The Holy Trinity

[Samwise]

Everquest could not replicate the table top gaming experience, so they sucked all the fun out of it, reduced it to numbers, like any good geek retard would, and gave us the most boring game mechanic ever invented.

Precisely.

[Falconeer]

Those numbers make me want to play a CRPG. Any CRPG. At least the computer does the calculations there!

Forget those and let's all go play Amber. Or Nobilis.

It should be about roles, not rules.

(And you should be able to "tank" if you are big and mean enough because it just makes sense. Fuck the rules if they say the opposite).

[Venkman]

I think this entire thread was contrived to unravel sidereal's psyche. 

Otherwise, Holy Trinity pre-WoW was CC/Tank/Healer. Holy Trinity post-WoW is DPS/Tank/Healer. Depends on whether you grabbed a veteran or a post-WoW newb off the street to ask them what the Holy Trinity is (and assuming they're not Roman Catholic*).

Just realized to that while the concept of a Holy Trinity is alive and well in WoW, I don't think most people call it that. Meanwhile that was common terminology in EQ1. Odd that. Is it because most people in WoW are post WoW genre newbs?

* which I was raised as, so back off with your pitchforks and flames and shit

[Abelian75]

I kind of have to agree that I never felt that old-skool AD&D really encouraged any concept of a "tank."  Certainly in all the campaigns I played in/ran the fighters were never under the impression that their chief responsibility was to take damage, if there were even any present.

[Samwise]

It wasn't ALWAYS the fighter who got shoved out in front of my adventuring parties... it was just whoever happened to have the heaviest armor, the most hit points, and not have any useful abilities that would be disrupted by an ill-timed poke in the ribs (like spellcasting).

 

[Azazel]

[derail]

I would classify the trinity as CC, Damage and Heals. And the typical warrior/tank fits in the CC slot most times.

[/derail]

Yeah, see that's the thing. D&D didn't require/have CC in the same sense that EQ-dikumud does.

Mage had hurty fireballs, but that wasn't a requisite.

[rk47]

Everquest could not replicate the table top gaming experience, so they sucked all the fun out of it, reduced it to numbers, like any good geek retard would, and gave us the most boring game mechanic ever invented.

Precisely.

Seconded, WoW's 'no-collision' tank made it worse. There's no blocking that goblin from your mage, just taunt or hit it harder.

[Abelian75]

To expand on what I said earlier, I always actually envisioned the fighter as the main reliable damage-dealing, ass-kicking class in D&D.  The combat specialist, if you will.  I mean, IIRC, they did pretty much do insane damage.

D&D wasn't really only about combat, after all, unlike most MMOs.  So it wasn't really imbalanced to make fighters both extremely survivable and highly damaging.

[sidereal]

digits

Awesome!  Numbers.
I'll renege on my pledge about the last word because actually introducing math raises it to a whole nother level. 

First, 3rd edition really isn't apropos to the original argument, since the question was whether the Holy Trinity originated in D&D pre-EQ.  3rd came out in 2000 and EQ in 1999.  But I put forth that fighters outdamage rogues in every edition, so I'll defend 3rd.

Your example ignores some fighter advantages (crits, PA, plusses, all the good minmaxers use 2H weapons these days) and exaggerates some rogue advantages (flanked SA on every hit).  Any 10th level fighter doing 15 damage a round should be dropped from the party, post-haste.  Seriously, he should take up farming.

Here's how I'd break it down:

1H Fighter:
Fighter 18S 10D Longsword +3 (+ Focus, Spec, Power Attack, Improved Crit). 
Good PA here is +4/+0, so attack boni are base 10/5 + Focus + Str + Weapon - PA for 14/13. 
Chance to hit against AC 19 is 75%/70%.  Damage is 1d8 + Spec + Str + Weapon + PA for 1d8+13/1d8+9
Chance of a crit is (improved) 20% * 75/70 for 15%/14%.  Extra damage from a crit is the same 1d8+13/1d8+9
So the average damage is 0.75 * 17.5 + 0.15 * 17.5 + 0.7 * 13.5 + 0.14 * 13.5 = 13.125 + 2.625 + 9.45 + 2.025 = 27ish

