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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5862961" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't believe this is true. 1st ed AD&D had them in the training rules. After each adventure, the GM had to give each PC a rating from 1 to 4 (lower is better), based on how well the PC fulfilled it's role. Fighters who cowered and refused to enage the enemey, MUs who went toe to toe with monsters, Clerics who refused to heal and/or buff, and Thieves who failed to rely upon stealth and subtlety are all given by Gygax as examples of POOR (ie 4) performance. Upon gaining enought XPs for a new level, the GM then had to average the ratings given, which in turn determined how many weeks the PC had to train to gain a level.There is also the discussion in the 3E PHB2 which a poster (I can't remember who, sorry) referenced a couple of times upthread.OK, but roles are one of the devices for making sure that conversation takes place. If you strip away roles, you still have to have the conversation. Roles are, in part, just a handy vocabulary with which to have it.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). The Puffin book from the early 80s, "How to Play Dungeons & Dragons" also has a cleric retainer being hired to round out the party (the PCs are a wizard, a fighter and a halfling thief).The idea that the default D&D party is a well-rounded one is hardly new to 4e!And doesn't the 4e DMG also have advice for running a game in which not all the roles are present? (I ran a game with no leader for 6 or so levels, and it was hardly rocket-science. I made no changes on my end, and the players had their PCs take more healing abilities via power selection, multi-classing (at one stage we had two multi-class clerics, a multi-class bard and a multi-class warlord). When the player of the ranger rebuilt his PC as a hybrid ranger-cleric, some of those other healing abilities were gradually retrained away.)But should these all be variants on the same class? Or should they be different classes?Right. A lot of the debate about roles straitjacketing classes really seems to be about whether the game should provide many classes, each reasonably well-defined, or few classes, which are sprawling and ill- or non-defined.I share the concerns of several others in this thread that the latter approach will produce caster dominance, because magic knows no inherent limits, whereas martial types will have someone or other's intution of "realism" or "verisimilitude" used to impose limits.I think there are other, and maybe easier, ways to make this work. As a very simplistic example, the GM doubles all monster hit points, and/or monster damage. Now the game has the feel of being a combat-useless party, but the actual mechancial adjustments required to achieve that are minimial.Similarly, a game in which everyone is tongue tied doesn't need special rules for building PCs that are useless at the social pilllar. It just requires easy guidelines for the GM to up the difficulty of social encounters while leaving everything else untouched.</blockquote>

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