D&D 5E What are the Roles now?

[SirAntoine]

I'm not sure how much this is definitional fiat - which is fine if that's how you want to use the words - and how much it goes beyond that.

I think choosing to be a bow fighter, though, who favours DEX over STR and lighter over heavier armours; or to be an enchantment mage rather than a fire mage who chooses Charm, Hold, etc rather than Burning Hands, Fireball, etc; makes a fairly big difference to how a character plays. Some of that is about pure flavour, but in D&D quite a bit is about mechanics. For instance, the combat rules for bows are different from the combat rules for melee combat (range rules, cover/concealment rules, etc). And a firemage tries to best foes by depleting their hit points, whereas an enchanter tries to best them by bypassing their hit points. (D&D doesn't generally use "mental health points" to resolve fighting of the effects of enchantment.)

These differences don't obtain in every RPG: they aren't part of HeroQuest Revised, for instance, and aren't part of Marvel Heroic. But to build and play a character in D&D you really need to have some sort of handle on them.

These are the sorts of features of the game that role labels try and provide guidance on. For instance, the typical firemage is a striker, whereas the typical enchanter is a controller. 30-something years ago Lewis Pulsipher, writing in White Dwarf, drew the distinction by using the terms "artillery" and (from memory) "anti-personnel". He also linked the mechanical contrast to an aesthetic one, when he wrote that "Charming a dragon is elegant, but blowing it up is more exciting." (An assertion that is stuck in my memory to this day.)

Steeldragons is right. The roles are the classes. You want details, read the class descriptions and learn about what skills and abilities you can pick. The assignment of classes into another layer of roles is unnecessary, and wouldn't impact how you create a character.

 

[SirAntoine]

I would have hoped that the purple pants and the green skin with freakishly bulging muscles bit came off clearly as a little levity to lighten things up Obviously a 4e Fighter (Defender) doesn't have that overlap with the Hulk.

However, I'm a little confused here. Are you guys saying that the other parts of what I wrote aren't how a Fighter manifests in play in 4e? I have no idea how much (if any) 4e (with a Fighter especially) you've played SirAntoine. However, I know you've played some Imaro (maybe 6 months?) and probably saw a Fighter in action.

Extraordinariy physically resilient doesn't fit?

What about top-end HPs, Surges, Armor, Fortitude and powers that restore HPs, give temp HPs or give damage reduction?​

Extraordinarily athletic doesn't fit?

What about Athletics as trained skill + Str primary + likely to be other stuff in the mix (utilities, feats, background, theme, etc) = meeting the medium DC pretty much auto and passing the high DC with regularity?​

Mobile Skirmisher doesn't fit?

What about the Combat Agility class feature, Fighter feats, attack (at-will as well) and utility powers galore that have movement or shifting in them?​

Mere presence on the battlefield forces enemies attention onto them and if they focus their attention on their enemies, their enemies aren't escaping (except by shuffling off this mortal coil) doesn't fit?

What about the general Opportunity Attack rules + general Marking rules + Combat Superiority and Combat Challenge class features + Fighter's attack (several at-will) and utility powers (pulls and slides) that synergize with all the former?​

Cleaving, multi-attacking juggernaut that cuts down swathes of enemies at a time?

What about at-will Cleave and attack powers at every Encounter/Daily level to multi-attack or close burst 1 (or more)?​

I can't even fathom how it could be said that the stock 4e Fighter doesn't possess all of those things above and, therefore, it doesn't translate into the fiction from the actions that come from merely playing the class. Is that you guys' position? Or something else? Because I've GMed a Fighter 1-30 and I've read much of Peter David's run of the Hulk (and tons of other Hulk stuff) and, from my measure of those things, they functionally and aesthetically (outside of the green skin and purple pants again) share a lot in common.



I think maybe this was addressed in other posts? The Wikia (a) doesn't appear to have it correct and (b) its an extremely shallow encapsulation that doesn't possess resolution enough to capture the function and synergies of 4e's various Defenders' tactical suites of abilities, coupled with the system's general mechanics, together which make up very nuanced (and thematic) modus operandi.

