Roles in Roleplaying Games

[Mark CMG]

(. . .) giving the fighter a Vorpal Sword (. . .)

A group finds a magic item (sword or otherwise) and they decide who gets it. There might be a number of choices who should use it (though I admit fewer with some items then with others). It also doesn't limit the user of the item from trading it to another in the group if they decide roles should switch. If we think of things in terms of Rich Baker's premise that the last decade has codified roles moreso than before, and think of if your example and my own additional analysis in this post pertains to it, then what more can we say along those lines?

 

[LostSoul]

1. See the problem with tying combat role to a class is that it's needlessly confining. 2. 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. 3. 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.

1. I don't think it's needlessly confining. The need that they are satisfying here is the need to understand how your character is going to play in combat. They could have done it differently (entries under weapon and armour choice, for example), but that doesn't mean that tying role to class doesn't satisfy a need.

2. That's true.

3. I don't think it's a shame. When designing 3E they decided to make caster level important, and thus the old "elf" was difficult to play until certain prestige classes came out. There's nothing wrong with that; the game works fine - there are lots of choices to be made - even without that archetype in the game.

 

[Hussar]

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.

See, that's only true if you presume two things:

1. Combat role specialization is so laser beam focused that it cannot allow for any other choices.

2. Characters who do not laser beam focus cannot operate within the game.

To me, neither of these are true. For one, the class powers are broad enough that while a character might be a defender or a striker, there is a LOT of overlap between the roles. For a second, the math is not so tightly wound that a single plus will gimp your character.

I know that people talk about Weapon Mastery feats as being a big deal. But, to me, a +3 spread over thirty levels is not a big deal. The difference between one character with the +3 and one without will not matter in the larger scheme of things. There are just too many other factors for a small bonus like this to make a dramatic difference.

The problem is, people want class to matter. Class is just a handy shorthand for getting whatever character you want. At least it has been since 3e when so many more character building options were added. Being a "fighter" doesn't really mean anything. It's just a mechanical shorthand for someone who gets lots of hit points and can use the big weapons and doesn't get access to spells.

Class =/= archetype. And, outside of a few classes like the paladin, never really did. My thief could fill a broad range of archetypes. Look at the 2e Complete Thief's Handbook for about two dozen different thief archetypes we can build with just a Thief class. Same for any other class as well.

If you want someone who can switch between melee and ranged and does good damage, take a striker with certain builds. Decide what you want to do, then pick the class that fits that concept. It's a bit backwards from what went on before where we generally picked a class and then altered the class to fit a concept.

But the end result is largely the same.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I believe he means the whole enchilada, not just base stats.

What I meant what that 3.5 could be considered point buy-ish. You really can determine many different things about your characters with easier multi-classing, many different classes, skill points, magic item choices, feats, etc. It's not quite point buy but it's it's the same general idea.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

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.

My unfamiliarity with Essentials continues...

Regardless, the Slayer has a valid trade-off to achieve this flexibility. First, he is worse with either melee or ranged attacks depending on ability scores. Alternatively he can be slightly worse with each by equalizing Str and Dex. Second, if he focuses on or equalizes Dex (assuming ability score synergy with race) he would do a disservice to himself to wear heavy armor, thus becoming the lightly-armored mobile warrior. Third, he loses the encounter power capability the Power Strike provides with melee. Fourth, he'd be better off using a heavy thrown weapon like the Weaponmaster Fighter.

He definately makes a decent secondary archer, but doesn't reach the mastery of the Archer Ranger. IMO it seems like stubbornness to insist upon a class named Fighter that equlas the master archer class, the Ranger, if that's what people are truly calling for, when the only barrier is story elements that the system encourages players to change to their tastes.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

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

It was just a question. My answer applied to all editions, so I'm not sure what you're asking me to stop. I honestly wasn't sure because you focused the questions on two characters from a single edition. I'm not clear how that's a past and present question.

 

[Hussar]

Something that has been tickling in my mind that finally came out as I was doing laundry.

