Fellow players stuck in "tank, damage, support, healer" MMO mindset

It doesn't really. It's why 4e had Defenders instead, which are much more focused on 'I will punish you for attacking my friends' or 'I will heavily reduce your ability to get past me' rather than having 'I will force you to attack me'. Putting people in a situation where they have a choice (But no option is good) rather than forcing a single option.

Honestly, 4e defenders are weirdly closer to the Mezzer role than the traditional MMO tank. They fuck up your ability to act as you want and make you play by rules you'd rather not.

It's just video games bleeding into the tabletop. I'd probably just reply "Sort of, but those terms don't fully apply" every single time. They're not wrong in that some of those game elements were partially designed with some of those typical roles in mind.

>The combat system doesn't support that dynamic, and combat isn't the focus anyway
>Players refuse to drop the terminology or stop classifying every new character into one of the above roles

How the fuck does it not do that if it's possible?
How would you run tank/damage/support/healer in WFRP2, for instance?

There's always combat roles in any system with a dedicated combat subsystem, they just don't always map to the same things between systems. Even in simulationist systems, it's not like IRL SWAT teams and such don't have roles.

Honestly, I don't think having names for the roles is a bad thing from a game design perspective. A lot of the time, classes can end up rather incoherent because they don't really have a mechanical theme behind the fluff theme. There is a problem if you go so very hard into standardising those roles that things get samey but going 'X should be trying to do Y' isn't' really a bad thing.

Like say, 4e. For all the comments about it being MMO-like, the various classes generally tried to do said roles in very different ways.

>Fighter: Picks a guy and locks him down in melee, hurting him if he tries to move and stopping his movement.
>Paladin: Shouts 'Come on you fuckers, I lay my wrath upon you!' and everyone he cursed out suffers unavoidable damage if they violate the divine sanction.
>Swordmage: Reduces the damage dealt to allies with protective shields.
>Warden: Lays down environmental effects around him and say 'No one is getting through this area and if you are already in this area, suck shit'.

All are designed with 'Protect allies' but the all try to achieve that in different ways. Which I think is how you design around roles RIGHT, rather than saying 'It is X role, so it needs to use the exact same features as everyone else doing X role' (Where you get more MMO tanks, where all of them get up in a face and force the guy to hit them)

Addendum to this: The counterpoint to focused design is the 3.5 monk. What's it's fluff role? Do monk stuff. What's it's mechanical role? Who the fuck knows. It's not particularly good at any given thing because it tries to go in a dozen directions at once.

>tank
Dwarf shieldbreaker
>damage
Human squire
>support
Initiate of any kind
>healer
Light wizard

Or duellist or assassin or fire wizard or...there is an awful lot of 'Do horrible damage to shit' classes in WHFB.

Everything in WFRP dies so fast that "tank" really isn't a feasible role to take.

I know, i was just speaking out of personal experience. I know for a fact that a dwarf shieldbreaker is the epitome of tank in this game because having a total of 8 TB at first career just isn't ok

Eh, I'd disagree with that. Dwarves are ungodly tough and the fact that 'Dodge Blow' is a trained-only skill means that there is a very solid role for 'Guy who can actually last 2-3 turns with the dangerous thing'.

"Tanks" in tabletop games are usually just durable characters that are good at charging into the heat of things first to run interference for the less durable backline. They force melee combatants to confront them first before they can get to the rest of the party. Alternatively, they get in and harass ranged combatants.

They're basically like linemen in American football.

If you pick Dwarf as a race and any career that gives you medium armor and a shield you're pretty much guaranteed not to die unless you face at least three enemies at once or a straight up minotaur

Oddly enough, that's more or less how they work in MOBAs too because you can't force people to attack you without making the game miserable to play. You are the tough thing that disrupts stuff and is a right pain to get rid of.

That's part of the challenge of GMing. Having enemies only attack the "Tank" often trivialized fights, but having everyone laser target the mage first every time isn't fun either.

"Tank" in wfrp is who ever has the most armour.

My PC calls anyone meatshield as long as he can heroically jump behind them if danger arises. Be it burly men or toddlers. Does that count?

Out of curiosity, what are Halflings good for?

