I would never do that. With this last post, I had said you could call yourself that. I didn't appreciate your sentiments against it.
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D&D 5E What are the Roles now?
- Thread starter Unwise
- Start date
I would never do that. With this last post, I had said you could call yourself that. I didn't appreciate your sentiments against it.
It's not a defender.
The protection feature reminds me of the Shielding Swordmages damage-mitigation feature. In functional terms, I see it as nearly as close to "leader" as to "defender", because it is about buffing an ally. But it does have that "defender" aspect of "Hit me instead!". And the rest of what you're describing (heavy armour, shield, fighter hit points) all fits with someone who does what they do by putting their body on the line in melee - which is the quintessence of defending.
Does anyone have a new combat role to propose?
In AD&D there is space in the fiction for a genuine skirmisher. Mechanically, it would be someone who can select targets in melee (the default is random target determination) and who can withdraw from melee without drawing a free attack sequence with +2 to hit.
That's the "striker".
The striker is Damage + Targeting VIPs + Not Paying for it Much.
Archers, Lurker, skrimishers, damage tanks, and blasters are "strikers"
That's why anyone can be a "striker". All you need is good damage and either high defenses, mobility, or range.
And oddly enough, if you do it too well... you become a "defender" as every enemy targets you, can't kill you, and doesn't target anyone else.
Sure, but in AD&D there is no distinct "striker" role (for melee PCs) because there is no distinct "defender" role, because melee is sticky for everyone by default. So a skirmisher of the sort I described would be a new role in that edition, and would stand not because of damage dealt (which is what tends to make a striker stand out in 4e) but because of ability to move through melee and select a target. You wouldn't need to give such a character better default damage than a fighter for it to be an interesting option - a type of fighter/thief combo. (The 2nd ed Ranger has flavour text that alludes to something like this, but no mechanics to deliver it.)
You could argue, I guess, that there is no conceptual room for new roles because the 4e roles cover all the combat concepts in D&D:
* melee skirmisher = striker
* sniper = striker
* condition imposition and forced movement = defender (in melee) and/or controller
* ranged AoE = controller and/or striker (depending on which 4e book you read)
* healing and/or buffing = leader
* sniper = striker
* condition imposition and forced movement = defender (in melee) and/or controller
* ranged AoE = controller and/or striker (depending on which 4e book you read)
* healing and/or buffing = leader
What is there to D&D combat besides hit point damage and recovery, condition imposition, buffing and damage prevention, and movement? Maybe a completely new role could do funky stuff with initiative and/or surprise: the "forward observer" role. But I'm not sure there's enough design space there for it not to really play as just a type of leader/controller hybrid.
It would be over-powered, except where the rules already allow it. They do in 2nd Edition at least. I am not sure about 1st Edition.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I feel like "allows optimization, still generalist-friendly" isn't too far off from describing 4e though. Everyone gets a half-level bonus to everything, which means "at-level" challenges hover around the same odds of success. The world is not keyed to specific level, however, so challenges that could not be overcome before (such as bluffing an angel or whatever) become possible, even (potentially) trivial. In fact, as I understand it, 5e's Proficiency bonus essentially acts as a slightly-flatter version of 4e's half-level bonus--it scales up at roughly the right levels for a half-as-fast growth with a slightly higher starting point (+2 instead of +0). Since this only applies to some things, rather than everything, one might even make the argument that 5e isn't quite as "generalist-friendly" as 4e, though the obvious rejoinder there is just that the numbers aren't supposed to get so high that an untrained rube couldn't at least possibly succeed. (The actual implementation of that, unfortunately, appears to vary.)
In general, I agree that at least the "traditional" areas of combat contribution are covered by the four 4e roles. So I'd argue that instead of trying to tease out a new combat role, the better choice would be to apply the "roles" concept to the other areas of interesting mechanical differentiation: Exploration and Socialization.
Your "forward scout" role would probably fall under Exploration, as would things like trapfinding/lockpicking, endurance/athletics, and knowledgeability. (Call them Scout, Expert, Tough, and Sage, just for grins and giggles.) Then Socialization would be split into the "nice guy"/diplomat, the "liar"/bluffer, the "bad cop"/intimidator, and...I'm not sure, maybe something akin to a "social controller/leader" e.g. the sort of Bard-like "play a song to set the tone" kind of thing (I'm kind of grasping at straws here; super tired, studying for physics exam, etc.) These would, of course, only be really useful if there were substantially more mechanical weight in the Socialization aspect of the game, but still.
