Non-combat roles in 4E (Was Forked Thread: When did I stop being WotC's target...)

[Fifth Element]

Forked from: When did I stop being WotC's target audience?

No, just that it doesn't support those things as well as it supports, say, the Striker role.

The level of attention the Striker role is paid in the rules obviously, overwhelmingly, trumps the amount of attention that a character designed to be a Negotiator gets.

A Striker has a way to contribute to every combat, in every session.

A Negotiator might not get to roll a Persuasion check for months at a time, depending on the campaign.

There's a disconnect there that doesn't need to be there.

Here's an interesting concept: what if you could select both a combat role and a non-combat role for your character? Non-combat roles would have selections of powers available to them that would be useful outside of combat. It would certainly allow characters to be less combat-focused, if you want them to be.

I think my first question would be: okay, can we agree on what basic types of non-combat roles exist? The four combat roles are pretty well-established. What are the non-combat roles?

Edit: How the heck do you change the thread title of a forked thread to something, y'know, useful?

 

[The Ghost]

Forked from: When did I stop being WotC's target audience?


Here's an interesting concept: what if you could select both a combat role and a non-combat role for your character? Non-combat roles would have selections of powers available to them that would be useful outside of combat. It would certainly allow characters to be less combat-focused, if you want them to be.

I think my first question would be: okay, can we agree on what basic types of non-combat roles exist? The four combat roles are pretty well-established. What are the non-combat roles?

How about these for three roles?

Craftsman - People who create
Performers - People who entertain
Professionals - People who provide services

 

[Drkfathr1]

I think you could probably combine Crafter/Professional together.

Also, I would add: Spokesperson.

 

[Cadfan]

I'll mostly stay out of this thread, but I will pipe in at this point to say this:

Roles are for two things. Creating character diversity, and balance. Character diversity will bug people, because it will require decisions like "if you can negotiate, you can't ride a horse well." Balance will be tough, because, unlike combat where balance can be at least roughly calculated mathematically, there's no even pseudo-objective way to balance "accomplished blacksmith" with "strong swimmer."

So I do not think that this is a mission that is likely to reach a satisfactory conclusion. I prefer the 4e vision for skills- things you do while adventuring improve automatically across your adventuring career, with certain characters being better than their allies at certain skills depending on their base ability scores, armor penalties, and degrees of training. Skills that you don't use during your adventuring career are handled through backstory, roleplaying, and DM/Player consensus.

 

[Hussar]

My version of the four non-combat roles would be:

Information gatherer/knowledge guy
Diplomat
Crafter/MacGyver type

Can only come up with three.

 

[Jack99]

If an RPG had that, all the haters could go "It's so much like EQ2!"

 

[Imaro]

You know I've thought about this for 4e...and I don't see why the already present roles wouldn't work. Something I've been slowly hashing out (and it is still rough) along the lines of this...

Defender (Deflector): He/she gets powers that help deflect or reduce the detrimental results or effects of traps, NPC attitudes, failures, etc. for both him and his companions

Striker (Assaulter): He/she gets powers that help to directly assault (acrue successes) against the trap, NPC's attitudes, skill challenges etc.

Leader( Supporter): He/she gets powers that help to support (add bonuses, rerolls, etc.) any of the other 3 non-combat roles when used successfuly

Controller (Manipulator): He/she gets powers that help to adjust circumstances, negate penalties, reduce number of successes, etc.


As an example...Let's take a classic Trap (Needle in the lock style)...

To start, the supporter might use a power with his Perception skill upon examining the lock and thus offer the Assaulter a bonus to his roll (or a bonus success) to disable the trap. While the manipulator may use a power that reduces the number of successes necessary for victory explaining the reason is that he holds the lantern at a superior angle (and using any appropriate skill the DM deigns feasible) while the assaulter tries to disable it. On one of the rolls the Assaulter fails, but the deflector uses a power with a successful athletics/acrobatics/etc. skill roll to push the assaulters hand aside and thus allowing him to avoid the trap and reroll the failure rather than suffer the effects of the trap.

This is a rough example, but I think this type of thing, once refined and polished a little could be applicable to alot of situations. I hope I communicated this clearly enough for people to get at least the gist of it. I'm at work and don't have my notes with me.

 

[Fifth Element]

So I do not think that this is a mission that is likely to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

I won't disagree with you here, and I don't think it's as easy as it would seem at first glance. 4E combat roles provide balance in combat - all characters should have something interesting to do in a combat encounter.

If we want the same thing for non-combat encounters, then "crafter" probably doesn't work well, since his schtick will not be relevant in a whole host of non-combat encounters.

 

[Fifth Element]

Information gatherer/knowledge guy
Diplomat
Crafter/MacGyver type

There's always information to be gathered/known about any situation, so the first one should work in a wide variety of situations.

But what's the diplomat going to do in a trap situation?

And what's MacGyver going to do in a social situation?

 

[Fifth Element]

To start, the supporter might use a power with his Perception skill upon examining the lock and thus offer the Assaulter a bonus to his roll (or a bonus success) to disable the trap. While the manipulator may use a power that reduces the number of successes necessary for victory explaining the reason is that he holds the lantern at a superior angle (and using any appropriate skill the DM deigns feasible) while the assaulter tries to disable it. On one of the rolls the Assaulter fails, but the deflector uses a power with a successful athletics/acrobatics/etc. skill roll to push the assaulters hand aside and thus allowing him to avoid the trap and reroll the failure rather than suffer the effects of the trap.

Interesting, but I think it does highlight a problem. Non-combat encounters are so varied that you'll end up really having to stretch to find ways some of the roles make sense in some situations.

Compared to the variety of non-combat encounters, combat encounters are quite homogeneous. So defining roles therein is easier.

And I don't think having different roles for each different type of non-combat encounter is practical either. That is, we don't want groups of roles for social encounters, traps, survival, etc.