Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Adamska]

I'm not going to lie, being a fighter is a lot of fun initially, when you dish out obscene amounts of damage every round... but at some point you realize that every combat round, all you do is "I hit enemy with big stick again". The most variation I have in that regard is: "I move to enemy so I can hit enemy with big stick".

Honestly it's not even that fun. The big issue with fighter is you are very easily outclassed by other martials and you don't have much of a niche to cover your ass since you lack both skill points and skills worth a damn on a roleplay basis.

Barbarians outstrip you casually on combat alone, and it takes focusing solely on one weapon (a long running investment) to keep the pace and eventually beat them on a damage race.

Though I will state that ranged combat fighter is probably the ultimate dick punch; you really can't stack on damage efficiently with your bows and arrows.

And as for Rangers; there's a variant called Mystic Ranger. IMO it's probably the best variant to play because it's so PrC friendly since the way it works frontloads your spells. Very easy to play a poor-man's druid with them and do well for the first ten levels, and then swap to a good PrC that they compliment.

 

[Snekposter]

The trouble with fighters IMO is that armor is just plain less useless than grabbing Dex. The former can get bypassed by certain attacks and also costs money, the latter is free and does not get bypassed. It also lets you roll Dex saves to avoid AoE, which is something armor can't help against. So if you go for Str you're just plain worse than a Barb who gets to rage and use those temp HP and DR to tank damage, and you're pretty much just a money sink as you try to scrape up the money to get platemail. Meanwhile a ranged fighter that stacks on Dex can do a surprising amount of pain with a Rapier/shortsword combo up close and a bow from afar, and with the proper feats you'll be doing crazy damage. Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, and a Heavy Crossbow lets you nail guys out to 400 with no Disadvantage for 1d10 piercing, and you get to make as many attacks as you normally do, so at level 8 you're popping off 2 1d10 attacks with every single Attack action... and at anything you can see within 400 yards with no penalty, and you ignore anything short of full cover, and in 5e ranged weapons get to add their ability score so its not terrible. Considering 500 is about what a current-day designated marksman is capable of with a 7.62 rifle, that's pretty damn good. Oh, and unlike a Rogue or Ranger you have the HP to get into melee if necessary and not die horribly.

Granted, I can't exactly say its good to be a fighter, but you can do whatever combat job is necessary in a pinch... if you snag dex. Otherwise you're just a worse barb who needs armor.

Of course, that's my 5e experience talking, so I can't say what its like for other editions.

(I can go on and on about the utter uselessness of Str for fighters, but I'll leave you with the abbreviated version above.)

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

The trouble with fighters IMO is that armor is just plain less useless than grabbing Dex. The former can get bypassed by certain attacks and also costs money, the latter is free and does not get bypassed. It also lets you roll Dex saves to avoid AoE, which is something armor can't help against. So if you go for Str you're just plain worse than a Barb who gets to rage and use those temp HP and DR to tank damage, and you're pretty much just a money sink as you try to scrape up the money to get platemail. Meanwhile a ranged fighter that stacks on Dex can do a surprising amount of pain with a Rapier/shortsword combo up close and a bow from afar, and with the proper feats you'll be doing crazy damage. Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, and a Heavy Crossbow lets you nail guys out to 400 with no Disadvantage for 1d10 piercing, and you get to make as many attacks as you normally do, so at level 8 you're popping off 2 1d10 attacks with every single Attack action... and at anything you can see within 400 yards with no penalty, and you ignore anything short of full cover, and in 5e ranged weapons get to add their ability score so its not terrible. Considering 500 is about what a current-day designated marksman is capable of with a 7.62 rifle, that's pretty damn good. Oh, and unlike a Rogue or Ranger you have the HP to get into melee if necessary and not die horribly.

Granted, I can't exactly say its good to be a fighter, but you can do whatever combat job is necessary in a pinch... if you snag dex. Otherwise you're just a worse barb who needs armor.

Of course, that's my 5e experience talking, so I can't say what its like for other editions.

(I can go on and on about the utter uselessness of Str for fighters, but I'll leave you with the abbreviated version above.)

Yeah, I realized that my mail armor wearing fighter would be better off wearing a breastplate would mean he retains the same AC that he has now, but loses the disadvantage for stealth checks. So even as a strength-based fighter, dex is still more useful.
I thought that Strength would give me an edge when I wrestle with someone, but apparently, putting someone in a headlock does jack shit to their ability to fight, no matter how strong I am.
Overall, me being unfamiliar with DnD 5e rules before making a character, learned the hard way that strength based fighters with champion are boring to play and severely limited in what they can do outside of combat.

