Roles - do they work?

[Sadrik]

So 4e brought 4 roles for players and 10 for the monsters.

So my question is simple, do they work? Are they helpful for the designers? Are they helpful for the players? Are the helpful for the DM? And finally, what do they make the game feel like, suspension of disbelief and all that? Is roleplaying literally "role" playing now?

Player roles:
Controller: Controllers deal with large numbers of enemies at the same time. They favor offense over defense, using powers that deal damage to multiple foes at once, as well as subtler powers that weaken, confuse, or delay their foes.
Synopsis: Favor offense over defense... that sounds like a striker

Defender: Defenders have the highest defenses in the game and good close-up offense. They are the party’s front-line combatants; wherever they’re standing, that’s where the action is. Defenders have abilities and powers that make it difficult for enemies to move past them or to ignore them in battle.
Synopsis: Bag o' HP, with lock down

Leader: Leaders inspire, heal, and aid the other characters in an adventuring group. Leaders have good defenses, but their strength lies in powers that protect their companions and target specific foes for the party to concentrate on.
Synopsis: Helper

Striker: Strikers specialize in dealing high amounts of damage to a single target at a time. They have the most concentrated offense of any character in the game. Strikers rely on superior mobility, trickery, or magic to move around tough foes and single out the enemy they want to attack.
Synopsis: Ass-kicker

Should classes be so hard wired in their design? Would you prefer a classes that allow more shifting between the designated roles?
Doesn't everyone want to be a striker? Killing monsters and taking their stuff is the point so being an effective "killer" does seem to be the point. So really, that means there are three player roles: defender/striker, leader/striker and controller/striker.


Monster roles:
Do these help in encounter design? Are they obvious types of designations and would be better served under the hood?

Some are required designations because they have hard game mechanic changes:
Minion: Sometimes you want monsters to come in droves and go down just as fast.
Synopsis: 1hp, 1/4 xp

Elite: Elite monsters are tougher than standard monsters and constitute more of a threat than standard monsters of their main role and level.
Synopsis: Double hp, double xp

Solo: Solo monsters are specifically designed to appear as
single opponents against a group of PCs of the same
level.
Synopsis: Stupid number of hp, x5 xp

The rest of the designations are:
Artillery: Artillery monsters excel at ranged combat. These creatures rain arrows, explosive fireballs, and similar attacks on the party from a distance. They’re well protected against ranged attacks, but more vulnerable in melee. They often spread damage out over multiple characters in an area.
Synopsis: Basically, your standard wizard or archer

Brute: Brute monsters specialize in dealing damage in melee. Brutes have relatively low defenses but high hit points. They don’t hit as often as other monsters, but they deal a lot of damage when they hit. They don’t move around a lot, and they’re often big.
Synopsis: Barbarian, type warrior

Controller: Controller monsters manipulate their enemies or the battlefield to their advantage. They restrict enemy options or inflict lasting conditions, alter terrain or weather, or bend the minds of their adversaries.
Synopsis: Funky, effect driven guy, thinking illusions and mentalists

Leader: “Leader” is not a stand-alone role. It is an additional quality or subrole of some brutes, soldiers, skirmishers, lurkers, artillery, and controllers.
Synopsis: Interesting... so cleric with an added role

Lurker: Lurker monsters have some ability that lets them avoid attacks, whether by striking from hiding or by turning into an invulnerable statue while regaining strength. They usually deliver one devastating attack every few rounds, while concentrating on defense in between.
Synopsis: Rogue type or assassin

Skirmisher: Skirmisher monsters use mobility to threaten the player characters. Their combat statistics define the baseline for monsters, but their mobility is their defining feature.
Synopsis: Ranger types

Soldier: Soldier monsters specialize in drawing the characters’ attacks and defending other monsters. They have high defenses and average hit points. Their attacks are accurate, but they don’t do exceptional damage.
Synopsis: fighter or paladin type

Are the monster roles are useful for the DM? Do monster roles seem to fit better than the players roles, lol?
I think they do, the only thing I would change is add the "leader" role to the controller and make them a catch-all for all effects driven roles (buffs and hindering - not just hindering). Still though some character types simply can not be pigeon holed into one of these roles.


Discuss.

 

[malraux]

I think roles have worked pretty well. From the player's perspective, the roles were always kinda there (tank, trap guy, healer, mage). But bringing them forward helps in two ways. First, you don't have to have a cleric, you have to have a leader. It also helps the designers avoid making a crappy class, because you know roughly what the class should be able to do.

IME, the roles haven't affected RP much. At the very start they did, but not so much now. It took a while to get into the grove of 4e, but now it just feels like another rpg system.

For the monsters, I love the system. The only big change I'd make to your descriptions is that I have no problem whatsoever including solos in with other monsters.

