# L&L: These are not the rules you're looking for



## Tom Servo (Mar 26, 2012)

Here.

Very interesting.  I really like what he is saying about roles here.


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## JamesonCourage (Mar 26, 2012)

Mr. Mearls said:
			
		

> I want roles to take the form of advice to help players learn the game, not a straitjacket that works against the freedom and flexibility offered by RPGs.



Yay!


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## TwinBahamut (Mar 26, 2012)

I'm very unhappy to see roles talked about in such a way. Roles are a _fantastic_ idea. "Playing your class how you want to" is a pretty short road to imbalance and poorly designed classes. Roles are a mechanical idea. Treating them as "advice" is silly.

It would be nice if the polls actually addressed the main subject he is talking about. Oh well... I tend to dislike player-oriented advice in D&D (it is usually really stiff and ridiculous, and eats up precious space better devoted to other things), so I voted they should just give DM advice. Not that I use the DM advice very much...


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## FireLance (Mar 26, 2012)

Here's a blast from the past: the Design and Development article on PC Roles from 31 August 2007.

It's interesting how the original design goals of solving "the problems faced by D&D characters who don't feel a clear niche" and attempting to "make sure every character class filled a crucial role in the player character group" somehow became perceived as "a straitjacket that works against the freedom and flexibility offered by RPGs".

Oh well, at least they are still aware that "Classes that are significantly weaker than the other classes - defined as easily overshadowed in all the aspects of the game - need a redesign".

Every once in a while, when you watch the clouds, you get a silver lining, eh?


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## Stormonu (Mar 26, 2012)

Thank God they are dropping the roles bit from 5E.  I absolutely hated that in 4E.  Good riddance.

And what the heck do the poll options have to do with with anything he was talking about?  Seems like just another badly worded poll to me.  They shouldn't be asking whether there should be advice (of course there should!), but HOW MUCH and WHAT TYPE.  Do we want something that's just like the 4E PHB1, which is primarily rules, or on the other extreme, do you want something akin to the 4E Player Strategy Guide?


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## DogBackward (Mar 26, 2012)

See, roles have been around since the beginning of the game. People are complaining that they're "removing roles", but that's not possible. What they're doing is not making them so tied in to the class. Even in 4e, you could play a Fighter that was closer to a Striker, with high Strength and ignoring Wisdom and marking special abilities. There's no difference in the way they'll do it now, there just won't be any abilities that _force_ you into a role. That's the whole point; they'll explain what the roles are, and how to make a character that can be a "Defender" or a "Striker"... but it sounds to me like they're going to make it easier for _anybody_ to take on those roles, instead of requiring you to play a certain class and a certain playstyle in order to do it.

You can't remove roles, because people will always fall into those niches. Even back in 3.5, we had people looking at everybody else's characters, making sure we had a "tanky guy" and a "healer" and a "kill-things-really-fast type". I see no problem with broadening the ways to do this while keeping things open for people that might not want to conform so closely. I mean, we all remember the guy that kept playing Bards that didn't do much of any one thing, but helped a little in every area. What's so wrong with that?


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## Tom Servo (Mar 26, 2012)

TwinBahamut said:


> I'm very unhappy to see roles talked about in such a way. Roles are a _fantastic_ idea. "Playing your class how you want to" is a pretty short road to imbalance and poorly designed classes. Roles are a mechanical idea. Treating them as "advice" is silly.




I definitely wouldn't call it silly, I believe most editions treated roles in such a way.  I think (hope) the 5e designers are trying to focus on what is special about table-top RPG's (in character play, creativity, story-telling, etc).

And I must say, I love balance as much as the next guy (I'm even a bit of a stickler about it in my groups), but if I have to make a choice between balanced classes and playing a class how I want to...I'll take the latter.


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## Shemeska (Mar 26, 2012)

> Originally Posted by Mr. Mearls
> I want roles to take the form of advice to help players learn the game, not a straitjacket that works against the freedom and flexibility offered by RPGs.




Thank God.


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## Dornam (Mar 26, 2012)

FireLance said:


> ...attempting to "make sure every character class filled a crucial role in the player character group"...




The problem was that the Roles were tailored for combat only. That was limiting for an RPG and needlessy so.

Besides the Roles were rather cheesily named ("Striker", I beg your pardon).


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## Dice4Hire (Mar 26, 2012)

I have no problem with the combat roles in 4E. I love them, in fact.

However, they stopped before making non-combat roles.

We need a couple sets of roles

The infinite combinations would be cool


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## Kynn (Mar 26, 2012)

Wow, those are pretty stupid poll questions.

Also, dismaying but not unexpected to see them throwing out every innovation of 4e design.


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## FireLance (Mar 26, 2012)

Dornam said:


> The problem was that the Roles were tailored for combat only. That was limiting for an RPG and needlessy so.



I'm not sure if you're familiar with the traditional argument why roles are limiting: namely, that they forced PCs to act in one particular way in combat. Now, I happen to disagree with that argument (in fact, I would say that it doesn't even have a factual basis), but if you do accept that argument, the logical soultion would not be to extend the concept of roles to the non-combat aspects of the game. That would seem to create constraints where none had previously existed.


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## Li Shenron (Mar 26, 2012)

There is a HUGE difference between saying "you are playing the Fighter so you should fight" and "you are playing the Fighter so you should be the tank" 

Pre-4e roles were generic enough so that you could have different types of fighters or wizards: a fighter could cover a few different roles, and one role could be covered by several classes. Shoehorning classes into one default combat role really impoverished the game IMHO, it felt like reduced biodiversity.


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## JamesonCourage (Mar 26, 2012)

Li Shenron said:


> There is a HUGE difference between saying "you are playing the Fighter so you should fight" and "you are playing the Fighter so you should be the tank"



_Exactly._ (Can't XP again yet, or you'd have gotten that comment with some yummy level-up sauce, too.)


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## FireLance (Mar 26, 2012)

Li Shenron said:


> There is a HUGE difference between saying "you are playing the Fighter so you should fight" and "you are playing the Fighter so you should be the tank"
> 
> Pre-4e roles were generic enough so that you could have different types of fighters or wizards: a fighter could cover a few different roles, and one role could be covered by several classes. Shoehorning classes into one default combat role really impoverished the game IMHO, it felt like reduced biodiversity.



Right, and the problem is not roles. As you pointed out, the problem was shoehorning classes into one default combat role. (Not that it actually limited individual characters very much at the table, due to power selection and multiclassing, but we'll let it pass for now.)

Arguably, you could take the concept of roles (each character should be able to do at least one thing quite well), allow the player to choose what role his character wants to play (your fighter could be a Striker hard-hitting damage dealer, a Defender bodyguard and protector, or a Leader battlefield tactician providing guidance and inspiration to his allies - which do you choose?), and maybe even allow more experienced players the option to take on more than one role through feats or higher-level class feature choices.

Oh well, I hope  doesn't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

In other news, I just noticed that we have a  smiley.


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## JamesonCourage (Mar 26, 2012)

FireLance said:


> As you pointed out, the problem was shoehorning classes into one default combat role.
> 
> Arguably, you could take the concept of roles (each character should be able to do at least one thing quite well), allow the player to choose what role his character wants to play.



If they're going to go with this, why make you choose? Why not just give an indication (via tags?) what type of power/feat is? This keeps it "advice" like Mr. Mearls talks about, and if you want a purely "bodyguard" (Defender) type guy, only take [Defender] powers and feats. It'd also make looking up that type of power/feat in a computer database pretty easy, if they were tagged as such as well (select powers, check allowed books, check types of powers you're interested in: defender, fire).



FireLance said:


> In other news, I just noticed that we have a  smiley.



Ha, that's cool. I never knew we had so many smileys until now...


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## FireLance (Mar 26, 2012)

JamesonCourage said:


> If they're going to go with this, why make you choose? Why not just give an indication (via tags?) what type of power/feat is? This keeps it "advice" like Mr. Mearls talks about, and if you want a purely "bodyguard" (Defender) type guy, only take [Defender] powers and feats. It'd also make looking up that type of power/feat in a computer database pretty easy, if they were tagged as such as well (select powers, check allowed books, check types of powers you're interested in: defender, fire).



I guess it depends on how  is structured - fighters might no longer have "powers" (at least not in the basic module), but judging from one of the supposedly leaked playtests, they might be able to choose between fighting styles. There was one "defendery" style, one "strikery" style and two others (archery and two-weapon fighting) which allowed multiple attacks which could be considered "controllery".


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## pemerton (Mar 26, 2012)

FireLance said:


> Arguably, you could take the concept of roles (each character should be able to do at least one thing quite well), allow the player to choose what role his character wants to play (your fighter could be a Striker hard-hitting damage dealer, a Defender bodyguard and protector, or a Leader battlefield tactician providing guidance and inspiration to his allies - which do you choose?), and maybe even allow more experienced players the option to take on more than one role through feats or higher-level class feature choices.



It's almost as if you could choose to play a sword and shield fighter, a greatweapon fighter, a warlord, a barbarian, a STR ranger, etc! And then hybrid them, or multi-class into a paragon path from a different class, to mix things up a bit.



FireLance said:


> I'm not sure if you're familiar with the traditional argument why roles are limiting: namely, that they forced PCs to act in one particular way in combat. Now, I happen to disagree with that argument (in fact, I would say that it doesn't even have a factual basis)



I also think that it has no factual basis.


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## Nimblegrund (Mar 26, 2012)

I don't mind advice.  As a player, I have very little use for it, however.  So long as the rulebooks aren't crowded with advice, I think I willk be fine.

As a GM, though, I am less comfortable and primarily read the DMG for advice.  But again, don't crowd my rules with advice, either.


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## Li Shenron (Mar 26, 2012)

FireLance said:


> I guess it depends on how  is structured - fighters might no longer have "powers" (at least not in the basic module), but judging from one of the supposedly leaked playtests, they might be able to choose between fighting styles. There was one "defendery" style, one "strikery" style and two others (archery and two-weapon fighting) which allowed multiple attacks which could be considered "controllery".




I am not a fan of that solution either...

When I play a Wizard, I don't want to _have _to choose a path. All I need is to take a look at spells of next level(s), and if I feel like playing a blaster then I'd pick damage-dealing spells, while if I feel like building myself an arsenal of "controller's" spells I pick the appropriate ones. But I also want to be able to mix them in whatever proportion I feel like: maybe one good blast is enough for me this time, and maybe next character I really want more blasters with different damage types, who knows? This is actually quite the normal way of playing a Wizard for me...

So why shouldn't the Fighter or anyone else allow for a similar approach? You have your long list of feats/powers, you just read the description and decide if you want all "striker's type" feats, or if you want to complement them with 1-2 "defender's type" feats or more.

If the designers really want to help players, just stick a tag on feats/power for beginners... that's all you need, non-beginners *can read*. 

Instead, introducing "paths" or "fighting styles" is *bad design*, because once they're the rule, it's hard to get away from them. Of course you can house rules them (but that's not a very nice argument), but it's not only the players who are stuck with them, it's the designers of further products who are.

It's ok if such "fighting styles" are _recommendations_, but not if they are _rules_. IIRC, 3ed Oriental Adventures took the right approach: they described martial arts styles as a series of feats (both core and OA-specific ones) but they didn't tell each PC to pick one, it was just description as in "if you want to call your PC as expert of style X, here are the feats that would make you look like that in combat", and then maybe if you did in fact take enough of those, you also unlocked some benefits, but they didn't force your PC to pick a style and then you must choose feats from that list or they were granted automatically.

This is the way to go IMHO to achieve both "tutored playing" for beginners and freedom for experts.


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## Bluenose (Mar 26, 2012)

There's going to be a big backlash against this, I predict. All those people who don't want fighters doing things that aren't mundane are going to be furious that now fighters are going to be able to buff and heal. People who dislike rogues being able to throw daggers fast enough that they blast a group of targets, blinding them; they're going to be unhappy. Because after all, classes aren't going to be forced into a role, so all sorts of things will have to be allowed if you're going to have all classes able to perform in all roles.


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## delericho (Mar 26, 2012)

A very interesting article, and there's a lot I can agree with. But...



> I am going to 100% promise you that, especially if you are a veteran player or DM, we will include stuff in the next iteration of the game that you will ignore. In fact, I'm going to come out and say that we want you to ignore parts of the game.
> 
> I like to draw the analogy between D&D and painting miniatures. Some people mix their own paints from a few basic colors. They have a lot of different brushes, and they spend hours and hours working on a single figure. These folks are veterans who take pride in knowing the craft and pouring time into it. Mixing paints, applying layer after layer of highlights, and bringing a figure to life is all part of the hobby.
> 
> ...




Okay, that's all fair enough. Except, _I do not want to pay for large amounts of rules text I'm just going to ignore_. If you publish another 1,000 page monstrosity of Core Rules, and I'm going to proceed to ignore large parts of the rules... I think I'm better off just ignoring 5e entirely, and going back to ignoring large parts of 3e.

And, yes, I appreciate that squaring that circle may be an impossible task. Other than wishing you good luck, there's not really anything I can say to that.



> Adventure Design Guidelines: Stuff such as XP budgets, treasure tables, encounter charts, and so on are there to make it easier to create adventures and build your campaign. If you are a veteran DM, it's quite likely you won't use any of this stuff.




Hmm. I've been DMing for more than 20 years, and you can bet I would use that stuff, at least for a while. Every game is different, and so there's a need to learn the baseline expectations before starting to break the rules in creative ways.

IMO, at least.



> Character Roles: This one is bound to be controversial, but I don't think roles belong in D&D as specific, mechanical elements that we design toward. Instead, I think roles are a great tool to help players focus on how they want to play a character.




Yes and no.

In 3e, there were always issues with how the Bard and the Monk fit into the party. Some books even went so far as to say they were an ideal "fifth man", in a game designed for a party of four. The Bard, in particular, was awkward - was it a "jack of all trades", a Wizard-replacement, or a Rogue-replacement? This was never clearly answered, and it meant that the class never really 'fit'.

But as soon as the roles came into being, it became obvious. Of course the Monk was a Martial Striker! Of course the Bard was an Arcane Leader (and, by extension, a _Cleric_-replacement)! So, in that regard, the roles were incredibly useful _as a design tool_.

That said, I think the roles have probably outlived their usefulness. To a certain extent, it is true that they came to straightjacket players, and it was extremely difficult to play against type - you were generally better off playing a different class, rather than trying to build a "Striker Fighter", or whatever.

Ironically, I'm inclined to think that Mearls has this one backwards - that the roles should be retained as a design _consideration_ (not goal), but that the roles absolutely should not be mentioned in the print books, even as advice. (Also, while the classes should probably have a primary role, it should be possible to effectively build characters of that class to fill other roles, if desired - so your Fighter _can_ be a Defender... or he could be a Striker or even a Leader instead.)


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## Minigiant (Mar 26, 2012)

Li Shenron said:


> There is a HUGE difference between saying "you are playing the Fighter so you should fight" and "you are playing the Fighter so you should be the tank"
> 
> Pre-4e roles were generic enough so that you could have different types of fighters or wizards: a fighter could cover a few different roles, and one role could be covered by several classes. Shoehorning classes into one default combat role really impoverished the game IMHO, it felt like reduced biodiversity.





There was no difference between the roles of pre 4E and 4E.  The difference was how they used them.

In pre-4, roles were free formed and not attached to classes but to class features, spells, and ability scores. The player choose what roles their character was. But the roles were not spread out evenly and with the same usefulness. 

In 4E, combat roles were tied to classes and non-combat roles were tied to skills. They were grouped together and mostly forced onto you based on the class chosen.

There are pros and cons to each method.

Pre-4E gave you the freedom to choose all the roles you wished to apply to your character. But this freedom allow players to choose overpowered, underpowered, or necessary character archetypes.* "A bard could be a damage dealer, a face, a sneak,  a healer/buffer, a combination of the first four, or useless."*

4E forced roles onto archetypes to make sure every character had the same level of usefulness. But the base level of choice was severely limited. *"A bard is a leader (healer/buffer)."*

I hope 5E/DDN finds a middle ground. Give players the ability to choose their role with "Useless" *not* be one of them.


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## Chris_Nightwing (Mar 26, 2012)

To follow up [MENTION=63508]Minigiant[/MENTION], I would add that if you tried to deviate from your given class role in 4E, you would often find yourself in the 'useless bard' situation.

I was most disappointed with the Ranger, because as written you deal damage, a lot of damage. There were few options that allowed you to act as a defender, which was (in my mind) a great Ranger archetype, especially with an animal companion.

It also led to 'well, the character is a leader so they must heal' type mechanic. Hence Warlords healing (which wasn't to everyone's taste), rather than say, providing temporary hitpoints or damage reduction.

As for solutions, well, I think that there are ways in which each class can fulfil each combat role, but even seeing it that way limits your design choices. Build the classes on the basis of what they ought to be able to do, rather than finding ways for them to be able to do things in four distinct categories.


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## Minigiant (Mar 26, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> As for solutions, well, I think that there are ways in which each class can fulfil each combat role, but even seeing it that way limits your design choices. Build the classes on the basis of what they ought to be able to do, rather than finding ways for them to be able to do things in four distinct categories.





Most of the changes to how roles were used were overreaction to the roles of the previous editions.

3E overreacted to the older editions' "Must have cleric" and "crappy early wizards" and accidental made Supah Castahs and CoDzillas.

4E overreacted to  Supah Castahs and CoDzillas having every role at one by fitting every class into one combat role and whatever non-combat roles they choose with their skills.

5E should take a step back and relax. They should build the classes to allow them to do what they ought to be able to do while still spreading the roles out fairly in access or strength. Then they can easily avoid One Role Forcing AND Masters of Everything.

Then give advice on how the various type of archetypes can be build within the class.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 26, 2012)

It's funny, we soon as he said the bit about roles being guidelines to make a useful party member, and then added "but vetrqns can do what they want.". I said to myself: "but they'll make a helpful member of the party anyway.". I mean let's face it, they will.  The party that doesn't cover their roles, doesnt work together, is the party that TPKs.  Roles exist, have existed, and while skilled players may blurr them through various means, the basic ideas of a defender, strikers and support remain.


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## Mattachine (Mar 26, 2012)

I liked the first part of his article, mostly because it seemed targeted at the veteran DM, like me. Everyone likes to be told he's awesome, right?

The second part I read as unmitigated 4e bashing, as has happened in some other L&L articles. I felt like Mike was saying, "You are an idiot not only for buying 4e, but for _buying into it_." 

I think the same idea--roles can be choices, not hard-coded--could have been said without disparaging the current system. 

In addition, the first big discussion of roles that I remember reading was in the 3.5 PHB2. Roles were discussed, as well as what to do when a role wasn't covered by a character. There was a whole section of the PHB2 on this, with example builds for 1st level characters. It was wonderful stuff. Too bad it was in a book that new players would likely never buy, at the tail end of an edition.

If 5e explicitly discusses roles, with suggestions on how different characters can fill those roles, I think the game will do fine. If 5e has a sidebar of "Advice" in a paragraph about "Make sure you cover your bases," the game won't do fine. 

As a final note: AD&D put out role advice, too. Unfortunately, it wasn't in the PHB--it was at the beginning of most AD&D adventure modules. A suggested party size and composition was typically described, often with example characters in the back. Oh, and those 4-10 characters were usually described in 2-3 pages.


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## Tallifer (Mar 26, 2012)

I thanked God for roles in the Fourth Edition. It made explicit the needs of the party. 

I am playing Pathfinder now and our party cleric has decided to change his channeling into negative damage energy and to concentrate his spells on commanding undead. So now we have no buffs and few heals. And his evil ways mean I feel unable to play a Paladin or Good Cleric. Because he is "creating a character out of an image in his head" rather than worrying about what is necessary. (I wish we could just leave him at the dungeon entrance. Heh.) At least a Fourth Edition leader can always heal at range with a minor action a couple of times per encounter regardless of his feats and powers.


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## Tallifer (Mar 26, 2012)

Oh and to answer Mearls's polls: the best advice is in the Character Optimization Guides on the forums, whether for Pathfinder or the Fourth Edition. They explain clearly what your role should be in either system and how to create the right kind of useful character with all the variations possible and effective.


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## Bobbum Man (Mar 26, 2012)

Mattachine said:


> The second part I read as unmitigated 4e bashing, as has happened in some other L&L articles. I felt like Mike was saying, "You are an idiot not only for buying 4e, but for _buying into it_."




No. No it wasn't. Mearls said absolutely nothing like that.

This is exactly this kind of overreaction in regard to perceived slights that caused all of the bile and vitriol when 4E was initially released, and why the game couldn't be discussed anywhere without some internet chucklehead going: "Hurd durp...4rry ain'it not D&D an' whotsee called 3rd edition players the N-word durp".

Let's try and avoid that this time around, shall we?


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 26, 2012)

Tallifer said:


> I thanked God for roles in the Fourth Edition. It made explicit the needs of the party.
> 
> I am playing Pathfinder now and our party cleric has decided to change his channeling into negative damage energy and to concentrate his spells on commanding undead. So now we have no buffs and few heals. And his evil ways mean I feel unable to play a Paladin or Good Cleric. Because he is "creating a character out of an image in his head" rather than worrying about what is necessary. (I wish we could just leave him at the dungeon entrance. Heh.) At least a Fourth Edition leader can always heal at range with a minor action a couple of times per encounter regardless of his feats and powers.




The thing is, some of us want the option to include the non buff, few heal cleric in a party. In pathfinder you have the option at least to it either way. For some groups parties like this wont work, for others they will. A lot of it comes to the style of your game.


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## avin (Mar 26, 2012)

Kynn said:


> Also, dismaying but not unexpected to see them throwing out every innovation of 4e design.




Combat roles innovation? I've seen combat roles for years in MMO... they work fine as combat tools in 4E, they help newcomer players a lot, but I think we should stay away for that gamist jargon in D&D.


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## Ahnehnois (Mar 26, 2012)

Well, that was refreshing. I have no use for roles, either. Or XP. It's not an rp*G*.



			
				Mattachine said:
			
		

> The second part I read as unmitigated 4e bashing, as has happened in some other L&L articles. I felt like Mike was saying, "You are an idiot not only for buying 4e, but for buying into it."



An incredibly ironic statement, given how much easier they're going on 4e than they did on 3e.



			
				Talifer said:
			
		

> Oh and to answer Mearls's polls: the best advice is in the Character Optimization Guides on the forums, whether for Pathfinder or the Fourth Edition. They explain clearly what your role should be in either system and how to create the right kind of useful character with all the variations possible and effective.



This is true. I'd rather they focus on the game itself rather than the advice.



			
				Minigiant said:
			
		

> Most of the changes to how roles were used were overreaction to the roles of the previous editions.
> 
> 3E overreacted to the older editions' "Must have cleric" and "crappy early wizards" and accidental made Supah Castahs and CoDzillas.
> 
> 4E overreacted to Supah Castahs and CoDzillas having every role at one by fitting every class into one combat role and whatever non-combat roles they choose with their skills.



I think that's true. It's easy to forget how crappy clerics used to be.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 26, 2012)

TwinBahamut said:
			
		

> "Playing your class how you want to" is a pretty short road to imbalance and poorly designed classes.




I don't think these two are as incompatible as you seem to believe. 

But let's say they are. Let's say you MUST choose between playing a balanced class in a way you don't want to play, and playing an imbalanced class that you can play however you want to.