2H Fighter
Notes: PA gives a double bonus to 2H weapons.  2H Weapons get 1.5 Str bonus to damage
Fighter 18S 10D Falchion +3 (+ Focus, Spec, PA, IC). 
Good PA here is +5/+0, so attack boni are base 10/5 + Focus + Str + Weapon - PA for 13/13.
Chance to hit against AC 19 is 70%/70%.  Damage is 2d4 + Spec + 1.5*Str + Weapon + 2*PA for 2d4+21/2d4+11
Chance of a crit is (improved) 30% * 70/70 for 21/21.  Extra damage from a crit is the same 2d4+21/2d4+11
So the average damage is 0.7 * 26 + 0.21 * 26 + 0.7 * 16 + 0.21 * 16 = 18.2 + 5.46 + 11.2 + 3.36 = 38ish

Rogue w/ Sneak
Rogue 10S 18D Shortsword + 3 (+ Focus, Finesse, Improved Crit). 
Attack boni are base 7/2 + Focus + Dex + Weapon for 14/9.
Chance to hit against AC 19 is 80%/55%.  Damage is 1d6 + Weapon + Sneak for 6d6+3
Chance of a crit is (improved) 20% * 80/55 for 16/11.  Extra damage from a crit is 1d6+3 (no SA bonus on crit)
So the average damage is 0.8 * 24 + 0.16 * 6.5 + 0.55 * 24 + 0.11 * 6.5 = 19.2 + 1.04 + 13.2 + 0.72 = 34ish

Rogue w/o Sneak
Same as above except base damage
Average damage is 0.8 * 6.5 + 0.16 * 6.5 + 0.55 * 6.5 + 0.11 * 6.5 = 5.2 + 1.04 + 3.58 + 0.72 = 11ish

Note I made the crit chance independent of the initial hit chance, but I'm pretty sure it washes out in the end.  The other math was more complicated.

So a chain-sneaking Rogue does beat out a 1H fighter but is outdamaged by a properly Feated 2H fighter.  Furthermore, the Rogue is a total waste at damage if he can't sneak attack on every attack.  There are a ton of environments where a rogue can't just share an enemy with a fighter and get the sneak attacks.  He needs to take on a creature alone, it's any of the many types of creature that can't be snuck (undead, oozes, plants, constructs, immune to crits, etc), he can't get a flanking position, and so on.  How often this comes up is totally dependent on your campaign of course, but I don't think it's out of line or my experience to suggest the rogue is prevented from chain-sneaking about half the time.  Now the average damage is in the 23ish range and takes many levels to get anywhere near a 10th level fighter's 38ish. 

Follow-up question:  When it's the Render's turn, is he going to attack the squishy rogue or the plated fighter?  So which one's the tank?

Arrrrgggggghhhh!   Okay, now I'm really done.

[Tebonas]

I find this thread funny. You people rape roleplaying.

Right now I play Earthdawn as one of three players (four at times when the brother of the DM is in town). The three people - Hunter (Range Damage), Thief (Sneak Damage) and Elementalist (Range Damage).

Fights consist of killing enemies from a distance or running around screaming like little girls while the Thief tries to backstab them. Much funnier than the Holy Trinity, and PnP isn't mainly about fights anyway.

Really, you people reduce the real experience to the castrated computer versions. Why do you do that?

[sidereal]

Who's you guys?  Just because I can do math doesn't mean that's how I create my characters. 

Most of my characters are unbalanced bards.

[Tebonas]

Let me rephrase it.

The holy trinity is - above all else - about efficiency. Even the survivability against increasingly bad odds is basically only for efficiencies sake.

Which doesn't mean dick in PnP, because thats not about the fastest ding - grats.

[Megrim]

Ugh, i don't mean to get in on your hot and heavy geek-on-geek action, but let me just say... There is a reason why Book of the Nine Swords was released for 3.5; i have to side with Trippy and Samwise in saying that you're wrong about Fighters Sidereal. I suspect that i come nowhere near your experience with D&D, since i've only played 2'nd and 3'rd, but, Mages/Clerics > all. After the few initial levels, anything melee bar the most rediculously feated/twinked Barb is going to be shut out by ranged/magic damage. Hell, didn't someone from the other site post a Bard build that was also out-dps'ing an equal level fighter from about level 3 onwards, a little while back?

