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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 4710823" data-attributes="member: 32536">I'll agree with this.Basically, there is a huge difference between potential combat roles and non-combat roles. The 4E combat roles work well because they are all-inclusive and describe easily-understood archetypes. The idea of the Defender is general enough that it can include a vast array of concepts quite easily, but it is specific enough and has enough solid precedent that it is easily recognizable. Between all four roles, every possible combat archetype can be easily slotted into any role. This is possible simply because combat has such a limited number of basic concepts that need to be covered (basically, offense vs. defense and direct vs. indirect). With two axes of real difference, there are only four main regions that lead to definable "roles".The problem with non-combat roles is that there are simply too many possibilities to be easily expressed. Almost any different non-combat situation calls for totally different roles, so the basic purpose of roles, to ensure that you always have a balanced team and to make sure that you always have a protected niche, is almost impossible to achieve.To show off something of my point...Look at Kamikaze's "Trailblazer" exploration role. It basically lumps together every possible skill in the game, so that anyone who has such a skill may be a "trailblazer" depending on context. Stuck in a dungeon? Athletics, Acrobatics, Dungeoneering, and Thievery all apply. Need to chart a new land route in order to carry out a trade expedition? You would need the Nature and Endurance skills, and the skills needed for dungeon exploration are useless. In other words, a class that can "trailblaze" in a dungeon would not be interchangeable with a class that can "trailblaze" in the wilderness, so it isn't really a role.Ultimately, non-combat roles don't really work simply because, unlike combat, non-combat challenges require very specific skillsets. It is not like there are dozens of different ways to successfully run a business in a D&D campaign. If you want to run a business, you pretty much need to be a merchant, with all of the skills of a merchant. If you want to explore the ocean, you pretty much have to be a sailor, with all of the skills of a sailor. It simply doesn't have the interchangeability that combat does, unless you literally create roles for each individual profession, so that there are multiple sailor roles and thus many sailor classes for an entire sailing sub-system.</blockquote>

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