CH: Have you done any work towards new roles?
MM: Not yet. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s something we ever try. I know there was some talk of trying to make hybrid character classes that span two roles, but in playtests and looking at it, it was just a switch that let you go “OK, now you’re a controller”, flip a switch, and now you’re a striker. At that point, we don’t want to be in a position where the class is not as good in either role, or they’re straddling two roles and they’re just as good with them as everyone else. The trickiest thing is to say if there’s a middle ground there, and if that can ever work. At some level you’re just going to be worse than someone else filling those two roles. You don’t want to be a controller that’s sometimes a crappy striker.
Then you go further than that point: a lot of people have noticed that you have your role, and you have a dash of a second role. Swordmage defender with a dash of controller. That may be enough already. We don’t really need to make multi-role characters. New roles are something I’ve never considered seriously, but I don’t know if in this structure it would be the same as making a new monster role. We don’t see the need yet. I could see in the future someone coming up with a role that’s so iconic that we can’t make an existing role work for it.