As a result, I have realized that I am barely involved in anything the group has done for the past months of (admittedly irreuglarly scheduled) sessions - which is partially my fault, but I just don't get invested into what's going on. I sort of tuned out with some of the inter-personel roleplay with NPCs and it's hard to get back into it. I guess you could also call it DnD fatigue, since I I am unhappy with the way how DnD handles certain key aspects of its gameplay, so even fights have become mind numbingly boring in general (infuriating at worst), which is ironic when you consider that that's the only thing my character is really good at.
I considered multiclassing to spice things up, but it feels like that would take too long to bear fruit and in the meantime the one thing I am useful for stagnates. The leveling system feels like the character has no personality at all and no genuine way to branch out without multiclassing.

On a sidenote: A pet peeve of mine regarding DnD is how everything boils down to how effectively a character class does the powercreep. Ranger is considered the worst class and maybe I'm wrong about it, but it feels like it's considered a shitty class cause it's progression/powerlevel doesn't make that thing a nuke on legs at a certain level, that's finetuned to fuck shit up with impunity.

Dude has a bunch of useful abilities and spells, but they're not exclusive enough and not damaging/strong enough, apparently.
Goodberry can be a godsend to keep your party alive. Alarm seems very useful. Ensnaring strike, searing smite or snare seem handy, too.
I guess I'm just too used to low-power RPGs, where all these spells would come to good use every once in a while.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

Honestly, I have more fun playing a strength fighter over a dexterity fighter because in a lot of instances, it affords more tactical and support opportunities. Having a high athletics mod allows for more opportunities to shove, knock down, and grapple opponents and assert more battlefield control and keep more enemies focused on my character while the squishier ones dole out the damage, especially at mid-levels when you have 2-3 attacks. Sure, you can plink arrows and crossbow bolts at the enemy spellcaster, but it's more entertaining to rush him and forcefeed him a dirty sock or a vial of alchemist's fire.

 

[WinchesterPremium]

On a sidenote: A pet peeve of mine regarding DnD is how everything boils down to how effectively a character class does the powercreep. Ranger is considered the worst class and maybe I'm wrong about it, but it feels like it's considered a shitty class cause it's progression/powerlevel doesn't make that thing a nuke on legs at a certain level, that's finetuned to fuck shit up with impunity.

Dude has a bunch of useful abilities and spells, but they're not exclusive enough and not damaging/strong enough, apparently.
Goodberry can be a godsend to keep your party alive. Alarm seems very useful. Ensnaring strike, searing smite or snare seem handy, too.
I guess I'm just too used to low-power RPGs, where all these spells would come to good use every once in a while.

Honestly that is like the opposite of DND's problems. 1d4chan goes over a bit of the problem with base Rangers, and most of them are present at first level.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Honestly that is like the opposite of DND's problems. 1d4chan goes over a bit of the problem with base Rangers, and most of them are present at first level.

The opposite? The majority of grievances seem to boil down more or less to "Rangers aren't as powerful in killing things or do things that helps with killing things as other classes", which to me is just an off-shoot of classes in DnD 5E being measured in damage-output. Whether this starts at level one or level 5 or level 20 is irrelevant as far as I am concerned. He starts off weak compared to others and doesn't have a good level progression and that makes him a bad class. Fine. That's not the point that I disagree with. I disagree with the metric that this is measured in, which seems to be entirely focused on combat effectiveness. That metric makes sense within DnD 5E and its playstyle, but that is precisely what I dislike about DnD 5E.

Though, admittedly, the way how Ranger animal companions work does gimp them in a way independent of powercreep-aspects that I am talking about. But again: Part of the combat effectiveness measurement of DnD 5E.

 

[Snekposter]

Well, I mean the game's named Dungeons and Dragons. You're going to be killing shit in caves and casting Cure Critical Wounds on the Bard after that Adult Male Dragon has his way with the poor fellah. If it was called say, A Game of Thrones then yeah, non-combat utility should be be considered a major aspect. But you really shouldn't play D&D and expect intrigue and plot. The game itself is just not set up for that.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Well, I mean the game's named Dungeons and Dragons. You're going to be killing shit in caves and casting Cure Critical Wounds on the Bard after that Adult Male Dragon has his way with the poor fellah. If it was called say, A Game of Thrones then yeah, non-combat utility should be be considered a major aspect. But you really shouldn't play D&D and expect intrigue and plot. The game itself is just not set up for that.

