Roles in Roleplaying Games

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The tank, healer/leader, striker, controller roles have been around since the beginning days of the hobby -- Goodman Games used similar terminology in their 3E guides to playing effective fighters and wizards, for instance -- and I'd be really surprised to hear of many groups having, say, a cleric tanking for them in the 1E or 2E days instead of a fighter, barbarian, paladin or cavalier (or, I guess, an anti-paladin).

I don't play 4E, but I've never gotten what all the hand-wringing about explicitly stating the roles was about. Yeah, the cleric has a healer role -- this shouldn't be big news to anyone. Yeah, the rogue's role in combat is to stab things until they stop moving -- what else would he do?

I always viewed them making roles explicit as a way to both help newbie players so that they didn't think they were making Conan the Reaver when the rules under the hood were to create a defensive lineman instead, and to help designers create effective additional classes.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have never read in any sword and sorcery or pure fantasy novel were the main characters are pigeon holed into combat roles.
LOL it would be funny tho having a group of adventurers escorting a prince and when it came to combat they push him in front

"Come on Prince, up front, your the tank now do your job.. No No we can't do it we're only strikers. Look it's just a little Ogre and some kobolds, just soak some damage while we get rid of the minions first. Hey could you push the ogre closer to those boulders. Thats a good lad"
After the carnage of battle and the prince lying half dead in a pool of his own blood the captain of the guard approaches. "See Prince nothing to worry about we're here to protect you"

Re-read the Fellowship of the Ring, specifically Weathertop and the battles inside Moria. Aragorn is definitely a tank/defender, as is Gimli. Everyone else are occupying striker/DPS roles. The movie's pretty blatant about it as well, with Aragorn forever shoving other people behind him as he defends them.

 

[pemerton]

LOL it would be funny tho having a group of adventurers escorting a prince and when it came to combat they push him in front

"Come on Prince, up front, your the tank now do your job.. No No we can't do it we're only strikers. Look it's just a little Ogre and some kobolds, just soak some damage while we get rid of the minions first. Hey could you push the ogre closer to those boulders. Thats a good lad"
After the carnage of battle and the prince lying half dead in a pool of his own blood the captain of the guard approaches. "See Prince nothing to worry about we're here to protect you"

Is that how you set up situations when you GM games? Presumably not - so why would you assume that an 4e GM would set up such a situation?

Does codifying "roles" as combat roles affect the way players approach the game? How so, in your own experience?

I don't think it particularly affects how the players approach the game - they play their PCs, using whatever mechanical resources their character sheet, plus their PC's position in the fiction, throws their way.

I think it does seem to have affected design, and in a good way. Designers seem to be thinking harder about (i) how various sorts of capabilities can be interesting distributed across a range of PCs, and relative to the game's action economy, and (ii) what range of mechanical features the game needs if it is to produce a range of fictional situations that are interesting in a game of heroic fantasy.

A simple example is the marked condition. Putting to one side what, if anything, marking means as a story element, its metagame effect is fairly clear: a PC who can mark enemies is more likely to be attacked by those enemies (because of the incentive created by the -2 penalty to attack other targets). Thus, a PC who can regularly mark enemies is likely to regularly be the focus of enemy hostility. Which then creates the space for the designers to ask "What sort of character ought to be the regular focus of enemy hostility?", and to think about both story elements, and other mechanical elements, that suit such a character. And thus a defender is born.

Another example is the paladin power Valiant Strike, which grants a +1 to hit for every adjacent enemy. This power more-or-less guarantees that the PC who has it will be valiant, because the player of that PC has a mechanical incentive to hurl the PC into throngs of enemies, in order to boost his/her to hit chance. Again, combine this with broader thinking about what sort of PC (mechanically and story-wise) such a power would suit, and we get the image of the knightly defender emerging.

For me, this is one of the important design differences between 4e and classic D&D, and one which the idea of roles seems to have contributed. Of course in classic D&D it was possible to build a valiant knight, or a skirmisher, or whatever other sort of fighter one was interested in. But there was not a coherent package of mechanics that one could select for ones PC that would - at the metagame/mechanical level - tend to push the resolution of the game in the story direction that would reflect one's choices about one's PC. It was much more either a matter of colour/free roleplay, or perhaps depended upon the GM's interpretation of non-mechanically-mediated elements of the fiction.

 

[Ringlerun]

Re-read the Fellowship of the Ring, specifically Weathertop and the battles inside Moria. Aragorn is definitely a tank/defender, as is Gimli. Everyone else are occupying striker/DPS roles. The movie's pretty blatant about it as well, with Aragorn forever shoving other people behind him as he defends them.

Aragorn uses a 2handed sword so not a defender he would be classes as a striker. Gimli uses a 2handed axe so again another striker.

I was trying to show that you cant pigeon hole characters in novels to the base defender, striker, warlord roles. The scope of the characters are more than that.

 

[Ringlerun]

Is that how you set up situations when you GM games? Presumably not - so why would you assume that an 4e GM would set up such a situation?

I was trying to show how absurd it would be if someone used the defined combat roles in rpg's in a book setting.

