D&D 5E What are the Roles now?

[Blue]

Occupation, role. Tomato tomato.

Especially when you have multiple roles within the same class (always a secondary role). And you gained XP in 2e for doing things your class was supposed to.

A role what you do. The occupation is how you do it. A ranger going an archery route and a fighter wearing full plate weilding sword & board and protecting your casters fill very different roles in the party balance, even if by the pre-3.0 occupation list you put up they are both FIGHTER.

 

[Blue]

5e has returned to the vague roles of 3e. They include such gems as: skill monkey, face/diplomancer, tank, meat shield, healer, buffer, debuffer, crowd control, AoE damage, melee damage, ranged damage. Or combinations of two.

On a tangent, I wonder if you could make a game where instead of classes each character picked one. Or maybe picked one as primary, one as secondary, and one as "not good at all" and assumed basic competence in the others.

On a tangent to my tangent, what's the difference between "tank" and "meat shield".

 

[Sacrosanct]

On a tangent to my tangent, what's the difference between "tank" and "meat shield".

Not much, IMO. If pressed, I'd say a tank is protected from taking damage (lots of armor), and a meat shield can just absorb lots of damage (like a barbarian with high HP)

 

[Neonchameleon]

Um...yes. Says so right there in the book. I even quoted it for you. Sorry, you don't get to pull a " The PHB is very clear on this.", and when shown how the PHB is actually very clear on using the term "occupation" and not "role", act like the PHB isn't clear and your interpretation is the right one.

Except "Occupation" is a term of art. So is "Role". They only have meaning with respect to Dungeons and Dragons. The actual job of adventurers, how they make their money, is adventuring. Occupation and role both specify what they bring to the job of adventuring.

You're the one to put up the PHB text as sacrosanct (no pun intended), so you don't get to hand wave it away when you find out that the actual text doesn't support what you thought it did.

Except you simply haven't understood the point.

Looking at it another way, Occupation is what is on your job description on your contract of employment. Role is what you are doing as a part of the team you work with within the team you are currently working with. They both describe what you do as a part of your team.

Wrong again. Using the analogy, some would be football players. Others would be basketball players. Others would be soccer players. Etc.

And they would be playing on entirely different teams in entirely different parties in entirely different games. Which is why treating them all as football players makes sense in a way your analogy simply doesn't. Football players in different positions work together. Football players and basketball players don't as a rule. So anything saying "There would be football players and basketball players" also says "These people do not work together and are playing completely different games."

Now it's possible to argue that a high level 3.X fighter is playing a completely different game to a high level 3.X wizard. But that's a flaw in the game.

Within each occupation, there are several roles one can play. That's the point I am trying to make. You could play a rogue that didn't have the role of "striker". Or a wizard that didn't have the role of "controller". Or a cleric that didn't have the role of "healer".

And the point I'm making is that this is irrelevant. Everyone is playing on the same team in a D&D party. For your

And to be honest, I find your statement of "4e is returning to tradition" to be pretty darn odd.

Indeed. When you think that a good analogy for D&D involves a team in which basketball players play alongside footballers, cricketers, and baseball players I'm not surprised you are confused.

3.0 was massively divergent from D&D. It attempted to impose "realism" on D&D (and Gygax was very outspoken about that). It turned the game from a genuinely class based game to a game using point buy. It destroyed the balance that Gygax had worked incredibly hard to put into the game. In short it was D&D redesigned by people who did not understand the strong design decisions made in D&D and threw almost all of them out of the window. It kept the look of the chassis. But quite deliberately turned the whole thing from a tightly focussed challenge centered game to an intentionally generic world-simulationist game. All wrapped up in layers of tradition when in many cases the very reasons for those traditions being useful had been removed from the game. Vancian casting was part of a larger system involving wandering monster rolls every ten minutes so recovering your spells while you were adventuring was ... implausible. 3.0 kept the Vancian Casting because it looked like the past while throwing out the intricate system of checks and balances.

