Roles - do they work?

[Scars Unseen]

What do you associate with the duellist? What style of weapons, armor, etc.? What options do you want to use in combat? One man's duellist is another man's swashbuckler.

I'll answer that by reposting what I said a couple of pages back. Keep in mind I was kind of zonked out on Percocet when I posted it.

If you don't want to focus on roles in your group, then don't. Take the RP approach rather than the tactical approach. Think of a character concept, figure out what class it best fits under(if it fits any at all), then figure out what role what you thought of fits under as the last step before putting together a build. Despite WotC's attempt at artificially shoehorning classes into a specific role, the actual system they made is very flexible.

Let's try, shall we? I want to make a lightly armored duelist, and I am not interested in sneak attacks. Now I could make a rogue and use feats to try to fit in some fighter abilities, but that seems a poor fit, really. Besides, the system is flexible enough that I can make my own little duelist build for the fighter class.

So what do I want him to be able to do? Well, first of all, as a duelist, he would be trained to fight a single opponent at a time, so that is how most of his abilities will be designed. Second, he is going to need to be proficient at parries, ripostes and quick, deadly attacks. Seems to me that we have a bit of a defender/striker hybrid going here. Not exactly your "main tank," as they would say in MMOs, but capable of holding a single foe's attention and dispatching him.

OK, just so that we don't have powers all over the place, go ahead and establish that dexterity is going to be our primary ability, followed by wisdom and strength.

We will start by following MP's lead and creating a class ability that you can take in place of the weapon talent:

Duelist's Balance
You gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls with light blades.
When wearing light armor, you gain a +1 bonus to damage rolls with melee and close weapon attacks against an enemy you have marked. This bonus increases to +2 if you're wielding a light blade.

I'm not sure if that is balanced or not, but it seems reasonable. If you want to make a more defense related duelist, you could take tempest technique and use a parrying dagger.

Next comes powers. I could come up with some, but since this is not the house rules forum and I am currently feeling a bit woozy from the percocet, I'll simply suggest that if one were so inclined and a bit lazy one could simply retool some rogue powers to work with the primary abilities I chose above and run with it. It wouldn't really fit my concept, but as I said, you could if you wanted to. Instead, let's pretend I came up with some really interesting powers involving my concept.

I may actually do a write up on the concept later on when my head isn't spinning quite so much, but here I only wanted to demonstrate how it doesn't matter what WotC say the roles for each class are. You can decide that for yourself in anything other than a RPGA event. The system is actually more flexible than 3E. About the only place that it really fails is with the gish concept, and 3E didn't do so hot at that either until well into the product's life cycle.

I bolded the part that answered your question.

Just to clear things up, I don't think that the way some of you people are looking at the class/role relationship is wrong. I just don't think that it is the only way to look at it. The biggest problem i see with a strict role/class bond is that people are going to have concepts that fall thematically under one class, but have a different combat role, and if you keep to a strict relationship you're going to eventually start having a lot of classes that are very similar in form, but different in function. Why do I think this is a problem? It worked out alright in 3E, didn't it?

Well the problem is that this isn't 3E. The classes are no longer strict lines of power gain; they are flexible, allowing you to fine tune your character's abilities as you level. If you have the same class glut of 3E you will find yourself having to use feats to multiclass into variations of the same class concept, when there is already a system in place to have such variations.

Now if you want to take the tactical approach and pick a role and then build a character around that then there is nothing wrong with that, but I have never played in a gaming groups that did that in my 20 years of gaming. Every group I have ever played in or DMed for has taken a character concept and then tried to use whatever system we were playing to mechanically define that concept. I don't see why there can't be room for both approaches.

 

[AngeltheTechrat]

I'll answer that by reposting what I said a couple of pages back. Keep in mind I was kind of zonked out on Percocet when I posted it.



I bolded the part that answered your question.

Just to clear things up, I don't think that the way some of you people are looking at the class/role relationship is wrong. I just don't think that it is the only way to look at it. The biggest problem i see with a strict role/class bond is that people are going to have concepts that fall thematically under one class, but have a different combat role, and if you keep to a strict relationship you're going to eventually start having a lot of classes that are very similar in form, but different in function. Why do I think this is a problem? It worked out alright in 3E, didn't it?

Well the problem is that this isn't 3E. The classes are no longer strict lines of power gain; they are flexible, allowing you to fine tune your character's abilities as you level. If you have the same class glut of 3E you will find yourself having to use feats to multiclass into variations of the same class concept, when there is already a system in place to have such variations.

Now if you want to take the tactical approach and pick a role and then build a character around that then there is nothing wrong with that, but I have never played in a gaming groups that did that in my 20 years of gaming. Every group I have ever played in or DMed for has taken a character concept and then tried to use whatever system we were playing to mechanically define that concept. I don't see why there can't be room for both approaches.

