This past weekend, I had the opportunity to play (as a player!) in a tabletop roleplaying game for the first time in a long while (long enough that I can’t remember when that previous time was, but that might be the general fog of the last year more than a measure of a long time). It was a one-shot that a frequent player and friend of mine put together that was a sci-fi, star wars/trek game run in Dungeons and Dragons 5e–because that was the system that everyone was familiar with–but everything was given a sci-fi twist rather than a fantasy one. The GM herself admitted later on, as we talked at the end of the session, that this particular game was basically the rough draft of a concept she had for something that she’d like to run in the Star Wars 5e ruleset, but it had been a long time since she’d looked at the rules and none of us were terribly familiar with them either, so simple and straight-forward with a system we all knew already was the order of the day. I had a decent amount of fun, even if it was a bit of an RP-light session (it kinda had to be, since it was a one-shot), but I definitely oveprepared in ways that were both incredibly useful for the group and a little personally frustrating. I have a tendency to do this sort of thing since, as a forever GM, I’m always offering to fill-in wherever I’m needed and while I got to chase my preferred idea for this game, I wound up doing it in a way that was technically interesting to build and run, but not particularly satisfying or fun.

The problem with adapting a star wars or star trek style story to D&D (even if there winds up being a little Alien mixed in there, ultimately) is that everyone’s conception of battle in those games is either ranged (blasters, phasers, or lasers of some kind) or super special melee (lightsabers, ceremonial horniness combat–or however you want to describe what happened in those pon farr episodes–etc). Which means, if you build a front-line character meant to stand up to hits and hopefully prevent the worst of them, you’re probably going to be the only one on the front lines. Which is what I did. Originally we were going to have a fifth player and I was hoping they’d also build a melee character of some kind, but they wound up needing to drop out right before the game, so I was the only person built to be in melee combat. Which, for most melee characters, isn’t that big of a deal. But I didn’t build a normal melee character. I built a rogue who was the face of the party but also a frontline defender. I’ve had the idea for a Rogue Tank for a while and I’ve even done a few experiments with it, but I went all-in on it this time and while I absolutely got to see it perform exactly as I hoped it would, I didn’t really get to enjoy combat. Despite my high armor, the luck of the dice had my character still getting hit constantly. I had plenty of hit points, but I got healed before I could show off how tanky I was by being barely alive. I was able to negate a few of the worst hits with some abilities, but all of that came at the cost of actually being able to put out the damage I wanted to.

In D&D 5e, the type of rogue you typically make for frontline combat is the “swashbuckler” type. They had an ability that literally allows you to do sneak attacks if you’re all alone on the front line and they’re even built toward Charisma like my rogue was. But, since I was the captain and strategist and not supposed to be the tank, I built a Mastermind who could create forged documents, easily impersonate people, and direct their allies to be more effective in and out of combat. That feels more like the kind of rebellious scoundrel I’d had in mind than some kind of smooth-talking frontline fighter dancing in and out of danger. So I got maybe one sneak attack in and then had to spend the rest of my time either dodging attacks or putting up what little damage I could with my one singular normal attack to keep the monster invading our ship focused on me so that my much squishier companions wouldn’t get taken down by this thing. Which means I absolutely served the role I meant to fill in combat, taking a bunch of hits and enabling my companions to hit harder, but I still left the session feeling a little frustrated that I’d made some of the choices I did and sacrificed mechanical ability for flavor when that flavor didn’t really matter anyway. I’m not sure any of my assistance helped people hit. I’m pretty sure everyone’s first rolls struck home anyway and the skill challenges we were doing were both too abstracted and not abstracted enough for me to use my ability to help my companions.

This isn’t the GM’s fault. She had a lot to cover in three and a half hours and she did so amazingly. I just over-prepared for the situation we wound up in since all I knew before that day was “star wars or star trek” and the “alien flavored sci-fi horror” stuff came up day-of. I didn’t know that we’d for-sure be doing any fighting at all, to be honest, and while there were a lot of other ways things could have gone based on our decisions and outcomes, I think all of them would have given my character a little more room to shine, built as they were. As far as I knew going in, it was entirely possible that we would spend all session in our ship, flying around, and never actually get into physical combat. Or that we’d be able to talk our way into or out of any situation that might have required combat. Unfortunately, we wound up in the scenario that involved direct, hand-to-blaster combat and while I was able to safeguard my allies as intended, I wasn’t able to contribute much else to the encounter. This isn’t nothing, of course. Them all being ranged combatants means that our foe getting into melee range with them would have been disastrous for them and being tank meant I prevented that from happening, but I do wish I’d focused a bit more on building in that direction rather than trying to be a good generalist with a few important spikes in ability like I did. I probably would have enjoyed it more since then I’d have been able to actively participate in the tanking rather than passively do it since my Armor Class and Hit Points were surprisingly high for a fifth-level rogue. Turns out I could have avoided all the stuff I picked to help with my tanking since the only attack that missed me would have missed me without all that specialization anyway. It was just bad luck, to be honest, but I still wish I’d built my character in a way that would have been more fun than utility like my fellow players seemed to have done.