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

[Tom Servo]

Here.

Very interesting. I really like what he is saying about roles here.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I want roles to take the form of advice to help players learn the game, not a straitjacket that works against the freedom and flexibility offered by RPGs.

Yay!

 

[TwinBahamut]

I'm very unhappy to see roles talked about in such a way. Roles are a fantastic idea. "Playing your class how you want to" is a pretty short road to imbalance and poorly designed classes. Roles are a mechanical idea. Treating them as "advice" is silly.

It would be nice if the polls actually addressed the main subject he is talking about. Oh well... I tend to dislike player-oriented advice in D&D (it is usually really stiff and ridiculous, and eats up precious space better devoted to other things), so I voted they should just give DM advice. Not that I use the DM advice very much...

 

[FireLance]

Here's a blast from the past: the Design and Development article on PC Roles from 31 August 2007.

It's interesting how the original design goals of solving "the problems faced by D&D characters who don't feel a clear niche" and attempting to "make sure every character class filled a crucial role in the player character group" somehow became perceived as "a straitjacket that works against the freedom and flexibility offered by RPGs".

Oh well, at least they are still aware that "Classes that are significantly weaker than the other classes - defined as easily overshadowed in all the aspects of the game - need a redesign".

Every once in a while, when you watch the clouds, you get a silver lining, eh?

 

[Stormonu]

Thank God they are dropping the roles bit from 5E. I absolutely hated that in 4E. Good riddance.

And what the heck do the poll options have to do with with anything he was talking about? Seems like just another badly worded poll to me. They shouldn't be asking whether there should be advice (of course there should!), but HOW MUCH and WHAT TYPE. Do we want something that's just like the 4E PHB1, which is primarily rules, or on the other extreme, do you want something akin to the 4E Player Strategy Guide?

 

[DogBackward]

See, roles have been around since the beginning of the game. People are complaining that they're "removing roles", but that's not possible. What they're doing is not making them so tied in to the class. Even in 4e, you could play a Fighter that was closer to a Striker, with high Strength and ignoring Wisdom and marking special abilities. There's no difference in the way they'll do it now, there just won't be any abilities that force you into a role. That's the whole point; they'll explain what the roles are, and how to make a character that can be a "Defender" or a "Striker"... but it sounds to me like they're going to make it easier for anybody to take on those roles, instead of requiring you to play a certain class and a certain playstyle in order to do it.

You can't remove roles, because people will always fall into those niches. Even back in 3.5, we had people looking at everybody else's characters, making sure we had a "tanky guy" and a "healer" and a "kill-things-really-fast type". I see no problem with broadening the ways to do this while keeping things open for people that might not want to conform so closely. I mean, we all remember the guy that kept playing Bards that didn't do much of any one thing, but helped a little in every area. What's so wrong with that?

 

[Tom Servo]

I'm very unhappy to see roles talked about in such a way. Roles are a fantastic idea. "Playing your class how you want to" is a pretty short road to imbalance and poorly designed classes. Roles are a mechanical idea. Treating them as "advice" is silly.

I definitely wouldn't call it silly, I believe most editions treated roles in such a way. I think (hope) the 5e designers are trying to focus on what is special about table-top RPG's (in character play, creativity, story-telling, etc).

And I must say, I love balance as much as the next guy (I'm even a bit of a stickler about it in my groups), but if I have to make a choice between balanced classes and playing a class how I want to...I'll take the latter.

 

[Shemeska]

Originally Posted by Mr. Mearls
I want roles to take the form of advice to help players learn the game, not a straitjacket that works against the freedom and flexibility offered by RPGs.

Thank God.

 

[Dornam]

...attempting to "make sure every character class filled a crucial role in the player character group"...

The problem was that the Roles were tailored for combat only. That was limiting for an RPG and needlessy so.

Besides the Roles were rather cheesily named ("Striker", I beg your pardon).

 

[Dice4Hire]

I have no problem with the combat roles in 4E. I love them, in fact.

However, they stopped before making non-combat roles.

We need a couple sets of roles

The infinite combinations would be cool