Roles, Power Sources; unbalanced?

[Rechan]

You guys do realize you'll be able to multi-class right?

 

[Exen Trik]

Your mages can heal?

Mages need not have to heal to be Leaders, they just need to be buff orientated which they are quite capable of doing.

What I think people having a problem with is the One Class = One Role approach would tend to pidgeonhole certain characters around certain styles of play, regardless of whether it was part of the concept or not. True, you can act any way you want, but who wants to waste potential usefulness?

And what about multiclassing? What is the role of my fighter/cleric/rogue in combat? I'd much rather be able to bring those class levels together around being a striker, instead of being a bit of defender, a bit of leader, and a bit of striker. Multiclassing already spreads our abilities around, a One Character = One Role mechanic provides a good opportunity to distinguish a character outside of it's class levels.

In any case, I'm not worried about it. If the 4e doesn't work that way, I'll just make some house rules to that effect.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Today I could design a Mage to be a Striker type, no?
Or even Leader?
A Rogue could have leadership quality, abilties.
Again they should be separate from Class...
They are forcing specific molds onto characters, thus limiting play.

It's not a matter of limiting play. It's a matter of having fun and feeling worthwhile as the class you chose. You do lose something with this gain.

In 3e, it had the feeling of "you want to be a tank type...pick any class and if you build it the right way, you can be a tank. You'll just do it in a different way depending on the class." Unfortunately, it created a situation where some classes were MUCH better at being a tank than others. And it had the weird side effect of making classes that you wouldn't EXPECT to be much better at roles than the ones you WOULD expect. Thus, clerics were better tanks than fighters, paladins, or barbarians when built right.

It sucks when you as a player sit down for the first time to play the game and say "Hey, I want to be a fighter. Those are the types that are good at weapons and wear lots of armor, can take large amounts of punishment and stand up front, right? Cool. That's for me." then during the first session find out that with 2 spells, the cleric can take more damage than you AND deals more damage than you as well as being able to heal himself, cure diseases, protect himself from energy attacks and undead drain attacks, consult his god for answers to problems, and raise the dead. It gets even worse when the Druid turns into an animal and due to equipment stacking and spell stacking is ALSO better than you. Then the Wizard polymorphs and uses protection spells to have a better strength and ac than you.

The same thing works for any implied role. Players who are new coming into the game think of rogues as the primary damage dealers in a group. They think of rogues as the ones that do very little damage, but when they move into the right position, they'll outdamage everyone. Then they find out that...they don't outdamage almost ANYONE.

So, the 4e philosophy is to make the classes each good at what they expect to be good at. Fighters are Defenders, so although the game won't stop someone from getting rid of their shield and using a two handed weapon for more damage, Fighters aren't going to be outdamaging Rogues and Rangers. Clerics might be able to increase their AC, but not to the level of a fighter. Or if they can, it will take Clerics more ACTIONS to do it. For example, fighters might get a "Martial Defense" stance where, as a swift action they add X to their ac for 3 rounds. Clerics might have a spell to add X to their ac, but it will take a standard action so they'll be unable to do anything else.

Yes, this will put an end to all of the players out there playing Clerics because they wanted to do the fighter's job better than he could. A lot of people out there will mourn their loss and say "But I never thought of the cleric as a healer and buffer, I always thought they were the tank type." But that's an impression that was only given to people due to quirks in the 3.5e rules, not because that's what clerics were supposed to do. Now, in 4e, if you want to be a tank type, you play a Paladin or Fighter. You want to play a Healer type, you play a Cleric. You want to play a damaging type, play a Rogue or Ranger. You want to play a tank type with a bit of healing, you play a fighter with a couple of levels of cleric.

I, for one, won't miss the days of characters who could do EVERYTHING, making everyone else in the group feel useless.

 

[GreatLemur]

I suspect we might be making too big a deal out of the whole "role" thing. It wouldn't be unreasonable to propose that the 4e classes will be just as adaptable to different roles through feats, equipment, and smart play as their 3e equivalents. The emphasis on roles may turn out to be more of a guide for new players than a limitation for experienced ones.