Yes. Concept first. Then try to hammer the mechanics down until they fit.

But with this strict bond of class to role, it's often impossible to make things work.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Yes. Concept first. Then try to hammer the mechanics down until they fit.

But with this strict bond of class to role, it's often impossible to make things work.

Unless you bend or break that arbitrary rule, which I am content to do. The system is just too flexible for me to artificially shackle it.

 

[Spatula]

Congratulations, you made a swashbuckler, which if you read one of my earlier posts, is a concept I identified with the rogue class earlier. Doesn't help my concept in the least.

Duelist, swashbuckler, whatever. You have a "duelist" just fine with a fighter, a dex-based weapon, and proper exploit selection, which was pointed out a few pages back. The neat thing about the fighter is that it doesn't have to do anything special to use the class abilities - no divine challenge, no warding aegies, or whatever. You just have to attack stuff, which you want to be doing anyway. So you're free to run around attacking what you want, and you're still marking foes and impairing their mobility.

If you want your duelist to dual-wield, go for the tempest build. There's some nice fighter powers for light blade wielders that give you combat advantage over your opponent if you hit, representing you getting the upper hand through your superior skill. Otherwise take the 2H weapon talent.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Duelist, swashbuckler, whatever. You have a "duelist" just fine with a fighter, a dex-based weapon, and proper exploit selection, which was pointed out a few pages back. The neat thing about the fighter is that it doesn't have to do anything special to use the class abilities - no divine challenge, no warding aegies, or whatever. You just have to attack stuff, which you want to be doing anyway. So you're free to run around attacking what you want, and you're still marking foes and impairing their mobility.

If you want your duelist to dual-wield, go for the tempest build. There's some nice fighter powers for light blade wielders that give you combat advantage over your opponent if you hit, representing you getting the upper hand through your superior skill. Otherwise take the 2H weapon talent.

And that would be fine if I was making a defensive light fighter designed around engaging multiple foes, but I'm not. There is nothing wrong with the way you are laying out your concept, but it isn't the same concept, as I've pointed out before. At best, my duelist concept would be a striker/defender hybrid with a focus on the former. Aside from that, he would be designed around engaging and holding a single opponent to the death, thus the term "duelist."

 

[Cadfan]

A 4e class brings three things to the table.

1. A theme.
2. A proclivity for certain out of combat abilities.
3. A combat role, with variation and specialization, but with an established base. So a Fighter is always going to be a Defender, though he can focus on whirling through battle like a dervish, or standing his ground like a rock, or even shielding adjacent allies.


These can be changed by the player with varying degrees of ease.

1. Theme is easily mutable. A good half of the time you can just declare it to be changed. "Guys, I know I'm playing a Ranger class character, but he's a city rat and a professional mercenary who's never seen the wilderness. I'm just using Ranger for the combat style. Ok?" And done. The other half of the time you have to make choices to fit your flavor, but again, that's not too tough. "He isn't trained in Nature, he's trained in Dungeoneering because he did a tour of duty cleaning out an infestation in the city sewer system." Or at worst, "He went to a private school before he got into trouble with the law and ran away to become a mercenary, so I chose Skill Training: History for him."

2. Out of combat abilities take a tiny bit of effort to change, but only a tiny bit. 99% of the time a skill training feat or three will get the job done.

3. This is the tough one to change. It requires a whole different suite of class abilities and powers.

Which is why I think that the people who want each class to support multiple roles so that they can get the theme they want with the role they want are being unreasonable.

 

[Cadfan]

And that would be fine if I was making a defensive light fighter designed around engaging multiple foes, but I'm not. There is nothing wrong with the way you are laying out your concept, but it isn't the same concept, as I've pointed out before. At best, my duelist concept would be a striker/defender hybrid with a focus on the former. Aside from that, he would be designed around engaging and holding a single opponent to the death, thus the term "duelist."

I still can't figure out how this isn't a Fighter that primarily selects powers that are more useful against one foe rather than several. A Tempest Fighter should succeed admirably at this goal.

There are tropes that D&D doesn't cover.* This isn't one of them.

*D&D is and always has been bad about lightly armored defenders (or what passed for defenders in previous editions) and characters who fight with one hand empty. Doing either usually involves leaving money on the table in terms of character power. It annoyed me in 3e, and it looks like its going to keep annoying me in 4e. I even wrote a fighter build option to bypass this, its in my signature. Its... not perfect. But its ok.

 

[Scars Unseen]

A 4e class brings three things to the table.