Absolutely, and as I said "That metric makes sense within DnD 5E and its playstyle, but that is precisely what I dislike about DnD 5E". It's a matter of personal taste. Also I am fine with combat heavy RPGs, but DnD feels barely like an RPG at all, since the class system railroads your character along, and at best you can hop on a different set of tracks every now and then.

I don't want intrigue or something, I mean, I am playing a fighter after all, so busting skulls is totally up my alley. It's just that the character can literall be nothing else besides what is on the can.
I can still roleplay by sticking whatever personality and behaviour I want on that character and plot and plot depth are entirely independent of the rulesystem, but I can't break from the mold that my character is in since its creation. I can literally just choose to dip a toe into another pre-made mold.

DnD is the system I play so I can play with friends, it's not the system I play cause I *want* to play DnD. Obviously, it's not so bad that I don't want to play it at all, but my pet peeves with DnD are big enough that it does get in the way of the enjoyment. For instance, one of its biggest reward systems, the leveling up, is something that I could not give less of a shit about, if I tried. It's kind of funny in its own right, when the other people in my group boast about all the cool shit they can now do and how hard it is to pick, while I can't even be arsed to look up what exactly I gained with that new level.

 

[Corn Flakes]

It all depends. You absolutely can play 5e without highly optimized characters or tactics. I've played a short campaign that was Rogues Only and it was a blast. There are two key things to pay attention to, though:

1 - Encounters have to be designed with the party in mind. A well-balanced, highly-optimized party being played as a wargame can and will rip through even overbalanced encounters like tissue paper. For a more "fluffy", less no-cap-kill-all party, the encounters need alternate winning conditions and interactions that allow for force multiplication, or encounters that can't be won by raw damage alone. Instead of fighting that pack of orcs in a blank featureless room in the middle of the cave crawl, fight them in a room split in two by a chasm with a rope bridge. The players can barge in and fight the orcs mano-a-mano, sure. But they can also be smart if that's how the group works. The Rogue can sneak in, weaken the ropes, then retreat before the Bard magically mimics the orc chieftain's voice and bellows for the orcs to come through the bridge and help him on the other side, and the wizard hits the weakened ropes with magic missiles and drops the orcs into the chasm. If any of them make it through, the Fighter and the Cleric can subdue them and interrogate them for information on the layout of the rest of the dungeon.

2 - The players must be in on it, all of them. There's no faster way to feel useless playing D&D than to have someone else on the party who can do exactly what you can do, but better. Likewise, if a character is built with a certain gimmick in mind (the Rogue is an expert climber, for example), then that gimmick needs to be both available with some frequency ("wow, this place feels like I'm playing Assassin's Creed 2!"), and it can't be easily overlapped by someone else ("oh, my Sorcerer is specialized in levitation").

It can be done, but it depends on everybody being on the same page and willing to compromise a bit. It's all about how you interact with the game world. Sure, you-hit-me-I-hit-you combat is one form of interaction, but it doesn't have to be the only one if that's what the party wants to do.

This sort of problem doesn't just affect D&D. Back when I played a lot of Storyteller, it was hard to find a Vampire game where the player characters weren't all too self-centered and unwilling to cooperate, which bogged down the game into a sequence of "wait for 20 minutes while the ST does a solo scene with the Ventrue. Again". But when the entire coterie was in on the joke and willing to push their characters into situations they normally wouldn't, for the sake of the plot, the game was a lot more fun.

 

[WinchesterPremium]

The opposite? The majority of grievances seem to boil down more or less to "Rangers aren't as powerful in killing things or do things that helps with killing things as other classes", which to me is just an off-shoot of classes in DnD 5E being measured in damage-output. Whether this starts at level one or level 5 or level 20 is irrelevant as far as I am concerned. He starts off weak compared to others and doesn't have a good level progression and that makes him a bad class. Fine. That's not the point that I disagree with. I disagree with the metric that this is measured in, which seems to be entirely focused on combat effectiveness. That metric makes sense within DnD 5E and its playstyle, but that is precisely what I dislike about DnD 5E.