I would just refer you to Skip Williams' roles, which predate the 4e ones. The defender would be the cleric, which he called a "Divine Guardian". In 4e terms, the fighter would be a controller and striker hybrid, called the Sturdy Brawler, the wizard an Arcane Spellslinger, not any of the 4e roles put down in any combination really because their spells have too broad a variety of effects; and the rogue of the core four classes would be more the leader because as a Stealthy Rascal, they basically can provide a little support in any area, including an ability to heal with access to scrolls and other magic items. The rogue is the one who can go from person to person, getting out potions for them, etc., and if he attacks he doesn't do enough damage to be a striker or a defender or a controller.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I would just refer you to Skip Williams' roles, which predate the 4e ones. The defender would be the cleric, which he called a "Divine Guardian". In 4e terms, the fighter would be a controller and striker hybrid, called the Sturdy Brawler, the wizard an Arcane Spellslinger, not any of the 4e roles put down in any combination really because their spells have too broad a variety of effects; and the rogue of the core four classes would be more the leader because as a Stealthy Rascal, they basically can provide a little support in any area, including an ability to heal with access to scrolls and other magic items. The rogue is the one who can go from person to person, getting out potions for them, etc., and if he attacks he doesn't do enough damage to be a striker or a defender or a controller.

I think you may be on to something here.

Wizard (2e,3e, or 5e) can reprep there spells to be anything, although one of the only class that CAN be a controller, they can prepr for anything...

Rogue (atleast 3e and 5e, but I think 2e a bit) striker (seresily never more then 1 attack behind a fighter, and even with a 1d2 weapon you quickly catch up by adding xd6)

Fighter (2e but not really 3e but definatly in 5e) striker

Cleric (2e) defender/leader hybrd but depened a little on your spheres, (3e) More leader then defender, but still a bit of both, but with getting all spells could also prep to off controller and still swap for healing.

 

[pemerton]

This seems to be the opposite of what Manbearcat is saying,

I don't think so.

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] suggests that the fighter is the paradigm of the defender (I agree). [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] says that fighters, out of the box, make the best defenders (I agree). These two claims aren't inconsistent, and I think are mutually reinforcing.

Hussar also says that there was a tone to the writing of 4e which many read as prescriptive (eg "only fighters can be defenders"). Personally I don't feel, and never really have felt, that the books had that tone, but Hussar is not the only peson to think they do (eg Mearls talked about "only one way to play guitar").

Supposing that Hussar is correct, that doesn't contradict Manbearcat, who said nothing about tone.

On the issue of defintions of roles: roles are shorthand labels for the combat functions that can, by default, be served by playing a character of a given class. So the best way to work out what a given role means is to look at what characters who fall under that role have in common - which is a matter of mechanics plus effect of those mechanics in play.

For leaders that's fairly easy - they all have a strong encounter-power hit point restoration ability.

For defenders it's pretty easy too - they all have an ability to mark (or, in Essentials, a mechanically simpler version of marking called a defender aura), plus an ability to punish mark violation, plus good AC and hit points.

For strikers, what they have in common (at least up until Essentials) is mobility plus hitting hard. For most strikers hitting hard is expressed via a damage bonus, but for the Avenger is is expressed via advantage on the to hit roll. Essentials gives us the Slayer and the Blackguard, who are non-mobile damage dealers - they are labelled strikers, but in some ways are a new role ("bruiser"?).

For controllers, what they have in common is debuff. Pure controllers tend to have a good suite of AoE debuff/control (though some single target also eg the Invoker has a 15th level daily single-target domination ability). Secondary controllers (eg warlocks) tend to have more single-target control.

