Roles in Roleplaying Games

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

It utterly boggles my mind that people think that the codification of combat roles in 4e is something new. It's been around since the guy in the front was a Fighting Man. How's that for a role?

Codified Combat Roles are new. Yes, clerics and druids both healed, but they could also be front line fighters. Put that cleric in heavy armor, give him a mace and you are good to go. Were roles implied by the rules absolutely. Enforced by the rules, not so much.

Look at 3rd Edition. What's a Fighter who dips into Rogue? Is he a defender? Is he a striker? What about a fighter who takes levels in cleric? What's that, a healer? What's a Barbarian? What's a monk - Striker, Defender, Controller? What's a bard? He can heal, but if you say he's just a healer, you've just hacked off 75% or more the class. What's a Druid? It can be a front line fighter, or a spell slinger, or a healer.

3rd Edition allowed you to be whatever you wanted to be. Multi-classing, feats, and spells could focus a character or broaden a charater to your heart's content. The player defined what, if any role, the character would have in combat.

 

[D'karr]

3rd Edition allowed you to be whatever you wanted to be. Multi-classing, feats, and spells could focus a character or broaden a charater to your heart's content. The player defined what, if any role, the character would have in combat.

Correct, add-ons to the base class allowed you to change your "basic" role in combat. But if you took fighter as a class and then expected to cast spells you were not playing to the "role" of that class, which is NOT spellcaster.

 

[pemerton]

The combat role of a PC is whatever the player (that'd be the seemingly forgotten "P" of "PC") wants their character to be/do during combat.

The "role" in role-playing game is not/should not be "what they do in combat." It is the role the player gives/creates for their character in the game...in whatever situation they find themselves...whatever the player wants it to be.

I am absolutely baffled by the very concept that it is (or was) either necessary or desired or even acceptable to players...For da rulz to tell them what their PC (specifically) or class (more generally) is. Not 'should be' or works best for mechanics or (another of my favorites) 'game balance'...but is.

Then you shouldn't have any trouble with 4e. It doesn't tell you what to do in (or out of) combat. It just tells you what works best, as a general rule.

Even if we're talking about sound rather than wacky tactical play, there can be a lot of variations in 4e. The drow sorcerer in my game does a lot of frontline fighting (using close bursts, darkness for defence, and teleporting out if things get too hairy) and on the odd occasion, when the fighter is low on hit points, has even taken on the defender role as best he can.

what baffles me is how you could play D&D for any length of time and not think that "da rulz" weren't telling you exactly what you were.

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Why do people think that calling attention to the roles means that people have to lobotomize themselves and remove all their creativity?

I agree with all this. The mechanics are a general guide to what your PC is best at. The "role" designation in 4e is just a generalisation of this. Creative play will buck those generalisations, from time to time at least, if not often.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

Correct, add-ons to the base class allowed you to change your "basic" role in combat. But if you took fighter as a class and then expected to cast spells you were not playing to the "role" of that class, which is NOT spellcaster.

In 3rd, if you are a Fighter 3 / Wizard 3, what are you? What's your role? You don't have enough information with that description to know what that Character's combat role is.

In 4th, if you say are a Figther with a wizard multiclass, you know exactly the role that the character performs in combat. The system defined it for you.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Why do people think that calling attention to the roles means that people have to lobotomize themselves and remove all their creativity?

Apparently because labels have meanings that can't be entirely circumvented by saying that "fighter" means something specific. I don't have a problem with such labels, but then I work in a field where I often encounter this problem.

There might be so much baggage associated with class names as archetypes that the old class names are no longer useful as technical terms. "Druid" and "Bard" and "Paladin" were problematic from the start, and have only gotten worse as time passes.

So maybe there is something to be said for using "Fighting Man", "Magic User", "Holy Guy", "Sneaky McStabby Pants", and whatever other goofy descriptions are needed for the generic idea. The whole thing has been going downhill ever since "Thief" and "Cleric" made an entrance.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

Then you shouldn't have any trouble with 4e. It doesn't tell you what to do in (or out of) combat. It just tells you what works best, as a general rule.

