Should There Even Be Roles?

[Hassassin]

'Role' is about your expected primary combat role and not "you will do this at all times." It also defines the general sort of powers that the class are given in 4E.

Yes, and what I'm saying is that roles in that sense haven't always existed in D&D. (As [MENTION=2198]Spatula[/MENTION], whom I quoted, seemed to claim.)

All paladins weren't defenders in 3e. Most paladins (but not all) could do things defenders in 4e do, but many were as good or better at other things. I've never expected players to choose a primary combat role.

You could say roles have always existed in the sense of "ways to affect combat" - i.e. as verbs like "I'm defending the mage". However, they haven't always existed as scopes of either classes or characters.

 

[AlioTheFool]

What do you want out of a Bard/Ranger/Rogue/Wizard? Is it the class names on the character sheet, or do you want to play a sneaky, wilderness-savvy guy that knows tons of stories and can weave magic?

Well, honestly, I don't play rangers, so my point was more "If I want to play this combination, from a story-based perspective, I want the ability to do so."

I like the idea of a Bard who started off as a street-performer picking-pockets while enthralling crowds, who eventually made his way into a school of magic.

Yes, I get that I could "say" that's what my character did in, say, 4E, but it doesn't work like that in practice. It's not like I haven't tried.

Well, let's talk about what was good about 4e's approach to roles.

Some roles have always been implicit. Take defenders, for instance. It was no major revelation to tell folks that fighters and paladins should be on the front lines protecting the softer characters. I think it's to 4e's credit that it made the job of defending the party consist of more than just being the closest target to attack.

They did another good thing in providing a healer role (ahem, I mean "leader") that led to all sorts of interesting ways to provide support to the party beyond spamming cures. I don't think bards have ever been cooler than in 4e.

And best of all, thinking along the lines of roles helped give purpose to some classes who previously lacking it. Monks and rangers, for instance, never had broad areas where they excelled. Monks had a lot of dumb, contrived abilities and rangers were just fighters that could track.

Conversely, classes like cleric and druid that encompassed virtually all roles were reined in. They could no longer do battle on the front lines better than a fighter while throwing out artillery spells.

So, where did they start to go downhill? I'd say it was with wizards and the institution of a "controller" role. While there were always spells that were good for crowd control, D&D did not previously have a class purely dedicated to it. I, for one, don't think it really benefited from having one foisted upon it. Combat is just not that fun when it constantly consists of fighting a bunch of dazed, immobilized, blinded, punching bags.

The appeal of a wizard is not that they chain-stun or drop AoE's. The true appeal is that they are a swiss army knife of utilities. They are a like a deck of Magic cards that, with proper preparation, can bring the party through any situation.

Rather than a controller role, the designers should have thought along the lines of a role that was designed for versatility and problem-solving. But that fell outside of their imperative to make classes uncomplicated and homogeneous. That was a major mistake. There are always going to be players who want something easy to play, and there are always going to be players that want something intricate to play. Somebody needed to stand up and say "y'know, it's okay for SOME classes to be more advanced than others".

I disagree. I think Leader was the ill-conceived role in 4E. It could have been a tack-on to any other role and still performed its goal. A defender-based cleric could have leader abilities. A controller-based wizard could add a healing spell or two.

In reality though, you could argue that any one role could be a tack-on role to any other. That's really where I come from in thinking anyway. I want the ability to mix and match. I'm aware of what the game has always had, but if I wanted to play that, I would.

Honestly, I'm grow less and less confident that this "all things to all people" is achievable.

 

[Klaus]

Well, honestly, I don't play rangers, so my point was more "If I want to play this combination, from a story-based perspective, I want the ability to do so."

I like the idea of a Bard who started off as a street-performer picking-pockets while enthralling crowds, who eventually made his way into a school of magic.

Yes, I get that I could "say" that's what my character did in, say, 4E, but it doesn't work like that in practice. It's not like I haven't tried.

So... making a bard with a "Street Performer" background that grants Thievery as a class skill is out of the question?

Not trying to pick on you, but I've seen this complaint a lot, that "the rules don't allow me to play the character I want", when IME the 4e rules offer a far broader range of archetypes than any other edition of D&D.

 

[Minigiant]

I always hated having a character in the party who could not contribute. Enforcing roles makes sure nobody is playing "can't do jack squat that anyone cares about well" guy.

A character's role is what the character can be counted on. In 3rd and 4th edition, you knew a fighter or paladin in armor can get in melee with 2 appropriate foes without crying for his or her momma.

3rd edition had the flaw that it made certain roles less important at a certain point and gave some classes access to multiple roles while others got one one. 4th edition locked characters in roles too well.

The solution to me is to define the roles well in the next edition and give classes access to multiple ones.

Each class would have a specialization for each combat role. Fighters could take Armor or Shield focus to be defenders or Two handed weapon or Dualwielding focus for Striker. Wizards schools, cleric domains, warlock pacts, etc could each have a role focus.

Then afterward player can choose their noncombat roles: be the Face with Conversation skills, the explorer with exploration skills, an athlete with physical skills, a sage with knowledge skills.... or choose nothing to get another combat focus.

 

[Electronic]

I think every class should have access to every role. Maybe it can be done with tokens, like how roles worked in the 4th Edition Level 0 rules. Or maybe with Paradigms like FFXIII. Or maybe something else. Just don't pigeon hole classes anymore. If want to play a Defender Wizard, I should be able to.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Combat roles need to be shot in the head.

...

Now Adventuring Roles...that I could get behind. Warrior. Face. Explorer. Sage. Those are the roles more like they played before 3e (and, to a small degree, in 3e).

KM, this is probably the issue on which I disagree with you the most. To me, if anything should be shot in the head it is the concept of a "face" character or the "sage".

The purpose of roles is to say: If something happens a lot in your game, everyone should be able to contribute in ways that interest them while that something is happening. Now, of course, the combat roles as specified probably have issues there, but it isn't because of they "able to contribute" part. It is the "ways that interest them" part that the 4E roles have fallen well short of.

Now, if you want to have several "social" roles, then we can talk. The big barbarian might have the "stand there and scowl impressively" role, whatever that is called. Meanwhile, some characters are "glib and witty" and others are more "erudite and formal".

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Thinking about some video game RPGs there are "talent trees" in many of them, and picking abilities out of those seem to push something towards a role. I'm guessing that something like that should be a system, since you could bother with a Fighter for example being a defender, or just go in a completely different direction like be a whip and dagger wielding duelist that's sort of a "controller" and "striker".

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think every class should have access to every role.

And this right here I think is one of, if not the biggest, stumbling blocks many people have with regards to roles in combat in 4E.

The class name means much more to them than what the class actually does.

We hear it all the time-- "I want my Fighter to be just as good with a bow." "Why can't my Paladin be mainly a healer?" "My Wizards have always been blasters first and never controlled the battlefield."

Now if someone was to then suggest that a "Fighter with a bow" is just a Ranger with a little change in fluff... they'll say "I don't want to play a Ranger... I want to play a Fighter!" Or that a healer paladin is just a STR-based Cleric, or that a blaster Wizard goes by the name of Sorcerer... again, these aren't the classes they want to play, because the NAME of the class is more important than the function the classes are meant to do.

I don't think it's any surprise that all the recent spellcasters in the Heroes books have all been made Wizard sub-classes rather than put under umbrellas that theoretically made more thematic sense. Bladesingers should probably be Swordmages and Witches make more sense as Warlocks... but because the designers have finally determined that the NAMES of things in the Wizard portfolio hold much more import... they've been re-assigned in a way that probably wouldn't have happened two years ago. I don't remember who said it... but one of the designers said quite specifically that they couldn't imagine a Bladesinger without access to Fireball. And that's why the Bladesinger is a Wizard sub-class.

It's for this reason that I don't think roles should be hard-wired into classes either anymore... because invariably someone will want to have a specific class name but do something with it that is not traditionally under its purview. So at this point... since so many people don't want to remove the fluff of an Avenger just so they can play a Divine Striker... then don't try and bother to change their minds. Let the Fighters, Clerics, and Wizards fulfill any role they want. It'll save headaches in the long run.

 

[Stalker0]

How many classes in 4E were one pure role? I do not think many were. Most of them, especially the better ones, were a splash of one and a bit of another.

This right here is why I don't think a class should have a role. A wizard for example could be a controller or a pure striker depends on what powers you take.

I'd be fine with builds having a role, especially the suggestions they often use. So you could have two suggested builds for a wizard, the "striker" wizard and the "controller" wizard.

But I do not think that a class should be built around a single role.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

It's for this reason that I don't think roles should be hard-wired into classes either anymore... because invariably someone will want to have a specific class name but do something with it that is not traditionally under its purview. So at this point... since so many people don't want to remove the fluff of an Avenger just so they can play a Divine Striker... then don't try and bother to change their minds. Let the Fighters, Clerics, and Wizards fulfill any role they want. It'll save headaches in the long run.

The only way I see out that would satisfy almost the full range of desires is to move the hard wiring out of the classes into a group setting that defines the relationship between class and role.

Say that you have "roles" (however expansive in combat, adventuring, etc.) defined in a silo where you get a bunch of picks over the life of the character. Somewhat like feats, but not shared with other feats. I suppose talent trees work here, but I personally don't like them. In any case, you get plenty of them over time--enough that you can afford to branch out a bit in any but the most extreme campaigns. It is probably important that they not be tiered and get progressively better as you get more pick, but rather broaden what you can do in that role.

Then at a given table, you are given advice on how to structure this. If you want everyone to contribute in combat (and not inadvertently weaken themselves), you require everyone to pick a role and use a good chunk of their picks on that. If you don't care at all and plan to manage this by early version means, let people pick freely by concept or whim--perhaps even ignoring combat roles altogether for other options. But I think most people will want somewhere in the middle, if only as part of the social contract to enforce niche protection: Sign up to be the defender, then that implies a certain commitment.