comrade raoul
Explorer
Wizard's decision to design classes around four roles four roles is absolutely brilliant.
The most brilliant part, though, is the fact that they eliminated what we might call a "support" role, and chose a "leader" role instead. Everything so far suggests that this changes both the way these classes are played, and how players are encouraged to perceive them--and both of these changes seems to me to be overwhelmingly for the better.
First, it's clear that both "support" classes and "leader" classes are designed in order to help the rest of the party function better--to provide healing, to enhance their abilities, and so on. Traditionally, we thought of this as basically passive--the cleric would heal people whenever they needed it; the bard would provide small passive bonuses to everyone--so that while support characters provided valuable aid to the rest of the party, they weren't classes that most people could easily have fun playing. However, it's been clear for a while that Wizards game design have been slowly moving in the direction of active support--in which a "support" character instead focuses resources on particular characters or towards particular action. Think of the marshal's ability to grant move actions as an early version of this, or a White Raven adept's abilities as a more sophisticated equivalent. Suddenly, support becomes fun again--as a "leader", you're directing other characters by using their abilities to give them incentives to take particular actions, but, in doing so, you're not compromising anyone's autonomy. And you're still providing what's an essentially supportive role.
Second, you no longer have to think of your character as a "support" type if you don't want to, for pretty obvious reasons. This should open up appealing new options for players, and make it in general less onerous to be the one to play the cleric.
It's really this kind of rethinking that makes me feel that 4e is motivated and appropriate.
The most brilliant part, though, is the fact that they eliminated what we might call a "support" role, and chose a "leader" role instead. Everything so far suggests that this changes both the way these classes are played, and how players are encouraged to perceive them--and both of these changes seems to me to be overwhelmingly for the better.
First, it's clear that both "support" classes and "leader" classes are designed in order to help the rest of the party function better--to provide healing, to enhance their abilities, and so on. Traditionally, we thought of this as basically passive--the cleric would heal people whenever they needed it; the bard would provide small passive bonuses to everyone--so that while support characters provided valuable aid to the rest of the party, they weren't classes that most people could easily have fun playing. However, it's been clear for a while that Wizards game design have been slowly moving in the direction of active support--in which a "support" character instead focuses resources on particular characters or towards particular action. Think of the marshal's ability to grant move actions as an early version of this, or a White Raven adept's abilities as a more sophisticated equivalent. Suddenly, support becomes fun again--as a "leader", you're directing other characters by using their abilities to give them incentives to take particular actions, but, in doing so, you're not compromising anyone's autonomy. And you're still providing what's an essentially supportive role.
Second, you no longer have to think of your character as a "support" type if you don't want to, for pretty obvious reasons. This should open up appealing new options for players, and make it in general less onerous to be the one to play the cleric.
It's really this kind of rethinking that makes me feel that 4e is motivated and appropriate.
