D&D 5E What are the Roles now?

[BryonD]

and this is why the above was very relevant... if you like something and can say X Y and Z you will never understand people who claim X Y and Z are not there... and on the flip side if you hate something (notice the word hate is spelled out here) because X Y and Z aren't in it then no one will ever convince you that they were there and you missed it.

You want examples, if 4E fans accepted that roles felt different to a lot of people in 4E than they do in other editions, then this whole 100+ page thread would not exist.

But, lets try to cut through all of this. You claim that both sides are doing the same thing. Lets put it to the test.

As I have said many times before, it is clear to me that 4E is a grand slam as far as delivering the game style that many people want. Anyone who says that liking 4E is a bad or wrong thing is quite foolish.

At the same time, 4E feels different than other editions in a lot of ways to a lot of people. The ways roles present themselves in 4E is one of these things. To other people, (not you) this is a big deal. To other people (not you) it negatively impacts the value of the game experience.
Do you accept this opinion?

Please show me that you a doing what you want others to do an respecting differences of opinion.

As to "H4ter", I was called that MANY MANY times. I'll agree that the use of that particular term has died off since 4E went away. But in this very thread Hussar claimed that I my preference for healing was conveniently developed to support being anti-4E and pro-3E. That mentality is downright bizarre to think that someone would, for no good reason, hate one system and then start claiming their preferences in specific matters based on supporting that agenda, rather than assuming that someone likes what they like and then picks a system that supports it. It is completely consistent with the old "if you don't like 4E you are a bad person looking to bring everyone else down" theme. Even you just summed up the anti-4E side as "everything about 4e sucked". Not exactly a "let's talk this through" attitude you are displaying. This thread has maintained the "you either like 4E or you are mean" vibe.

And if you want to claim people who don't like 4E "the vocal minority" so be it. But I'mm not clear why YOU bring up the people making these complaints and when I respond to you about them you turn around and act like they are not significant. I mean, either way works for me, but if they are important enough for you to bring up, you shouldn't blow them off when someone replies.


But, again, bottom line, please show me that you respect differing opinions. Please prove me wrong and agree that it is ok to find the feel of roles in 4E different in a not-positive way, just as it is ok to find the many differences in 4E to be improvements.

 

[BryonD]

Is there that unending assertion that "all editions are the same?" .

You don't have too look hard for the "my edition is no different than your edition" sigs. As with h4ter, this is dying off. But it is still around.

I love 3E/PF and part of the reason I love it is BECAUSE it is such a departure from AD&D.
Now I know there are people who feel that 4E was the first game to be "different". I don't agree with that. But, again, I respect that ti comes down to how each specific group plays the game.

I know that there are groups who played 3E in a way that felt similar to 4E. To these groups the only difference between 3E and 4E is that 4E does the things they were already doing *much better*. But then we get back to that same closed-mined attitude amongst some that because 4E supports the way THEY played 3E, all groups playing 3E must see the same thing. It doesn't remotely work that way.

 

[Umbran]

The past few years could be summed up as:

...snip...

Did it not occur to you that continuing to put emphasis on it, and continuing to blame the 4e fans only, is part of the problem? Because it very much is.

You lose the right to gripe about how others continue to be hostile, when your own statements help perpetuate hostility. The moral high ground is not yours when you do this.

The same goes for everybody - lingering issues continue when you always blame the other guy for things, and never honestly take responsibility for your own part. Anyone claiming that it is all the other guy's fault... is just wrong in the case of the edition wars. There's plenty of blame to go around.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Ok I'm bowing out of this thread again, it is way too easy to get into the edition war

 

[pemerton]

Cowering was YOUR example

It was the example to which you replied, saying that 4e and AD&D approach it differently. What is the difference?

If you don't see any mechanical differences

Between which two things?

Between AD&D and 4e, or between 3E and 4e, or between AD&D and 5e, or between 4e and 5e? I could list many.

I've listed some upthread. I'll do so again, just do with movement in combat.

In AD&D, melee is per se sticky, mosty due to the punitive rules for withdrawing from melee. Therefore no class has or needs any special ability to make melee sticky. Hence any PC who is able to hack it in melee - a fighter is the paradigm, but plenty of clerics are up there too - can play the role that, in 4e, is labelled "defender". It is not a distinctive class thing.

