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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6511017" data-attributes="member: 42582">Sure. And anyone can cast fireballs and charm enemies, given enough support (eg magic items, like the UA wand of fireballs, that don't have a class requirement for use).What distinguishes a "defender" is that s/he can hold the corridor by drawing primarily on his/her own resources rather than by being propped up by others. That's a matter of degree, but then so are many interesting distinctions in other areas of life too! [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], upthread, said "f by roles you mean any grouping or label one comes up with for a grouping of whatever one may consider "competencies"... then yeah roles exist". In my post to which this was a reply I said that "The question of roles, for me, is whether the build mechanics tend to channel PCs into one of an identifiable suite of default competencies." If the suite of competencies is not identifiable, and is not a default, then I don't think you have roles except by way of post hoc labelling. That's not roles in the 4e sense.The default competencies exist as a function of the class build rules. By default, a fighter can withstand being attacked, and hit, in a way that a wizard cannot. This has been a feature of the game since it was originally published - fighters are defined by their high AC and high hit points, wizards by their low hit points and lack of armour, and hence their vulnerability.That the suite of default competencies be identifiable is something I see as a distinct constraint. Competencies become identifiable relevant to perceived needs. Because combat is an almost universal component of D&D play, and a not-insignificant component of a large amount of D&D play, healing is a widely-felt need and hence an identifiable area of competence. And by default some 5e classes possess this capability while others don't, at least not in substantial measure.Is blocking corridors an identifiable area of competency, in virtue of widely-felt need? 4e is built on the assumption that combat encounters will take place, and that when they do they will often occur in spaces large enough that mobility is a relevant consideration. This is part of the context which defines the roles of "defender", "striker" and "controller". Change that context and those roles become less salient - for instance, if most encounters happen in narrow corridors or small rooms, then "defending" becomes simply a matter of blocking the corridor, melee striking and defending cease to be interestingly different functions (or at least the interesting difference between them narrows), and ranged striking will start to look like just another mode of control (that specialises in imposing the "dead" or "dying" conditions).Resolution mechanics also matter here. In both AD&D and Rolemaster, withdrawing from melee tends to be punitive. So every melee character becomes a "defender", in the sense of being able to lock others into melee. Under these circumstances, the difference between a high AC, lower damage melee character and a lower AC, high damage character simply becomes one of rounds required for victory. And the holy grail of melee becomes the combination of high AC and high damage.4e is closer to 3E in its generic treatment of melee: melee is not, by default, especially sticky. This mechanical context helps underwrite the distinction between defender and striker. A fighter and a rogue in 4e don't differ just in their AC and damage output, but also in their stickiness. Fighters lock down enemies. Rogues are hard for enemies to lock down. These mechanical differences, combined with the fictional context noted above - an assumption that combats will occur in relatively large spaces - help underpin the identifiably different roles of defender and melee striker.When someone asks "What are the roles now?", part of what I would think is being asked about are what are the default assumptions about play - eg what are the expectations about the fiction - and how do the mechanics interact with them, so as to create identifiable areas of competence to which different class builds might tend to default.So far, it seems pretty clear that 5e has an identifiable area of competency in "healing" - it comes up in thread after thread - and that there is some interesting differences around holding the line in melee combared to mobile skirmishing, given the frequency of discussions around movement, the circumstances in which a rogue can hide in melee, etc. The significance of condition-imposition/debuff, something which is absolutely fundamental to combat in 4e, is less clear to me.</blockquote>

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