Making an innocuously terrible class

[GreatWyrmGold]

As with everything else in an RPG, versatility's utility depends heavily on how the game is designed (both by the original authors and by the GMs). But in general, if you're not deliberately trying to make versatility useful, it tends to be better to have a party of specialists.
Which isn't too surprising. I mean, the civilizations which were essentially huge parties of specialists outcompeted the ones who were huge parties of generalists.

[Tinkerer]

In almost every system I've seen, making a 'jack of all' usually falls within this category. A new player will go 'wow, they can do x&y&z&q? how is this not broken in its versatility?'. A more experienced one will go 'why would I want that when I'd rather have someone who does X, someone who does Y, someone who does Z, and someone who does Q'. Party play encourages specialization, so jacks either lag behind in use (if they're the only one in that roll), or are made redundant by someone better (where roles overlap). This is especially true if it's not possible to perform more than one role at a time (i.e, action economy, finite resources), so you're never really a hybrid, just a crappy substitute.

There are a few systems out there which do tend to encourage versatility via diminishing returns, low ceilings, and sometimes having everything be indispensable. Savage Worlds is one which springs immediately to mind (although some of the particular settings not so much). Most characters within that system tend to have MAD like crazy, each point that you spend within a skill gets less and less powerful, and due to the low ceilings you usually wind up spreading out to a few different areas.

EDIT: Although that's just skills, the edges are what makes the character and you usually want to focus on those.

[Knaight]

There are a few systems out there which do tend to encourage versatility via diminishing returns, low ceilings, and sometimes having everything be indispensable. Savage Worlds is one which springs immediately to mind (although some of the particular settings not so much). Most characters within that system tend to have MAD like crazy, each point that you spend within a skill gets less and less powerful, and due to the low ceilings you usually wind up spreading out to a few different areas.

There's more than a few - it's not uncommon in stat-skill systems for skills to get dramatically more expensive as they go up. Common formulas include skills costing N points to increase from N-1 to N, and skills costing 2^(N-1) points to increase from N-1 to N. You can have Piloting 6, or you can have Piloting 5, Firearms 4, Athletics 3, Survival 2, Diplomacy 1, and Science 1 for the same price. The latter is probably a more useful array most of the time.

[Guizonde]

There's more than a few - it's not uncommon in stat-skill systems for skills to get dramatically more expensive as they go up. Common formulas include skills costing N points to increase from N-1 to N, and skills costing 2^(N-1) points to increase from N-1 to N. You can have Piloting 6, or you can have Piloting 5, Firearms 4, Athletics 3, Survival 2, Diplomacy 1, and Science 1 for the same price. The latter is probably a more useful array most of the time.

i'll have to check with my dm, but that sounds strangely similar to rogue trader's advancement. all in all, i'll keep preaching versatility until between the party we cover all skills in that particular game... the dice gods have been clement towards violence, less so towards subtlety...

[Cynthaer]

There's already a large number of potential actions in any action situation, and I suffer from decision paralysis. Therefore having more options (or worse, not having some basic options because I don't have some ability, but that's rare) adds even more for me to consider, which makes my decision paralysis works.

Or rather, abilities adds more options, and there's already a lot of them.

I think I get what you're saying. It's similar to what Mark Rosewater calls "board complexity" in Magic: the Gathering—the more cards with relevant effects there are on the battlefield, the more mental load there is on the players and the more different places you have to remember to look for things to track.

That makes perfect sense with your class preferences, too. The Champion is specifically designed to minimize both character-build decisions and abilities to track in combat, while the Battlemaster is designed to give lots of turn-by-turn resource management decisions to people who like that. Berserker Barbarians are similarly straightforward, for the reasons you outlined.

Setting aside whether the class is underpowered, the Sorcerer has also historically been "Wizard, but with fewer choices". That's bad for its raw power level, but it's good for people who don't want to keep track of more spells, or decide what to prepare every day, or even worry about whether they should be constantly trying to find more spells for their spellbook. The addition of Sorcerer metamagic in 5e adds a wrinkle, but it sounds like it's not a problem for you.

This also makes sense with this:

I'm not completely against Stat-Powers systems if they leave skills and talents out of it [...]

A purely stat-skill system with talents but no powers lets you calculate your bonuses up-front. In-game, you only have to care about (A) what's actually going on, and (B) how good you are at the various things you might think of doing. You only have to care about the one list of numbers, in other words.

A pure stat-powers system with no skills/talents forces you to consider your mechanical options, but at least those are still the only things on your character sheet you have to worry about. You get a similar effect because the scope of things to think about at a given time is reduced, and they're all of basically the same type.

Contrast something like a 5e Paladin, who gets to choose between normal attacks, Lay on Hands (X/day), prepared spells (X/day), Divine Smite (using a spell slot), various Channel Divinity options (1/rest), and the normal non-attack combat actions. That's not a problem for a lot of people, but having all these options and resources spread around the character sheet can get very overwhelming if that's not your thing.

