Developing Roles

Last July, I originally published a piece about how classes in fourth edition D&D now serve to define a role, a set of abilities, rather than a specific archetype including flavor text.  In other words, how the Ranger, the class, is not necessarily the ranger, the guy who runs around in the woods making friends with animals and shooting orcs — and vice versa.

In my review of the Player’s Handbook 2, I mentioned some thoughts about where that book was taking the game.  Now I’m finally getting around to digging into that.

Like any edition, 4e has changed as new books are published to support it.  New classes, new races, new powers, new feats, new items — new everything has appeared.  In some ways, the game is much the same.  The system is robust in its exception-based design — and, even more so, because it divorces the mechanics from the special effects, the “fluff.”  It remains an extremely adaptable game, although the system itself almost seems to hide this fact.  The ease of refluffing is one of 4e’s greatest strengths, but, even with the permission granted in the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide, many players and GMs seem reluctant to do so.

Continue reading »