PC Roles (New Design and Development Article)

[Simia Saturnalia]

Okay, so it's apropos of nothing, but the ranger tagged to the 'Divine' source grates a little at me, in the way it might for anyone who hated spellcasting rangers.

Congratulations, D&D. Considering the ranger likely wouldn't exist in the books but for Aragorn, you've once again made him difficult to replicate with the ranger class.

 

[hong]

A problem with the ranger has always been: how do you differentiate him from the fighter, barb and druid. In 3E the druid has shapeshifting and lots of spells, so that's not too hard. But a barb makes a handy lightly-armoured woodsman-warrior in a pinch, so a nonspellcasting ranger is likely to run into niche identification issues.

 

[Anax]

Seems to me like it is mitigating the possible bad consequences of a choice. . .

I think that it does lessen the intensity of the consequences—but it doesn’t negate them. Think about an ability that allows you to take an extra standard action. If that ability is usable at will, clearly you can do it whenever you want. Which will be all the time. If it’s usable once per encounter, you have to think a little bit about when you want to expend it. If you see a potentially deadly situation, you’re going to use it to help he party recover, and you hope there won’t be another for a while. If it’s usable once per day, it’s really a constrained resource: you can use it to save somebody’s bacon—but if you do, and the next fight is even tougher, you might be hurting.

In the case of the example of “I hit the bad guy and heal my friend”, what kinds of things can impact this choice? Well, is this two independent actions (choose one to heal, choose one to attack, do them both)? It doesn’t sound like it. If they’re not independent, then what are the limits? What happens if I attack my enemy and miss? Well, then I probably don’t want to do it if I need that heal. How much does it heal? Well, then I probably don’t want to do it if I need a big heal.

I would personally imagine that if you absolutely positively must get a big heal to someone right now, you’re not going to be doing anything else (except maybe moving) in that round.

Under that assumption, it’s not so much decreasing the danger as increasing the range of possibilities. Now you can do damage for 1.0, or damage for 0.75 and heal for 0.75, or heal for 1.0 in a single round. If you don’t need healing, you can do straight up damage. If you need a crap-ton of healing, you can do straight healing. If you need a mix of the two, your efficiency actually goes up (you’re able to put out more damage and healing than if you were alternating one round healing and one round attacking), but your overall throughput goes down.

And the final thought is: If the party can do more stuff, doesn’t it stand to reason that the enemy will be built to take that into account? If healing can be done more easily on the fly, while combat continues, then the enemy will probably be putting out damage more consistently.

 

[KarinsDad]

So if limited to 8 PHB classes I'd vote:

Fighter (martial defender)
Cleric (divine leader)
Wizard (arcane controller)
Rogue (martial striker)
Paladin (divine defender)
Warlord (martial leader)
Druid (divine controller)
Ranger (divine striker)

You could change the ranger up to make him arcane ... but I think not if the assumption nature = divine holds. Frankly, I'd rather limit races and see all 12 class options of role/power mix in the PHB.

I would too.

However, I think you need at least 2 arcane, 2 divine, and 2 martial in the first 8.

Fighter (martial defender)
Rogue (martial striker)
Warlord (martial leader)
Monk? (martial controller)

Paladin (divine defender)
Ranger (divine striker)
Cleric (divine leader)
Druid (divine controller)

??? (arcane defender)
Sorcerer (arcane striker)
Bard (arcane leader)
Wizard (arcane controller)

This makeup gives 2 of each role and at least 2 of each type. Course, I would prefer to have all 12 right off the bat.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Is that WotC's description of the role?

Think of a swordsage focusing on the Setting Sun discipline. A 4E monk might well look something like that, and I think most people would describe that skillset as a controller, even if it doesn't exactly fit your definition.

It was either James Wyatt or David Noonan that discussed the roles in the Gamer_Zer0 video interview; that's how I recall the definition from that interview.

I can envision a 4E martial controller using some of the abilities you describe, but I still say that if you build a character based on today's monk, he's a striker, not a controller: very effective at moving around and influencing a single target, but when he's focusing on one target not able to effectively do damage to others, prevent others movement, etc.

I think iconic "controller" spell effects -- web, entangle, grease, the various walls, fireball, cloudkill, ice storm, flame strike, fear -- are going to be tough to come up with purely martial analogs.

I know WotC has said ranger will be a striker, but I still think they could play to controller, if the archery and skirmish powers are beefed up.

Either way, I'll be extremely disappointed if the Ranger ends up under the "divine" power source. They should definitely be martial.

I, too, would prefer to see the ranger be martial.

