D&D 5E What are the Roles now?

[SirAntoine]

Oooh! There is also more to follow on your turns. You get to read and see what you do with the powers like you were playing a board game.

 

[Imaro]

There are definitely options, just like how there were attacks of opportunity and feats in 3E... But I've personally found them wimpy. If I recall correctly, by 4th level you can have that style, maneuver, and feat... And then you really don't ever improve your stickiness. And short rests are so long that people don't take them as often, meaning you can't use your superiority dice to keep enemies away as often.

I'm curious... wimpy compared to what?

4e Fighter
Combat Challenge: mark target to give it -2 to attacks that do not include you/attack if enemy shifts or attacks another.
Combat Superiority: Enemy struck by AoO stops moving.

5e Fighter
Sentinel Feat : Enemy struck by AoO stops moving/Provoke AoO if disengage or move within 5'/attack a creature within 5' if it attacks a creature other than you.
Goading Attack: Spend superiority dice to impose disadvantage on all attk rolls against targets other than you
Protection Style: Use reaction to impose disadvantage on attk roll against creature within 5' of you.
Menacing attack: Impose disadvantage on all of a creatures attacks and checks

Now granted the maneuvers require a failed Will save but all things considered the 5e abilities around locking down targets don't seem "wimpy" to me (actually since the fighter is attacking numerous times and can spend superiority dice on each attack I think the 5e abilities are more flexible but 4e has powers so...) , why exactly do you consider it "wimpy"? Also what options were there in PHB 1 to increase the fighter's actual stickiness?

I will freely admit that I'm basing the social/exploration stuff off of my own experiences and therefore not the most valid data point, and I said "attempted" for a reason. At the very least, it moved rituals away from magic users and made the skill and difficulty system much easier to actually use than at least 3.5 did for my group.

Yes but the actual disparity in number of skills/ access of skills, resources necessary to attain said rituals, new skills, and so on were nowhere near equal between classes.

 

[Herschel]

I deny that the tasks assigned by the combat roles have as much priority as is being established, and I am saying if more abilities are given to support those tasks the player will feel like other tasks aren't supported so well.

For some players, they will think their options are only the written options. It just happens.

1. So how well supported do players feel with no (or almost no) options given (ala 1E/2E Fighters)?

2. If players think their only options are the written ones, a player problem, then how does giving them no options help?

 

[Herschel]

" I fear the 4th Edition has made it hard for you to communicate."

"4th Edition is like a novel in a different genre than what Wizards of the Coast's audience likes."

"4the Edition should have been called the D&D board game"

You didn't 'hear of all the classes, yet you continually bash in the ENWorld-standard passive-aggressive with extreme ignorance.

I know you are a defender of the 4th Edition, to the last. In your zeal, I wonder if you have forgotten that it is just a game. I am a defender of all of D&D and AD&D, and I have been for many years, long before 3rd or 4th Edition were printed. At my table, all players can bring their own character from any edition and play together. They always will.

Pure hypocrisy. You are not the bastion of D&D purity and your comments show that directly.

 

[Aenghus]

To be honest, my experience as a player in 4e, being a Fighter (levels 1-22), has been horribly marred due to terrible DMing of the absolute worst kind. It was an entirely new group found via the internet. The best thing about my branching out being that I poached two of their players for my own group and after their campaign "ended" we parted ways.

I definitely didn't master the system, so I could not answer you as to which class is factually better, especially since the DM mucked around with the powers of other classes and unhinging some limits - so when I hear that the 4e Fighter was such a great class, and have only my rather disappointing experience to draw I am amazed on how different my experience was to others. I played in a group with a Rogue, SwordMage, Avenger and Cleric and felt overshadowed by all - I will admit the DM's design-meddling ideas probably had a lot to do with that.

I generally agree with pemerton's comments on the 4e fighter as it evolved. It was viable but not as strong straight out of the first 4e PHB, but became a lot stronger with subsequent material - Fighters and wizards are both contenders for the 4e classes with the most available options, and more material equates to more options for optimisation. There are a bunch of 4e fighter subclasses.

Some of the enthusiasm from 4e fighter players comes from the marking mechanics. It meant that at long last the fighter had mechanics that helped them lock down enemies and defend other PCs. This meant 4e fights could take place in the open without it being suicidal for the PCs, as opposed to being stuck in bottlenecks (which previously was the main way to protect squishies).

Obviously, a proportion of fighter players in previous editions were focusing on damage dealing, not protection. The damage dealing role in 4e was primarily shifted to the striker classes which potentially meant the 4e fighter didn't work as they expect. The 4e essentials slayer fighter subclass was for those players, though it's a lower damage striker that doesn't scale well at higher level.

Though as it happens, the AEDU 4e fighter is a fairly high damage class, more so if the subsequent material is utilised. Some of the damage output is dependent on how the DM runs monsters though, the damage is higher if monsters sometimes trigger combat challenge.

As it happens the 4e group I DM for contains both a sword and board fighter and a shielding swordmage. Both are considered effective in their own ways. The fighter, though a defensive build, deals out a lot more damage than the swordmage, who is in effect a secondary controller, though a lot less than the strikers in the party (melee ranger, essentials thief).

