D&D 5E What if 5e had 2 types of roles

[AbdulAlhazred]

A fair point. Consistent design always sounds good in the abstract, but is harder to do in practice. Let me give an example:

In this hypothetical, let's say that classes (i.e. the combat part) don't provide skills or utility powers. (I'm not saying this is a good idea, I'm just trying to create a hypothetical that is close enough to existing 4e mechanics that we could discuss it.) Also, for the purpose of this discussion, I'm going to use the word "theme" to refer to the non-combat part of the character.

In this example, the rogue class wouldn't provide skills or utility powers but would instead allow the character to choose any martial theme. Let's consider a hypothetical "Sneak" theme, a martial example of the infiltrator role. Similarly, a warlock could choose any arcane or shadow theme. Let's consider a hypothetical "Shadow" theme, an arcane example of the infiltrator role.

The Sneak theme might grant Stealth and Thievery training, plus training in any two of Acrobatics, Athletics, Bluff, Perception or Streetwise, plus any two skills of the character's choice. The Sneak theme might also come utility powers such as Fleeting Ghost, Persistent Tail or Shadow Stride, plus others (that are more like martial rituals) for disguise, creating a secret campsite and providing a bonus on a group stealth check.

The Shadow theme might grant Arcana, Stealth and Thievery, plus training in Bluff, History or Perception, plus any two skills of the character's choice. The Shadow theme might have more magical utility powers like Float, Invisibility along with abilities that are currently in the game as illusion rituals.

Continuing along this path, you could imagine a primal infiltrator theme focused on self-transformation that granted Nature, Stealth and Perception, plus a choice of Acrobatics, Athletics and Thievery and any other two skills. The powers of that theme might start with cat eyes (low-light vision) and cat feet (stealth bonus) and progress into transformation into a small bird.

I'm not sure there would be a separate divine or psionic infiltrator, but I would allow an Avenger or Monk to access Sneak. To get a little wacky, you could also imagine a second arcane infiltrator theme based around transformation where the character uses a lot of Knock, Passwall and Fade into Stone style magic. Also, characters who want multiple themes could presumably spend a feat to gain access to the utility powers of a second theme.

-KS

OK, the only major question I have at this point is where is 'infiltrator' really coming into this. You've got themes driving most non-combat skill/etc functions, which is OK, I think 5e will NEED to do more of this kind of blocking together of options and creating more smaller lists of things you can access in different combinations. I'm not sure themes need to be ALL about non-combat or restricted to that side of the fence, but that's really a different discussion. Anyway, I just haven't really found a spot where I need to attach some actual mechanics to 'infiltrator'. Nor does it seem like it does more mechanically than act as a flag. That's OK, but I'm leery of lists. Once you start making lists you are staking out some ground and saying "this list of things are the relevant things, everything else is right out". With combat roles I think that is OK because the 4 roles really DO cover all the conceptual functions of combat (and really if you study military tactics map fairly well onto the functions and concepts that say the Army will tell you are relevant). Any list of non-combat roles I would think would necessarily be open-ended, and as I say, I'm leery of open-ended lists where the list claims to categorize everyone. An open list of say races is OK, nobody ever has trouble fitting into that list. A list of non-combat roles OTOH might not fit everyone, and then you run into where players have issues or the system starts to feel restrictive or artificial.

 

[KarinsDad]

So for a fighter to use Dex for melee, they'd have to use light fast weapons like daggers were more important than strength; to use Con, they'd need to use hammers, for Int, they'd need to use weapons where strategy was more imporant than speed and strength (rapiers, for instance), and for Wis or Cha, they'd need to train in techniques that made their weapon use more magical than physical -and- use appropriate weapons for that technique.

And it already becomes implausible.

Why is CON needed to do a lot of damage with a hammer when STR makes more sense? Because some game designer wanted to do that. It's not that it makes any sense at all. Ditto for rapiers and INT. Stupid people can use rapiers in the real world and use them real well.

Physical activities should use physical stats. Mental or magical activities should use mental stats.

Just because a game designer made implausible game design decisions in the past doesn't mean that we should hand wave away plausibility in a future game design. The concept of "well, we can accept anything, as long as it's balanced" is a bit lame. We can accept any hair-brained idea that a game designer comes up with, but why should we have to? Why shouldn't the game make a certain amount of logical sense?

The "you can use any stat for anything" concept is merely another way to change D&D into GURPS where the player can purchase and design his PC any way he wants and even in GURPS, stat modifiers make sense with regard to what they modify. Once one goes down the road of anything goes, game balance and logical consistency starts to be thrown out the window.

