Individuality and Teamwork in D&D

[exile]

Earlier today, I read this quote on Yahoo news about how this Lin guy has transformed the New York Knicks from "five fingers into a fist." I thought that was really cool-- and kind of applicable here.

 

[howandwhy99]

A team of assassins plays very differently than a team of paladins. Each is exploring territory far from the other. But both campaign options should be viable.

Having a greater variety of classes (and races, etc.) simply means more potentially different adventures.

Maybe you aren't Mission:Impossible every session?

Maybe you also take on holy quests to prove your virtue?

You know, 'cause there are both assassins AND paladins in the party.

(like that'll work long)

 

[Aenghus]

Interestingly, although I've never played it myself I'm given to understand that in the buffy rpg that a Xander character is a full and valuable member of a party who can have as much fun as the slayer or other PC's.

Perhaps something d&d can learn from that?

Cheers

AFAIK this is done by having Drama points in the system that can be used for narrative purposes, introducing or modifying plot details, getting skill bonuses, emergency healing, and lucky escapes. There are different classes in the Buffy RPG, with the combat heroes having straightforward power and less Drrama points and the normals having more Drama points, that allow them to get into hot water, as comedy or dramatic foils do, survive situations where ordinary peoople without Drama points wouldn't, and often get saved by the more conventionally heroic PCs.

My take from this is that the RPG recognises different roles for the different types of PC in an action-adventure subgenre, and gives tools to the players to keep everyone involved and relevant and facilitate melodrama.

The solutions used are very narrative and metagame, which is less of an issue in an RPG designed to facilitate games that emulate TV episodes.

 

[FireLance]

Ironically, I remember early in the life of 4e reading the point being made strongly by WotC that the design was supposed to make sure that 'whatever you chose to do with a class, it would still be good at its primary role' - which over time somehow morphed in peoples perceptions to 'your class is mechanically locked into a role'.

Now, it may or may not be that designers after the initial design didn't grok that and ended up introducing stuff which had the effect of locking people into a role. I don't know enough to judge - but it wouldn't be the first time that original design principles got undermined, and it won't be the last either!

I have said in another thread that roles seemed to be the alignment of 4e: it's as if "You can't do that, you're [role]" killed "You can't do that, you're [alignment]" and took its stuff.

Roles tell you what your character is good at. They don't prevent you from doing things that you aren't good at, 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.

Now, one possible source of unhappiness about roles is that they make the classes more inflexible: if all characters of a particular class are a particular role, then you're not playing that class to its full potential if you don't want to take on that role, e.g. non-Defender Fighters and non-Controller Druids. IMO, the solution to that is not to ditch the concept of roles, but to make the classes more flexible, e.g. the Essentials Slayer Fighter and Leader Druid.

Fairly or not, I'm sure that there's been too much of a public backlash against roles that they will likely not be explicit in 5e. However, I'm sure that they will be there, "under the hood" so to speak, as they are far too useful a design concept to ignore.

 

[tbk409]

A nice thing about roles is they help prevent overlap in PC functions, and so prevent direct comparison. If multiple characters have the same function, for instance doing damage, then it is pretty easy to compare them. If one does much more damage than another, the weaker PC feels undervalued. It is harder to directly compare different functions, such as comparing healing to damage, or a wall spell to standing on the front line defending others. This then makes every PC feel valuable, even if one is built more effectively than another. Role act as a guideline to build a party where everyone is doing different things. It is nice to be able to determine if your Psion is going to overlap more with the wizard or the cleric in the party.

I think part of the problem of roles in 4e is that multiple classes of the same role often functioned very similarly mechanically. This can make your role feel more like your class than your class does.
Alice: "I use my minor action to heal the fighter."
Bob: "I forget Alice, are you a cleric or a warlord?"
I think by differentiating the classes more, and making the roles a little less transparent, they can remain a viable guideline.

In any case, roles should only be a guidelines. If you want a party of five thieves, it is possible in any edition (and a little more doable 4e).