Those saying the 4e roles only labelled what was there before simply are ignoring the fact that any "role" is something a lot of different classes can do. Not 'now". Not 5e. Before 4e. Certainly everything up to 3. I don't really know 3x well enough to say, but since it didn't have the stringent labelling/built-in roles, I'm inclined to say it was, maybe not.
And in 4e anyone can get in the way and block the enemy from attacking the wounded. Anyone can do damage. Anyone can bring people back onto their feet. And anyone can disrupt the GM's plans. It is just that you are specifically good at some and not terribly good at others based on your class and choices. This is
exactly the same as in previous editions. (Indeed any 4e character is better able to pick other people up in 4e than in other editions due to the Second Wind and heal rules).
4e roles are like soccer positions. All 11 players on the pitch are capable of heading the ball, passing the ball, tacking, running around, and scoring goals. Only the goalkeeper has actual special rules. But this doesn't mean that there isn't going to be a striker or two, some midfielders, some defenders, and a goalkeeper on the team.
I have seen just as many, if not more, characters do the same things. Clerics with their high ACs and decent HP, charging into battle and/or holding the line. Bolstering protection/defense of their allies through their spells. Mages creating "cover" [in the common sense, not the game term] to mask retreats with a wall of fire or ice or stone or force. Illusionists, even, with sphere's of darkness or walls of fog. Heck! I had a heroically minded elvin thief [waaay back in the day] "guard the rear" as a party was trying to flee...I only recall that I "slowed them down" for a single round and proceeded to roll up a new character not more than a half hour into our first session as 1st level PCs [Dyr "the Lucky" lives on in infamy!]. But hey, I covered the fleeing.
4e prevents none of this. And encourages it all. Indeed it's easier for a wizard to flat out tank in 4e than in previous editions. This doesn't mean that some people are less well suited for the task than others.
Are those guys "defenders"? They are fulfilling a "defender role", sometimes repeatedly. In those moments, hell yeah they are.
Pedant: The wizard summoning a wall and the illusionist are both textbook controllers there.
The role of Defender doesn't say "This is all this person can do" it says "If you want to specialise in this, choose this role". I've tanked with an Invoker before now (the squishiest class in the game).
That's all a [as 4e would define] "role" ever was. Moments of the character's actions.
No. The 4e role is about aptitude and expertise. The fighter and cleric are both
better suited to hold the line than a thief is. The role doesn't say "You must do this", it says that "You should be good at this".
I've also seen just as many PCs/Fighters who were the first to "turn tail."
Still around in 4e.
Fighters who like pushing people around.
These happen much more in 4e. The 4e fighter that defends the back line by bullying the enemies is a big thing.
Fighters who say, "If we use our brains and don't have to unsheathe our swords, that's a win!" Fighters who want to be the strategic/heroic/valorous/just plain physically damage-dealing impressive "leaders."
In 4e these normally become Warlords - they have actual mechanics backing what the player pictures their character's expertise is.
Yes. Obviously "all of that was still possible with your PC in 4e" (if you were an experienced enough player/strong enough person to do that). But, according to the way 4e was designed and described, those guys are still Defenders. Because they were Fighters. The game said so.
Which just means that they would be good at defending. Playing a cowardly defender in 4e is just as much a thing as playing a fighter that doesn't like fighting in any edition.
What you [the general 4vengers, not any specific "you"] don't seem to grok is that these "roles" you claim to have been in the game before and still are, simply were not. Defending/Controlling/Striking were all just a single choice in the round at hand.
What you [the general h4ters] don't seem to grock is that aptitude matters. And your class has always indicated aptitudes. This is unchanged.
What you claim to be a "role" of a class is, to non-4eigners, a single course of action that anyone could fulfill in any scenario at any given time. A class's "role" was not a defining term/course of action or even "majority of the time" for most characters, let alone everyone of a certain class.
Once more
this did not change in 4e.
[quot]That thinking/preference comes/stems from a video gaming "we need a tank/healer/whatever" mentality and/or, if you like, "game evolution" or whatever you want to call it that is non-threatening/-insulting to the fragile sensibilities oft seen around here. [/quote]
This, of course, comes out of D&D and needing a cleric - and a lot of old games being based on D&D.
It is, objectively, not a "way D&D did things/always was." That is not a slam on 4e. That is not edition warring. That is simple fact.
What is not a fact is to say that4e is
in any way different from other editions here. In fact 4e is more flexible because you do not
need to protect the wizard. The wizard has a lot more hit points. They don't lose fights to housecats. You do not
need a cleric - the healing surge mechanic means that you can work perfectly fine with no one with inspiring abilities or magical healing at all and it doesn't screw up pacing.
The simple fact is that for all 4e highlighted the sepecialities people always had they are less important than they ever were.
And, imho, it is not seeing/acknowledging that simple truth that, I think, leads to loads of these kinds of "ch'yeah, it was/nuh uh, it wasn't" sort of talking-past-each-other debates.
So does not seeing the simple truth that if 4e changed any of this it was by ensuring that healing was not the exclusive ability of some classes and that the wizard did not lose fights to housecats so although they were squishy there wasn't such a need to protect them.
4e makes the aptitudes of characters more explicit than any other edition. This doesn't mean that it forces you to play a certain way. And it certainly doesn't mean that the aptitudes are more skewed to given classes than they were in other editions.
. But 2e is a previous edition, and those books were out for years before 3e came out. Look at Skills and Powers, and Combat and Tactics, and the similarities to 3e are uncanny. It seems clear that 3e took that and jut polished it, rather than became a "massively" different game.
