Roles in Roleplaying Games

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I'd argue heavy armor with it's penalties and weight is more of a detriment than a bonus in 4e. IMO, of course.

The only other bonus I can think of for heavy armor is that you have access to masterwork armor sooner (at +2 enhancement instead of +3). And there may be some skewing between magical armors, but I'm not about to tackle the entire list to figure that one out.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

This is a well moderated forum if i've ever seen one.

Yes. The moderators here at ENWorld are the best I've seen. I want to apologize for letting my temper get the best of me earlier in the thread. I hope you and I can discuss things with more civility in the future.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Previous editions allowed for more mutable combat roles.

Hang on a second. This example doesn't actually work. Everything you just outlined is pretty heavily punished by the rules in any edition.

That has what to do with what? The point being that a character can and did fulfill multiple combat roles quite easily, whether they began a particular combat in a role and moved to another of simply fulfilled the various roles from the beginning of a combat.

The point was that 4E characters can step out of their main combat role just as well as characters in previous editions. I'm sure we could find corner-case examples in different rulesets that would seem to contradict this statement, but overall it feels at our tables, like Talking Heads said, "same as it ever was."

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

In keeping with the above, allow me to ask a few questions about the level of roleplaying outside of combat in the games some of you experience . . .

What sorts of things did he do outside of combat? What level was he? Did he have a lot of background info that informed his in-game choices?

Same questions, if I may. What sorts of things do they do outside of combat? What level are they? Do they have a lot of background info that informs their in-game choices?

Were these questions meant to give you insight to a particular edition? Because, IME, the questions will yield the same types of answers from the same people over the various editions (unless the person has changed their own style over time).

The same people who enjoyed having depth of character back in AD&D in my group still enjoy creating that depth now, myself included. Those who never have, still don't.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

If that defender can't switch between melee and ranged, with credible powers for both, that shows how codified his role really is. That fighter tends to be stuck at the front, melee weapon in hand, with weaker options for ranged attacks. In other games, with less codified roles, that fighter could have chosen to be a real killer with a bow.

That killer-with-a-bow-fighter in 4E can be a Ranger, Rogue, Warlord, etc. Because those who are killer with a bow tend to be lightly armored mobile warriors which fits the Striker role better IMO. I geuss the designers could create a ranged striker version for the Fighter, but I'm not sure it would differ enough from the other options currently available to warrant inclusion in the game.

I think ranged defender could be an interesting take for the Fighter. I'm having trouble envisioning what that would entail, but I'd be intrigued to see its implementation.

 

[Imaro]

That killer-with-a-bow-fighter in 4E can be a Ranger, Rogue, Warlord, etc. Because those who are killer with a bow tend to be lightly armored mobile warriors which fits the Striker role better IMO. I geuss the designers could create a ranged striker version for the Fighter, but I'm not sure it would differ enough from the other options currently available to warrant inclusion in the game.

I think ranged defender could be an interesting take for the Fighter. I'm having trouble envisioning what that would entail, but I'd be intrigued to see its implementation.

The Slayer is the killer-with-a-bow-fighter in 4e... he's a heavily armored, high hit point, striker build under the fighter class that uses Dex as a secondary and most/many of his powers can be used with ranged or melee weapons. He isn't a woodsman, he isn't lightly armored, he doesn't specialize in traps and thievery, and he doesn't provide support for other characters that hit harder then him... he is a warrior who kills things using the best weapon for the situation wearing the best armor he can afford and is tough as nails (compared to other strikers).

See the problem with tying combat role to a class is that it's needlessly confining. The slayer is a facet of the fighter(martial warrior) archetype that couldn't have existed if all fighters were tied to the defender role. It's just a shame that it took 3 years to get a fighter who primarily... fights as opposed to defends... even though it's been possible in every other edition.

