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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6508177" data-attributes="member: 42582">How so?I pointed out that, in 4e, role labels serve the purpose of guidelines. They tell a prospective player of a class what sort of class features/build options they can expect to choose from in building a PC of that class.In AD&D, there are advancement rules that expressly penalise players who play their PCs in a way that differs from Gygax's conception of the relevant class role.There aren't any evaluations there, just descriptions.Why not?In AD&D, if I want to play a character who can reliably deal significant amounts of damage in melee, I will choose a fighter. This is a mechanically-driven choice - fighters have good hit points, good AC and (especially if weapon specialisation is in play) good rates of attack with good chances to hit for good amounts of damage.(If the game is very low level, and weapon specialisation is not in play, a cleric can also be a reasonable choice to play this role (comparable hp, comparable AC, comparable to hit and damage in a low-level, non-specialisation play environment. But this is not really evidence of flexibility so much as of oddities in the AD&D approach to class balance.)I have no idea what you think a "role" is. Nor, therefore, what you think it means to "emphasise roles".If you mean "having regard to the mechanical capabilities of the PC", then I have never encountered an RPG in which this is not relevant - after all, they nearly all have rules for building PCs whose mechanical abilities vary.If a player describes, or conceives, his/her PC as a miracle working healer, but mechanically has no ability to restore hit points, remove debilitating conditions like blindness/deafness, etc, then what am I meant to make of that description/conception?Once a character, in building his/her PC, has regard to the link between mechanical features of PC build and capabilities in the fiction, and notes that (in a class-based game) that distribution of features is neither random nor identical across classes, how is s/he not "emphasising roles" ie noting what the general mechanical thrust and capability of the various classes is?</blockquote>

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