D&D General D&D is a Team Sport. What are the positions?

[Tony Vargas]

On a serious note

1. Frontline
2. Striker
3. Blaster
4. Healer
5. Support/Leader
6. Control

Splitting the support and controller roles in half? Interesting. I understand breaking up controller, AE blasting and condition-infliction being enjoyable in quite distinct ways, and easily split out. Blasting is part of 'battlefield control,' tho, like zones, walls, summons, etc... and single-target condition imposition gets a little narrow, while AE also gets back into battlefield control. Still, it could be worked out, and controller-as-cypher-for-grandfather-in-wizard-spells was too broad, anyway.
Healer, tho, it's a very limited role that is as uninspired, lacking in dynamism or agency, and generally as boring as it is vital. Combining it with other support functions (and 'leader' is much more euphamism for support than it is literal), makes it more engaging, and does't clash.

1. Investigator
2. Explorer
3. Utility
4. Negotiator

You've got two social and two exploration roles there?

Do you figure that each of those pillars just has fewer ways of approaching it than combat?

 

[Lanefan]

The game was never meant to be competitive DM vs players. The 1e DMG and Dragon magazine were full of warnings to avoid that style of play. The players weren’t meant to compete with the DM any more than players are meant to compete against the referee in football. It’s why the DM was called referee in the beginning.

The players are, however, IMO supposed to compete against the game itself; and as the DM represents a large part of said game it's only natural that the players end up sometimes competing against the DM.

It's one of the real tricks involved in DMing - to be able to decently represent one side of that competition and at the same time be a fair referee.

 

[Hriston]

So, if we use the analogy of D&D combat as a team sport, what do you think are the key positions?

I'm not well versed in team sports, so at the risk of going a little off topic I think I'll skip the analogy and talk about this in terms of the "classic" combat arms and other combat support and combat service support functions.

Naturally there is some overlap among characters and individual characters can fill more than one position, but I think the functions typically performed within a D&D party are as follows:

Infantry - This breaks down into heavy and light infantry with the fighter being the exemplar class in both areas.

Heavy infantry - This is the party's frontal assault and defensive force. It relies on a focus on melee weapons, so typical classes in this role are primarily Strength-based barbarians, fighters, paladins, and rangers.​

Light infantry - Other infantry functions, such as scouting, skirmishing, and providing supporting missile fire, fall to light infantry. Dexterity-based fighters and rangers serve well in this role. Special forces, below, could be considered a sub-category.​

​

Special forces - This covers a variety of specialized functions including scouting, information gathering, acquisition of high value targets/objects, and other activities requiring stealth and/or a high degree of mobility. This is the area of expertise for rogues and monks, and to some extent rangers.

Artillery - "Gunners" use ranged magic that goes beyond the range and firepower of non-magical ranged weapons employed by infantry and is the province of wizards and sorcerers, fireball and lightning bolt being the prime examples of the type of munitions being employed.

Combat engineering - Combat engineers use magic to modify the battlefield to ensure the mobility and survivability of their allies while creating obstacles for their enemies. All spellcasting classes seem to have access to spells enabling this role.

Military intelligence - This function collects and analyzes information. All spellcasters have some access to spells of this nature. Also, highly skilled characters such as rogues who engage in espionage and gathering human intelligence are performing this function.

Health services - Medical personnel are mainly spellcasters with access to healing magic, such as cure wounds and greater restoration. Spells like mass healing word mark clerics as exemplars in this area.

 

[Aldarc]

If D&D were ever to return back to 4e-style roles, I have posited before that MOBAs would probably provide a richer source of inspiration than MMOs or even D&D's classic four team. The sort of classes/roles (nomenclature here varies) one would potentially expect in a MOBA:

• Tank/Juggernaut: melee control, HP sponge, and combat initiation
• Bruiser/Fighter
• Assassin: i.e., melee striker
• Marksman: i.e., ranged striker
• Mage: artillery and/or control
• Support/Healer

Often there are MOBA characters with mixed roles: e.g., Bruiser/Support, Support/Marksman, Mage/Assassin, etc.

 

[payn]

What is a MOBA?

 

[jmartkdr2]

What is a MOBA?