Absolutely incorrect. If you are playing a Swordmage and refuse to mark anything or a Warlord who refuses to heal, you are violating the social contract of the class and it's role at the table.

 

[D'karr]

In 3rd, if you are a Fighter 3 / Wizard 3, what are you? What's your role? You don't have enough information with that description to know what that Character's combat role is.

In 4th, if you say are a Figther with a wizard multiclass, you know exactly the role that the character performs in combat. The system defined it for you.

Correct, you added a multiclass to "break" out of your role.

If you said you're a Fighter 3 in 4e, you would have to look at build/feats/power selection to determine what aspects of the "defender" role the fighter decided to "specialize" in. Not only that there are certain build that are not defenders. If he had multiclassed then you have the same issue as in 3e, because there are multiple ways to multiclass. Is he a hybrid, is he a multiclass, is he a swordmage, is he a bladesinger, what feats did he take, what powers? All of those different factors allow you to "break" the role, or play to it.

 

[D'karr]

Absolutely incorrect. If you are playing a Swordmage and refuse to mark anything or a Warlord who refuses to heal, you are violating the social contract of the class and it's role at the table.

If you're playing a 3e Fighter and refuse to "fight" you are also violating the social contract of the class and it's role at the table. Stupid decisions at how to run a character do not a point of data make.

 

[pemerton]

Codified Combat Roles are new. Yes, clerics and druids both healed, but they could also be front line fighters. Put that cleric in heavy armor, give him a mace and you are good to go. Were roles implied by the rules absolutely. Enforced by the rules, not so much.

But this is still true. You can stick your STR cleric in chain armour (or scale if you spend a feat) and have him/her fight in the front line. You can even get marking powers.

The rules don't enforce that a STR cleric, or a warlord, can't hold the front line. They just make a fighter better at doing that job.

 

[Imaro]

Steeldragons - what baffles me is how you could play D&D for any length of time and not think that "da rulz" weren't telling you exactly what you were.

I'm going to disagree here, I feel like in earlier editions "da rulz" gave you much more freedom to decide what role in combat you wanted to take on within the archetype of the class you picked.

If you played a cleric, you were "the healer". Most of your spells revolved around healing/curing and certainly the expectation at any table I ever played at was that the cleric was going to be busting out the healing from time to time.

See now you're talking about expectations of the players. The rules don't force a cleric to be a healer, there are plenty of useful spells pre-4e that allow a cleric to take on a multitude of roles... From defender to controller. Choosing to focus on healing was just one facet.

If you played the fighter, you were going to be the guy in the front taking the beats and laying the slippers to the baddies.

Unless you focused on being a ranged fighter or sacrificed defense for damage output.

If you were the thief/rogue, you were going to be the guy who looked for traps and tried to remove them, BECAUSE YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE WHO COULD.

Uhm... This isn't a combat role and I would venture so far as to say is actually more a part of the rogue archetype.

It utterly boggles my mind that people think that the codification of combat roles in 4e is something new. It's been around since the guy in the front was a Fighting Man. How's that for a role?

I think you're confusing "combat roles" with archetypical abilities in certain instances of your examples. Combat roles have never been as explicitly hardcoded as you're trying to make them out to be or as I feel they have been with 4e and its power system.

Where the problem, in my mind, comes is that people insist on applying the idea of combat role to the entirety of the character. That if I'm a "striker" then that must be the single, sole thing that my character is and I can never, ever do or be anything other than a "striker".

No, most people in this thread are sticking to combat... As in the archetype I want has been pigeonholed into a specific role in combat, and all that doing that entails.

Sorry, that's utter and complete bollocks. My current Dark Sun character is a noble from Urik whose family has been wiped out by the Sorcerer King of Urik for an attempt on his life. I have a bounty on my head and a HUGE chip on my shoulder. The fact that I'm also a Faelock is simply not what this character is.
We have three strikers in the group and all three are entirely different, despite two of them being the same race (thri-kreen).
Why do people think that calling attention to the roles means that people have to lobotomize themselves and remove all their creativity?

Total strawman here... What people are saying is why does my selection of the holy warrior archetype auto-regulate me to taking hits and being a blockade... When really I want to be doing damage and striking down my gods enemies like a hot knife through butter.