L&L: These are not the rules you're looking for

[Schmoe]

Well, mechanically they could always treat roles as more explicit and separate, instead of less so and embedded. Make "role" an actual mechanical widget, just like race, class, feats, etc. Then simply include option in that list that amount to, "no thanks, I'll make my own". For whatever feats, powers, spells, etc. that exists outside of that framework, but should be informed by it, use keywords.

Yeah, this is more along the lines of what I was thinking. A section that describes common roles in an adventuring party, such as scout, controller, front-man, assassin, etc. will help give people, especially new people, an idea of the possibilities in the game. Then each class description could talk about how a class can be used to fill certain roles and the tradeoffs that need to be made in order for a class to function in that particular role.

In a purely for-demonstration-only example, let's pick the Fighter. The roles description could say:

A fighter has the tools to be able to succeed in multiple combat roles. He can be extremely effective as a combat neutralizer. To do this he will want to look to take feats such as Improved Trip, Improved Bull Rush, etc. Strength is important for a fighter to be effective as a combat neutralizer, as it makes his combat maneuvers more effect. A combat neutralizer role combines well with any other combat role.

<goes on to talk about more combat roles>

In practice a fighter can expect to be extremely proficient in 3 or 4 combat roles. Trying to focus on more will dilute the fighter's effectiveness.

A fighter is typically limited to being capable at only one social role. While he can dabble in many, he doesn't have the tools to really succeed in a wide range of roles. A fighter can be reasonably effective as a front-man. To do this he will want to take at least one or two feats such as Negotiator and spend a lot of skill points in Diplomacy and Sense Motive. A fighter who is a front-man will find it difficult to also fill the Combat Skirmisher role, because both roles compete for the fighter's limited skill points.

<goes on to talk about more social roles>

I don't know, it may be overly wordy and overly complex and self-evident to veteran players, but I think information like this would be very helpful to newer players who are figuring out what kind of character to make.

 

[malkav666]

Not at all.

Fair enough.

I'm not really able to compare 4e to 3E in this respect, as I don't have enough experience with 3E. Likewise for full bells-and-whistles 2nd ed AD&D.

When I compare 4e in this respect to Basic D&D and 1st ed AD&D, I would see the biggest changes of this sort are in respect to wizards, rangers and druids. Rangers and druids in AD&D are quirky enough (and arguably overpowerd enough) that the changes are tolerable - one set of oddities is replaced by another, and rangers - especially archer rangers - make for an easy class to play.

The changes to wizards are a different matter, but I'm personally from the "classic D&D wizards need to be evened out" school.

In 4e, one of the benefits of broader classes with "sub-builds" is that it opens up space for the sharing of utility powers (and in some cases attack powers as well), which reduces power bloat. 5e seems unlikely to have a 4e-style power system for non-spellcasting classes, which makes me curious about what, if at all, is at stake in this issue.

For example, if (i) the fighter class has 3 build options, and (ii) being a fighter doesn't involve any mechanical choices other than choosing one of those 3 builds, then why call it one class rather than 3?

For clerics and wizards choosing spells it probably will matter, but I worry a bit about a return to pre-4e overpowered, in part because overly broad and flexible, spell casters.

I see two themes from your post here, that I would like write about. The first is the bit about the three fighter builds. I think the example you gave is a good one for the discussion. To me, a fighter is just one who fights. Now with that statement I can make a good deal of character concepts. Now sometimes a concept or a build is good enough to develop it into its own class. For example we have barbarians, paladins, and rangers who also fight and are designed with the idea that they can do it very well (speaking from 3.x/PF frame with regards to FULL BAB progression).

