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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 9863425" data-attributes="member: 32164">I disagree with the MMO “Tank, DPS, Healing, Magic” role thing because it literally comes from D&D’s “Core 4.”Fundamentally, other than healing, there’s three things you can do in combat (I’ll tackle healing in a minute).1. You can be a frontline melee combatant.2. You can be a skirmisher, either attacking from range, or acting as a highly mobile melee combatant.(*)3. You can cast spells.Now, spellcasters can function in a LOT of different ways, including targeted attacks,  area attacks, manipulating the battlefield, or weakening adversaries. Which makes their niche complicated.Healing isn’t a particularly interesting thing to do in combat. If a low-level potion can replace your niche, it’s not a very good niche.(*) A reasonable argument could be made that a ranged combatant and a skirmishing melee combatant are two very different roles. I tend not to think so, because part of what happens in a normal fight is that most archers have to use weapons other than their bows at times.I’d draw the Aragorn-Legolas comparison. While Gimli is a frontline fighter, wading into combat with his axes and hacking enemies down, Aragorn generally prefers to fight as more of a skirmisher, even though he does it from melee. He dashes in, makes his kills, and moves on to the next target. While he doesn’t even carry a bow in the books, he has one in the movies and it very much suits his preferred combat style.Legolas, by contrast, is a mostly a ranged skirmisher, shooting his bow from a distance, and fighting in melee (using a single long knife, in the books, and paired ones, in the films) only when necessary.Different fighting styles can be as much a combat niche as DPS, Tank, Healer and Mage.(As an aside, I would note that Clerics got the things needed to be a second-string fighter in early D&D, and “extra fighters” was almost always what was suggested once the primary roles were covered).</blockquote>

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