Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
Promotions/Press
2 Ways To Abandon Roles
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 7652319" data-attributes="member: 2067"><p>Got a “Someone Has To Play The Leader (or Defender or Controller or Whatever)” problem? Let the banana fix it.</p><p>[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]</p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p></p><p>4e D&D’s roles system helps players build an effective party: get someone of each role, and you’re well-balanced and effective. Without someone of each role, you’ll have a noticeably harder time of it. Playing without a balanced party is like using a computer without a keyboard: totally possible (character map and a mouse!), but really, really inefficient. Because of that, in a functional way, the people who pick their characters later than others are goaded into filling out the roles that previous players didn’t fill. They may end up NOT filling those roles, but most players aren’t too excited to be the one who throws away the keyboard, so to speak. Rather than go with their first choice, if someone already has that role, they’ll go with their second or third.</p><p></p><p>If you were to play a game of 4e D&D end-to-end, levels 1-30, leveling up about once a month, it would take about two and a half years. That’s a long time to be stuck playing a character that you felt was your second or third choice, something that you felt pressured to take because you didn’t want to be the guy who decided to say “Instead of that leader that we clearly could benefit from, I’m going to be the party’s 3rd striker, because I like rogues.”</p><p></p><p>This is totally an avoidable problem. Any of the ways below will help your group to liberate your players from the tyranny of feeling like you just broke the computer’s keyboard for playing what you want to play instead of what the party needs. </p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><strong><u>Consumable Items</u></strong></span></p><p>Healing potions in 4e kind of suck. “Spend a surge to heal a fixed value” is only a good idea for a few corner cases. This is probably deliberate: they’re not meant to overshadow or replace a party Leader. A party with a cleric and a brace of healing potions should be turning to the cleric more often than not.</p><p></p><p>Of course, a party without a cleric <em>can</em> have healing potions that are equal to what a cleric can do. Simply have a healing potion heal a healing surge plus 1d6. Or, depending on the type of potion, you can have it duplicate some other class’s leader ability – a healing surge plus a slide, for instance. Like so:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><strong>Potion of Life</strong></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Use</em>: Minor action</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Target</em>: Yourself or an ally adjacent to you.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Effect</em>: The target can spend a healing surge, and gains 1d6 additional temporary HP. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p><p></p><p>But let us not stop there. We can have consumable items that duplicate ANY of the role mechanics. </p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><strong>Karach Cocktail</strong></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Use</em>: Minor action</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Target</em>: One weapon wielded by yourself or an ally adjacent to you.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Effect</em>: Roll 1d6. 1 is Fire, 2 is Cold, 3 is Electricity, 4 is Acid, 5 is Poison, and 6 is Psychic. Your next hit with that weapon creates a Blast 2 centered on the target. Make an attack against each creature in the blast. Those who are hit are dealt 1d6 damage of the rolled type.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><strong>Bumblebee Blade</strong></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Use</em>: Minor action</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Target</em>: One weapon wielded by yourself or an ally adjacent to you.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Effect</em>: The next attack with the target weapon, whether it hits or misses, releases a small buzzing insect that harasses the target. This imposes a -2 penalty on the attack rolls of the target, until the end of that target’s . If the target makes an attack that doesn’t include the insect, the bug stings them for 1d6 damage.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><strong>Acid Reservoir </strong></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Use</em>: Minor action</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Target</em>: One weapon wielded by yourself or an ally adjacent to you.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Effect</em>: The next hit with the weapon deals an additional 2d6 acid damage. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="http://preview.turbosquid.com/Preview/Content_2010_12_03__09_03_06/medpack_promo07.bmp9dbd4a84-924b-4eef-a7eb-7aa62cdfe060Larger.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p> <p style="text-align: center"><em><span style="font-size: 9px">Who needs a doctor when I've got this bad boy?</span></em></p><p></p><p>…those are only examples. No doubt you can think of a dozen different directions to take this in already. The thrust of the idea is that we have items that replace the roles. These items can be purchased, or can be found in treasure hoards such that they are generally always available to any PC with a minor action who wants to use one. It lets anyone serve as a healer, striker, controller, or defender, for that action. </p><p></p><p>The down side to using these is that the DM would have to make sure to sprinkle these items in treasure hoards and make them available at shops, and that changes the dynamic of play a bit. A DM who is used to fulfilling wishlists might not care too much about plunking down a handful of consumable items, and a DM who has hedge wizards, apothecaries, or potion brewers might not have a problem with this kind of minor magic shop, but these are pretty specific requirements. </p><p></p><p>A more subtle issue with presenting them as consumable items is the loss aversion inherent in any consumable resource. By definition, a consumable item is