D&D 5E What are the Roles now?

[MechaPilot]

I am assuming tank and healer are defender/lead, DPS sounds like striker, but what is CC?

(((This remeinds me of the big argument I have over the title tank... a friend who plays MMOs tells me all the time tanks are weak hitting big armor... I always tell him every tank I know of has a really big gun, and when they hit they end the fight.)))

CC is crowd control.

In WoW, you often have the rogue stun a creature with her sap before the party pulls a mob. You also see the wizard turn an enemy into a sheep for a limited time as part of the mob pull. You can also have a cleric shackle an undead creature or a warlock banish a demon creature.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

It is the classic D&D party composition, and it's such a paradigm of a party that MMOs probably took the whole Tank-Healer-DPS-CC roles from it.

Not directly. MMOs inherit their character design strategies from RPG, TPS, FPS, and RTS video games. The RPG and RTS games tend to inherit their design strategies from older editions of DnD and table-top wargames (of which DnD is a descendant). Of course, some of those earlier RPG video games were DnD video games, which muddies the waters a bit.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Not directly. MMOs inherit their character design strategies from RPG, TPS, FPS, and RTS video games. The RPG and RTS games tend to inherit their design strategies from older editions of DnD and table-top wargames (of which DnD is a descendant). Of course, some of those earlier RPG video games were DnD video games, which muddies the waters a bit.

you know what the most important part of this is...

every major video game and rpg owes at least a little thank you to Gary and Dave...and our little corner of a hobby gave birth to a huge things that are more well known.

 

[pemerton]

Interesting that in just the very prior post you were taking exception to quoting references because it was "how the game plays" that was important. Yet, when talking about games other then 4E you quickly go the other way.

I don't understand your basis for saying this. In the post you quoted I referred to the DMG in which Gygax set out rules implementing his conception of what the various character class roles were/are. Those rules take the form of advancement penalties for playing one's character outside allocated role.

I believe that 2nd ed AD&D has something similar in its XP rules (fighters get more XP for killing, thieves for looting, etc) but I don't myself have a copy of the relevant DMG.

In 3E, as far as I know, and in 4e, there are no rules that relate advancement to role. Hence my remark that descriptions of roles, in 4e, are merely guidelines. They tell you what your PC might be good at, given its mechanical capabilities.

You 4E fighter might be a controller or a striker or whatever. Pointing out that a class can choose more than one role misses the point that the roles where much more directly bolted on to the mechanics.

In what sense? Dealing damage in D&D has always been bolted very directly onto the mechanics. And as far as the "healer" role goes, it is absolutely bolted onto the clerical spell mechanics in AD&D. (As [MENTION=49017]Bluenose[/MENTION] pointed out upthread, and which you scorned for reasons that are opaque to me.)

I can't recall anyone ever talking about their fighter being a "controller" or a "striker", not even in concepts that would pre-date those terms.

<snip?

The guys I played with never felt like they were playing "controller" fighters or "striker" fighters. They were playing fictional characters who were warriors.

And this biographical anecdote is diffrent how? When you play 4e with these guys, do they think of their PCs differently? Or do you not play 4e with them?

When I have played Rolemaster o AD&D, some players think of their PCs primarily in terms of mechanical capabilities - this fighter has a shield for defence but lower damage, this fighter has a two-handed sword for maximum offence - and others not. Likewise in 4e - some of my 4e players think in terms of role, but some - especially the wizard/invoker player - very clearly do not. (At least not in 4e terms. In 3E terms his PC is the skill monkey.)

I tend to think that the issue is not about roles, but about classes.

<snip>

Your loyalty should be to the character concept, not to the class definitions.

Good post, good points, but D&D does have a history of linking role to class at least in part (eg cleric = healer, AD&D thief = something of a non-combatant) and Gygax seems to have seen things this way too, so sometimes it can be hard to prise one off the other.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Fighter-Cleric-Thief-Mage is another; it's a paradigm of party building.

You're absolutely right that it's a paradigm in the original sense of the word, but I don't quite see it as paradigmatic in the Kuhnian sense[1]: I don't know anyone who thinks there will always be an answer to the question "is this guy a Fighter/Cleric/Thief/Mage?" There aren't many people who would tell you that a Paladin was a cleric (or fighter), most people would say, "None of those labels quite fit."

However, I think maybe "all magic is either divine or arcane" might be a paradigm with about this level of popular support. Witness the people who try to classify monk Ki stuff as "divine".

[1] Kuhn goes out of his way at one point to discuss how his use of the word is actually an abuse of the original term, "paradigm" as "pattern or model for replication", because in science you're extending the model, not replicating it from scratch.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

so where does some one fit who thinks 4e roles where a good start, but missed the rest of the spectrum... someone who would like to discuss combat role/social role/explorative role all being given in a spectrum... like that briggs test thing you are X amount striker and Y amount Defender, you are A amount face and B amount sly trickster. Someone who would rather build and modify the 4e terms (some that he doesn't even like) then bury them and pretend they do not exsist.

It's hard to say really. My first reaction is to say, "if they've rejected the 4E classifications, then clearly that person isn't operating in the 4E paradigm any more" but then I look at the way some of those people behave (trying to classify AD&D Thieves as Strikers for example) and it seems clear that they are still using the 4E paradigm after all. You can extend the 4E paradigm to cover non-4E situations by inventing "combat roles" and "non-combat roles" in the same way you can extend Ptolmaic astronomy with cycles and epicycles and still model the solar system fairly accurately; but modern astronomers don't bother thinking in terms cycles and epicycles because Newtonian calculations are more straightforward (and relativistic calculations are more accurate). Anyone who was emotionally attached to Ptolmaic astronomy could have held on to it long after new astronomers had stopped adopting it, preferring Newton, and that's how paradigm shift happens: people die off.

