D&D 5E What are the Roles now?

[LostSoul]

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

In B/X, Read Languages apparently allows you to decipher codes and secret languages.

In the context of how I design dungeons these days, that's a huge benefit! But that might just be me. I like to create rooms in the dungeon that provide information as to how a big bad trap works, or how a trick works, or that sort of thing. So if you go into the first room of the dungeon, and cast that spell, and find out that (1) going up the ziggurat's stairs will turn you into a snake-person, (2) the creators of the ziggurat hate corvids because the corvid god killed their god, (3) and that their god is dead and lies beneath the ziggurat, I think you've done well.

 

[Sadras]

charm's effectively a single target out of combat, as is hold, making them equivalent to burst damage.

How do you liken burst damage with Charm and Hold Spells?
I agree the base (weakest) version of them is one target but the spells can be upgraded to affect more targets. Hold is not preferably an out of combat spell like Charm.

Confusion is most useful as an out-of-combat utility.

I do not see your reasoning here. Why is it Confusion mostly useful as an out of combat spell?

 

[Janx]

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.)

I haven't played 5e yet. Nothing against it. And I'm certainly not intending to diss it.

I'm just saying that the 4 main classes (or categories of classes) are a decent indicator of party diversity and thus balance.

If I am about to join a 3-player group of 5e and I hear they have a Fighter, Thief and Cleric, then I am going to choose to play a Wizard in order to "balance" that party out by providing a category of class, they had left out.

I'm sure we'll all contribute to combat. But I am also sure that stuff that only my wizard can do will be quite handy to the party. That's my role.

 

[Mallus]

My 5e Warlock maps pretty well to a 4e Striker. He's a (flavorful) glass-cannon who can easily do the most damage in a combat.

 

[SirAntoine]

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).

4e does not focus exclusively on fighting.

What @Hussar (correctly) stated is that 4e's role labels are solely about fighting.

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.

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.

The classes themselves are the roles, and they tell you everything you need to know. The game still bases everything on cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard, too.

 

[SirAntoine]

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.

I am the one who is unimpressed. You can call a fighter a defender if you want, but that is not the case in the game as it is intended to be played.

 

[SirAntoine]

I haven't played 5e yet. Nothing against it. And I'm certainly not intending to diss it.

I'm just saying that the 4 main classes (or categories of classes) are a decent indicator of party diversity and thus balance.

If I am about to join a 3-player group of 5e and I hear they have a Fighter, Thief and Cleric, then I am going to choose to play a Wizard in order to "balance" that party out by providing a category of class, they had left out.

I'm sure we'll all contribute to combat. But I am also sure that stuff that only my wizard can do will be quite handy to the party. That's my role.

I would do the same.

 

[SirAntoine]

See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. There was no giving going on. It was a recognition of how the class was actually being played at the table. Or, at least the attempt at that. I'm not saying they got it right, but, that's what they were trying to do. And, once you have that recognition - fighters are defensive characters, heavy armoured, not particularly adept at dealing damage to large numbers of targets and typically not ranged combatants, then you build the class around that core concept. Again, realising that this is only as it pertains to combat, not the other pillars.

Look at what people generally do with that class, and then make that class do that thing really well. It's not a bad design goal. And, because it's not prescriptive, it doesn't mean that the class can only do that thing and nothing else. Which is yet another misinterpretation that gets trotted out pretty regularly.

It's useless. Take a look at the fighter, which is your example. The fighter was not a defensive character, he wasn't always heavily armored, he was adept at dealing damage to large numbers of targets and he typically was both a ranged combatant and a melee combatant. The fighter always varied according to how it was played, so what you describe as recognition was wrong, and the support you describe rewarded only those ideas which so many groups never would have recognized. It is much better to speak to the truth, that every class can be played how you wish, and to provide supportive abilities everyone can enjoy.

 

[Aenghus]

Take a look at the fighter, which is your example. The fighter was not a defensive character, heavily armored, not particularly adept at dealing damage to large numbers of targets and typically not ranged combatants. The fighter always varied according to how it was played, so what you describe as recognition was wrong, and the support you describe rewarded only those ideas which so many groups never would have recognized.