It was not a represent of how i or anyone else plays an rpg.

My point is that you can not use the defined roles for characters in novels as they are more than just tanks or strikers.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I don't play 4E, but I've never gotten what all the hand-wringing about explicitly stating the roles was about.

It's getting pigeonholed that's the problem for me. For example, the paladin has always been my favorite class from a flavor perspective (but I never play them Lawful Bastard either), and is a defender in 4e. While I would like to play a paladin defender in 4e, I'd also like to play a paladin striker, paladin leader, or occasionally even a paladin controller.

If 4e had split things up differently, I think things could have been really interesting. First, divide powers by power source, so everyone can draw from those pools. Secondly, add themes, so that people can have a noncombat background that works with their concept. Third, let them choose their role, from which they can draw more powers (leader powers, controller powers, defender powers, and striker powers). When you choose your class, you keep your class abilities, as normal. For example, I could choose to be a paladin controller blacksmith with Lay on Hands. The onus would still be on the players to provide context to the powers, of course, but that's how it works now in 4e. Why is the paladin a controller? That's up to the players.

I understand that it's not a problem for everyone, and that's cool. I'm glad it's not. It is for me, and for a couple other people I play with (a couple others don't care). As always, play what you like

 

[Wiseblood]

It's getting pigeonholed that's the problem for me. For example, the paladin has always been my favorite class from a flavor perspective (but I never play them Lawful Bastard either), and is a defender in 4e. While I would like to play a paladin defender in 4e, I'd also like to play a paladin striker, paladin leader, or occasionally even a paladin controller.

If 4e had split things up differently, I think things could have been really interesting. First, divide powers by power source, so everyone can draw from those pools. Secondly, add themes, so that people can have a noncombat background that works with their concept. Third, let them choose their role, from which they can draw more powers (leader powers, controller powers, defender powers, and striker powers). When you choose your class, you keep your class abilities, as normal. For example, I could choose to be a paladin controller blacksmith with Lay on Hands. The onus would still be on the players to provide context to the powers, of course, but that's how it works now in 4e. Why is the paladin a controller? That's up to the players.

I understand that it's not a problem for everyone, and that's cool. I'm glad it's not. It is for me, and for a couple other people I play with (a couple others don't care). As always, play what you like

I am not oppesed to roles. I am opposed to "here is how you will play this class" any deviation from this will yield suck. Often times the power structure in 4e hardwires this in. It, to me, feels like playing a wizard in 3e but not being able to change your spell load until you level.

Does page 42 alleviate this? If I have a fighter and my enemies are far away can I make up a ranged attack power on the spot to use my bow/javelin whatever? Would the DM let me? Or is that a protected niche?

 

[MichaelSomething]

How many people complained that the 3.5 Bard doesn't do anything?
How many people complained that the 4E Warlock isn't DPS enough?

 

[GSHamster]

It's getting pigeonholed that's the problem for me. For example, the paladin has always been my favorite class from a flavor perspective (but I never play them Lawful Bastard either), and is a defender in 4e. While I would like to play a paladin defender in 4e, I'd also like to play a paladin striker, paladin leader, or occasionally even a paladin controller.

This was another design path. You could have made "kits" for each class, which is a set of abilities that allow that class to function in a specific role. So you could play a Fighter controller, simply by selecting the right chain of feats or abilities.

In videogames that use roles, you often see this. For example, the World of Warcraft paladin has three specializations, one healer, one defender, and one striker. There is a common set of abilities, but each specialization also uses unique abilities.

WotC decided to go another route, which says that each class would map to one role, and they would make many classes. So if they wanted a paladinish controller, they'd make a new class that was very similar in flavor to the paladin class, and then name it something different, like Templar.

It's really debatable which path is better. Separate classes is simpler, and easier to extend. Specializations sometimes feel like multiple classes within a class, and it can be a real challenge to get a healer paladin to "feel" like it belongs to the same class as a tank paladin.

Basically, the choice was:

1. Fewer classes, and more specializations per class;
2. Many classes, and one specialization per class

WotC chose #2. I cannot say that they were wrong. It is a defensible decision.

 

[pemerton]

I think it is possible to underestimate the breadth of 4e classes.

Fighters can play as (quasi-)strikers, or as melee controllers (the polearm fighter in my game fits this description).

Paladins can be pushed fairly heavily in a leader-ish direction with the right selection of powers, and CHA paladins aren't too bad at modest control either with their implement attacks.

If I want a more leader-ish paladin I can hybrid with warlord or cleric, or just play a STR cleric or an e-warpriest.

Does page 42 alleviate this? If I have a fighter and my enemies are far away can I make up a ranged attack power on the spot to use my bow/javelin whatever? Would the DM let me? Or is that a protected niche?

Good question. I think page 42 is intended to rely on ficional positioning. So at a minimum, I think you'd have to say what it is about the environment that your fighter is using to make the ranged attack that is more dangerous than a basic ranged attack (eg I'm throwing my javelin to cut the rope that will cause the heavy block to fall on my enemy).