Though, admittedly, the way how Ranger animal companions work does gimp them in a way independent of powercreep-aspects that I am talking about. But again: Part of the combat effectiveness measurement of DnD 5E.

The opposite yeah. Fighting is easier to balance. The real problem with DND has always been discrepancy in utility. The reason 3.5 magic users where gods compared to martials wasn't that they could do more damage (though they could), it was because they could fly, teleport, mind control, revive the dead, summon legions, magic open doors, scout with magic, and a bunch of other things at base without even taking clever use of all those abilities into account.

Ranger isn't under powered because it doesn't do enough damage, its under-powered because it doesn't do anything better than the other classes. Anything a ranger can do other classes can do better, including doing damage. What is it that you think a ranger is good at that the party Rogue or Wizard won't be better than them at?

 

[Judge Dredd]

ive never played dnd, but i've been interested in giving it a shot recently. any advice?

yeah, i'm a huge dork for roleplaying in vidya. in general, i go for characters with lots of utility, or characters with weird gimicks. is dnd 5e any good? apparently, 2 of my friends play that version.

I'm going to disagree with pretty much everybody here. My advice is to keep your expectations well in check, ignore all the squabbling above, and if possible play one shots or shorter campaigns.


If your interest in the game comes from critical roll, internet memes and stories, or popular media, it might not be worth your time.

I haven't watched Critical Roll myself, but my understanding is Critical Roll and shows like it are stage productions that use the premise of a RPG to tell a story. If you're expecting highly emotional scenes to leave the players teary eyed one moment, and leaping out of their chair with excitement the next, you're in something truly special.
This is somewhat closer to playing the game in my experience.

4chan green text stories and CritCrab videos are equally dubious. Funny, and in some cases plausible, but most seem to be using the RPG set up as a way to tell a joke or set up a gotcha. I've never had a murderhobo in my games, or seen someone derail a campaign fighting for gay rights.

As others have said, don't worry about a min-maxed party. As long as the players have an even remotely compatible playstyle, a DM can (and should) balance combat accordingly. This is why all the squabbling over this or that race or class being over or under powered is mostly bullshit. I've had people play vanilla Dragonborn with no problems. The biggest balance issue are weak starters that end strong (monk, casters) and characters that start strong and get stronger.

Same goes for roleplay. People go in depth about it online, but I don't know anyone who puts on silly voices and goes on in on oscar grade acting. Most of the time it's "My character asks about X". Sometimes in character conversations happen, but those are the exception instead of the norm.


As for why I suggest shorter campaign and one shots. It gives you a chance to try the game. It also goes to the dirty little secret of DnD. People talk about campaigns going on for years, or decades, and people talk about role play heavy games involving intricate politics and intrigue, but in practice it's mostly combat with the occasional mystery thrown in. You level from 1 to 20, then retire and start a new campaign.


Oh, and if you're playing 5e. Look into Warlock and Monk as classes. They're classes you don't typically see in PC and video games.

 

[Corn Flakes]

As for why I suggest shorter campaign and one shots. It gives you a chance to try the game. It also goes to the dirty little secret of DnD. People talk about campaigns going on for years, or decades, and people talk about role play heavy games involving intricate politics and intrigue, but in practice it's mostly combat with the occasional mystery thrown in. You level from 1 to 20, then retire and start a new campaign.

Since we're talking about shorter campaigns, here's a dirty little secret for the newbies: you might as well not even look at what your class can do past level 14. The vast majority of campaigns reach their conclusion, take a Total Party Kill, or peter out, long before level 20. Under normal XP distribution rules, it would take over a year of playing religiously every weekend to get there.

This is probably a blessing, too. Because designing challenging encounters for characters so powerful and with toolboxes that large gets way more annoying for both the GM (who has to try to account for all the tools the players have to trivialize/bypass/cheese things) and for the players (who have to deal with bullshit mechanics in high-level monsters). The vast majority of level 14+ characters I've played were for silly high-power one-shots, and balance was all over the place.

