Great Wheel had a lot of momentum behind it.
Planescape in 2E, Out of the Abyss/Tyrants of the 9 Hells and The Savage Tide towards the end of 3.5.
Heh. I 4venged with the best of 'em. I'm always ready to defend D&D if I think a criticism is unfounded.
I've also never been shy about acknowledging valid criticisms.
So totally on-topic.IIRC that quote is explicitly about the cosmology and somewhat about alignments, not a reference to other possibilities for grid-filling.
I played in parties like that - one time by accident. We just happened to show up with martial characters across the board. We borked one Skill Challenge, but, apart from that, were fine (Controller was, arguably, the most dispensable formal role).(Though I would agree with Tony Vargas that asking for a martial controller in 4e wasn't grid-filling for the sake of grid-filling - I would have liked to see it as an option to have the ability to have no-magic parties where everyone is running a martial character.).
"Anything you need mechanically" is here defined as "DPR," apparently. ;P6-9 Champions, Thieves, Assassins, Battlemasters, and Berserkers can pretty much take care of anything you need mechanically.
Semantically true. There are no formal roles governing class design or simplifying choices of party composition in 5e.There are no necessary roles to fill, even healer.
"Anything you need mechanically" is here defined as "DPR," apparently. ;P
Semantically true. There are no formal roles governing class design or simplifying choices of party composition in 5e.
That does not mean that there are no concrete contributions a party needs to succeed, nor that each & every sub-class is able to provide all such contributions.
In short, a mixed party does better than a homogenous one. Currently a party of all casters can have quite the mix of capabilities (including PCs from any, or if big enough, all classes), while a party with no casters is much more limited, and one with no magical abilities at all (the 5 sub-classes you mention above, if we're talking PH-only), has only a small sub-set of desirable contributions to make (and all of them happen to contribute, primarily, DPR).
As long as we're clear.DPR and Skills, yup.
As long as we're clear.