The Jack

"Jack not name! Jack job!"

— Sweetums, in The Muppet Movie

Basic Information

The Jack, as in Jack-of-all-trades, is a combat role of a character that can do a little bit of everything. They don't crumple in one hit (from most foes, anyway), the can do a little healing and buffing, and they can do damage at a variety of ranges.

The term "Jack" is also sometimes used to describe a type of folklore hero who is uncommonly brave and uncommonly lucky, such as Jack the Giant Killer and the similarly-themed hero of Jack and the Beanstalk.

Subtypes and Related Tropes:

• Evasion Tank
• The Hero
• Jack of All Trades, Master of One
• The Mario
• Mode-Shifting Jack
• Party Leader
• Standardized Leader Type

Sources

Bibliography

1. full source reference

Game and Story Use

• Take care that the character isn't actually Master of None. It can be very tricky balancing a generalist palette of skills and abilities, without simply sucking. The goal is to minimize weaknesses and increase utility, not fail at everything.
  • Some game systems just make this a lot easier or harder than others. Sometimes the difficulty is minimal in the early campaign, but gets insurmountable at the higher levels.
    • As an example from a campaign I ran, the Scion RPG made this sort of character almost impossible to play unless the whole party was doing it - the gaps in power level from one epic attribute point to the next were just too big, and the generalist ended up feeling useless by the middle of the campaign.
• One option, if the play group all trusts each other, and egos don't really figure in, is for The Jack to be slightly higher level than the other PCs, and built to be literally second best at everything.
  • In the Amber DRPG, this would describe Bleys.
• Spies and Badass Normals are often The Jack.
• In a Solo Campaign, you may feel you have no other choice than to play The Jack.
  • However, The Nuker, The Petmaster and The Plugger can all work well for solo play, provided the game system cooperates.