It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out what's going to appeal to most people.

This statement makes a mistake of putting balance up on a pedestal as a goal, rather than as a tool in service of a goal. Balance is not a reward in and of itself. It's not something you pursue for the sake of itself. It's something you pursue (in the context of D&D) as a part of building a fun RPG where you can pretend to be your favorite fantasy hero. 

Balance is important, but it is not sacrosanct. If you NEED to sacrifice balance to achieve some other goal, it's certainly possible. 

I don't think you need to sacrifice class balance to have a flexible character, but even if your assumption holds true, it is, perhaps, an acceptable sacrifice, in certain contexts. Balance is only a tool.


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## Minigiant (Mar 26, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> The thing is, some of us want the option to include the non buff, few heal cleric in a party. In pathfinder you have the option at least to it either way. For some groups parties like this wont work, for others they will. A lot of it comes to the style of your game.




I approve of non buff few heal clerics.

The issue is the nonbuff few heal cleric is allowed by the game system, it needs to be able to fulfill a combat role. If it is to be a blaster, need to be a good one. If it is to be a backup debuffer/controller, it needs to have the ably to do so.  

THEN the class need to be fixed to work with other classes. This might mean the class may not be able to do something. Maybe the cleric's damage spells and weapons are severely nerved to force clerics to rely on others to deal damage to anything that is a decent challenge.

THEN the books have to lightly suggest that a cleric can be a defensive warrior via buff, a magical tactician via heals and group buffs, or a single character controller. And also casually they would suggest that clerics deal poor spell damage and have few multiple target attacks. Probably through having only 3 sample build suggestions in the book.

And we the fans will have to deal with not being able to do everything in order to have a working game.


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 26, 2012)

Minigiant said:


> I approve of non buff few heal clerics.
> 
> The issue is the nonbuff few heal cleric is allowed by the game system, it needs to be able to fulfill a combat role. If it is to be a blaster, need to be a good one. If it is to be a backup debuffer/controller, it needs to have the ably to do so.
> 
> THEN the class need to be fixed to work with other classes. This might mean the class may not be able to do something. Maybe the cleric's damage spells and weapons are severely nerved to force clerics to rely on others to deal damage to anything that is a decent challenge.




Why? I dont see why every class choice has to fulfill a combat role. In fact, i prefer having a few character selections that are not terribly focused on or suited to a given combat role. The non buff, non heal cleric as described by the poster sounds like a character that is quite forimdable outside combat, but maybe less effective inside it. I see nothing wrong with this as an option. Ijust dont see why all classes need to built around what other classes can and cant do in combat.


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## hanez (Mar 26, 2012)

Tallifer said:


> I thanked God for roles in the Fourth Edition. It made explicit the needs of the party.
> 
> I am playing Pathfinder now and our party cleric has decided to change his channeling into negative damage energy and to concentrate his spells on commanding undead. So now we have no buffs and few heals. And his evil ways mean I feel unable to play a Paladin or Good Cleric. Because he is "creating a character out of an image in his head" rather than worrying about what is necessary. (I wish we could just leave him at the dungeon entrance. Heh.) At least a Fourth Edition leader can always heal at range with a minor action a couple of times per encounter regardless of his feats and powers.




I think this is a perfect quote that illustrates why some groups feel the "need" for roles. 

In my view however explicit roles that are used to tell players how to act have no use in D&D.  The negative energy cleric is having fun playin a role in his head and the system is letting him, that is awesome.  Another player could play a Paladin and we could roleplay the tension that might occur with that.  Or the party can purchase some healing potions, or seek out some wands of healing, or they can choose to seek lower level challenges.  Or the DM can modify encounters, or supply the appropriate magic items to help alleviate the problem, or an NPC could pop in now and then.  Maybe the next adventure the party encounters a troubled magical creature in the woods and if they save them, a druid in the woods offers free healing every time they visit the grove (but perhaps not to the one who radiates negative energy).   

There are plenty of solutions to this "problem" (which really isn't a problem because playing your character the way you want is the very nature of the game).  The least acceptable solution to me would be forcing classes into specific roles.

I think this illustrates the different types of D&D people play.  I have played in games where the DM shows the purchased module and says to the players "lets see if you guys can beat the module".  These  games usually devolve into tactile mini wargames with much less roleplaying and I can see the need for strict roles in this type of D&D.  I have also been in games where DMs use modules as guidance and form their world according to the players choices (if a player chooses a barbarian they meet his tribe, if a player roleplays a warlock their sure to include some witching sites in the world, if no one in the group chooses a healer, the DM reacts to that too).  I much prefer games with an active DM who doesn't blame things on the rules.  I have DM'd an all Paladin party, and all gnome party, and parties with no magic users, I do not believe it should be too onerous to run a fun game with no healers in Pathfinder.


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## avin (Mar 26, 2012)

Li Shenron said:


> I am not a fan of that solution either...
> 
> When I play a Wizard, I don't want to _have _to choose a path.




When you choose Wizard you choose a path already. Only in skill based systems there's freedom of choice.

In fact, 3E prestige classes (Dwarven Defender) and 2 kits were already role choices for classes, so, this isn't new to D&D.

What bothered me in 4E was the jargon... the tone, the way it was described as if you can't figure out for yourself like in former editions... 

...let's face it, RPG is a game for clever people...


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## hanez (Mar 26, 2012)

avin said:


> When you choose Wizard you choose a path already. Only in skill based systems there's freedom of choice.
> 
> In fact, 3E prestige classes (Dwarven Defender) and 2 kits were already role choices for classes, so, this isn't new to D&D.
> 
> ...




I agree and disagree, you chose and archetype, and some choices have been made for you.  But for the wizard (especially) in 3e you had a plethora of paths to follow.  Just look at the difference between the schools of magic, if you chose to focus on illusion, or enchanting, or summoning, or divining or evocation or even necromancy!  Each of these specialists played extremely differently.  The wizard with his undead following him, versus the illusionist trickster who was good in social but worse in the dungeon, or the diviner who was great for figuring out what to do but less so in doing it.

I am of the belief that all classes should have close to this level in choice of what they can play.


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## Minigiant (Mar 26, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> Why? I dont see why every class choice has to fulfill a combat role. In fact, i prefer having a few character selections that are not terribly focused on or suited to a given combat role. The non buff, non heal cleric as described by the poster sounds like a character that is quite forimdable outside combat, but maybe less effective inside it. I see nothing wrong with this as an option. Ijust dont see why all classes need to built around what other classes can and cant do in combat.




Well to me, every class has to be go at something in combat as the basic description of D&D is a dungeon/cave dive where you kill monsters, take their stuff, and maybe encounter a dragon. Not everyone has to play heavy combat but combat is an inherent part of the game.

Plus the idea of a noncombatant purposely going in a place where they are expected to be attacked having no combat skill but doing this for a living... never made sense to me.


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## Crazy Jerome (Mar 26, 2012)

I like good advice in my RPG books, even if it is good advice aimed at beginners.  A game with good advice in it, even if stuff I already know, is a game written by people that not only know what they are doing, but how to communicate it to someone that has no prior experience.  This is generally a sign of something well done.  

I dislike bad advice, even if easily ignored or not aimed at me.  It indicates a severe misunderstanding on the part of the author--or more likely in gaming books put out by a group of authors, unresolved disagreement about how the game is supposed to work. IMHO, this is why you sometimes see advice that is not in sync with the mechanics that supposedly work with this advice.

Every version of D&D has had some of both.  4E, however, is particularly distinctive in rarely having neutral advice--nothing especially sharp or awful.  When its on, it's on.  When its off, it's off.  If we are going to have advice in the place of mechanics, it had damn well better be written by a group of people who agree on how it works.


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## malkav666 (Mar 26, 2012)

Tallifer said:


> I thanked God for roles in the Fourth Edition. It made explicit the needs of the party.
> 
> I am playing Pathfinder now and our party cleric has decided to change his channeling into negative damage energy and to concentrate his spells on commanding undead. So now we have no buffs and few heals. And his evil ways mean I feel unable to play a Paladin or Good Cleric. Because he is "creating a character out of an image in his head" rather than worrying about what is necessary. (I wish we could just leave him at the dungeon entrance. Heh.) At least a Fourth Edition leader can always heal at range with a minor action a couple of times per encounter regardless of his feats and powers.




You illustrate one of my favorite things about d20/3.x./PF. It is awesome that you can make a Palpatine cleric, a healing cleric, a fighting focused cleric, a master of the undead type. Or a little of all of it. With the additions of domains and subdomains into pathfinder they have ensured that you can deviate away from "healbot" as a character theme and play the cleric in meaningful ways. The Palpatine cleric you describe is actually super effective at most levels. Several selectively AoE attacks a day with the same damage as sneak attack? yes please. Undead pawns to control movement on the battlefield (That also as a side effect get healed by previously mentioned  AoE)? Yes please. Add in the clerics buff spells and pretty good melee options and you have a very formidable and useful toon.  

Now of course the rules support "healbots" as a play choice as well. One of my roommates who just started playing PF the other day while making a cleric to play said they wanted to make the "healing monster" And he made an awesome one and has had a blast playing the toon. I think its awesome that many types of play can come from the same class. If you lock the classes mechanically into a role what you are really doing is making the roles the class. Sure you could have a primal defender, a martial defender, and a blueberry defender, but by making the role a mechanical implementation it doesn't really matter what you call it, it still washes out the same. This sameness is one of the things that made 4e less enjoyable to me. In addition to all of the powers kind of feeling the same to me , a lot of the classes did as well. And it made me like the game less.

I think the problem you illustrate in your post has nothing to do with an argument for or against roles. It has to do with your party not talking with one another and making sure you had concepts that fit well with one another. Obviously you have an alignment issue. Usually in most games I play in or run alignment is always a topic that is discussed at the start of the game and with the addition of a new player. My usual way of handling it get a majority vote from the players on wether they want to be good guys or bad guys. Once the paradigm of alignment had been stated I alert the players that they can make a toon of any alignment they wish but outliers must find a way to hide in the paradigm or make it workable. 

The cleric you presented is obviously evil, of course you can no longer make a paladin or cleric that is good aligned and travel with this fellow. But you could make a neutral cleric and still have great healing and do it. There are also druids, witches, oracles, alchemists, rangers, bards, and inquisitors that also have access to healing spells.

The thing is PF is a group experience. If this was a new player your party should have alerted him/her of what your group of toons was really good at and what they needed help with. If this was a player that was with the group from the start he/she should be allowed top make the character "from an image in their head" The idea that one player is responsible for buffing/healing based on class choice is silly. Why should the player of this cleric have to sacrifice playing the toon in their head, so you can be buffed healed and get to play the toon in your head? Group cohesion and getting all the bases covered has more to do with players being able to talk with one another than it does packaging forced concepts into classes to get them to fit into a role. My groups discuss not just class but also concepts at the start of character creation. So if one of my parties fails to have someone heal or stand up from and get beat. Then its a group problem not a problem of a particular player.

The only area of RP games that I could see any benefit for roles is in organized play where you don't necessarily get to enjoy all the benefits and social contracts of a group that meets regularly. But I have found that the alignment issues you mention work themselves out. I have to step in every now and again if folks get poutyfaced. But in general if an outwardly evil toon tries to roll with a posse of all good toons its a short love affair at best. But I don't try and prevent it from a game standpoint, because sometimes the interactions from these toons with drastically different views is very good and fun to play through. I only put on the referee hat if it looks like folks aren't having fun as a result. But if the group is having fun with it then I let it go and even nurture it.

On the idea of parties going out with a glaring weakness like "very few buffs and heals". This a party weakness, not a player problem.  While in the groups I run I don't usually force anyone into roles. If they are glaringly missing something I might mention that they have no melee fighter or no one who could even cast a healing spell. Sometimes they are like "dang we forgot about that" and someone changes concept, sometimes they roll on without the missing component. Once they start adventuring in earnest one of two things usually happens:

1. The party suffers a defeat/partial defeat/lack of success that sees one or more toons dead or retired and new toons joining the group shoring up the weaknesses.

2. They party attacks the game with a handicap and has a great time because of it and gets some level of success from their adventure and keeps at it missing role be damned.

It doesn't sound to me like your group really needs roles to succeed. If I had a player come to me after the game was started and say "Malk, I come from a 4e environment where choosing to play a cleric has mechanical assumption of healing so I assumed the cleric would fulfill that role. When I made my toon I thought we had a healer, I can see we do not. I do not feel good about our group going into a dark hole with poor healing. I would like to retire my toon and roll up something with better healing capabilities for our group. IS that cool?"

I would totally let them swap out. I think most DMs would let this go down. I would also let the group go into the hole with no cleric, to be chewed up by the encounters or to perhaps succeed against stacked odds and coming out feeling like a baddass.

The removal of mechanical roles is a good thing. It allows people to play more different things with smaller amounts of splat required. The issue you painted doesn't have anything to do with roles other than perhaps an assumption on your part. You need to talk to your party to find out if there is a want for a healer. Let Palpatine be, if your group can't survive without a dedicated healer, the dice will sort it out for you. Or you can take one for the team and roll the healer yourself.

love,

malkav


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## Szatany (Mar 26, 2012)

Shemeska said:


> Thank God.




You should say _thank Mearls_, but I've seen people confuse those two before.


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 26, 2012)

Minigiant said:


> Well to me, every class has to be go at something in combat as the basic description of D&D is a dungeon/cave dive where you kill monsters, take their stuff, and maybe encounter a dragon. Not everyone has to play heavy combat but combat is an inherent part of the game.
> 
> Plus the idea of a noncombatant purposely going in a place where they are expected to be attacked having no combat skill but doing this for a living... never made sense to me.




But you aren't the only person playing D&D. Many of us want more from the game than combat focused characters.

That said, even if we accept your premise that D&D ought to be dungeon and cave dive focused, that doesn't mean every character should be built for combat. And historically it hasn't meant that. Thieves were not good at combat until at least 3E (they were good at thieving, detecting traps and sneaking around--backstab was a good bone to have in combat but didn't balance them out against other characters that ar exceeded their combat skills). 

For me though the bottom line is this, treating D&D like a combat board game, where everyone needs to be good at something in combat limits my options and reduces my enjoyment of the game. Far better to open up the game to charcaters good at exploration or social situations, and have optional add-ons to make every good at combat if that is your goal. Ever since I started playing in the 80s, non combat charactes have been a feature of our games.


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## Mattachine (Mar 26, 2012)

Again, I really liked the discussion of roles in the 3.5 PHB2. Whether or not anyone wants to admit that their PC has a role in the group, the roles exist. The game has combat, exploration, and social interaction--at the very least, these create some basic roles. If the game is combat-heavy (and most D&D games are), then combat roles should be discussed--not everyone does the same thing in combat.

That discussion should be in the new PHB. Something like this:


1. For most campaigns and adventures, it is helpful for certain roles to be represented in the party. Parties in which the characters have similar capabilities will sometimes be stymied by certain types of encounters. Some DMs, however, will design a campaign to fit such groups.

2. The most common roles are A, B, and C. A party covering these roles will be able to handle a wide variety of challenges and situations. Also, some parties will have roles D or E, but these are not always needed.

3. Role A is usually handled by <class1>, but often by <class2> and <class3>. It's possible for other classes to handle this role. For example,  . . . 

4. Roles B and C are described as above.

5. Discuss less common roles D and E.

6. Advice for parties lacking a role. Character types that can fill two roles. Using henchmen or hirelings, etc. Give examples of parties lacking one or two roles completely, with brief discussion of how a campaign like that might work.

7. Example builds showing different ways to fill given roles, for 1st level characters. These could actually be part of each class write up.


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 26, 2012)

Minigiant said:


> Plus the idea of a noncombatant purposely going in a place where they are expected to be attacked having no combat skill but doing this for a living... never made sense to me.




makes perfect sense to me. Any expedition is going to have non combat specialists (people who are good at navigation, wilderness survival, interating with locals, etc). We see this in books and films all the time. It all comes down to the specifics of the party and the chafacter's motovations. let the players and Gm decide this for themselves. If it is as essential as you say, then people will only play combat focused characters.


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## Mattachine (Mar 26, 2012)

By the way, 4e has a non-heal, non-buff cleric: the Invoker.

In AD&D, non-heal, non-buff clerics were generally the province of the various "NPC only", unofficial classes presented in Dragon Magazine.


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 26, 2012)

Mattachine said:


> By
> 
> In AD&D, non-heal, non-buff clerics were generally the province of the various "NPC only", unofficial classes presented in Dragon Magazine.




in AD&D is was pretty much dependant on spell choice. The only thing an AD&D cleric was assured was turning undead.


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## Balesir (Mar 26, 2012)

Interesting article. On "advice", I want to see it, not only for beginners but for a very specific role with veterans, too. The "advice" given on designing what I'll call "first order play material" (i.e. adventures, characters, encounters, locations and scenarios) performs a function beyond that of "guidelines" - it represents a *communication* from the designers to those generating much of that first order play material concerning how they envisaged the game working as they wrote the design. It conveys to the GMs something of their design aims and philosophies as they designed the "second order play material" (i.e. rules, spells, monsters, classes, magic items and so on). When I create first order play material, this is excellent information to have.

On roles, as others have pointed out, roles have always existed. Given the (excellent) spread of game focus to include the "pillars" of social and exploration challenges as well as combat, the logical extension is that there *will* be roles for these fields, too. Whether these roles shouls be explicitly described in the rulebooks - I think they should. They will be useful to anyone beginning to play the game and form a useful design concept for that "first order play material" stuff. Should they be tied to specific classes or similar game elements? Not necessarily. As long as they are understood, and no character can realistically dominate in all of them, it should all work out. To be clear, I want *each* character to have a role in combat *and* a role in social encounters *and* a role in exploration situations. A character whose "role" is to be useful in only one of those classes of encounter is a suboptimal character to play, period. If a player just dislikes combat, say, then let them be the healer/buffer or something, but making them the "swooning non-com" just seems daft, to me.

If roles are to be de-coupled from class, however, then that raises another issue. What is class *for*? If fighters just have to be "the guy that hits stuff with a sword", or the thief gets to be "the guy that uses percentile dice", of the magic user gets to be "the dude who gets awesome spells", then I think the seeds of dysfunction are soundly sown. If the only "meaning" of character class relates to the "fluff" - the psychological archetype of the character in the game world - then I think you have a different set of issues looming. Complaints of 4E that "all the classes play the same" (barf) when the new edition's classes have no systemic meaning at all will seem like supreme irony.

So - decouple roles from classes by all means, but please,  designers, be clear what character classes in the new system are *for*.


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## Harlekin (Mar 26, 2012)

Bobbum Man said:


> No. No it wasn't. Mearls said absolutely nothing like that.
> 
> This is exactly this kind of overreaction in regard to perceived slights that caused all of the bile and vitriol when 4E was initially released, and why the game couldn't be discussed anywhere without some internet chucklehead going: "Hurd durp...4rry ain'it not D&D an' whotsee called 3rd edition players the N-word durp".
> 
> Let's try and avoid that this time around, shall we?




Well he used a false internet meme, suggesting that the role restricts the ability to role play his character to indicate that roles are only useful to beginners. I would call that using misleading statements and hyperbole to disparage other people's playstyle. Add: Even if this is not what he means, he appropriates the language of some of the uninformed 4ed bashers. That makes it look like he endorses their argument.

I think his arguments about roles go exactly in the wrong direction. If the fan base is allergic to spelling out a concept that has existed since the game was first played, then drop the names. Use the character description to explain what a character is good at without ever mentioning the terms. If we believe the SA, the designeres are already working hard to hide all 4ed influences. 
But keep using roles internally as part of the design process to give each character focus and to avoid bad classes like the Monk, Bard, Hexblade, Spellthief, Soulknife, Duelist, Marshall, Healer (of the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more)


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## SkidAce (Mar 26, 2012)

hanez said:


> I think this is a perfect quote that illustrates why some groups feel the "need" for roles.
> 
> In my view however explicit roles that are used to tell players how to act have no use in D&D.  The negative energy cleric is having fun playin a role in his head and the system is letting him, that is awesome.  Another player could play a Paladin and we could roleplay the tension that might occur with that.  Or the party can purchase some healing potions, or seek out some wands of healing, or they can choose to seek lower level challenges.  Or the DM can modify encounters, or supply the appropriate magic items to help alleviate the problem, or an NPC could pop in now and then.  Maybe the next adventure the party encounters a troubled magical creature in the woods and if they save them, a druid in the woods offers free healing every time they visit the grove (but perhaps not to the one who radiates negative energy).
> 
> ...




quoted because I can't XP it twice.

We need to be able to choose, not be limited by the system.  If we want a "useless" party;

Bard (playing as sage-like thief)
Quarter Staff Fighter
Wizard (Alchemist)
Rapier Fighter (displaced nobleman)

then we should have the option and the DM and players adapt.  Forcing a particular class to be good at a role is no good no good.

Players of other styles/opinions can develop their group as they see fit*

Fighter (Longsword/Shield)
Cleric of Fire and Holy Flame (oww it hurts when you heal us!!)
Sneaky Rogue
Wizard (Storms and Enchantments)

It's all good.



*both actual play groups in my campaigns


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## Bobbum Man (Mar 26, 2012)

Harlekin said:


> Well he used a false internet meme, suggesting that the role restricts the ability to role play his character to indicate that roles are only useful to beginners. I would call that using misleading statements and hyperbole to disparage other people's playstyle.




I'm still of the opinion that people are looking for insults where none exist and taking things too personally.



Harlekin said:


> I think his arguments about roles go exactly in the wrong direction. If the fan base is allergic to spelling out a concept that has existed since the game was first played, then drop the names. Use the character description to explain what a character is good at without ever mentioning the terms. If we believe the SA, the designeres are already working hard to hide all 4ed influences.
> But keep using roles internally as part of the design process to give each character focus and to avoid bad classes like the Monk, Bard, Hexblade, Spellthief, Soulknife, Duelist, Marshall, Healer (of the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more)




My theory is that roles will show up in D&DN, albeit in a more implicit or malleable form. They're too handy as a design guideline not to keep around in some manner.


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## Klaus (Mar 26, 2012)

I don't know. This:



> I'd much rather see roles cast as advice that highlights some basic strategies that players can follow. For instance, the advice for the cleric might explain how the class excels at healing. If you're playing a cleric and want some guidance on what to do, that advice can suggest some spells and abilities, along with tactics for use during the game.




..sounds pretty much just like how roles are today. "the cleric (...) excels at healing" and advice suggesting spells, abilities and tactics is pretty much the same as saying "the cleric is a leader-type, here's how to play a leader".


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 26, 2012)

Harlekin said:
			
		

> Well he used a false internet meme, suggesting that the role restricts the ability to role play his character to indicate that roles are only useful to beginners. I would call that using misleading statements and hyperbole to disparage other people's playstyle.




The idea that roles are restrictive isn't false. For some people, they are restrictive. 

The idea that roles are mostly for beginners is actually Mearls saying something like, "We trust you, as a player of D&D, to make the character you feel is great. Beginners kind of need to know how to be great, but by the time you're a veteran, you know the system well enough that you don't need us to tell you that. So roles are advice, not mechanics."

I don't know that he mislead or used hyperbole or disparaged anybody's playstyle. No need to get up in arms!


