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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6550718" data-attributes="member: 996">You could certainly play a Cleric who never preps a healing spell, and, viola, he's not filling the healer role anymore.&nbsp; He may be contributing sub-optimally to his part, possibly even contributing to their demise, but he is, indeed, 'free' of the healer role.&nbsp; The Cleric has enough spells, though, that if someone else takes up the healing burden, he could probably neatly fill some other (traditional or de-facto) role well enough to be fully-contributing.&nbsp; A pacifist fighter who refused to ever swing his weapon would be another instance of a character bucking his classic role - though he'd have little else to do with his extra attacks/round and action surge.Not having formal roles takes a lot of pressure off the design of classes.&nbsp; A class can just be whatever you dream up, even if it doesn't contribute much to the party, contributes different things at different levels or even just different days, over-contributes to the point of dominating play and marginalizing characters of other classes, or is differentiated from other classes only by fairly meaningless or pedantic mechanical distinctions.&nbsp; That's a lot of 'design space' opened up.&nbsp; &nbsp;That's a nice idea.&nbsp; Classes actually get in the way of that approach - even with 3e-style multi-classing or 4e-style reskinning - classless systems are much better at facilitating it.&nbsp; Hero system, for instance:&nbsp; you don't even have a choice of classes, you just come up with a concept and build it up from individual stats and powers.&nbsp;&nbsp; Rather, classes spark character ideas and/or emulate stock characters or archetypes from the genre and/or make character building easier by presenting a complete/functional/contributing package of abilities without requiring undue system mastery.&nbsp; When they do those things well, they're a positive for the game. Especially for new players who are not going to have the system mastery to do a viable build-to-concept, and who can't count on having an experienced DM or system master there to mentor them.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6550718, member: 996"] You could certainly play a Cleric who never preps a healing spell, and, viola, he's not filling the healer role anymore. He may be contributing sub-optimally to his part, possibly even contributing to their demise, but he is, indeed, 'free' of the healer role. The Cleric has enough spells, though, that if someone else takes up the healing burden, he could probably neatly fill some other (traditional or de-facto) role well enough to be fully-contributing. A pacifist fighter who refused to ever swing his weapon would be another instance of a character bucking his classic role - though he'd have little else to do with his extra attacks/round and action surge. Not having formal roles takes a lot of pressure off the design of classes. A class can just be whatever you dream up, even if it doesn't contribute much to the party, contributes different things at different levels or even just different days, over-contributes to the point of dominating play and marginalizing characters of other classes, or is differentiated from other classes only by fairly meaningless or pedantic mechanical distinctions. That's a lot of 'design space' opened up. That's a nice idea. Classes actually get in the way of that approach - even with 3e-style multi-classing or 4e-style reskinning - classless systems are much better at facilitating it. Hero system, for instance: you don't even have a choice of classes, you just come up with a concept and build it up from individual stats and powers. Rather, classes spark character ideas and/or emulate stock characters or archetypes from the genre and/or make character building easier by presenting a complete/functional/contributing package of abilities without requiring undue system mastery. When they do those things well, they're a positive for the game. Especially for new players who are not going to have the system mastery to do a viable build-to-concept, and who can't count on having an experienced DM or system master there to mentor them. [/QUOTE]

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