Given how I understand the role definitions and how the various concepts play off of each other, though, archery and skirmish are quintessential "striker" abilities along with sneak attack/backstab. The striker is highly mobile and able to put high amounts of precision damage on single targets, trading armored defense and survivability for speed. Controllers need to impact more of the battelfield than single targets, as in the spells above.

Remember it's about synergy of roles. It's a combined arms fight. In military terms we'd have tanks and infantry (defenders) performing the main fight while artillery (controller) sets conditions and hits massed targets; our strikers (cavalry & attack helicopters) take out individual high value targets, all controlled & aided by leaders (C3I assets). In D&D terms: the fighter is holding the line and pinning down the enemy's brute while the wizard separates the mooks from the front line. The cleric is keeping everyone motivated & propped up while he punches a hole in the line for the rogue to roll in and take out the enemy caster.

Interesting that even 30 years later, D&D retains its wargame roots at its core.

 

[el-remmen]

I do not believe more variety of choice is neccessarily a good thing. In fact, sometimes it is bad thing, more often leading to indecision and/or regret.

 

[hong]

Remember it's about synergy of roles. It's a combined arms fight. In military terms we'd have tanks and infantry (defenders) performing the main fight while artillery (controller) sets conditions and hits massed targets; our strikers (cavalry & attack helicopters) take out individual high value targets, all controlled & aided by leaders (C3I assets). In D&D terms: the fighter is holding the line and pinning down the enemy's brute while the wizard separates the mooks from the front line. The cleric is keeping everyone motivated & propped up while he punches a hole in the line for the rogue to roll in and take out the enemy caster.

Interesting that even 30 years later, D&D retains its wargame roots at its core.

Hmm... rogues swordsages as armoured divisions....

 

[Jer]

A problem with the ranger has always been: how do you differentiate him from the fighter, barb and druid. In 3E the druid has shapeshifting and lots of spells, so that's not too hard. But a barb makes a handy lightly-armoured woodsman-warrior in a pinch, so a nonspellcasting ranger is likely to run into niche identification issues.

I think the problem in 4e is going to be more how to distinguish the ranger from the rogue. If you make him a martial striker, and the rogue is also a martial striker, there are going to be a lot of tactics that overlap between them. Making the ranger an arcane or divine striker opens up more possibilities to differentiate him from the rogue.

Having said that, I'd like to see someone get creative with the ranger, take away the divine link, and make the class a purely martial one. I'm just not sure what you would have to do to avoid making the class seem too much like a "forest rogue".

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Fighter (martial defender)
Rogue (martial striker)
Warlord (martial leader)
Monk? (martial controller)

Paladin (divine defender)
Ranger (divine striker)
Cleric (divine leader)
Druid (divine controller)

??? (arcane defender)
Sorcerer (arcane striker)
Bard (arcane leader)
Wizard (arcane controller)

That's definitely how I'd see the 12 classes breaking out total -- though I'd expect the sorcerer to be much more warlock-like than the blaster wizard he is today. The arcane defender might be some sort of abjurant champion or duskblade-like character -- he's a tank, but his tank abilities come from magical protections and self-buffs rather than armor and brute force. The warrior-mage role, if you will.

I'd hate to see the ranger dropped from the first book, but there is definitely an advantage to having two classes for each power source and role.

And I do think that for many character classes the roles ought not to be set in stone: the druid should be able to take a shapeshifting path that is more defender than controller; the fighter should be able to take mobility, archery, and single strike feats to perform the striker rrole. That way you can fill roles without necessarily needing the specific classes and you open up a lot of customization opportunities.

I'm hoping the ranger won't actually rely on magical abilities, but that his non-magical; woodcraft and nature skills will get him lumped in the "divine" category. But if you make him martial, why wouldn't he just be a feat/talent offshoot of either the fighter or rogue?

 

[hong]

I do not believe more variety of choice is neccessarily a good thing. In fact, sometimes it is bad thing, more often leading to indecision and/or regret.

If you've got the group into the habit of making decisions quickly, this becomes a non-issue. In the long run it probably works to the players' benefit anyway, since you (the DM) also have to make up your mind fast, and there's 4-5 brains on their side and only one on yours. I know that I make just as many (if not more) tactical slip-ups as my players, because they have can consider what to do next while other people are taking their turns. By contrast, I have to have my mind constantly on the current turn, with little time to plan ahead.

Anyway, what about all that business about player skill and practising to become a better player and whatnot? Increasing the number of decision points while putting a time limit on decisionmaking seems like a great way to encourage skill development!