The cleric and the rogue were both great at combat in every edition.
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D&D 5E What are the Roles now?
- Thread starter Unwise
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What does that even mean? You have 27 classes and thousands of powers/abilities to choose from to create the character that does what you want it to do. The PHB also heartily encourages reskinning or reflavoring classes and abilities to get the character you want to play as. It's certainly not perfect, but no edition of D&D is; I have a terrible time making a fun-to-play martial character without Tome of Battle in 3E and in Basic I dislike that my only option for a magic-wielding warrior is to be an elf for instance.
I've never heard of so many classes and abilities? Do you mean that is how many were in 4th Edition?
Sadras
Legend
Really? Can you please substantiate this and define what you mean by 'strongest'?
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Yeah. There were a ton of classes and in the book they were introduced in, there were typically 1-3 overarching ways you could build your character depending on what you wanted him or her to specialize in. Splat books, such as Martial Power, came out that added a ton more powers (abilities classes can use like a wizard Fireball, fighter Shield Bash, cleric Inflict Wounds, etc.). There may not have been as many extra book as in 3E for example, but there were still tons of options for how to build your character how you'd like, and it was done in such a way that even different classes under the same role (striker, defender, etc.) could play very differently.
So with all the extra books there are 27 classes and a great many options of powers. This is how they addressed the problem, I guess. The four 4e roles don't change, though. The powers are all written for 4th Edition and it's incompatible with other editions.
4th Edition is a good game. I am not saying anything negative about it.
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I have heard that before, but I doubt it. Do you have some examples?
EDIT: Never mind. There is a thread about this, so I'll read it.
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Can you quote Gygax saying this? I've just quoted multiple sentences where he says something different. He says that class is a significant determiner of role, but he doesn't say that each class has a unique role.
In fact, he groups multiple classes as having the same role: MU and illusionist, and cleric and druid. I quoted the relevant passages not very far upthread.
In respect of MU and illusionist I think his remarks somewhat elide the fact that an illusionist doesn't have the artillery dimension that an MU has. (In 4e terms, an illusionist is a controller but not a ranged striker.) In respect of the cleric and druid, as I explained upthread, I think his remarks elide the fact that a druid is somewhat intermediate between a cleric and a MU.
Part of why I didn't quote his remarks about the ranger and paladin is because they add very little to his remarks about the fighter: all three classes have the same role, of being good at combat, especially hand-to-hand combat, in virtue of good AC, high hit points and a wide-ranging weapon selection.
In the absence of context, sure. But by the time a person is responding to post 1000 of a thread, I think it's a fair to assume some sort of engagement with what's gone before.
In the context of 4e, would anyone deny that a ranged striker plays differently from a melee striker, and that the decision not to break them out as separate roles (say "sniper" and "skirmisher") is a decision as much of economy as of principle?
And to give a reverse example, what is a defender but a controller who controls by putting his/her body on the line in melee? Here the decision to break them out as separate roles is an abandonment of economy in the service of principle, namely, upholding D&D's traditional distinction between fighters and wizards - which goes back at least as far as Gygax's remark (which I quoted upthread) that martial training is the antithesis of magic-use.
And then there is the ambiguity over whether AoE damage is best conceived of as striking (see the sorcerer) or control (see the wizard).
In my 4e game, in a climactic combat in which all the stops are pulled out, it is not uncommon to have the following three dailies all operating simultaneously: Swords of the Marilith (20th level sorcerer paragon path power), Fire Storm (19th level cleric power) and Righteous Inferno (19th level paladin power). All of them are zones of auto-damage. The paladin power also makes enemies grant combat advantage. The sorcerer power also grants allies an AC bonus.
Now this is a particularly strong example of role overlap, chosen by me to prove the point. But here we have a so-called striker acting as controller and leader; a so-called defender acting as controller and leader; and a so-called leader acting as a pure controller. And in each case the power begins by dealing AoE damage at range, which is a striker function.
In discussions around roles in 4e, especially by the thousandth post, I expect the discussion to actually engage with the reality of 4e's class design, not conjectures about what certain classes must look like, or how they must play, because the designers slapped a certain role label onto them.
