Roles - do they work?

[TwinBahamut]

Personally I think that they are no help at all to players, in that they pigeonhole classes and pigeonhole characters too much.

The cynic in me sees them as an an attempt to produce grids (roles vs power source) to enable loads of new classes to be created to fill PHBn to PHBn+1 and so on.

That is a pretty odd thing to by cynical about. When has WotC ever needed a justification to create lots of classes? There were tons of classes in 3E even without power sources and roles, so I don't see how the addition of those things would change anything. Besides, when has the addition of large numbers of classes ever been a bad thing?

Regardless, WotC has even said that they are not interested in "grid-filling", and it is the players who are demanding and expecting that holes in the "grid" get filled.

D&D is a class based system, and that is fine. I prefer the way classes have been created for years and years where they are developed around a strong central idea. 4e classes don't so much have a strong central idea as a fusion of a role and a power source.

Nonsense. If that were true, then it would be impossible for two classes to share the same power source and role and remain distinct. Class pairs like the Ranger and Rogue or Warlock and Sorcerer clearly contradict that. 4E classes are built around a strong central idea, but they also happen to belong to roles and power sources. It is not like this is a totally new thing, either, considering the various "power source" books of 3E, such as Magic of Incarnum or The Expansed Psionic's Handbook, which presented a number of classes that fulfilled different roles in the party rooted in the same flavor and mechanics.

What I see is less players thinking about being "Blagwulf the bold" or "Sienna the Sneaky" and instead just fitting into the pigeonhole for their role. Like all the others in their role.

Again, I consider this to be absurd. Besides, what exactly is the "pigeonhole for their role"? What is the "pigeonhole" that makes the Warlord and Cleric classes even remotely the same, let alone every individual Warlord or Cleric regardless of race choice, feat choice, weapon choice, and individual characterization and player personality? Such a thing can't possibly exist.

Monster roles may be happy for new DMs to sort out appropriate challenges, but again it seems to have been a license for designers to create a bunch of wildly different versions of a monster which maybe have one tiny thread linking them together. I much preferred the 3e method of having base creatures to which classes could be added to support different roles (for instance).

Well, if you are talking about the different versions of humanoids, I can't possibly disagree with you more. Those seem to be one of the most wildly popular kinds of creature in the new MM, and the vast majority of DMs (including myself) seem to love them because they allow complex and fun encounters with no prep work. Besides, it is trivial to create new creatures to add to the mix using the monster creation rules, monster race stats, templates, and class templates. All that has been removed is the necessity of doing a lot of creative work yourself, not the ability to do so.

 

[ProfessorPain]

I understand why they introduced roles, and they were already starting to come in late in 3E, but personally I found them constraining. As a player it was like being handed a position on a football team. It just made combat not that fun for me. As a GM, It makes designing the encounters harder. I appreciate the minion thing, but that appeared in Savage Worlds long before 4E, and i had already adopted it into most of my games. But the other roles... I don't know. Some of the time it matches what you envision, but other times it becomes a lens you are forced to view all combat through. Just not my cup of tea I guess.

 

[AngeltheTechrat]

I understand why they introduced roles, and they were already starting to come in late in 3E, but personally I found them constraining. As a player it was like being handed a position on a football team. It just made combat not that fun for me. As a GM, It makes designing the encounters harder. I appreciate the minion thing, but that appeared in Savage Worlds long before 4E, and i had already adopted it into most of my games. But the other roles... I don't know. Some of the time it matches what you envision, but other times it becomes a lens you are forced to view all combat through. Just not my cup of tea I guess.

I agree completely.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Nonsense. If that were true, then it would be impossible for two classes to share the same power source and role and remain distinct. Class pairs like the Ranger and Rogue or Warlock and Sorcerer clearly contradict that. 4E classes are built around a strong central idea, but they also happen to belong to roles and power sources. It is not like this is a totally new thing, either, considering the various "power source" books of 3E, such as Magic of Incarnum or The Expansed Psionic's Handbook, which presented a number of classes that fulfilled different roles in the party rooted in the same flavor and mechanics.

I'm sorry, but it isn't nonsense. You've mentioned Ranger, Rogue, Warlock and Sorcerer which all come from 3e.

In pHB2 we are going to have primal strikers, primal controllers primal etc. So a barbarian is going to fill one role, a warden is going to fill another role, another anonymous name is going to fill a third role.

You might disagree with my comment, but it isn't nonsense.

 

[AngeltheTechrat]

I'm sorry, but it isn't nonsense. You've mentioned Ranger, Rogue, Warlock and Sorcerer which all come from 3e.

In pHB2 we are going to have primal strikers, primal controllers primal etc. So a barbarian is going to fill one role, a warden is going to fill another role, another anonymous name is going to fill a third role.

You might disagree with my comment, but it isn't nonsense.

Right... Shaman is being wasted on the Leader role. (Opinion)

 

[Nymrohd]

Well I don't see how the barbarian strays badly from his archetype. The Warden is indeed a special case; he doesn't fit any archetype I know of and simply feels like the only way to split the druid archetype up for mechanic purposes. So out of the 4 new classes introduced in 4E (warlord, invoker, avenger being the others) the warden does feel arbitrary.

And I don't think that roles are so heavily enforced either. Almost every built has a minor in a second role, very few are really pure. And I want to think this is not so much because they intented for classes to be hybrid (which apparently they don't) but rather because the archetypes enforce this and they simply play along.

 

[Nymrohd]

But the shaman has been a leader on the previous editions too. He was short of a cleric in 2E with less skill in melee and the ability to use through spirits higher level spells that were mostly leaderish or utilities. And the 3E shamans were all leaders with a minor in another role as well. And the shaman archetype is pretty much that of a leader of his people.

 

[AngeltheTechrat]

But the shaman has been a leader on the previous editions too. He was short of a cleric in 2E with less skill in melee and the ability to use through spirits higher level spells that were mostly leaderish or utilities. And the 3E shamans were all leaders with a minor in another role as well. And the shaman archetype is pretty much that of a leader of his people.

I'd have to argue that the 3.5 shaman was a controler with a minor in striker. The only leader-like features were Warding of the Spirits and Recall Spirit.

They were artillery, not buffers or ally-puppeters.

And a leader of a group has nothing to do with the Leader role. (Which I actually think is a misleadingly named role, incidently.)

 

[Ebon Shar]

Khairn,

If you really think that the only role or function of the wizard, then you are not paying attention in our game. The wizard has been able to "control" the battlefield and channelize enemies in such a way as to make their defeat easier. It seems to me that you are griping just to gripe. Your argument would also conclude that the only reason dragonborn have a breath weapon is to clear out minions because the ydo a low amount of damage over a wide area.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Here's my thing about roles:

They're pretty good at what they do. They make siloing abilities for minis combat easier. They can be a little ambiguous, but they work mostly as intended, and they work well as intended.

They have a few things that come in tow with them.

The first is that because of the siloing, you can never be a "jack of all trades, master of none" kind of character. You'll be a master at ONE and only ONE, and never very adept at any others.

The second is that they're not exactly universal. They're minis combat roles, not general battle roles.