The idea of paladins, and rangers, and barbarians could all be made with the fighter class thematically.In fact, my favorite paladin that I ever played didn't have a single level in the paladin class (his charisma was too low)but he still went the route of the paladin with fighter levels and it worked out just fine. But all three of those classes possess something at their core that the fighter does not as a class. Be it spell casting, animal companions, the ability to rage. Those crucial differences, the bits that cannot be picked up from say a feat, are the things that merit the design of a new class to me. I don't for example think a dexterous fighter who has chosen to focus on thrown weapons and stealth deserves to be a different class from the fighter in armor standing up front take it in the face and dishing it out in return on the dime of her blood.

The idea that I could make many builds and or flavors within the rule space of a single class is something that appeals to me greatly. The idea of making two classes out of variations seems like a greta way to waste pages as well. In essence the fighter is more than just the sum of each specific possible build you can make, it is the collection of ALL of them. When I set down as a player in a group and we are discussing group viability three things usually come up-

How will we stop the bleeding?
How will we keep the bad guys off of the ranged toons?
How are we gonna open that door?

I have found the answer to those questions will vary from group to group (sometimes the second question doesn't even need to be asked). I like that in the D&Dish games I play that I could answer any of those questions with almost any class. That means that I as the player decide the role of my character. I don't have to be shoehorned into anything by mechanical role expectations. I do think that groups of players should sit down during the toon making process and decide how certain eventualities will be handled, and the idea of roles as a concept fits very well there. I just think that the broader classes give the game variety. When you cut anything into small enough pieces it all looks the same.

The second thing I gather from your post is a theme of dislike of casters power (in the Vancian world at least). I have heard this argument before and it has some validity. Full casters can and do break the game in many ways. I tackle the issue by really only letting players in my games have wizards after I have shown them the role that I want them to have in the game world. Its tough when you get a player who has a full blown caster and instead of making their own niche they go after the niches of the other players. But I find this to be more of a player issue than a class issue. But hands down if someone wants to ruin everyone elses fun with a full caster, they can do it by the rules.

I also break the spells up into lists regardless of the source. The lists I keep are high arcana, elder arcana, and banned. These lists started in my groups towards the end of AD&D2e. And the players made them not me. The players put the spells on the lists. And we basically handle them like this: A caster may only cast one spell from the high arcana list in a single encounter for any reason(And they may not cast a second if the effects of a previously cast spell from this list are still active). A caster may only ever have one spell on the elder arcana list memorized at a time, this spell may not be cast during combat, and this spell cannot be dropped voluntarily, if memorized, it must be cast. and a banned spell is simply banned.

I mention these house rules we use because I think that WOTC could really improve the vancian system by leaving it largely open but perhaps adding a similar keyword system to it. It would make it very easy for a DM to say we are in a low magic world mages don't get the high arcana-ish spells (I have done this in the past and my players had a great time). I am not certain what type of keywords would be appropriate for a core adjustment to the game though, I just know what works for me and mine, and it took us years to make our lists (the lists are player maintained in my group, so for a spell to get on them they had to be mentioned by one of the players and discussed by all of them to actually get on the list. I didn't just fill them as the DM, although I did offer a list of spells that I wanted on it, and let the group decide).I also think that organized play could do with a banned list for sure (kind of like MTG) to keep silly combos out of the organized play sessions.

love,

malkav

 

[Balesir]

Well, mechanically they could always treat roles as more explicit and separate, instead of less so and embedded. Make "role" an actual mechanical widget, just like race, class, feats, etc. Then simply include option in that list that amount to, "no thanks, I'll make my own". For whatever feats, powers, spells, etc. that exists outside of that framework, but should be informed by it, use keywords.

Which is very cool and all, but begs the question "what is "class" for? I still haven't seen this really answered outside of roles and vague generalities.

Another nice thing about this is that you can have roles that not everyone will enjoy, perhaps some that don't even overlap well. I don't care for games where one guy can be the "face guy". Others don't like "defenders". Someone else will want a guy with no particularly great combat abiltiies whatsoever.

I think a system of "roles" that has half a dozen "combat" roles and then one role each for "face guy" and "scout" is a lazy kludge that should be aborted before publication.

