Working in the Game Mine

Mark CMG said:

Naw. Combat roles are pigeonholes. I prefer creatures to be more well-rounded whenever possible and not to be shunted into a category nor to have some species divided up into several versions, each shunted into one so-called combat role or another. This gets back to what Mike Mearls was saying in the late 3.5 era about creatures being boiled down to just what they can do in a single combat encounter. It's flat, overly predictable for players, and encourages the kind of two-dimensional thinking that RPGs inherently should be trying to rise above. No thanks.

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It's possible I'm stepping into a minefield here, but let me maybe explain the thought behind what [MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] was saying. Or at least why thinking about "combat roles" can make some sense.

So, you've got your typical D&D game. Stereotypical. ARCHETYPAL, even. Folks in a town seek rumors about treasure and go kill things to get it. The Core D&D Experience.

You go to kill some goblins and take their stuff.

Now, even if the goblins are pretty quick to mow through, round after round of "I attack...it dies...it attacks...deal damage..." in a vacuum is pretty tedious accounting. Tension builds as your players loose HP, but it's only slightly more interactive than watching your toon auto-attack in WoW.

So variety in combat is a goal that is worthy of being met for D&D.

You can add variety with terrain. Traps, hazards, pits, rocks, cover, difficult terrain, etc. All of those add some interesting variety.

You can also add variety by changing up monster abilities. This goblin has a bow, so it attacks at range. This other goblin has a longspear, so it fights from the back ranks. A third goblin uses a flail, so it can trip you up.

You can also add variety by adding "recruited" monsters. The hobgoblin has better armor and better coordination. The bugbear is big and tough and sneaky.

Guess what?

You've created monster roles.

Bow goblin? He's artillery. Longspear goblin? Maybe a soldier. Flail goblin? Possibly a controller. Hobgoblin? Soldier. Bugbear? Brute. Or maybe Lurker if you play up the sneaky angle.

Recognizing these roles and embracing what they can do helps makes everyone's combats a little better.

Now, there is a big difference in brainspace between a descriptive role that describes what the thing is like in combat, and a proscriptive role that mandates that the creature do X, Y, and Z in combat. But the difference in what is actually on the paper is more a difference in page layout than a substantial difference in philosophy. A monster who hits hard with ranged attacks is Artillery, and noting that Artillery monsters have general qualities X, Y, and Z are really helpful to DMs who want good combat encounters.

And, as an addendum, not everything is a suitable combat threat, either. Rust monsters and ear seekers and gelatinous cubes and pixies and dryads celestials don't necessarily need a combat role, because they aren't necessarily combat encounters. It's OK if a celestial is wildly more powerful than other creatures of its level in combat -- combat is not the way you deal with them. It's OK if a rust monster is boring except for its rusting abilities -- combat is not what it's there for. A gelatinous cube isn't a "brute" or a "lurker," it acts more like a trap or a hazard. Not everything is there to be fought. I think 5e monster design must learn that lesson, at least.

But combat roles for monsters you're expected to enter combat with help define their abilities and limitations and design intents better than "goblin with a bow" does.

Kamikaze Midget said:

It's possible I'm stepping into a minefield here, but let me maybe explain the thought behind what [MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] was saying.

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Oh, I'm aware of the design mentality. I just think it needs to go in the other direction. Teach the GMs to make them individually unique on top of being inherently well-rounded, I say. Make the combat encounter interesting by virtue of fleshing out the well-roundedness to include personality traits on top of the base creatures rather than boiling them down and then making them cookie-cutter-interesting by imposing set combat roles on top of the bare bones. Players then aren't bored of the encounters after discovering the two or three types of combat roles they discover might be prevalent in any given species and the handful of tricks each combat role and species has grafted onto it.

Kamikaze Midget said:

It's possible I'm stepping into a minefield here (. . .)

