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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5699305" data-attributes="member: 54877">I think it could work, but related to your objection, I don't think it would be a 1:1 match with combat roles.  I agree that the spread of possible roles is just too wide, especially since some of those roles will be things that people don't want in any given campaign. However, I think it might work where every character was 1 combat role + 2 or 3 non-combat roles.  (Among other things, in games where people wanted to emphasize or not this aspect, they could do so by bumping the standard number of non-combat roles up or down by one.  "Exactly one" tends to get rather fixed around other design decisions.) Obviously, there is going to be some overlap in skills and special abilities with that many, but I see that as a virtue, too.  You can make it so that taking overlapping roles allows for a bit of extra specialization, while spreading out as much as possible gives a wider range of skills.   On the ability side, you might be able to set the abilities mostly or even entirely by bonuses granted by roles and race.  So if you are a dwarf, fighter, miner, loremaster you get Str/Con, Str/Con, Con/Wis, Int/Wis boosts.  But the otherwise same character going for merchant and politician gets more Int, Wis, Cha boosts.  Obviously, the class role being represented only once would need a bigger single boost than the others.  Might lead to too much powergaming at the expense of versatility, but some careful trade-offs in a definite set of non-combat roles could make it work. Of course, if you want to get really exotic, you go the "lifepath" route.  That would be a first in D&D! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  So then non-combat roles are pretty narrow, you get a bunch of them, and about all they do is grant some bonuses to skills, minor bonuses to abilities, and a few special abilities.</blockquote>

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