If you want to build a character who is a defender but not a fighter or paladin, you might look at other ways to mark targets and/or punish them for mark violation. Just looking at 1st level options in the PHB, a 1st level cleric can take the encounter power Healing Strike, which is not a bad power: 2W +STR damage, the target is marked for a round, and the attacker or an ally can heal. There is no punishment for mark violation there - just the default -2 to the enemy's attacks that don't target the cleric - but that is still a bit of defence. The same character could also take the paladin multi-class feat Soldier of the Faith which grants training in a skill from the paladin list (which has a good suite of skills that a cleric might want) and permits use of Divine Challenge once per encounter (which is the ability a paladin uses to mark and punish). Now we have a character who can heal and defend - not as well as a fighter or paladin, but not hopeless at it either.

I wonder at what point do the roles become so wide and encompassing of so many different traits that they essentially become kind of meaningless as reference points? That is what I have been saying about 5e, IMO there is so much customization that trying to match a class with a definitive role as was done in 4e is kind of pointless.

4e doesn't have a 1:1 correlation of class to role - fighters and paladins both include strikers (slayer, blackguard), druid includes leader (sentinel), ranager includes controllers (hunter).

But in any event, I don't see the question of "Does 5e have roles" as being a question about what role is each class. It's pretty obvious, for example, that the 5e fighter picks up the archer as well as the melee warrior. The question of roles, for me, is whether the build mechanics tend to channel PCs into one of an identifiable suite of default competencies.

I think this is similar to what [MENTION=6698582]yakuba[/MENTION] is saying - perhaps not identical, because I think if the competencies are not from and identifiable suite then we only have roles "after the event", as it were.

the Fighter in 4e could not really be primarily a controller

I have a 4e PC in my game who disagrees with this. The polearm fighter with Polearm Gamble, Deadly Draw, and 4 AoE encounter powers, plus Footwork Lure (boosted by Rushing Cleats) at will, plus a bit of mobility to get into the thick of things (Mighty Sprint in this particular case) is a controller. That fighter is a vortex into which everything gets sucked, and from which nothting comes out alive.

Monk as psionic felt forced to me

There was a very popular rewrite of the AD&D monk in an early-80s Dragon magazine (number 53, Sep 81). As part of the rewrite it gave the monk quite a few psionic abilities, with this explanation (p 9): "The new special abilities and powers presume that the inner strength of monks flows from the mind — that it is a sort of psionic power."

And there was already a degree of overlap between monk and psionic abilities eg body weaponry, catalepsy/suspended animation.

So I think the treatment of monks as psionic has a strong D&D heritage behind it.

Steeldragons is right. The roles are the classes. You want details, read the class descriptions and learn about what skills and abilities you can pick. The assignment of classes into another layer of roles is unnecessary, and wouldn't impact how you create a character.

I don't see the reasoning behind this assertion.

For instance, I have many times on these boards, in the past few months, seen someone reply to a complaint about the need to play a cleric that there are other classes - paladins, bards etc - that can supply the party with healing. There is a function - healer, or as 4e called it leader - that players of D&D commonly want a character to be able to fulfil, and there are multiple classes that can fill that function. But not all of them can. A fighter or thief is not going to make a very effective healer.

Likewise, if someone wants to play a ranged attacker some classes will suit that function - wizard, fighter, ranger, to name a few - but others will not. Barbarians and monks, for instance, don't tend to make especially effective ranged attackers (but might make for good mobile skirmishers).

Role labels are labels for functions defined by the overlap between mechanics and fiction. (In some RPG systems, there is no mechanical difference between, say, a ranged attacker and a mobile skirmisher - that's just fiction - but D&D isn't such a system.)

Not using the labels won't make people be any less interested in the functions, nor change the fact that not every class can serve every function equally well.

 

[SirAntoine]

I don't see the reasoning behind this assertion.

For instance, I have many times on these boards, in the past few months, seen someone reply to a complaint about the need to play a cleric that there are other classes - paladins, bards etc - that can supply the party with healing. There is a function - healer, or as 4e called it leader - that players of D&D commonly want a character to be able to fulfil, and there are multiple classes that can fill that function. But not all of them can. A fighter or thief is not going to make a very effective healer.

