An Overview of Combat Roles in RPGs (Part 2)

 My Roles:

So, with all of that out of the way, here are the combat roles in my own TTRPG: 

Strikers (also known as Melee DPS) are the close-ranged damage dealers of the game, but they don’t have to be fragile speedsters. They are also allowed to have medium amounts of health and limited agility. Their goal is just to deal damage up close, and the nuance between different classes lies in how they go about this goal. Think of them as this game’s equivalent to Rushdown characters in fighting games. 

Defenders (also known as Tanks) are fighting alongside Strikers, blocking attacks and soaking up damage. They have low mobility, high health, and lots of endurance to make them fit for this role. While they can also deal damage (and usually average-to-high damage, at that), this is only a last resort, and their main goal is to let other people do that on their behalf. They also make extensive use of “Reactions” that can be taken during the opponent’s turn, specifically Blocking, a Reaction dependent on their Constitution stat. 

Healers heal their allies. The nuance of Healers lies in how they heal (medicine, potions, magic, etc,), as well as how many people they heal at a time, whether or not they can heal multiple characters simultaneously, and what they are doing when they are not healing. Plus, Healers can also cure enemies of status effects. Buffers (also called Leaders) give various buffs to their allies, including extra damage, extra attacks, extra movement options and more. Alternatively, they might even have abilities that move their party members around the map like a chessmaster. One of the most common types is to engage in “preemptive” healing, essentially giving magic shields to the other party members that absorb their next hit of damage. Because Healing and Buffing go hand-in-hand so often, I might end up combining them into a single role, called Supporters. 

Blasters (also known as Mages, AoE, Magic DPS and Area Deniers) strategically control the pace of combat and disrupt enemy movements from afar, with the goal of making them easier targets for Strikers and Artillerists. They do this with AoE attacks, Burst attacks and long-lasting spells that target the ground itself. 

Artillerists (also known as Ranged DPS) are damage dealers operating from long range. Artillerists are distinguished from Strikers because they can focus on many more targets at a time, are rarely at risk themselves, have less health, have to manage resources (namely ammo) and are often more reactive. Rather than attacking front-line enemies, they specifically target enemies that slip past the Defender. To reflect this, they are more fragile than their Striker counterparts, but have tools to create distance between them and their opponents. They are an obvious parallel to the Zoner archetype in fighting games. 

Spikers (also called Slayers, Assassins) have average-to-low health, mediocre speed, average defenses and their damage is usually subpar. However, they have the best stealth and their damage explodes in specific situations, making them the go-to Burst characters of the game, but this usually requires one or more turns of setup. For instance, the Ranger needs to setup a trap, the Rogue needs to perform backstabs from hidden environments, and the Agent has to be unseen to perform takedowns. They are comparable and somewhat equivalent to the Trapper (sub)archetype in fighting games. 

Disablers (also called Guardians) are based around slowing down the enemy and preventing too many enemies from overwhelming the team. This mainly comes in the form of abilities which prevent the enemies from using their own abilities; attacks that inflict heavy stun; abilities that bind the enemy in place and prevent them from moving; and negative status effects, such as poisoning or burning them. However, many of these status effects can only be activated from a close or midrange, so to compensate for the fact that they’ll see more combat, they have a bit more health than Blasters. 

Flankers (also called Linebackers) are the midranged damage dealers. Flankers excel at hitting enemies from the side, poking them from the midrange, baiting them into making mistakes and distracting them. Damage-dealing decreases in effectiveness the farther it gets from combat, which leaves the Flankers in something of a sweet spot: at midrange, they can escape a lot of potential harm, but enough of them can also work together to annoy and even seriously threaten the opposing forces. The goal of a Flanker is not to kill enemies themselves, but to distract them and force them to waste resources, allowing Strikers to jump in with a kill. They are equivalent to the Footsie archetype of fighting games. I’m also dabbling with the idea of Flankers excelling in the Parry Reaction, much like how Defenders use the Block Reaction. 

Evaders are to agility what Defenders are to defense and Strikers are to offense. That is to say, Evaders are a role based around having a high Agility Stat and Speed Score, so their gameplan revolves entirely around dodging the enemy’s attacks, tricking them, drawing fire so the rest of the party can attack, employing hit-and-run tactics on the slower enemies, and infiltrating the back of the enemy’s ranks to attack their vulnerable Blasters and Healers (but this leaves them open to the enemy’s Artillerists). Much like how the Defender has the Blocking Reaction, Evaders have the Dodge Reaction, which is dependent on their Agility score. 

Universalists (aka Versatile, Balance or Jack-of-all-Trades) can act in any of the above roles in their party. This could be because they have access to Artillerist, Striker, Defender, Buffer, Disabler, Flanker, Healer and Blaster tools by default, but they are all mediocre. However, different subclasses tend to emphasize one of these roles more than the other, allowing players to develop a particular preference as they play along. They are equivalent to the All-Rounders of fighting games. 

Swarmers outsource their fighting to familiars, pets and constructs, and they are often Necromancers, Summoners, Beastmasters, Puppeteers, Engineers and occasionally Shamans. They are a bizarre role that, conceptually speaking, is adjacent to but can’t really be placed under Strikers, Blasters, Artillerists or Defenders. They are roughly equivalent to the Puppet archetype of fighting games. 

I really like this system, and I think it has a lot of merit because natural contrast exists between so many roles. A natural conflict exists between Artillerists and Evaders, with Evaders trying to sneak past enemy lines and Artillerists punishing enemies who successfully do so. There’s also an obvious conflict between Healers/Buffers and Disablers (the former uses positive status effects on their allies and the latter uses negative status effects on the enemy). 

One idea I wanted to push forth is that, like in SMITE, some roles vary depending on their consistency. Blasters and Artillerists are both ranged damage dealers, but they differ in how many enemies they target and how consistent their damage is. Spikers and Strikers are both mid-to-close ranged damage dealers, but they differ in how much preparation they need and how long they can stay in the heat of combat.