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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4711215" data-attributes="member: 2067">That's very true, but that's equally true of D&D combat (hit points, in any edition, look pretty weird if you go up close and study them). Again, ideally, the system slides to accommodate heavier levels of resolution -- it's not hard to divide "trailblazer" into different environments if you want that granularity.What I'm presenting is basically there to resolve conflicts, just as combat is. There's only really two outcomes that are possible in resolving any conflict: either you win, or you fail. <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    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> If I'm trying to convince someone of something, either I convince them, or they remain unswayed.If I'm trying to get somewhere, either I get there, or I get lost.If I'm trying to figure out a puzzle, either I figure it out, or I don't.It's not meant to replace in-character dialogue or players choosing how to respond, anymore than combat replaces players saying things like "I stab him in the eye!" Conflict resolution isn't any more open ended than that. Conflict resolution isn't everything that roleplaying is, of course.It's not meant to be DEFINITIVE, but it is meant to illustrate what already exists in 4e. Those three things are what noncombat challenges ARE in 4e. New conflicts can be added (perhaps in Ravenloft you have Morality challenges; perhaps in Dark Sun you have Survival challenges, whatever). "Striker" doesn't tell you if you're a ninja or a sniper or a wizard, either. It tells you what you do in combat. "Trailblazer" doesn't tell you if you're in the Riders or Starfleet, but it does tell you what you do when  you are trying to find a way from Point A to Point B. That's what it's intention is, just like the other roles. No role is meant to tell you what genre you're playing in -- Strikers are just as applicable in a Star Trek universe as they are in the D&D universe.There are other elements that tell you that, though. It's not like we're getting rid of classes or races or archetypes. "Striker" doesn't tell you if you're a rogue or a ranger or a warlock or a sorcerer, so I don't know why "Trailblazer" would have that burden -- that's not what roles do.If Rangers, in addition to being strikers, also happen to be trailblazers, and are described as warriors learned in the ways of the wilderness, you probably know pretty well how the ranger gets from Point A to Point B -- like a boyscout who knows what side of the tree moss grows on, or a hunter able to read the migrations of animals, or just a guy who knows which way the rat tracks are headed based on their toes.Roles are a level of abstraction above "class," after all. The game has other ways to fill in those details. Roles are, by their very nature, not very specific to genre or archetype. They're descriptive. Your class is your archetype, your role describes what you do in certain situations (combat in the core rules, or the other three situations common in a D&D game with something like my expanded system). And if you want more specificity, it's not hard to add. Power sources and Classes ALREADY add another level of nuance, and if you divide up the roles into smaller sub-divisions, you get added layers of complexity. What's important about any role is that you know what it does in the given challenge. If you divide up "trailblazer" so that every 100-square-foot area in your campaign has its own "trailblazer" subdivision, you still know that your trailblazer is going to find a way from point A to point B (and can use powers that relate to that). Roles -- whether combat roles or these noncombat roles -- never, ever tell you HOW your character does what it does. You can say that's a failing of "roles" overall, but it's as much a failing in combat as out of combat, if that's the case.</blockquote>

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