D&D 5E What are the Roles now?

[pemerton]

Giving characters a combat role is a mistake. The classes are all you need.

I have pages and pages of discussion, in Dragon Magazines and White Dwarf magazines from the 70s and early 80s, of effective ways to play certain classes, of feasible builds for certain classes, of common mistakes that new players might want to avoid, etc. This sort of play advice has always been part of the game. The rulebooks, at least since Moldvay Basic and AD&D, have always included some of this sort of advice (eg advising players of MUs to keep their PCs out of melee). The label of "roles" is an aspect of such advice - it is advising actual and prospective players on what sorts of combat actions their PC is likely to be good at, given certain build choices (and 4e makes choice of class the pre-eminent build choice - in this respect it is more like AD&D or Basic than 5e, which makes sub-class and background and even race as or more significant than class).

You're correct to point out that 4E focused exclusively on only one part of adventuring (fighting)

4e does not focus exclusively on fighting.

What [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] (correctly) stated is that 4e's role labels are solely about fighting.

Janx said there are situations where fighting/thieving/clericing doesn't cut it. Isn't it pretty obvious that he's not talking exclusively or even primarily about combat? What can wizards do? Well, for one thing, they can summon Phantom Steeds for everybody to ride on the overland map. That isn't thieving, fighting, or clericing, and yet it's valuable.

If the game is written in stone tablets that have been handed down, then this sort of answer makes sense. But the game isn't fixed in this way.

For instance, Phantom Steed began its life as an illusionist spell, published in Unearthed Arcana and before that, I believe, in Dragon 66. And it summoned one steed. What makes it appropriate to give that spell to wizards rather than a distinct illusionist class? And to make it useable as a ritual to summon multiple steeds (a 4e innovation)? Why not make the ability to call mounts part of the ranger or druid's class abilities (to call a herd of friendly horses, camels or whatever)? Or a background feature for guides or nomads?

From the point of view of designing the game, making these calls is deciding that some character builds - whether defined at the level of class, sub-class, background, race or feat - will be able to perform a particular function that the game might call for, while others will not.

From the point of view of playing the game, it is helpful to know that (for instance) the same characters who are good at healing are also good at dealing with undead (true in 3E, mostly true in AD&D, frequently not the case in 4e or 5e); or (for instance) that it is thieves and not fighters who are better at skirmishing and stabbing from the back (true for backstabbing but not skirmishing in B/X and AD&D; true for both in 4e; true for skirmishing but not necessarily backstabbing in 5e); etc.

None of this is self-evident simply by describing a character as a cleric, a fighter, a wizard or a thief.

The story drives the game. Every character will do what is required of them.

Not if things are required of them that they can't do. A wizard can't have healing spells in his/her spellbook, for instance. Why not? Because decisions have been made, by the game designers, that different sorts of characters will have different sorts of functions that they perform. If you want your party to be able to heal, you need to bring along a character other than a wizard.

Thinking about what the capabilities of a given PC are, given how their mechanical abilities interact with the typical sorts of situations the game throws up, has been part and parcel of the game for a long time now.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

If the game is written in stone tablets that have been handed down, then this sort of answer makes sense. But the game isn't fixed in this way.

For instance, Phantom Steed began its life as an illusionist spell, published in Unearthed Arcana and before that, I believe, in Dragon 66. And it summoned one steed. What makes it appropriate to give that spell to wizards rather than a distinct illusionist class? And to make it useable as a ritual to summon multiple steeds (a 4e innovation)? Why not make the ability to call mounts part of the ranger or druid's class abilities (to call a herd of friendly horses, camels or whatever)? Or a background feature for guides or nomads?

I don't mean to sound rude, but you're changing the subject and you know it. Janx was talking about 5E, not about some hypothetical alternate universe of game design. I simply have no interest in following you every time you go off on a tangent. It's not even that I necessarily disagree with you about this point (roles as a game-design construct for game designers); however, it's just not relevant to this thread. "What are the roles in 5E?" is not a historical question nor a question about hypothetical alternate paradigms WotC could have used when designing 5E.

 

[pemerton]

Janx was talking about 5E, not about some hypothetical alternate universe of game design.

Here is Janx's post:

fighter
thief
cleric
wizard


The original roles still apply.

What do you think Janx meant by "original"? I think it referred to "the original game of D&D", not "the original 5e roles".

Wizards casting Phantom Steeds is not an instance of "the original roles still applying". Unless you think the original role of wizards was to be able to do anything that's useful, because they have an option (spell memorisation) that lets the player rebuild the character periodically throughout the game.

The original role of wizards - found in Chainmail and then Men & Magic - was to be artillery and anti-personnel. AD&D significantly increases their utility functions, and as the spell lists grow I at least find it hard to discern any rhyme or reason in the allocation of utility functions to wizards and clerics (why do wizards get Unseen Servant and Invisible Stalker, but clerics get Aerial Servant, Dust Devil and (in the 2nd ed Tome of Magic) Frisky Chest?).