 

[KarinsDad]

A list of non-combat roles OTOH might not fit everyone, and then you run into where players have issues or the system starts to feel restrictive or artificial.

Interestingly enough, there are people who won't play D&D because a class is too restrictive for them.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Would the game be worsse if there was a weapon property, light melee, that makes basic melee attacks with this weapon automatically use dexterity?

I also believe making every stat usable for anything should not be the goal... but having properties that make weapons more distinct seems a good idea...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And it already becomes implausible.

Why is CON needed to do a lot of damage with a hammer when STR makes more sense? Because some game designer wanted to do that. It's not that it makes any sense at all. Ditto for rapiers and INT. Stupid people can use rapiers in the real world and use them real well.

Physical activities should use physical stats. Mental or magical activities should use mental stats.

Just because a game designer made implausible game design decisions in the past doesn't mean that we should hand wave away plausibility in a future game design. The concept of "well, we can accept anything, as long as it's balanced" is a bit lame. We can accept any hair-brained idea that a game designer comes up with, but why should we have to? Why shouldn't the game make a certain amount of logical sense?

The "you can use any stat for anything" concept is merely another way to change D&D into GURPS where the player can purchase and design his PC any way he wants and even in GURPS, stat modifiers make sense with regard to what they modify. Once one goes down the road of anything goes, game balance and logical consistency starts to be thrown out the window.

Yeah, I agree. I think some middle ground can be obtained. If each weapon and implement had an associated attack stat then the player can decide for himself what his primary stat is, which gives a pretty decent selection even if it is only 2-3 viable choices per class. Making secondary stats more flexible would take you pretty much the rest of the way. You'd then be able to allocate your fighter's stats pretty much anywhere and equip the character to be effective with those choices. That would give you the ability to focus skills as you wish too. You certainly wouldn't be able to make ALL permutations totally effective, but you could probably get pretty close. I kind of suspect that was what 4e originally thought it was aiming for and it just fell to the side when the design solidified. 4e did pretty well, but I think there are a lot of those kinds of considerations that didn't work out perfectly. Pretty typical for a complex design. Even as-is it is pretty good. I mean a fighter can have secondaries of CON, WIS, and DEX. Adding some ways to use CHA or INT could be done, though how much that stepped on the 'warlord' concept would really depend on how the game was designed. Warlord might end up being eaten by fighter anyway, or be a 'fighter' option or something.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

OP here,

I feel there is already alot of out of combat options out there, and I think siloing is a good thing. I also want to use these roles, witch I like the idea of combineing backgrounds and themes to get, being used as short hand.

Imagin 5 guys sit down at a con to make up characters for 4e. The DM told them to use the basic Raw rules. Player 1 only has hero's of X from essential. Player 2 has all the essential books, and hero's of shadow, player 3 has PHB 1 and 2, but nothing after those books, players 4 and 5 have DDI, and all the books.

So when Player 5 says he is playing a warlord, and player 1 and 2 have no idea what it is, the short hand is Martial Leader. When player 2 says he is a Hexblade and player 3 says "whats that?" Arcane Striker is a short hand. When player 4 says warden is Primal Defender... they all understand.

Now I want a short hand for skill challanges and general skill use too.

 

[KidSnide]

OK, the only major question I have at this point is where is 'infiltrator' really coming into this. You've got themes driving most non-combat skill/etc functions, which is OK, I think 5e will NEED to do more of this kind of blocking together of options and creating more smaller lists of things you can access in different combinations. I'm not sure themes need to be ALL about non-combat or restricted to that side of the fence, but that's really a different discussion.

I'm not sure that "non-combat" roles need to be strictly limited to non-combat either. (Certainly, there are stealth uses of combat that make sense. Most of the other skills have some combat-applicable utility power.)

However, I think the non-combat roles need to start with non-combat. 4e made a significant advancement over 3x by removing arcane magic as the ultimate tool to bypass any non-combat challenge. However, I don't think 4e really put anything back in its place. Skills are important, but dominate or are dominated by rituals and utility powers in something of a hodge podge. I'm not particularly set on any particular design, but I'd like the 5e designers to look at the major types of non-combat challenges, figure out the collections of abilities well suited to solve those problems and let the players pick from appropriate packages.

Anyway, I just haven't really found a spot where I need to attach some actual mechanics to 'infiltrator'. Nor does it seem like it does more mechanically than act as a flag.