In a "perfect" world (for me) I would like to see a D&D with 4-5 combat roles, 4-5 social roles and 4-5 exploration roles. Every character gets one of each. Maybe they come from class, theme and background, or maybe they are selected for themselves and class and theme have other, separate functions (but those functions had better be well defined, dammit). D&D was always a class-based team game where the whole is supposed to be more than the sum of the player characters. Let's see that laid out clearly in a coherent design for combat, social encounters and exploration as a base starting point.

As for roles, I'm not sorry to see them getting downplayed - I want to be able to take a class and shoehorn it into a different role if that's what suits the character I have in mind. My usual example is the "heavy Ranger", a sword-and-board guy in heavy armour who in most respects is a tank but can take the armour off and track/scout if he has to.

Er, isn't that just a fighter with tracking? What's in a word ("Ranger")?

 

[Balesir]

Frankly, I think this is one of the few times I've ever seen Mearls so on point. A lot of people don't use whatever the XP/CR system is (link); "no XP" is hovering a little below 50%). If it's being widely ignored, and even more widely altered, why not treat it as optional and make it simple and easy to modify? That's already the way it's being treated in practice.

Wasn't that talking about using XP to determine when characters level up, rather than talking about XP budgets for encounters? I have been GMing since the late '70s and I still find XP budgets and the like handy guides for encounter planning.

Oh, and someone said "let's do away with monster roles as well" - yeah, why not? Gods forfend we should have any kind of useful shorthand to help build interesting encounters or anything. Sheesh.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Which is very cool and all, but begs the question "what is "class" for? I still

In a "perfect" world (for me) I would like to see a D&D with 4-5 combat roles, 4-5 social roles and 4-5 exploration roles. Every character gets one of each. Maybe they come from class, theme and background, or maybe they are selected for themselves and class and theme have other, separate functions (but those functions had better be well defined, dammit). D&D was always a class-based team game where the whole is supposed to be more than the sum of the player characters. Let's see that laid out clearly in a coherent design for combat, social encounters and exploration as a base starting point.

Er, isn't that just a fighter with tracking? What's in a word ("Ranger")?

I dont hold your preferences against you. I can see why some styles of play and some people would prefer this. But this is the opposite of what i want.

 

[Henry]

Are you kidding? Marking is fun! Half the enjoyment I get in combat with my Warden is when I get to abuse the marking rules in order to protect allies, hurt foes, and control the situation. They are a blast to use in play.

True, not everyone wants to play a barbarian or ranger to hit as hard as one, for all the baggage that those classes imply. (And one could with DM permission mod a Ranger to just be "Urban Archer", but it's an extra step that you have to do outside of the rules that some people would rather not have.) Also, the whole "A fighter can do just as much damage as a Striker" thing that I've seen some others state just isn't true -- an OPTIMIZED fighter could do as much damage as an un-optimized ranger, but an optimized one is still going to show him up. In 4E role design, this is a good thing, and works as intended -- but a LOT of folks don't like the design feature. The slayer really should have come along in 2008, and the community would not have had as much rancor on the topic. Suddenly, a fighter wasn't the premier "heavy hitter" any more.

Also, it is kinda nice to actually have rules to make the Fighter good at what it was supposed to have been good at in every previous edition. The idea that the Fighter was supposed to be a good tank has been around forever. It's just that is was miserably bad at it before.

I actually disagree with that, IF you play with 1E AD&D with the combat rules as they were written in the DMG.... which very few people ever did back in the day, myself included. In 1E combat, EVERYONE was "sticky", not just defenders. If you wanted to engage someone, you either charged them, in which case the longer reach weapon struck first (gave a lot of advantage to those pikes and two-handed swords), or you spent your entire turn engaging them in melee; you couldn't start attacking until next round. To move away from someone you were engaged in melee from, they got a free attack on your backside. I don't even believe there was a "fighting withdrawal" (which came with Basic D&D in 1981). It was just that fighters were better built to hurt their melee opponents, and the "defender stickiness or marking" was built into the basic rules.