Also: Pun-Pun

[Falconeer]

digits

Awesome!  Numbers.

[...madness follows...]

Dude you and Samwise never dare say "RPG" again. You are on probation. Double secret probation

[lamaros]

Seeing how this discussion started with working out where"Holy Trinity" came from, not where it can be said to possibly apply...

Why the fuck are you talking about stuff post EQ which, you all see to agree, is a point in time when the term was already in use?

As someone who never pyed D&D or EQ1 I feel impartial enough to give victory to sidereal, pending any relevant (read: identifying Holy Trinity as a significant/dominant playstyle in D&D pre EQ1) responses.

[Simond]

Fights consist of killing enemies from a distance or running around screaming like little girls while the Thief tries to backstab them. Much funnier than the Holy Trinity, and PnP isn't mainly about fights anyway.

This thread is now about everybody's wacky PnP adventures!

Most memorable D&D group I was in had a generic_warrior with a semi-cursed magic longsword, a paranoid megalomaniacal halfling thief, cynical dwarf cleric with a heart of...goldish (me) and an excellently RPed "high int low wis" mage (if only by coincidence).

Example of the mage's actions: We were camped out at night in a clearing in a forest where a dragon was rumoured to live. The second watch heard a leathery creaking-flapping noise circling around from the sky above - fading, getting stronger, disappearing, reappearing, etc. Dark, cloudy night so nobody could see what was making the noise. Whole party gets woken up and starts trying to figure out what's going on.

The mage, skimming through the spells he has memorized, realizes that he doesn't have any light spells ready. He does, however, have Glitterdust. It went something like this:

Mage: OK, I cast glitterdust
DM: Er...at what?
Mage: Straight up, to try and hit whatever it is that's flying around up there.
DM: Are you sure?
Mage: I don't have a light spell memorized but this should work.
DM: OK. What are the rest of you doing?
Thief & my cleric simultaneously: Running out of the clearing and into the woods.
Warrior, a couple of seconds of thought later: Yeah, that.
Mage: ...um?
DM: OK. Right, mage: your glitterdust spell goes off, firing into the air above you but not hitting anything.
Mage: Oh, ok then. Now I'll...
DM: Then gravity takes over and the cloud of glitter rains down into the clearing, making everything inside glowing & sparkly. Including yourself. The two wyverns that were flying overhead hunting for food are attracted by this display and land, turning towards you. Everybody roll for initiative.

 

[Tebonas]

The holy trinity came from the mind of min-maxers, or how they were called in former time - munchkins.

Really, this is not even a question. And it is not at all reliant on the actual system.

[amiable]

I never said 'underpowered'.  I said they're not damage focused.  D&D, being an actual RPG, has a lot of conduits for power that have nothing to do with combat.  Like Astral Projection, and Time Stop, and Wish.  Yes, a high level mage nukes and if you call stuff like Power Word: Kill 'dps' they might even out-nuke a specialized fighter with 4 attacks a round, a magical weapon, increased crit chance, and a girdle of storm giant strength.  Maybe.  But it wouldn't be by a lot.  Certainly not enough that you'd say the mage's job is to 'do damage' and the fighter's job is to 'tank', especially when you run into magic resistance and high saves vs spell and your mage's job is mostly to not die. 

Ok I need to call shenanigans on this. 

1)  I'll happily take the nerd D&D pepsi challenge with you.  I have been playing D&D since pre-first edition.  Back when D&D and AD&D were different entities and everyone was stoked about running through B2: The Keep on the Borderlands.

2)  Ever since we started playing we always, always, always played with miniatures/chits and on a grid like surface.  The technology has advanced somewhat over the years (I use a dry erase "board" now) but I feel we were the norm, not the exception.