4e on the other hand looked hard at D&D and realised there were two modes of play. "Dungeons" and "Dragons". Dungeons is what D&D was written to be about. A team of low life adventurers working together to explore challenging and lethal environments and working tightly with logistics. But certainly since 1985 DL1 "Dragons" (i.e. epic quests where fighting fire breathing dragons was awesome rather than dragons being something you tried to kill in their sleep) was the most common mode of play. Pathfinder adventure paths are almost pure Dragons play. And the reason 3.0 could get away with being a generic game was this mismatch. 4e was written from the ground up for Dragons play using a lot of the default gamist assumptions of Gygax - that hit points are as much an abstract pacing mechanism as anything, that classes are meaningful and pointbuy is a bad thing, that the game changes nature at level 10, that classes should all be balanced, and that overcoming challenges is a core part of the experience. Vancian Magic was chosen as a pacing mechanism and because D&D had its roots as a hacked tabletop wargame. Nothing more. 4e, as it normally did, had a purpose to the decision of its magic and pacing mechanism.

 

[Neonchameleon]

A role what you do. The occupation is how you do it. A ranger going an archery route and a fighter wearing full plate weilding sword & board and protecting your casters fill very different roles in the party balance, even if by the pre-3.0 occupation list you put up they are both FIGHTER.

In short both are weapon users. In 4e both are martial characters. But the 2e fighter profession has only two areas of specialty. Wielding weapons and taking damage.

On a tangent, I wonder if you could make a game where instead of classes each character picked one. Or maybe picked one as primary, one as secondary, and one as "not good at all" and assumed basic competence in the others.

On a tangent to my tangent, what's the difference between "tank" and "meat shield".

"Meat shield" is an insulting term for tank. If being technical there's a functional difference between "Tank", "Meat Shield" and "Defender" - but this only applies in really technical discussions; they are generally interchangeable. When being technical:

• A meat shield is big and tough and prevents the enemy coming through with their body by taking the hits and refusing to move. Enemies can normally run round meat shields (although meat shields work very effectively in Dungeons play because to run round them they'd have to run through a stone wall).
• A tank has mind-controlling Taunts as in WoW. If the enemy runs round the tank, the tank can taunt and force the enemy to attack them.
• A defender says "You can attack someone else if you like but there will be consequences." Such as being good enough at exploiting opportunities that you get a free attack on the enemy when they take their attention off you to attack someone else. Or a spell of challenge.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Yeah, no. I think you're wrong on pretty much all counts. For one, all you have to do is look at the progression of 2e into 2.5 (I'm assuming you are aware of that since you used 2e material as supporting evidence), and see that 3e was not remotely "massively divergent" from D&D, but only slightly different than 2.5. Ascending AC was really the only big change. Point buy classes, skills, etc all existed in 2.5 or earlier. In fact, an interview a few years ago with Steve Winter revealed that they wanted to put ascending AC into 2e (back in the late 80s), but wanted 2e to be compatible with 1e, so they didn't.

The fact that you honestly think 4e was a return to traditional D&D is possibly one of the most bizarre things I've ever heard.

 

[BryonD]

3.0 was massively divergent from D&D.

As a HUGE 3E fan I say: You got that right.

I find the rest of your follow-up..... amusing. But you are dead on that 3.0 is wildly different from prior versions. Any fan of old school D&D who says 3E isn't D&D is absolutely justified in having that opinion.

The oft-cited claim that "all D&D are D&D" is nice for the kum-by-yaa crowd. But it isn't much for critical thought.

 

[Sacrosanct]

As a HUGE 3E fan I say: You got that right.

I find the rest of your follow-up..... amusing. But you are dead on that 3.0 is wildly different from prior versions. Any fan of old school D&D who says 3E isn't D&D is absolutely justified in having that opinion.

The oft-cited claim that "all D&D are D&D" is nice for the kum-by-yaa crowd. But it isn't much for critical thought.

See my post above. Look at late 2e (Player's Options books) and look at 3e. There isn't much difference at all. 3e seems very much like a natural progression from late 2e.

 

[steeldragons]

I think the big thing that happened in 5E that makes people think roles are gone is what they did to the fighter: the defender options have been lessened a lot and the class now is back to doing more damage. The thing is, the defender role is something that a lot of different classes can do now if they use the right feats. But the high hit point and AC character being a meat shield? Still there.

<emphasis mine>

I think the above bolded section is where a lot of the disagreement/misunderstanding comes through on this particular topic. It is not that they "now can do" that is causing the issues I see here. It is that they "always could."

Those saying the 4e roles only labelled what was there before simply are ignoring the fact that any "role" is something a lot of different classes can do. Not 'now". Not 5e. Before 4e. Certainly everything up to 3. I don't really know 3x well enough to say, but since it didn't have the stringent labelling/built-in roles, I'm inclined to say it was, maybe not.