something you can’t get back once it’s used, which makes people reluctant to use it all up. You’ll probably see healing dropped a lot less often than a typical leader would drop healing, and you might not see the other items used much at all (“we’ll save it for when we REALLY need it!”). </p><p></p><p>This can be counter-acted, to a degree, by making the items more permanent, more like magic armor or a magic weapon. But then they compete with other armor and weapon powers, and also can be swapped out for other gear. </p><p></p><p>So that’s the trade-off you’ll be making with roles-as-items: flexibility and customizability, but less reliability and perhaps slightly more DM burden. </p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><strong><u>Battlefield Achievements</u></strong></span></p><p>Rather than give your players items that duplicate the effects of a role, you can code the role mechanics into elements on the battlefield that players and monsters can interact with or achieve. You could make these particular squares or terrain elements, or triggered events that happen when the player or character performs a particular action. For instance:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><strong>The Glory of War!</strong></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Trigger</em>: When two members of the enemy party drops to 0 hp (for this purpose, minions count as ¼, Elites count as 2, and Solos count as 2 when they become bloodied, and 2 when they are reduced to 0 hp).</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Target</em>: One member of the triggering character’s party.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Effect</em>: The target can spend a healing surge. If the target was the one who activated the trigger, the target also gains 1d6 hp. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><strong>Provoking Distraction</strong></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Trigger</em>: When a party member attacks an enemy adjacent to an ally.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Target</em>: The enemy attacked</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Effect</em>: Until the end of the target’s next turn, it takes -2 penalty on attack rolls against anyone other than the triggering party member. If the target attacks someone other than the triggering party member, the triggering party member can make an opportunity attack against the target.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><strong>Flanked!</strong></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Trigger</em>: When a party member attacks an enemy that they flank.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Target</em>: The enemy attacked</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Effect</em>: The target takes an extra 2d6 damage.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><strong>Take Full Advantage</strong></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Trigger</em>: When a party member hits an enemy granting combat advantage</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Target</em>: The enemy attacked</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Effect</em>: The target is dazed until the end of their next turn. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p><p></p><p>These ideas require less DM intervention. In fact, you can farm this out to the PCs to keep track of. Since it’s purely an added effect, chances are good they’ll pay attention when it happens, leaving you to worry less about their balance and more about enemy behaviors. This also achieves solid synergy: a party that needs healing is encouraged to flank and gain combat advantage to take an enemy out so that they can spend a surge. There’s a particular strategy to their behavior that can reward advanced planning and smart play. </p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><strong><u>Your Ideas</u></strong></span></p><p>I’ve barely scratched the surface, here, I’m sure. Over the last 5 years, I bet a lot of ENWorlders have stumbled on different ways to make it so that a player wasn’t locked into a role for the life of the character. <strong>Let me know what you think of these, and what you’ve done yourself, down in the comments!</strong></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 7652319, member: 2067"] Got a “Someone Has To Play The Leader (or Defender or Controller or Whatever)” problem? Let the banana fix it. [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] [HR][/HR] 4e D&D’s roles system helps players build an effective party: get someone of each role, and you’re well-balanced and effective. Without someone of each role, you’ll have a noticeably harder time of it. Playing without a balanced party is like using a computer without a keyboard: totally possible (character map and a mouse!), but really, really inefficient. Because of that, in a functional way, the people who pick their characters later than others are goaded into filling out the roles that previous players didn’t fill. They may end up NOT filling those roles, but most players aren’t too excited to be the one who throws away the keyboard, so to speak. Rather than go with their first choice, if someone already has that role, they’ll go with their second or third. If you were to play a game of 4e D&D end-to-end, levels 1-30, leveling up about once a month, it would take about two and a half years. That’s a long time to be stuck playing a character that you felt was your second or third choice, something that you felt pressured to take because you didn’t want to be the guy who decided to say “Instead of that leader that we clearly could benefit from, I’m going to be the party’s 3rd striker, because I like rogues.” This is totally an avoidable problem. Any of the ways below will help your group to liberate your players from the tyranny of feeling like you just broke the computer’s keyboard for playing what you want to play instead of what the party needs. [SIZE=3][B][U]Consumable Items[/U][/B][/SIZE][B][U][/u][/B][U][/U] Healing potions in 4e kind of suck. “Spend a surge to heal a fixed value” is only a good idea for a few corner cases. This is probably deliberate: they’re not meant to overshadow or replace a party Leader. A party with a cleric and a brace of healing potions should be turning to the cleric more often than not. Of course, a party without a cleric [I]can[/I] have healing potions that are equal to what a cleric can do. Simply have a healing potion heal a healing surge plus 1d6. Or, depending on the type of potion, you can have it duplicate some other class’s leader ability – a healing surge plus a slide, for instance. Like so: [INDENT] [B]Potion of Life[/B] [I]Use[/I]: Minor action [I]Target[/I]: Yourself or an ally adjacent to you. [I]Effect[/I]: The target can spend a healing surge, and gains 1d6 additional temporary HP. [/INDENT] But let us not stop there. We can have consumable items that duplicate ANY of the role mechanics. [INDENT] [B]Karach Cocktail[/B] [I]Use[/I]: Minor action [I]Target[/I]: One weapon wielded by yourself or an ally adjacent to you. [I]Effect[/I]: Roll 1d6. 