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General Tabletop Discussion
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My thoughts of Roles - from Races and Classes
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<blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 3949257" data-attributes="member: 5143"><p>I think SOME might. Others will play timid clerics who are afraid of being the boss but love to be support.</p><p></p><p>What it comes down to it is that support and leader are pretty much the same term. It's a matter of the images that it invokes.</p><p></p><p>A leader casts a spell to increase his own accuracy and his allies then he attacks the enemies and yells out, "Join me, my allies, we can defeat them!"</p><p></p><p>Support casts a spell to buff his allies accuracy and says, "Alright guys, I made you better, now go kill them. I'll be back here if you need healing."</p><p></p><p>One invokes images of heroic people risking their life to lead their comrades to defeat their enemies. The other invokes images of a medic who sits back at camp waiting for the wounded to be brought to him or a supply officer who delivers ammo to the front line.</p><p></p><p>One is the officer who says, "You flank to the left and you flank to the right, I'll charge at him to distract him." The other is the guy who stays in the rear waiting for the battle to go bad enough that the real adventurers need support.</p><p></p><p>Even if they had the exact same powers, the first one just SOUNDS more appealing. And(if I'm not remembering incorrectly) one of the designers has already said that this is why they are named Leaders.</p><p></p><p>However, I think that Clerics already fit this role pretty well. They tended to be the center of most combats with no one wanting to get too far away from them to make sure they were in range of buffs and healing. Often, they were in the position to survey the battlefield since they had to keep constant track of hitpoints of all of their allies as well as the damage being done by enemies so they could estimate who needed healing first and approximately when they would need it. I've found that often they managed to see tactical weaknesses before others. Not that every class and every character didn't participate in the tactical portion of the game. It's just that clerics made the difference between winning and losing in most cases.</p><p></p><p>Most armies need good soldiers, good weapons, but they also need good leadership to tie it all together or it won't matter. That's where the cleric and warlord come in.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I know the designers have stated time and again that the roles are descriptive not proscriptive. However, I agree with you that it is very likely that the roles have partially shaped the classes.</p><p></p><p>On the other hand, I have no problem with this since my main problem with 3e is that the classes don't have any roles and that it is too easy to design any class to fill any role or to multiclass yourself into a character who fills no roles at all.</p><p></p><p>To me, if this form of game design causes someone to look at spells like Tenser's Transformation, Polymorph, and Divine Power and say, "These spells can singlehandedly cause one class to equal or surpass another class in a role they shouldn't, maybe we need to remove that ability." I am all for it.</p><p></p><p>I've always viewed D&D as a cooperative game where everyone should HAVE to work together to succeed. I've seen what happens when a group of people made up characters and figured they were well balanced because they have a Fighter, Barbarian, Druid, Cleric, and Wizard only to find out they were basically all playing the same character with a different class.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Majoru Oakheart, post: 3949257, member: 5143"] I think SOME might. Others will play timid clerics who are afraid of being the boss but love to be support. What it comes down to it is that support and leader are pretty much the same term. It's a matter of the images that it invokes. A leader casts a spell to increase his own accuracy and his allies then he attacks the enemies and yells out, "Join me, my allies, we can defeat them!" Support casts a spell to buff his allies accuracy and says, "Alright guys, I made you better, now go kill them. I'll be back here if you need healing." One invokes images of heroic people risking their life to lead their comrades to defeat their enemies. The other invokes images of a medic who sits back at camp waiting for the wounded to be brought to him or a supply officer who delivers ammo to the front line. One is the officer who says, "You flank to the left and you flank to the right, I'll charge at him to distract him." The other is the guy who stays in the rear waiting for the battle to go bad enough that the real adventurers need support. Even if they had the exact same powers, the first one just SOUNDS more appealing. And(if I'm not remembering incorrectly) one of the designers has already said that this is why they are named Leaders. However, I think that Clerics already fit this role pretty well. They tended to be the center of most combats with no one wanting to get too far away from them to make sure they were in range of buffs and healing. Often, they were in the position to survey the battlefield since they had to keep constant track of hitpoints of all of their allies as well as the damage being done by enemies so they could estimate who needed healing first and approximately when they would need it. I've found that often they managed to see tactical weaknesses before others. Not that every class and every character didn't participate in the tactical portion of the game. It's just that clerics made the difference between winning and losing in most cases. Most armies need good soldiers, good weapons, but they also need good leadership to tie it all together or it won't matter. That's where the cleric and warlord come in. I know the designers have stated time and again that the roles are descriptive not proscriptive. However, I agree with you that it is very likely that the roles have partially shaped the classes. On the other hand, I have no problem with this since my main problem with 3e is that the classes don't have any roles and that it is too easy to design any class to fill any role or to multiclass yourself into a character who fills no roles at all. To me, if this form of game design causes someone to look at spells like Tenser's Transformation, Polymorph, and Divine Power and say, "These spells can singlehandedly cause one class to equal or surpass another class in a role they shouldn't, maybe we need to remove that ability." I am all for it. I've always viewed D&D as a cooperative game where everyone should HAVE to work together to succeed. I've seen what happens when a group of people made up characters and figured they were well balanced because they have a Fighter, Barbarian, Druid, Cleric, and Wizard only to find out they were basically all playing the same character with a different class. [/QUOTE]
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