Striker, Defender, Leader, Controller Dynamic

[Cadfan]

You worried about skill monkeys?

Back in the day, we weren't very smart.

 

[Dausuul]

Even back in the 3e days, we used to worry about roles.

In 4e, I guess we'll worry about whether we have a defender, striker, leader, and controller.

In 3e, we worried about whether we had a tank, a skill monkey, a healer, and an arcanist.

This. The only effect of 4E's roles on my group's D&D will be that we use different names for the same stuff we've been talking about the whole time. (Heck, my current group started out playing White Wolf's Aberrant, and even then we considered roles.)

 

[Remathilis]

Even back in the 3e days, we used to worry about roles.

In 4e, I guess we'll worry about whether we have a defender, striker, leader, and controller.

In 3e, we worried about whether we had a tank, a skill monkey, a healer, and an arcanist.

Truth.

if you scratch out "skill monkey" and write "trapfinder" you are 110% correct. It was one of the major drawbacks of the bard class and a major boon to the artificer. WotC even realized it and added more classes that could find traps (ninja, spellthief, scout, and beguiler, the latter making good trapfinding alternatives to ranger and sorcerer). While other skill elements could be handled by other classes (monks made fine acrobats, rangers were good at stealth, bards on face stuff) few classes dealt with traps, and that meant one of your PCs was looking forward to (nearly) max ranks in search and disable device...

 

[Remathilis]

This. The only effect of 4E's roles on my group's D&D will be that we use different names for the same stuff we've been talking about the whole time. (Heck, my current group started out playing White Wolf's Aberrant, and even then we considered roles.)

Ha. On our long hiatus from D&D, we played a lot of d20 Star Wars, and even though the whole party was jedi or jedi-hybrids, we each fell into the "role" slots: a guardian/warrior jedi, a healer/medic jedi, a "all force all the time" jedi and a scoundrel/pilot/lots of skills jedi. Hmmm...

 

[Surgoshan]

2e had the roles, too. You had to have a <strike>rogue</strike> thief to deal with traps and locked things. You had to have a fighter or two to soak up punishment. You had to have a cleric/druid for heals. You had to have a few wizards to deal massive damage. Seriously, nothing new under the sun.

 

[Family]

It's my opinion that rock is too powerful and should be nerfed.

Paper however is fine.

Thanks, Scissors.

 

[Mostlyjoe]

It's a useful mental to tell me how a power structure 'should' work.

 

[Kaodi]

Depending on how our group tries to rebuild our characters for 4e, we could end up with four strikers and a leader. Maybe not the most likely scenario, but it could happen.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I'm going to do what we did in 3e and completely ignore the existance of roles. Groups work regardless of your actual classes so long as the characters act as a group.

 

[Khairn]

Is this becoming part of the D&D culture for you or are you picking characters and fighting like before it was implimented?

Is it becoming part of how you think of D&D?

I have no doubt that its becoming part of 4E culture, but am I using it as part of how I think about D&D? Nope. Not in the least. It doesn't fit how I play the game nor how I run it. I'm not saying that some of the Striker, Defender, Leader, Controller mechanics aren't taken into consideration, but personally I ignore "roles" in almost every decision I make as both a player and GM.

I've never been interested in min-maxing my character, nor in min-maxing the combat effectiveness of a group. I prefer to focus on the story and character development.