 

[Adamska]

The trouble with fighters IMO is that armor is just plain less useless than grabbing Dex. The former can get bypassed by certain attacks and also costs money, the latter is free and does not get bypassed. It also lets you roll Dex saves to avoid AoE, which is something armor can't help against. So if you go for Str you're just plain worse than a Barb who gets to rage and use those temp HP and DR to tank damage, and you're pretty much just a money sink as you try to scrape up the money to get platemail. Meanwhile a ranged fighter that stacks on Dex can do a surprising amount of pain with a Rapier/shortsword combo up close and a bow from afar, and with the proper feats you'll be doing crazy damage. Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, and a Heavy Crossbow lets you nail guys out to 400 with no Disadvantage for 1d10 piercing, and you get to make as many attacks as you normally do, so at level 8 you're popping off 2 1d10 attacks with every single Attack action... and at anything you can see within 400 yards with no penalty, and you ignore anything short of full cover, and in 5e ranged weapons get to add their ability score so its not terrible. Considering 500 is about what a current-day designated marksman is capable of with a 7.62 rifle, that's pretty damn good. Oh, and unlike a Rogue or Ranger you have the HP to get into melee if necessary and not die horribly.

Granted, I can't exactly say its good to be a fighter, but you can do whatever combat job is necessary in a pinch... if you snag dex. Otherwise you're just a worse barb who needs armor.

Of course, that's my 5e experience talking, so I can't say what its like for other editions.

(I can go on and on about the utter uselessness of Str for fighters, but I'll leave you with the abbreviated version above.)

One more reason Barbs are better; they actually have an okay set of skills for a martial. They get things like Handle Animal and Survival as well as Craft, meaning you can actually play them a bit more thoughtfully as a zen nature warrior or something like a wild expert. Hell, they also get more skill points per level at 4+INT per, but that's because I bet the testers (and players in general) dump INT as hard as possible because Rignar Smash is fun.

It is, but you can play them smarter than you would a fighter, or many non-skill monkey martials can be done.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

The opposite? The majority of grievances seem to boil down more or less to "Rangers aren't as powerful in killing things or do things that helps with killing things as other classes", which to me is just an off-shoot of classes in DnD 5E being measured in damage-output. Whether this starts at level one or level 5 or level 20 is irrelevant as far as I am concerned. He starts off weak compared to others and doesn't have a good level progression and that makes him a bad class. Fine. That's not the point that I disagree with. I disagree with the metric that this is measured in, which seems to be entirely focused on combat effectiveness. That metric makes sense within DnD 5E and its playstyle, but that is precisely what I dislike about DnD 5E.

Though, admittedly, the way how Ranger animal companions work does gimp them in a way independent of powercreep-aspects that I am talking about. But again: Part of the combat effectiveness measurement of DnD 5E.

It's not even just a combat only issue. Ranger doesn't excel at anything in 5e and most feedback has been ignored about this. My current character is a scout rogue and it feels more like a ranger RP-wise than the actual ranger class, which is a shame because ranger has been my favorite class since AD&D2e.

 

[robobobo]

Since we're talking about shorter campaigns, here's a dirty little secret for the newbies: you might as well not even look at what your class can do past level 14. The vast majority of campaigns reach their conclusion, take a Total Party Kill, or peter out, long before level 20. Under normal XP distribution rules, it would take over a year of playing religiously every weekend to get there.

This is why I prefer levelless systems like Shadowrun, WFRP, Fantasy Flight's Star Wars, etc. Having your really cool whatever power gated behind being level 18 or something similarly unreachable blows, while buying a skill rank or whatever is an easy bite-sized improvement to a character with a tangible benefit, and is often cheaply gotten in RPGs where you buy improvements individually.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Since we're talking about shorter campaigns, here's a dirty little secret for the newbies: you might as well not even look at what your class can do past level 14. The vast majority of campaigns reach their conclusion, take a Total Party Kill, or peter out, long before level 20. Under normal XP distribution rules, it would take over a year of playing religiously every weekend to get there.

That reminds me of something I forgot the mention.

People swap in and out. I struggle to think of a campaign that someone didn't drop mid campaign, turned up only occasionally, or otherwise missed sessions. This is a problem as people who's only experience is the internet or popular media will want to put the game on hold whenever this happens. If you start putting the brakes on a campaign every time someone is late or can't make it, the campaign is as good as dead as someone will always be late, get called into work, go to bed, forget, etc.

@The Fresno Nightcrawler I know you're playing and not running, but if you do find yourself DMing, I recommend giving your campaign an organisation the PCs are all part of with a clear, achievable mandate that involves the campaign. eg. "We work for the thieves guild, and want to steal MacGuffin X." or even "We're members of the adventurers guild and we want to kill the villain to stop him from taking over the world.". This flies in the face of conventional advice, but this takes a weight off the shoulders of not only the DM, but the players too. It gives the PCs a unifying goal, gives them a reason to work together, and gives you a handy excuse whenever they're unavailable.