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## Balesir (Mar 26, 2012)

Klaus said:


> I don't know. This:
> 
> ..sounds pretty much just like how roles are today. "the cleric (...) excels at healing" and advice suggesting spells, abilities and tactics is pretty much the same as saying "the cleric is a leader-type, here's how to play a leader".



Yes, but the roles also inform the class abilities that the cleric has. Decoupling the classes from the roles sounds to me like taking those class abilities and making them more generic, available-to-all-characters traits.

Which leads right back to my question about "what are classes *for*?"


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## KidSnide (Mar 26, 2012)

I think the real problem with roles is that, for many classes, the class archtype is bigger than any one role.  As such, assigning individual roles to classes makes them narrower than many players would like.

Fighter is a great example of this: many people wanted striker fighters and, while the two-handed fighter was more striker-y than the sword-and-board fighter, the marking mechanics still placed that character in the defender camp.  Bard is another good example.  At least in my experience, the appeal of a bard is to play a controller-style enchantment caster with a wide range of jack-of-all-trades abilities.  A leader-bard seems like _a_ reasonable interpretation of the class, but it excludes the type of bard that I would like to play.

But all this having been said, I'm sure roles will continue to exist -- quietly and behind the scenes as design considerations and party building advice.  But I don't think roles will be assigned to classes as they once were.  Instead, roles  are simply methods of testing whether classes are balanced under different metrics.  For example, fighters and paladins built to defend the party should both be able to hold attention and withstand attacks to roughly the same degree.  It's just that the classes shouldn't be limited to builds optimized for that purpose.

-KS


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## Minigiant (Mar 26, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> But you aren't the only person playing D&D. Many of us want more from the game than combat focused characters.
> 
> That said, even if we accept your premise that D&D ought to be dungeon and cave dive focused, that doesn't mean every character should be built for combat. And historically it hasn't meant that. Thieves were not good at combat until at least 3E (they were good at thieving, detecting traps and sneaking around--backstab was a good bone to have in combat but didn't balance them out against other characters that ar exceeded their combat skills).
> 
> For me though the bottom line is this, treating D&D like a combat board game, where everyone needs to be good at something in combat limits my options and reduces my enjoyment of the game. Far better to open up the game to charcaters good at exploration or social situations, and have optional add-ons to make every good at combat if that is your goal. Ever since I started playing in the 80s, non combat charactes have been a feature of our games.




I understand D&D's tradition of noncombatant characters. It just never made sense to me being a base/core feature. The idea of a person actively entering situations where combat will happen over and over and having no method of helping the group survive just felt weird and silly.

 If Johnny can't fight, what will happen when the goblins in room 7 attack the party. We don't send cooks on the front line unless they plan on helping us win.

I am for classes all having one of each of the staple role types an D&D adventurer would have by default. Then using modules and giving advice to switch them out.


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## KidSnide (Mar 26, 2012)

Balesir said:


> Which leads right back to my question about "what are classes *for*?"




At the risk of stating the obvious, classes are for allowing players to play an archtype with a balanced and fun set of appropriate abilities.  There are interesting arguments to be had about how broad/flexible classes should be and whether the archtypes overlap (e.g. paladins and melee-clerics), but that's what they are for.

-KS


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## Mengu (Mar 26, 2012)

Classes are for game mechanics. Roles are for game mechanics. Everything in the system, is for game mechanics. The rule books don't role play for us. We do that at the table. All I need from the rule books are the rules for conflict resolution.

I don't have a problem with there being roles, or no roles. If it'll have a game mechanical impact, sure let's have roles. If you are a cleric with the defender role, maybe you have a marking mechanic. If you are a fighter with the striker role, maybe you are quicker and can attack more frequently. If you are a rogue with the defender role, perhaps you have a taunt mechanic, and are a swashbuckler. If you are a paladin with the striker mechanic, maybe you do bonus radiant damage.

Or if roles aren't going to have a game mechanical impact, ditch 'em. Whether a game mechanic comes from a role, a class, a feature, whatever, if the mechanic captures the flavor of the concept, we're good to go. Why do I care whether there are roles or not?


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## billd91 (Mar 26, 2012)

Bluenose said:


> There's going to be a big backlash against this, I predict. All those people who don't want fighters doing things that aren't mundane are going to be furious that now fighters are going to be able to buff and heal. People who dislike rogues being able to throw daggers fast enough that they blast a group of targets, blinding them; they're going to be unhappy. Because after all, classes aren't going to be forced into a role, so all sorts of things will have to be allowed if you're going to have all classes able to perform in all roles.




As anything, it depends on how it's done. Soldiers make great medics in Star Wars Saga Edition, but it's based on a skill roll and use of some equipment so it doesn't feel out of place. Nobles inspire with leadership and that provides some buffing. I don't think most people would have too much problem with similar abilities for 5e fighters. Flavor does matter.


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## Balesir (Mar 26, 2012)

KidSnide said:


> At the risk of stating the obvious, classes are for allowing players to play an archtype with a balanced and fun set of appropriate abilities.  There are interesting arguments to be had about how broad/flexible classes should be and whether the archtypes overlap (e.g. paladins and melee-clerics), but that's what they are for.



Right - which just switches the question to "what do we mean by "archetype"?"

Is an archetype just an aesthetic, look-and-feel thing in the game world? Or does it have some role in resolution or capability of the characters in-game? Does it have any defined limits? Or is it just a seed of inspiration?


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## Harlekin (Mar 26, 2012)

Klaus said:


> I don't know. This:
> 
> 
> 
> ..sounds pretty much just like how roles are today. "the cleric (...) excels at healing" and advice suggesting spells, abilities and tactics is pretty much the same as saying "the cleric is a leader-type, here's how to play a leader".




But some don't like to see the L-word, they associate it with a restriction on their ability to role-play. So if avoiding the name removes a perceived restriction, why keep it?


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## hanez (Mar 26, 2012)

Harlekin said:


> But some don't like to see the L-word, they associate it with a restriction on their ability to role-play. So if avoiding the name removes a perceived restriction, why keep it?





Its more then just a word.  It goes hand in hand with the changes that 4e made.  Look at illusionists and necromancers  in 4th.  Look at druid summoners.   Whole aspects of classes vanished and this happened in concert with trying to make the classes fit into a defined role.

When I say ditch roles, I am not saying just ditch the word, I am saying ditch the straight jacket.

Let the fighter be good with weapons in a variety of ways, let the mage be good at casting in a variety of ways.  Let players choose and see how that works out into a combat role for them.


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## Harlekin (Mar 26, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> The idea that roles are restrictive isn't false. For some people, they are restrictive.
> 
> The idea that roles are mostly for beginners is actually Mearls saying something like, "We trust you, as a player of D&D, to make the character you feel is great. Beginners kind of need to know how to be great, but by the time you're a veteran, you know the system well enough that you don't need us to tell you that. So roles are advice, not mechanics."




Roles are restrictive the same way classes are restrictive. Nobody is concerned if I say "the rogue can't stand there all day and take a pounding because he is a rogue". Why does it get worse if i say  "the rogue can't stand there all day and take a pounding because he is a striker"?

I also think the boundary drawn between advice and rules is arbitrary. To an advanced player, I can show the rules for a wizard and he will realize that this class is not a melee striker. To the beginner, I may need to spell it out. The restriction is the same. So the roles summarize a lot of mechanics, but have no mechanical implication beyond that.


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## Harlekin (Mar 26, 2012)

hanez said:


> Its more then just a word.  It goes hand in hand with the changes that 4e made.  Look at illusionists and necromancers  in 4th.  Look at druid summoners.   Whole aspects of classes vanished and this happened in concert with trying to make the classes fit into a defined role.
> 
> When I say ditch roles, I am not saying just ditch the word, I am saying ditch the straight jacket.




Huh?
Illusionists are about the most classical definition of a controller wizard and they are in 4ed (In multiple versions I think).

Summoner-druids are in 4ed as well, though as late-comers. And aspects of the Druid class vanished/were distributed over multiple classes for reasons that had nothing to do with roles.

So are Necromancers, although I don't know of any D&D edition that has managed to make a PC class do justice to the necromancer concept, 4ed included.


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## gyor (Mar 26, 2012)

Instead of force feeding classes into rolls, if some people still want rolls how about themes that give you the tools to do those rolls. Like a Killer theme for would be strikers, Champion for would be defenders, Tactician for controllers, and combat medic for leaders.


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## Balesir (Mar 26, 2012)

hanez said:


> Its more then just a word.  It goes hand in hand with the changes that 4e made.  Look at illusionists and necromancers  in 4th.  Look at druid summoners.   Whole aspects of classes vanished and this happened in concert with trying to make the classes fit into a defined role.
> 
> When I say ditch roles, I am not saying just ditch the word, I am saying ditch the straight jacket.
> 
> Let the fighter be good with weapons in a variety of ways, let the mage be good at casting in a variety of ways.  Let players choose and see how that works out into a combat role for them.



But illusionists, necromancers and summoning druids were not nerfed to make them "conform to a role" - they were nerfed so that they were no longer overdominant niche-stealers with open ended power limited only by how outrageous an abuse they could blag past the DM. The nature of illusions and charms in previous editions of D&D was so obviously broken that we were playing rules that changed them utterly from around 1980 onward.


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## Libramarian (Mar 26, 2012)

Mengu said:


> Classes are for game mechanics. Roles are for game mechanics. Everything in the system, is for game mechanics. The rule books don't role play for us. We do that at the table. All I need from the rule books are the rules for conflict resolution.




Eugh. This attitude could not be further removed from my own. I would almost say the exact opposite.


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## hanez (Mar 26, 2012)

Harlekin said:


> Huh?
> Illusionists are about the most classical definition of a controller wizard and they are in 4ed (In multiple versions I think).
> 
> Summoner-druids are in 4ed as well, though as late-comers. And aspects of the Druid class vanished/were distributed over multiple classes for reasons that had nothing to do with roles.
> ...




Im going to run to my 4th edition PHB to make sure I've read it!  Actually wait, I've done this before.  I own the 4e phb, I know that illusion spells were MUCH reduced (and forced only into utility powers choosable every few levels by a wizard).  I don't remember anyone summoning undead in my 4e campaigns (I do remember the standard attack power with the label "necrotic" on it however.   And as you say the druid summoners weren't introduced to much later.  This was not true for the first book for either  AD&D or 3e.  Both previous systems allowed players a wide rand of  choices like these from day 1.  I think it is plain to see that the focus on combat and combat roles was a major factor in this change.


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## hanez (Mar 26, 2012)

Balesir said:


> But illusionists, necromancers and summoning druids were not nerfed to make them "conform to a role" - they were nerfed so that they were no longer overdominant niche-stealers with open ended power limited only by how outrageous an abuse they could blag past the DM. The nature of illusions and charms in previous editions of D&D was so obviously broken that we were playing rules that changed them utterly from around 1980 onward.




Illusionists and necromancers were broken?  Wow, never heard that one before.  I was always under the impression they were less optimal flavor builds.  Do you mean some illusion spells were broken, or that players who restricted their spell list to contain mostly illusions were broken?

I've seen and played a lot of illusionists and necromancers in the last few editions (and pathfinder), I've heard them called underpowered, I've heard players complain that they'd rather you pick a class less annoying, but I've never heard them called  broken.


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## Bobbum Man (Mar 26, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> The idea that roles are restrictive isn't false. For some people, they are restrictive.
> 
> The idea that roles are mostly for beginners is actually Mearls saying something like, "We trust you, as a player of D&D, to make the character you feel is great. Beginners kind of need to know how to be great, but by the time you're a veteran, you know the system well enough that you don't need us to tell you that. So roles are advice, not mechanics."
> 
> I don't know that he mislead or used hyperbole or disparaged anybody's playstyle. No need to get up in arms!




I don't know about this. I think there should be mechanics for fulfilling certain rules.

What I would like to see is variable class features like:

Choose option (A) if you want to focus on bitchsmacking monsters for picking on your booknerd friend.

Choose option (B) if you want to focus on running around real fast and murdering enemies right in the face.

Choose option (C) if you want to make your friends better at kicking bad guys in the Carl Jonas.

Choose option (D) if you want to put enemies in submission holds, or kick their legs out from under them, or throw them into walls or into eachother until they cry.

Chooae option (D) if you want to sit in back and shoot arrows while listening to Belle & Sebastian and writing bad poetry about how girls never go for sensitive guys.

Roles don't have to be hard-coded into specific classes, but the rules supporting them should be there in some fashion.


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## Tortoise (Mar 26, 2012)

TwinBahamut said:


> "Playing your class how you want to" is a pretty short road to imbalance and poorly designed classes. Roles are a mechanical idea. Treating them as "advice" is silly.




I'm not sure why you would say that. Roles as they are in 4e were not part of the game until 4e. The game did well for decades without roles being boxed up neatly as mechanical functions, instead being more like advice. The game has always had shortcomings and I don't see a lack of mechanically based roles as one of them.

Maybe I'm not understanding your intended meaning, but the wording gives me the impression of a boardgame where the Knight can only do certain things and the Thief can only do certain things and there is no playing the character outside those strictures.

Please let me know if I'm not getting your point and clarify it for me.


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## FireLance (Mar 26, 2012)

hanez said:


> Illusionists and necromancers were broken?  Wow, never heard that one before.  I was always under the impression they were less optimal flavor builds.  Do you mean some illusion spells were broken, or that players who restricted their spell list to contain mostly illusions were broken?



I don't know about broken, but some illusions (and charms) were quite open-ended and harder to adjudicate than spells that had simpler, more direct effects. For that reason alone, I can see why the designers might have chosen to leave them out of the first PH.


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## Harlekin (Mar 26, 2012)

Bobbum Man said:


> I don't know about this. I think there should be mechanics for fulfilling certain rules.
> 
> What I would like to see is variable class features like:
> 
> ...




And why would that be fundamentally different to having 5 classes, each with one role?


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## Harlekin (Mar 26, 2012)

hanez said:


> Im going to run to my 4th edition PHB to make sure I've read it!  Actually wait, I've done this before.  I own the 4e phb, I know that illusion spells were MUCH reduced (and forced only into utility powers choosable every few levels by a wizard).  I don't remember anyone summoning undead in my 4e campaigns (I do remember the standard attack power with the label "necrotic" on it however.   And as you say the druid summoners weren't introduced to much later.  This was not true for the first book for either  AD&D or 3e.  Both previous systems allowed players a wide rand of  choices like these from day 1.  I think it is plain to see that the focus on combat and combat roles was a major factor in this change.




I'm not sure I can follow your logic. The 4ed PHB supported a lot of character concepts from day one, some of those were not in previous PHBs even though they were obvious archetypes (e.g. Warlords, Charisma-based rogues, Ranged Clerics). On the other hand, the PHB did not support some character concepts that were in previous PHBs.

I am not sure why that has anything to do with roles.


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## Janaxstrus (Mar 26, 2012)

SO, from my reading....

It sounds like the CR type stuff is in (but feel free to ignore like always)
Wealth guidelines are in (but feel free to ignore)
Other charts for treasure, xp and encounters are in (but feel free to ignore)
Roles and their silly names will be removed/marginalized.

This is an awesome update.  I approve completely.


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## hanez (Mar 26, 2012)

Harlekin said:


> I'm not sure I can follow your logic. The 4ed PHB supported a lot of character concepts from day one, some of those were not in previous PHBs even though they were obvious archetypes (e.g. Warlords, Charisma-based rogues, Ranged Clerics). On the other hand, the PHB did not support some character concepts that were in previous PHBs.
> 
> I am not sure why that has anything to do with roles.




Some types of options that were more combat centric were added while other options that provided problems or were not combat based were left out.

Illusions were a problem because a wizard that chose ONLY illusions might not be able to fulfill a combat role effectively.  This is why illusions were relegated to only utility powers, chosen every few levels.  

Necromantic and druid summoning presented a problem  with regards to balance (in combat) of some players having multiple actions due  to choices.

A comparison of the 3e PHB vs the 4e PHB will make it plain to see that powers and options that were problems to quantify in combat were either "siloed" away (as in utility spells) or relegated to a different subgame (as in rituals) or removed completely.

These changes are completely key to balancing each class in combat (a major goal in 4e).   They used roles as a metric to achieve this goal.  I personally believe achieving this goal is not worth the price of my wizard not being able to choose only illusion spells (and being worse in combat because of his choices).


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## Harlekin (Mar 26, 2012)

hanez said:


> A comparison of the 3e PHB vs the 4e PHB will make it plain to see that powers and options that were problems to quantify in combat were either "siloed" away (as in utility spells) or relegated to a different subgame (as in rituals) or removed completely.




Agreed. 4ed, even more than 3ed, made sure that every character could contribute in combat without being overpowering.  I still don't understand what that has to do with roles.


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## Bobbum Man (Mar 26, 2012)

Harlekin said:


> And why would that be fundamentally different to having 5 classes, each with one role?




The difference is a practical one. Each one of these 5 hypothetical classes would require a page or two for a write up, whereas my way only requires a few short paragraphs on one page, thus freeing up space for maneuvers, or a Robear Berbil player race write up, or whatever.

Also, it packs more decision points into smaller packages, rather than spreading them too thinly, thus it saves on the: "Wahhhhh *sob* classes are too rigid and inflexible. How can I play the character I want with only 100 classes to choose from??? All Elven Swiftarrow Archers play the same now! I'm gonna complain on the internet and then cut myself in the dark *sob*". Psychology.


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## KidSnide (Mar 26, 2012)

Balesir said:


> KidSnide said:
> 
> 
> > At the risk of stating the obvious, classes are for allowing players to play an archtype with a balanced and fun set of appropriate abilities.  There are interesting arguments to be had about how broad/flexible classes should be and whether the archtypes overlap (e.g. paladins and melee-clerics), but that's what they are for.
> ...




In and of itself, an archtype is a type of character in the gameworld.  By itself, it doesn't have any "role in resolution or capability."  That's the class.  At the risk of defining on the fly, I'd say that the class is the game mechanic construct that enables an archtype in the game.

Of course, you can have archtypes without mechanical support, but D&D archtypes tend to be involved in the sort of conflict resolution where mechanical support lends to an entertaining game and a more satisfying narrative.

I don't think an archtype inherently has defined limits, but there are plenty of people who choose to define them.  (Is a paladin inherently lawful good?  Different people and different rules will give you different answers.)

-KS


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## DEFCON 1 (Mar 26, 2012)

Well, why don't we look at the actual game mechanics that are given to a specific class to have it become a member of that Role.

The Defender classes: All have a Marking ability, and all have a punishment ability that occurs when the Mark is disregarded.  They also tend to have high AC and high hit points.

The Striker classes: All have abilities or power add-ons that add extra damage or extra dice of damage on top of the normal damage their powers do.

The Leader classes: All have a 'Word'-esque power that allows them to 'heal' twice in an encounter.  They also have powers that tend to buff their compatriots or let them do extra helpful things.

The Controller classes: All tend to have more frequent use of AoE abilities and attacks, and more abilities that debuff the enemies on the battlefield close and at range.

Now let's be honest here... is there any reason these abilities for these "roles" couldn't get layered on top of more classes than what 4E has?  No, not at all.   There's no reason why a Druid with an animal companion couldn't have a defender's marking mechanics for the companion, or why a Wizard couldn't have additional striker damage on their evocation spells (at the expense of losing some of his debuffing spells), or why a Monk couldn't lay on hands, or a Rogue couldn't control the battlefield with poisons, smokebombs, caltrops, alchemical fire and the like.  After all... we've already seen this in Essentials, with some classes getting new roles (the Hunter Ranger being a controller, the Slayer Fighter being a striker, and the Sentinel Druid being a leader.)  These choices don't necessarily _need_ to be hardwired automatically into any specific class... the abilities that lend themselves to a certain role could easily be made available to all classes and chosen by the player during character creation to help do what they want to do with their character.  So that if the Cleric of the God of War wants to be heavily armored and punish those enemies who move away from him on the field of battle, can have the ability to do so.


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## Harlekin (Mar 26, 2012)

hanez said:


> Some types of options that were more combat centric were added while other options that provided problems or were not combat based were left out.
> 
> Illusions were a problem because a wizard that chose ONLY illusions might not be able to fulfill a combat role effectively.  This is why illusions were relegated to only utility powers, chosen every few levels.
> 
> ...




I also find it interesting that the main examples being trotted out are always full spell casters, who in 3ed can switch from one set of spells to the next within 24 hours. Hence, they can typically decide from day to day, which role they want to fill out. Non-spell casters on the other hand settle on a role by their choice of class and overall feat/attribute choices.


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## Dausuul (Mar 26, 2012)

hanez said:


> Some types of options that were more combat centric were added while other options that provided problems or were not combat based were left out.
> 
> Illusions were a problem because a wizard that chose ONLY illusions might not be able to fulfill a combat role effectively.  This is why illusions were relegated to only utility powers, chosen every few levels.




The funny thing is that an illusionist-wizard _should_ be a formidable combatant. The ability to manipulate the enemy's perception of reality is extremely potent. Unfortunately, early 4E couldn't cope with the idea of "non-damaging combat spells."


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## hanez (Mar 26, 2012)

Harlekin said:


> Agreed. 4ed, even more than 3ed, made sure that every character could contribute in combat without being overpowering.  I still don't understand what that has to do with roles.




The way 4ed did this was that it removed choices.  Both quantity of choices (for casters) and troublesome choices that required DM adjucation.  Choices that were left fit into neatly described boxes that fit into combat roles.  We are quickly heading to another tangent relating to players stating that many 4e classes felt and played the same.   

Its all related.  The focus on combat, the focus on balance, the ease of DMing, the roles, the similarity of powers all the powers, the siloing.   Its hard to have balance and everyone having there time in the spotlight if half the powers don't fit into a classes particular role, or are not combat related in the first place.


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## Minigiant (Mar 26, 2012)

I think I found a good analogy between Advice and The game.

A game show.

The player is the contestant create the character.
The game system is the game show host. He shouldn't force the player to choose Door 1. Nor should he allow the player to choose Doors 1, 2 and 3 without taking away some other prize. 

The game can give advice to the player of what Door to take, suggest a course of action, and hint to what is behind the door. But the game shouldn't make the deal for you.

Now whether the doors have fake prizes, that is between you, your DM, and Monty Hall (or Wayne Brady). Personally I don't like booby prize choices and wish their are none by default. But you should be able to switch out to less optimal choices via modules.


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## Harlekin (Mar 26, 2012)

Bobbum Man said:


> The difference is a practical one. Each one of these 5 hypothetical classes would require a page or two for a write up, whereas my way only requires a few short paragraphs on one page, thus freeing up space for maneuvers, or a Robear Berbil player race write up, or whatever.
> 
> Also, it packs more decision points into smaller packages, rather than spreading them too thinly, thus it saving on the: "Wahhhhh *sob* classes are too rigid and inflexible. How can I play the character I want with only 100 classes to choose from. All Elven Archers play the same now! I'm gonna complain on the internet and then cut myself in the dark *sob*". Psychology.




Fair enough. On the other hand, each being its own class allows designers to fine-tune your design toward the need of each playstyle. But I take your point about the perception of flexibility.


