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What are the Roles now?
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<blockquote data-quote="Aenghus" data-source="post: 6529259" data-attributes="member: 2656"><p>I find these discussions frustrating and circular. Nethertheless, this is my experience, YMMV...</p><p></p><p>I played basic, AD&D and up so there was less emphasis on looting and more on fights. In older editions I found dungeon delving fascinatingly Darwinian (I'm talking vaguely logical dungeons here, not random deathtrap dungeons where the only role was "corpse in waiting"). Players who didn't play to their characters strengths or attempt to mitigate their PCs weaknesses died early and died often. PCs who didn't pull their weight in the party risked being fired, not being rescued or being ganked by the party themselves.</p><p></p><p>Successful adventuring parties in this style become finely honed machines, with each PC "knowing his role" with in the group.Successful compositions varied from campaign to campaign, but generally surviving specialised in stuff they were good at and avoided stuff they were bad at. Groups that lacked a decent melee front line suffered deaths until they evolved one or changed games.</p><p></p><p>With the primitive mechanics, stealth was fraught with problems. Low level thieves had low chances of hiding and sneaking. DMs would tend to force everyone trying to use stealth to make a roll, often making their rolls themselves secretly. The more people trying to sneak the higher the chance of failure, especially with untrained people or people with noisy armour. We learned the hard way that small groups work better for scouting.</p><p></p><p>Some players seemed to instinctively fight the system and produce characters that were just a bad fit for it. Which would be potentially ok in a light hearted game, but doesn't in Darwinian Dungeons where they end up dragging the party down and using valuable resources that could have been better spent elsewhere.</p><p></p><p>New players needed advice creating their first PC. Typically they were recommended to play a fighter, the simple, failsafe, expendable class. New players left to their own devices often came up with terribly inefficient PCs due to their understandable lack of system mastery, and the regrettable tendency of the mechanics not to support the descriptive text. I've seen new players who didn't get appropriate support have terrible first games and leave the hobby for ever as a consequence. This isn't good for the hobby or the industry.</p><p></p><p>To me roles in RPGs are primarily guidelines to help newish players, so they get PCs that function roughly as expected, and the RPG designers to create effective mutually supportive classes with niche protection. The posters here are mostly experienced roleplayers so can create whatever PC they want (subject to DM guidelines) and probably make it work more or less.</p><p></p><p>There are tasks an individual PC can't expect to do successfully in a consistent fashion - non-spellcasters casting spells, low charisma barbarian with no social skills being diplomatic, etc .Arbitrary titles are arbitrary, I realise, roles are a label for "tasks a PC can reasonably expect to perform consistently with an acceptable level of success". A poor hp and AC wiizard trying to hold monsters off in melee fails both the "consistently" and "acceptable level of success" clauses due to dying of stupidity in short order.</p><p></p><p>The point of them isn't to oppress anyone or force them to play in a way they don't want to, but they are there to point out the consequences of trying to fight the system, instead of negotiating a change in that system.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Aenghus, post: 6529259, member: 2656"] I find these discussions frustrating and circular. Nethertheless, this is my experience, YMMV... I played basic, AD&D and up so there was less emphasis on looting and more on fights. In older editions I found dungeon delving fascinatingly Darwinian (I'm talking vaguely logical dungeons here, not random deathtrap dungeons where the only role was "corpse in waiting"). Players who didn't play to their characters strengths or attempt to mitigate their PCs weaknesses died early and died often. PCs who didn't pull their weight in the party risked being fired, not being rescued or being ganked by the party themselves. Successful adventuring parties in this style become finely honed machines, with each PC "knowing his role" with in the group.Successful compositions varied from campaign to campaign, but generally surviving specialised in stuff they were good at and avoided stuff they were bad at. Groups that lacked a decent melee front line suffered deaths until they evolved one or changed games. With the primitive mechanics, stealth was fraught with problems. Low level thieves had low chances of hiding and sneaking. DMs would tend to force everyone trying to use stealth to make a roll, often making their rolls themselves secretly. The more people trying to sneak the higher the chance of failure, especially with untrained people or people with noisy armour. We learned the hard way that small groups work better for scouting. Some players seemed to instinctively fight the system and produce characters that were just a bad fit for it. Which would be potentially ok in a light hearted game, but doesn't in Darwinian Dungeons where they end up dragging the party down and using valuable resources that could have been better spent elsewhere. New players needed advice creating their first PC. Typically they were recommended to play a fighter, the simple, failsafe, expendable class. New players left to their own devices often came up with terribly inefficient PCs due to their understandable lack of system mastery, and the regrettable tendency of the mechanics not to support the descriptive text. I've seen new players who didn't get appropriate support have terrible first games and leave the hobby for ever as a consequence. This isn't good for the hobby or the industry. To me roles in RPGs are primarily guidelines to help newish players, so they get PCs that function roughly as expected, and the RPG designers to create effective mutually supportive classes with niche protection. The posters here are mostly experienced roleplayers so can create whatever PC they want (subject to DM guidelines) and probably make it work more or less. There are tasks an individual PC can't expect to do successfully in a consistent fashion - non-spellcasters casting spells, low charisma barbarian with no social skills being diplomatic, etc .Arbitrary titles are arbitrary, I realise, roles are a label for "tasks a PC can reasonably expect to perform consistently with an acceptable level of success". A poor hp and AC wiizard trying to hold monsters off in melee fails both the "consistently" and "acceptable level of success" clauses due to dying of stupidity in short order. The point of them isn't to oppress anyone or force them to play in a way they don't want to, but they are there to point out the consequences of trying to fight the system, instead of negotiating a change in that system. [/QUOTE]
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