Honestly, even in those situations he's gonna last a few more rounds than anyone else and that could easily save the day. RPGs are not MMOs where you have functionally indefinite endurance as long as you rotate your cooldowns well.

Dealing with corruption. Don't underestimate that.

Sneaking, dodging and shooting

Well of course a wfrp tank is not a WoW tank
I too had to deal with players who thought it was the same but they usually realise the difference when they understand that health does not regenerate over time and "healers" don't have infinite spells

I've had rather good experience with prior 4e players getting into WHFB. As 4e 'Leaders only get a couple of heals a battle' and healing surges being a limited resource got them pretty well into the mindset that damage will stick about.

Gettin dat ring ta mordor

Hasnt dnd always basically been infantry > sapper > artillary > infantry?

>tank/damage/support/healer in WFRP2, for instance?

Shallya priest or light mage can be healer, tank anyone with a shield/plate who can run his mouth with intimidate or other checks making them attack him instead of others. You CAN think in such terms but generally you shouldn't for roleplay's sake.

Play FATE or a similar system, you can't have combat-based archetypes there even if you tried.

Fall and fire damage fucks with everyone in WFRP including my dwarf who had 7TB and 5 armour.

>roll agility

Well fuck you too then GM guess I'm falling down or I'm on fire again then.

Maybe because the terms are USEFUL you joyless faggot. Yes we all know there's no such thing as an MMO tier "tank" and that damage-per-second is not a thing. But for fucks sake there is still a value to the words. Why? because we're not playing a game with AI, threat tables or motherfucking aggro.

The player with the highest AC, the best chance to minimise or avoid damage on behalf of the party, the one whose first into the fight? It's a poor DM who'll mindlessly run enemies around that player to focus the squishy wizard.

The player with healing cantrips, healing and buff spells and a high medicine skill? Guess what he can do? HEAL

and can you guess why it's still called 'dps" I don't actually care. I'm going to tell you. It's because changing to "damage per round" or even just "damage" isn't necessary when most people will get that the dps classes are those that focus on setting up and dealing damage.

What are you trying to achieve here? This is too asinine to just be about farming (You)'s how can you honestly think any of the above is a problem?

look at heroes of the storm, or most MOBAs for that matter

tanks exist there, they can do damage (enough that you shouldn't ignore them unless you're a tank, not so much that they're an immediate threat), and generally work by being sufficiently annoying that you can't ignore them, and sufficiently durable/mobile that they can survive the shitstorm they stir up, or escape it.

there are also tanks in some PvP mmos.

Dark age of camelot comes to mind. again, tanks didn't force anyone to attack them (usually), but they had the capability to a) keep their group members alive through disabling attacks b) take one hell of a beating c) mess up the enemies backline (ie. casters, since in DAoC, any damage taken would interrupt a spell typically) d) bodyguard allies by intercepting/parrying/blocking attacks on their behalf

>It's a poor DM who'll mindlessly run enemies around that player to focus the squishy wizard.
No, it's a DM that's doing what makes sense. If an enemy is tough but incapable of doing damage or stopping you from going after squishier enemies, you ignore them. Fix the fucking mechanics rather than blaming the DM.

>Fellow players stuck in "Fighter, Thief, Wizard, Cleric" MMO mindset
>Is it the MOBAs? I blame the MOBAs.

Ah yes, that's where they have it from. It's definitely the mobbbas.

The new one, Blaze, is a pretty good example of how you can do it without forcing people to attack you exclusively. He does utterly horrific damage...if you stay still. If you keep moving/don't stand in the fire his damage isn't that great but the fact he can set multiple areas on fire, they recharge quickly, he can stun people with a charge and he has an AOE damage aura means that he basically turns a battle into a game of musical chairs unless you can neutralise him. By not engaging him, you are letting him fuck with your battle plans to a silly degree because he's horribly disruptive.

Which is something, imo, that RPGs could learn to do a bit more. A lot of RPGs have 'You can make your fighter tough' but not a heap of 'You can give reason for them to want to attack you over the squishy guys'. Which was a core issue of 3.5 fighters (And still exists in 5e without some very specific feats). You really want a reason for enemy archers to not just lob a shot over your head into the mage.

