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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6544832" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this, but if you're saying that 4e deliberately took a looser approach to non-combat resolution than earlier versions of D&D, then I agree.There is an umbrella concept of "support character". Gygax in the PHB asserts that the druid, like the cleric, satisfies it. As it happens I think he is not entirely correct about that - the 1st ed AD&D druid is something of a cleric-MU hybrid (in 4e terms a leader-controller) - but the concept existed.Two things.First, I don't understand the contrast between "strengthening ability in a combat role" and "selecting mechanics based on what they wish their character to do". Presumably, when the player of the invoker in my 4e game choose Invoked Devastation as a feat, that was because he wanted to increase the area of effect of his AoE powers - so he was selecting based on what h wished his character could do, and in that particular case he was strengthening his ability in his combat role. When he chose Fey feats so that he could teleport at will, that was also based on what he wanted his character to be able to do (in particular, escape from grapples and similar traps), but it wasn't strengthening his control abilities.Second, I don't think that "the 4e crowd" define their characters by combat role. Maybe some 4e players do, but plenty don't. In my 4e game the players define their characters by what they aspire to have them do. This includes abilities related to combat function, and non-combat function, and those combat functions sometimes but not always overlap with the class's notional combat role.That is a biographical fact about you. Without knowing exactly what you are looking for from D&D, it's not clear to me what it tells us about D&D.What I look for from D&D is an experience that resembles the promise of Moldvay Basic's foreword: freeing the oppressed kingdom from the dragon tyrant, using the sword gifted by the mysterious hermit. Of editions of D&D, the one that has done the best job of giving me that sort of experience is 4e, mostly because it completely divorces the game's mechanics (PC build mechanics, XP mechanics, treasure apportionment mechanics) from it's Gygaxian dungeoneering roots.In Gygaxian D&D, a paladin has the tropes of a paladin, but plays as a mercenary - s/he is trawling through dungeons earning XP by hauling out gold. In 4e, the tropes are retained (and not just for the paladin, but for the cleric, the melee fighter, and the wizard - the ranger and thief are more distant cousins of their AD&D equivalents) but they are liberated from the distorting context of Gygaxian D&D play.For me, that is an improvement. But it is mostly orthogonal to the question of combat roles.</blockquote>

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