Likewise, if someone wants to play a ranged attacker some classes will suit that function - wizard, fighter, ranger, to name a few - but others will not. Barbarians and monks, for instance, don't tend to make especially effective ranged attackers (but might make for good mobile skirmishers).

Role labels are labels for functions defined by the overlap between mechanics and fiction. (In some RPG systems, there is no mechanical difference between, say, a ranged attacker and a mobile skirmisher - that's just fiction - but D&D isn't such a system.)

Not using the labels won't make people be any less interested in the functions, nor change the fact that not every class can serve every function equally well.

All of the information the player needs to know can easily be presented in the descriptions of the character classes. There is no need for an extra layer of roles at all. Given the widespread use of the term, which largely stems from their presentation in 4e, it can be important to re-establish the freedoms and versatility of the classes. There are no roles as such, only possible strategies and tactics. As steeldragons also said, what some people are talking about as roles today are actually just moments of play, which come and go and depend on the situation.

It would also be bad form to tell all the players of a character class their role is something different.

I think I get what you are trying to say.

 

[Imaro]

4e doesn't have a 1:1 correlation of class to role - fighters and paladins both include strikers (slayer, blackguard), druid includes leader (sentinel), ranager includes controllers (hunter).

So again we're using Essentials (A new set of core books whose whole purpose was to break with the original design tenets in 4e ... we might as well be talking about a separate edition) as the example for 4e not matching class to role. Like I said earlier essentials was designed to break from 4e in a last ditch effort to try and emulate the feel of previous editions... Let's at least try to be upfront here... is it or is it not true that for the majority of 4e's run that class directly corresponded to a role and the books specifically called this out? If anything Essentials shows that WotC was finally realizing most people don't want to be pigeonholed in the manner that the majority of 4e's run promoted.

But in any event, I don't see the question of "Does 5e have roles" as being a question about what role is each class. It's pretty obvious, for example, that the 5e fighter picks up the archer as well as the melee warrior. The question of roles, for me, is whether the build mechanics tend to channel PCs into one of an identifiable suite of default competencies.

Then we aren't talking about 4e roles, which is where the main point of contention has been throughout this discussion.

Otherwise nearly everyone has agreed (including myself) that if by roles you mean any grouping or label one comes up with for a grouping of whatever one may consider "competencies"... then yeah roles exist... of course the problem then is none of us are agreeing on what the roles are. Taking your example above what "role" is the archer fighter? Is it Striker? Is it ranged combatant? Is it lightly armored dex-based fighter? If it can be all of them and even more we are essentially getting to a point where trying to create roles for the classes is just added terminology towards what point when at least everyone can agree upon the competencies of the fighter and even those of a particular subclass... what benefit do I get from roles unless they are defined and hardcoded (at least to a minimum) within the game. And it gets even worse when a class has enough options, spells, maneuvers, choices in equipment, etc. open to it that it isn't channeled towards any particular default suite of competencies... Which IMO, is exactly what 5e does for the most part.

I think this is similar to what @yakuba is saying - perhaps not identical, because I think if the competencies are not from and identifiable suite then we only have roles "after the event", as it were.

Which means we effectively do not have roles... at least again not in the 4e sense of the word.

I have a 4e PC in my game who disagrees with this. The polearm fighter with Polearm Gamble, Deadly Draw, and 4 AoE encounter powers, plus Footwork Lure (boosted by Rushing Cleats) at will, plus a bit of mobility to get into the thick of things (Mighty Sprint in this particular case) is a controller. That fighter is a vortex into which everything gets sucked, and from which nothting comes out alive.

Funny I created a similar character in 5e and was told he was not a "controller" by a 4e fan... Various and vague definitions that always seem to accommodate whatever example from 4e is being presented...

