What are the "Roles" in True20, Etc?

[Baduin]

Warrior fights, Expert has more skills, also Sneak attack, and can have special social abilities (so some elements of Leader?). Adept has supernatural powers, including healing. As I said, a few levels of Adept are enough to heal even extensive damage. All roles have enough skills (4 per level for Adepts and Warriors, 8 for Experts) to be competent at trap removal, sneaking and similar.

True20 was not created with D&D 4ed roles in mind.

 

[Goken100]

Warrior fights, Expert has more skills, also Sneak attack, and can have special social abilities (so some elements of Leader?). Adept has supernatural powers, including healing. As I said, a few levels of Adept are enough to heal even extensive damage. All roles have enough skills (4 per level for Adepts and Warriors, 8 for Experts) to be competent at trap removal, sneaking and similar.

True20 was not created with D&D 4ed roles in mind.

That's good information, thanks everyone. What I'm trying to figure out is if someone house rules a flat HP system for 4E, how will Leader classes fare? Should their healing powers be changed or replaced with out more useful abilities?

 

[Gloombunny]

The leader role isn't just about healing. There are buffs and White-Raven-style tactical abilities too. I think you could make a perfectly good character role out of those without any healing, especially if you let the leader characters do a little defending/striking/controlling on the side. (As I'm sure clerics and warlords will be doing, and probably subsequent "leader" classes in 4e as well.)

edit: As to how specific 4e classes will function under such a house rule, I don't think any of us can usefully comment on that until we've actually seen the classes.

 

[Warbringer]

Hard to comment as True20 roles are essentially generic classes.

In 4e, from what we've seen, roles are a defintion of the intnent of you abilities in comabt as compared to the competency of the class. There are crossovers m but the differences are exciting... a defender role, martial focus, will be different from a defender role, magic focus.

No idea how, but they are new roles

 

[Arkhandus]

For what it's worth, D&D actually has that problem already. If the common soldier has only one or two hit dice, a low- to mid-level fighter with decent strength, a Spiked Chain and Great Cleave will ravage armies.

And yet, out of every 20 archers, 1 is statistically likely to hit the fighter with a natural 20 for around 4-5 damage, maybe 5-10 damage, depending on how meek they are and whether or not their bow is composite/suited-to-their-Strength-score.

And with something like 10 footsoldiers charging the fighter each round (several, but not all, getting dropped by the spiked chain + combat reflexes), probably 1 footsoldier every other round will bash the fighter for 5-10 damage with a sword or polearm (and if they are using polearms, most likely pikes/longspears, the fighter's attacks of opportunity won't even help, since they won't be moving through his threatened area when they charge him with those reach weapons).

So after, say, 1 minute of fighting an army solo, Mr. High-Level D&D Fighter is liable to get hit by, say, 100 arrows and 50 swords/spears, taking about 650 damage or so. From 200 archers each shooting one arrow at him each round, and 100 footsoldiers charging him in total. Cut down the numbers to 100 archers and 50 footsoldiers, and you have just a small army but still enough offensive power to kill that high-level fighter. Even if the fighter uses magic items to fly or teleport over to the archers directly, it's still a losing proposition for him, most of the time.

 

[Fifth Element]

That's good information, thanks everyone. What I'm trying to figure out is if someone house rules a flat HP system for 4E, how will Leader classes fare? Should their healing powers be changed or replaced with out more useful abilities?

Considering we still really don't know anything about how the "leader" classes would fare, any suggestions would be pure speculation.

Commenting on changes made to a rule set requires knowledge of that rule set. Which we do not have at this point.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I think a leader class as a sort of conviction generating dynamo for True 20 would work pretty well.

But mostly I have the impression that True 20 just isn't as tactically oriented as DnD or D20 so it gets by with less.

Spycraft, which is much more tactically complex, has a couple of different roles beyond what are present in DnD.

Primarilly the acquisitions and movement men in addition to leaders, defenders, strikers, and 'controllers.'

Course it's not really a flat system.

Shadowrun certainly needed a leader type and a healer skill set and it was pretty dang flat.

 

[ShadowX]

With the exception of removing the "Leader" role (in the context of 'healer'), I doubt you'd see much, if any, change. The tank/"Defender" would be focused on soaking and/or dodging damage rather than ablating it, and the "Striker" and "Controller" would be largely the same.

The biggest difference is that gameplay, as in True20, would become much more random, with virtually all attacks taking the form of 'Save or Die,' and one of D&D's main strengths, its ability to appeal to a wide variety of players, would completely disintegrate. The game would cater exclusively to one narrow splinter of Simulationists, those who want to attempt to 'emulate reality' (as they see it).

HP work. They work better - MUCH better - than anything else anyone has come up with in thirty years, and that's something I can't say of ANY other element of D&D's original design. They work so well, (electronic) game companies whose development budget for a single A-list title is comparable to Wizard's ENTIRE budget and who have the data-collection resource to put that budget to use almost exclusively use hit point systems. In fact, HP work so well, they're now almost UNIVERSAL in electronic games, and the old one-shot = one-kill rules all but completely abandoned.

While I agree that the HP system is actually a very good system, especially for D&D, backing it up with the assertion that video games use it is not a very convincing argument. The modern video game industry is quickly approaching Hollywood in its stagnancy and its inability to conceive of original ideas. With the computer taking over the upkeep you don't need to keep the extremely streamlined system that D&D created; yet as you said, almost every game in fact does.