Should There Even Be Roles?

[Herschel]

D&D isn't just a combat game, and not everybody plays D&D, or selects a Class to play purely on tactical combat grounds.

Then what do combat roles matter? If your game doesn't have combat or any tactical combat whether or not roles are there for the people that want them makes not one bit of difference. In 4E any class can be the party face, just like in 3E, 2E, 1E, etc. In fact, any character personality can be applied to any class.

 

[keterys]

I'm pretty sure we've been figuring out who got stuck healing or dealing with traps for decades. Enough so that it was pretty common to multiclass (cleric/mage, fighter/mage/thief, etc) so you could pick up the thing you "needed" then move on.

Though a lot of later games got less worried about traps. I think cause low level thieves were so bad at it (20% chance or whatever), and at higher levels you stopped caring.

I'm iffier on the whole wizard vs fighter distinction. Depended on whether the game used certain rules - like the game where OAs were in and it was trivial to interrupt spells? Yeah. The one in which you could move wherever you want and rarely got interrupted? Not so much. Then it was more about whether you wanted to specialize in weapons and do good damage at low level, or stick it out til higher level and do good damage then

 

[GameOgre]

No on a definded role. Let every pc be what it wants to be. Doesn't matter that the fighter IS a defender. Guess what? he sees himself as a striker,or did till we tried to hang a role label on him.

Roles do not fit in with so many character types. Tasselhoff Burrfoot wasn't a striker. Raistlin wasn't a controler and my evil cleric in AD&D wasn't a leader!

Let people do what they want with the powers they have.

Sure most of the time they will conform to roles as if you had them in the game,but when they don't.....good times are coming!

 

[hanez]

Then what do combat roles matter? If your game doesn't have combat or any tactical combat whether or not roles are there for the people that want them makes not one bit of difference. In 4E any class can be the party face, just like in 3E, 2E, 1E, etc. In fact, any character personality can be applied to any class.

The difference is that in previous editions these were part of the game mechanics, some builds might be worse at combat but better at being the "face" and these were mechanical descisions that players had to choose. In 4e its been mostly relegated to fluff such that any player can say "Im really good at being the face" without incurring as much of a cost.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

While I do not disagree with the content in your post I think it is misleading or misses the point as I see it. Sure groups of players WANTED those roles, there were players that said "we need a healer", but that has less to do with the system and more to do with the players.

yes and no, it has as much to do with the players as when I sit down to play 4e and get ranger, rouge, avenger, slayer and one of them says "Hey no leader and no defender gonna suck"

The fact is that there were perfectly usable non artilary Wizard classes,

ok, spell casters could be any role based on spell choice... but try to make leader or controler out of your fighter...

not every theif had to specialize in stealth because they had other options, and there were other classes that could specialize detect traps and sneak.

that depends on the edtion... in 1e and 2e, no only theif could find traps, and only theif or ranger could be stealthy (% skills)

There were cleric builds that could be frontline warriors.

agaain spell casters rule... in 2e I could self buff, heal, and cast find traps... in 3e it got better I could build a better fighter by taking 2 levels of fighter then going cleric then I could if I made a level 8 or 9 fighter.

I might be the one missing the point, but the problem I have with "roles" is that they NARROW what a class can do.

Yes they narrow spell casters... but find the edtion of D&D that a theif or rouge could be be a defender, leader or controler... then find a fighter that is anything but a defender.

I liked the option of changing how my class works and I saw many of the options in 4e narrow the options to 1 or 2 predefined roles. I also mourn the passin of non combat roles, I often made diviners, enchanters, and charmers (not always spellcasters) that traded combat effectiveness for more effectiveness with the story

.
now we are back to where we can discuss how roles are implmented not weather the exsist or not.