Multiplayer Online Battle Arena - a genre of video game where a party of fantasy characters fights another party of fantasy characters. Quite big in the E-Sports world. League of Legends (LoL) is the big dog in the genre, though Defense of the Ancients (DotA) is pretty big as well.

Because people play for real money (and significant amounts at the world tournament levels) they've spent a lot of time figuring out how to make it work as efficiently as possible, both as players and as game designers. Way more than DnD gets. Which is why the roles are much better defined and understood.

 

[payn]

Multiplayer Online Battle Arena - a genre of video game where a party of fantasy characters fights another party of fantasy characters. Quite big in the E-Sports world. League of Legends (LoL) is the big dog in the genre, though Defense of the Ancients (DotA) is pretty big as well.

Because people play for real money (and significant amounts at the world tournament levels) they've spent a lot of time figuring out how to make it work as efficiently as possible, both as players and as game designers. Way more than DnD gets. Which is why the roles are much better defined and understood.

Thanks. Its cool that MOBA is a thing, but I hope its never a D&D thing.

 

[Scribe]

If D&D were ever to return back to 4e-style roles, I have posited before that MOBAs would probably provide a richer source of inspiration than MMOs or even D&D's classic four team. The sort of classes/roles (nomenclature here varies) one would potentially expect in a MOBA:

• Tank/Juggernaut: melee control, HP sponge, and combat initiation
• Bruiser/Fighter
• Assassin: i.e., melee striker
• Marksman: i.e., ranged striker
• Mage: artillery and/or control
• Support/Healer

Often there are MOBA characters with mixed roles: e.g., Bruiser/Support, Support/Marksman, Mage/Assassin, etc.

You almost have to go to MOBA style hybrids if you are going to implement and enforce roles in a 4e style. There are only so many 'traditional' roles out there.

 

[Pedantic]

If D&D were ever to return back to 4e-style roles, I have posited before that MOBAs would probably provide a richer source of inspiration than MMOs or even D&D's classic four team. The sort of classes/roles (nomenclature here varies) one would potentially expect in a MOBA:

• Tank/Juggernaut: melee control, HP sponge, and combat initiation
• Bruiser/Fighter
• Assassin: i.e., melee striker
• Marksman: i.e., ranged striker
• Mage: artillery and/or control
• Support/Healer

Often there are MOBA characters with mixed roles: e.g., Bruiser/Support, Support/Marksman, Mage/Assassin, etc.

The struggles around balancing healing in MOBAs are actually an interesting mirror for the same problems it poses in D&D. MOBA team fights sre fast affairs that need to resolve relatively quickly, or break down into a chase state, and too much access to effective healing has a degenerate effect on the desired gameplay.

 

[Aldarc]

Thanks. Its cool that MOBA is a thing, but I hope its never a D&D thing.

Taking inspiration from MOBA roles isn't necessarily a desire to make MOBAs a D&D thing or turn D&D into a MOBA.* It's more about looking at how MOBAs understand their characters in terms of the "class/role" function that they are supposed to perform.** I think that these MOBA roles are better defined and clearer than 4e's roles/positions. I also think that TTRPG roles are closer to MOBA roles than they are to MMO roles (i.e., tank, healer, damage), since MMOs are generally involve players playing against PvE AI with dungeon/raid encounter mechanics.

* I would, however, love to see some TTRPGs (though not D&D) with more MOBA-like character design. Characters generally have a basic attack, 3 or so basic abilities, a passive ability, and an ultimate. There is a fairly wide range of character-specific mechanics that create a wide variety of playstyles. So MOBAs favor a LARGE cast of playable characters/classes. Moreover, progression often includes, but not always, magic items.

** Technically there is another set of "roles" in a MOBA that are often about the character's expected role in an arena match: e.g., top lane, jungler, carry, pusher, etc. If that's all nonsense to you, don't worry. I don't think that it's applicable so that's why I left it out.

You almost have to go to MOBA style hybrids if you are going to implement and enforce roles in a 4e style. There are only so many 'traditional' roles out there.

Most definitely. We had this to an extent already with 4e roles. For example, the Paladin was a Defender Primary and Leader Secondary.