It is much better to speak to the truth, that every class can be played how you wish, and to provide supportive abilities everyone can enjoy.

This quote illustrates one of the strong tensions in class-based RPGs, between those who want strong or restrictive classes, and those who want weak or unrestrictive classes. Both extremes here have their advantages and disadvantages, depending on how well they are implemented.

Strong/restrictive class RPGs at their best makes for flavoursome classes with clear strengths and weaknesses, simplifies character generation and campaign startup(It's easier to choose Fighter, Rogue, Cleric,Wizard when that behaves as expected), facilitates niche protection and helps avoid the "good at everything" and "good at nothing" design traps. The price is the restrictions chosen, which are a matter of taste.

Weak/unrestrictive class-based RPGs move closer to classless skill-based RPGs, and typically have more complex character generation and make campaign setup more complex. Players can likely customise their PCs to be closer to their personal vision, especially those who don't conform to the restrictions of the RPG concerned.

I strongly prefer the former design paradigm. Class-based RPGs are inherently unrealistic, I feel you might as well take advantage of the strengths of classes, which I see as simplification and abstraction. As well I feel it's easier to design strong classes as they are simpler than a more open system.

IMO the former design type tends to produce distinct roles in and out of combat as a consequence of class restrictions. The latter produces increasingly blurry class-related roles as the classes weaken towards a skill-based, classless system - the roles that develop in such play will be more individual, less class-based, which risks leaving roles uncovered by accident.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The classes themselves are the roles, and they tell you everything you need to know. The game still bases everything on cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard, too.

When fighter and rogue are defined by what they do (fight and steal, more or less), and cleric and wizard are defined by how they do things (Use Magic), the names really don't actually tell you that much at all. Someone with a heavy LotR mindset (not unexpected, given the popularity of the movies) will probably expect Fighters to be pretty damn awesome, and there's a very good chance they'll be disappointed to see Wizards capable of completely overshadowing them over and over again, except and unless there are big fat sacks of HP with some Legendary Saves to slowly whittle down to 0.

These words do not actually tell us as much as you claim they do.

I am the one who is unimpressed. You can call a fighter a defender if you want, but that is not the case in the game as it is intended to be played.

How do you mean? I see "calling a fighter a defender" as in no way whatsoever different from saying "fighters have good defenses and can interpose between their allies and the threats they face." Where is this conflicting with "the game as it is intended to be played," and what exactly IS "the game as it is intended to be played"? Because that sounds to me like a fancy way of saying, "The word 'defender' is badwrongfun."

I'm sure we'll all contribute to combat. But I am also sure that stuff that only my wizard can do will be quite handy to the party. That's my role.

Well, that's nice, but you're abusing the different senses of the word "role." 4e consistently uses "role" in one way: the answer to the question, "What functions should this class be consistently competent at in combat?" The 4e term says nothing about anything that isn't combat, because that's a separate consideration; this is not to say that classes therefore lack things outside of combat, merely that 4e doesn't have a term, description, or specifically-declared mechanical goal for things outside of combat.

You're using the word "role" to answer the question, "What functions does my character contribute over the course of its entire life?" This question is fundamentally different, and I'd argue it's beyond the scope of being answered in the way that 4e answered its "functions in combat" question. Your question admits so many possible variants and is so deeply dependent on the context of each table that I don't believe it can be answered systematically.

"Wizard" is what you contribute to your player-group, sure. But that's not, at all, the same kind of "role" that 4e talks about. Conflating the two is at best just confusing, and probably more like strawmanning.

It is much better to speak to the truth, that every class can be played how you wish, and to provide supportive abilities everyone can enjoy.

Ah, yes, the "truth" that class literally doesn't matter and you can do absolutely anything you want...except that that hasn't been true since at least 2e and probably earlier. The Fighter was always--even from the 0e days--intended to be a meatshield and to tell people "you shall not pass" with a weapon to the face/body/etc. The whole "marching order" thing and the like. That's the design of the class. People can take the class and then actively oppose what it's designed to do, but that's probably an exercise in heartache. The only way to not do that is to have a class designed to do absolutely everything...at which point "class" really doesn't mean anything anymore.