FickleGM
Explorer
Ditto.The_Gneech said:Y'know, this whole "you are your role" thing really grates at me, and at the risk of trotting out a cliché, reminds me of one of the worst aspects of MMOs.
To use an example, I picked up Lord of the Rings Online and made an elven Champion, whose "role" as I understand it, is DPS. His job is to do damage in melee.
As such, the character, though a martial character and a trained soldier, could not learn to use a bow until he was 20th level, because bows belong to the "nuker" class.
This made my head spin. An elven warrior who didn't know how to use a bow? WTF?
Only in this "you are your role" context could it possibly make sense -- doing damage at range is the "damage at range guy's job" and not the "melee damage guy's job". Setting-wise, story-wise, and character-wise, it was crazy nutso.
Now I know that D&D has always had some of this, and I certainly think that "fighter / magician / skill-user" broad categories are both useful for players and GMs. But I don't think they should trump other design considerations, and especially not those of setting, story, and character. I would hope the 4E team won't be so fatuous as to make the Fighter unable to use bows because he is a "defender" and not a "striker" or whatever -- but I would have hoped they wouldn't be so fatuous as to kill Dragon and Dungeon too, thus I have no real faith in them on that score.
-The Gneech
We have my first actual concern for 4e. I know that I am amongst those who seem to have partaken in the WotC Kool-Aid and believe that everything we've heard is either really cool or not a big deal. The pidgeon-holing of class-to-role grates on me, as well. Heck, one of the things that comes with any class-based game is some level of pidgeon-holing...I don't know that we need more.
One of the reasons I hate playing (aside from being a control freak) is that I don't like to play "inside the box". This attitude doesn't always mesh with the other players, so I am better off running the games.
You comment about LotRO is a very good analogy. I just started the 7-day trial a couple days ago and I don't like some of the limitations based on assumed role that a class is supposed to fill (on the other hand, I like almost everything else about the game and am leaning toward plunking $15/month on it).
I would much rather they describe what each role is, what it normally does and how it normally does it. Then give advice on which class(es) fit each role the best and how to fit any class into the role. Then again, I'm not an optimizer.