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What are the Roles now?
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<blockquote data-quote="Nergal Pendragon" data-source="post: 6501369" data-attributes="member: 6777649"><p>To expand on what Sacrosanct said...</p><p></p><p>A departure from tradition is not necessarily bad. Even 5E departs from it in areas. Sometimes, it works out and you get a very good ruleset... sometimes, it doesn't. Whichever resulted from 4E's departure is not my place to say; 4E didn't die just because of people finding problems with its ruleset. If anything, that's probably the proverbial straw of the whole situation; given what I have heard about the DnD community at the time, it's quite possible what happened after 3.5E ended was simply inevitable.</p><p></p><p>However, that doesn't mean the roles themselves did exist before 4E. I'm going to be blunt: The 1E players and 2E players I knew called WotC's reasoning for the roles existing bull and suggested WotC was flat-out lying. Maybe they were; maybe they weren't. But even I have to admit I never saw signs of some of those roles. Defender? That wasn't a role for any DnD game I played prior to 4E; it was a temporary tactical consideration, and usually one taken because things were going horribly wrong. Controller wasn't a role; it was a tactical consideration someone like the wizard made when preparing their spells for the day (and, just as often, they chose otherwise). The same character could, at various times during the same adventure, cover every single role that 4E lined out.</p><p></p><p>That is the DnD the 1E and 2E vets I learned from remember. That is the DnD I played, the Pathfinder I still play, and the 5E I am preparing to play. That is why 4E is a departure from tradition. But it is not a bad departure; it created a way of thinking about classes that can still be used in 5E for a group of people willing to work together, and a way of thinking about classes that is effective in actual play.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Nergal Pendragon, post: 6501369, member: 6777649"] To expand on what Sacrosanct said... A departure from tradition is not necessarily bad. Even 5E departs from it in areas. Sometimes, it works out and you get a very good ruleset... sometimes, it doesn't. Whichever resulted from 4E's departure is not my place to say; 4E didn't die just because of people finding problems with its ruleset. If anything, that's probably the proverbial straw of the whole situation; given what I have heard about the DnD community at the time, it's quite possible what happened after 3.5E ended was simply inevitable. However, that doesn't mean the roles themselves did exist before 4E. I'm going to be blunt: The 1E players and 2E players I knew called WotC's reasoning for the roles existing bull and suggested WotC was flat-out lying. Maybe they were; maybe they weren't. But even I have to admit I never saw signs of some of those roles. Defender? That wasn't a role for any DnD game I played prior to 4E; it was a temporary tactical consideration, and usually one taken because things were going horribly wrong. Controller wasn't a role; it was a tactical consideration someone like the wizard made when preparing their spells for the day (and, just as often, they chose otherwise). The same character could, at various times during the same adventure, cover every single role that 4E lined out. That is the DnD the 1E and 2E vets I learned from remember. That is the DnD I played, the Pathfinder I still play, and the 5E I am preparing to play. That is why 4E is a departure from tradition. But it is not a bad departure; it created a way of thinking about classes that can still be used in 5E for a group of people willing to work together, and a way of thinking about classes that is effective in actual play. [/QUOTE]
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