People have been equating Combat Role with melee vs ranged and then saying how some characters could switch between the two. Sure, I might buy that, but, that's not really changing combat roles is it? If the fighter switches from a longsword to a bow, he's still doing essentially the same thing - hitting things with pointy bits in an attempt to kill them, by and large, one at a time.

However, at no time can a fighter ever take over the other roles. A fighter cannot become a support character. He can't heal. He can't buff. He cannot help anyone do anything particularly. The fighter fights. End of story. That's his combat role. Sure, he steps back and shoots a bow twice a round for 2d6 damage, but that makes him pretty poor artillery compared to the wizard standing beside him who's dropping a fireball for 10D6 damage on fifteen different opponents in the same round.

And the same works in reverse. Give a wizard a sword and armor and put him in the front line and he dies. He can't use the sword, can't cast spells in armor (or can with great difficulty in 3e) and doesn't have enough HP to survive.

Clerics? Well, they get a bit of both. They can stand on the front line, but, they're going to be sucking hind mammery (sorry, didn't know the T word would hit the filter - is that actually rude?) behind the 18/63 Str fighter who's dishing out twice or three times as much damage on average. They can stand back, but, pre-3e, their offensive capabilities with spells are seriously limited. So, they turtle up and tank and then provide healing afterwards.

Note, none of this means that this is all those classes do and that they do this every single time. I'm painting with a fairly broad brush. But, the mechanics of the classes does define their combat roles pretty strongly. You can't switch between roles very easily. Multiclassing does allow some degree of it, although that comes with its own problems and issues as well.

But, at the end of the day, the classes were always pre-defined into fairly specific combat roles. Fighters fight, clerics heal and provide support and magic users are artillery. This isn't anything new at all. This was recognized thirty years ago. Again, as I said before, the primary difference now is that 4e has added a fourth option of splitting fighter into defender and striker. Before, fighter (and fighter types) were really a bit of both but really, not all that great at either one. 4e simply recognized what was already there.

 

[Mark CMG]

However, at no time can a fighter ever take over the other roles. A fighter cannot become a support character. He can't heal. He can't buff. He cannot help anyone do anything particularly. The fighter fights. End of story.

I've DMed a group that would have their fighter carry a lot of potions because he could step in and heal with them and take a hit while doing so. (He was also the least likely to becomed encumbered by the stores of minor items they had collected.)

Give a wizard a sword and armor and put him in the front line and he dies. He can't use the sword, can't cast spells in armor (or can with great difficulty in 3e) and doesn't have enough HP to survive.

With the right protection spells, a wizard can stand up in the front line if necessary, but of course you're not discussing if a wizard can fill another role, you're discussing if the best role for him is somewhere else and if the rules of some systems make it so suboptimal to fill another role that it is beyond worth trying. That's seems to be precisely Rich Baker's point.

Clerics? Well, they get a bit of both. They can stand on the front line, but, they're going to be sucking hind mammery (. . .)

I played in a group that had no fighters and used three clerics (brothers) act as the front line of melee defense quite effectively. It was a sort of religion vs religion campaign where our temple was often at odds with other temples.


But, again, you seem to be arguing both sides of Rich Baker's premise in alternate posts. Is it that you are seeing his point?

 

[Tayne]

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.

It's all good bro. E-hugs.

 

[pemerton]

This is not about edition.

<snip>

This is about individual's game experiences past and present.

This post does talk about editions - and experiences with them - but I hope that it doesn't cross the line that you've got in mind for your thread.

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.

<snip>

Earlier editions didn't really suffer from this, mostly because there simply weren't any build options to take.

Actually, as soon as UA introduced weapon specialisation, it became possible to build your fighter as a melee combatant or ranged combatant - although going ranged was harder, because it required DEX to boost your attacks but you still wanted STR to boost your XP.

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.