4e-defined "Roles" did exist before 4e, sure. In certain, specific, characters...their player's choices. A player of a fighter could make a PC with lots of armor and lots of HP and some heroic/selfless [Good] sensibilities that would put him in the front line and the last to leave covering a retreat. Trying to keep the pointy edges off the squishy back-row guys (whether casting something, so trying to avoid interruption or missile weapons guys who didn't fair well up close). Sure. That guy exists/existed.

The problem is, I've seen that character in a many many forms: various races, various classes, different armor and weapons, different ways to GET to the high AC with or without high HP, high HP without a high AC, etc etc. Call that guy a "defender"? Fine.

I have seen just as many, if not more, characters do the same things. Clerics with their high ACs and decent HP, charging into battle and/or holding the line. Bolstering protection/defense of their allies through their spells. Mages creating "cover" [in the common sense, not the game term] to mask retreats with a wall of fire or ice or stone or force. Illusionists, even, with sphere's of darkness or walls of fog. Heck! I had a heroically minded elvin thief [waaay back in the day] "guard the rear" as a party was trying to flee...I only recall that I "slowed them down" for a single round and proceeded to roll up a new character not more than a half hour into our first session as 1st level PCs [Dyr "the Lucky" lives on in infamy!]. But hey, I covered the fleeing.

Are those guys "defenders"? They are fulfilling a "defender role", sometimes repeatedly. In those moments, hell yeah they are.

That's all a [as 4e would define] "role" ever was. Moments of the character's actions. When the player decides what they want their PC to do. Does this course of action [which could be called "defending, striking, controlling, etc..."] work for a given situation?

I've also seen just as many PCs/Fighters who were the first to "turn tail." Fighters who were reluctant combatants [for whatever RP/backstory or player personality reasons]. Fighters who like pushing people around. Fighters who are only in it for the gold. Fighters who say, "If we use our brains and don't have to unsheathe our swords, that's a win!" Fighters who want to be the strategic/heroic/valorous/just plain physically damage-dealing impressive "leaders."

Yes. Obviously "all of that was still possible with your PC in 4e" (if you were an experienced enough player/strong enough person to do that). But, according to the way 4e was designed and described, those guys are still Defenders. Because they were Fighters. The game said so.

What you [the general 4vengers, not any specific "you"] don't seem to grok is that these "roles" you claim to have been in the game before and still are, simply were not. Defending/Controlling/Striking were all just a single choice in the round at hand. What you claim to be a "role" of a class is, to non-4eigners, a single course of action that anyone could fulfill in any scenario at any given time. A class's "role" was not a defining term/course of action or even "majority of the time" for most characters, let alone everyone of a certain class.

That thinking/preference comes/stems from a video gaming "we need a tank/healer/whatever" mentality and/or, if you like, "game evolution" or whatever you want to call it that is non-threatening/-insulting to the fragile sensibilities oft seen around here.

It is, objectively, not a "way D&D did things/always was." That is not a slam on 4e. That is not edition warring. That is simple fact.

And, imho, it is not seeing/acknowledging that simple truth that, I think, leads to loads of these kinds of "ch'yeah, it was/nuh uh, it wasn't" sort of talking-past-each-other debates.

...it's all about the characters and a good story. We can agree there.

For sure! Agreements all around! Cheers/Salut/Slainte!

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yeah, no. I think you're wrong on pretty much all counts. For one, all you have to do is look at the progression of 2e into 2.5 (I'm assuming you are aware of that since you used 2e material as supporting evidence), and see that 3e was not remotely "massively divergent" from D&D, but only slightly different than 2.5. Ascending AC was really the only big change. Point buy classes, skills, etc all existed in 2.5 or earlier. In fact, an interview a few years ago with Steve Winter revealed that they wanted to put ascending AC into 2e (back in the late 80s), but wanted 2e to be compatible with 1e, so they didn't.

The fact that you honestly think 4e was a return to traditional D&D is possibly one of the most bizarre things I've ever heard.

I'd forgotten about the unholy broken mess that was Skills and Powers, that it took me all of a single read through to destroy any semblance of game balance with. Yes, I suppose 3.0 was a better balanced continuation of that. Ascending AC was a trivial change. If you want huge changes, look at the saving throws.