Anyway, I'm not an expert on Kuhn's ideas, it's just a book I'm reading right now so don't take my comments too seriously--I just wanted to point out the similarity between this discussion and his ideas. There's nothing stopping some people from seeing 4E roles in 5E, and they probably will until they die. What will determine future paradigms is not what old gamers continue to see, but which ideas are compelling enough that new gamers begin to adopt them. (Note: this is not a value judgment on old gamers' tastes, in either direction.)

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

You're absolutely right that it's a paradigm in the original sense of the word, but I don't quite see it as paradigmatic in the Kuhnian sense[1]: I don't know anyone who thinks there will always be an answer to the question "is this guy a Fighter/Cleric/Thief/Mage?" There aren't many people who would tell you that a Paladin was a cleric (or fighter), most people would say, "None of those labels quite fit."

However, I think maybe "all magic is either divine or arcane" might be a paradigm with about this level of popular support. Witness the people who try to classify monk Ki stuff as "divine".

[1] Kuhn goes out of his way at one point to discuss how his use of the word is actually an abuse of the original term, "paradigm" as "pattern or model for replication", because in science you're extending the model, not replicating it from scratch.

I've played quite a bit of pathfinder, and I have noticed that when online Pathfinder games are only taking a limited number of characters, someone inevitably produces a list that organizes the applications along those lines. Often, they will openly indicate they are recruiting along those lines, so you tend to have a better chance once the first list comes out as you can identify an area where there are fewer applicants and apply there.

I also saw this quite a bit during the 3E era.

 

[Minigiant]

Wow long thread.


well the roles are what they always been

• Combat
  • Defender (look scariest)
  • Leader (heal and buffs)
  • Striker (damage and damage avoidance)
  • Controller (aoe and control)
• Exploration
  • Physical one (jumping, swimming, climbing, balancing)
  • Mental one (lore)
  • Scout (scouts)
  • Lookout (looks out)
  • "Rogue" (locks and traps)
  • "Ranger" (tracking, foraging, camping)
  • Taxi (moves the group)
• Social
  • Face (persuade, lie, intimidate)
  • Detective (detect motive)
  • Sage (lore)
  • Body (the one you point to)

Also one of the funny thing I see is how people get the Striker wrong. It's isn't all about damage. Anyone can deal high damage. The striker just gets away with it. Via long range, stealth, effects with damage, punishment for attacking out of revenge, or just being crazy tough.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Wow long thread.


well the roles are what they always been

• Combat
  • Defender (look scariest)
  • Leader (heal and buffs)
  • Striker (damage and damage avoidance)
  • Controller (aoe and control)
• Exploration
  • Physical one (jumping, swimming, climbing, balancing)
  • Mental one (lore)
  • Scout (scouts)
  • Lookout (looks out)
  • "Rogue" (locks and traps)
  • "Ranger" (tracking, foraging, camping)
  • Taxi (moves the group)
• Social
  • Face (persuade, lie, intimidate)
  • Detective (detect motive)
  • Sage (lore)
  • Body (the one you point to)

Also one of the funny thing I see is how people get the Striker wrong. It's isn't all about damage. Anyone can deal high damage. The striker just gets away with it. Via long range, stealth, effects with damage, punishment for attacking out of revenge, or just being crazy tough.

wow where were you page 1... that is the best list of roles I have ever seen (still want the name leader taken out back, and I see some overlap...and don't get body in social) it is far from perfect, but if we could go back and start with this...we could have a much better progressive talk...

 

[SirAntoine]

I don't quite grok how you can see the evidence of people playing with roles since the '70's and then say that roles didn't exist until 4e (and dub it an "outlier"). People have been playing with these roles since there were dungeons to crawl and HPs to whittle away. 4e recognized and codified these roles, but it certainly didn't invent them.

Now, any individual table may or may not have been playing with clearly defined roles, and so 4e's codification and enforcement can certainly seem like a novel thing to that table, but it's ignoring a tremendous swath of the D&D player base to suggest that the roles didn't exist until 4e created them.

I didn't say roles didn't exist until 4e, I said the roles that 4e invented didn't exist until 4e. You say "people have been playing with these roles," but now you're talking about the 4e roles in particular, not roles of some kind. The roles 4e recognized and codified were nonexistent before 4e. 4e invented them.

If there were tables using the roles from 4e before 4e, that does not mean 4e didn't invent them to the general knowledge of all of us in the public. Okay, you may have used them before, but the thing is, you and others are trying to say "there are four roles" that have always been in the game, the same roles 4e recognizes and codifies. I would contend there have always been roles, the number of those roles has always been more than four, and the four recognized and codified by 4e were unique to that edition of the game and they represent, in fact, a departure from tradition. Both in the sense of so specifically laying out only those four like they are all that matter, and to exaggerate their significance as a concept. The roles I recognize from all editions of the game are quite different, and they are more numerous. I find the 4e roles to be effectively irrelevant to discussions of 5e and pre-4e editions. It's confusing advice that has little bearing on actual play, or on play in the past. 4e sets up the four roles it does with new abilities and rules, so in 4e, those rules flourish. In 4e, discussions of these four roles are indeed highly pertinent and beneficial. There is nothing wrong with thinking of the game in this way, either, that these four roles were in every edition, it is just a point of view that is tied to one's appreciation of the 4e roles from 4e. I have no bias against 4e.