AM by Memers

I think a combination of "base class" and "source of abilities." I think there's too much overlap between "fighting style" and "combat role" (Damager, Healer, Tank), since one way to determine a player's combat role is the fighting style of the character-controlled-by-player (do they usually take the bulk of the damage (Fighter?), deal most of the damage (Thief?), or usually heal their allies (Mage?)).

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

The Thief isn't necessarily the highest damage dealer, as some games don't give them a Sneak Attack and force them to rely on Death of a Thousand Cuts.

Even when they have Sneak Attack, the Fighter's damage tends to be more consistent because it lacks a condition and some systems like to give stronger enemies immunity to Sneak Attack.

edited 8th Mar '17 12:21:40 PM by Karxrida

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

All 3 are damagers, not Damager, Healer, Tank.

Mages don't usually heal and if they do its minor healing, Casters that heal are usually confined to a Priest or White Mage. They typically survive via ranged abilities, Crowd Control abilities and Area of Effect abilities.

Thieves are all about the speed, they probably do the same amount of damage overall as the other classes however their Armor Class and abilities makes them have to burst damage, be at range with a bow or use escape abilities. Hence the Fragile Speedster and Hit-and-Run Tactics.

Fighters might take more damage but will lack a Thief's escapes abilities or ability to be at range. Draw Aggro mechanics probably wont exist so they really arnt a "tank". They just charge in and brawl.

edited 8th Mar '17 12:29:32 PM by Memers