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Message: <blockquote data-quote="blalien" data-source="post: 5618616" data-attributes="member: 41954">The thing about the four roles is that they fundamentally define anything you would want to do in combat.In combat, you have two goals: reduce the enemies' HP, and not get your own HP reduced.  You can contribute in two ways: you can directly affect your party's or the enemy's HP total, or you can do something that will affect the HP total later.  In other words, a character may be offensive or defensive, and may contribute directly or indirectly.A striker is a direct offensive role.  He immediately contributes to lowering the enemy's HP total.A leader is a direct defensive role.  He boosts the party's HP total and keeps them alive longer.A controller is an indirect offensive role.  He doesn't do a lot of damage, but he makes it easier for the other party members to deal damage in the future.A defender is an indirect defensive role.  He marks enemies now and prevents his allies from taking damage later.This grid isn't strictly defined.  You could argue that a leader's buffs are indirect offensive, or a controller's debuffs are indirect defensive.  But any action a character can take in combat can fit into one part of that grid.  If you wanted to add a fifth role, it would have to either not involve combat, or you would have to redefine the other four roles.A possible fifth role is a noncombat role, like a skill monkey.  But D&D 4e is based on the assumption that most encounters are combat, so Wizards wouldn't publish a class whose primary focus is diplomacy.You could look to other games for inspiration.  For example, in Spycraft the roles are roughly socialization, information gathering, stealth, and combat.  Or in WoW there is the aggro manager, which keeps too many enemies from ganging up on the defender.  But I don't think a fifth role would add anything to D&D as its design philosophy is now.</blockquote>

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