The PHB suggests that all adventuring parties should have at least one PC representing each of the four roles: controller, defender, leader and striker. Most parties, in my experience generally follow this guideline. But what happens when this balance is disrupted. What if your party make-up is missing some of the roles? How will that affect your game?
In May we hit the four month mark as well as posting our 100th article. Things are going great and we’re still marching full speed ahead. We’ll continue providing these monthly recaps so that everyone can get a quick overview of what’s happened at Dungeon’s Master over the past month. Our readership and subscribers continue growing so thank you to everyone who visits and comments regularly. Knowing that you keep coming back lets us know that we’re on the right track. Here are the highlights from May just in case you missed anything.
Do you define your character by his class or his role? We continue to look at roles in 4e and their defining characteristics. We’ve already explored the idea of how to make the Fighter a striker and we pondered whether the roles could be redefined. But this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to looking at roles. Since this is a new element in 4e perhaps it can be done better. We think there is room to introduce some new house rules around roles, but before we start developing them we thought it prudent to take a deeper look at how the existing presentation of roles affect the game.
You’ve decided that your next character will be an archer and your primary weapon will be the longbow. But you’re not interested in playing a tree-hugging, one-with-nature Ranger. You want to play a tough as nails Fighter in plate armor who is a longbow master. Interesting character concept, but can you make this character using the 4e mechanics?