D&D 5E What are the Roles now?

[Celtavian]

http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140310

"A bard can easily take on the role that a cleric fulfills in a party"

I am not sure why giving players the option to not have a cleric would be harmful. Arcane cure wounds doesn't exactly impact gameplay just because it's arcane instead of divine in such a case.

My group loves not having to choose only a cleric to be an effective healer. Now the bard or druid can fulfill the role. That is fine by us. No one should be forced to play a cleric.

 

[Celtavian]

The easiest fix is to disallow bards. They were an optional class, and it's clear they're over-powered in 5th Edition as well.

Healing magic should be at least 95% from clerics and other priest classes. It's a big part of how they keep characters with the faith.

I don't care. Very few others care. Divine versus arcane magic is completely irrelevant to gameplay. I'm very glad for more options for players filling the healing role. Not everyone wants to have to play a priestly class to heal. I'm glad they have a non-priestly class healer. I'm always for more options outside the norm. I hope they add more non-priest healers if they add classes.

 

[Bluenose]

A well-rounded party is the right way to look at it. You have four basic roles: the warrior to have someone who fight and kill most monsters, the rogue to have someone who can scout ahead and back everyone up, the priest who can use divine magic, and the wizard who can use arcane magic.

So, what's the role of the priest and wizard? Because you tell us what the other two classes do, but for those you describe how they do... the whatever it is they do.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I never even really liked the "you need a divine caster and an arcane caster" terminology anyway. Healing can, and has, come from many sources. Few tricky/utility spells have remained exclusively arcane. Some games, even some versions of D&D, separate Druids (and Shaman etc.) into their own thing, apart from Clerics. That's another reason why I think the things you are expecting to come from "divine caster" should just be stated directly, or given a label (like "Support" or "Leader") that doesn't pigeonhole you into a single concept or interpretation.

 

[Mephista]

Originally Posted by SirAntoine
"A well-rounded party is the right way to look at it. You have four basic roles: the warrior to have someone who fight and kill most monsters, the rogue to have someone who can scout ahead and back everyone up, the priest who can use divine magic, and the wizard who can use arcane magic."


So, what's the role of the priest and wizard? Because you tell us what the other two classes do, but for those you describe how they do... the whatever it is they do.

One man magical artillery is the mage's traditional role. Clerics, back in the first editions, was actually meant to be the original gish: a combination of Fighting Man with some Magic-User, with a vampire hunter theme to them. Thus, their traditional role is the self-buffing magical warrior.

2nd edition continued this tradition by comparing the cleric to the Knights Templar and other warrior-priest organizations, though it began to include variants and adapting more of the whole mythology stuff. 3e and 4e evolved from that line of thought, pushing more and more godly attributes onto the cleric.

So, really, the 'healbot' cleric isn't the traditional cleric at all. Its a undead hunter / warrior with non-direct damage magic that also happens to serve as a priest.

So, if we had to differentiate "divine" (re: clerics) from "arcane" magic (re: wizard), its based entirely on being buffs/debuffs or direct damage. Clearly, given how much the cleric and wizard classes have evolved, this division no longer makes sense.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

One man magical artillery is the mage's traditional role. Clerics, back in the first editions, was actually meant to be the original gish: a combination of Fighting Man with some Magic-User, with a vampire hunter theme to them. Thus, their traditional role is the self-buffing magical warrior.

2nd edition continued this tradition by comparing the cleric to the Knights Templar and other warrior-priest organizations, though it began to include variants and adapting more of the whole mythology stuff. 3e and 4e evolved from that line of thought, pushing more and more godly attributes onto the cleric.

The paliden really eat up a lot of the old school cleric in that regard.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Ah, very good! I am convinced now they did not intend for healing magic to always be divine magic.

Mike Mearls was wrong to let the bard easily take on the role that a cleric fulfills in a party.

and that is why you don't like roles... because it let someone choose to fill the fighters shoes with a different set of similar abilities, or the cleric or the thief or the wizard...

 

[Mephista]

The paliden really eat up a lot of the old school cleric in that regard.

Perhaps, but it is the "traditional" cleric role. Given the inclusion of dedicated healers and the so called laser clerics, the entire thing has become defunct, and moved more into the ideal of "White Mage" ala Final Fantasy.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Perhaps, but it is the "traditional" cleric role. Given the inclusion of dedicated healers and the so called laser clerics, the entire thing has become defunct, and moved more into the ideal of "White Mage" ala Final Fantasy.

agreed...

The traditional roles of basic D&D where

Defender (cleric)
Striker (Fighter)
Artillery/Blaster (Wizard)
Non combat specialist (Thief)

then the ranger came in and was a fighter/mage/thief hybrid and the bard (1st prestige class) was a druid thief fighter and the Paliden who would eat up a lot of the clerics space...


by second edition they had Bard as a type of thief and ranger and paliden as types of fighters...

by 4e they really wanted nitch protection and the roles we are argueing over where named, after popular play styles of 3e, that in turn where based on 'turning up the fun' of 2e, witch in turn was based on a evolved version of 1e...

 

[Mephista]

I think trying to define clear, one word names for Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Wizard are just doomed to failure. With the exception of Fighter, which has remained remarkably the same since 1e (save for the new inclusion of warlord ideals from 4), the others have branched out, redefined themselves in a lot of ways, back and forth. We have combinations, divides of, and lots of random permutations. I've heard some call bard a mix of rogue and cleric, and warlock an arcane rogue.

But, in the end, it keeps coming back to Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard.

Even the power sources in 4e kinda repeated themselves for a second time on those four roles. Martial characters had secondary striker traits. Arcane characters all had Controller elements about them. Divine classes all had Leader abilities. Primal were all secondary Defender bits. Funny how that worked out. All the arcane classes had a bit of wizard artillery in them, all the divine had buffing, all the martials heavy on the offensive single target damage. 4e virtually ended up as a 4x4 grid of the four core classes mixing. Well, 4x5 with psionics doing weird things with their power points, but that's another matter.


So, yeah. I feel like I should start talking about how the four classes match up to a four elemental ensemble (with the GM as the fifth element of Void!) Earth-fighter, wind-rogue, water-cleric, fire-wizard. Or the Five Man Band. Something.