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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cryptos" data-source="post: 4528217" data-attributes="member: 58439">The old Star Wars class names (from d20 pre-SAGA) actually provide a pretty good summary of what people are mentioning here as non-combat roles.  Which is pretty odd when you consider that Star Wars is a setting based on cinematic sci-fi adventure.  But here they are:Scoundrel:  Your sneaks, tricksters, gamblers, thieves, smugglers, the "knows a guy" person, etc.Noble: Your social types, diplomats, performers, merchants, etc.Tech Specialist:  Your crafters and knowledge specialists.Scout / Fringer:  Your wilderness survival, tracker, hunter, beast and local knowledge types.The thing is that even though 4th edition admittedly does focus primarily on encounters, all but one of the non-combat roles above would have some overlap with what already exists in 4th edition.  Not just in skills, but in utility powers that affect them.  We have stealth, streetwise, thievery, bluff, and insight.  The scoundrel section is pretty well covered.  What isn't explicit in the rules can be simulated pretty well with this foundation.  We also have Nature, which covers lore and wilderness survival.  We have diplomacy, the aforementioned bluff and insight, and social encounters / skill challenges.  Some types of performers might even get by with an Acrobatic stunt or two.There is some element of knowledge skills that is missing, admittedly, but although I have created many characters with Knowledge (Engineering) or Knowledge (Nobility) and so forth, I can count on one hand the number of times checks for those things actually impacted the outcome of the game.  They are missed mainly not because they did something for the game, but because they said something about the character, and it seems that you could just as easily tell your DM that your character is an expert astronomer or designed catapults and bridges for the local duke as buy a skill for it, for all the difference it makes in day-to-day gaming.When you get right down to it, when we talk about "missing" non-combat roles all we're really talking about are two things: crafting and making money (profession) doing any of the above.Making money through professions in some ways detracts from the combat and encounter portion of the game.  4e seems designed so that adventures can be paced in such a way that you're supposed to have less downtime, and you have the potential for adventures where you're racing the clock rather than planning adventures with ample rest areas and opportunities for an arcane, divine, or psionic class to recharge.  Players can still nova early if it's their choice, but theoretically they could keep going with standard encounters.  So there's less downtime.  But also, 4e tries to carefully manage income so that encounters and adventures can be planned according to the level of the characters rather than their wealth and possessions.  Your DM could reserve parcels for income, but other party members might not be so thrilled that 1/10th or even 1/5th of their earnings are coming from Bob the Blacksmith's day job than from his adventures with the rest of the group as Bob the Bard.So there's a strong argument that could be made against the various Profession skills.Which really only leaves crafting.  When you get right down to it, that seems to me to be the key issue in terms of non-combat roles.  There are minor, peripheral non-combat options for which there are no rules, but the only one that can't be at least loosely simulated in some shape or form because there are absolutely no rules for it is crafting.I made crafting characters quite a bit.  My longest played character was a dwarf from a clan that made enchanted weapons, and studied to become a wizard to follow in those footsteps.  I planned very hard for this character to be able to do the job well of providing magical arms and armor for his party, and he did.  But having actually done it, the effort that went into making sure he could do it was greater than the handful of checks and handwaving that went into the completion.  I could say likewise for my Atom / Barry Allen Flash / Hank Pym - inspired scientist character in an M&M campaign, or my Tech Specialist in a Star Wars campaign.  The tech specialist was probably the most effective in terms of his crafting, but only because having already ruled that I had certain schematics and knowledge through character creation, had rescued a large student group at a technical training outpost in adventure 2, and had scrounge sufficient spare parts to do so during adventures 1-3, there wasn't a whole lot stopping the GM from letting me put together several hundred very simple hovering drones with blasters and setting them loose on an Imperial installation in adventure 4.  It would have been one hell of an adventure if we had actually fought it.  (Such are the consequences of telling someone with a Force Sensitive Droid Engineer they are going to go on recruiting and rescue missions to get talent for the Rebellion.  By a certain point I was just steamrolling every challenge that came up.  The effects aren't as dramatic for a D&D crafter, but there are certain to be encounter-based consequences.)I like crafters.  But although they are absent from 4e, I'm not entirely sure they're actually missing.</blockquote>

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