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The mini-announcement from Mike Mearls on Twitter that 5e warlord won't heal got me thinking about an old issue: class roles.

They existed since the game's creation as the four "core" classes, which later got expanded through kits and sub-classes. Fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric; in MMO-speak, tank, DPS, AOE/CC, and healer; in the official 4e terminology, defender, striker, controller, and leader.

Third edition had some problems because classes outside those core four sometimes didn't fit into the party well. A 3.5e bard was a decent class, but he couldn't fill one of those main four roles, so unless your party had five or more characters he was a subpar choice.

(A proviso: this obviously wasn't a hard and fast rule. My favorite 3e characters were a monk and a barbarian. Some groups didn't even know about the "core four," others didn't care, and plenty worked around it more or less elegantly. Scrolls, wands of cure light wounds, hirelings, and other adaptations covered a miltitude of design sins.)

4e did a great job of solving this conundrum with a two-part procedure: first, they sawed off the rough edges that made certain classes absolutely necessary. Most obviously, they gave all characters out of combat (and some in combat) healing, so the party wasn't screwed if nobody wanted to play a cleric.

Second, the wedged every class into one of those four roles. So the 4e bard was a leader, meaning he could replace a cleric.

Now, 5e is rejecting that second change. Not every fighter is a defender anymore. A cleric or even rogue can have elements of a defender. Hurray for flexibility!

But where does this leave classes outside those core four? What does a monk or bard or warlord or ranger add to the party that those four core classes don't? Who do they replace?

A meta-question that should probably come first: has WOTC kept enough of the other 4e adaptations, like (soon-to-be-optional) HD healing, that those four roles aren't as rigidly required as they sometimes seemed in earlier editions?

Not healing, could mean not restoring hit points, but granting temporary hit points. So the specifics are important and Mike really needs to stay off of any type of instant messaging. I know I would if I was a developer.

Feb 19, 2013 -- 9:49PM, ClockworkNecktie wrote:

@jenks - sorry, I'm on my phone, but google @mikemearls and check his twitter feed. Someone asked if warlords were healers too and he said they focus more on mitigation.

Interesting. I'm actually kind of looking forward to seeing that. But it does solidify one thing, they ARE developing a Warlord class. At least that argument can be put to rest.

Feb 19, 2013 -- 9:53PM, Mithrus wrote:

So I decided to run a party of 4 black belts/masters. I ended up beating the game about 5 levels lower than the "standard" party. I was truly impressed on how well they survived.

A level 21 Master can take out the endboss with a single attack. It's awesome.

And then we're bloating up the game because some very loud players out there have a huge mental disconnect between "take five less damage" and "gain five hitpoints" for some reason.