It doesn't look like a troll, more like a giant chipmunk. But who did that and why?
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D&D 5E What are the Roles now?
- Thread starter Unwise
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It doesn't look like a troll, more like a giant chipmunk. But who did that and why?
GMforPowergamers
Legend
and many people myself included disagree...
the terms are only narrow if you want them to be... and are only suggestions on build and we have gone over this... you are just disagreeing to be difficult at this point... you don't like roles I get it.
well that is what they became over time, but straight from Gary and Dave themselves they started as the equivalent of cannons and artillery pieces...
GMforPowergamers
Legend
4e only labled the combat roles and left the non combat roles unfdefined, it was 4e's greatest short coming. I asked 100 or so pages ago if maybe combining roles like alignments would be better...
instead of lawful+good, you would have striker+face... but then add a third, one for each pillar.
yup every edition... even 4th, they just didn't have lables....
artillery is a sub set of control, or strike... just like lurker and skirmisher are types of strike, and battlfiend manipulation and target lock are parts of control... it is just a sub set the 2 share...
BryonD
Hero
I find this post quite ironic.
Another thing "we have gone over" is that disagreement on personal observation is quite real and no big deal.
"Many people" do strongly agree with Sacrosanct, just as "many people" agree with you. But if the people who agree with you would recognize that the opposing opinion is very important to the overall market and ultimately to the degree of popular acceptance for a game, then this whole thread goes away.
Instead your side keeps dropping out of context Gygax quotes that describe the game's roots and completely ignore the completely different experience (different from war games) that D&D became. Those guys were proud and happy about their wargaming roots, but they were also proud and happy about the new thing they had created out of it. Talking about where something started doesn't give the answer to where it ended. But these endless misleading quotes amount to "disagreeing to be difficult".
Again, in this very thread you challenged me on accepting other opinions. And I replied that all you had to do was " please show me that you respect differing opinions. Please prove me wrong and agree that it is ok to find the feel of roles in 4E different in a not-positive way, just as it is ok to find the many differences in 4E to be improvements.". You did not accept this. So who is "just disagreeing to be difficult"?
Imaro
Legend
Honestly I find it ironic that a thread about roles in 5e has devolved into a continuous discussion of 4e... I'd love to actually talk about 5e seeing as how I actually enjoy that game but this thread just doesn't seem like it's ever going to get back to the point of actually discussing the game it's supposed to be about... Keep fighting the good fight man, I commend you and a few others in this thread because you all have got infinitely more patience for repetitive discussion of 4e in a 5e thread than I apparently have.
BryonD
Hero
Heh
Yep. I honestly don't recall now if I ever posted this one or not (long thread that I've dropped in and out of) but I know I thought a bit about the irony of this thread. It was often complained that 3E talk was a bane of 4E conversations.
From my perspective, I'm talking about 5E and how, on this topic, it does a good job of reflecting AD&D. And I've consistently said that the "4e roles are in everything" crowd simply need to respect that this is not remotely a universal truism. I don't remotely dispute the merits of their opinion for themselves. But I strongly dispute their demand that everyone else agree that 5E (and older D&D) work that way at every table.
How? In AD&D melee is sticky: you can't move and attack unless you charge; if you come within 10' of a melee combatant you are locked into melee and can't withdraw at full speed without suffering a free rear attack sequence. 3E radically changed this, making freedom of movement in melee the default. 5e, like 4e, follows 3E in this respect. It is not like AD&D at all.
What does market popularity have to do with whether or not a given RPG has roles?
Also, how are Gygax quotes about the roles that he designed the AD&D classes around out-of-context? They are relevant to the context of this thread; and the context in which they appear in his rulebooks has been fully set out. Perhaps by "out of context" you mean "approaches to the game that you (and others?) ignored?" I'm not sure.
Look at [MENTION=15700]Sacrosanct[/MENTION]'s description of a classic D&D cleric upthread: wears armour like a fighter, turns undead and heals. How is the 4e cleric - especially its STR and Essentials versions - any different from that? How is the Warlord (the other PHB leader) different from that except in respect of turning undead? (For that matter, how is the AD&D paladin any different from that? The functional and archetypical overlap between the classic cleric and the paladin is part of any serious discussion of AD&D character roles and themes.)
And if Sacrosanct is right that a classic D&D magic-user is (on the offensive and tactical side of things) a combination of artillery and anti-personnel, how is that any different from the 4e wizard, who combines AoE damage ("artillery") and anti-personnel (Sleep, Web, Confusion, Hold, etc)?
Talking about "feel" doesn't shed much light on roles, in my view. Playing a swordsman in AD&D feels pretty different from playing a swordsman in Runequest, or in Tunnels & Trolls, but that in and of itself show that the characters are filling different roles in their respective games. It is a fairy trivial consequence of the fact that the three games have quite different mechanics for resolving combat.
Imaro
Legend
I can't answer for @BryonD but I think he is speaking to a wider picture of "roles" as opposed to a singular detail of one class...which honestly still isn't very sticky in the bigger picture unless the terrain or luck is helping the fighter out... the fighter's opposition if already engaged with another target is free to continue attacking said target in AD&D witgh no immediate reprecussions (no way to mitigate him continuing to attack the squishy)... the fighter's opposition can just move around him and attack someone else (unless terrain, luck or some other mitigating factor helps the fighter)... and so on. So yeah if the fighter can engage him first, before his opponent gets near another enemy then I guess he can sorta kinda hold him there...
