D&D 5E Living Dice Article: "Is It Really D&D Next?"

[I'm A Banana]

I think we have different relationships to the 4e "rulespeak". For me, that's what helps make clear how the ability will likely play.

Sure. I think people have different points at which jargon becomes more obfuscating than enlightening. I can't be knackered to tell subtle the differences between a shift, a teleport, a slide, and a scoot, and a +1 modifier looks much the same to me as a +3 modifier, and an attack vs. Reflex is much the same as an attack vs. Fortitude. The differences seem largely superficial to me, and without meaningful distinction being obvious, the subtle distinctions get lost in the blah blah blah.

5e so far has been a lot better. It's a lot easier for me to see the significant advantages of kobolds with the 5e notes in the adventure than it was to tease out how exactly Shifty helped at all, or what I should do with it in play. I don't need to be rules-lawyery to run 5e, and it's felt VERY good.

 

[jadrax]

and a scoot,

Please tell me you made that one up.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yeah, scoots aren't part of the official rules.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I wouldn't say roles have been abandoned so much as loosened-- a Slayer Fighter is a Striker, while a Guardian Fighter is a Defender. The Cleric of Pelor is a Leader, while the Cleric of Moradin is a Leader/Defender. (Almost a Paladin.) The Rogue is a Striker and the Wizard is a Controller.

So it isn't that roles are no longer prevalent, but that the relationship between class and role has changed so that a given class can choose between different roles or straddle two roles with less complication and potential dilution than 4e Hybrid.

I think this might be a little off. It seems to me that the themes don't really define your role, so much as define how you pull it off. (I think Mearls or someone said that a class defines WHAT you do and a theme HOW you do it.)

The "slayer" theme, for example, does little (that we know of, so far) to aid the type of "focused fire" that strikers specialize in. A rogue or archer-ranger, for example, would seem to have little use for this theme. (When a rogue has more than one enemy in melee range and/or is missing his target, he's not having a very good day.) However, a defender - who is supposed to be surrounded by enemies and may care about consistent damage more than high damage - would find this theme a good way to do his job while also dishing out some extra damage. (The "guardian" theme would help him "defend" in a more direct way.) Meanwhile, the "lurker" theme is pretty much useless for a fighter, and the "magic-user" theme, while it would be cool and even useful for a fighter, wouldn't really do much to make him a controller. He would be a defender with a few controller-ish abilities.

So in other words, a fighter is always a defender and a cleric is always a leader, etc., at least in my interpretation; the themes and possibly backgrounds allow you to "hybridize" to a degree, but probably not to such a degree that they seriously alter your role. Moreover, from what we've seen, the themes with the greatest synergy for a given class play into that class's primary role.

Now, all this could well change for classes like druid and monk that are somewhat hybrid in concept.