3:  If your fighters were out damaging your wizards at any point in any ediition, than you have some very, very terrible wizards, or you were playing the game only up to 5th level.  High level spellcasters RULE the damage game, so much so that they are being substantially downgraded in 4th edition.  i don't care how many attacks joe barbarian is doing per round at (1d12(Greataxe)+5(magic weapon)+1d6(elemental weapon)+4 (rage strength bonus) +15 (30 strength with two handed weapon). You are still avergaing 30-40 per hit if every hit conects.  I had Red wizards doing hundreds of points of damage to multiple targets in single rounds.  In earlier editions the differences were even more pronounced, where fighters rarely had more than 2 attacks per rounds and wizards could shapechange into Red Dragons and such.

Now, the nice thing about fighters is that they could keep going and going (assuming they could stay healed).  But at later levels wizards usually had enough spells and did enough damage that it wasn't a problem.

[Venkman]

Jeezus, nerd rage galore.

Holy Trinity pre-WoW was CC/Tank/Healer
Holy Trinity post-WoW is DPS/Tank/Healer

[Lucas]

Me despises Holy Trinity hooga-booga.

Me liked in UO when everyone was able to do everything.

And yes, I'm serious. No more contrived and obligatory roles in a group.

[Threash]

Just realized to that while the concept of a Holy Trinity is alive and well in WoW, I don't think most people call it that. Meanwhile that was common terminology in EQ1. Odd that. Is it because most people in WoW are post WoW genre newbs?

* which I was raised as, so back off with your pitchforks and flames and shit

Thats because in EQ there really was a holy trinity of classes in warrior/cleric/enchanter that had to be in every single group, in wow for regular grouping theres three tank classes, four healing classes and every single class can dps and has some form of cc.  So the "holy trinity" is more of an abstract concept rather than the three specific classes every single group had to have in order to be efficient in EQ.

[Ratman_tf]

Right now I play Earthdawn as one of three players (four at times when the brother of the DM is in town). The three people - Hunter (Range Damage), Thief (Sneak Damage) and Elementalist (Range Damage).

Earthdawn was one of the greatest RPGs I got to GM. Awesome setting, interesting ruleset, and much RPing and good storytelling abounded.

[Ratman_tf]

Me despises Holy Trinity hooga-booga.

Me liked in UO when everyone was able to do everything.

And yes, I'm serious. No more contrived and obligatory roles in a group.

I'm seriously with you. Creating interdependency by making every class able to do only one damn thing is madness, and led us down this grim path of boring gameplay.

[Murgos]

Thats because in EQ there really was a holy trinity of classes in warrior/cleric/enchanter that had to be in every single group.

Right, if you didn't have the Holy Trinity in your group in EQ1 then you didn't have a group.  You were at best relegated to dorking around on yard trash while you got whichever holy trinity member you were missing.  That's it.  End of story.

Wow doesn't have that paradigm, EQ2 doesn't have it, and D&D or AD&D certainly didn't have it.

[Merusk]

I never said 'underpowered'.  I said they're not damage focused.  D&D, being an actual RPG, has a lot of conduits for power that have nothing to do with combat.  Like Astral Projection, and Time Stop, and Wish.  Yes, a high level mage nukes and if you call stuff like Power Word: Kill 'dps' they might even out-nuke a specialized fighter with 4 attacks a round, a magical weapon, increased crit chance, and a girdle of storm giant strength.  Maybe.  But it wouldn't be by a lot. 

Pika-wa?  You see what you did here, right? I mean, I hope you do.   If not, you just compared a fighter with a whole bunch of gear and bonus-boosting shit to a mage who, apparently, woke up naked and with one spell memorized.

Also, D&D Wasn't about "DPS" because fucking monsters didn't have 32k hit points to chew-through for 10-20 minutes.   Fights were about the Killing blow, not DPS.  Boom, headshot.  Casters did this very effectively and without attack rolls.  Attack rolls were WHY fighers get so much +attack and so many more attacks/ round.. because dice suck and (unless you were playing munchkin land) even a THAc0 of 15 (your 5th level fighter) with a +4 to attack meant you were missing more than you were hitting on attacks.   Fuck, even Rogues killed effectively IF THEY WERE PLAYING ROGUES and being sneaky and shit.


