A Brief Tangent on Rogues, Fighters and DPS Characters

 Recently, I got into Dungeons & Dragons. I had always been aware of the games, of course, seeing as they’ve left a nearly unmatched mark on the tabletop medium and fantasy genre, but I had never gotten interested in them for the simple fact that I don’t play tabletop RPGs all that often. However, it was actually my brother—an avid tabletop fan and frequent D&D homebrewer—who got me interested, and it was through him that I discovered my love for the games not because of their storytelling potential, but because of their unique combat systems. 

Specifically, I got attached to 4E and its roles, which led me to analyze how combat roles work in numerous other games, including other TTRPGs as well as MMOs (which were influenced by D&D) and MOBAs (which where influenced by MMOs). The goal of combat in 4E was creating an experience where everyone worked together as a party during combat, so the developers naturally drew inspiration from MMOs and war games. This made D&D 4E an extremely crunchy, tactical game, and it was both the closest D&D ever got to a war game and the closest D&D ever got to an MMO. 

The flow of combat and healing in RPGs dates back to D&D 1E, and it was a result of how they handled classes, damage, Hit Points (HP) and rests. The Fighting-Man, Magic-User and Cleric were the first ever classes for D&D or any RPG, and the Thief came out shortly thereafter. The Fighting-Man was best at direct combat, the Magic-User was a versatile caster, the Thief (later called the Rogue) was a nimble Skill Monkey who was best at avoiding combat altogether, and the Cleric was a healer. That last decision came about as a result of the fact that each of these classes had access to Hit Die, which determined how many Hit Points (HP) they had, and each class could roll their Hit Die to recover HP during a short rest. For balancing purposes, the Magic-User and Thief had less HP than the Fighter to balance out their greater versatility, and they couldn’t heal until a short rest, which meant that if they did get hit, they needed a way to be back on their feet ASAP. Likewise, even if the Fighter placed themselves in front of the Magic-User and Thief, in a properly-balanced combat encounter, that meant they would be soaking up damage for four people. Hence, the Cleric (a divine caster who obtained powers through faith in the gods instead of study) was made into a healer, who could regularly heal the Fighter and keep them on their feet, then occasionally heal the Magic-User and Thief in the rare event they got hut instead. 

Roles in MMOS vs D&D:

Over the years, MMOs like World of Warcraft developed three distinct roles: DPS (Damage-per-Second), Tank and Healer. DPS characters did the most damage, Tanks protected the DPS, and Healers obviously healed both Tanks and DPS of any damage they took. 

WotC adapted those roles into 4E; Healers were called Leaders, DPS were called Strikers and Tanks were called Defenders. But even though this trinity is upheld as a holy grail for constructing classes and roles in MMOs and MOBAs, almost everyone would agree that there’s actually a lot more roles in MMOs, notably namely a Crowd Control / Disabler who can slow the enemy down and a Nuker who bombards the enemy with AOE attacks. You can try to justify those as being extensions of DPS or Tank, but frankly, you’d be lying to yourself since they play very differently. D&D acknowledged this, and they combined Nukers and Disablers into a new role: Controllers. (I personally enjoy when AOE characters and Crowd Controllers are two separate roles, like in SMITE, but I understand that for the mechanics of D&D it made more sense to merge them.)

in the first player’s handbook for 4E, WotC related each of these four roles to four of the original classes from D&D 1E: Fighter (called Fighting-Man in 1E), Rogue (called Thief in 1E), Cleric, and Wizard (called Magic-User in 1E). Many speculate that they did this specifically to appease fans who were worried that the game was too “MMO-y,” dissuading those fans and assuring them that their design decisions were actually rooted in past trends. The Cleric was referred to as the archetypal Leader, since their function in the early days of D&D was to heal and buff allies. The Wizard was used as the archetypal Controller, since many of their spells are AOEs, have debuffing abilities, or both. That makes sense, but what confuses me is that Fighters were used as the basis for Defenders, and Rogues were used as the basis for Strikers. Why do I have a problem with this? 

Reason #1: Function vs Thematic Identity:

Looking at the specific wording in the player’s handbook, WotC says of the Defender:

• “Defenders have the highest defenses in the game and good close-up offense. They are the party’s front-line combatants; wherever they’re standing, that’s where the action is. Defenders have abilities and powers that make it difficult for enemies to move past them or to ignore them in battle.”  [PH1 p15]

These paragraphs are really odd to me, for a few reasons. Again, the Fighter’s entire identity was that, in 1E, they were the only one of the four OG classes who actually excelled in melee combat. Basically, the Fighter was good at, well, fighting. (In fact, I would make the argument that the Fighter is outdated for this exact reason. Their thematic identity dates back to a time when no other combat-centric classes existed, which makes it meaningless, overly-broad and obsolete when presented alongside more defined combat-centric classes with an actual thematic identity, like Monks, Rangers and Barbarians. But I digress.) 

I agree with sentences like “[Defenders] are the front-line combatants,” but it feels odd to label a class of melee combatants as highly-defensive powerhouses who soak up damage for the enemy. Fighters can be both, and the consensus among those who play Fighter is that they really feel more like a Striker/Defender hybrid rather than one or the other. 

Furthermore, Rogues were used as the archetypal example of a Striker. In the player’s handbook for 4E, WotC states of the Striker:

• “Strikers specialize in dealing high amounts of damage to a single target at a time. They have the most concentrated offense of any character in the game. Strikers rely on superior mobility, trickery, or magic to move around tough foes and single out the enemy they want to attack.”  [PH1 p15]

Of course, the Rogue’s entire identity in 1E was that they were stealthy, nimble Skill Monkeys who were adept at stealth and avoiding combat altogether. Designating them as the damage-dealers of the game feels bizarre to me. 