[Tinkerer]

There's more than a few - it's not uncommon in stat-skill systems for skills to get dramatically more expensive as they go up. Common formulas include skills costing N points to increase from N-1 to N, and skills costing 2^(N-1) points to increase from N-1 to N. You can have Piloting 6, or you can have Piloting 5, Firearms 4, Athletics 3, Survival 2, Diplomacy 1, and Science 1 for the same price. The latter is probably a more useful array most of the time.

My apologies, I meant that there is a few which use all three methods. And it truly depends on the system, I can think of quite a few where (particularly for the piloting skill) specialization is still quite encouraged despite the increasing costs. To put it another way a system which has none of those 3 methods generally actively encourages over-specialization, a system which has 1 is generally fairly neutral, and a system which has 2 or more most likely actively discourages over-specialization. But that is a simplification.

[Cynthaer]

My apologies, I meant that there is a few which use all three methods. And it truly depends on the system, I can think of quite a few where (particularly for the piloting skill) specialization is still quite encouraged despite the increasing costs. To put it another way a system which has none of those 3 methods generally actively encourages over-specialization, a system which has 1 is generally fairly neutral, and a system which has 2 or more most likely actively discourages over-specialization. But that is a simplification.

All this discussion of standard RPG components is giving me a lot more insight into why D&D put the specific classes and archetypes they chose into the starter set. Even though the system as a whole is heavily stat-power based, the prebuilt characters (at low levels) pretty well cover the extremes that you would expect to see within the system.

The two Champion Fighters let the player more or less pretend they're in a pure stat-skill system, with emphasis on the stats. Straightforward.

The Thief Rogue is also pretty much a stat-skill character, but with more emphasis on the skills and talents. Being a Halfling adds a few powers as well.

The Cleric and Wizard, like all casters, are heavily stat-power characters from level 1, with the Wizard built as a High Elf to cram in even more powers (spells).

(Obviously in 5e every character ends up accumulating a bunch of powers as they grow, and everybody engages with the skill system outside of combat. It's not the same as actually playing a pure stat-skill or stat-power system, but my point is the designers seem to have intentionally constructed the pre-built characters to be spread across the design space within the 5e system.)

[JBPuffin]

All this discussion of standard RPG components is giving me a lot more insight into why D&D put the specific classes and archetypes they chose into the starter set. Even though the system as a whole is heavily stat-power based, the prebuilt characters (at low levels) pretty well cover the extremes that you would expect to see within the system.

The two Champion Fighters let the player more or less pretend they're in a pure stat-skill system, with emphasis on the stats. Straightforward.

The Thief Rogue is also pretty much a stat-skill character, but with more emphasis on the skills and talents. Being a Halfling adds a few powers as well.

The Cleric and Wizard, like all casters, are heavily stat-power characters from level 1, with the Wizard built as a High Elf to cram in even more powers (spells).

(Obviously in 5e every character ends up accumulating a bunch of powers as they grow, and everybody engages with the skill system outside of combat. It's not the same as actually playing a pure stat-skill or stat-power system, but my point is the designers seem to have intentionally constructed the pre-built characters to be spread across the design space within the 5e system.)

Oh yeah, that’s entirely intentional. Building pre-gens to cover the spectrum allows the maximum amount of people with their varying play styles to find an option that suits them.

[johnbragg]

Yeah, but they're full casters. Even though their spell list is terrible, they still have access to Sanctified spells, spell list-expanding techniques, and the things on this list.

That requires a fair level of op fu. If you stacked the same amount of cheese on a bard, you'd be close to Tier 1. If you stacked it on a Tier 1 caster, you're just showing off.

[Velaryon]

As with everything else in an RPG, versatility's utility depends heavily on how the game is designed (both by the original authors and by the GMs). But in general, if you're not deliberately trying to make versatility useful, it tends to be better to have a party of specialists.
Which isn't too surprising. I mean, the civilizations which were essentially huge parties of specialists outcompeted the ones who were huge parties of generalists.

I think group size affects the utility of generalists vs. specialists as well. Not just in an RPG group, but in general. The more people you have, the smaller the spectrum of abilities you need each person to have. Since characters are generated with a finite amount of resources they can devote to their abilities (whether that's ability score points, skill ranks, other class features to choose, dots to put in different attributes, or whatever mechanism the RPG uses), having more characters allows each one to focus those resources on improving their areas of specialty.

Conversely, in smaller groups the generalists will be advantaged because they allow the group to cover multiple different roles.

[CharonsHelper]

As with everything else in an RPG, versatility's utility depends heavily on how the game is designed (both by the original authors and by the GMs). But in general, if you're not deliberately trying to make versatility useful, it tends to be better to have a party of specialists.

That's largely because most tasks are generally designed for one person to do at a time. Even in combat most games push having a character focused on one thing.

If you make #s matter more and/or actions be more situational, then going generalist is more viable as you can add to the competent # of people for non-combat and in combat pick the action which best fits the situation rather than just using your alpha tactic all the time.