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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5699740" data-attributes="member: 82106">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.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. 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).</blockquote>

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