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## Harlekin (Mar 26, 2012)

hanez said:


> The way 4ed did this was that it removed choices.  Both quantity of choices (for casters) and troublesome choices that required DM adjucation.  Choices that were left fit into neatly described boxes that fit into combat roles.  We are quickly heading to another tangent relating to players stating that many 4e classes felt and played the same.
> 
> Its all related.  The focus on combat, the focus on balance, the ease of DMing, the roles, the similarity of powers all the powers, the siloing.   Its hard to have balance and everyone having there time in the spotlight if half the powers don't fit into a classes particular role, or are not combat related in the first place.




I would argue that for every choice 4ed removed for a caster, it added a choice for a martial class. But that is often overlooked. 

Really all I can hear you say is roles are bad because they are in 4ed. I'm afraid we're not getting any further with this.


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## Choranzanus (Mar 26, 2012)

*Guys....*

After all he said the only thing that interest you is that roles are out? This forum isn't what it used to be.

What about advice for new players in the books. What kind of advice it should be?

He even claims to give us a flowchart for crafting an adventure. Don't you think that is a tad bit more interesting?


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## Bobbum Man (Mar 26, 2012)

Janaxstrus said:


> SO, from my reading....
> It sounds like the CR type stuff is in (but feel free to ignore like always)




Uuuugh...

Dear WotC Lurkers,

Please don't bring back 3rd editions CR system. Pretty please?

The encounter budget system was better (though not perfect), and there was less bookkeeping and cognitive dissonance.

Thank you for your time.

Love,

Bobbum Man


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## Janaxstrus (Mar 26, 2012)

Bobbum Man said:


> Janaxstrus said:
> 
> 
> > SO, from my reading....
> ...


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## Balesir (Mar 26, 2012)

hanez said:


> Illusionists and necromancers were broken?  Wow, never heard that one before.  I was always under the impression they were less optimal flavor builds.  Do you mean some illusion spells were broken, or that players who restricted their spell list to contain mostly illusions were broken?
> 
> I've seen and played a lot of illusionists and necromancers in the last few editions (and pathfinder), I've heard them called underpowered, I've heard players complain that they'd rather you pick a class less annoying, but I've never heard them called  broken.



I didn't say "broken" and I didn't mean that in the sense frequently used on the intarnetz. Illusions and charms in earlier editions could be either underpowered (possibly to ridiculous extents) or grossly overpowered - depending entirely on what the DM could be persuaded was a "logical" interpretation of the written effects. I have seen illusions of gaping chasms ruled as doing the same damage that falling down a real chasm of the illusion's apparent depth would give ('cos the orcs absolutely believe they have fallen, and hit points are not just physical injury...). I have also seen it ruled that an illusory bridge over a real chasm has no effect (because as soon as they step on it they touch it and so dispel it). I have seen Charm Person used to get a bank manager to open a safe and leave the room; I have also seen it ruled that the charmed creature will not stop attacking the caster but will just switch to subdual damage ('cos they remember that the caster was attacking their friends, so they still need to restrain him...) It's a set of effects that could be either broken overpowered or crazy underpowered or anywhere in between - depending on how good the player using them is at persuading the particular DM about what they "would, realistically" do.

Summons are simpler: old-style summoning spells just meant that one player gets to play an army (maybe 5-6 turns per combat round) while the mere mortals get to play one (for their own character). This applies to necromancers, too, even though "Animate Dead" might not be a summoning, technically.


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## UngeheuerLich (Mar 26, 2012)

damn... misclicked... don´t look at the xp line above... 

I like this article. I like to ignore rules. My group constantly gets imbalanced magic items. I tend to ignore the battle grid and never used a treasure parcel, instead i rolled for random encounters. I ignored most of the balnced encounter advise, but used the suggested xp values as guidelines.

It mostly worked.

I like this approach in 5e.

But: i liked the initial idea of roles: If you fall back to at wills, you can still do your base role in combat. The PHB fighter, with striker like dailies and encounters can still defend, when everything else is used. The thief always has sneak attack to fall back to etc.

So as far as roles go, no universal mechanic needed, but something that any class can do all day long.
The cleric should be able to invoke the power of god to temporarily buff your party, the wizard should have some at will tricks at its hand (even if they are just cantrips like ghost sound etc)
the fighter should always be abe to draw his sword and say: "you shall not pass"


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## D'karr (Mar 26, 2012)

Choranzanus said:


> After all he said the only thing that interest you is that roles are out? This forum isn't what it used to be.
> 
> What about advice for new players in the books. What kind of advice it should be?
> 
> He even claims to give us a flowchart for crafting an adventure. Don't you think that is a tad bit more interesting?




When all the arguments against a particular game are based on X, all that matters to those complaining is that X is no longer there.  It's playing a game of "vindication".

There are a multitude of things to discuss that would be interesting but the "hate" of X, Y, or Z, seems to be so much more important.


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## UngeheuerLich (Mar 26, 2012)

Janaxstrus said:


> Bobbum Man said:
> 
> 
> > I like the CR, and since they said "feel free to ignore", it shouldn't be an issue.
> ...


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## GreyICE (Mar 26, 2012)

UngeheuerLich said:


> The encounter budget is better! Especially after MM3!
> "Monster level = your level => 50% chance to die"
> is easier than
> "One monster of challenge rating x is an appropriate challenge for a party of 4 people of level x, which means it should waste 20% of  your sesources"
> ...




A level 7 barbarian was CR 7.  That was exactly what their CR rules said for PC classes.

Now a level 7 barbarian is an appropriate challenge for a party of 4 level 7 barbarians...


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## Hussar (Mar 26, 2012)

Y'know I wonder if Mr Mearls is being a tiny bit sneaky.  On one hand it looks like he's saying that roles are going to go out the window, which is cause for much rejoicing in some quarters.  But,



			
				Mearls said:
			
		

> I'd much rather see roles cast as advice that highlights some basic strategies that players can follow. For instance, the advice for the cleric might explain how the class excels at healing. If you're playing a cleric and want some guidance on what to do, that advice can suggest some spells and abilities, along with tactics for use during the game.




is exactly what a role IS.  When you get past all the hyperbole (Roles restrict roleplay!  Roles force us to eat brocolli) and sit down and actually look at what a role does, this is precisely what a 4e role is - advice on how a given class works in play.  People keep thinking that the role comes first and then all the powers are built on that - fighters are defenders, so, all the powers for fighters have to be defender powers.

But that isn't true.  It might have been true for the first PHB, although, even there, it's not really accurate.  A fighter, to keep on the same example, is a defender.  He's got that sticky power right up front.  But, if you actually look at his powers, there's all sorts of other stuff in there - controller bits and striker bits.  Making a striker fighter is easy right out of the PHB 1.  With the DDI, making a Leader fighter isn't all that difficult.

Right from the outset, roles are simply a shorthand for what a class is generally about.  But, it's never been a straightjacket.  Mearls knows that.  I know he knows that.  He's written far too much of the material not to know that.  But, people who don't play 4e, or with limited experience with the system, only see "ROLE!  YOU MUST BE THIS!" so, he downplays the role role plays and still gives 4e players exactly what they're used to.

I'm thinking this is a pretty sweet bait and switch.


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## Bluenose (Mar 26, 2012)

billd91 said:


> As anything, it depends on how it's done. Soldiers make great medics in Star Wars Saga Edition, but it's based on a skill roll and use of some equipment so it doesn't feel out of place. Nobles inspire with leadership and that provides some buffing. I don't think most people would have too much problem with similar abilities for 5e fighters. Flavor does matter.




If it's done with the cleric getting all the healing magic they've had previously, and the fighter relying on the Treat Injury/Surgery skill/feat combination, I know which one is going to be vastly more useful. So do you. It works in SWSE because other sources of healing are extremely limited. If D&D is made to work that way, I predict people are going to be unhappy with the 'nerf' to clerics. Similarly with Nobles and their Leadership tree, compared to buff spells. It's not as good as magic, people will complain if magic is weakened, and while it provides lip-service to the idea that a class can take on a different role that class is for practical purposes only able to perform a very limited version of it. 

If you aren't going to let classes perform a role competently, don't say that letting them be incompetent at something means you aren't pigeon-holing classes by role.


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## hanez (Mar 26, 2012)

Harlekin said:


> I would argue that for every choice 4ed removed for a caster, it added a choice for a martial class. But that is often overlooked.
> 
> Really all I can hear you say is roles are bad because they are in 4ed. I'm afraid we're not getting any further with this.





I like adding options to martial classes.   All for it in fact.  I think 2e's combat and tactics, 3es Tome of battle, Monte Cookes - Iron heroes, and 4es power system are all great examples of giving options to martial classes.  My only note would be I am also for providing simple versions of martial classes to the players as well.  I have a couple players who love the simple, at will, attack 4 times a round fighter, and I don't think that should be removed from the game.

And how am I saying roles are bad because they are in 4e?  I feel you are purposefully trying to misunderstand my posts.  Roles are bad when they are used to narrow what a class could previously do.  Roles are bad when they assume that every player/class must fill a role at all.  If a player wants to pick random powers let them, if a player wants to pick powers that are largely non combat, the system should let that and not silo it away. "Combat" roles are bad (imo) because they put further unneeded focus on tactile combat.


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## UngeheuerLich (Mar 26, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> A level 7 barbarian was CR 7.  That was exactly what their CR rules said for PC classes.
> 
> Now a level 7 barbarian is an appropriate challenge for a party of 4 level 7 barbarians...



just look into the book. This is how it was defined. Notice, that an appropriate chalenge should use up 20% of the resources. If you read the whole paragraph, you would have noticed.


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## Agamon (Mar 26, 2012)

I think having roles that delineate everyone in combat is less necessary if fights don't take forever to play out.  If fights play out as quickly as has been described in the base game, maybe everyone doesn't need to be able to do something significant each and every fight to enjoy themselves.


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## GreyICE (Mar 26, 2012)

UngeheuerLich said:


> just look into the book. This is how it was defined. Notice, that an appropriate chalenge should use up 20% of the resources. If you read the whole paragraph, you would have noticed.




I have.  And check out your own standards there, and apply them.  A hill giant is the same CR as a level 7 barbarian.  So 1 hill giant in an encounter is equivalent to 1 level 7 barbarian.

That's... utterly absurd.  A hill giant does massive damage and has 102 hp, far more than a level 7 barbarian (assuming the level 7 barbarian rolls 6 12s for HP, he'd still need at 16 in con or so to equal that.  With more reasonable rolls he'd need about a 26).  

Yet the CR rules clearly state that 2 Hill Giants is just as challenging as 2 level 7 barbarians.

Nowadays we'd have the vernacular to properly express what is going on.  The Barbarian is a standard level 7.  The Hill Giant is an elite level 7.  

Yet they both have the same CR.  And that's why XP Budgets are much saner than CR - CR allows no differentiation between higher level monsters and more challenging monsters of a lower level, and that's not even getting into what it does to solos.


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## rogueattorney (Mar 26, 2012)

The quote that stuck out to me the most:

"Adventure Design Guidelines: Stuff such as XP budgets, treasure tables, encounter charts, and so on are there to make it easier to create adventures and build your campaign. If you are a veteran DM, it's quite likely you won't use any of this stuff."

I've been playing D&D since 1981.  So I probably qualify as veteran.  I use treasure tables and encounter charts ALL THE FREAKING TIME.  There's really nothing like a cool random chart to give you a spark of an idea and spice up your encounters and dungeons with things you might not have thought to use otherwise.

I think that assuming stuff like that is for "NOOBS" completely misses why products like the 1e DMG and Judges Guild's Ready Ref Sheets maintain a fairly high reputation as useful products these many years later.  

Cool random charts are also a possible hook to get those who might not be sold on the rules to take a look at the new edition for usable bits in their own edition of choice.


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## Minigiant (Mar 26, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> I have.  And check out your own standards there, and apply them.  A hill giant is the same CR as a level 7 barbarian.  So 1 hill giant in an encounter is equivalent to 1 level 7 barbarian.
> 
> That's... utterly absurd.  A hill giant does massive damage and has 102 hp, far more than a level 7 barbarian (assuming the level 7 barbarian rolls 6 12s for HP, he'd still need at 16 in con or so to equal that.  With more reasonable rolls he'd need about a 26).
> 
> ...




That's not a problem with the CR system. That is bad design of the barbarian. Obviously a level 7 Barbarian should have the Str and Con equivalent to a hill giant.


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## Bobbum Man (Mar 26, 2012)

Janaxstrus said:


> Bobbum Man said:
> 
> 
> > I like the CR, and since they said "feel free to ignore", it shouldn't be an issue.
> ...


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## Kynn (Mar 26, 2012)

rogueattorney said:


> The quote that stuck out to me the most:
> 
> "Adventure Design Guidelines: Stuff such as XP budgets, treasure tables, encounter charts, and so on are there to make it easier to create adventures and build your campaign. If you are a veteran DM, it's quite likely you won't use any of this stuff."
> 
> I've been playing D&D since 1981.  So I probably qualify as veteran.  I use treasure tables and encounter charts ALL THE FREAKING TIME.  There's really nothing like a cool random chart to give you a spark of an idea and spice up your encounters and dungeons with things you might not have thought to use otherwise.




Yeah, I noticed that too. I'm a pretty experienced 4e DM (going back to AD&D times) and XP budgets are very useful to me for encounter design.

I wonder why Mearls seems to be so out of touch on this point.


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## avin (Mar 26, 2012)

Choranzanus said:


> After all he said the only thing that interest you is that roles are out? This forum isn't what it used to be.
> 
> What about advice for new players in the books. What kind of advice it should be?
> 
> He even claims to give us a flowchart for crafting an adventure. Don't you think that is a tad bit more interesting?




Both 4E DMG, in special the second, have excelent advice for newcomer DMs (better than any other edition, if you ask me, even if 4E's far from perfect for me). Veteran DM's doesn't care too much about that...

And most people (I suppose) playes more than DM, so, people focus on player stuff...


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## Janaxstrus (Mar 26, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> I have.  And check out your own standards there, and apply them.  A hill giant is the same CR as a level 7 barbarian.  So 1 hill giant in an encounter is equivalent to 1 level 7 barbarian.
> 
> That's... utterly absurd.  A hill giant does massive damage and has 102 hp, far more than a level 7 barbarian (assuming the level 7 barbarian rolls 6 12s for HP, he'd still need at 16 in con or so to equal that.  With more reasonable rolls he'd need about a 26).
> 
> ...




Str 18 (20) (24 w/rage)
Con 16 (18) (22 w/rage)

16, 10, 11, 10, 11, 10, 11 = 79, 93 while raging.
Dr 1/-

+1 Flaming Greatsword
+2 Gauntlets of Ogre Power
+2 Amulet of Health

+14 2d6+10 +1d6 fire

Looks fairly comparable to a hill giant to me.  Not perfect, but comparable.


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## Klaus (Mar 26, 2012)

avin said:


> Both 4E DMG, in special the second, have excelent advice for newcomer DMs (better than any other edition, if you ask me, even if 4E's far from perfect for me). Veteran DM's doesn't care too much about that...
> 
> And most people (I suppose) playes more than DM, so, people focus on player stuff...



I agree. Both 4E DMGs are excellent, and the Essentials DM's Kit is also very good. Both give advice and tools for the DM to run his games.

I prefer the 4e XP budget system to the 3e CR system, because the CR system assumes a party of 4 PCs, and if you have more or less PCs you have to adjust the party "level" to get the equivalent CR, etc.

The XP budget system immediately gives you the appropriate result based on the party you have, not on how your party relates to an idealized party. You can then spend your budget on a lot of lower-level foes, or go all-in with a single higher-level creature (regardless of it being an elite or solo).


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## avin (Mar 26, 2012)

It seems that most people are missing that Roles were hated on 4E because reminded MMOs.

There has been roles before, I insist, on Prestige Classes and Kits, but never on classes. That may be seen as a restriction for a lot of people.

(Not judging, just pointing)


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## billd91 (Mar 26, 2012)

Bluenose said:


> If it's done with the cleric getting all the healing magic they've had previously, and the fighter relying on the Treat Injury/Surgery skill/feat combination, I know which one is going to be vastly more useful. So do you. It works in SWSE because other sources of healing are extremely limited. If D&D is made to work that way, I predict people are going to be unhappy with the 'nerf' to clerics. Similarly with Nobles and their Leadership tree, compared to buff spells. It's not as good as magic, people will complain if magic is weakened, and while it provides lip-service to the idea that a class can take on a different role that class is for practical purposes only able to perform a very limited version of it.
> 
> If you aren't going to let classes perform a role competently, don't say that letting them be incompetent at something means you aren't pigeon-holing classes by role.




If there are multiple ways for the game to do things, some more effective than others, that doesn't imply that the ones less effective are actually incompetent. Make them all at least competent and there should be no problem. If clerics are the most effective at healing, but nobody wants to play one, that's not a problem as long as other classes people do want to play are reasonably competent.


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## avin (Mar 26, 2012)

4E XP budget seems more intuitive and easy to use than CR. I wouldn't mind if a similar approach is tried for DDN... in fact, give me anything that I can figure out without thinking too much and I'll be fine... 

...or release Monster Builder at launch for DDN.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 26, 2012)

Hussar said:
			
		

> When you get past all the hyperbole (Roles restrict roleplay! Roles force us to eat brocolli) and sit down and actually look at what a role does, this is precisely what a 4e role is - advice on how a given class works in play.




Not exactly.

Each 4e role comes first with Role Mechanics -- Defender's Mark (or Aura), Striker's Additional Dice (or extra damage), Leader's Word, and a controller with an area-affect ability and maybe some (save ends) or EoNT status effects.

This is how 4e ensures that any character can "do their job" in a party.

Secondly, and a bit more subtly, a class's 500 powers reinforce this role. There is much more variety to be found here, but many of a fighter's powers are still defensively-oriented, and those are, mechanically, the more optimal choices -- as a fighter you will have the best defensive powers around, so unless you want your entire party to suffer more, you choose defensive powers.

What Mearls seems to be talking about for 5e is the lack of explicit role mechanics -- no longer will every fighter have a mark -- and instead general advice on playing a given class -- telling you that fighters have the highest AC, so a good strategy is to get monsters to direct their attacks against the fighter, preserving the more vulnerable members of the party. 

You might also get advice for the Bard that tells the player to try and solve their problems through diplomacy and deception and interaction rather than brute-force, too -- this doesn't need to be combat advice, per se. There are three pillars of D&D nowadays. 

This means that roles aren't something the system puts on you. You can still play with de facto roles if you want -- no one is going to stop you from making a tanky fighter, a blasty rogue, a disabling wizard, and a healy cleric and going junk-to-the-skunk with some dragon. This DOES mean that no longer are the four combat roles the beginning and end of your character's purpose in the party. And it might also mean that fighters can be blasty and wizards can be healy and rogues can be controly and clerics can be tanky, too.


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## Schmoe (Mar 26, 2012)

Dice4Hire said:


> I have no problem with the combat roles in 4E. I love them, in fact.
> 
> However, they stopped before making non-combat roles.
> 
> ...




That's a cool idea.  Come up with a whole bunch of different roles, some combat-oriented, some social-oriented, some reconnaissance-oriented, etc, and allow classes to fill several of those roles simultaneously.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 26, 2012)

Schmoe said:


> That's a cool idea.  Come up with a whole bunch of different roles, some combat-oriented, some social-oriented, some reconnaissance-oriented, etc, and allow classes to fill several of those roles simultaneously.




Isn't that what most classes do anyway?


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## Crazy Jerome (Mar 26, 2012)

Well, mechanically they could always treat roles as more explicit and separate, instead of less so and embedded. Make "role" an actual mechanical widget, just like race, class, feats, etc. Then simply include option in that list that amount to, "no thanks, I'll make my own". For whatever feats, powers, spells, etc. that exists outside of that framework, but should be informed by it, use keywords.


Another nice thing about this is that you can have roles that not everyone will enjoy, perhaps some that don't even overlap well. I don't care for games where one guy can be the "face guy". Others don't like "defenders". Someone else will want a guy with no particularly great combat abiltiies whatsoever:

Defender - marking ability, pick from a handful of relevant consequences, pick options with "defender" keyword to strengthen the role.
Face Guy - some kind of reroll ability on social skills, pick from a handful of ways to mitigate failures on social rolls, pick options with "face" keyword to strength the role.
Adventurer - some kind of bonus feat ability or "generic" option that works ok no matter what your focus (not unlike what "humans" often get for racial abilities), pick from a handful of similar ways to mitigate failure or get bonus action point or something similar, pick any options that strike your fancy.
And so forth.
Note that nothing says that you must "strengthen" your chosen role, either, with those feats, powers, etc. picks. Those are just there to tell you how to go about it if you want to. Of course, an individual table might decide that you must--if you sign up to play a "leader" then you have to bring N abilities to the table. Everyone can draw the line where they want.


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## hanez (Mar 26, 2012)

Crazy Jerome said:


> Well, mechanically they could always treat roles as more explicit and separate, instead of less so and embedded. Make "role" an actual mechanical widget, just like race, class, feats, etc. Then simply include option in that list that amount to, "no thanks, I'll make my own". For whatever feats, powers, spells, etc. that exists outside of that framework, but should be informed by it, use keywords.
> 
> 
> Another nice thing about this is that you can have roles that not everyone will enjoy, perhaps some that don't even overlap well. I don't care for games where one guy can be the "face guy". Others don't like "defenders". Someone else will want a guy with no particularly great combat abiltiies whatsoever:
> ...




Agreeed


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## Lanefan (Mar 26, 2012)

Ignoring roles for just a minute, one theme in this article that leaps out at me is that various things e.g. CR, wealth-by-level, etc. are being presented as *guidelines* rather than rules.

I really hope the word "guidelines" is emphasized in great big bold letters on the relevant page(s) where they appear; mostly so players don't start inventing expectations where there are none and can be quickly corrected when they do.

As for roles, I'm not sorry to see them getting downplayed - I want to be able to take a class and shoehorn it into a different role if that's what suits the character I have in mind.  My usual example is the "heavy Ranger", a sword-and-board guy in heavy armour who in most respects is a tank but can take the armour off and track/scout if he has to.  Both 3e and 4e somewhat force Rangers to be light-armour 2-weapon types (thank you Drizz't, may you rot in pain for all eternity) and expect them to be what is now called a striker.

Lan-"every time I see the word 'guidelines' I think of Capt. Jack Sparrow"-efan


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## Janaxstrus (Mar 26, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Ignoring roles for just a minute, one theme in this article that leaps out at me is that various things e.g. CR, wealth-by-level, etc. are being presented as *guidelines* rather than rules.
> 
> I really hope the word "guidelines" is emphasized in great big bold letters on the relevant page(s) where they appear; mostly so players don't start inventing expectations where there are none and can be quickly corrected when they do.
> 
> ...





I'm fine with them being considered guidelines.  They were in previous editions as well.  It was, however, assumed that characters met certain threshholds at certain levels.  If your characters weren't equipped, statted, etc etc to meet those baseline assumptions, then you needed to account for that with monsters, encounters et all.

If they say this is a 7th level encounter, and it wipes your 7th level party because they all have mundane weapons, and 3d6 in order stats, that is not a failing of the game.  It can only give you the tools and tell you what the assumptions are.  

They can't say "This monster is a challenge for a level 7 party, UNLESS A, B, C or D.  It's a challenge for a 9th level party if they are all wearing +4 full plate of speed and x, y and z".   They have to take a baseline (in this case, 4 party members of a balanced party, with an assumed amount of treasure) and go with it.


