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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jasin" data-source="post: 3980579" data-attributes="member: 7531">I get what you mean, I think.You're worried that the same way that now you just don't play D&D without a cleric, in 4E you just won't play D&D without a defender, a striker, a controller and a leader. Just like a clericless game, it could be done, but a real issues (such as the monster designers' assumptions about party capabilities), familiarity, and Zeitgeist just seem to combine so that you simply don't.My counterpoint is that 3E is already there. Having played Age of Worms to 17th level, I wouldn't have liked it without: a cleric, an arcanist (preferably a wizard, perhaps a sorcerer, most others need not apply), a front line guy (a druid or a cleric would work just as well as a warrior type, but that's a balance problem between druids and cleric and warrior types, not an indication of flexibility in party makeup), and a search/traps guy (this one is the most flexible, since the right party might just tough out the traps, but you still need someone to find the treasure).Defender, controller and leader seem to me to be just labels for roles that are already considered necessary by the game as a whole. Striker and search/traps guy aren't quite the same role, even if they're traditionally filled by the same type of character, but I don't think the change of emphasis is a bad one, as trapsfinding is hardly very glamorous (I would've used a three-letter word starting with F and ending with N, but WotC used up the whole stock).Having the roles stated explicitly also diminishes the potential for confusion among newbies. "We don't have a wizard? Great, I'll play another arcanist, a warlock!" seems to me a recipe for disaster in something like Age of Worms.I think that you are right to an extent, and that having the explicit roles will surely constrain the perceived campaign options a bit, but I don't think it will be really significant, so it's not something I worry about.What I do worry about WRT roles is that the designers will become too comfortable in the framework and only ever look at things from within the grid. I'm worried that rather than coming up with a class and then labeling it according to the most appropriate power source and role, the designers will see an empty place in the grid at the intersection of (say) "martial" and "controller" and try to make a class that fills it, resulting in classes that feel like game pieces rather than models of people.But I hope that it doesn't come to that, either (to the point where it's annoying for me; some of it is inevitable and I have no real problem with that).I don't think he was referring to you specifically, but to the Platonic ideal of the person that answers any comments along the lines of "D&D is a game of killing monster and taking their stuff" with "but my game is all about the love life..."</blockquote>

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