That said, the "Trinity" evolved out of HP mechanics and inability to creativly use spells in text-based systems.  You coudln't really use cool things like ice floors and rivers of sand or blade-barriers and magical hands without them simply being "Yet another +/- damage ability" Fights became "Epic" not because you had to be creative/ resourceful to beat them, but because you had to focus for long periods and have the resources (HP/ Damage pool) to survive them.  Yawn.  (And why I enjoy MOST of the WoW bosses, but some DO drag on too long.)

  Computers have evolved, which is why I'd like to see folks abandon the HP/ Stat barrier.  However, since so many 'designers' were weaned on D&D and MUDs it's not happening any time soon.. and we're passing these expectations on to the next genration.

[Samwise]

Right, if you didn't have the Holy Trinity in your group in EQ1 then you didn't have a group.  You were at best relegated to dorking around on yard trash while you got whichever holy trinity member you were missing.  That's it.  End of story.

Wow doesn't have that paradigm, EQ2 doesn't have it, and D&D or AD&D certainly didn't have it.

It was certainly not a requirement in D&D as it became in Dikus, but that doesn't mean the concept of "this guy stands in front and tries to absorb the brunt of the attack, this guy stands in back and tries to do as much damage as possible, this guy tries to keep everybody healed up" didn't exist prior to EQ.

As ratman said, EQ basically took one aspect of D&D, amplified it, reduced it to numbers, and then made that the entire game.  Claiming it actually brought something new to the table is giving it credit it doesn't deserve.

(edit) To put it in one sentence: EQ did not invent the Holy Trinity, it simply made it mandatory.

[Abelian75]

I don't think AD&D or pencil+paper role-playing really invented anything regarding "tanking" though.  The things people are describing (having the big armored guy stand in front while you shoot things at the dudes) are just things that you actually would do in the real world.  We may have done it in AD&D, but only because that's what one would actually do in that situation.  I really do think it's fair to say that EQ (or some sort of MUD, but I don't recall seeing it until EQ) originated "tanking" as a game mechanic, for better or for worse.

I may be in the minority I guess, but I didn't really consider AD&D a "game" in the mathematical sense like I consider MMOs.  Like I said before, imbalanced stuff didn't really matter as much in D&D because you weren't trying to play a formal game.  AD&D was more of a toy from my perspective.

edit:  This is all pretty much semantics, of course... we can all pretty much define holy trinities and tanking however we wish, it's not like there's a formal definition.  But debates about semantics are fun.

[cmlancas]

This thread made my eyes bleed a little bit. 

I picked a lock with a gnome once. I rolled four 20s and a 19 to do it. 

[Samwise]

I picked a lock with a gnome once. I rolled four 20s and a 19 to do it. 

I hesitate to ask, but... was it a gnome-sized lock, or did you use a particularly small and slender part of the gnome to do the picking?   

[Murgos]

(edit) To put it in one sentence: EQ did not invent the Holy Trinity, it simply made it mandatory.

It wasn't a Holy Trinity until it became mandatory.  Prior to that it was just 'nice to have'.  EQ created the Holy Trinity because EQ required those three specific classes the rest of the posturing in this thread is just evasive semantics to avoid having to admit error.

edit: The Holy Trinity was 3 specific classes.  Warrior, Cleric and Enchanter.  I certainly played plenty of P&P sessions without one, two or even three of the classic D&D archtypes in the session.

[Samwise]

(edit) To put it in one sentence: EQ did not invent the Holy Trinity, it simply made it mandatory.

It wasn't a Holy Trinity until it became mandatory.

To me it seems  to give EQ credit for inventing a particular (preexisting) mechanic simply because it didn't support anything else.  But if the commonly accepted definition of "Holy Trinity" is specific to its presence in EQ, then I agree the whole discussion is  anyway.  I never played EQ so my grasp of the  terminology is apparently lacking.

[Montague]

(edit) To put it in one sentence: EQ did not invent the Holy Trinity, it simply made it mandatory.

It wasn't a Holy Trinity until it became mandatory.