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## TwinBahamut (Mar 26, 2012)

Wow. So many pages in just half a day. Hard to keep up with all of this, but I may as well replay to those who replied to me...



Tom Servo said:


> I definitely wouldn't call it silly, I believe most editions treated roles in such a way.  I think (hope) the 5e designers are trying to focus on what is special about table-top RPG's (in character play, creativity, story-telling, etc).
> 
> And I must say, I love balance as much as the next guy (I'm even a bit of a stickler about it in my groups), but if I have to make a choice between balanced classes and playing a class how I want to...I'll take the latter.



Like some others in this thread, I don't think RPGs need to focus on things like in-character play, creativity, or story-telling. Or at the very least, I don't believe that those thing have anything at all to do with roles and class design. Those things don't need rules, and rules can't do a thing to inhibit them, if you ask me. Maybe it's because I play pure freeform roleplay games (more often than I play D&D, actually), so when I want to play D&D I do so for the mechanics. All those things you list will happen regardless of what mechanics I use, so I want mechanics that are actually _good_. Roles and game balance are a part of what lets mechanics be good.

In other words, if the mechanics for D&D are not good, then there is quite literally no point on me even using the rules at all.

As for your second point, I'll be addressing that in my response to the next quote.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> I don't think these two are as incompatible as you seem to believe.
> 
> But let's say they are. Let's say you MUST choose between playing a balanced class in a way you don't want to play, and playing an imbalanced class that you can play however you want to.
> 
> ...



I think you are focusing _WAY_ too much on my reference to balance and far too little on my other point: that roles are essential to good classes and good class design. They help with balance, but that is far from being even their most important purpose.

Roles are about giving classes identity. They are about niche protection. They are about making each character a part of a whole, rather than either the whole itself or an unnecessary tag-along. Put simply, they are about building the game around cooperation and encouraging it to the point of necessity. D&D is, supposedly at least, a cooperative game. Roles encourage and support cooperative play. Editions prior to 4E quite frankly didn't, and a large part of that is their failure to embrace the idea of roles. Advice completely devoid of mechanics and rules is just empty verbiage that has no bearing on reality. It is little different than a lie. It can't support cooperation, good class design, balance, and fun gameplay the way that a role system can.

There is also the point that "play your class any way you like" is itself, an impossibility for any version of D&D. D&D has always been and will continue to be a class-based game. No class-based game will ever permit a true "your character can be anything it wants" kind of game. A 3E Fighter will never be a buffer. In fact, a 3E Fighter can't really be much of _anything at all_, because it doesn't have the mechanics needed to do anything. A Ranger will never be able to create walls of fire in order to isolate certain parts of the battlefield. Even an overpowered 3E Wizard will never be an effective healer.

The moment you choose a class, you are giving up the freedom to do whatever you want. No class will be that flexible, and neither should they. Mixing limitations and advantages is the very point of a class-based system. Restrictions are just as much a part of classes as anything else.

Overall, D&D is a cooperative class-based game, and an essential part of any cooperative class-based game is a role system. If you don't want roles, than you don't want D&D to be a cooperative class-based game.



Tortoise said:


> I'm not sure why you would say that. Roles as they are in 4e were not part of the game until 4e. The game did well for decades without roles being boxed up neatly as mechanical functions, instead being more like advice. The game has always had shortcomings and I don't see a lack of mechanically based roles as one of them.
> 
> Maybe I'm not understanding your intended meaning, but the wording gives me the impression of a boardgame where the Knight can only do certain things and the Thief can only do certain things and there is no playing the character outside those strictures.
> 
> Please let me know if I'm not getting your point and clarify it for me.



Well, as I said just above, the idea of Knights only doing some things and a Thief doing other things is essential to a game where you pick between classes. D&D has always been exactly that kind of game. Fighters have their class features and Rogues have different class features. These different class features create mechanical advantages and disadvantages, and it is impossible for players to play outside the limitations of their classes.

Anyways, roles have been a part of D&D ever since the belief that a balanced party consisted of a Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and Cleric came about, and that belief started very, very early on in the game's history. Back then there was no identification of roles as such because the classes were the roles. The ideas of classes and roles only separated because of the proliferation of many new classes that broke down the old equivalency. In other words, the Rogue's ability to sneak and open chests used to be both a class mechanic and a role mechanic, but in 4E it is a class mechanic, since there is no "thief" role. In a theoretical 5E that embraces roles, it might very well be a role mechanic for a "thief" role.

If you want to go back to a game where there are no explicit roles, you need to go back to a game where there are only as many classes as there are players at the table. I rather like having lots of class options, however, so I'd much rather have explicit roles and a variety of options.


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## Bluenose (Mar 26, 2012)

billd91 said:


> If there are multiple ways for the game to do things, some more effective than others, that doesn't imply that the ones less effective are actually incompetent. Make them all at least competent and there should be no problem. If clerics are the most effective at healing, but nobody wants to play one, that's not a problem as long as other classes people do want to play are reasonably competent.




First Aid, the "heal me now!" function of Treat Injury, can be used once a day to heal somebody for their level in hit points plus the amount by which your check exceeds DC15, and incidentally can go wrong and make someone worse off. Revivify requires you get to the character in the round they drop. Treat Disease and Treat Poison are identical to the same functions in Heal. About the only way to improve this is to go for the Medic prestige class. It's not even close to comparable with what a traditional cleric can do, and certainly wouldn't keep up with the damage values for monsters. So, "reasonably competent" is going to be a matter of opinion.


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## I'm A Banana (Mar 26, 2012)

TwinBahamut said:
			
		

> that roles are essential to good classes and good class design.




I don't believe this to be the case. The fighter's mark isn't what makes the fighter class in 4e a fun class to play (it is what makes it a defender, though!).



> Roles are about giving classes identity. They are about niche protection. They are about making each character a part of a whole, rather than either the whole itself or an unnecessary tag-along. Put simply, they are about building the game around cooperation and encouraging it to the point of necessity. D&D is, supposedly at least, a cooperative game. Roles encourage and support cooperative play. Editions prior to 4E quite frankly didn't, and a large part of that is their failure to embrace the idea of roles. Advice completely devoid of mechanics and rules is just empty verbiage that has no bearing on reality. It is little different than a lie. It can't support cooperation, good class design, balance, and fun gameplay the way that a role system can.




Classes have a pretty clear identity without roles as 4e defines them (even when that identity was just "fighter" and "magic-user" and "cleric"). And Niche Protection figures into what I said about balance: it's only good when it's in the service of something other than itself.

Your claim about "editions prior to 4e" doesn't jive with what others are saying about "roles always being present, but sometimes more flexible" and I'm going to have to go with the others on this. Any race-to-zero numerical resolution system is going to have two main ways to affect it (moar damage to them, and less damage to you), and at least two supporting ways to affect how you affect it (improve your defenses/weaken their damage, or improve your damage/weaken their defense), just by the nature of that system. And outside of that context, there's been an adventure-level division of roles based on what a character is best at (fighters at fightin', rogues at sneakin', wizards at whatever, but only for a few minutes, and then they suck worse than everyone at everything). Cooperation also existed long before 2008, so it doesn't seem to jive with your statement, either.

4e's addition to the table was the enforced role mechanics. Which solved the problem of making sure nobody accidentally sucked pretty nicely, but introduced many problems of its own (homogeniety, straitjacketing classes, kludge multiclass mechanics, etc.)

Roles, of course, aren't the only way to solve the Accidental Suck problem. It's entirely possible for 5e to solve that problem without using marking or <Splat> Word or Striker Dice -- namely by baking the basics for the roles into every character, or by making it clear (via the advice) what the class is good and bad at, so that a player who takes it in a different direction has no expectation of being a badass. 

Lets try not to exaggerate the effects of 4e's role mechanics -- or the effects on the game of dropping them -- to panacea and catastrophe levels. Fun times at the game table do not depend on one character dealing more damage, one character marking, one character healing, and one character using persistent or area-effect powers. 

And, if for some reason, for you, they do, I'm fairly certain you'll be able to play a 5e that has all those features. Ditching role mechanics for the core doesn't mean they won't be a module. 

I, however, won't have to play that way, because role mechanics won't be an assumed feature of the game, as if it's something that everyone needs in order to have fun with D&D.


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## TwinBahamut (Mar 26, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> I don't believe this to be the case. The fighter's mark isn't what makes the fighter class in 4e a fun class to play (it is what makes it a defender, though!).



Are you kidding? Marking is fun! Half the enjoyment I get in combat with my Warden is when I get to abuse the marking rules in order to protect allies, hurt foes, and control the situation. They are a blast to use in play.

Also, it is kinda nice to actually have rules to make the Fighter good at what it was _supposed_ to have been good at in every previous edition. The idea that the Fighter was supposed to be a good tank has been around forever. It's just that is was miserably bad at it before.

Which gets to my main point... "Play whatever you want however you want" is an impossibility. You don't need a "one mechanic for every class that shares a role" kind of thing, but you certainly need _something_ to help a class be able to carry out its given concept and place in the party! 

As for the rest of your reply to me, it feels rather like you're trying to drag me into a conversation I wasn't having. It is utterly unimportant to me whether 5E uses universal role mechanics like Word powers or marking. I don't care in the slightest if they completely revise the list of roles and change the relationship between roles and classes significantly. I certainly would be quite happy if 5E classes are less homogenous than 4E's classes. It does bother me, however, when people like Mr. Mearls start talking about roles as suggestions that can be ignored by veteran players. That implies a complete abandonment of the entire role concept's impact on class design, which is unacceptable to me.


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## Kynn (Mar 26, 2012)

When we talk about 4e's innovations, like "role" (tied to class), we need to not just talk about -- as some people in this thread have suggested -- only the concepts found in the first Player's Handbook, but also those which developed as the game evolved.

One of the most important post-launch innovations, that came about in Essentials, was to explicitly de-couple the strict relationship between a class and a role. It used to be that a fighter was always a defender, and a druid always a controller, and ranger always a striker -- but they changed that.

The fighter (Slayer vs. Knight) example is the most obvious of this, with one variety of fighter being a striker, while the other a defender. There are rangers who are strikers and rangers who are controllers. Warlocks who are strikers and warlocks who are controllers (okay, well, they kind of suck but the idea was good). Druids who are controllers and druids who are leaders.

This is a good innovation for class design and one which needs to be expanded up on 5e, not discarded as an unnecessary 4e-ism. Roles need to continue to exist and continue to be separated from class as this will give the best diversity of characters to play.

Not all classes are going to be suitable for all roles, but the various "builds"/specializations of each class should support different roles. Thus you can play whatever concept you want, but you can also get guidance as to how that concept can excel in a fight along specific directions.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 26, 2012)

Kynn said:


> One of the most important post-launch innovations, that came about in Essentials, was to explicitly de-couple the strict relationship between a class and a role. It used to be that a fighter was always a defender, and a druid always a controller, and ranger always a striker -- but they changed that.




This happened as more material was added, WAY before essentials.  While Fighter "powers" were always verging on defendery, it was not difficult at all to make a striker fighter.  Most classes, could by half-way through 4e's life, reasonably cover two roles.


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## Kynn (Mar 26, 2012)

shidaku said:


> This happened as more material was added, WAY before essentials.  While Fighter "powers" were always verging on defendery, it was not difficult at all to make a striker fighter.  Most classes, could by half-way through 4e's life, reasonably cover two roles.




Except that the Fighter couldn't ever divorce herself from the Defender role entirely until the Slayer.

Sure, you could just not use your marking abilities, but it's not like you got anything cool in return for giving up using Combat Challenge.

I had several players who wanted to play fighters just because they wanted to be the Guy With A Big Sword Who Hits People, not the Guy With Heavy Armor Who Defends His Friends. They were out of luck until the Slayer.


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## UngeheuerLich (Mar 26, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> I have.  And check out your own standards there, and apply them.  A hill giant is the same CR as a level 7 barbarian.  So 1 hill giant in an encounter is equivalent to 1 level 7 barbarian.
> 
> That's... utterly absurd.  A hill giant does massive damage and has 102 hp, far more than a level 7 barbarian (assuming the level 7 barbarian rolls 6 12s for HP, he'd still need at 16 in con or so to equal that.  With more reasonable rolls he'd need about a 26).
> 
> ...



what exactly are you fighting for?

of course the 4e xp budgets are better. 4e is better balanced overall. It is newer and the designers had more experience. 3.5 CR were better overall than 3.0 CR´s

So CR and xp budged stand in a similar relation as thacß and bab. Overall the same, but one is more confortable to use. But both work reasonably well. And i imagne, that no matter how it is called in the end, it is as balanced as the xp budget is now.

Actually an xp budget would be my system of choice, but I rather had CR than level, as with level, i expect a certain attack bonus, a certain AC and a certain number of hp. I however could imagine monsters that are balanced differently and thus may have a higer CR than "level"
And I rather had those values independant from each other. You could even have magic items increasing or lowering the challenge rating by some points. So CR seems appropriate here.


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## Tallifer (Mar 26, 2012)

hanez said:


> The negative energy cleric is having fun playin a role in his head and the system is letting him, that is awesome.  Another player could play a Paladin and we could roleplay the tension that might occur with that.  Or the party can purchase some healing potions, or seek out some wands of healing, or they can choose to seek lower level challenges.  Or the DM can modify encounters, or supply the appropriate magic items to help alleviate the problem, or an NPC could pop in now and then.  Maybe the next adventure the party encounters a troubled magical creature in the woods and if they save them, a druid in the woods offers free healing every time they visit the grove (but perhaps not to the one who radiates negative energy).
> 
> There are plenty of solutions to this "problem" (which really isn't a problem because playing your character the way you want is the very nature of the game).  The least acceptable solution to me would be forcing classes into specific roles.




I can think of three more solutions. 1. When the adventurers first encounter each other in the tavern, the others say, "Hmm. Thanks Mr. Evil, but we will leave the spot open for another cleric." 2. The Paladin leaves an opening for some gnolls to slip past and eat Mr. Evil. "Too bad I did not have Divine Challenge." 3. Another player chooses to play a class in a weird role to complement the cleric: "Hi. I am a Wizard who uses his staff in melee. This should be fun."


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## JeffB (Mar 27, 2012)

Good for Mr. Mearls.

There are many things i loved about it, but the mechanical combat roles, and  the naming of such are defintely high on the list of  puke-worthy elements of 4e, afaic.  I certainly hope this decision to cut out the roles  spills over into the monster area too.


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## JamesonCourage (Mar 27, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> I have.  And check out your own standards there, and apply them.  A hill giant is the same CR as a level 7 barbarian.  So 1 hill giant in an encounter is equivalent to 1 level 7 barbarian.
> 
> That's... utterly absurd.



It's not as bad as you might think. Let's compare a 25-point buy half-orc PC barbarian to a hill giant (HG=Hill Giant, for quick comparison):


			
				Quick Write-Up said:
			
		

> Level 7 Half-Orc Barbarian (Raging, 9 rounds)
> *HP:* 93 [HG: 102]
> *Initiative:* +0 [HG: -1]
> *Speed:* 20 feet in armor, 50 ft. on warhorse [HG: 30 feet in armor, no mount]
> ...






GreyICE said:


> A hill giant does massive damage and has 102 hp, far more than a level 7 barbarian (assuming the level 7 barbarian rolls 6 12s for HP, he'd still need at 16 in con or so to equal that.  With more reasonable rolls he'd need about a 26).



Well, there's only a 9 point HP difference, thanks to the rage mechanic. The barbarian deals, on average, 17.5 damage per hit, compared to the HG's 19 (18 vs. the PC barbarian), which is not nearly as massive compared to the PC as you might have thought. The barbarian has the same or better saves and initiative (very slightly), slower speed on foot, but has a horse. His attack bonus is the same. His AC is two less, but he can't be flanked (negating 2 AC, as we'll see below). His ranged attack is 1 less on the attack, but 3.5 less damage on a hit (just over 1% of the HP pool of the barbarian party when they aren't raging). Their skills are comparable, with a noticeable edge on Spot going to the HG, though the barbarians do have darkvision to the HG's low-light vision. 

If we assume that the HG is attacked by a party of 4 barbarians (as you implied might be the case with the quote: "Now a level 7 barbarian is an appropriate challenge for a party of 4 level 7 barbarians"):

Let's assume that a barbarian in the party of 4 is built similarly to our PC barbarian. If, in the first round, the 4 PCs surround and flank the HG (+2 to attacks), they'll be attacking at +18, against an AC of 20 (only missing on a 1), so we'll assume 4 hits for 70 damage (rolling average). The HG goes down in round 2 at the latest (round 1 if they wait for him, 5 ft. step, and full attack). If things play out badly for the PCs and the Hill Giant hit 3 times (1 attack in the first round, 2 attacks on a full attack... that's _if_ they wait for him and negate his AoO for reach with 5 ft. steps), he'll deal 54 damage. That's 17.0% of the 4 barbarian's total non-raging HP pool.

Now, let's look at the same 4 barbarian's are attacking that PC barbarian (he's screwed):

The barbarians surround and attack the PC barbarian, flanking him (though for no effect). They'll be attacking at +16 against an AC of 18 (only missing on a 1), so we'll assume 4 hits for 66 damage (thanks to damage reduction). The PC barbarian goes down in round 2 (or round 1 if they wait, step, full attack). If things go badly and the barbarian hit 3 times (1 attack in the first round, 2 attacks on a full attack), he'll deal 49.5 damage. That's 15.6% of the 4 barbarian's total non-raging HP pool.

That's about a 1.4% difference. Yes, the HG is more effective, but it's not by a massive margin. Not even by a large margin. If both fights go well for the party of barbarians and they only get hit once (HG deals 18, barbarian deals 17.5), we're looking at a 0.15% difference in effectiveness (both deal about 5.5% of the party's non-raging HP pool). Still, it does show us something, as I'll note below.



GreyICE said:


> Yet the CR rules clearly state that 2 Hill Giants is just as challenging as 2 level 7 barbarians.



I think they would be seen as about the same to most parties.



GreyICE said:


> Nowadays we'd have the vernacular to properly express what is going on.  The Barbarian is a standard level 7.  The Hill Giant is an elite level 7.



I don't think this is the case, but that's the real takeaway lesson here: CR can be misleading. You glanced at the two, said "it's not the same" based on previous experience with the CR system, when in reality _this_ matchup is pretty similar.

The CR system, while decent, could either be pretty on-target (like with this matchup), or it could be very misleading. We need a better system than what we had. As always, play what you like


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## Kynn (Mar 27, 2012)

JamesonCourage said:


> I don't think this is the case, but that's the real takeaway lesson here: CR can be misleading. You glanced at the two, said "it's not the same" based on previous experience with the CR system, when in reality _this_ matchup is pretty similar.
> 
> The CR system, while decent, could either be pretty on-target (like with this matchup), or it could be very misleading. We need a better system than what we had. As always, play what you like




Yeah, if the example was instead "a level 7 monk" then we'd see more problems.


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## Savage Wombat (Mar 27, 2012)

And Pathfinder, BTW, just says that the Level 7 Barbarian is only a CR 5 opponent.  So 4 lvl 7 Barbarians fighting 4 lvl 7 PCs would only be a CR +2 encounter.


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## Janaxstrus (Mar 27, 2012)

Kynn said:


> Yeah, if the example was instead "a level 7 monk" then we'd see more problems.




CR isn't perfect, that is for sure.  Substitute CR6 Chraal and that level 7 party is in more trouble than they are from the Hill Giant.

That is on the designers, in that instance though and MMIII and IV (fastest way to have the players groan...pull out MMIII or IV for an encounter)


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## JamesonCourage (Mar 27, 2012)

Janaxstrus said:


> CR isn't perfect, that is for sure.  Substitute CR6 Chraal and that level 7 party is in more trouble than they are from the Hill Giant.
> 
> That is on the designers, in that instance though and MMIII and IV (fastest way to have the players groan...pull out MMIII or IV for an encounter)



Or even the CR 3 Allip from the first MM. Incorporeal (50% miss chance even with +1 weapons), 1d4 Wisdom drain as a touch attack (against my barbarian's 10 Wisdom and touch AC of 10), gains 5 temp HP per Wisdom drain attack, and a group fascinate ability for 2d4 rounds vs Will (with about 50% chance to affect the barbarians). This is an all barbarian party, though, so more things can challenge it than normal.

At any rate, the CR system definitely needs a major overhaul from what 3.X had if it's going to get used. I think that's something must people agree on. Good place to start, bad place to stop.

And, I actually think the 3.X CR system's the opposite of what Mr. Mearls wrote: it's potentially better than nothing for experienced players/DMs, but it's probably bad for new players/DMs who don't know what they should be looking to ignore. Let's get that reversed, yeah? As always, play what you like


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## hanez (Mar 27, 2012)

Tallifer said:


> I can think of three more solutions. 1. When the adventurers first encounter each other in the tavern, the others say, "Hmm. Thanks Mr. Evil, but we will leave the spot open for another cleric." 2. The Paladin leaves an opening for some gnolls to slip past and eat Mr. Evil. "Too bad I did not have Divine Challenge." 3. Another player chooses to play a class in a weird role to complement the cleric: "Hi. I am a Wizard who uses his staff in melee. This should be fun."




I am not 100% sure if your being sarcastic here.   I see #3 as a suitable option and #1 and #2 as examples of whiney players who might be close to getting kicked out of my gaming group.   The example you provided had a cleric summoning undead, a not uncommon occurrence in D&D.  As long as your DM does not have a houserule to ban  non good characters,  I would propose that sabotaging the player would be a bit of an extreme way to play out the tension.   There are many reasons why characters of different alignments might work together, perhaps you or your DM could think of some ( there are many other examples in fiction).  

As for option #1 I believe it is always the DMs job to give players a reason why they are working together.   So if my DM was silly enough to let the players in the tavern "not want to work with me" and have no negative consequences to the game for doing so, I would be sure to immediately role up a lawful good character who didn't want to work with the other characters because they don't meet his standards.   The other player can be just as difficult as you are being.

Again your group might have a rule about only playing good characters, thats not uncommon, but if it doesnt have that rule I don't exactly see what your problem  is.  One of my most memorable campaigns involved a wizard who summoned legions of undead, and a druid working in the same party.   We ended that campaign at epic levels and when we get together over beers the wizard player always brings up his mammoth spiraling evil tower overshadowing the druids grove, while the druid jokes about how he used the wizard to save Gaia (a plot theme in the campaign).


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## Hussar (Mar 27, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Not exactly.
> 
> Each 4e role comes first with Role Mechanics -- Defender's Mark (or Aura), Striker's Additional Dice (or extra damage), Leader's Word, and a controller with an area-affect ability and maybe some (save ends) or EoNT status effects.
> 
> ...




Thing is, while the verbiage might be different, it really isn't a huge shift.  Sure, the fighter might not mark.  Ok, fine, so, you've just made a Slayer and called it a fighter.  OTOH, even in the PHB, you can make a fighter that isn't really a defender (or not a great one) pretty easily.  

The argument has always been that role foces you into a single type of character.  All defenders MUST be the same, because they're defenders right?  

About the only role that I would argue is forced is the leader one.  Other classes just don't get the healing abilities.  And that should be changed.  I have no problems with the healer wizard.  But, pretty much all classes have their primary role and can, with very little work, be competitive in any other role.  

