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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6513094" data-attributes="member: 6787650">"Heavy" vs. "light" is a well-understood distinction, so you could just drop the "cover" bit and refer to them as "heavies" vs. "lights". Or "heavy infantry" if you prefer, vs. "light skirmisher." There's no shortage of real-world terminology to choose from without making up RPG-specific jargon.One place where thinking about roles explicitly (though not in the 4E sense) may be useful is adventure/encounter design. You shouldn't tailor encounters to your specific PCs because that's unfair, but you can and should design many/most encounters against the iconic roles. (I need to be better at this.) Six Allosaurs attacking in a pack is boring and will be dealt with mostly by the heavies, so make it four allosaurs and three swooping pteranodons, or four allosaurs and six flying apes with bows: something that the heavy is less well-equipped to fight but the archer or artillery can. Add in some interesting terrain (fight takes place at the base of a cliff, and there's a nearby grove of tall trees) for the skulker to play with, and a dramatic conflict ("can our favorite dinosaurs catch themselves a meal? can our heroes avoid getting eaten without losing the trail of the jewel thief?"), and a consequence for the outcome of the battle, and you've got yourself an encounter. The question of whether your actual PCs conform to the roles is immaterial: they play they characters they want to play, and whether the heavy is a fighter or a melee necromancer with Vampiric Touch isn't your problem. Perhaps they don't have an archer at all, and the flying apes will be dealt with by the Lore Bard summoning Giant Owls. The key thing is that by designing the encounter to be satisfying to an iconic set of roles, you ensure that a variety of approaches is needed, which means there will likely be something satisfying for each of your players.</blockquote>

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