Should There Even Be Roles?

[JRRNeiklot]

There is only one role - adventurer.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

What's the huge upside to having a ton of keywords? I can see certain keywords, sure. Like [attack]. Using this ability mimics an attack. We don't need tons of keywords in the game. Keep the number down, and definitely don't use keywords relevant to all editions when going through all the rules and abilities of the game.

Two upsides:

• If they intend to support a 5E DDI, as I'm sure they will, the keywords make it reasonably possible to filter the presentation so that more people get what they want.
• In a printed version, keywords aren't good. They are just better than anything that has yet been devised.

As to why you'd use fully written out keywords instead of abbreviations, I'm no expert, but my understanding is that it really does cause more confusion than you can warrant with the space saved.

Every checked out Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved? He uses keywords heavily to simplify the spell listings. Despite adding a lot of fairly complex options to his casting system, the whole things ends up cleaner in play out of the book than default 3E/3.5.

It is true that there is a finite limit to how many keywords you can use in a given subsystem, before they start to lose their usefulness. So by all means, if some other keywords have a better call on that space than roles, bump the roles. That's not an argument against role keywords being useful though, but merely a practical acknowledgement that something else might beat them out.

 

[TrippyHippy]

You're completely denying the game as it was and is. The classic party was fighter (melee tank guy defending the squishies), Cleric (healer, buffer/de-buffer), Thief (trap guy and sneaky guy) and Wizard (mess us the enemy's plans guy). If you had a fair amount of dungeon crawls and combat in your game, you wanted a guy to fill each role.

Not true. You are simply stereotyping the game from your own perspective of it being purely a tactical, team driven game.

In previous editions, you always had the option - for example - of playing a cowardly, back stabbing fighter who lingered at the back and bullied the Halfling. You could play the world's most reckless wizard who charged into combat, or an honorable Thief, etc. There was nothing stopping you - beyond your own decisions how to roleplay your character. This stopped in 4th edition when you started getting, frankly, quite fascist players didctating to others to do their 'job'. It killed the individuals right to..well, roleplay.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Not true. You are simply stereotyping the game from your own perspective of it being purely a tactical, team driven game.

In previous editions, you always had the option - for example - of playing a cowardly, back stabbing fighter who lingered at the back and bullied the Halfling. You could play the world's most reckless wizard who charged into combat, or an honorable Thief, etc. There was nothing stopping you - beyond your own decisions how to roleplay your character.

Nothing about 'role' prevents you from making RP decisions such as these. In fact, I've seen this kind of thing at 4e games I've been in.

This stopped in 4th edition when you started getting, frankly, quite fascist players didctating to others to do their 'job'. It killed the individuals right to..well, roleplay.

Sorry, but this kind of behaviour in D&D far, far predates 4e. I first noticed it myself in 3.x, but I'm sure it was around before that.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Thanks for the anecdotes.

The significance being that 'this kind of behaviour' was not only endorced in 4th edition - they actually codified it into the rules that forced you to play it this way. If your Fighter wasn't playing as a 'Defender' then he wasn't playing his 'Role' - moreover, the entire class was designed with this 'Role' as it's goal. It removed the choice from the player about how they wanted to play their character - and simply provided the tools to act as a useful tool in a tactical skirmish game.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

The fact that I added anecdotes to the statements doesn't make the statements themselves any less true.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Pre 4e, I saw parties of all fighters, all wizards, even an all halfling party in basic. There was never any problem. Then along came Everquest and the holy trinity. WoW propagated the problem even further. When I first played WoW, it never occurred to my friends and I that we had to have a healer and a "tank" to run a dungeon. Hell, I even had the opposite idea of what a tank was. To me, a tank was someone who rolled into town and blew everything up, rolled over houses and crushed them. He wasn't a tank because he was clad in armor so much as he dealt death to everything around him. But I digress. In D&D, sure, it was always harder without a healer, but you could make it work. You didn't NEED a fighter, or a wizard, or a thief. Your role was whatever you decided to be, not some job that needed to be filled before you could even leave the tavern. Roles such as striker, defender, need to go away. Far away.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Sometimes roles and positions can exist de facto and not de jure.

For example, consider the game of basketball. Organized basketball teams generally have five positions: point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward, and center.

These positions do not exist in the rulebook. There is no rule saying you must have a center who does X. And yet, if you tried to argue that centers do not exist in basketball, you would be laughed at by every serious basketball team.

Previous editions had all the roles. They existed in practice. All 4E did was write them down to make it easier for to design different classes to substitute for each other. In my view, it was primarily done so you could make a "cleric" substitute, a class that fulfilled the same role the cleric does, but in a different manner.

All our team games tend to specialize, to develop roles for the participants. Sometimes the roles are formal, like the difference between a catcher and a pitcher in baseball. Sometimes the roles are informal, like the difference between a winger and a center in hockey.

I don't play D&D because I want to play in a tactical team sport game. I play it because I want to roleplay an interesting character. 4th Edition invented 'Roles' - and it just shows a blinkered perspective to claim they've always been there. They have not.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Pre 4e, I saw parties of all fighters, all wizards, even an all halfling party in basic. There was never any problem.

I have seen and been in parties such as this, even in 4e. These still isn't a problem, at least no more than there ever has been in doing parties like that.

But I digress. In D&D, sure, it was always harder without a healer, but you could make it work. You didn't NEED a fighter, or a wizard, or a thief.

Both those things are still true, and, they're related.

Roles such as striker, defender, need to go away. Far away.

That will be difficult, since they've always kind of been there, if not openly named. Wanting the names to go away, I can understand, if not fully agree with. Wanting the class=role relationship to be relaxed a bunch, that is something I actively want.

 

[TrippyHippy]

The fact that I added anecdotes to the statements doesn't make the statements themselves any less true.

Your anecdotes are purely subjective. The rules as written in 4th Edition are entirely objective. Therein lies the difference.