>toons

:^)

fucking disgusting, 100/100 I furious

>How would a tank even work without A.I. enemies?

Fighter and Cleric are both allowed to wear plate armor and carry a shield, and both have good HP. Standing next to each other they block a standard 10' dungeon corridor, preventing the orcs/ogres/whatever from reaching the bow-wielding thief and spell-slinging mage on the back line from getting hit.

This is is super old school and has nothing to do with computers.

Defenders in 4e are not tanks.
In fact, 4e is the one game where you're likely to see this "MMO mentality" (it actually originates from AD&D) get punished hard and fast.
Nobody in 4e wants to get hit. The goal of defenders is to defend, not to "tank" attacks.

Being immune to corruption and resistant to magic. That's godly if you have to deal with chaos or wizards.

>The player with the highest AC, the best chance to minimise or avoid damage on behalf of the party, the one whose first into the fight? It's a poor DM who'll mindlessly run enemies around that player to focus the squishy wizard.

>implying

Get the fuck out.

It's a stupid goblin chief who doesn't shriek to his warriors: "GET THE MAGE."

4e, wfrp and OD&D are surprisingly thematically compatible

Yeah to use MOBA terminology that's an Initiator or a Bruiser. They don't just exist to be tough, they exist to be disruptive or scary enough that their allies can stay safe. If the big tough guy is up in your face stunning people or knocking them about and blocking shots against the back lines he can't be safely ignored.

Oh yeah, I agree with that and it was part of my post (That I said the role of them is to 'protect allies' not 'Take hits').

I think part of it is that they all go with 'The major cost of a battle should be long term', though not in the same way. WHFB does it by having injuries be long term or permanent, meaning that offence you take can put you out of fighting for quite a bit. 4e's different take (but with the same goal) is that damage during a battle comes out of a long-term resource (Healing surges) so your character is ground down over time. A bad battle in both of them means that you'll be feeling it for a while, rather than it being something that you can get over with a few healing options.

That and 'Environments fucking hurt', something that a lot of RPGs are kinda short on. Having the party lose half their healing surges trekking up a mountain in the freezing cold can make people really fear bad environmental conditions in 4e while they can be downright lethal in WHFB.

As an aside: have you ever seen 4e's long-term injury and disease rules? Those guys are a bitch and would fit right in with WHFB where you can easily have a character break his leg and be utterly fucked up until you get medical attention (The basic idea is that every time you hit 0 HP, flip a card from the long-term injury deck. If you flip one you've already got it upgrades from say 'Fractured ribs' to 'Internal bleeding').

My players use that terminology (we play a lot of League of Legends) yet combat is not exactly the focus of our games. In fact we didn't have a single combat in quite a long time.

Granted, they understood that there's no "meta" in this game and happily went to make a team with three tanks.

How tanks work in OD&D:
>stack up AC, clog a corridor with your bodies, hope the enemy does not have magic and that your own magic-user calculated the volume of his Fireball correctly to avoid friendly fire

How tanking works in pvp games and games without "taunt" mechanics:
>stack up in front of the formation, ready to take the first hits and body block the enemy melees and projectiles; if you have the option to reflect, stack it up and hope someone is stupid enough to suicide on it
Rare options:
>defensive link - you take part of the damage intended for the guy you defend
>defensive aura or shield wall - defend guys next to you or behind you
>challenge - pick a target - they now take extra damage from you until they hit you

Yes, 4e diseases are a bitch (in a fun way). But nobody uses them (just like rituals, skill challenges and environmental attacks).

I'm lucky, the GM of the game I'm in really likes skill challenges. We've used them for stuff like 'Plotting how to outmanoeuvre a cult to expose them to the public' and having a chase scene between a monk and a carriage. Environmental stuff has also come up a lot, though diseases a bit less so.

Rituals are...almost where I'd like them in 4e. They feel like they still have just a couple too many strings hanging onto them from 3.5 weighing them down (Expensive material components, tying them purely into the 'Use magic' skills for example).

>Yes, 4e diseases are a bitch (in a fun way). But nobody uses them (just like rituals, skill challenges and environmental attacks).

My players are coughing on Russet Mold Contagion at this time.

