Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm
Note that this thinking applies equally to many professions. Why play a holy warrior, for instance, if the GM's campaign is all about fighting orcs, orcs, and more orcs (and the occasional ogre or troll), and there won't be any undead or demons? Just play a cleric or a knight. Why play a shaman outside of a campaign that involves dealings with the Spirit World? Just play a cleric, druid, or wizard.
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This sort of thing also cascades out to other choices, beyond overall template and niche.
If the campaign is all about fighting orc, orcs, and more orcs (all of whom are melee dudes) then the party will focus on impaling weapons and the skill to do Vitals (or Eye) hits, spells to disarm, break weapons and shields, and bypass equipment-based armor, and everything that exploits the flaws of low IQ and low Will opponents while completely neglecting tricks that target low ST and/or low HT. They'll completely ignore resisting magic, they'll ignore the problem of traps, they'll never have to cross a narrow ledge, scale a wall, swim a leech-filled canal, sneak past a sleeping dragon, handle wild animals, or talk to
anything - and suddenly the martial artist, thief, druid, and bard's players all ask to reroll as knights, scouts, swashbucklers so they can actually
do things. They'll all equip with pointy weapons, they'll all have shields, and they'll only ever target Vitals or Eye.
I've seen this happen in multiple game systems.
Now, if you have a group of players that
only likes to play knights, scouts, and swashbucklers, you probably
should build a campaign that focuses on tracking down evil humanoids, murdering them, and then going back to Town to flirt with the waitstaff at the Tavern. They'll have a blast doing it, and you'll have an easy time structuring challenges for them that you're sure they'll be engaged in and can cope with.
If you have a party with a thief, a druid, a barbarian, a scout, and a scholar, and you put them in the All Orcs All The Time campaign, things will go south quickly.
EDIT: The problem that can happen to a GM with a one-note campaign is the PCs becoming
extremely hyperspecialized and exploding all the orcs on contact (for example). This can get boring for everyone. The usual advice is "well, change it up!" but now you have a party who is hyperspecialized for orcslaying. A 350 point orcslaying party can get unexpectedly
splattered when suddenly confronted with some icky goo - it's nearly all Diffuse or Homogenous, it has no hit locations, it relies on buckets of HP instead of armor so you can't target chinks, it's
mindless so you can't mind control it, you can't
poison it, you can't sneak up on it... and often it oozes right past your armor, uses a gas-based attack, or
eats your armor, and your shield.