In AD&D, because melee is per se sticky, there is no skirmisher class. The only mechanic that gets close to that is the rather clunky thief-acrobat evasion ability. As a result, in AD&D there is no role comparable to the 4e melee striker (of which the ranger and rogue are the two paradigms).

A corollary of the above two states of affairs is that, in AD&D, as far as melee is concerned, there is no very robust striker/defender distinction. At mid-levels some approximation to it might emerge, as a cleric can "defend" - ie survive OK in melee - but not really "strike" - no multiple attacks. But a mid-level cleric also starts to emerge as a significant spell caster in his/her own right, and so tends to become somewhat less of a melee character overall.

In 4e, like 3e, melee is essentially unsticky, due to 5' step/"shift" rules. In 4e, some characters have the ability to use particular abilities to make melee sticky (via a combination of marking, forced movement and/or movement interruption). They are called "defenders" (or, if monsters/NPCs, "soldiers"). Because this is a useful ability, which allows the exercise of battlefield control while in melee, it is something that can be traded off against other abilities, much the same as spell-users in D&D have always had features that involve tradeoffs, and much the same as (say) the thief in comparison to the fighter trades off non-combat expertise against combat ability.

This is what then opens up space for a contrast with the "striker" role. The default non-stickiness of melee also permits the easy implementation of skirmisher/swashbuckler abilities (much more straightforwardly then something like the thief-acrobat ability in UA).

In 5e, melee is non-sticky by default, like the two previous editions and unlike AD&D. Furthermore, movement is much more easy to achieve than in 3E and 4e - which make movement part of a rigid action economy. Hence forced movement is less of a thing in 5e than 4e. This change in action economy is part of a larger goal, in 5e, of reducing mechanical minutiae, particularly those which encourage use of maps/grids to track position. One consequence of this is that "defending", in the 4e sense, is unlikely to be as big a thing in 5e. Using 4e language, 5e fighter abilities like attack interrupts and damage reduction fit into the "leader" basket as well, or better, than the "defender" basket.

Overall upshot: 4e has distincitve mechanical features - combining aspects of 3E's approach to movement in melee combat with a desire to recreate, at least in respect of fighters and some similar classes, the sticky melee of AD&D - which make "defender" a distinctive mechanical role in that edition. It is not present in AD&D, 3E or 5e in the same way.

That does not mean that those other editions don't have roles, however - they still rather detailed combat resolution mechanics, which interact in myriad and fairly pedantic ways with a range of abilities that are rationed by class. This is the sort of mechanical state of affairs out of which roles emerge.

If I think of RPGs without roles in the sense that 4e has them, I think of ones in which there are no classes (eg RQ), and so no pre-determined patterns of PC build that generate typical patterns of PC competence and non-competence; or of ones which lack the fine-grained mechanical resolution procedures in which those different competencies express themselves (eg Tunnels & Trolls, or for a more modern game Marvel Heroic RP).

 

[pemerton]

I agree entirely with [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s post 1029 upthread.

[MENTION=957]BryonD[/MENTION], I have never used the term "h4ter" in this thread, nor - to the best of my recollection - in any thread ever.

You want examples, if 4E fans accepted that roles felt different to a lot of people in 4E than they do in other editions

This is not in dispute.

But it is not relevant to the question of whether or not other editions had roles.

Manifestly, no fighter in AD&D could be a healer or a buffer on a par with a cleric. (And this is one respect in which AD&D and 4e resemble one another pretty closely.) That is the sort of distinction in areas of competence that roles are made of.

Fighters in AD&D and in 4e are both very sticky. But the mechanical devices whereby these are achieved are very different - I've outlined them earlier upthread, and again just above. I've got not doubt that some people don't care about generically sticky melee but dislike stickiness achieved by deploying a class ability (imposing the marked condition, or forced movement, or the slowed condition, etc). But that doesn't tell us anything about whether or not their are roles - fighters in both AD&D and 4e stand out as the characters best able to stand in the middle of a sea of enemies who can't easily retreat. (Which is not to say that both are "defenders" because, for reasons I have also explained upthread, in AD&D there is no very interesting distinction between "defender" and "melee striker".)

A lot of those who don't like 4e don't like the feel of warlord healing. But that does not have any bearing on whether or not the warlord has functionality similar to that of a cleric: of course s/he does. It's precisely because of that overlapping functionality (ie both fulfil the healer or "leader" role) that people object!

