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<blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4528150" data-attributes="member: 710">A good write-up. I think you've nailed down the idea of &quot;roles&quot; and the way to handle &quot;non-combat combat&quot; very well. I note that skill challenges basically introduce a kind of &quot;hit point&quot; system for non-combat stuff, but what the system lacks are the finer points of the roles.I want to add one thought about how I believe &quot;class&quot; and &quot;role&quot; interact - basically a class defines your role in different encounter types. (Combat, Social, Mystery, Exploration), and provides a certain &quot;theme&quot; and &quot;flavor&quot; to it. You are not just a Athletic Defender Hassling Intimidator (or whatever), you're a Fighter (hmm, doesn't really sound better, but you get my point? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> )There are games that don't &quot;force feed&quot; you these connections, and sometimes even allow you create your own flavor (all those point based and superhero systems I always hear about <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ). I think not providing the flavor is not the D&amp;D thing&quot; to do - but its appeal might be that it gives you an instant idea of what your character is all about and how he might look like. Before KMs post on the &quot;point based challenges&quot; my ideas more went along the line of having one combat role and one non-combat role. But the non-combat roles I had in mind (Guide, Sage, Face) seem to map to certain non-combat encounter types (Exploration, Mystery, Social), which might not really be a the best idea - though it might work, if you manage to keep a healthy mix, but it creates a dangerous imbalance or instability in the system. If you want to run a lot of Social Encounters, it will probably suck to be the Guide. That is something I might be willing to work with, but KMs idea of ht definitely identifying the core encounter types and narrowing down roles for each of them might be a far better approach. At least, it seems more consistent in the design goals.Of course,this isn't neccessarily the &quot;best&quot; way to do things. But it would be consistent with the 4E design goals and I think it's a logical conclusion of them.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mustrum_Ridcully, post: 4528150, member: 710"] A good write-up. I think you've nailed down the idea of "roles" and the way to handle "non-combat combat" very well. I note that skill challenges basically introduce a kind of "hit point" system for non-combat stuff, but what the system lacks are the finer points of the roles. I want to add one thought about how I believe "class" and "role" interact - basically a class defines your role in different encounter types. (Combat, Social, Mystery, Exploration), and provides a certain "theme" and "flavor" to it. You are not just a Athletic Defender Hassling Intimidator (or whatever), you're a Fighter (hmm, doesn't really sound better, but you get my point? ;) ) There are games that don't "force feed" you these connections, and sometimes even allow you create your own flavor (all those point based and superhero systems I always hear about ;) ). I think not providing the flavor is not the D&D thing" to do - but its appeal might be that it gives you an instant idea of what your character is all about and how he might look like. Before KMs post on the "point based challenges" my ideas more went along the line of having one combat role and one non-combat role. But the non-combat roles I had in mind (Guide, Sage, Face) seem to map to certain non-combat encounter types (Exploration, Mystery, Social), which might not really be a the best idea - though it might work, if you manage to keep a healthy mix, but it creates a dangerous imbalance or instability in the system. If you want to run a lot of Social Encounters, it will probably suck to be the Guide. That is something I might be willing to work with, but KMs idea of ht definitely identifying the core encounter types and narrowing down roles for each of them might be a far better approach. At least, it seems more consistent in the design goals. Of course,this isn't neccessarily the "best" way to do things. But it would be consistent with the 4E design goals and I think it's a logical conclusion of them. [/QUOTE]

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