Fighters did do their job, but the feature that helped them was removed as D&D evolved in its definition of what were "fun" combat rules.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Which is very cool and all, but begs the question "what is "class" for? I still haven't seen this really answered outside of roles and vague generalities.

I think a system of "roles" that has half a dozen "combat" roles and then one role each for "face guy" and "scout" is a lazy kludge that should be aborted before publication.

In such a system, "class" would be the main glue that holds everything together. It might require very little space to explain for each class. The difference in a fighter, paladin, and cleric, for example, might be some basic numbers and what lists they get to pick from.

As for the other part, please note that my fourth bullet point was meant to indicate that the list was in no way complete or imply one pick per character. I don't like "face" roles, either. Ideally, you wouldn't have 4-5 of combat, exploration, and interaction roles in such a system. You'd have at least twice that many--some of them likely mutually exclusive with each other, or at least not very compatible. This is so that after you got done throwing out the ones that annoyed you, you'd still have 4-5 roles left in each pillar.

 

[howandwhy99]

Classes are roles (fantasy social roles) and archetypes (fantasy ones in the D&D genre).

They are also scopes for the players playing the game. Pick a Magic-User and you'll be exploring magic and getting XP for mastering elements of it. Does this mean the character shouldn't don armor and hack away with a sword? No, but they are not as good at being a Fighting-Man unless they have it as another class. (In fact, M-Us score the least combat rating of the core four).

Roles are not the manner in which one excels in combat. Classes are the defined scope of the game the character is built to excel in. As all of the classes overlap non-combat class abilities can be used to succeed in combat and other non-class activities. As combat is pretty central I can understand how classes could be construed as combat roles though.

[sblock]

[/sblock]"You Wish" is pretty much confrontation (combat) and resources (treasure) in D&D. Everyone is doing one to get the other, but ends and means are not necessarily the same for each class. This means we ally and share or we go our own way. Going it alone is far more difficult as the world doesn't get easier just for 1 character, so you're still going to need to hire help if nothing else.

Also, Sub-classes could be brought back to highlight what primary class role each focuses on in general. Then we can have the standard Cleric with a second highest fighting ability, yet have their scope be substantially different than a holy warrior's Paladin scope. Sub-classes overlap their core classes, sometimes borrowing from other classes, sometimes creating their own niche, frequently not using all of the core class they are under. Think of them as specialized custom classes unique to a setting, though the core 3-4 are already setting defining.

 

[ExploderWizard]

From memory, the Moldvay Basic book has an example party in which a cleric retainer has been hired to round out the party (Sister Rebecca, to complement the Fighter, the Elf, the Dwarf and the Thief).

Nope.

[page B59]

THE SITUATION: This party includes four 2nd level characters and a 1st level dwarf. Morgan Ironwolf,a female fighter (the caller);Silverleaf,an elf;Fredrik,a dwarf; Sister Rebecca,a cleric; and Black Dougal, a thief.

[end quote]

No mention is made of how anyone joined this party.

 

[MoxieFu]

Mike said in the original article:

"I like creating a character based on an image in my head, not a to-do list."

The role of the character is what the player makes of the class. The rules are there to serve the game and not vice-versa. If a rule gets in the way of the game, then the rule goes.

I am okay with roles as a guideline, but I don't want Roles forced on me. That capitalization is there for a reason. People have been claiming that roles have always been part of of the game and I don't dispute that. But I will disagree that "Roles" have always been part of the game.

A character's role can shift during the course of an adventure as can the role of the entire party. They may start out trying to gather information as stealthily as possible and then shift into a mode where they need to deliver the strongest first strike they possibly can on an enemy that they have discovered. They may then need to fall into a defensive posture and try to leave the area. Changing from one "role" to another requires flexibility of the party and the characters within the party.

This is a case where circumstance is dictating the role of a character and not the class design. Flexibility in the class design will allow the character to extend beyond the Role that was initially intended.