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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 7907632" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I'd be curious what you think the other half is. But, to answer your question: The designers have expressly said that they want this to be a game about Combat, Exploration, and Socialization (the "three pillars"). That means those are the most key, most fundamental components of the play experience, whatever those terms mean in the context of the game. This, incidentally, is part of what I mean by giving non-answers; people throw out jargon terms like this without defining what they mean, assuming--IMO very unwisely--that people "just know" what they mean.Before we get into that, though, there's a more important thing that the designers rarely talk about--it's so fundamental it often gets forgotten in design discussions. That is, D&D is a cooperative game...and that is also something that often goes without definition because people (IMO unwisely) assume that everyone just knows what a "cooperative game" is. I define a "cooperative game" as a system of rules that determine the success or failure of individual actions directed toward player goals, for which multiple equally-valid solutions (meaning it's not a puzzle or a trivially-solvable game like tic-tac-toe/noughts-and-crosses) and strategies exist--in other words, a game--wherein each player is given equal opportunity to participate in the process that determines the overall success or failure, and where it is not possible for any individual player (and perhaps even not possible for any proper subset of players!) to produce a unilaterally successful strategy.In more jargony terms: It's a non-trivial/non-solved ruleset, with one or more resolution mechanics, that both offers and depends on every player having equal opportunity to participate in all essential aspects of the ruleset. Non-essential aspects, being non-essential, can be divvied up however one likes, because those are merely..."experience enhancers," if you will. Analogically (and yes, I know the perils of argument by analogy, but): Guacamole isn't an essential part of nachos, but chips and cheese are--it's not really vital that every plate of nachos get some guac on it, but a plate of nachos that has a heavily skewed ratio of chips to cheese is probably going to get a bad reaction.So, what are these "essential" things? Let's start with combat. No version of D&D has really broken the mold of combat, so we actually have quite a good idea what that is. It involves things like HP/damage, initiative, weapons/spells/items, AC. If combat is meant to be a "pillar" of the game, an essential part of the experience, then every player should have a part to play in how combat happens, and no player should have unilateral control over how combat happens. Furthermore, it is desirable to ensure that, no matter what choices players make, they DO have SOMETHING to contribute (even if it's similar to what others can contribute or not necessarily the strongest way to do that particular "something"). This is where your bugaboo about "combat roles" becomes an issue: you are, at least as I understand the term, opposed to players having guaranteed minimum competence in something the game explicitly says is essential to the experience of D&D. Asking these questions Socratically, not because I'm implying anything about your actual beliefs: Does this mean you simply want some people to just get left out of combat? That you want some classes to have unilateral control over it? That you oppose what the designers have said, and assert that combat is not an essential part of the D&D experience? etc.We can get to the other stuff later. This is the one you've actually voiced opinions about (and also the one that's easiest to actually discuss, since it has definition in a way the other two really don't.)</blockquote>

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