So, if you're new to the game, you can stick to the role that's given and have a solid character that does what it says on the box.  Or, you can deviate from that and make a character that maybe isn't as good as another specialist in that area, but, is certainly competitive with any other role.

Yes, role means that the majority of powers for a class of that role will be focused on that role.  But, there are more than enough options, even in core, to not have to follow that.

Thus, role is more simply advice than actual straight jacket.  You certainly aren't forced by the mechanics to follow a single role, nor, given easy retraining and the sheer number of powers, are you forced into a single role for the career of the character.

OTOH, by saying what he's saying, it makes all the critics deliriously happy.  Look at the responses in the first three pages of this thread.  The biggest 4e critics have all chimed in on how fantastic it is that role is being changed in 5e.  But, when you get right down to it, nothing is really changing, just the verbiage.

Presentation was always the biggest issue in 4e.


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## pemerton (Mar 27, 2012)

avin said:


> There has been roles before, I insist, on Prestige Classes and Kits, but never on classes.



I don't believe this is true. 1st ed AD&D had them in the training rules. After each adventure, the GM had to give each PC a rating from 1 to 4 (lower is better), based on how well the PC fulfilled it's role. Fighters who cowered and refused to enage the enemey, MUs who went toe to toe with monsters, Clerics who refused to heal and/or buff, and Thieves who failed to rely upon stealth and subtlety are all given by Gygax as examples of POOR (ie 4) performance. Upon gaining enought XPs for a new level, the GM then had to average the ratings given, which in turn determined how many weeks the PC had to train to gain a level.

There is also the discussion in the 3E PHB2 which a poster (I can't remember who, sorry) referenced a couple of times upthread.



malkav666 said:


> I think the problem you illustrate in your post has nothing to do with an argument for or against roles. It has to do with your party not talking with one another and making sure you had concepts that fit well with one another.



OK, but roles are one of the devices for making sure that conversation takes place. If you strip away roles, you still have to have the conversation. Roles are, in part, just a handy vocabulary with which to have it.



Mattachine said:


> That discussion should be in the new PHB. Something like this:
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 6. Advice for parties lacking a role. Character types that can fill two roles. Using henchmen or hirelings, etc. Give examples of parties lacking one or two roles completely, with brief discussion of how a campaign like that might work.



From memory, the Moldvay Basic book has an example party in which a cleric retainer has been hired to round out the party (Sister Rebecca, to complement the Fighter, the Elf, the Dwarf and the Thief). The Puffin book from the early 80s, "How to Play Dungeons & Dragons" also has a cleric retainer being hired to round out the party (the PCs are a wizard, a fighter and a halfling thief).

The idea that the default D&D party is a well-rounded one is hardly new to 4e!

And doesn't the 4e DMG also have advice for running a game in which not all the roles are present? (I ran a game with no leader for 6 or so levels, and it was hardly rocket-science. I made no changes on my end, and the players had their PCs take more healing abilities via power selection, multi-classing (at one stage we had two multi-class clerics, a multi-class bard and a multi-class warlord). When the player of the ranger rebuilt his PC as a hybrid ranger-cleric, some of those other healing abilities were gradually retrained away.)



malkav666 said:


> You illustrate one of my favorite things about d20/3.x./PF. It is awesome that you can make a Palpatine cleric, a healing cleric, a fighting focused cleric, a master of the undead type. Or a little of all of it. With the additions of domains and subdomains into pathfinder they have ensured that you can deviate away from "healbot" as a character theme and play the cleric in meaningful ways.



But should these all be variants on the same class? Or should they be different classes?



Bedrockgames said:


> The thing is, some of us want the option to include the non buff, few heal cleric in a party.





Mattachine said:


> By the way, 4e has a non-heal, non-buff cleric: the Invoker.



Right. A lot of the debate about roles straitjacketing classes really seems to be about whether the game should provide many classes, each reasonably well-defined, or few classes, which are sprawling and ill- or non-defined.

I share the concerns of several others in this thread that the latter approach will produce caster dominance, because magic knows no inherent limits, whereas martial types will have someone or other's intution of "realism" or "verisimilitude" used to impose limits.



SkidAce said:


> If we want a "useless" party;
> 
> Bard (playing as sage-like thief)
> Quarter Staff Fighter
> ...



I think there are other, and maybe easier, ways to make this work. As a very simplistic example, the GM doubles all monster hit points, and/or monster damage. Now the game has the feel of being a combat-useless party, but the actual mechancial adjustments required to achieve that are minimial.

Similarly, a game in which everyone is tongue tied doesn't need special rules for building PCs that are useless at the social pilllar. It just requires easy guidelines for the GM to up the difficulty of social encounters while leaving everything else untouched.


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## pemerton (Mar 27, 2012)

TwinBahamut said:


> Roles are about giving classes identity. They are about niche protection. They are about making each character a part of a whole, rather than either the whole itself or an unnecessary tag-along. Put simply, they are about building the game around cooperation and encouraging it to the point of necessity. D&D is, supposedly at least, a cooperative game. Roles encourage and support cooperative play.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Advice completely devoid of mechanics and rules is just empty verbiage that has no bearing on reality. It is little different than a lie. It can't support cooperation, good class design, balance, and fun gameplay the way that a role system can.



Agreed.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> What Mearls seems to be talking about for 5e is the lack of explicit role mechanics -- no longer will every fighter have a mark -- and instead general advice on playing a given class -- telling you that fighters have the highest AC, so a good strategy is to get monsters to direct their attacks against the fighter, preserving the more vulnerable members of the party.
> 
> You might also get advice for the Bard that tells the player to try and solve their problems through diplomacy and deception and interaction rather than brute-force, too -- this doesn't need to be combat advice, per se.



The question is, will this be good advice or not? If there are no marking mechanics, then how does the fighter get the monsters to direct their attacks against him/her? If the answer is "by engaging them", does that imply that the game is going back to a norm of non-mobility rather than mobility? If the answer is "via free roleplay between player and GM", what does that say about the role of the GM in the game? And will all classes be reliant on the GM in the same way?

Similar issues arise for your bard. Will there be social conflict resolution mechanics for the player of the bard to take advantage of? If not, does the player of the bard have to engage in free roleplaying to make anything happen?

I see this relating back to TwinBahamut's points - advice without mechanics to support it is pointless, and if free roleplaying is to be a major part of the action resolution mechanics, then the rulebooks would want to have a pretty good discussion of how it is meant to work!


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## malkav666 (Mar 27, 2012)

pemerton said:


> 1.OK, but roles are one of the devices for making sure that conversation takes place. If you strip away roles, you still have to have the conversation. Roles are, in part, just a handy vocabulary with which to have it.
> 
> 
> 2.But should these all be variants on the same class? Or should they be different classes?




I hope you don't mind that I snipped your post down to the bits discussing the parts that you quoted from my earlier post.  In response to your offerings:

1.I don't necessarily have an issue with roles from a thematic standpoint. A role based lexicon makes a lot of sense to me. I just happen to dislike them from the mechanical perspective. I feel that with a predetermined mechanical role precedent that you end up with classes that kind of get shoehorned into that role at the expense of classic representation of the trope the class was based on or ignoring things that it could do in previous editions for no other reason than just to fit better into the role.

But I will say that roles in and of themselves were not a deal breaker for me with 4e, I just feel they were partially responsible for some of the "saminess" vibes I took away from the edition.

2. On your second point; I am not certain whether they should be separate classes or not TBH. I tend to prefer much larger sets of options for a class and working with different builds than to have classes minced down to a single "role". But I could definitely see folks wanting it the other way. In the end with that particular question I find I cannot really answer it in a way that would promote a productive debate. I could tell you which I prefer (in this case it would be for the more broad class instead of many classes with a narrow focus), but I couldn't say which way is how it "should" be done. But it is an interesting question. Maybe even one that would deserve its own thread.

Thanks for the discussion.

love,

malkav


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## pemerton (Mar 27, 2012)

malkav666 said:


> I hope you don't mind that I snipped your post down to the bits discussing the parts that you quoted from my earlier post.



Not at all.



malkav666 said:


> I feel that with a predetermined mechanical role precedent that you end up with classes that kind of get shoehorned into that role at the expense of classic representation of the trope the class was based on or ignoring things that it could do in previous editions for no other reason than just to fit better into the role.



Fair enough.

I'm not really able to compare 4e to 3E in this respect, as I don't have enough experience with 3E. Likewise for full bells-and-whistles 2nd ed AD&D.

When I compare 4e in this respect to Basic D&D and 1st ed AD&D, I would see the biggest changes of this sort are in respect to wizards, rangers and druids. Rangers and druids in AD&D are quirky enough (and arguably overpowerd enough) that the changes are tolerable - one set of oddities is replaced by another, and rangers - especially archer rangers - make for an easy class to play.

The changes to wizards are a different matter, but I'm personally from the "classic D&D wizards need to be evened out" school. 



malkav666 said:


> I am not certain whether they should be separate classes or not TBH. I tend to prefer much larger sets of options for a class and working with different builds than to have classes minced down to a single "role". But I could definitely see folks wanting it the other way.



In 4e, one of the benefits of broader classes with "sub-builds" is that it opens up space for the sharing of utility powers (and in some cases attack powers as well), which reduces power bloat. 5e seems unlikely to have a 4e-style power system for non-spellcasting classes, which makes me curious about what, if at all, is at stake in this issue.

For example, if (i) the fighter class has 3 build options, and (ii) being a fighter doesn't involve any mechanical choices other than choosing one of those 3 builds, then why call it one class rather than 3?

For clerics and wizards choosing spells it probably will matter, but I worry a bit about a return to pre-4e overpowered, in part because overly broad and flexible, spell casters.


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## Ahnehnois (Mar 27, 2012)

Kynn said:


> Yeah, I noticed that too. I'm a pretty experienced 4e DM (going back to AD&D times) and XP budgets are very useful to me for encounter design.
> 
> I wonder why Mearls seems to be so out of touch on this point.



Frankly, I think this is one of the few times I've ever seen Mearls so on point. A lot of people don't use whatever the XP/CR system is (link); "no XP" is hovering a little below 50%). If it's being widely ignored, and even more widely altered, why not treat it as optional and make it simple and easy to modify? That's already the way it's being treated in practice.



			
				JamesonCourage said:
			
		

> And, I actually think the 3.X CR system's the opposite of what Mr. Mearls wrote: it's potentially better than nothing for experienced players/DMs, but it's probably bad for new players/DMs who don't know what they should be looking to ignore. Let's get that reversed, yeah?



I think experienced DMs are often the ones who know how to pace and balance a game without CR/XP. They are metagame rules that seem focused on teaching you how to do those things; I'm not sure what the use for an advanced DM is other than to quickly survey CRs when picking monsters. New ones need guidance a bit more, though I think the learning curve would be softened by the rules saying loudly and clearly "take this with a grain of salt".


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## Schmoe (Mar 27, 2012)

Crazy Jerome said:


> Well, mechanically they could always treat roles as more explicit and separate, instead of less so and embedded. Make "role" an actual mechanical widget, just like race, class, feats, etc. Then simply include option in that list that amount to, "no thanks, I'll make my own". For whatever feats, powers, spells, etc. that exists outside of that framework, but should be informed by it, use keywords.





Yeah, this is more along the lines of what I was thinking.  A section that describes common roles in an adventuring party, such as scout, controller, front-man, assassin, etc. will help give people, especially new people, an idea of the possibilities in the game.  Then each class description could talk about how a class can be used to fill certain roles and the tradeoffs that need to be made in order for a class to function in that particular role.

In a purely for-demonstration-only example, let's pick the Fighter.  The roles description could say:

A fighter has the tools to be able to succeed in multiple combat roles.  He can be extremely effective as a combat neutralizer.  To do this he will want to look to take feats such as Improved Trip, Improved Bull Rush, etc.  Strength is important for a fighter to be effective as a combat neutralizer, as it makes his combat maneuvers more effect.  A combat neutralizer role combines well with any other combat role.

<goes on to talk about more combat roles>

In practice a fighter can expect to be extremely proficient in 3 or 4 combat roles.  Trying to focus on more will dilute the fighter's effectiveness.

A fighter is typically limited to being capable at only one social role.  While he can dabble in many, he doesn't have the tools to really succeed in a wide range of roles.  A fighter can be reasonably effective as a front-man.  To do this he will want to take at least one or two feats such as Negotiator and spend a lot of skill points in Diplomacy and Sense Motive.  A fighter who is a front-man will find it difficult to also fill the Combat Skirmisher role, because both roles compete for the fighter's limited skill points.

<goes on to talk about more social roles>

I don't know, it may be overly wordy and overly complex and self-evident to veteran players, but I think information like this would be very helpful to newer players who are figuring out what kind of character to make.


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## malkav666 (Mar 27, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Not at all.
> 
> Fair enough.
> 
> ...




I see two themes from your post here, that I would like write about. The first is the bit about the three fighter builds. I think the example you gave is a good one for the discussion. To me, a fighter is just one who fights. Now with that statement I can make a good deal of character concepts. Now sometimes a concept or a build is good enough to develop it into its own class. For example we have barbarians, paladins, and rangers who also fight and are designed with the idea that they can do it very well (speaking from 3.x/PF frame with regards to FULL BAB progression).

The idea of paladins, and rangers, and barbarians could all be made with the fighter class thematically.In fact, my favorite paladin that I ever played didn't have a single level in the paladin class (his charisma was too low)but he still went the route of the paladin with fighter levels and it worked out just fine. But all three of those classes possess something at their core that the fighter does not as a class. Be it spell casting, animal companions, the ability to rage. Those crucial differences, the bits that cannot be picked up from say a feat, are the things that merit the design of a new class to me. I don't for example think a dexterous fighter who has chosen to focus on thrown weapons and stealth deserves to be a different class from the fighter in armor standing up front take it in the face and dishing it out in return on the dime of her blood.

The idea that I could make many builds and or flavors within the rule space of a single class is something that appeals to me greatly. The idea of making two classes out of variations seems like a greta way to waste pages as well. In essence the fighter is more than just the sum of each specific possible build you can make, it is the collection of ALL of them. When I set down as a player in a group and we are discussing group viability three things usually come up-

How will we stop the bleeding?
How will we keep the bad guys off of the ranged toons?
How are we gonna open that door?

I have found the answer to those questions will vary from group to group (sometimes the second question doesn't even need to be asked). I like that in the D&Dish games I play that I could answer any of those questions with almost any class. That means that I as the player decide the role of my character. I don't have to be shoehorned into anything by mechanical role expectations. I do think that groups of players should sit down during the toon making process and decide how certain eventualities will be handled, and the idea of roles as a concept fits very well there. I just think that the broader classes give the game variety. When you cut anything into small enough pieces it all looks the same.

The second thing I gather from your post is a theme of dislike of casters power (in the Vancian world at least). I have heard this argument before and it has some validity. Full casters can and do break the game in many ways. I tackle the issue by really only letting players in my games have wizards after I have shown them the role that I want them to have in the game world. Its tough when you get a player who has a full blown caster and instead of making their own niche they go after the niches of the other players. But I find this to be more of a player issue than a class issue. But hands down if someone wants to ruin everyone elses fun with a full caster, they can do it by the rules.

I also break the spells up into lists regardless of the source. The lists I keep are high arcana, elder arcana, and banned. These lists started in my groups towards the end of AD&D2e. And the players made them not me. The players put the spells on the lists. And we basically handle them like this: A caster may only cast one spell from the high arcana list in a single encounter for any reason(And they may not cast a second if the effects of a previously cast spell from this list are still active). A caster may only ever have one spell on the elder arcana list memorized at a time, this spell may not be cast during combat, and this spell cannot be dropped voluntarily, if memorized, it must be cast. and a banned spell is simply banned.

I mention these house rules we use because I think that WOTC could really improve the vancian system by leaving it largely open but perhaps adding a similar keyword system to it. It would make it very easy for a DM to say we are in a low magic world mages don't get the high arcana-ish spells (I have done this in the past and my players had a great time). I am not certain what type of keywords would be appropriate for a core adjustment to the game though, I just know what works for me and mine, and it took us years to make our lists (the lists are player maintained in my group, so for a spell to get on them they had to be mentioned by one of the players and discussed by all of them to actually get on the list. I didn't just fill them as the DM, although I did offer a list of spells that I wanted on it, and let the group decide).I also think that organized play could do with a banned list for sure (kind of like MTG) to keep silly combos out of the organized play sessions.

love,

malkav


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## Balesir (Mar 27, 2012)

Crazy Jerome said:


> Well, mechanically they could always treat roles as more explicit and separate, instead of less so and embedded. Make "role" an actual mechanical widget, just like race, class, feats, etc. Then simply include option in that list that amount to, "no thanks, I'll make my own". For whatever feats, powers, spells, etc. that exists outside of that framework, but should be informed by it, use keywords.



Which is very cool and all, but begs the question "what is "class" for? I still haven't seen this really answered outside of roles and vague generalities. 



Crazy Jerome said:


> Another nice thing about this is that you can have roles that not everyone will enjoy, perhaps some that don't even overlap well. I don't care for games where one guy can be the "face guy". Others don't like "defenders". Someone else will want a guy with no particularly great combat abiltiies whatsoever.



I think a system of "roles" that has half a dozen "combat" roles and then one role each for "face guy" and "scout" is a lazy kludge that should be aborted before publication.

In a "perfect" world (for me) I would like to see a D&D with 4-5 combat roles, 4-5 social roles and 4-5 exploration roles. Every character gets one of each. Maybe they come from class, theme and background, or maybe they are selected for themselves and class and theme have other, separate functions (but those functions had better be well defined, dammit). D&D was always a class-based team game where the whole is supposed to be more than the sum of the player characters. Let's see that laid out clearly in a coherent design for combat, social encounters and exploration as a base starting point.



Lanefan said:


> As for roles, I'm not sorry to see them getting downplayed - I want to be able to take a class and shoehorn it into a different role if that's what suits the character I have in mind.  My usual example is the "heavy Ranger", a sword-and-board guy in heavy armour who in most respects is a tank but can take the armour off and track/scout if he has to.



Er, isn't that just a fighter with tracking? What's in a word ("Ranger")?


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## Balesir (Mar 27, 2012)

Ahnehnois said:


> Frankly, I think this is one of the few times I've ever seen Mearls so on point. A lot of people don't use whatever the XP/CR system is (link); "no XP" is hovering a little below 50%). If it's being widely ignored, and even more widely altered, why not treat it as optional and make it simple and easy to modify? That's already the way it's being treated in practice.



Wasn't that talking about using XP to determine when characters level up, rather than talking about XP budgets for encounters? I have been GMing since the late '70s and I still find XP budgets and the like handy guides for encounter planning.

Oh, and someone said "let's do away with monster roles as well" - yeah, why not? Gods forfend we should have any kind of useful shorthand to help build interesting encounters or anything. Sheesh.


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 27, 2012)

Balesir said:


> Which is very cool and all, but begs the question "what is "class" for? I still
> 
> In a "perfect" world (for me) I would like to see a D&D with 4-5 combat roles, 4-5 social roles and 4-5 exploration roles. Every character gets one of each. Maybe they come from class, theme and background, or maybe they are selected for themselves and class and theme have other, separate functions (but those functions had better be well defined, dammit). D&D was always a class-based team game where the whole is supposed to be more than the sum of the player characters. Let's see that laid out clearly in a coherent design for combat, social encounters and exploration as a base starting point.
> 
> Er, isn't that just a fighter with tracking? What's in a word ("Ranger")?




I dont hold your preferences against you. I can see why some styles of play and some people would prefer this. But this is the opposite of what i want.


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## Henry (Mar 27, 2012)

TwinBahamut said:


> Are you kidding? Marking is fun! Half the enjoyment I get in combat with my Warden is when I get to abuse the marking rules in order to protect allies, hurt foes, and control the situation. They are a blast to use in play.




True, not everyone wants to play a barbarian or ranger to hit as hard as one, for all the baggage that those classes imply. (And one could with DM permission mod a Ranger to just be "Urban Archer", but it's an extra step that you have to do outside of the rules that some people would rather not have.) Also, the whole "A fighter can do just as much damage as a Striker" thing that I've seen some others state just isn't true -- an OPTIMIZED fighter could do as much damage as an un-optimized ranger, but an optimized one is still going to show him up. In 4E role design, this is a good thing, and works as intended -- but a LOT of folks don't like the design feature. The slayer really should have come along in 2008, and the community would not have had as much rancor on the topic. Suddenly, a fighter wasn't the premier "heavy hitter" any more.



> Also, it is kinda nice to actually have rules to make the Fighter good at what it was _supposed_ to have been good at in every previous edition. The idea that the Fighter was supposed to be a good tank has been around forever. It's just that is was miserably bad at it before.




I actually disagree with that, IF you play with 1E AD&D with the combat rules as they were written in the DMG.... which very few people ever did back in the day, myself included. In 1E combat, EVERYONE was "sticky", not just defenders. If you wanted to engage someone, you either charged them, in which case the longer reach weapon struck first (gave a lot of advantage to those pikes and two-handed swords), or you spent your entire turn engaging them in melee; you couldn't start attacking until next round. To move away from someone you were engaged in melee from, they got a free attack on your backside. I don't even believe there was a "fighting withdrawal" (which came with Basic D&D in 1981). It was just that fighters were better built to hurt their melee opponents, and the "defender stickiness or marking" was built into the basic rules.

Fighters did do their job, but the feature that helped them was removed as D&D evolved in its definition of what were "fun" combat rules.


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## Crazy Jerome (Mar 27, 2012)

Balesir said:


> Which is very cool and all, but begs the question "what is "class" for? I still haven't seen this really answered outside of roles and vague generalities.
> 
> I think a system of "roles" that has half a dozen "combat" roles and then one role each for "face guy" and "scout" is a lazy kludge that should be aborted before publication.




In such a system, "class" would be the main glue that holds everything together.  It might require very little space to explain for each class.  The difference in a fighter, paladin, and cleric, for example, might be some basic numbers and what lists they get to pick from.  

As for the other part, please note that my fourth bullet point was meant to indicate that the list was in no way complete or imply one pick per character.  I don't like "face" roles, either.  Ideally, you wouldn't have 4-5 of combat, exploration, and interaction roles in such a system.  You'd have at least twice that many--some of them likely mutually exclusive with each other, or at least not very compatible.  This is so that after you got done throwing out the ones that annoyed you, you'd still have 4-5 roles left in each pillar.


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## howandwhy99 (Mar 27, 2012)

Classes are roles (fantasy social roles) and archetypes (fantasy ones in the D&D genre).

They are also scopes for the players playing the game. Pick a Magic-User and you'll be exploring magic and getting XP for mastering elements of it. Does this mean the character shouldn't don armor and hack away with a sword? No, but they are not as good at being a Fighting-Man unless they have it as another class. (In fact, M-Us score the least combat rating of the core four).

Roles are not the manner in which one excels in combat. Classes are the defined scope of the game the character is built to excel in. As all of the classes overlap non-combat class abilities can be used to succeed in combat and other non-class activities. As combat is pretty central I can understand how classes could be construed as combat roles though.

[sblock]
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





[/sblock]"You Wish" is pretty much confrontation (combat) and resources (treasure) in D&D. Everyone is doing one to get the other, but ends and means are not necessarily the same for each class. This means we ally and share or we go our own way. Going it alone is far more difficult as the world doesn't get easier just for 1 character, so you're still going to need to hire help if nothing else.