I don't think that 4e pushes as hard on the optimisation front as you do. The wizard in my game is far from optimised - he has two arcane familiar feats, Deep Sage and Skill Training (Dungeoneering). He's as much a scholar and ritualist as a controller. In combat, it's not uncommon for him to plink away with Magic Missiles (a very poor man's striker).

But anyway, to say your class is optimised for a certain role, and thus "forces" you into specialisation, is only to say that build choices are made at the class-selection point, rather than the class-feature-selection point.

Which takes me to:

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.

A different way of looking at it - which echoes what I and other said way upthread, that the impact of roles is more on the designer side than the player side - is this: while the 4e PHB is more narrow in the range of options it offers than are some other PHBs, it delivers a more focused game with tighter play.

I know that's not a universal experience, but it is certainly the experience of me and my group. The game's combat resolution is a sophisticated and elegant machine, and it's moving parts are the PC and encounter build elements that the designers have given us! Without the tight, focused design of the 4e classes, they wouldn't deliver this payoff in play.

I think for those who want a different sort of play experience - in particular, one where the relationship between build and action resolution is looser than 4e (perhaps certain styles of classic D&D, and even moreso I think 2nd ed AD&D) - can expect to find that 4e is not the game for them.

But other editions have also had features of the rules that (for better or worse) aimed at delivering the play experience that that editions authors thought was worth having. And to that end, I thought I'd quote a bit of Gygax's DMG (pp 61, 86):

Combat is a common pursuit in the vast majority of adventures, and the participants in the campgin deserve a chance to exercise intelligent choices during such confrontations. . .

The gaining of sufficient experience points is necessary to indicate that a character is eligible to gain a level of expereince, but the actual award is a matter for you, the DM, to decide.

Consider the natural functions of each class of character. Consider also the professed alignment of each character. Breifly assess the performance of each character after an adventure. Did he or she perform basically in the character of his or her class? Were his or her actions in keeping with his or her professed alignment? Mentally classify the overall performance . . .

Clerics wh refuse to help and heal or do not remain faithful to their deity, fighters who hang back from combat or attempt to steal, or fail to boldly lead, magic-users who seek to engage in melee or ingore magic items they could employ in crucial situations, thieves who boldly engage in frontal attacks or refrain from acquisition of an extra bit of treasure when the opportunity presents itself, "cautious" characters who do not pul their own weight - these are all clear examples of a POOR rating.​

This very strongly suggests that role, at least as Gygax conceived of it, flows not from the player - as many have posted upthread - but from the build, namely, the choice of class plus alignment (of far greater mechanical importance in AD&D play than in 4e play).

Presumably, though, many players - all those who played charitable NG thieves, for example, or cowardly and treacherous fighters - just ignored these guidelines (or hoped that their GMs would). The same players, playing 4e, are presumably capable of doing comparably imaginative things: the GM building combat encounters that will reward players for breaking from role expectation, or letting the player of the fighter take a STR bow attack as one of his/her at will powers.

We seem to have ended up in a situation where at least some people don't want the experience that the designers have built the game to deliver, and yet seem strangely reluctant to depart from that design.

Likewise with the comment that 4e produces combat-centric play. Plenty of people ran AD&D games with less combat than the DMG (as quoted above) seems to envisage. Why would they become incapable of doing so when sitting down at a 4e table?

I guess that, despite my differing from him earlier in this post about when fighters encountered build rules (UA rather than 3E), I ultimately agree with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]: the game designers have always had expectations about roles (combat and otherwise); they have build those expecations into the game in various ways (in AD&D especially via the alignment and advancement mechanics, in 4e via the PC build rules); and there is plenty of scope to at least tweak the rules, and thereby the expectations, while leaving the bulk of the game intact.

Which is not to say that the game will play the same. A game in which fighters have STR archery at-wills might play a bit differently from standard 4e. But then, a game without alignment will play pretty differently from standard AD&D. That was why, back in the day, at least some of us were very enthusiastic about Dragon articles that would give us advice on how to run alignment-free D&D!