"robobobo couldn't make it today and 40 year old boomer can't play any more? Their characters are on another job for the organisation." "Adamska want's to join our campaign in progress and Corn Flakes' character died last session? Guess who just joined the guild/got assigned to the case/whatever makes sense for the organisation."

Edit: Fixed spelling mistake.

 

[Snekposter]

One more reason Barbs are better; they actually have an okay set of skills for a martial. They get things like Handle Animal and Survival as well as Craft, meaning you can actually play them a bit more thoughtfully as a zen nature warrior or something like a wild expert. Hell, they also get more skill points per level at 4+INT per, but that's because I bet the testers (and players in general) dump INT as hard as possible because Rignar Smash is fun.

It is, but you can play them smarter than you would a fighter, or many non-skill monkey martials can be done.

Speaking of skilled Barbarians:

 

[Corn Flakes]

That reminds me of something I forgot the mention.

People swap in and out. I struggle to think of a campaign that someone didn't drop mid campaign, turned up only occasionally, or otherwise missed sessions. This is a problem as people who's only experience is the internet or popular media will want to put the game on hold whenever this happens. If you start putting the brakes on a campaign every time someone is late or can't make it, the campaign is as good as dead as someone will always be late, get called into work, go to bed, forget, etc.

@The Fresno Nightcrawler I know you're playing and not running, but if you do find yourself DMing, I recommend giving your campaign an origination the PCs are all part of with a clear, achievable mandate that involves the campaign. eg. "We work for the thieves guild, and want to steal MacGuffin X." or even "We're members of the adventurers guild and we want to kill the villain to stop him from taking over the world.". This flies in the face of conventional advice, but this takes a weight off the shoulders of not only the DM, but the players too. It gives the PCs a unifying goal, gives them a reason to work together, and gives you a handy excuse whenever they're unavailable.

"robobobo couldn't make it today and 40 year old boomer can't play any more? Their characters are on another job for the organisation." "Adamska want's to join our campaign in progress and Corn Flakes' character died last session? Guess who just joined the guild/got assigned to the case/whatever makes sense for the organisation."

Very good point. That's another reason why deep, story-driven campaigns are exceedingly rare to find out there, unless you're literally being paid to take part in it (coughcoughCriticalRolecoughcough). It's a lot easier to get them going when you're a teenager and have no commitments, but as people enter adulthood, get jobs, start families, or go to college, it gets increasingly harder to get everybody schedules to line up.

Shorter adventures that reach a safe point (where characters can duck in or out) or finish by the end of the session make things a lot easier. Otherwise the GM may have to control absent characters or find a way to get them out of the story for a while. The party reaches a split in the dungeon path and the PCs the GM is controlling decide to go one way while the rest of the party go another, one of them is seriously injured and the other has to hang behind to take care of them, they get abducted, stuff like that. It's always a bit clunky.

 

[Memento Malum]

After the first game I ran had a character walk out a magic door, shake hands with a new character who passed him on the way in, and then vanish into the aether only to reappear and then redisappear (fucker who played that guy moved away twice), and had to deal with several other "convenient" appearances/disappearances, I swore never again.

The last two campaigns I've run have both had a central organization to base the party off of. In one they ran a criminal gang and in the other they had a ship that they sailed from place to place on. This let me bring in people whenever someone was in town and wanted to play or when someone wanted to switch classes (again) or when their job schedule changed (again). Much better for narrative flow.

It also let me run two evil games with zero intraparty conflict, which according to the internet is completely impossible. We never stated that this was an "evil" game or that the characters were on the darker side of the moral compass, but the things that happened were definitely less-than-legal in both conception and execution. Despite everyone playing pretty terrible people, we never had a intraparty fight because everyone was loyal to the group (the gang or the ship).

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

That reminds me of something I forgot the mention.

People swap in and out. I struggle to think of a campaign that someone didn't drop mid campaign, turned up only occasionally, or otherwise missed sessions. This is a problem as people who's only experience is the internet or popular media will want to put the game on hold whenever this happens. If you start putting the brakes on a campaign every time someone is late or can't make it, the campaign is as good as dead as someone will always be late, get called into work, go to bed, forget, etc.

This happens often enough in my group that we just roll with it and say "so-and-so is in the player box".