So when I think of "combat roles" I define them as "how a class specifically benefits the party in combat" and I see this idea really becoming more focused (if not created) in 4e. A blatant way I see that 4e magnified the focus of "combat roles" was that in previous editions it was possible to build characters whose focus was not combat, this is for the first time largely impossible in 4e.

ok, but if we made builds so that you can define your combat role, and ways to define your non combat roles would that make you happy? I think if we go with say... Abjure are leaders (buff and heal) necromancers and Illusionist are controler, Invokers are strikers, and Summoners are defenders (they summon things with defender stufff...

Edit - I found a rule of three article where Rich Baker expands on roles in 4e- Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Rule-of-Three: 11/14/2011)

once again the roles can totaly be done better, but one they have always been there, and two they always will.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Immersion is everything dnd, and that's where they dropped the ball. We know a fighter in traditional sense may be front line, but we don't want it mechanically restricting, nor do we want a player to feel locked into it.

But, like i said earlier, this is an edition argument, not an actual mechanical one. There's ont a person who switched to Pathfinder who will want the term role or square in their RPG. It sounds corny.

I don't even think it is an edition argument. If you start with the assertion that immersion is king, you are already cut off from any real understanding of whole swaths of D&D players.

It's true that 4E made this division more apparent by poking that assertion in the eye. But is was always a division in D&D, right from the beginning.

 

[Herschel]

Roles do not fit in with so many character types. Tasselhoff Burrfoot wasn't a striker. Raistlin wasn't a controler and my evil cleric in AD&D wasn't a leader!

For one, they're story characters, not game characters, but that aside....

Tas was a sneaky combatant who'd hoopak someone upsied the head when they weren't looking to knock their punk butts down. Raistlin was certainly a controller, he was trying to control time and reality itself while also dabbling in enchantment and being a blaster.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Five-Man Band - Television Tropes & Idioms

five man bad can be a great way to make non combat roles...infact we need both and that way skill challanges can be more useful

 

[Herschel]

The difference is that in previous editions these were part of the game mechanics, some builds might be worse at combat but better at being the "face" and these were mechanical descisions that players had to choose. In 4e its been mostly relegated to fluff such that any player can say "Im really good at being the face" without incurring as much of a cost.

How is that any different than 1E/2E?

Also, there are mechanically easier/better choices to being a face. The Bard in 4E has a lot of feats and abilities that can enhance being the party face if the player so chooses while the fighter will have to multi-class or skill train to get the Diplomacy skill trained.

 

[hanez]

once again the roles can totaly be done better, but one they have always been there, and two they always will.

Good points/responses.

I guess the reason why I hate the word/concept of a role is that I associate the motivation of defining roles with a change in attitude towards D&D in 4e such as:

-every class in the game must be balanced to eachother on a combat scale even if it makes the classes more similar and more boring

-classes cannot grow in power at different rates (e.g. some stronger at first then relatively weaker later) because everyone should have a role and there role should be equal to everyone else during the game

-combat is really 99% of what the game should be focussed on and if you want to "roleplay" outside of combat fine, but thats mostly fluff and were not going to give you a lot of rules or character creation mechanics to guide it, because you dont need rules to roleplay, right?

-every combat is important, and where before you could just handwave battles and fake it, now we have very specific powers that are very clear on how they damage, move, stun and effect the battlefield and you really cant handwave battle now because thats the main point of a character. If 99% of my character choices are combat based, who is the DM to break combat rules, fudge things or say "god do you really wanna move that guy 2 spaces again, are you sure because theres like 15 battles in this da*n adventure and if you guys wanna play this intricately its going to be incredibly boring just like the last adventure."

Sorry... Im trying to be humorous, I just see it as more focus on the area of the game that has enough focus already.


This association may not be relevant outside of my head, I mean I have my groups of Players and we never really thought like that till 4e, where it was really in our face. Other groups might have always have thought like that. Still others may like this type of gameplay whereas I always thot the story elements and amazing feats of battle that could not be defined by rules as being the greatest things about D&D. In the campaigns I was exposed to, Fighters had insane magical items that more then made up for balance problems with wizards, hence the fact that I never had a problem with balance. However, I could see where other peoples experience might lead to different opinions.