 

[Cadfan]

Mechanically, I love the roles. My only worry is that, by putting something that is essentially a rules matter and a game design matter into the front and center, it may break immersion for some people. It doesn't for me, but I hear other people say it does. The problem is, some of those other people are just whining about an edition change, and picking on this as something to complain about. I won't know whether roles really break immersion for anyone who isn't looking to have their immersion broken until things calm down a bit.

None of the new players I've run games for have had any problem with them.

 

[Umbran]

As a practical matter, the roles were there long before 4e. I remember thinking about roles in combat back in the 1980s - every group understood the tactical roles of the tank, the artillery, and so on.

So, as a general idea, roles are a proven thing. The question is whether the current implementation works. Personally, I think the current form is a touch too strict for my taste, pigeonholing characters such that many concepts don't work out too well mechanically.

 

[Sadrik]

Mechanically, I love the roles. My only worry is that, by putting something that is essentially a rules matter and a game design matter into the front and center, it may break immersion for some people. It doesn't for me, but I hear other people say it does. The problem is, some of those other people are just whining about an edition change, and picking on this as something to complain about. I won't know whether roles really break immersion for anyone who isn't looking to have their immersion broken until things calm down a bit.

None of the new players I've run games for have had any problem with them.

I also really like the idea of the roles, and like you, I also am concerned about their effect on the immersion. They seem a perfect way for designers to be able to hone what they are designing into a clear and effective class/monster. As much of a boon this can also be a design straight jacket. Multi-role characters become a little more design work intensive. Also, giving each PC role a class feature to make their "role" to stand out mechanically plays makes the roles even more defined than they naturally were defined already. So it seems a double edged sword.

 

[Badwe]

my only quip with what you've said is your analysis of the roles is that really, ALL roles get to do a little bit of everything, especially damage. this is especially true of the leader class that often HAS to deal damage in order to heal/support. Also, look at the classes coming in PHB2 and you'll see almost all of them talk about a "secondary role" where their fringe abilities bleed into the territory of other roles.

Also, I've been playing in a campaign with 3 strikers, a controller, and a leader (me), so while it's been tough, at times, to control incoming damage without a defender (in particular, the damage finding its way to the squishiest target), we are by no means gimped or ineffective as a group missing a critical role in 3e might have been. In this sense, I think the concept of roles are a huge success. They are guidelines, and perhaps just as important they frame the kind of challenges you'll need to overcome should you choose to bypass them.

My only complaint with monster roles is that they are not entirely balanced. Essentially, every monster group is intended to go kaput, but the guidelines for mixing them into groups tends to be more about creating interesting combat situations than balance. IE: you don't make a group better by following a role division. This was evidenced when our DM threw a party of 5 artillery at us, gave those 5 artillery first attack, and the party nearly wiped. Sure, you combine artillery with brutes/soldiers to create 2 lines, but it really doesn't enhance those artillery a great deal the way having a defender enhances a controller/striker.

 

[gizmo33]

Is roleplaying literally "role" playing now?

I don't think so. The only thing "roles" have to do with is your general capabilities in combat. If you want to talk to the king, or create a character who hates orcs, or whatever, the roles have no effect on any of that.

Synopsis: Favor offense over defense... that sounds like a striker

Consider, as a point of logic, that A and B sharing the same characteristics doesn't mean that A is the same as B. The rest of what you wrote basically speaks for the differences. In fact, I would caution against providing a "synopsis" for a synopsis. They seem to me to be either inaccurate or redundant and run the risk of omitting important distinctions.

Should classes be so hard wired in their design? Would you prefer a classes that allow more shifting between the designated roles?

Personally, no. The point of the class system was to give everyone a "role" to play in combat resolution that was distinct. Shifting between the roles is either going to result in players playing distinct roles (in which case what was the point), or a muddying of the roles so that each character pretty much has the same capabilities (which would occur if players were able to choose an optimal power from each "role" concept).

Doesn't everyone want to be a striker?

Not in my games. Many players have enjoyed playing characters that support, but do not engage in, melee combat.

Killing monsters and taking their stuff is the point so being an effective "killer" does seem to be the point.

Actually in my game in prior editions of DnD, players liked to do things other than kill stuff. Many players, for instance, enjoyed wizards for their information gathering abilities and utility spells like teleport. They liked being facilitators. But ultimately, *all* of the roles play a part in killing monsters. I think you're way over-simplifying things - a controller can kill more minions than a striker can per unit time. I probably should assume you've played 4E already but I'm hesitant too because this seems so obvious.

So really, that means there are three player roles: defender/striker, leader/striker and controller/striker.

