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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6718002" data-attributes="member: 996">Fascinating.  What was this point of divergence for D&D?  In what year did it happen? (assuming you use the same calendar) Same thing it was in 4e: a character who could use tactics, inspiration, and martial training to help a D&D party through the challenges of adventuring, filling the critical support role that had traditionally been done by the cleric.But support characters and non-casters are still there, so the lack of a formal label really doesn't matter. Get a downed ally back into the fight, for one example.  Out of a potential 336. Play a character without having to deal with neo-Vancian casting.Play in a campaign that's not using the multi-classing rules.Just the stereotypical hero who 1) doesn't have supernatural powers, 2) is competent, 3) provides inspiration and/or leadership and/or tactical insights &c as a way of getting things done.  It's a very common archetype in genre.  Much, much more common than the 'Cleric' who stands behind the hero and touches him periodically to make his wounds disappear, or the 'Wizard' who memorizes spells but forgets them when he casts them.The small number of non-caster sub-classes in 5e - and the relatively small number of such classes in D&D traditionally - does make it hard to narrow them down to unique archetypes.   A 0e Fighter, for instance, was anyone who didn't cast spells.  Then the Thief got broken out from that, and it became anyone who didn't cast spells and also wasn't so great at climbing walls & stealing stuff (or donning disguises & committing stealthy murder, lest we forget the Assassin sub-class of Thief) for quite a long while, really.  I mean, that's really the vast majority of characters from history/myth/legend/literature/fantasy-genres,  ALL fighters.  In 5e, we have slightly more sub-classes carrying that burden - Champions, Battlemasters, Thieves & Assassins and arguably Berserkers - to cover that same vast expanse of characters.   Some of them, they do well.  Grey Mouser?  Definitely a Thief.  All those annoying ninjas?  Assassins.   You can tell the Berserkers by the whole rage thing.  That leaves the Champions & Battlemasters - 2/3rds of a class - to handle everyone else, and it's not like there's all that much to either of 'em.Contrast that to the casters sub-classes available and what they represent in Genre.  We have 7 flavors of Cleric, and there's not a single glowy-handed-healing, heavy-armored, forgets-his-prayers-as-he-recites-them character outside actual D&D licensed fiction.  We have 8 wizards and do any of them play remotely like Gandalf or Harry Potter or anything in-between?  Warlocks at least start to cover archetypes actually in genre - mostly villains, but at least they're in genre - and their Vancianism is less pronounced, so you can kinda squint & see them looking like something you might actually see in a story.  The Sorcerer comes closest to modeling magical powers something like you might expect a character in genre to display (maybe not talk up 'I know hundreds of spells of opening..,' but actually use to some effect).</blockquote>

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