My early 4e games demonstrated what happened to strikers without defender support. The party rogue won initiative and dashed forward to attack the enemy, then was immediately surrounded and knocked out by the monsters. Eventually the player of the rogue learned to hang back the first round and throw a dagger, only flanking once the defenders had locked down the enemy.So the striker players learned to be grateful to the defender players for their role in enabling their fun.

I use all the relevant errata, and the player of the fighter enjoys using the vs Will version of Come and Get It. It''s the sort of thing you see in the over the top action movies that were partially an inspiration for 4e.

Without knowing the details of your DM's house rules I can't say how it affected your experience of the 4e fighter. Messing up the adjudication of marks is one possibility.

 

[Imaro]

Imaro, I have to ask, because this came up before, how often do you have combats that start at 150+ feet away? It's an honest question. In all my years of gaming, this has almost never happened. Maybe once a campaign. If that. Is long range combat that common in your games? If it is, then I could see why you would think that an archer fighter is effective. IME, this just doesn't happen.

First let me answer your question by saying it happens as often as the PC's (mostly the Dex specialized fighter) sets it up. I run a sandbox game set in a brutal and savage recently re-discovered northern land called the "Far North". My players have over time learned to set up combat so that it is in their favor as opposed to rushing in and wailing on whatever the enemy is until it's dead. So while every fight doesn't start at 150ft (that would be as likely as every fight having easily available cover that still lets you move within melee range of the archer)... it has and does happen, especially since the fighter can scout ahead with a high Dex and stealth and start attacking to try and draw enemies back towards the other members of the party.

All that said, I still think you vastly underestimate the versatility and advantages of the Dex/ranged fighter even without being 150ft away. Nothing prevents him from going sword (rapier) and board if necessary, he shores up the total weakness the Str/melee based fighter has against fliers and again can move hide and snipe if he's not needed on the front line. If your definition of "effective" equates to pure damage in a limited situation then yeah I guess the Str fighter is more effective, but IMO whether a fighter is "effective" or not is much broader than that. YMMV of course.

EDIT: And to dovetail back to your original assertion, I remain unconvinced that the 4e PHB fighter and the 5e PHB fighter are equally ineffective when using ranged weapons. Nothing you've presented or stated provides any evidence to support your claim... and repeating it (without any evidence) doesn't count.

 

[Sadras]

Obviously, a proportion of fighter players in previous editions were focusing on damage dealing, not protection. The damage dealing role in 4e was primarily shifted to the striker classes which potentially meant the 4e fighter didn't work as they expect. The 4e essentials slayer fighter subclass was for those players, though it's a lower damage striker that doesn't scale well at higher level.

Yeah, I probably fell into the group you are speaking of here. I did look at the Slayer and remember thinking at the time I like it, although I never tested him out.

Though as it happens, the AEDU 4e fighter is a fairly high damage class, more so if the subsequent material is utilised.

I was a DDI subscriber, so I did have access to the subsequent material, but sadly never experienced the "higher damage" everyone seems to be speaking of. Refer below.

Without knowing the details of your DM's house rules I can't say how it affected your experience of the 4e fighter. Messing up the adjudication of marks is one possibility.

I will illustrate one way which this DM affected my experience. He had his own character which he gave stuff to and played him when his brother was DMing. One of the things given to him included a made up encounter power which elevated his damage output into the stratosphere. This is besides items and the like. I was moving to extricate myself from the group when the campaign fizzled out thankfully. As I said I poached two great players from the group, so in the end it was worth it

 

[Sadras]

It would be more logical for Wizards to get a new audience than try and win back the one they lost.

Why would it be more logical? You may agree of disagree, but they made an error whether it be in style of game or presentation with 4e (I'm not here to debate that), so they backtracked a little and attempted to cherry pick as much as possible from each edition to cater for the most styles of play, i.e. a larger audience/fan-base. Why is it logical that they need to lure in an entirely new market? That makes no sense to me.

In your mind does every new RPG target a new market and ignore the current RPG hobbyists?

 

[Eirikrautha]

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.

Except this isn't a discussion of roles in 4e. THAT'S why we have 1000+ posts on this thread, because fans of a particular edition have decided to "educate" the rest of us about how they played an old edition of the game!

This thread is (or was supposed to be) about the roles in 5e. The only even slightly tangential part that interfaces with the older, dead, editions of the game might be if you wanted to use the same terms as an older edition to describe them. But, as has been evidenced by the testimony of many of us on this thread, the terminology of recent editions doesnt fit how WE play. So, no matter how much you tell us that it does, IT DOESN'T. Just because someone wants to tell us what the terminology "really" meant in an older edition doesn't change the fact that 5e characters AREN'T built as "strikers". They're built as "rogues" or as "fighters" or as "warlocks" in 5e. Everything else is a situational tactical choice, more than in any other edition.

I understand that you might like some other edition. Have fun with it. But those editions are dead to me. They are less than irrelevant. So, can you address the original question without mentioning the dead editions?

 

[Rejuvenator]

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.

I've only attempted to read a fraction of the 1000 posts, so yes, there was some sort of engagement but pragmatically limited for time constraints.

I wrote:

When anyone talks about roles in context of 4e, it's fair to assume they're thinking controller/defender/leader/striker.

And, for 4E, discussing "roles" under those labels still seems to be a correction assumption:

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.

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.

I'm confused, I thought the debate with BryonD (in the middle of which I interjected) was about the confessed satisfaction of some people to avoid having 4E-label roles mechanized in 5E.