Edit: Also when it comes to stickiness in AD&D how do you view the "Falling Back" and "Parry" maneuver... it seems like a prototype disengage action which while definitely harder to pull off gives the opponent an option to disengage without possibly taking that massive hit.
What does this have to do with 5e roles again??
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BryonD
Hero
And yet I played AD&D for years and never sat there thinking about melee being sticky. Remember, we have had numerous conversations about how I'm not a "gamist" guy. I was using AD&D to tell stories and it WORKED.
The way 4E feels does a very poor job of delivering the experience I want.
The way AD&D worked did a very good job of delivering the experience I want.
5E reflects AD&D well in a way the 4E does only very poorly.
The context of this thread is "how did a significant majority of the gaming population experience AD&D and how do various modern editions compare"
Gygax is famous for making all kinds of proclamations and sometimes he would even play opposite sides of the same fence is different rants. It is almost a game to find Gygax quotes that support any given position.
Comments about the origins of AD&D provide little insight into how the game was actually enjoyed by the masses.
Further, specific comments about how Gygax famously opinionated evaluations of "correct" play don't fit within the context of why vast numbers of people enjoyed the games in ways that contradicted these statements. And, again, Gygax demonstrated that how he played D&D was often at odds with the strict war-game founded quotes you have offered. I don't accept that your quote remotely demonstrate that even he was "on your side".
Then broaden your view or simply accept that your view missed a huge chuck of the highly relevant audience.
You have no obligation to understand or care about how anyone other then you and your groups play. But if you want to argue with the community about what is and is not popular, then you need a view broad enough to perceive them.
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Sacrosanct
Legend
OK, there have been a lot of replies, and I'm not going to quote them all, but this deserves special attention.
No, I don't think you do get it. I have nothing against roles. I am disagreeing with your assessment that Basic D&D had the classes fit the roles you said they do. Because they don't. They can, but you (and others) seem to think that if a class can fit a role, then it means it always fits the role. And that's not true at all. I don't know how many times people have to keep giving you examples of how and why you are objectively incorrect before you actually see it. In Basic, there are these big umbrellas that the same classs falls under, and it's not just one role. Often this role changed from battle to battle, depending on what the circumstance was. A fighter could be a striker in combat, focusing no being the high damage dealer, while the next fight relies on his heavy armor and tons of hit points just to keep the bad guys busy while another class does it's thing. The halfling was also often in a scout role, and he is pretty much the exact same thing as a fighter.
Wrong again! You need to talk to Mike Monard. A guy who was there from day 1 and played with Gary in his original group and often played a magic user. Guess what the most common spell was that MUs cast? Charm Person.
Not magic missile. Not sleep. Charm Person.
And that's something that you and others for some weird reason insist on forgetting or ignoring. You say a MU is artillery (glass cannon) as the role in Basic. Flat out wrong, especially at low levels. The MU was simply a role you played if you wanted to be a wizardy type PC like Gandalf, Merlin, Sheebla, etc. You could play like a glass cannon if you wanted, but not only wasn't it the only role, it wasn't even the most common. Others have said the role was controller (and no, I don't buy a controller role being the same as an artillery role--they are fundamentally different). Not only does the fact that people can't agree on what they think the MU's role was in Basic proof that there wasn't any set role, but the most common spell memorized (charm person) didn't even fit into that area denial aspect that control magic does. It was "charm one guy, and use him as a meat shield for the rest of the adventure until you finish, or he dies."
No, I don't think you do get it. I have nothing against roles. I am disagreeing with your assessment that Basic D&D had the classes fit the roles you said they do. Because they don't. They can, but you (and others) seem to think that if a class can fit a role, then it means it always fits the role. And that's not true at all. I don't know how many times people have to keep giving you examples of how and why you are objectively incorrect before you actually see it. In Basic, there are these big umbrellas that the same classs falls under, and it's not just one role. Often this role changed from battle to battle, depending on what the circumstance was. A fighter could be a striker in combat, focusing no being the high damage dealer, while the next fight relies on his heavy armor and tons of hit points just to keep the bad guys busy while another class does it's thing. The halfling was also often in a scout role, and he is pretty much the exact same thing as a fighter.
Wrong again! You need to talk to Mike Monard. A guy who was there from day 1 and played with Gary in his original group and often played a magic user. Guess what the most common spell was that MUs cast? Charm Person.
Not magic missile. Not sleep. Charm Person.
And that's something that you and others for some weird reason insist on forgetting or ignoring. You say a MU is artillery (glass cannon) as the role in Basic. Flat out wrong, especially at low levels. The MU was simply a role you played if you wanted to be a wizardy type PC like Gandalf, Merlin, Sheebla, etc. You could play like a glass cannon if you wanted, but not only wasn't it the only role, it wasn't even the most common. Others have said the role was controller (and no, I don't buy a controller role being the same as an artillery role--they are fundamentally different). Not only does the fact that people can't agree on what they think the MU's role was in Basic proof that there wasn't any set role, but the most common spell memorized (charm person) didn't even fit into that area denial aspect that control magic does. It was "charm one guy, and use him as a meat shield for the rest of the adventure until you finish, or he dies."