There was a very popular rewrite of the AD&D monk in an early-80s Dragon magazine (number 53, Sep 81). As part of the rewrite it gave the monk quite a few psionic abilities, with this explanation (p 9): "The new special abilities and powers presume that the inner strength of monks flows from the mind — that it is a sort of psionic power."

And there was already a degree of overlap between monk and psionic abilities eg body weaponry, catalepsy/suspended animation.

So I think the treatment of monks as psionic has a strong D&D heritage behind it.

So a single magazine issue... and your own opinion on similarities now equates to a strong D&D heritage... as compared to I don't know the class that has appeared in the actual books for numerous years?

 

[dd.stevenson]

You have to remember that for a lot of those who eschewed 4e, 4e begins and ends with the first three books. They didn't read anything that came later and certainly didn't spend a whole lot of time looking at how the system changed over time. Understandable. I played OWoD but never played NWoD and have absolutely no idea what the changes are. Nor do I care. Did they fix the mechanical issues with OWoD? I certainly don't know. I gave up on Vampire in the early 90's and never really looked back.

So, while those who followed 4e know that the system evolved radically during the four years (or so) it was in print, those that are outside that bubble only look at the original three. You can see it all over this thread with people quoting only the 4e PHB multiple times in order to "prove" how limited 4e roles were. The fact that the AEDU structure was opened up considerably with things like Essentials, the inclusion of hybrid classes and numerous bits and bobs across multiple books talking about how the roles aren't prescriptive are completely ignored because, as far as a number of people are concerned, they don't exist in their experience.

I think that when you or I look at 5e and see all the 4e under the hood, it's because we have a great deal more experience with the 4e system, while someone only seeing 4e as PHB and DMG 1, wouldn't recognise most of the 4e'isms because the tone is so different.

That was a very thoughtful and (for me) relatable post.

If we follow through with what you're saying, then the conclusion must be that "4E Roles" is an excessively vague term, since roles are defined differently throughout the run. What are the evolutionary stages of 4E roles you would like the rest of us to be aware of?

(e.g., PHB1 Roles, Essentials Roles, etc.)

 

[Hussar]

That was a very thoughtful and (for me) relatable post.

If we follow through with what you're saying, then the conclusion must be that "4E Roles" is an excessively vague term, since roles are defined differently throughout the run. What are the evolutionary stages of 4E roles you would like the rest of us to be aware of?

(e.g., PHB1 Roles, Essentials Roles, etc.)

Why do you come to that conclusion? Just because the notion of roles was refined throughout the run of 4e doesn't mean that they are "excessively vague". IMO, it's mostly the tone that people seem to be getting stuck on. The idea that if a class is labelled a "defender" that that is all it can ever be and it can be nothing else. Which, once you move past some of the more egregious wordings in the core 3 books, is patently false and easily falsifiable. After all, you can make a pretty decent striker fighter right out of the box in 4e. To me, essentials aren't even a real revision of the AEDU structure. They are still very recognizable as AEDU characters, just with a lot less D . Essentials expanded the rules, not over wrote them.

The basic definition of "defender" (for example) didn't change all that much. A character whose primary focus is holding the line, tying down opponents and protecting the rest of the group. That's what a defender does. How it does it varies from class to class, but, at the end of the day, that's what a defender does. How is my Crusader Fighter with Protection Style not a defender?

 

[dd.stevenson]

Just because the notion of roles was refined throughout the run of 4e doesn't mean that they are "excessively vague".

I didn't say that 4E roles were excessively vague. I said that "4E Roles" is an excessively vague term.

Which it most certainly is, if people are miscommunicating by quoting only the 4e PHB.

 

[SirAntoine]

I didn't say that 4E roles were excessively vague. I said that "4E Roles" is an excessively vague term.

Which it most certainly is, if people are miscommunicating by quoting only the 4e PHB.

So we should call the defender, controller, striker, and leader from 4e the original 4e roles? I wouldn't have a problem making that distinction, but these roles are excessively vague. They are, in each instance, widely off the mark.