Also, Sub-classes could be brought back to highlight what primary class role each focuses on in general. Then we can have the standard Cleric with a second highest fighting ability, yet have their scope be substantially different than a holy warrior's Paladin scope. Sub-classes overlap their core classes, sometimes borrowing from other classes, sometimes creating their own niche, frequently not using all of the core class they are under. Think of them as specialized custom classes unique to a setting, though the core 3-4 are already setting defining.


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## ExploderWizard (Mar 28, 2012)

pemerton said:


> From memory, the Moldvay Basic book has an example party in which a cleric retainer has been hired to round out the party (Sister Rebecca, to complement the Fighter, the Elf, the Dwarf and the Thief).




Nope. 

[page B59]

THE SITUATION: This party includes four 2nd level characters and a 1st level dwarf. Morgan Ironwolf,a female fighter (the caller);Silverleaf,an elf;Fredrik,a dwarf; Sister Rebecca,a cleric; and Black Dougal, a thief. 

[end quote]

No mention is made of how anyone joined this party.


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## MoxieFu (Mar 28, 2012)

Mike said in the original article:

"I like creating a character based on an image in my head, not a to-do list."

The role of the character is what the player makes of the class. The rules are there to serve the game and not vice-versa. If a rule gets in the way of the game, then the rule goes. 

I am okay with roles as a guideline, but I don't want Roles forced on me. That capitalization is there for a reason. People have been claiming that roles have always been part of of the game and I don't dispute that. But I will disagree that "Roles" have always been part of the game.

A character's role can shift during the course of an adventure as can the role of the entire party. They may start out trying to gather information as stealthily as possible and then shift into a mode where they need to deliver the strongest first strike they possibly can on an enemy that they have discovered. They may then need to fall into a defensive posture and try to leave the area. Changing from one "role" to another requires flexibility of the party and the characters within the party.

This is a case where circumstance is dictating the role of a character and not the class design. Flexibility in the class design will allow the character to extend beyond the Role that was initially intended.


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## Hussar (Mar 28, 2012)

Henry said:
			
		

> True, not everyone wants to play a barbarian or ranger to hit as hard as one, for all the baggage that those classes imply. (And one could with DM permission mod a Ranger to just be "Urban Archer", but it's an extra step that you have to do outside of the rules that some people would rather not have.) Also, the whole "A fighter can do just as much damage as a Striker" thing that I've seen some others state just isn't true -- an OPTIMIZED fighter could do as much damage as an un-optimized ranger, but an optimized one is still going to show him up. In 4E role design, this is a good thing, and works as intended -- but a LOT of folks don't like the design feature. The slayer really should have come along in 2008, and the community would not have had as much rancor on the topic. Suddenly, a fighter wasn't the premier "heavy hitter" any more.




The problem is, the fighter NEVER was the premier heavy hitter.  Not in any edition.  The fighter has always been consistent from round to round.  His damage never really changes until he gets some sort of buff, or gains additional attacks per round.

From 2e onward, the ranger outdamaged the fighter by virtue of having two weapon fighting built in (doubling your damage potential per round makes you the heavy hitter) and 3e made rogues the premier one shot hitter with sneak attack.

Fighters are great at doing consistent damage every round.  But, the damage they did was never "spikey".  Typically, you only had about a d8-d12 variation in damage from round to round.  By 3e, that variation meant far less than the damage you were getting from buffs and the like.

Or, to put it another way, a fighter never did more damage than any other fighter type.  Why should fighters be the "premier heavy hitter" in 4e when they never were in any other edition?


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## pemerton (Mar 28, 2012)

Henry said:


> In 1E combat, EVERYONE was "sticky", not just defenders.



Yes. I alluded to this upthread:



pemerton said:


> If there are no marking mechanics, then how does the fighter get the monsters to direct their attacks against him/her? If the answer is "by engaging them", does that imply that the game is going back to a norm of non-mobility rather than mobility? If the answer is "via free roleplay between player and GM", what does that say about the role of the GM in the game?



In 1st ed AD&D, there was a norm of non-mobility, and this is how fighters (and clerics, to a lesser extent) "defended". Whereas it was crucial for MUs and thieves not to get caught in combat, because if they did then they could find themselves well-and-truly hosed.

If the combat system envisages mobility as the norm (eg 4e shift-and-charge, 3E 5' step-and-charge), then a fighter can't defend without some other mechanic in place such as marking. Whether or not you call it a role.

A similar comment could be made about healing. In my AD&D days, there was very little casting of in-combat healing. I gather that 3E made it common, and in 4e it is utterly central to the dynamics of combat. If you want to keep that sort of dynamic, then someone has to be able to heal, and if you want it to have a 4e-style pacing then someone has to be able to heal without using up all their actions for the turn. And either everyone can do it, or some class(es) specialise in it.

And what do you give as a trade-off for those classes that can't do the healing and can't do the defending? Better damage or better effects.

In my view, then, the 4e roles aren't spun from whole cloth and imposed willy-nilly on unsuspecting gamers the world over. They reflect pressures that are inherent to the post-AD&D dynamics of the game (ie incombat movement, and incombat healing). Unless we get rid of those dynamics, we will need the mechanics, whether or not we call them roles.


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## pemerton (Mar 28, 2012)

MoxieFu said:


> A character's role can shift during the course of an adventure as can the role of the entire party. They may start out trying to gather information as stealthily as possible and then shift into a mode where they need to deliver the strongest first strike they possibly can on an enemy that they have discovered. They may then need to fall into a defensive posture and try to leave the area. Changing from one "role" to another requires flexibility of the party and the characters within the party.



Sure, but are you intending to imply that this can't happen in 4e?


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## pemerton (Mar 28, 2012)

Hussar said:


> The problem is, the fighter NEVER was the premier heavy hitter.  Not in any edition.



But in 1st ed AD&D the fighter came close to this - best weapons, best STR, best attack bonus.

It's true that thieves could hit hard with backstab, but low STR and lower-damage weapons, plus it's one-off nature, tended to limit its impact.

Clerics were just weaker in my experience. And MUs are in a different category altogether.

It's true that rangers were just better than fighters at damaging a good variety of opponents, but the stat requirement meant you didn't see many of them. Leaving fighters as both tough and hard-hitting.


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## Bluenose (Mar 28, 2012)

Hussar said:


> The problem is, the fighter NEVER was the premier heavy hitter.  Not in any edition.
> 
> ...snip...
> 
> Or, to put it another way, a fighter never did more damage than any other fighter type.  Why should fighters be the "premier heavy hitter" in 4e when they never were in any other edition?




BECMI Fighters were the premier heavy hitters. No-one else compared. Of course, that was a game where the other "Fighter type" was the Dwarf (and arguably the Elf). So perhaps not fair to compare, but it is an edition of D&D and Fighters with Weapon Mastery rules in play were heavy hitters in a way other classes didn't match.


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## JamesonCourage (Mar 28, 2012)

pemerton said:


> If the combat system envisages mobility as the norm (eg 4e shift-and-charge, 3E 5' step-and-charge), then a fighter can't defend without some other mechanic in place such as marking. Whether or not you call it a role.



Just a note: you can't 5' step and charge in 3.5. You cannot move if you take a 5' step in 3.5; you get one or the other. That helped the Fighter somewhat (especially if they had a reach weapon), but a sidebar for dealing with archers and spellcasters who just took a 5' step away would've been nice.



pemerton said:


> A similar comment could be made about healing. In my AD&D days, there was very little casting of in-combat healing. I gather that 3E made it common, and in 4e it is utterly central to the dynamics of combat. If you want to keep that sort of dynamic, then someone has to be able to heal, and if you want it to have a 4e-style pacing then someone has to be able to heal without using up all their actions for the turn. And either everyone can do it, or some class(es) specialise in it.



It was common enough in 3.X, though it wasn't optimal unless someone was down or about to be. Personally, I like it better that way, though I'd love to see protective wards, warning shouts, etc. thrown around as a way to mitigate incoming damage (absorb damage ala damage reduction, give temporary hit points, a bonus on a save or AC against the attack, etc.).

Currently, I have a PC in my game built around giving a protective aura to his allies, and then giving them bonuses in combat (kind of like a paladin/bard, though less fight-ey). He'll give two different offensive bonuses on his turn, save his last action to do it again if someone is attacked (he could attack if he wanted to), and use it to give a defensive bonus (he can also give a fourth bonus as a free action interrupt at any point, too).

He's very effective, and the build can be entirely mundane (if you lost the "constant" aura he has up, or improved his current version). He just has it flavored as "passive aura = my presence as a neish'paa (chosen by destiny); free action bonus I can give 2/round = improved aura of my presence as a neish'paa as fate focuses on them; move action bonus I can give 2/round = me yelling encouragement, warnings, etc. to them while I observe the fight."



pemerton said:


> In my view, then, the 4e roles aren't spun from whole cloth and imposed willy-nilly on unsuspecting gamers the world over. They reflect pressures that are inherent to the post-AD&D dynamics of the game (ie incombat movement, and incombat healing). Unless we get rid of those dynamics, we will need the mechanics, whether or not we call them roles.



I kinda do hope that they go with reactive protective measures, with in-combat healing mostly when you're desperate (your ally is down, or about to be). I like the feel more, if nothing else.

As far as balancing it out, I'm not someone who thinks everyone needs to contribute to combat equally. Maybe they can't defend/heal as well, but they are better at social interaction. I much prefer a game where this is a choice than "everyone contributes to combat equally", but I gather that's where a lot of disagreement comes from in these conversations. As always, play what you like


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## Hussar (Mar 28, 2012)

Bluenose said:


> BECMI Fighters were the premier heavy hitters. No-one else compared. Of course, that was a game where the other "Fighter type" was the Dwarf (and arguably the Elf). So perhaps not fair to compare, but it is an edition of D&D and Fighters with Weapon Mastery rules in play were heavy hitters in a way other classes didn't match.




I honestly only ever played B and E, so, I cannot comment there.  In Basic/Expert, there wasn't a huge difference between classes in damage output.  Even with different damage from different weapons, you didn't have the percentile strength that put the fighter types head and shoulders above everyone else.  Heck, even the wizard doing a measly d4 damage with a thrown dagger wasn't really all that far behind the fighter with a longsword doing d8+2.  The spread just wasn't all that great.

But, going back to the idea of fighters being king of damage in other editions - well, if you include all the other fighter types (paladins and rangers) in that, then I'd probably agree, but, only if the fighter type had percentile strength by and large.

A fighter with a 17 strength and a cleric with a 17 strength in AD&D were doing pretty much the same damage.  At least until about 7th level when the fighter types start getting iterative attacks.

Granted, 2e went a long way to bumping up the fighter types, but, it still bumped them all equally.  Rangers and fighters did the same damage, and clerics, if you used two weapon fighting from the Complete Fighter weren't really all that far behind.

At least until you start getting into percentile strength.

Thinking about that, I suppose that is one way to get fighters to be king of damage again.  Just give them four or five times the damage bonus that every other class gets based on their base stats and you're good to go.


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## Garthanos (Mar 28, 2012)

The original party was based on the fireteam 
Fireteam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The effect of not paying attention to roles in a real mechanical way (ie people with fortes and specializations that contribute to that capability)? Is the same as not having roles in real life teams, *incompetance*, in D&D this was most obvious protectors who couldnt protect in any real way and sometimes its the opposite, spell casters who could do anything and everything and usually better than everyone else. Hiding roles and pretending new players will magically understand ... is ridiculous.






Ignoring team roles is actually kind of childish.


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 28, 2012)

Hussar said:


> I honestly only ever played B and E, so, I cannot comment there.  In Basic/Expert, there wasn't a huge difference between classes in damage output.  Even with different damage from different weapons, you didn't have the percentile strength that put the fighter types head and shoulders above everyone else.  Heck, even the wizard doing a measly d4 damage with a thrown dagger wasn't really all that far behind the fighter with a longsword doing d8+2.  The spread just wasn't all that great.
> 
> But, going back to the idea of fighters being king of damage in other editions - well, if you include all the other fighter types (paladins and rangers) in that, then I'd probably agree, but, only if the fighter type had percentile strength by and large.
> 
> ...




another option is remove power attack as a feat, turn it into a class ability fighters get at first level. Start it off with an appropriate cap and reduce that cap at different levels.


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## Balesir (Mar 28, 2012)

Crazy Jerome said:


> In such a system, "class" would be the main glue that holds everything together.  It might require very little space to explain for each class.  The difference in a fighter, paladin, and cleric, for example, might be some basic numbers and what lists they get to pick from.





howandwhy99 said:


> Classes are roles (fantasy social roles) and archetypes (fantasy ones in the D&D genre).



Both of these seem to me to be describing what classes *are* (in older forms of D&D, mainly), not what they are *for*.

When I say "What are classes for?" I mean, literally, what function do they fulfill in the game design. What are they supposed to facilitate, encourage or require? Why is it that having classes is better (for this specific game we want to play) than just picking elements to describe a "picture in our heads" (to choose the term Mike Mearls used)? Because, if there isn't a reason to use them, I think classes should not be included.



Crazy Jerome said:


> As for the other part, please note that my fourth bullet point was meant to indicate that the list was in no way complete or imply one pick per character.  I don't like "face" roles, either.  Ideally, you wouldn't have 4-5 of combat, exploration, and interaction roles in such a system.  You'd have at least twice that many--some of them likely mutually exclusive with each other, or at least not very compatible.  This is so that after you got done throwing out the ones that annoyed you, you'd still have 4-5 roles left in each pillar.



Sure - understood. I'm not sure it would be possible to find that many resonant roles for each; my "4-5" was more a practical maximum than a desire, but maybe it could happen. In which case, great!



howandwhy99 said:


> They are also scopes for the players playing the game. Pick a Magic-User and you'll be exploring magic and getting XP for mastering elements of it. Does this mean the character shouldn't don armor and hack away with a sword? No, but they are not as good at being a Fighting-Man unless they have it as another class. (In fact, M-Us score the least combat rating of the core four).



Now, this *is* an intriguing _raison d'être_ for classes. To determine what aspects of the game world the player of the character is rewarded for engaging with. A sort of character-specific set of "victory conditions" (as far as any such thing is relevant to any RPG - which is to say only in a fairly restrained and ongoing way). I actually see the last part as redundant - I see no reason they should not be every bit as competent a fighting man as the "Fighter"; they simply gain nothing whatsoever for it in the game. A mechanic one would need to be careful with, to be sure, but that is something for the detailed execution of the idea, not the basic principle.



howandwhy99 said:


> Roles are not the manner in which one excels in combat. Classes are the defined scope of the game the character is built to excel in. As all of the classes overlap non-combat class abilities can be used to succeed in combat and other non-class activities. As combat is pretty central I can understand how classes could be construed as combat roles though.



Nope - for me, this is just back to describing what the classes have traditionally done. Mushy "look-and-feel" that really holds no value, either in-game or meta-game.

Roles in 4E are certainly not this: they are the basic combat function for which the class should be built with some facility for. They make sure that every class has at least some use in combat. I disagree with the limitation to "combat", but I do think that in a game about "adventuring" every character should be assured of some ability to "adventure" - in all the major aspects of that activity.



howandwhy99 said:


> "You Wish" is pretty much confrontation (combat) and resources (treasure) in D&D. Everyone is doing one to get the other, but ends and means are not necessarily the same for each class. This means we ally and share or we go our own way. Going it alone is far more difficult as the world doesn't get easier just for 1 character, so you're still going to need to hire help if nothing else.



You lost me, here. Everyone in D&D takes part in confrontation and also gets resources (treasure) - don't they?


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## Balesir (Mar 28, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> I dont hold your preferences against you. I can see why some styles of play and some people would prefer this. But this is the opposite of what i want.



Not sure I know what the opposite of this would be. Do you want a classless (as in role-less, niche-less) system? Cool beans - valid approach. But why does D&D (which has never been classless) need to change to that?

Or do you mean that you want any character to be competent in only a subset of the situations they might encounter? Same comments, really.


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 28, 2012)

Balesir said:


> Not sure I know what the opposite of this would be. Do you want a classless (as in role-less, niche-less) system? Cool beans - valid approach. But why does D&D (which has never been classless) need to change to that?
> 
> Or do you mean that you want any character to be competent in only a subset of the situations they might encounter? Same comments, really.




No, what i mean by opposite is I dont want the classes to each have a combat, social and explorations role. Would ike some classes that are all combat, that cover 2 areas, or are spread out over the three. So what I dont like is giving everyone a combat role, social role and exploration role. I like having characters that arent good at combat for example but may shine in other areas. Or by the same token, characters that cant handle social interaction but can wipe the floor in a fight.


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## Bluenose (Mar 28, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> No, what i mean by opposite is I dont want the classes to each have a combat, social and explorations role. Would ike some classes that are all combat, that cover 2 areas, or are spread out over the three. So what I dont like is giving everyone a combat role, social role and exploration role. I like having characters that arent good at combat for example but may shine in other areas. Or by the same token, characters that cant handle social interaction but can wipe the floor in a fight.




Then you're going to have to severely reduce the effectiveness of spells. Because they're going to be Vancian, so that the caster can pick the right spells to be best in combat one day, best in exploration the next, and best in social the one after that, then you're not getting what you say you want.


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## DEFCON 1 (Mar 28, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> No, what i mean by opposite is I dont want the classes to each have a combat, social and explorations role. Would ike some classes that are all combat, that cover 2 areas, or are spread out over the three. So what I dont like is giving everyone a combat role, social role and exploration role. I like having characters that arent good at combat for example but may shine in other areas. Or by the same token, characters that cant handle social interaction but can wipe the floor in a fight.




But here's the thing, Bedrock... I don't think it's good for the game or most of the players if it's designed to automatically have certain classes _really_ crappy at certain things.  Because a player who wants to make a character really suck at something can most certainly do so if they want (by careful application of ability scores, skill selection, feat selection etc.), without the game having to "help" him doing that.  I think it is far better for all the classes be at least _somewhat mediocre_ in all facets of the game, so that those who want their character to be "good" in that mediocre aspect can move up, and those who want him to be "poor" can easily move down.

For example... let's say (by way of example) that classes are designed with 18 points of "power" to be spread out over the three pillars of D&D-- combat, exploration, and interaction.  A class that is equally good over all three pillars would have 6 points of combat ability, 6 points of exploration, and 6 points of interaction.

The question then becomes... when designing other classes off of this "middle of the road" class (in terms of power)... _how far off the average_ should they go? 

Theoretically... you could open design such that all 18 points could be put into a single pillar, completely forsaking the other two.  So a class might have 18 points in combat, and zero in exploration and interaction.  But is that actually a good idea?  Because balance-wise... your range of power in any particular pillar is now 18 points all the way down to 0.  That swing is HUGE.  How can you truly balance the game like that?  A class that's _completely_ designed around combat standing next to a class with NO combat capability at all (through no efforts of the player himself.)  Because we're not talking about a PC that the _player himself_ *deliberately* gimped... we're talking a class that was designed from the beginning to have NO skill in something.  That does not seem to me to be good design.

I for one think it's better off to set _at least_ a minimum level of capability in the design of each pillar for each class.  So that you have to have like at least 4 points of power for example.  As a result, you might have classes whose power distribution might be:

Combat 6 / Exploration 6 / Interaction 6 - Rogue
Combat 10 / Exploration 4 / Interaction 4 - Fighter
Combat 6 / Exploration 8 / Interaction 4 - Ranger
Combat 4 / Exploration 7 / Interaction 7 - Bard
Combat 7 / Exploration 4 / Interaction 7 - Paladin

Then... these behind-the-scenes building blocks the game designers have set up gets modified BY THE PLAYER based upon his choices of things like ability score, weapon, skills, feats, spells, etc. etc.  So if the Fighter (which has been designed to primarily be focused on combat) wants to have a bit more use during interaction and roleplay scenes... he can raise his Charisma stat and take those skills or feats needed to get a 1 or 2 point boost, thereby getting closer to what the default Rogue might start like.  Similarily... if you choose a Bard and want him more focused on combat and don't give a rat's ass about exploration... build him the right way so that his combat ability gets better while his exploration is completely ignored.  But at least you've _chosen_ to make him suck at exploration, rather than having the game design it for you that way automatically.

At least this way... players can build off of each class to reach at least a GOOD level of competency (compared against the other classes) in any of the three pillars.  Which I think is something we'd all like the option of possibly reaching with whichever class we choose.


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## Crazy Jerome (Mar 28, 2012)

DEFCON 1 said:


> The question then becomes... when designing other classes off of this "middle of the road" class (in terms of power)... _how far off the average_ should they go?




Must spread XP.  That whole post is entirely sensible.  But the XP would have been for asking the right question.


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 28, 2012)

Bluenose said:


> Then you're going to have to severely reduce the effectiveness of spells. Because they're going to be Vancian, so that the caster can pick the right spells to be best in combat one day, best in exploration the next, and best in social the one after that, then you're not getting what you say you want.




Lol. That is a whole other debate. One that would take us far from the topic at hand.


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 28, 2012)

Defcon: good post, but that isn't the kind of game i wish to play. I also think it can be good design to make some classes bad at portions of the game. It depends on what preferences you are trying to accomodate. Your prefered approach may work for you, but i find that leads to games i personally find boring.


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## DEFCON 1 (Mar 28, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> Defcon: good post, but that isn't the kind of game i wish to play. I also think it can be good design to make some classes bad at portions of the game. It depends on what preferences you are trying to accomodate. Your prefered approach may work for you, but i find that leads to games i personally find boring.




Well, I would inquire why you require the game itself to give you something that completely sucks outright, rather than just give you the tools to _make_ something completely suck if you so chose (based on how you build your character?)  If the end result in both cases is that some part of your character completely sucks... why does the game doing it rather than you doing it somehow make it less "boring"?  I'm not sure I understand.

(And on a similar point... doesn't this "forced suckage" pretty much fall in line with the idea of Roles in the first place?  The game is TELLING you "this class has NO business doing combat."  That pretty much puts it into a specific role then, does it not?  You aren't gaining freedom... you're getting shoehorned just the way Roles supposedly do.)


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 28, 2012)

DEFCON 1 said:


> Well, I would inquire why you require the game itself to give you something that completely sucks outright, rather than just give you the tools to _make_ something completely suck if you so chose (based on how you build your character?)  If the end result in both cases is that some part of your character completely sucks... why does the game doing it rather than you doing it somehow make it less "boring"?  I'm not sure I understand.




Because i think it is a better and more interesting game when some characters will be bad at certain things regardless of build. It is obviously not for you. But personally i like the idea of some classes being bad at aspects of the game and this being part of how they are balanced overall. I just find the whole approach where everyone is basically good at combat dull. Same if everyone is basically good at exploration or basically good at social interaction or investigations.


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 28, 2012)

DEFCON 1 said:


> (And on a similar point... doesn't this "forced suckage" pretty much fall in line with the idea of Roles in the first place?  The game is TELLING you "this class has NO business doing combat."  That pretty much puts it into a specific role then, does it not?  You aren't gaining freedom... you're getting shoehorned just the way Roles supposedly do.)




