Mustrum_Ridcully said:
I like both your combat and non-combat roles.
I found the distinction Defender/Controller difficult in an environment where most people are supposed to be used ranged weapons. A Defender has now to work at range, and thus the distinction between Controller/Defender go away.
I dunno, there's definitely some "wiggle" room. Ranged Defenders are possible, but they
need to have some ability to draw fire, but I don't really want to see too many defenders automatically going for SWAT assault armor. (I get why many would, it being the best possible armor in terms of the ability to prevent penetration, but it goes against the general "action movie" ideal generally used for Modern. I suppose a cop-themed game could have it, but it's usually something either all the heroes will have access to or none will; there's not much middle ground.) Ideally, they should also probably have some capacity to ignore or minimize the practical results of certain types of effects, like say suppressive fire.
Besides, if you really want to look at how a good 4-5 man party will work, I'd look at a commando fireteam. Most of 'em work together for years, and they often have group assignments like heavy weapons specialist (probably uses a shotgun, or some form of SAW), grenadier or combat engineer (has a grenade launcher, mines, and explosives) team commander (basically provides tactical info and decides target prioritization), scout (will tend to either have some form of light rifle or instead have something that is single shot and high-powered for max distance and single-target damage) and a radioman (who will help lug stuff around for the engineer or heavy weapons guy). Given those roles, it's clear that we have some basics for each of the 4 roles... HWS takes Defender, as he's going to draw fire and his suppressive fire means that he makes things difficult for attackers to move into position to attack his teammates in the ideal case; commander takes the leader position (in the more warlord-esque style); grenadier/engineer takes up the controller role, as he has a wide array AoE abilities suitable for doing things other than keeping heads down; and the scout and radioman (sometimes the same person, sometimes not) will be most likely to be pure striker types as they aren't as focused on AoE and mostly are going to be used to maximize single target damage against personnel. In some respects, the move to ranged damage being the primary sort used in warfare actually makes being a "defender" significantly easier, as it's possible to lock down multiple enemies somewhat effectively via suppressive fire, particularly when all members of a team aid the SAW user. In a game context, the 5th man could also be a medic (leader more like the cleric) or be another one of the types already mentioned, rather than just purely a rifleman.
I don't know how powers would work in such a context, but if one knows something of military organization, there is definitely support for a 4 combat role system. However, I don't want a game where the roles are totally defined purely in combat. I favor something along the lines of a gestalt-ish system where players take one non-combat role (these will generally have a few combat applications, of course) and one combat role, but have the two not directly linked, so that out-of-combat, players can choose which out-of-combat archetype they want to be.
A simplification to be sure, but sounds like the right idea.