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Oh, and your entering the fray couldn't help but remind me of this little scene -


[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9_jIa2WADc]Grease me up woman! - YouTube[/ame]

Fifth Element said:

Naw, combat roles help make sure the monster is interesting in combat. You don't end up with useless monsters in a fight because their attributes and attacks or what have you interact poorly.

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Or worse, huge, confused monstrosities that are so broad in what they can do as to become unclear in what they do or flat-out too complex to use by any non-expert DM (I'm looking at you "most outsiders from the old 3e MMs" [but mostly the Marilith and Pit fiend]).

The Choice said:

Or worse, huge, confused monstrosities that are so broad in what they can do as to become unclear in what they do or flat-out too complex to use by any non-expert DM (I'm looking at you "most outsiders from the old 3e MMs" [but mostly the Marilith and Pit fiend]).

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That too. Focused design can help avoid "analysis paralysis" for less-experienced DMs, when faced with monsters who were given 17 different things to do in order to be well-rounded.

Heck, this problem even exists in some high-level 4E monsters. The designers don't always manage to stick to their principles.

I don't mind roles - provided they are descriptive not prescriptive.

Hit dice/saves etc by monster/type etc, and a role appended to the tag. So you don't build to the role but to the monster, but the role is there to help in creating encounters and such.

The patterns are going to be there whether they name them or not. The patterns are going to be there whether they tell us the names or not. The only real problem with naming patterns is if you miss some and/or confuse them.

It would actually help to have more than one such naming scheme, because when you stick to one naming scheme, inevitably you do miss some thngs.

Lord Mhoram said:

I don't mind roles - provided they are descriptive not prescriptive.

Hit dice/saves etc by monster/type etc, and a role appended to the tag. So you don't build to the role but to the monster, but the role is there to help in creating encounters and such.

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I think that proscriptive us easier to fall into for designers when they are designing for specific combat roles. "Hey Mike, we need a goblin artillery monster, so I gave him a shortbow, and a special feat with a bonus to hit if he spends his initiative and attacks last, called an aimed shot. We're good now."

I'd rather see an entry for goblin with a pool of tools from which to build, rather than Goblin, Archer, Artillery.

Harlock said:

I think that proscriptive us easier to fall into for designers when they are designing for specific combat roles. "Hey Mike, we need a goblin artillery monster, so I gave him a shortbow, and a special feat with a bonus to hit if he spends his initiative and attacks last, called an aimed shot. We're good now."

I'd rather see an entry for goblin with a pool of tools from which to build, rather than Goblin, Archer, Artillery.

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YEah.

I tend to build from "These are Orcs, that is what they can do--- what kind of tactics can I give them, that fit what an orc is" - simulationist in a sense - I don't really care what combat role the Orc might feel - but I want it to be an Orc.
Now give me a baselline Orc with tools to build into each role (or split roles or none at all) and I'm happy.

Mark CMG said:

I just think it needs to go in the other direction. Teach the GMs to make them individually unique on top of being inherently well-rounded, I say.

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I think part of what mearls was saying was that these two directions are not incompatible. You can (and 5e probably should) do both.

Mark CMG said:

Make the combat encounter interesting by virtue of fleshing out the well-roundedness to include personality traits on top of the base creatures rather than boiling them down and then making them cookie-cutter-interesting by imposing set combat roles on top of the bare bones. Players then aren't bored of the encounters after discovering the two or three types of combat roles they discover might be prevalent in any given species and the handful of tricks each combat role and species has grafted onto it.

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Cookie cutters have their place, too! Not every goblin needs to be well fleshed out.

Besides, the problem you're seeing -- similar monsters -- isn't a problem inherent in the use of combat roles. It's a problem with rigid definition, assembly-line production, and an unconsidered story. You can use combat roles without necessarily taking along any of that baggage, so that "Controller" remains a useful term to describe how Bob the Demon fights (by moving enemies around) without necessarily dictating the entirety of Bob the Demon (because he exists independently of the ten rounds in which the party encounters and kills him, and the design keeps THAT in mind, too).