Well, yes, it's a flag in much the same way that Defender and Striker are flags. Striker doesn't have any specific mechanic. It's just a marker to that says this class has a special damage enhancing ability. The role indicates that the classes (or themes) that are of this role will be especially good at the actions associated with the role (buffing/healing, defending, single-target-killing or AoE/conditions) or (infiltrating, persuading, exploring/traveling, or information gathering).

That's OK, but I'm leery of lists. Once you start making lists you are staking out some ground and saying "this list of things are the relevant things, everything else is right out". With combat roles I think that is OK because the 4 roles really DO cover all the conceptual functions of combat (and really if you study military tactics map fairly well onto the functions and concepts that say the Army will tell you are relevant). Any list of non-combat roles I would think would necessarily be open-ended, and as I say, I'm leery of open-ended lists where the list claims to categorize everyone. An open list of say races is OK, nobody ever has trouble fitting into that list. A list of non-combat roles OTOH might not fit everyone, and then you run into where players have issues or the system starts to feel restrictive or artificial.

I don't think the 4 roles are actually a complete list of combat abilities. I just think they're good enough. One could imagine a high-defense character class that creates large zones around them that damage and imposes conditions on both enemies and friends, but slightly more on enemies and even more when they are close. (Imagine some partially controlled elemental magic.) Such a character would be a lot like a controller, but they would also operate much like a defender because they need to go up to enemies and lock then down. There are a gazillion variety of possible classes, so I'm not really worried that 4e doesn't support every possible PC concept, but the existing roles is just one more imperfect framework that we've become used to.

But stepping back for a moment, I think the missed the major advantage to having non-combat roles, which is that it lets you design non-combat situations that everyone can particulate in. Sure, a face-character is going to dominate in pure persuasion gameplay, but you don't have to design the encounter that way. If there is a duke that needs to be persuaded, the GM can provide several important clues to help the persuasion that can be gained by information gathering, exploration or infiltrating, respectively. That means that each type of player can participate in the effort.

In effect, if a GM designs a situation where each role can contribute, and each role is guaranteed to be at least marginally capable in role-appropriate activities, then each PC is assured that there will be useful ways of contributing out-of-combat. That is very different from today's fighter who can easily discovery that Athletics, Endurance and Heal just aren't useful this module.

Of course, not every obstacle needs to have four approaches. (Not every lock or trap needs to be persuadable.) You could easily fill an adventure with a dozen obstacle, each of which is amenable to 2-3 approaches. That provides balance of opportunity in the aggregate, even if individual encounters/obstacles are dominated by a specific role.

-KS

 

[mneme]

And it already becomes implausible.

Why is CON needed to do a lot of damage with a hammer when STR makes more sense? Because some game designer wanted to do that. It's not that it makes any sense at all. Ditto for rapiers and INT. Stupid people can use rapiers in the real world and use them real well.

Dude? I fence. I didn't pick rapier by accident.

It's more plausible that you use Int for long light weapons than Dex. Certainly than Str. You need a modicum of Str and Dex to use such weapons, but the primary indicator is strategy. If someone beats me, it's rarely going to be because they're stronger than I am, and rarely because they're faster (and if either, it's because they're a -lot- faster or a -lot- stronger); more often they're smarter (doubtful) or more skillful. And I've certainly beaten better fencers soley through strategy. Clearly, Int should be the primary trait for all physical combat, with everything else relegated to secondary use, if at all.

I can -easily- make an argument that any D&D stat is paramount in physical combat. It's not even hard. Except Con (where I could do it with magic, but doing it with active combat might require changing your understanding of what Con means) -- and frankly, I'd be fine with having Con be the stat that no attacks are based on; it justifies itself. But I also don't really mind if Con has weapons or classes it powers, and maybe someone else can make good arguments for Con-based weapon attacks.

 

[Ryujin]

CON, for weapon attacks: Wail wildly and constantly at your opponent, until he's too tired to defend himself properly, then kill him.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not sure that "non-combat" roles need to be strictly limited to non-combat either. (Certainly, there are stealth uses of combat that make sense. Most of the other skills have some combat-applicable utility power.)

However, I think the non-combat roles need to start with non-combat. 4e made a significant advancement over 3x by removing arcane magic as the ultimate tool to bypass any non-combat challenge. However, I don't think 4e really put anything back in its place. Skills are important, but dominate or are dominated by rituals and utility powers in something of a hodge podge. I'm not particularly set on any particular design, but I'd like the 5e designers to look at the major types of non-combat challenges, figure out the collections of abilities well suited to solve those problems and let the players pick from appropriate packages.

