One criticism of savage worlds at our game table has been the lack of well defined character roles, resulting in all the characters pretty much doing the same thing in combat, and taking the same edges when leveling up. In fact, while I was in the process of drafting this post, I came across
Tommy Brownell's series on the same topic. Its a great series, but all it proves is that a savvy Savage Worlds player
could create a character that runs a bit different from the norm. It doesn't address how real players actually create their characters. And if you have to introduce in a bunch of obscure edges to prove your point, you loose.
The real question is, how do I as a GM encourage players to build characters that they will have more fun playing, knowing that a major component of "fun" for most players is uniquely contributing to the success of the party.
I don't think anyone can argue that Arcane Background characters play differently than your stock fighter. Let's set them aside for now, although all I say subsequently could certainly apply when you compare one Arcana user to another.
Consider a related problem - in a combat-heavy campaign, players are reluctant to take non-combat edges and skills. Strategical, this makes sense - they are going to be making Fighting rolls much more often than, say, Lockpicking rolls, and taking a non-combat edge means forgoing a combat edge. Its only rational for a player to spend their limited resource (Advances) where they will be most useful. Contrast this to D&D, where combat resources and non-combat resources are almost completely separate.
Now, one obvious solution is to make your character roll on non-combat skills as much as possible. This certainly worked for our group in Fifty Fathoms when we realized we had nobody with decent boating skill. Many days lost at sea and two advances later, we had several competent boaters. Of course, those characters paid a price for that when a melee broke out, being significantly less effective.
So as GMs, we need to reward, not punish. characters who take non-combat skill and edges. One great way to reward them is to to give them a chance to make use of those non-combat abilities to improve their combat. And if we do this right, they will develop a distinctly different tactical style compared to their fighter companions, solving the "everyone plays the same" problem. And we do this by introducing a bunch of obscure edges. Specifically, Professional Edges.
Take the classic RPG trope, the thief. In my experience, the thief was the role assigned to the guy who joined after the campaign was already well under way, because playing a thief requires a significant investment in non-combat skills and edges, and you were rewarded with the thankless job of picking locks and detecting the occasional trap. The thief trope already has a nice Professional Edge to support it, but if it didn't we should create one - that's what Professional Edges are for, after all - highlighting the useful character tropes of your campaign (more on this in a later post). Unfortunately, there really isn't much incentive to take Thief as it stands now, so lets add a new edge:
Stealth Fighter
Requirements: Seasoned, Thief
If the character starts his turn unobserved by the enemy, they may make a Stealth Attack. To do this, they must first make a successful stealth roll vs their target's notice. If successful, they get a +2 bonus to any Fighting roll they then make against that enemy during their turn. If they get a raise on their stealth roll, they also get a bonus 1d6 on damage.
A character with this edge is going to have a distinctly different fighting style. Instead of directly engaging his foe, he's going to try and stay out of sight until he gets a chance to sneak up and execute his Stealth Attack. As GMs, we can set up our combats so that the player gets opportunities to do this. Maybe their is a single guard the party needs to take out quickly and silently. Maybe some archers are shooting from a balcony, where the thief can approach unobserved from below, then use stealth and climbing to pop-up and attack. Suddenly, our thief goes from being "the other fighter" to a key player on the combat team.
When doing this, we need to make sure the prerequisites are set sufficiently high to discourage everyone from taking the edge, and they should synergize with the other skills and edges required by the profession we are trying to boost. The easy way to do this is to make the professional edge a prerequisite to our new edge. Even if we hadn't done that, the Thief bonus to Stealth rolls makes it very appealing to someone who wants to take Stealth Fighter. In fact, the main reason to make Thief a prerequisite is that Stealth Fighter is a little too good, and we don't to make it so easy to get that every fighter takes it.
Give each profession two or three of these exclusive edges (at different ranks) and you are good to go.