1. A theme.
2. A proclivity for certain out of combat abilities.
3. A combat role, with variation and specialization, but with an established base. So a Fighter is always going to be a Defender, though he can focus on whirling through battle like a dervish, or standing his ground like a rock, or even shielding adjacent allies.


These can be changed by the player with varying degrees of ease.

1. Theme is easily mutable. A good half of the time you can just declare it to be changed. "Guys, I know I'm playing a Ranger class character, but he's a city rat and a professional mercenary who's never seen the wilderness. I'm just using Ranger for the combat style. Ok?" And done. The other half of the time you have to make choices to fit your flavor, but again, that's not too tough. "He isn't trained in Nature, he's trained in Dungeoneering because he did a tour of duty cleaning out an infestation in the city sewer system." Or at worst, "He went to a private school before he got into trouble with the law and ran away to become a mercenary, so I chose Skill Training: History for him."

2. Out of combat abilities take a tiny bit of effort to change, but only a tiny bit. 99% of the time a skill training feat or three will get the job done.

3. This is the tough one to change. It requires a whole different suite of class abilities and powers.

Which is why I think that the people who want each class to support multiple roles so that they can get the theme they want with the role they want are being unreasonable.

That is one way of looking at it.

On the other hand, if you want to stick to WotC material(and I'm assuming you do if you are squeamish about writing a build into the existing framework) then you should realize that your solution to #1 is a short term solution. Eventually WotC is going to cover many different character concepts, and if they stick to their roles, that means class glut. There is going to be a certain amount of that in any case, but when you have two roles with similar themes(look at how similar yet different Spatula's suggestion was to mine) you are going to have pointless separation.

The only reason that the classes are tied into a single role is because WotC said so. That's fine for the RPGA, but in your own group you are allowed to house rule away anything that doesn't make sense for your group. The existence of coherent roles makes sense to me, but ironclad association with classes does not when you already have a system for division within the classes for different themes.

By the way, #1 and #3 aren't as different situations as you make them out to be. As I pointed out before, If you wanted to be lazy about it you could simply take the exploits from another class and change the fluff and applicable attributes for each power. That would actually work out better than your suggestion since my concept of a duelist has no need for the ranger fighting styles or prime shot, and mark fits the concept better than hunter's quarry.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

What do you associate with the duellist? What style of weapons, armor, etc.? What options do you want to use in combat? One man's duellist is another man's swashbuckler.

I wonder that too, especially that nowadays we also have the Tempest variant of the Fighter, that can use off-hand weapons very effectively, and typically wears light armor. Such a character would be pretty mobile, and if you pick Dual Strike, your damage output should also improve notably. Your AC still can't compete with a fighter armed with a one-handed weapon, shield and heavy armor, but who can?

 

[Khuxan]

Well, first of all, as a duelist, he would be trained to fight a single opponent at a time, so that is how most of his abilities will be designed. Second, he is going to need to be proficient at parries, ripostes and quick, deadly attacks. Seems to me that we have a bit of a defender/striker hybrid going here. Not exactly your "main tank," as they would say in MMOs, but capable of holding a single foe's attention and dispatching him.

I'd recommend fighter. Nowhere here do you mention light armor, but I believe you said that elsewhere, so go for Martial Power's the tempest fighter or stick with the dual-wielding ranger. I think the tempest fighter is the best fit, so we'll go with that.

The core fighter's combat challenge ability covers being able to lock down a single opponent. Improved Initiative for quick, deadly attacks, dual strike and footwork lure cover locking someone in single combat and striking viciously at him or her. No opening or defensive stance (Martial Power) covers parries and for ripostes rain of steel and last ditch evasion are obvious choices. The aptly named parry and riposte (Martial Power) also covers a duellist's parries and ripostes.

If you're not after a light armor fighter, ditch tempest fighter and dual strike and go for a big two-hander that does plenty of damage. That way, you can mix defender and striker.

I had a lot of fun building this duellist. I think any of the core fighter paragon paths suit it. There may be some paths in Martial Power too. I was tempted to multiclass rogue because it has some counterattack powers, but I realised I didn't need them.

Just to clear things up, I don't think that the way some of you people are looking at the class/role relationship is wrong. I just don't think that it is the only way to look at it. The biggest problem i see with a strict role/class bond is that people are going to have concepts that fall thematically under one class, but have a different combat role, and if you keep to a strict relationship you're going to eventually start having a lot of classes that are very similar in form, but different in function. Why do I think this is a problem? It worked out alright in 3E, didn't it?

I think I understand what you're saying, but I think you're underestimating the flexibility of classes. You wanted a duellist that could both lock-down a single enemy (defender) and dish out plenty of damage (striker) - which does, indeed, transcend the role system. However, classes are flexible enough that you can build a duelist out of a fighter that mixes two of the roles effectively.