Well, I dunno, I think the non-combat abilities are pretty well defined. I could see 5e regularizing the terminology and mechanics some. Perhaps restructuring things to make practices and utility powers into one consistent mechanism, etc. I'd just rather not see some kind of 'you get to pick from THIS bin' concept. That IMHO would be as faulty as the old 3e 'class skills' concept where you had to pay extra to do anything except whatever the author of your base class thought was appropriate.

Well, yes, it's a flag in much the same way that Defender and Striker are flags. Striker doesn't have any specific mechanic. It's just a marker to that says this class has a special damage enhancing ability. The role indicates that the classes (or themes) that are of this role will be especially good at the actions associated with the role (buffing/healing, defending, single-target-killing or AoE/conditions) or (infiltrating, persuading, exploring/traveling, or information gathering).


I don't think the 4 roles are actually a complete list of combat abilities. I just think they're good enough. One could imagine a high-defense character class that creates large zones around them that damage and imposes conditions on both enemies and friends, but slightly more on enemies and even more when they are close. (Imagine some partially controlled elemental magic.) Such a character would be a lot like a controller, but they would also operate much like a defender because they need to go up to enemies and lock then down. There are a gazillion variety of possible classes, so I'm not really worried that 4e doesn't support every possible PC concept, but the existing roles is just one more imperfect framework that we've become used to.

Actually I think the 4 combat roles ARE fundamental. They transcend D&D (though D&D puts its own spin on them to some extent). Go back to The Art of War and you'll find the same tactical concepts. They aren't a construct of the game at all, they fall naturally out of the very fundamental nature of tactics and you could not create a different set that would be meaningful, nor construct a fifth role which was equally fundamental. This is entirely different from the non-combat role concept, which is simply a packaging up of similar mechanics. I think they are fundamentally different.

But stepping back for a moment, I think the missed the major advantage to having non-combat roles, which is that it lets you design non-combat situations that everyone can particulate in. Sure, a face-character is going to dominate in pure persuasion gameplay, but you don't have to design the encounter that way. If there is a duke that needs to be persuaded, the GM can provide several important clues to help the persuasion that can be gained by information gathering, exploration or infiltrating, respectively. That means that each type of player can participate in the effort.

In effect, if a GM designs a situation where each role can contribute, and each role is guaranteed to be at least marginally capable in role-appropriate activities, then each PC is assured that there will be useful ways of contributing out-of-combat. That is very different from today's fighter who can easily discovery that Athletics, Endurance and Heal just aren't useful this module.

Of course, not every obstacle needs to have four approaches. (Not every lock or trap needs to be persuadable.) You could easily fill an adventure with a dozen obstacle, each of which is amenable to 2-3 approaches. That provides balance of opportunity in the aggregate, even if individual encounters/obstacles are dominated by a specific role.

-KS

I've just never found a need to have a conceptual tool to tell me that I need a variety of things for different characters to do in a non-combat situation. Honestly I don't think combat roles are even that useful to the DM in making combat encounters. They are useful to the players in terms of conceiving of how a team of PCs will be organized. So I would look to that for any justification for non-combat roles. Do your categories help the players organize a party which can operate in different flexible ways? The thing is, I'm not really sure there's a compelling need there that is unmet. The game already focuses each character on one or two ability scores, and that pretty well determines what sorts of things they are good at. Your CHA guy does the talking, your DEX guy does the sneaking, your WIS guy does the spotting of things, and your STR guy does the jumping and climbing. It is of course POSSIBLE to make a party that lacks one of those, but both unlikely and fairly obvious if it happens.

In other words, I'm not sure I WANT characters funneled into a specific function outside of combat. In fact I think a lot of the things I hear about people being annoyed over amount to the game already doing that. You have plenty of people complaining (see the 5e thread) that they don't like the way their CHA primary guy is stuck always being the face, etc. I'm not sure why I want that aspect of the game amplified and codified as opposed to hauled out back and shot.

I'd see 5e as MORE flexible on the non-combat side. I'd see the result being PCs would have options of some sort to let them use a variety of ability scores in combat (maybe say attack bonus decided by type of weapon/implement instead of power). That would give you even more flexibility on the non-combat side to be say a CHA/DEX fighter or something like that (this might feel a lot like the existing Warlord class).