D&D 4E 4E Roles

[Hussar]

This is due to a heavy mmorpg influence. Now this will lead to annoying situaitons where gm's advert their games as needing "a divine controller, a divine defencer, a defender, etc etc' *roll eyes*

And this is different from now when DM's advertise that they need a healer or a tank? I've certainly seen that for VTT games.

 

[glass]

Also, use stunning fist to good effect; a good tactic is to use stunning fist successfully, then follow up with flurriers in the following rounds on the same stunned target.

You can't do that. Stunning fist only lasts one round.


glass.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In a way, this part has kind of gone back towards AD&D, and I like this: The classes have more sharply defined archetypes associated with them, even if they multiclass or have other abilities with feats. I do miss using one or two descriptors to define most of your character's thrust in the direction you intend him or her to go.

See Henry, I hope you're right on this one, but I very much fear the new roles and associated baggage will cause a situation more severe than in AD&D, as I strongly suspect Guardians, for example, will have a lot of "HIT ME!" abilities combined with "Take less damage abilities" (neither of which was present in AD&D), and this will cause a larger disparity with classes like Cleric/Warlord when it comes to actually fighting people.

I should also note than in 1E/2E, the vast majority of characters I saw were multiclass (the only exceptions really being Wizards and Bards, neither of whom exists in 4E, certainly not with a similar play-style, for better or worse). Maybe that was exceptional, but it's what I saw.

Of course, 3E messed up multiclassing so bad that we ended up using the Gestalt rules, so hopefully 4E's multiclassing rules will be a little better. I mean, I guess one thing is true - virtually all players who chose multiclass characters in 1E/2E had a conception of the basic "role" of the character. I just never came across anyone whose conception was "tank" or "healer".

 

[doomwh]

warlord as good as a cleric?

I would just like to be able to put together a party without a cleric, and not be hamstrung by it. I'd like to have a warlord instead and still be able to adventure without 10 cure light wound potions. I guess what I'm saying is I'd like to play without magical healing being so important. I'm not sure if they can pull this off with changing the entire balance of the game but we have players who don't care for playing clerics. I'm hoping second wind and other abilities helps with this, but it wasn't enough in our Star Wars Saga campaign where we had 3 Jedi pc's and we would have to take a lot of down time to recover hit points and it didn't help the flow of the campaign.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

sry posted in wrong thread

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I say this because in my group (3 out of 6) certain folk IRL have the confidence and conversational skill to almost always 'float to the surface' and become leader/spokesperson regardless of class or race.

Sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, I just wanted people to share thier thoughts with me.

You're misunderstanding what they mean by "leaders" and "roles."

"Roles" just define what you do IN COMBAT. In this context, "leader" is a technical term for a class that heals and buffs allies, like a cleric in 3e. So when the designers say that the Cleric and Warlord are "leaders," they mean that those classes have lots of buffing and healing abilities. Fighters are "defenders" because they have a lot of hit points and armor, along with special abilities that encourage enemies to attack them rather than their squishier friends.

They've also said that they're moving more of the conversation/diplomacy mechanics to feats and skills that are available to everyone, so you'll finally be able to make a fighter character who's persuasive and diplomatic without a bunch of cross-classing or rippling feat choices (since fighters' effectiveness won't be dependent on feat selection anymore). Which would probably be welcomed by those players of yours who always end up "leading" the party socially!

 

[Glyfair]

I want to go on record saying clerics or fighters, for example, could work well as defenders or leaders depending on your PC's stat build and other party members choices.

While I don't think fighter was the example, there was a recent comment that a certain class was a certain role, but wouldn't do bad at filling in another role (might have been one of the podcasts). So, it's not hard and fast.

They are trying to give every class an obvious role though. They want to avoid the classes with no clear role that invariably excel at nothing (bard & monk come to mind).

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

While I don't think fighter was the example, there was a recent comment that a certain class was a certain role, but wouldn't do bad at filling in another role (might have been one of the podcasts). So, it's not hard and fast.

It was the Warlock, it's a striker that can manage a good bit of control work.

 

[M.L. Martin]

See Henry, I hope you're right on this one, but I very much fear the new roles and associated baggage will cause a situation more severe than in AD&D, as I strongly suspect Guardians, for example, will have a lot of "HIT ME!" abilities combined with "Take less damage abilities" (neither of which was present in AD&D), and this will cause a larger disparity with classes like Cleric/Warlord when it comes to actually fighting people.

From what we heard from Mearls at D&D Game Day, this won't be the case. The Fighter, specifically, is not a damage sponge--they tried that approach but found it didn't play well--but rather tends to tie up attackers by making it dangerous to ignore the Fighter.

 

[hamishspence]

Races and classes do say something like that

Specifically, they said: Fighters are sticky. As in, getting around them is difficult, getting loose from a fighter who is pounding you is dangerous.

That would help define the role. WaM also said some of the knight powers go to the paladin and the fighter, and the knight was also built around defending.