Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 5733400" data-attributes="member: 6668292">"Casting spells" is not what 4e means by role. At all. There's "dealing damage really well" and "healing people" and "controlling the battlefield" with casting spells. Those are defined as "roles" in 4e. Casting a spell is just a means to an end.So, in 4e, my paladin has to have the "takes damage really well" role, whether or not I'd rather be a "dealing damage really well" paladin. It's not about spell vs melee vs skills, and it's not about class features. It's about the play style that is hard-coded and baked into the classes. D&D has always had this, but it's been more broad in the past. A Fighter wasn't always a "takes damage really well" type of guy. Now he has to be.The thing is, a Bard is an entirely different archetype than a Fighter. As is a Ranger. As is a Warlord. As is a Rogue. There's only a couple upsides to classes, in my mind: simplicity, balance, and archetype support. I feel that the setup of some classes in D&D (including 3.X) are too restrictive to meet the "archetype support" upside. Just my opinion, but in a thread about my feelings on role, I am most certainly not "missing the point." As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Of course. I didn't mean to sound contrary or unproductive, but there seems to be a lot of talking past one another in this thread so far, and while a few people have nailed the issue (as far as I can tell), I wanted my statement to be as clear as possible. Looking back, it may have come off as a little short, and if so, I apologize.At any rate, let me quote your statement again to give it some context:Okay, context given.Some people in this thread like the feel of broad archetype classes. The Fighter can represent of lot of different things: ranged, reach, sword and shield, two-handed, two-weapons, etc. The class "Fighter" is just the D&D archetype for "warrior" to me, for example. With this in mind, by narrowing the Fighter down to fulfilling one role very well (and other roles workably), you really take a bite out of the concepts that will fit into "warrior". I may envision my archer warrior as a light-on-his-feet kind of guy. I don't want to wear plate, I want to wear light armor.If I'm a Warlord, it makes sense that I'd want to heal from a class-perspective, but not necessarily from a conceptual perspective in terms of archetypes. I may want to be someone who inspires his allies (healing or buffing them in 4e). I may, however, want to be someone who is a great tactician and military leader (I'm not aware of any class abilities or skills to reflect this).As I mentioned, a few people have really nailed the issue, in my opinion. It's about how broad any individual wants the classes. I prefer the "Fighter" to be D&D's "generic warrior archetype" class. I'm not a big fan of Barbarian (3.X, can't say for 4e) because of how narrow it was. I remember being pretty impressed from some other d20 systems that used a talent system and gave you basically one or two class distinctions, and let you build the rest with shared tools to those broad classes.That's my preference. So, when I hear "why would you be a Warlord and not heal?", I think "because that's a form of the archetype I'm thinking of." I admit, however, I think of archetypes in a rather broad sense. If you think "the heavily armored melee warrior" is an archetype, I can see where you're coming from. I say "warrior" instead, but it's not like you're wrong, either. It's just a difference in perception.Thus, I said that it was missing the point (probably rather rashly). I was trying to point out (very poorly) that tying class abilities to roles is one way to define roles, yes. It's not like 3.X didn't do it from time to time, too. I was trying to point out (again, poorly) that it's not a given, and that pointing to class abilities as indicators of what that archetype is misses the point others have been trying to make: they don't agree with the narrow archetypes.Again, not saying you're wrong. You're not. It's just perception. I'm not even sure that my players would agree with me (I haven't really talked to them about it). Again, sorry for the poor communication, short reply (originally), and possible confusion. As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification