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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6530118" data-attributes="member: 42582">It was the example to which you replied, saying that 4e and AD&D approach it differently. What is the difference?Between which two things?Between AD&D and 4e, or between 3E and 4e, or between AD&D and 5e, or between 4e and 5e? I could list many.I've listed some upthread. I'll do so again, just do with movement in combat.In AD&D, melee is per se sticky, mosty due to the punitive rules for withdrawing from melee. Therefore no class has or needs any special ability to make melee sticky. Hence any PC who is able to hack it in melee - a fighter is the paradigm, but plenty of clerics are up there too - can play the role that, in 4e, is labelled "defender". It is not a distinctive class thing.In AD&D, because melee is per se sticky, there is no skirmisher class. The only mechanic that gets close to that is the rather clunky thief-acrobat evasion ability. As a result, in AD&D there is no role comparable to the 4e melee striker (of which the ranger and rogue are the two paradigms).A corollary of the above two states of affairs is that, in AD&D, as far as melee is concerned, there is no very robust striker/defender distinction. At mid-levels some approximation to it might emerge, as a cleric can "defend" - ie survive OK in melee - but not really "strike" - no multiple attacks. But a mid-level cleric also starts to emerge as a significant spell caster in his/her own right, and so tends to become somewhat less of a melee character overall.In 4e, like 3e, melee is essentially unsticky, due to 5' step/"shift" rules. In 4e, some characters have the ability to use particular abilities to make melee sticky (via a combination of marking, forced movement and/or movement interruption). They are called "defenders" (or, if monsters/NPCs, "soldiers"). Because this is a useful ability, which allows the exercise of battlefield control while in melee, it is something that can be traded off against other abilities, much the same as spell-users in D&D have always had features that involve tradeoffs, and much the same as (say) the thief in comparison to the fighter trades off non-combat expertise against combat ability.This is what then opens up space for a contrast with the "striker" role. The default non-stickiness of melee also permits the easy implementation of skirmisher/swashbuckler abilities (much more straightforwardly then something like the thief-acrobat ability in UA).In 5e, melee is non-sticky by default, like the two previous editions and unlike AD&D. Furthermore, movement is much more easy to achieve than in 3E and 4e - which make movement part of a rigid action economy. Hence forced movement is less of a thing in 5e than 4e. This change in action economy is part of a larger goal, in 5e, of reducing mechanical minutiae, particularly those which encourage use of maps/grids to track position. One consequence of this is that "defending", in the 4e sense, is unlikely to be as big a thing in 5e. Using 4e language, 5e fighter abilities like attack interrupts and damage reduction fit into the "leader" basket as well, or better, than the "defender" basket.Overall upshot: 4e has distincitve mechanical features - combining aspects of 3E's approach to movement in melee combat with a desire to recreate, at least in respect of fighters and some similar classes, the sticky melee of AD&D - which make "defender" a distinctive mechanical role in that edition. It is not present in AD&D, 3E or 5e in the same way.That does not mean that those other editions don't have roles, however - they still rather detailed combat resolution mechanics, which interact in myriad and fairly pedantic ways with a range of abilities that are rationed by class. This is the sort of mechanical state of affairs out of which roles emerge.If I think of RPGs without roles in the sense that 4e has them, I think of ones in which there are no classes (eg RQ), and so no pre-determined patterns of PC build that generate typical patterns of PC competence and non-competence; or of ones which lack the fine-grained mechanical resolution procedures in which those different competencies express themselves (eg Tunnels & Trolls, or for a more modern game Marvel Heroic RP).</blockquote>

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