5e does not simply reproduce some "original role" for wizards or clerics (or thieves or fighters, for that matter), however exactly those might be defined.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Here is Janx's post:

What do you think Janx meant by "original"? I think it referred to "the original game of D&D", not "the original 5e roles".

So to complete the sentence, "the original [oD&D] roles still apply [in 5E]." Yes, I think he would agree with that paraphrase.

Wizards casting Phantom Steeds is not an instance of "the original roles still applying". Unless you think the original role of wizards was to be able to do anything that's useful, because they have an option (spell memorisation) that lets the player rebuild the character periodically throughout the game.

The original role of wizards - found in Chainmail and then Men & Magic - was to be artillery and anti-personnel. AD&D significantly increases their utility functions, and as the spell lists grow I at least find it hard to discern any rhyme or reason in the allocation of utility functions to wizards and clerics (why do wizards get Unseen Servant and Invisible Stalker, but clerics get Aerial Servant, Dust Devil and (in the 2nd ed Tome of Magic) Frisky Chest?).

5e does not simply reproduce some "original role" for wizards or clerics (or thieves or fighters, for that matter), however exactly those might be defined.

Okay, now we're talking about something relevant. You've now pointed out that the "original" role of wizards was different: artillery. Yes, very good, thank you for that bit of trivia. So instead of "original" it would be more appropriate to say "classic," as in, "almost 50 years old now but not quite as old as Chainmail." Coming full circle, that makes the corrected statement "the classic oD&D/AD&D roles still apply in 5E." Nothing controversial about that statement.

 

[Bluenose]

The story drives the game. Every character will do what is required of them.

Well that's radical. All characters have the capability to do anything, whether it's restoring hit points or buffing party members or AoE attacks or negotiating with potential enemies. Makes you wonder why there's classes at all, and it must make D&D very disappointing.

 

[pemerton]

"the classic oD&D/AD&D roles still apply in 5E." Nothing controversial about that statement.

What is the classic role of the oD&D/AD&D wizard?

The only example you gave of the wizard's role in 5e is to cast Phantom Steed. That is not part of the classic role of the wizard - the spell didn't exist for years, and when it was invented (as an illusionist spell) it created one steed (and there were no ritual rules for free castings). So that seems to be at least one respect in which the role of the 5e wizard is not the classic one.

Whose role is it to summon elementals? Wizards' (Conjure Elemental, Invisible Stalker)? Clerics' (Dust Devil in UA, Aerial Stalker)? Druids' (Conjure Fire and Earth Elemental, with additional buffing in UA)?

Whose role is it to animate objects? Wizards' (Unseen Servant, TK)? Clerics' (Animate Objects, and in 2nd ed AD&D Frisky Chest)?

Simply saying "the roles are what they have always been" seems to fail on two points: the roles have not been constant; and it is not necessarily uncontroversial what the roles were at any given point in time.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Janx will have to speak for himself there, since it's not my classification scheme we're discussing. Somehow I don't imagine he's thinking at that level of granularity though--you're focused on means, not ends, but I sense that he was thinking primarily of ends. In any case, it's an obvious feature of 5E that there are things magic can simply no longer do. Frisky Chest is one of those things.

Speaking for myself:

Conjuring elementals remains well within the wizardly idiom. It is somewhat curious that clerics can no longer do it; they are now restricted to celestials. Too bad, although perhaps the intent was that by disallowing clerics from battle-summoning they'd preserve distinct niches for druids and bards.

(Also, clerics have gone from being the best necromancers to nearly the worst.)

 

[aramis erak]

What is the classic role of the oD&D/AD&D wizard?

Artillery - low number of uses, but as needed either large-area area-effect damage and high-potency burst of damage. Utility spells a far distant 3rd role. Interplanar travel spells added at high (15+) levels.

One could, however, focus on utility spells even at low levels, being useless in combat...

In long-duration adventures, the ability to switch between modes was useful, but not always able to be fulfilled due to the way new spells were acquired - basically, GM whim and stolen spellbooks (another, specialized, form of GM whim).

 

[pemerton]

Artillery - low number of uses, but as needed either large-area area-effect damage and high-potency burst of damage. Utility spells a far distant 3rd role.

I would add anti-personnel (sleep, charm, hold, confusion etc). But agree about utility.

That's why I think that saying the roles in 5e are what they have always been is not very helpful or accurate.

 

[aramis erak]

I would add anti-personnel (sleep, charm, hold, confusion etc).

Effectively, those are divided between the other three categories: Sleep is an area effect, charm's effectively a single target out of combat, as is hold, making them equivalent to burst damage. Confusion is most useful as an out-of-combat utility.