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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6511876" data-attributes="member: 42582">This goes back to the question I asked and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] reiterated - are you asserting, what some others in this thread, have, that any given 5e character can fulfil multiple roles, and perhaps any role?Because by pointing to the Basic PDF, I am pointing to some 4e characters for whom I believe this is not true.If the claim is that a given class can be built to multiple roles, I don't think I've seen that widely contested. The contested claim is whether this is also true of 4e - I think it is, but accept [MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION]'s point that doing so can require a relatively high degree of system mastery.The terminological point seems to me a relatively small quibble. You are looking at it from within the fiction - the character is brave; the role label has more of an eye on metagame function - by drawing and absorbing attacks, the character keeps those attacks off the other PCs, and thereby defends them.The mechanics in 4e are unique. I've discussed this in multiple posts upthread. In AD&D, melee was sticky by default. In 3E melee was non-sticky by default, due to very generous 5' step rules. 4e kept a version of the 3E rules as its default, but then established particular mechanics available to certain characters, and concentrated primarily but not exclusively in certain classes (with fighters as the paradigm), in order to replicate the stickiness of AD&D when the melee involved the characters who chose those mechanics.The net upshot is that if you write the story of a 4e melee with a fighter at the centre of the scrum, it will read much like the story of an AD&D melee with the fighter at the centre of the scrum. But if you move from the fiction to the gameplay, the mechanical pathway to that fictional outcome was different in each case; and more specific and intricate in the case of 4e.A footnote to the above: I think we can identify at least three reasons why 4e uses different mechanical devices from AD&D to achieve melees in which enemies are locked down in a scrum with the fighter at the centre of the action.(1) 4e favours mechanical intricacy as a general feature of its design. It is a game for RPGers who enjoy working with mechanics.(2) 4e is a successor-game to 3E, so it's default approach to melee is closer to 3E's non-sticky melee than AD&D's sticky melee. Therefore, to achieve AD&D-style stickiness in the special case of the fighter (and similar characters), new mechanics are needed.(3) 4e's approach, while mechanically more complex than AD&D, makes it easier to support different sorts of character builds for whom melee is not sticky, like the ranger and rogue (who have many ways of generating multi-square shifts, or - in 3E terms - 5' steps of a lot more than 5 feet). In AD&D this sort of character was hard to implement; the only version I know of is the Thief-Acrobat with its Evasion special ability, which is complex in wording and, in my personal although admittedly long-ago experience, not all that easy to use and adjudicate in play either.</blockquote>

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