How many roles should there be?

[enigma5915]

There should be no roles what so ever. Classes provide enough distinction on their own. Then characters add their background and character concept. The entire use of roles in 4E was for combat anyways...which added to the concept of 4th being only about combat. Let players role play their chacters and choose their own path...that is suposed to be the point, isnt it?....or have I been doing this wrong for 30 years... just say no to roles.

 

[BobTheNob]

There should be no roles what so ever. Classes provide enough distinction on their own. Then characters add their background and character concept. The entire use of roles in 4E was for combat anyways...which added to the concept of 4th being only about combat. Let players role play their chacters and choose their own path...that is suposed to be the point, isnt it?....or have I been doing this wrong for 30 years... just say no to roles.

(Totally agree)

I dont think D&D is a combat game, its a pen and paper story/adventure game which combat is but an aspect of.

As soon as you start designing classes around what they do in combat (which is what happens when you start putting combat rolls on classes), combat stops be an aspect of the game and becomes the focus, hence necessitating that everyone has a role in combat. They are a self-sustaining concept that condemn D&D to being a "mini-wargame"

I just think de-emphasies combat drastically. Make it a MUCH smaller part of play time and overall adventure importance and the need to even have roles( i.e. the need for every character to be "combat feasible") becomes entirely unneccessary.

It all comes down to what sort of game you want to play. I dont want D&D to be so darn combat intensive, so even suggesting roles is wrong to me. If they are true to their word and 5e can adapt to different audiences, placing combat roles on characters is just going to make 5e into another "combat iteration" and therefore alienate those that are completely "combatted out" after 4e.

 

[Mattachine]

I think folks that didn't spend much time with 4e don't understand the roles concept.

As others have said, 4e put its mechanics out there for all to see, and it turned a lot of people off.

 

[BobTheNob]

I think folks that didn't spend much time with 4e don't understand the roles concept.

As others have said, 4e put its mechanics out there for all to see, and it turned a lot of people off.

We played 4e, ALOT. 3 years of campaigning across all 3 tiers. I understand 4e very well and get roles completely, and it is for this very reason I dont want them any more.

 

[enigma5915]

I think folks that didn't spend much time with 4e don't understand the roles concept.

As others have said, 4e put its mechanics out there for all to see, and it turned a lot of people off.

I gave 4E a try right out of the gate up to the summer of 2011. The roles that labeled the classes did in fact focus people to think of mostly combat. Of all the years I introduced new people to this hobby 4E was the most difficult. I would say IME the roles and combat always brought to the foreground was the cause. So having played the game plenty before these role labels and since using them, I would have to say…they suck, IMHO. 4E had some good idea, but this was not one of them.

 

[Mattachine]

Exactly, BobtheNob and enigma5915.

You two belong to the "turned a lot of people off camp", rather than the "don't understand" camp, as noted in my brief post.

 

[Aeolius]

4e put its mechanics out there for all to see, and it turned a lot of people off.

What's not to understand? I downplay combat in my games, because I find the prevalence of numbers and die rolls interferes with my "willing suspension of disbelief". I prefer role-play heavy and combat light, with an emphasis on story over stats.

Having played D&D since 1979, I am still just fine with combat being Initiative/To Hit/Damage. Roles seem contrary to my preferred mode of play, as they add an unnecessary barrier between what I want to do and what I am expected to do.

Yes, I realize that D&D began as a wargamers' hobby. However, some of now see it as more of a coauthored work of interactive fiction. In my games, someone's skill as a carpenter is far more interesting than their role as a defender.

 

[FireLance]

I hope that, in the backlash against roles, we do not forget the problem that roles were developed to solve: anemic classes that didn't do anything well. (Now, whether or not you, personally, saw that as a problem is a separate issue, but there were a number of complaints made about classes such as the bard and the monk).

At the most basic, having a role meant that you had the mechanical backing to do at least one thing well, if you chose to do so (this latter part is often de-emphasized when roles are painted as limiting or pigeon-holing):
If you were a defender, you had a mark mechanic. (Mind you, since some people don't like mark mechanics, this further taints the concept of roles for them.)
If you were a leader, you had a healing mechanic. (And if they also disliked 4e-style healing, it's possible that some of the dislike spread to the concept of roles, too.)
If you were a striker, you had some extra damage mechanic.
If you were a controller, you (usually) had an at-will attack that affected multiple targets.

The other point about roles that tends to be de-emphasized is that they don't actually constrain the characters very much, since every class has powers that blur the roles, and multiclassing makes individual characters even more flexible. In addition, the lack of a mechanical advantage shouldn't prevent you from doing things, any more than being untrained in Stealth prevents you from hiding, or being untrained at Perception means you can't notice things. If you're not a striker, you can still deal out damage. If you aren't a defender, you can still get between an enemy and a badly wounded ally, and be no worse off than any character in any edition who doesn't have a mechanic to make the enemy want to attack you instead of your ally.

That said, roles can create a psychological constraint on player behavior. In much the same way that having a list of powers focuses attention on the list and can discourage some people from attempting things outside of it, assigning roles to classes and characters can focus attention on the role, and discourage some players from attempting actions that seem to fall outside the role.

IMO, explicit roles aren't going to be in 5e. However, I'm sure that they will be there in the background, helping the designers to ensure that there will be no anemic classes in 5e. Which is perfectly fine, in my book.

 

[Grazzt]

Zero and Infinite.


Zero mechanically defined roles. Infinite roles created by the Imagination.

Completely agree

 

[Andor]

Roles, in the 4e sense, as explict determinants of character capability... honestly I'm not sure how much of my distaste for them comes from the linking to 4e, which I found to be very gamist and abstract system. So much so that I had trouble understanding it. What on earth happens when a Fighter uses 'Come and get it'? I have no idea. And the usually answer was "It's a game. Roll with it."

Fine, but it stopped being an RPG to me and seemed like a miniature game or tactical game like FFT or Disgaea.

I fall pretty far along the 'Simulationist' spectrum of gamers. It should be no surprise that I love 3e. It's by far the most simulationist edition of D&D. Leafing through any book of 3e material I could say "Yes. I see how that works in the world. What it looks like, what it implies." And it would spin a thousand possibilities into my head. Spies trained as Binders, nomadic cultures that use Totemist powers to adapt to the most inhospitable of fringe climates, the uses of an immovable rod.

So the term 'Role' to me may be inextricably tainted by it's association with a design aesthetic I find alien.

I do, absolutely, see the use of Roles as a valuable perspective for judging the game, from the back-end, under-the-hood world of the game designer. But it's just one of many valuable tools and perspectives, and it only measures along one aspect of power, and then only for a single and limited playstyle.

Personally I like functions better, as other have mentioned in this thread.

I've had more than one discussion with game designers, about how rules are an inescapable aspect of the worlds they portray. You can try to pretend that Hit Points are abstract but the fact remains that Old Knight MacDougal can jump off a 30' cliff without fear and his Squire Percy will die if he tries to follow. And both MacDougal and Percy will know it.

Roles are a usefull concept. Power sources are a useful concept. Spell schools is a potentially useful concept. The arcane/divine split is a potentially useful concept.

None of these things should be explicit however, unless they are helping to describe the world. Unless an old man on the street might tell you "Nay. Dinnae go ta Magus Bertrand, he be one o' them Nercomancers. A fell and unwholesome lot they be, even if he does stay within the law. Go ta Magus Wainwright. He's a Abjiggimawhatsit. You know, one o' them as works with protections and the like."

If a man in the know would stare at you blankly when asked about it, it should not be an explicitly stated part of a classes design.