Reason #2: “Video Game Logic” and Damage:

Now, you might disagree with my reasoning that Rogues are a strange Striker class on the basis of a crucial mechanic: the backstab. The backstab (or, more broadly, the sneak attack) is a core part of the Rogue’s gameplan, granting explosive damage when they surprise an enemy. Many Rogue builds across D&D’s lifespan focus on expanding a Rogue’s sneakiness as much as possible to expand their sneak attack possibilities, and a successful sneak attack at high-levels can blow out of the water anything a Fighter can do. 

My issue with D&D 4E making explosive damage the cornerstone of a Rogue’s design is that 1) the Striker is the only role WotC explicitly designated as the party’s primary damage-dealer, and 2) it very much feels like “video game logic.” Simply put, a quick thief with no armor and a knife shouldn’t be doing more damage than the fully-armored knight with a sword and shield; the latter may surpass the former in defense, but that doesn’t mean the former surpasses the latter in offense. Many video game RPGs break their classes down like this as a way to address balancing, so it’s understandable why WotC did it this way, but I think this would be avoided by not thinking about these classes in such black-and-white terms. Party roles don’t have to be just offensive or just defensive. 

Side Tangent: Mobility =/= Damage: 

As a bit of a side-tangent, I want to bring attention to a common notion I see in designing RPGs, and it’s designating the most mobile characters as the best damage-dealers. Again, I think that it’s a result of black-and-white thinking on the part of developers, where every role in a party has to be offensive or defensive. 

To illustrate my point, I’ll turn to another genre I know a lot about: fighting games. I want to remind everyone that this is all my subjective gripes on game design, but in general, while writing this essay, I noticed that defining the roles of an RPG has a lot of overlap with defining archetypes in fighting games. In fighting games, many fans speak of the “Rushdown” archetype: characters who are highly offensive, extremely mobile glass cannons. 

The truth is, this description actually mashes together some relatively unrelated ideas, and it creates a definition so broad that it leaves out many of the genre’s most well-known Rushdown characters. Not every offensive powerhouse is a nimble, quick fighter; some boast average or even below-average mobility, but have explosive damage output all the same. Additionally, not every mobile character uses their above-average mobility to apply damage; some use it to evade the enemy’s attacks, especially in 3D fighting games. And not every offensive powerhouse or mobile fighter is a glass cannon; almost any archetype can be a glass cannon regardless of how they actually play. 

I believe this fact of fighting games is true in other genres, like MMOs, MOBAs and, of course, TTRPGs. The most mobile characters are not always going to be those who deal the highest amount of damage, and vice versa. This is important when we look at 4E’s other Strikers. 

Reason #3: The Inconsistency of the Striker’s Design:

If we look at the quote written above about Strikers and their design, it’s obvious that the Rogue was being used as a basis to outline what a Striker should do, much like how Clerics were used to outline what Leaders should do, and Wizards were used to outline what Controllers should do. 

I think the problem here is that WotC created the Striker role as the sole damage-dealing role in their player’s handbook. It’s actually the same problem that MMOs and MOBAs often have: when the entire game is based around combat and enemies only die when you deal damage to them, having “damage dealer” as a role in the class tells you absolutely fucking nothing about how they work. I dislike “DPS” as a role for the same reason I dislike “Fighter” as a class name: it made sense when the genre was finding its footing, but now that party-based combat has evolved and the majority of players are some sort of damage-dealer—and even the Tanks and Crowd Controllers are dealing damage—the phrase “DPS” feels overly-broad, unhelpful and outdated. 

Unfortunately, as opposed to just keeping the Striker’s language vague and open-ended, WotC made it clear in their first player’s handbook for 4E that Strikers were tricky, nimble, quick characters who targeted one enemy at a time. Many of the classes that they introduced later on didn’t fit into this mold. Warlocks and Sorcerers were classified as Strikers, even though they were flinging spells at the enemies from afar, as opposed to getting up-close and employing hit-and-run tactics. Barbarians are classified as Strikers, but they’re extremely straightforward, in-your-face fighters, and Rage makes them so tanky that they could’ve just as easily been Defenders. 

Breaking Up Damage-Dealing Roles:

At the end of the day, I think a lot of the problems I have with D&D 4E assigning Fighter to the Defender role and Rogue to the Striker role is that it feels like WotC used the MMO framework of DPS/Healer/Tank without recognizing how vague “DPS” really is. They added Controller as a fourth role, tried too hard to make a 1:1 comparison between those roles and their original four classes (Rogue, Fighter, Wizard, Cleric), and implied that this is the model they would be using to construct other classes from here-on out. 

The way I see it, there are actually a number of different roles one can extrapolate from this. Strikers are characters who dish out the most damage on the front lines, and Defenders are the tanks who protect everyone. Just as Strikers are all about damage and Defenders are all about defense, Evaders are all about agility; they are high-risk, high-reward characters who use their speed to both draw enemy fire, infiltrate the enemy’s formation and/or use hit-and-run tactics. Spikers are unusual burst damage characters: they set up certain conditions, lay traps and hide while the enemies are distracted, before dishing out explosive damage. 

In this new, revised framework, Fighters would be a Striker class with Defender as their secondary role. Rogues would be Spikers with Evader as a secondary role, since their damage-dealing isn’t as straightforward and they are more interested in burst damage and agility.