But I think striker is a distinct role. Strikers, IME, are vulnerable. The striker in my game is the first one to fall in combat. He also does the most damage. The defender supports him and provides flanking so he can maximize his damage (he's a rogue). The cleric heals him, and the controller clears the minions so that they don't flank him and kill him (in theory, anyway). The striker is able to do damage that he does because of the support that the other roles give him. The sports team analogy has been made, and I think you should consider this if you haven't already.

Monster roles:
Do these help in encounter design? Are they obvious types of designations and would be better served under the hood?

They are under the hood, as much as the creature's strength score is. And yes, I think they help with encounter design - or at least they don't hurt.

Some are required designations because they have hard game mechanic changes:

You might be putting the cart before the horse here. A DM chooses the monster designation because it suits his concept IMO. For example - You don't *choose* minion if you don't want the rules that minions come with.

So if you expect the monster to challenge the party by itself, then you choose a solo creature. Even if the creature is a "minion" in other terms (ie. he's working for some BBEG) it doesn't preclude him from being a solo creature in terms of his stats. If he's an orc, and a solo orc is not in the MM (or you can't find the one you want in the books) then you design one. But I infer from your statement about "required designations" that you're missing this point - I think.

Synopsis: Stupid number of hp

Any number of hit ponts that allows a character to jump off of a 100 ft cliff and live could be considered a stupid number of hit points. In spite of the hitpoints I don't think a solo monster is going to last longer than 1 or 2 minutes (of game time, not real time) in the fight. Ultimately, *any* differences between 4E and prior editions are going to seem stupid if you aren't open-minded about it. Without a more analytical definition of what "stupid" really means, I don't think you can really understand what 4E was trying to accomplish.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

So far I have noticed two main things when it comes to roles in actual play.

1. If a player seeks to emulate precisely his role, he is largely much more effective at that role if other player's with their characters try to follow suit with a class not of that role.

2. When things get really heated and close to breaking point. The players tend to shift more closely to their classes role as they try to survive.

Besides these two points, the exact manner of how the classes act is primarily up to the player. I have seen Defenders act like Strikers, Strikers act like Defenders (mainly by messing with a couple foes in a few rounds to lead them away from a more squishy player), etc.

Heck, the fact that their know saying secondary roles for classes shows that the classes are fairly flexible.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Because of its effects on class design alone, the roles system is a huge improvement over previous editions. The existence of different roles is directly linked to game designers thinking about how people actually use the classes in play. It is both a product of that line of thinking and forces future classes to be designed with that line of thinking in mind. This is a far better situation for creating fun and balanced classes than the much less focused older mentality, which often created overly focused (often underpowered and boring) or overly broad classes (often overpowered and game-wrecking).

In other words... The roles system gave us a Wizard that isn't a horrible fusion of every magical archetype ever conceived, a Fighter that has a clear purpose and doesn't interfere with the creation of new "non-magical warrior" archetypes, a badass Ranger, the Warlord (this one would not even be conceived without roles), a Bard that actually is distinct and useful (from what I have heard, at least), a new kind of priest class that is inarguably distinct from the Cleric (the Invoker), and countless other great improvements. It gives us classes that are designed to work together as a part of a greater whole, rather than classes that try to emulate countless stories seen in other mediums rather than actually work as part of a greater game.

Monster roles are very useful guidelines. They fulfill a very different purpose than class roles, so I am not sure if they really belong in the same line of conversation (you don't use monster roles to create a "balanced" group of monsters), but they are just as useful as class roles. Without them, it would be a lot harder to actually discuss what kinds of encounters are good or bad given different kinds of terrain and different party compositions. Advice like "don't give a group of Artillery monsters a surprise round and superior tactical positioning unless you want a TPK" isn't really possible in older editions, but 4E makes it pretty easy to discuss and think about the game in such terms. That is a huge aid for DMs. This is a large part of the reason I vastly prefer the encounter-building advice in the 4E DMG compared to the 3E DMG, actually.

However, I am beginning to suspect that the original poster hasn't read the Monster Manual, based on his comments about monster roles. If nothing else, saying that the "Leader" role is a Cleric, the Controller is some kind of mentalist, and that they should fold the two together totally ignores everything about the actual implementation of those roles in the game... The Leader role is only seen as a added "sub-role" to creature of other roles, and is hardly Cleric-like (it looks more like a tactical warlord, typically), and the average controller is hardly a "mentalist". In fact, even saying that the Lurker is some kind of rogue or assassin ignores a number of cool implementations of the idea.

 

[Sadrik]

I have no idea how this would have worked but wouldn't it have been nice if classes mutable enough to apply roles as a template. So you could select fighter/striker, fighter/defender, or fighter/controller and fighter/leader. It really would have put the character building in the player's hands.

This really would have been cool. It would cut down on class glut. We are already seeing this. Why play class a when their is class b that is better. I don't know if the roles really had much to do with this problem, but I can already see that it is going to be a problem.