 

[Someone]

It's a bit ingenous to think that only Fighters and Paladins will be able to take the Defender role. Rangers will have too hit points and ill be able to wear armor, so they'l be able to tank, even if not as effectively as the fighter, and I'm sure a fighter will be able to pick abilities and magic items to boost his mobility and damage output, becoming more like a Striker.

Anyway, I think we should drop the Defender, Leader, Controller and Striker nicknames and talk about Tank, Buffer, Debuffer and Paper Tiger battle roles.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I suspect we might be making too big a deal out of the whole "role" thing. It wouldn't be unreasonable to propose that the 4e classes will be just as adaptable to different roles through feats, equipment, and smart play as their 3e equivalents. The emphasis on roles may turn out to be more of a guide for new players than a limitation for experienced ones.

I don't think so. The designers said one of their core design rules for 4e was "never punish someone for doing their role." They've also said the classes were all given abilities which make them better at their specific role.

I don't remember everything that was said, but I got the impression that the comment about "punishing people for doing their role" meant that, for instance, clerics were punished for healing since that's all they could do that round. So, if you allow clerics to fulfill their role WHILE still doing other things, you weren't punishing them. If you can make an attack and heal at the same time or buff as a swift action enabling them to also heal the same round, then you are excelling at that role. You can give the ability to heal to another class in a different role (say, paladin) but they will not excel in that role. It may take them standard actions to heal people thus "punishing" them for taking actions outside of their role(they don't get to attack that round and they aren't doing anything to prevent the enemies from getting to their allies that round like they should be as a defender).

They may not be straightjackets, but I've got the impression from all of the comments the designers have made that they will at least be jackets with big labels on them saying "Leader" and having bandages in one pocket, salve in another, cheerleader pom poms attached to the sleeves, and "Go TEAM!" written on the helmet. You can ignore all the cool abilities you get that are only useful as a Leader and put on full plate, pick up a greatsword and attack all you want though. You just might feel kind of dumb for doing so when you look over and see the fighter wearing his "Defender" shirt that is made out of adamantine, projects a force field around him, has the ability to make a shield appear at will and has "Hit me first" on his helmet in big flashy letters on it.

 

[Cadfan]

Its more important that the PHB be able to cover the widest possible range of character archetypes than for it to cover all the possible Roles/Power Sources combos. While I can imagine options to fill all the role/power slots, many of these would be so specific in terms of archetype that they shouldn't be in the PHB. Some power/role slots are so difficult to fill due to the nature of the game that anything that fits them is going to be a pretty specific character type, not a generalist archetype like wizard or fighter. So those should go in later books if they're needed.

And remember, you can always combine power sources. A fighter/mage obviously has both Martial and Arcane aspects. This makes creating a class to fill the Arcane Defender slot a little easier. But significant combining of power sources in the PHB is probably best reserved for multiclassing, not for base classes.

 

[Rechan]

Mages need not have to heal to be Leaders, they just need to be buff orientated which they are quite capable of doing.

I think the point is that those classes in Role X do it better. Here, let me give you an example from one of the playtests.

Before we begin play, another player is giving Rich grief about one of Rich’s character’s abilities that grants the rest of us a blanket +2 to saves; it just ain’t sexy. Rich says something like, “I don’t know, I doubt I’ll use it that much, but who knows, maybe everyone in the party will get entangled.”

Sure enough, not 10 minutes later this fire-crazed flame priest has entangled half the party with fire snakes! Rich throws up his +2 to saves and, voila, at least two of us get free immediately. I guess that power isn’t so corner case after all.

The character with the ability in question is playing a Warlord/Wizard, by the way, and I fully suspect that the Warlord gets the ability to give everyone +2 saves. I'm willing to bet that the Wizard COULD do this but he'd have to be higher level, or spend a much more significant resource to do so.

What I think people having a problem with is the One Class = One Role approach would tend to pidgeonhole certain characters around certain styles of play, regardless of whether it was part of the concept or not. True, you can act any way you want, but who wants to waste potential usefulness?

Except that there will be multiple classes per role. See: Paladin vs Fighter, see Warlord vs Cleric.

And what about multiclassing? What is the role of my fighter/cleric/rogue in combat? I'd much rather be able to bring those class levels together around being a striker, instead of being a bit of defender, a bit of leader, and a bit of striker.