1 is Fire, 2 is Cold, 3 is Electricity, 4 is Acid, 5 is Poison, and 6 is Psychic. Your next hit with that weapon creates a Blast 2 centered on the target. Make an attack against each creature in the blast. Those who are hit are dealt 1d6 damage of the rolled type. [/INDENT] [INDENT] [B]Bumblebee Blade[/B] [I]Use[/I]: Minor action [I]Target[/I]: One weapon wielded by yourself or an ally adjacent to you. [I]Effect[/I]: The next attack with the target weapon, whether it hits or misses, releases a small buzzing insect that harasses the target. This imposes a -2 penalty on the attack rolls of the target, until the end of that target’s . If the target makes an attack that doesn’t include the insect, the bug stings them for 1d6 damage. [/INDENT] [INDENT] [B]Acid Reservoir [/B] [I]Use[/I]: Minor action [I]Target[/I]: One weapon wielded by yourself or an ally adjacent to you. [I]Effect[/I]: The next hit with the weapon deals an additional 2d6 acid damage. [/INDENT] [CENTER][IMG]http://preview.turbosquid.com/Preview/Content_2010_12_03__09_03_06/medpack_promo07.bmp9dbd4a84-924b-4eef-a7eb-7aa62cdfe060Larger.jpg[/IMG] [I][SIZE=1]Who needs a doctor when I've got this bad boy?[/SIZE][/I][/CENTER] …those are only examples. No doubt you can think of a dozen different directions to take this in already. The thrust of the idea is that we have items that replace the roles. These items can be purchased, or can be found in treasure hoards such that they are generally always available to any PC with a minor action who wants to use one. It lets anyone serve as a healer, striker, controller, or defender, for that action. The down side to using these is that the DM would have to make sure to sprinkle these items in treasure hoards and make them available at shops, and that changes the dynamic of play a bit. A DM who is used to fulfilling wishlists might not care too much about plunking down a handful of consumable items, and a DM who has hedge wizards, apothecaries, or potion brewers might not have a problem with this kind of minor magic shop, but these are pretty specific requirements. A more subtle issue with presenting them as consumable items is the loss aversion inherent in any consumable resource. By definition, a consumable item is something you can’t get back once it’s used, which makes people reluctant to use it all up. You’ll probably see healing dropped a lot less often than a typical leader would drop healing, and you might not see the other items used much at all (“we’ll save it for when we REALLY need it!”). This can be counter-acted, to a degree, by making the items more permanent, more like magic armor or a magic weapon. But then they compete with other armor and weapon powers, and also can be swapped out for other gear. So that’s the trade-off you’ll be making with roles-as-items: flexibility and customizability, but less reliability and perhaps slightly more DM burden. [SIZE=3][B][U]Battlefield Achievements[/U][/B][/SIZE][B][U][/u][/B][U][/U] Rather than give your players items that duplicate the effects of a role, you can code the role mechanics into elements on the battlefield that players and monsters can interact with or achieve. You could make these particular squares or terrain elements, or triggered events that happen when the player or character performs a particular action. For instance: [INDENT] [B]The Glory of War![/B] [I]Trigger[/I]: When two members of the enemy party drops to 0 hp (for this purpose, minions count as ¼, Elites count as 2, and Solos count as 2 when they become bloodied, and 2 when they are reduced to 0 hp). [I]Target[/I]: One member of the triggering character’s party. [I]Effect[/I]: The target can spend a healing surge. If the target was the one who activated the trigger, the target also gains 1d6 hp. [/INDENT] [INDENT] [B]Provoking Distraction[/B] [I]Trigger[/I]: When a party member attacks an enemy adjacent to an ally. [I]Target[/I]: The enemy attacked [I]Effect[/I]: Until the end of the target’s next turn, it takes -2 penalty on attack rolls against anyone other than the triggering party member. If the target attacks someone other than the triggering party member, the triggering party member can make an opportunity attack against the target. [/INDENT] [INDENT] [B]Flanked![/B] [I]Trigger[/I]: When a party member attacks an enemy that they flank. [I]Target[/I]: The enemy attacked [I]Effect[/I]: The target takes an extra 2d6 damage. [/INDENT] [INDENT] [B]Take Full Advantage[/B] [I]Trigger[/I]: When a party member hits an enemy granting combat advantage [I]Target[/I]: The enemy attacked [I]Effect[/I]: The target is dazed until the end of their next turn. [/INDENT] These ideas require less DM intervention. In fact, you can farm this out to the PCs to keep track of. Since it’s purely an added effect, chances are good they’ll pay attention when it happens, leaving you to worry less about their balance and more about enemy behaviors. This also achieves solid synergy: a party that needs healing is encouraged to flank and gain combat advantage to take an enemy out so that they can spend a surge. There’s a particular strategy to their behavior that can reward advanced planning and smart play. [SIZE=3][B][U]Your Ideas[/U][/B][/SIZE][B][U][/u][/B][U][/U] I’ve barely scratched the surface, here, I’m sure. Over the last 5 years, I bet a lot of ENWorlders have stumbled on different ways to make it so that a player wasn’t locked into a role for the life of the character. [B]Let me know what you think of these, and what you’ve done yourself, down in the comments![/B] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
Promotions/Press
2 Ways To Abandon Roles
Top