 

[SirAntoine]

The only roles worth studying are the character classes in 5th Edition. The kind of roles 4e set up are unique to that edition, and they represent what was a departure from tradition. Not that the latter is any great cause for concern, but 5th Edition has to recapture a certain amount of "the feel" of earlier editions, 3e and before, for the fans.

If someone claims they used the kind of roles 4e set up before, that doesn't mean those roles wouldn't be a mistake for other people.

 

[SirAntoine]

Is there that unending assertion that "all editions are the same?" I mean, I certainly don't feel that way. I'm a 100 %, dyed in the wool "system matters" guy and most of the prominent 4e commenters that I know of are as well. I think where the disagreement has always lived is in clarifying the differences and their impact on play. Things like genre, pacing, mechanical infrastructure, player authority, and the primary locus of play.

For instance, with respect to the above, I would say that 4e is definitively focused on "player protagonism", "Big Damn Heroes", and an aggressive push toward "the conflict charged scene" (the combat or noncombat encounter as "action scene") as the primary locus of play. I don't think you'll get too many 4e advocates disagreeing on that. Is TSR era D&D, 3.x, and now 5e focused on those things? Clearly not. They could probably be encapsulated as "GM empowerment", "Murderhobos or Zero to Hero (and some other stuff)", and "dungeon/hex-crawls, open-world exploration, or metaplot railroads." To those varying ends, the rulesets (broadly or tightly in some cases) supported those aims...and in some areas, to the detriment of an alternative agenda.

No disagreement there. Where there will be disagreement is when you zoom in on the subtle nuance where one edition is claimed to be deviant from orthodox. These issues are things like HPs, the existence/place of combat roles, and player authority. But just because folks may disagree with you and say there is no (or at least not in any way that is functionally impactful to playstyle - eg an aesthetic coat of paint) deviation from orthodox D&D on those specific issues doesn't mean that they disagree that 4e wasn't (when taken as a whole) different than TSR D&D etc.

TSR-era D&D did focus on "player protagonism" and "big heroes", but not "a push toward the conflict charged scene". "GM empowerment" was no different. I don't know what you mean by "murderhobos" or "zero to hero". Dungeon-crawls and open-world exploration were both featured. Metaplot railroads now, again, I don't know what you mean.

I do not find it to be a subtle nuance that one edition is deviant from orthodox. This is both saying it's not a nuance to me personally, and also that from what I've observed, it has always been a bigger issue for many other people. Even where 2nd edition deviated from 1st, it was a problem. The 4e roles were not like a different coat of paint, thank you.

By hit points, I assume you mean the debates people had over martial healing and damage on a miss. Again, these were problems for many people and of course they were deviations from orthodox but that is beside the point. If someone wants to express an opinion about this, it should be put in context before anyone jumps to the conclusion edition warring is taking place. People have had concerns, that's all. The issue of player authorship, again, I don't know what you mean.

 

[SirAntoine]

I agree entirely with @Manbearcat's post 1029 upthread.

@BryonD, I have never used the term "h4ter" in this thread, nor - to the best of my recollection - in any thread ever.

This is not in dispute.

But it is not relevant to the question of whether or not other editions had roles.

Manifestly, no fighter in AD&D could be a healer or a buffer on a par with a cleric. (And this is one respect in which AD&D and 4e resemble one another pretty closely.) That is the sort of distinction in areas of competence that roles are made of.

Fighters in AD&D and in 4e are both very sticky. But the mechanical devices whereby these are achieved are very different - I've outlined them earlier upthread, and again just above. I've got not doubt that some people don't care about generically sticky melee but dislike stickiness achieved by deploying a class ability (imposing the marked condition, or forced movement, or the slowed condition, etc). But that doesn't tell us anything about whether or not their are roles - fighters in both AD&D and 4e stand out as the characters best able to stand in the middle of a sea of enemies who can't easily retreat. (Which is not to say that both are "defenders" because, for reasons I have also explained upthread, in AD&D there is no very interesting distinction between "defender" and "melee striker".)

A lot of those who don't like 4e don't like the feel of warlord healing. But that does not have any bearing on whether or not the warlord has functionality similar to that of a cleric: of course s/he does. It's precisely because of that overlapping functionality (ie both fulfil the healer or "leader" role) that people object!

Defender and healer have never been roles in D&D.

 

[Eric V]

Defender and healer have never been roles in D&D.

But for so very many people, someone in their group "had to play a cleric" because the group needed healing...