To me it seems  to give EQ credit for inventing a particular (preexisting) mechanic simply because it didn't support anything else.  But if the commonly accepted definition of "Holy Trinity" is specific to its presence in EQ, then I agree the whole discussion is  anyway.  I never played EQ so my grasp of the  terminology is apparently lacking.

I think I agree with Samwise in this argument because in every D&D group I've ever played in, fighters, paladins, rangers, or (insert high hp class here) were considered necessary to surviving an encounter. Healers were of course common sense, and everything else was considered damage/CC/removal. The difference between then and now is that the concept back then was instinctual, not confined to neat terminology like "Holy Trinity" or "Tank/DPS/Heals"

What EQ did was split the tanking concept into two more defined roles: Mitigation and Aggro control. As has been mentioned before, in AD&D aggro control was very limited and dependent on positional tactics or roleplaying. In practice at the higher levels it was almost impossible thanks to abilities like flight, teleport, enemy CC abilities etc.

So I think Sideral is correct in the sense that that the tank as we know it today with aggro tools did not exist, but the concept of a high defense high hit point character to take the hits that squishies couldn't was most definitely there.

[shiznitz]

Diku tanking = ability to attract mob damage.  Survivability is secondary. That is the healer's job. There are two ways to attract mob damage: taunts to manage aggro, buffs to manage aggro and dps. That's it. If there is no game mechanic to allow a PC to consistently attract mob damage, then there can be no tanks. Yes, diku tanks have more hps and damage mitigation due to equipment but a plate fighter who cannot hold aggro - i.e. attract a majority of the mob's damage - is not a useful tank even if his class was intended as a tank. The aggro mechanic defines whether tanking exists or not.

D&D has never had an aggro mechanic since the DM can make any NPC attack any PC he wants, therefore tanking emerged post-D&D.

Now, MUDs had lots of classes. In order to make all of those classes attractive to players, devs had to vest various "jobs" in them. There is no other way to differentiate in a text only game. Tanking was and is a key mechanic in diku systems. Therefore the tank classes have to have some drawbacks or everyone would pick it or healing. So, tanks have lower dps to balance the fact that you need at least one in every group. But if the tank has low dps and the healer is healing the tank, combat will suck because it will take too long so the other classes get high dps to make them attractive to include in a group. But high dps means higher aggro generation which means a better tank (attracting the majority of the mob's damage) so the devs have to punish that dps somehow: squishiness.  Tanks needed something to offset the aggro of higher dps so they got taunts and healers had to have some danger so healing behaved like dps. Balance achieved.

Bottom line is that if groups don't have the tools AND the need to manage aggro, then combat becomes boring because everyone just mashes all their buttons to kill the mob as fast as possible since in that model everyone will have similar dps. If the threat of defeat is minimal and/or random, it is not fun. So devs have to carefully balance the aggro system so that it is neither kindergarten easy nor random.

UO was (and may still be) a game with seemingly random aggro. It has been a long time since I played but I remember mobs sticking to whomever landed the first blow but there was also plenty of aggro ping-pongi via dps. So despite my description  above that devs must have believed random aggro to be not fun, I found UO combat fun. If aggro was random in EQ it would not have been fun. Everyone would have played a wizard and just nuked the mob as hard as possible and let the random number generator determine if someone was going to die, and if so, whom.

[Ratman_tf]

UO was (and may still be) a game with seemingly random aggro. It has been a long time since I played but I remember mobs sticking to whomever landed the first blow but there was also plenty of aggro ping-pongi via dps. So despite my description  above that devs must have believed random aggro to be not fun, I found UO combat fun. If aggro was random in EQ it would not have been fun. Everyone would have played a wizard and just nuked the mob as hard as possible and let the random number generator determine if someone was going to die, and if so, whom.

I'm reminded of the comments that people make about mob AI being no match for player intelligence.

And yet if you take out the threat/aggro mechanic, the whole game comes crashing down.

 

[Venkman]

You didn't need a lack of aggro to crash UO AI. You just needed some easles I still laugh that they banned for monster blocking well in advance of actually, ya know, fixing monster blocking.