The thing I find strange is the claim that permeton made that at this point, 3-4 years down the road we have the flexibility that this isn't a major problem... well no, it's not if you're willing to buy a ton of books, comb through a gigantic number of feats and kinda, sorta squint while ignoring the things that don't fit your concept and still be on the low end of effectiveness if that's not the role you should be tackling... and/or wait a couple years in the hopes (because it wasn't a sure thing) that the developers of the game would realize how silly hardcoding a combat role into a class/archetype really was. Looking at just PHB 1 vs. the first PHB of earlier editions 4e is alot more restrictive and confining because it went the route of hardcoding combat roles in the beginning. All IMO, of course.

 

[Hussar]

If that defender can't switch between melee and ranged, with credible powers for both, that shows how codified his role really is. That fighter tends to be stuck at the front, melee weapon in hand, with weaker options for ranged attacks. In other games, with less codified roles, that fighter could have chosen to be a real killer with a bow.

As I said, I'm not really the best person to answer this, my 4e experience is fairly limited.

But, in 3e, to be a "real killer with a bow" meant that my fighter wasn't much of a front line fighter. If I'm burning bow related feats, at least until I get very high level, I don't have the extra feats to make me also great at melee combat.

Competent, yes. Sure. But great? Nope.

Earlier editions didn't really suffer from this, mostly because there simply weren't any build options to take. Your guy would likely be a great bowman because he had a high dex/low strength and a magic bow. If he was the reverse, high Str/low Dex, then he had a magic sword and a bow was something that got used in a pinch.

See, my experience is very different. Characters have always tended to focus IME. If I was building a brute force character in AD&D, I pumped up Str, then Con, and then whatever was left went into Dex. Sure, I had a bow, but, that was an after thought, not a focus.

Then again, in AD&D, because monsters tended to be so much weaker relative to the PC's, it was easy to be a great melee and great ranged character. A bow +1 meant that you could pump out 10-20% of any baddies hit points in a round when giants only have about 45 hit points.

But, there's more to it than simply combat role specification. The inflation of the monsters, and the massive scaling back of the PC's relative to challenges has had a much larger impact IMO. Characters specialized because they had the tools to do so, and doing so was rewarded by the system.

Codification of combat roles simply recognizes that fact, not emphasizes.

After all, what defines a class? If you look at classes in any edition, what do you see? Hit Dice, weapons allowed, armor allowed. Combat abilities out the wazoo with a dash of out of combat stuff for a few specific classes. The character's Combat Role was defined out of the box all the way back at the beginning, the fighting man fights, the wizard is artillery and the cleric heals/provides support.

The only real difference is that 4e split the "fight" role into "striker" and "defender" and then based character abilities on that. Since characters are hardly limited to a single role as most abilities allow for a great deal of flexibility within that role and between roles (fighters are defender/strikers or controllers depending on what you take forex) codifying roles hasn't really changed anything.

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Mark CMG - I gotta go, but I haven't forgotten your question, I just wanted to answer this first.

 

[Mark CMG]

The point was that 4E characters can step out of their main combat role just as well as characters in previous editions.

I think Rich Baker's statement about the last decaqde is fundamentally true, editions aside, and that it is harder to step from role to role without substantial loss of optimization.

Were these questions meant to give you insight to a particular edition?

No. This is not about edition. Please stop it. This is about individual's game experiences past and present.

 

[Hussar]

I think Rich Baker's statement about the last decaqde is fundamentally true, editions aside, and that it is harder to step from role to role without substantial loss of optimization.





No. This is not about edition. Please stop it. This is about individual's game experiences past and present.

I'd point out that it's the growth of the ability of players to actually choose particular routes of optimization that has changed. Pre-3e, there really wasn't a whole lot of choice in optimization that any player could make. Magic items were the purview of the DM, so, it was the DM who might be making that choice of your role - giving the fighter a Vorpal Sword generally means that that fighter is going to try to use it on as many things as he can. He'd certainly be more effective in melee combat than in ranged.

 

[Imaro]

Codification of combat roles simply recognizes that fact, not emphasizes.

I would say codification of combat roles forces that fact.

A group or even a single player had the ability to choose to play an optimization game in which the cost was enforced specialization or to not play the optimization game and not be forced into role specialization... now that choice no longer exists. You have had your role specialization explicitly built into your class... and the class optimized for said combat role.