Badu: I’m a humanist. I see good in everybody. I saw something good in Hitler.
Journalist: Come again?
Badu: Yeah, I did. Hitler was a wonderful painter.
Journalist: No, he wasn’t! And even if he was, what would his skill as a painter have to do with any “good” in him?
Badu: Okay, he was a terrible painter. Poor thing. He had a terrible childhood. That means that when I’m looking at my daughter, Mars (Badu’s daughter with enigmatic rapper Jay Electronica. She also has another daughter, Puma, with the West Coast rapper the D.O.C.), I could imagine her being in someone else’s home and being treated so poorly, and what that could spawn. I see things like that. I guess it’s just the Pisces in me.
Journalist: I’m perfectly willing to accept that you might be operating on a higher moral plane than I am, but I think going down the route of “Hitler was a child once too” is maybe turning the idea of empathy into an empty abstraction.
Badu: Maybe so. It doesn’t test my limits — I can see this clearly. I don’t care if the whole group says something, I’m going to be honest. I know I don’t have the most popular opinion sometimes.
Thesis: the real reason 4E’s role taxonomy is so unpopular among a certain vocal subset of the D&D fandom is because its role name for the classes with all the heals and buffs is “Leader”, and folks couldn’t handle that much honesty.
I could actually see that causing tension, like with how Paladins players tried to boss everyone around in previous editions.
The thing is, it’s not just a matter of being bossy: it’s basically true.
In a team-based game with high tactical crunch, it’s typically the case that the kind of situational awareness that’s needed to play an effective support is also the kind of situational awareness that’s needed to play an effective field commander. The relevant skillsets have near-total overlap. Whether we’re talking tabletop games or video games, the same principle applies: if you want to win, let the cleric call the shots.
And for the most part, DPS wonks hate acknowledging that. Just loathe the very notion. Ask any Overwatch fan if you don’t believe me!
Lets be perfectly fair, if you focus entirely on your own damage output and not at all on how best you fit into the group dynamic, you’re not a teammate: you’re a weapon with an ego score.
Also that bit about paladins trying to tell everyone what to do? Keep in mind that stereotype comes from the barbaric days before the internet existed and that “ vocal subset” were a bunch of mysogonistic gatekeeping jerks who drove away anyone who didn’t want to take part in their rape/murderhobo wish fulfillment fantasies.
In my personal experience, the folks who are strongly against there being any kind of moral backbone to a party composition are the same people who’re worried about women intruding on their communities and preventing them from being as crass as they want.
that last comment cleared my skin, watered my crops, and did my laundry for a week.