My issue with roles is that they are centered around combat and designed to make everyone be good at it in some way. The design aim of making sure characters are assured being good at all aspects of the game to stabalize fun over play doesn't appeal to me. Whether it is the way 4e does it (everyone is good at combat) or done by making everyone good at everything. I want more texture in my game, and since d&d is class based, the place to do that is with the classes. If you don't care for this approach,that is fine. I am not here to convert anyone, just give my opinion about what I like.


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## DEFCON 1 (Mar 28, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> Because i think it is a better and more interesting game when some characters will be bad at certain things regardless of build. It is obviously not for you. But personally i like the idea of some classes being bad at aspects of the game and this being part of how they are balanced overall. I just find the whole approach where everyone is basically good at combat dull. Same if everyone is basically good at exploration or basically good at social interaction or investigations.




Yeah... I just don't get it.  To have a class be deliberately bad at something with *no opportunity* of getting _mediocre_ (let alone good) is pretty much having Roles by another name.  Based upon your comments on the earlier pages... it seemed like you were someone who didn't want roles hardwired onto classes.  But apparently you do.  And you want those roles being MUCH WORSE than what the game currently has.

I suspect you are in an exceedingly small minority on this one.  And I don't think you'll ever be able to find a class-based game which will satisfy you, because no designer worth his salt will ever design a class to be THAT BAD at something.  It makes no sense.  There's no reason why the player can't just do it, rather than the game forcing them to.


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## DEFCON 1 (Mar 28, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> My issue with roles is that they are centered around combat and designed to make everyone be good at it in some way. The design aim of making sure characters are assured being good at all aspects of the game to stabalize fun over play doesn't appeal to me.




But the things is... THEY DON'T.  Roles do not ASSURE you of being good at combat.  You know why?  Because the player has the choice to not build his character the way the game assumes he will, even in 4E.

You want to be a Cleric who sucks at combat?  Keep your STR at 8 and take all STR-based powers.  There.  Done.  Your attack bonus is now like 5 points less than the Cleric the game expects you to have.  Throw in a 10 CON, and take a weapon you aren't proficient in... and you now SUCK at combat.  Easy-peasy.  And you now have all those great high ability scores to spend on the abilities that raise those skills you want.  You are a clerical skill-monkey who can't fight his way out of a paper bag.

And the game didn't have to FORCE you to do it... you did it yourself.


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 28, 2012)

DEFCON 1 said:


> Yeah... I just don't get it.  To have a class be deliberately bad at something with *no opportunity* of getting _mediocre_ (let alone good) is pretty much having Roles by another name.  Based upon your comments on the earlier pages... it seemed like you were someone who didn't want roles hardwired onto classes.  But apparently you do.  And you want those roles being MUCH WORSE than what the game currently has.
> 
> I suspect you are in an exceedingly small minority on this one.  And I don't think you'll ever be able to find a class-based game which will satisfy you, because no designer worth his salt will ever design a class to be THAT BAD at something.  It makes no sense.  There's no reason why the player can't just do it, rather than the game forcing them to.





I think we simply disagree defcon. Clearly my opinion differs from your own on all counts (especially your last paragraph). However i do understand and appreciate your position. I could be misreading you, but you seem overly hostile to my position. It is one thing to not like what i am proposing, quite another to suggest no designer worth his salt would attempt it (there are lots of different approaches to game design).

I do not see my position at all inconsistent. I want the option of playing a character weak at combat and strong in other areas, having classes that are combat weak but strong elsewhere gives me that option (and it makes class selection meaningful).


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 28, 2012)

DEFCON 1 said:


> But the things is... THEY DON'T.  Roles do not ASSURE you of being good at combat.  You know why?  Because the player has the choice to not build his character the way the game assumes he will, even in 4E.
> 
> You want to be a Cleric who sucks at combat?  Keep your STR at 8 and take all STR-based powers.  There.  Done.  Your attack bonus is now like 5 points less than the Cleric the game expects you to have.  Throw in a 10 CON, and take a weapon you aren't proficient in... and you now SUCK at combat.  Easy-peasy.  And you now have all those great high ability scores to spend on the abilities that raise those skills you want.  You are a clerical skill-monkey who can't fight his way out of a paper bag.
> 
> And the game didn't have to FORCE you to do it... you did it yourself.




Except the class powers in 4E are still oriented around combat and many dont even rely on STR or CON. Look Defcon, we just disagree. But i dont see this going down a good road if we kee at this. I have given my position, and you have given yours. Obviously the designers of next will be hard pressed to produce an edition both you and I enjoy


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## Kynn (Mar 28, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> Except the class powers in 4E are still oriented around combat and many dont even rely on STR or CON.




But you can just choose the ones which do.

Here's Brother Gregg the Unworthy:

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Brother Gregg, level 7
Human, Cleric (Templar)
Cleric Option: Healer's Lore
Human Power Selection Option: Heroic Effort

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
STR 8, CON 10, DEX 13, INT 16, WIS 18, CHA 14

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
STR 8, CON 10, DEX 13, INT 15, WIS 15, CHA 14


AC: 19 Fort: 14 Ref: 17 Will: 20
HP: 52 Surges: 7 Surge Value: 13

TRAINED SKILLS
Arcana +14, Diplomacy +11, History +14, Insight +13, Perception +13, Religion +14

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +6, Athletics +4, Bluff +8, Dungeoneering +10, Endurance +5, Heal +10, Intimidate +8, Nature +10, Stealth +6, Streetwise +8, Thievery +6

POWERS
Basic Attack: Melee Basic Attack
Basic Attack: Ranged Basic Attack
Human Racial Power: Heroic Effort
Cleric Feature: Divine Fortune
Cleric Attack: Punish the Profane
Cleric Utility: Healing Word
Bard Feature: Majestic Word
Cleric Attack 1: Battle Cleric's Weapon Mastery
Cleric Attack 1: Weapon of Divine Protection
Cleric Attack 1: Weapon of Enforced Serenity
Cleric Attack 1: Gift of Incomparable Strength
Cleric Utility 2: Divine Skill
Cleric Attack 3: Words Are Not Enough
Cleric Attack 5: Rune of Peace
Cleric Utility 6: Holy Lantern
Cleric Attack 7: Awe Strike

FEATS
Level 1: Bardic Knowledge
Level 1: Ritual Caster
Level 1: Bardic Dilettante
Level 2: Bard of All Trades
Level 4: Disciple of Lore
Level 6: Building Camaraderie

ITEMS
Ritual Book
Comprehend Language
Create Holy Water
Dust of Arcane Insight
Map of Unseen Lands
Bag of Holding
Animal Messenger
Portend Weather
Make Whole
Create Campsite
Tenser's Floating Disk
Silence
Hold Portal
Brew Potion
Alarm
Seek Rumor
Water Walk
Endure Elements
Continual Light
Read Omens
Fluid Funds
Detect Secret Doors
Delay Affliction
Adventurer's Kit
Chainmail x1
Holy Symbol x2
Greatclub x1
Residuum (Any)
====== End ======

He's terrible in combat, but he can do a heck of a lot of stuff outside of combat.


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## DEFCON 1 (Mar 28, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> Except the class powers in 4E are still oriented around combat and many dont even rely on STR or CON.




Actually... if this quote is truly your real issue... then it seems like we're actually talking about two different things here.

If the real issue here for you is that 4E's primary game mechanics in the books all fall mainly under the umbrella of 'combat'... then you're absolutely correct.  If you look at the number of pages of rules text in the PH that are how combat works and what a PC can do in combat... then yes, absolutely, you're right.  And in that regard, it does make all the class seem as though they are _about_ combat (since that's what most of their rules all deal with).

I'm right there with you on that score.  And if your point is that you'd like to see classes who have _less rules about combat_ attributed to it... then yeah, I understand completely and in many ways agree with you.  I think it'd be great if there were many more game rules in D&D that deal with the exploration and interaction pillars than what we currently have, since the only real game mechanics in 4E for both are 'skill challenges'.  But that's a single mechanic in use for two pillars, both only really involving skills (and whose mechanics are in no way as in-depth a system as 4E's combat is.)

So I think I'm getting closer in understanding what you mean.  It's not that you need some classes to be inherently bad at something (like combat)... you just don't want most of the game rules to _focus_ on one aspect of the game at the expense of all the others.  Because what 4E does right now is give the impression that all classes are about combat since most of the rules found in each class section primarily help to describe and accomplish it.

Thus, if 5E has more comprehensive exploration and interaction mechanics, some classes can have their rules and abilities primarily focus on those parts of the game, rather than combat.  The combat rules for that class might be nothing more than listing its hit points, armor class, and basic attack.  It's not that the class is BAD at combat necessarily... it's more that there's just few rules in the class description talking about it.


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## howandwhy99 (Mar 29, 2012)

Balesir said:


> Now, this *is* an intriguing _raison d'être_ for classes. To determine what aspects of the game world the player of the character is rewarded for engaging with. A sort of character-specific set of "victory conditions" (as far as any such thing is relevant to any RPG - which is to say only in a fairly restrained and ongoing way).



I think you're personal views in parentheses could restrain RPG play and design. Role playing is much bigger than that. As to XP rewarding players I don't see that as the point of XP at all. Many, many resources can be gained players playing a character. Class XP is only one kind. It may not valuable for a player if they don't see it as such, but playing one's class role well is a pretty common objective in role playing games and for RPG gamers.



> Nope - for me, this is just back to describing what the classes have traditionally done. Mushy "look-and-feel" that really holds no value, either in-game or meta-game.



For me, if no one plays a fighter, D&D isn't a really a combat game anymore. If you're not talking about D&D as solely a combat game, then what game for assessing value are you referring to when making your judgements above?



> I disagree with the limitation to "combat", but I do think that in a game about "adventuring" every character should be assured of some ability to "adventure" - in all the major aspects of that activity.



Would you agree engaging with traps is a kind of adventure? The classes (roles) are defining the major aspects of adventuring. There are others beyond those offered, but the classes define the scope of adventure the game does offer.



> You lost me, here. Everyone in D&D takes part in confrontation and also gets resources (treasure) - don't they?



Yep, they are part of playing any of the classes, so the overlap of all three circles in the "you wish" segment of the .pic was what I was referring to for their position in D&D.


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## Balesir (Mar 29, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> Defcon: good post, but that isn't the kind of game i wish to play. I also think it can be good design to make some classes bad at portions of the game. It depends on what preferences you are trying to accomodate. Your prefered approach may work for you, but i find that leads to games i personally find boring.



I'm not sure "bad at" isn't a sort of tangent to what I was thinking of, actually. What I had in mind was more "doesn't have any sort of contribution to make for..."

Controllers and Leaders (Wizards and Bards, for example) sometimes aren't particularly "good at" combat in the sense that, if caught alone by some toughs they will struggle. But, when the entire party is engaged in a fight, they have support functions that they can perform. A low level Wizard with only ranged control powers is going to be in a tough place if ambushed by a bunch of thugs in an alley, but when protected by his buddies in a melee he can make a full contribution to the team.

Likewise, I see 'roles' for non-combat as being things to contribute, not solo puissance. A burly but uneducated sort of character, for example, may be able to charm the ladies with animal magnetism, and this could help in a general, mixed social encounter in a multitude of ways - but corner him and ask for an academic debate and he'll be a total fish out of water.



howandwhy99 said:


> I think you're personal views in parentheses could restrain RPG play and design. Role playing is much bigger than that. As to XP rewarding players I don't see that as the point of XP at all. Many, many resources can be gained players playing a character. Class XP is only one kind. It may not valuable for a player if they don't see it as such, but playing one's class role well is a pretty common objective in role playing games and for RPG gamers.



We seem to be at cross purposes, or something; I wasn't intending to limit my comments to XP, either, although they might be part of the picture. "Rewards" and "victory conditions" are, indeed, extremely varied in RPGs, I agree.



howandwhy99 said:


> For me, if no one plays a fighter, D&D isn't a really a combat game anymore. If you're not talking about D&D as solely a combat game, then what game for assessing value are you referring to when making your judgements above?



Again, I don't see this limited to combat. In fact, you could say that "focussing the *players* on what we want the game to be about" is part of what *I* see roles being for. Which, to expand further, is why it's a shame that 4E gave roles only for combat - thus subtly saying "combat is what we want you to focus on". If roles had been given for social encounters and exploration, perhaps it would have been clearer that these were intended to be foci of play, as well.



howandwhy99 said:


> Would you agree engaging with traps is a kind of adventure? The classes (roles) are defining the major aspects of adventuring. There are others beyond those offered, but the classes define the scope of adventure the game does offer.



Is this you agreeing with what I am saying about "there should be roles for social interaction, exploration AND combat, or am I misunderstanding?

As a bit of an aside, I'm not sure it's useful to put roles for all three "pillars" into the class. Having them split over class, theme and so on would likely be more flexible and adaptable.



howandwhy99 said:


> Yep, they are part of playing any of the classes, so the overlap of all three circles in the "you wish" segment of the .pic was what I was referring to for their position in D&D.



Oh, I see - I understood the graphic a different way. I saw the "You Wish!" as meaning that you will _never_ (realistically) get all these three things in one operating system. It's sort of like the old garage sign: "We do three kinds of repairs - good, quick and cheap. You can have any two."


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## howandwhy99 (Mar 29, 2012)

Balesir said:


> Is this you agreeing with what I am saying about "there should be roles for social interaction, exploration AND combat, or am I misunderstanding?
> 
> As a bit of an aside, I'm not sure it's useful to put roles for all three "pillars" into the class. Having them split over class, theme and so on would likely be more flexible and adaptable.



You know I think we're closer in agreement than I first thought. The D&Dn designers are talking about categorizing three focuses of play: social interaction (nominally role play), exploration, and combat. I suppose those spheres of engagement could be considered roles too, but I think a solid Class (role) should cover all three to some degree.

For me Class == Role in D&D. 4E combat roles made sense in the rock-scissors-paper combat design that goes much farther back in wargaming and military science history than 71's _Chainmail_ game. I've mentioned before I think they are a carryover of the infantry-cavalry-artillery theory, but with computer and console combat roles built in as well. I don't think these should be the first and foremost design considerations though. 

Interlocking role design like the above could conceivably be built into the designers' other two spheres of action as separate game designs, but I'd hesitate limiting classes even that much. It's good game design to be sure, it's simply predetermining a second level of class categorizing upon the first (actually named class) like 4E did with Roles & Classes. It isn't necessary. 

The classes themselves focus the sphere of adventure for the game by character. Enabling more activities, even more than the 3 suggested, can be done (perhaps with modularity) without taking anything away from the niche each class offers. 

Each class engages in combat as per their class abilities and advancement goals first, combat roles are secondary and decided upon by the player. Maybe the M-U wants to be a meatshield this time? That's their choice, but by historical design that means it is tougher for them.

Socializing mechanics, exploration mechanics, and anything else they can dream up mechanics need only cover the classes they are being designed for. Crafting is generally outside of all the core classes, but a rule supplement could be provided that played it up for each, and each in their own specific way. Weapons, clerical implements, arcane book design, refining thieves' tools, etc. Personally that's beyond the scope of the game for me and more in the realm of NPC classes, but its possible the players want to spend some hours of gaming playing at crafting waterskins and whatnot.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 29, 2012)

howandwhy99 said:


> but I think a solid Class (role) should cover all three to some degree.




I agree, though the degree to which a class focuses on any one aspect should be up to the player's particular build.  A fighter should be a pretty typical staple of any fantasy world, but if the game only designs them for combat, we won't see them in exploration and socialization games, which they should be in.  If Wizards can provide us the tools to make our characters combat, skill, or exploration junkies, or some mix of that, then I think any class is going to be pretty well off.


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## howandwhy99 (Mar 29, 2012)

Single class parties can throw into high relief how each class is different, but not excluded from engaging in any of the designer's situational categories (or any others).

Fighters seek out combat, but when they come upon magical stuff in the dungeon they are at a disadvantage. They can still engage in trial and error study, but they aren't as equipped to deal with it as a magic-user.

Thieves should avoid overt combat whenever possible and ambush, trick, and basically engage in covert combat when deemed necessary. What they are really here for is stealing stuff and getting away with it. Magics and direct combat are still not their forte, but neither are these fully excluded either.

Magic-Users should basically avoid combat at all costs. If it's unavoidable, which is rare considering the variety of options M-Us have, then they have spells that can end it quickly or enable easier evasion or retreat. Again, they are good at what they do, they are not so good at what they are not trained to do.

Clerics are another kettle of fish altogether. I had a long post around here a few weeks ago explaining all about how clerics engage with the game from their class perspective, but I don't have search capabilities.  Basically, they engage with intelligent, language-based creatures and gain followers as they go down the dungeon levels until they reach the stuff they cannot convert and instead must Turn (like demons and devils). They focus on alignment, morale, loyalty, and similar game elements. They are good casters, good fighters, and average thieves (like everyone else who's not a thief), but everything they have is focused on performing the class of cleric.


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## Gryph (Mar 29, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> makes perfect sense to me. Any expedition is going to have non combat specialists (people who are good at navigation, wilderness survival, interating with locals, etc). We see this in books and films all the time. It all comes down to the specifics of the party and the chafacter's motovations. let the players and Gm decide this for themselves. If it is as essential as you say, then people will only play combat focused characters.




There are a lot of very valid and usefull plot and literary techniques that work well in books and film that fail miserably in a cooperative game.

Even if a player is comfortable being a detriment to the team when the knives come out, doesn't mean that the other players are going to want to deal with carrying them and protecting them in every combat.

Hirelings and NPCs are a good place to model your non-combat specialists. 

Even with that said, I'm not opposed to PCs having little to no combat capability but if they are in the core rules (or introduced later) players and DMs need strong advice laying out the pitfalls in such a choice. With care given to point out the possible impact on the other players enjoyment of the game and advice given on how they might work with different campaign styles. Such a PC is likely to be a great fit in a heavily intrigue/political/kingdom building sort of campaign.


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## Mattachine (Mar 29, 2012)

howandwhy99 said:


> Thieves should avoid overt combat whenever possible and ambush, trick, and basically engage in covert combat when deemed necessary. What they are really here for is stealing stuff and getting away with it. Magics and direct combat are still not their forte, but neither are these fully excluded either.
> 
> Clerics are another kettle of fish altogether. I had a long post around here a few weeks ago explaining all about how clerics engage with the game from their class perspective, but I don't have search capabilities.  Basically, they engage with intelligent, language-based creatures and gain followers as they go down the dungeon levels until they reach the stuff they cannot convert and instead must Turn (like demons and devils). They focus on alignment, morale, loyalty, and similar game elements. They are good casters, good fighters, and average thieves (like everyone else who's not a thief), but everything they have is focused on performing the class of cleric.




Of course, not all "thieves" are actually thieves. Likewise, not all clerics seek to convert--many seek to punish, or to exclude.

The big four classes need to accommodate several archetypes each.

Just sayin'.


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## Bedrockgames (Mar 29, 2012)

Gryph said:


> There are a lot of very valid and usefull plot and literary techniques that work well in books and film that fail miserably in a cooperative game.
> 
> Even if a player is comfortable being a detriment to the team when the knives come out, doesn't mean that the other players are going to want to deal with carrying them and protecting them in every combat.
> 
> ...




I agree books and film dont often work in games. I disagree that aving an exploration specialist who isnt that good at combat presents a huge issue (at least it hasnt in games i run or play). The 2E thief was not terribly effective in combat and was geared more for out of combat situations. To me this worked and felt better than running a party like a modern football or strike team. When stuff got tricky the thief would hang back and do what he could to help, but combat was not his time to shine. 

I do realie this boils down to preference. But i dont think WOTC should repeat the same mistake it made with 4E: gamist design centered mostly around combat.


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## Gryph (Mar 29, 2012)

Bedrockgames said:


> I agree books and film dont often work in games. I disagree that aving an exploration specialist who isnt that good at combat presents a huge issue (at least it hasnt in games i run or play). The 2E thief was not terribly effective in combat and was geared more for out of combat situations. To me this worked and felt better than running a party like a modern football or strike team. When stuff got tricky the thief would hang back and do what he could to help, but combat was not his time to shine.
> 
> I do realie this boils down to preference. But i dont think WOTC should repeat the same mistake it made with 4E: gamist design centered mostly around combat.




I think there is a pretty big gap between the 2e Thieves combat effectiveness and a non-combat specialist. I like that they are moving away from classes strictly balanced on combat effectiveness.

What I was trying to get to in my last post, at some tables the campaign style is going to make a pc with no effective combat abilities very difficult to play because they may effectively have no opportunity to do anything. In other campaigns, of course, they may shine regularly. This holds true for pure combat classes too.

If there is room in the rules for a character with no capabilities at all in one or more of the "pillars" than there needs to be some very explicit advice that warns players/dms of class/style problems. Even some experienced players and dms need to see things work in game before they can make a good evaluation on suitability to a campaign. 

So, forex, saying "The Sage will have few opportunities to use its class features in a Hack & Slash style campaign,"  makes it clear to everyone (including the other players) that the sage class has certain limitations.

In consulting we call it managing expectations.


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## Lanefan (Mar 30, 2012)

pemerton said:


> In my view, then, the 4e roles aren't spun from whole cloth and imposed willy-nilly on unsuspecting gamers the world over. They reflect pressures that are inherent to the post-AD&D dynamics of the game (ie incombat movement, and incombat healing). Unless we get rid of those dynamics, we will need the mechanics, whether or not we call them roles.



Maybe those dynamics need a sober second look.

In-combat movement is great - as long as it is fluid and not strictly turn-based.

In-combat healing is not so great.  Healing is what you do after the battle, not during it. 

Lanefan


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## pemerton (Mar 30, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> In-combat healing is not so great.  Healing is what you do after the battle, not during it.



But if by "healing" we really mean "hit point recovery", and by "hit points" we really mean "that combination of meat, morale and luck that lets you stay on your feet and win fights even when you've taken a beating", then in-combat healing makes a lot of sense. It's a staple of the fight genre from fantasy through Die Hard to boxing stories.


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## pemerton (Mar 30, 2012)

Balesir said:


> Controllers and Leaders (Wizards and Bards, for example) sometimes aren't particularly "good at" combat in the sense that, if caught alone by some toughs they will struggle. But, when the entire party is engaged in a fight, they have support functions that they can perform. A low level Wizard with only ranged control powers is going to be in a tough place if ambushed by a bunch of thugs in an alley, but when protected by his buddies in a melee he can make a full contribution to the team.
> 
> Likewise, I see 'roles' for non-combat as being things to contribute, not solo puissance. A burly but uneducated sort of character, for example, may be able to charm the ladies with animal magnetism, and this could help in a general, mixed social encounter in a multitude of ways - but corner him and ask for an academic debate and he'll be a total fish out of water.



Excellent examples of how "equally able to contribute", in the context of a game oriented towards party play, and with certain expectations about how encounters will be designed in line with that orientation, doesn't at all equate to "equally capable".


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## Garthanos (Apr 4, 2012)

A step further in to the not - particularly good at fighting but quite able to contribute is the noncombatant action adventurer... the princess build warlord.

Its actually rather fun... interestingly totally dependent on allies in a fight, can be kidnapped easily but the instant the team shows for the rescue the group is now far more awesomely inspired and going the nine yards in her name. Also has no need of implement or weapon, allows that resource to spent various ways, from rituals to gifts for her allies... almost like Galadriel.  

Anyway let me not really participate during huge chunks of story doesnt make sense to me... no matter what the arena and that means better team roles out of combat ...


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