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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6308499" data-attributes="member: 5143">Here's the deal. As I've said before, any game that has hitpoints really only has 3 options for things you can do in combat:Make enemy hitpoints go downMake allied hitpoints go upPrevent allied hitpoints from going downNow, you can accomplish these 3 things in different ways for sure.  It depends how you want to subdivide them as to how many "roles" you can make.  The more you subdivide them the more the roles bleed together, however.4e divided it thus:Striker (Make the enemy hitpoints go down using any method possible)Defender (Prevent allied hitpoints from going down by focusing attacks on themselves then reducing the damage either using high defenses to prevent being hit or abilities that give them temporary hitpoints or restore their own health)Leader (Make allied hitpoints go up through healing.  Also prevent allied hitpoints from going down through buffs and debuffs on enemies)Controller (Prevent allied hitpoints from going down by hindering the ability of the enemy to move and act.  Make the enemy's hitpoints go down using AOE powers)Unfortunately, the roles weren't well defined and therefore caused a lot of bleedover.  It meant that a lot of classes didn't fit one role very well.  It appeared that WOTC had no idea what they wanted to define Controller as and kept changing it.  Ditto with Leader.Technically, these could be defined into 50 or 60 roles by dividing them into roles like: (melee damage which prevents damage by hindering enemies) and (ranged healing with defensive buffs attached).  Because you can use Ranged, Melee, Defenses(high or low), Hitpoints(high or low), healing, buffs(damage or defensive), debuffs(lowering damage, lowering defense, preventing actions), burst or sustain, and likely a few I'm not thinking of all as descriptors for roles.  Any way you choose to combine these descriptors technically makes a new role as long as you prevent other roles from precisely duplicating it.In theory, the best way for them to define the roles would be to only have 3 of them:  Defender, Healer, Striker.  It's no real coincidence that this is also the Holy Trinity of MMORPGs: Healer, DPS, Tank.  It would be the most clear.Unfortunately, it would also mean classes we don't really recognize as D&D anymore.  Defenders would include both wizards who trapped enemies in webs, priests who put up damage shields on their allies, fighters who tanked, and rogues who disarmed their opponents.  However, none of these classes could also do the things we normally expect them to ALSO be capable of.  Wizards who threw fireballs around would end up being classified as strikers.  And it would mean that there would be a fairly boring set of classes called Healers who did nothing but make hitpoints go up.</blockquote>

Verification