(Ok no, they're done, but they were for a while. used all their alcohol on sterilizing everything before travelling back to civilization in order to avoid contaminating their downtime location)

Let's say the combat area is 200x200 feet, and all combatants start at opposite ends, 400 feet apart. If the archers and casters have a range of 100 feet, then when the enemy melee charge into range they can either attack him with little risk to themselves. Or they can charge forward, putting themselves in danger of melee attacks as well as the range attacks from the other side. Same goes for the enemy melee, they have to push past anyone up front in order to be able to engage the back lines.

So this is one example where someone "tanks" by making themselves a more convenient target.

>Russet Mold Contagion
AKA "The Last Of Us" zombie disease:

funin.space/compendium/disease/Russet-Mold-Contagion.html

Level 5 Disease
Russet Mold Contagion

Those infected sprout red-brown mold that transforms tissue into plant matter. A victim’s death gives rise to a plant creature known as a vegepygmy

Stage 0: The target recovers from the disease.

Stage 1: While affected by stage 1, the target exhibits patches of red-brown mold and tendrils over 10 percent of the body, and the target loses a healing surge.

Stage 2: While affected by stage 2, the target’s skin becomes green or brown, resembling plant matter. The target loses two healing surges and takes a -2 penalty to AC, Fortitude, and Will.

Stage 3: While affected by stage 3, the target’s skin is altered as in stage 2, and its hair changes to resemble plantlike tendrils. The target loses all healing surges, cannot regain hit points, and takes a -2 penalty to AC, Fortitude, Will, and Constitution-based ability and skill checks. The target still makes Endurance checks against the disease, but the stage cannot decrease even on a successful check. If the target dies while at this stage, a vegepygmy hunter (see below) emerges in its former space. If the stage of the disease increases at this stage, the target dies.

Check: At the end of each extended rest, the target makes an Endurance check if it is at stage 1 or 2.

10 or lower: The stage of the disease increases by one.

11-14: No Change

15 or higher: The stage of the disease decreases by one.

Tank also veers often into crowd control and support/healer often leers into buffs/debuffs.
Generally the best way to implement this is by making attacking both the "Tank" and the "Squishies" bad ideas, often involving some sort of punishment for either.

>If the stage of the disease increases at this stage, the target dies.
Get fucked, players.
I'm totally gonna throw an evil disease that will kill them dead, probly via mushroom.

>Get fucked, players.

Yeah, 4e diseases did not fucking play. Even if you avoid dropping at stage 3 and flat dying, you have 0 healing surges, every single point of damage you take is PERMANENT until you start to recover. In a game that heavily goes 'It's ok to beat the shit out of players in an encounter because they have the buffer of healing surges to prevent them becoming unable to continue too quickly'.

You know that the Endurance checks are piss easy to make unless you're, like, level 1, right?

Hell, anyone can use Heal to help out with it DURING an extended rest.

Yeah, if you are trained in endurance. A guy untrained in the skill is looking more in the area of +3 to the roll if he's level 5 (Half level + con 12-13), so the odds of him dropping to level 3 isn't super high but it can still fuck him up.

Blame your players, they are cunts.
My mates and I play wow and d&d together and they never used that terminology or mindset.

(Gotta admit though, one dude I know does talk about tanks and healers and shit, and he's an avid LoL player..)

You can't say "halfling" without "fling".

They are fun to play as because the whole setting pretty much hate you and whatever hurts the others hurts you so much more so you can rise to the top against all odds (but most likely you will die horribly)

Also never underestimate sling and staff slings they hurt like a motherfucker.

It's really the core issue that such classes have often had. There isn't much reason to actually engage them in many games since they are more effort to kill but not actually more of a threat than the squishy guys.

Guy in heavy armor with high AC and health
>COME AND FIGHT ME YOU FECKLESS MONGRELS

Done

Kreig?

Beefy Kender spewing a constant string of taunts.

This.

You're gay. Yes we get it, you're very "intelligent" and "creative" for having enemy's fight "realistically" and ignoring decades of culture and basic fucking game design.

Kill yourself.

You have a special place in Hell reserved for you, motherfucker.

Have you tried not playing D&D 4E?

Your problem right there.