Except the impression I got is that this is not the case. In 3e, a wizard/fighter is a subpar wizard and a subpar fighter. In 4e it has been said that a multiclassed character will be effective for their level, they will merely have fewer options. As it was said in the podcast "Any class, any combo will work."

Did you watch the roles video with Wyatt at GenCon? The notion of roles is basically this: If you have no cleric in the party, just a druid, well he Can be a healer but he's not very good at it, and he's spending a lot more of his resources - what he could use to Have Fun - on healing spells. The monk can't front-line like the fighter/barb/paladin, and (at least in my experience) he can't effect one target very well unless he's grappling - what is his place in a 4 man party?

In other words, if the only time that class is viable is when you are the 5th guy in the party, that class isn't balanced very well. I'm playing a bard in a game, and in combat I'm... bored, because I can't hurt anything and I'm not cool; I'm just giving everyone a + to hit and damage and that's just not very satisfying.

3e all ready has those combat roles. "The Guy that Holds back the monsters" "The Guy that goes after one target" "The guy that effects large groups of people" and "The guy that makes sure everyone else doesn't die." But some classes are better than others at this, and some can do all of them (The Druid can do it all).

4e is designing the classes so they are All balanced to fit that role in combat. This way if there's a Bard in the class and not a cleric, the party doesn't suffer.

So ultimately: You possibly could fill any role with any class. Just that the classes associated with that role are going to be better at doing what their role is. The ranger probably can jump in the ogre's face and hold him back from the wizard, but he's not going to have any abilities that's going to let him hold the line. The Wizard might be able to do the buffing game, but he's just not going to be As Good as the Leader role classes, and no one is going to be As Good at effecting large swaths of people as the Controller.

 

[Umbran]

I think, perhaps, it will call for us to think about the structure of a character differently.

In 3e, classes only vaguely correspond to roles. We are very used to having classes that are malleable, or don't clearly fit a given role. We are used to molding the classes to fit, and occasionally griping that a given class just can't be twisted around to fill a particular role.

I think a large part of the point of this design is to turn the logic around. Rather than taking a class, and trying to bend it to a role, you choose the role, and find the class that fills it in an interesting way. You are not intended to bend the class into a different role - if you want the character to play a different role, you choose a different class.

Some folks might call this restrictive, others would call it a process of choosing the right tool for the job. If you have a full toolbox, there is never a call to use your hammer to drive screws. Similarly, if they give you a full spread of classes, you never have the need to warp a class to a new purpose, because there's another class that does it better.

 

[jolt]

I suspect we might be making too big a deal out of the whole "role" thing. It wouldn't be unreasonable to propose that the 4e classes will be just as adaptable to different roles through feats, equipment, and smart play as their 3e equivalents. The emphasis on roles may turn out to be more of a guide for new players than a limitation for experienced ones.

I sincerely hope that this is this case. If it isn't, the multi-classing is going to be an even bigger mess than it is now since not only will you be combining class abilities, but roles as well.

Now, in 4e, if you want to be a tank type, you play a Paladin or Fighter. You want to play a Healer type, you play a Cleric.

I find this notion hideous and it's pure videogame thinking. City of Hereos(TM), for example, uses archetypes because it would be far too difficult to code in all the variations present in a comic book setting. So it's simplified to a level where the coding is manageable. There is absolutely no need to do this in a pen & paper rpg (not that you can't but there's no need for it). Dumbing down a system to fit unneeded "Roles", from a completely different gaming structure no less, just so mmorpg types who can't think beyond the most basic concepts will buy the ganme, is IMO moronically stupid. Even CoH(TM) wouldn't make these distinctions if the coding weren't an issue. Besides, I think most mmo'rs are perfectly capable of understanding the system without the need for "Roles". Character personalities should determine roles. "I want to play a Tank" is videogame thinking. "I want to play someone who protects his friends" is pen & paper thinking. And no, they aren't the same.

There seems to be an extraordinary amount of effort being made so that "newbies" will understand the game better. To me, not only is it a bad marketing strategy for a game that's been around for 30+ years and is culturally known by even those who don't play it, but I fail to see how suddenly calling a class a "Leader" will make the game more understandable to anyone or cause hordes of people to become enlightened to the wonders of D&D and start playing where they never had before.

jolt