Nonexistent/underrepresented RPG roles

[rusty_shackleford]

Combat tactician that directs the other members of combat and everyone begins panicking if he goes down. Could even blow a whistle and have cool hand maneuvers.


Sometimes you see things like a 'leader' that gives small bonuses, but I want to see it turned into a real role. Closest is the one Rogue Trader class. Also, ATOM RPG lets you issue commands to allies on your turn.

[WaterMage]

I would say more physical supernatural powers. Wind, psychokinesis, etc.

[Oyster Sauce]

Fire Emblem has a dancer class that dances for people who have already moved to give them another turn. It can't do anything else.

[J1M]

Combat tactician that directs the other members of combat and everyone begins panicking if he goes down. Could even blow a whistle and have cool hand maneuvers.


Sometimes you see things like a 'leader' that gives small bonuses, but I want to see it turned into a real role. Closest is the one Rogue Trader class. Also, ATOM RPG lets you issue commands to allies on your turn.

D&D 4e introduced the Warlord class, which is this. Can grant his attack to someone in a better position, inspire greater feats of bravery, etc. Some of the mechanics survived into 5e in the Fighter's Battlemaster subclass. Even so, there's multiple homebrew recreations because people liked the concept.

It also appeared that the Rogue Trader game supported a playstyle like this, via the Officer class, but I only made it to the end of the prologue so I don't know how well it scales.

My additions to the list:

• Mana battery. This was a thing in Everquest from what I understand, but nothing recent I'm familiar with.
• The Carry. Basically a character that is completely useless in combat that must be defended, but taking them along at the cost of combat effectiveness grants another bonus, such as increased treasure recovery.
• Geomancer. Powerful but circumstantial abilities determined by the terrain type that the Geomancer and the target occupy. (Can heal when standing in water, can entangle foes standing in grass, and the most powerful spells require both Geomancer and target to be in a certain terrain type. Itemization allows bending these rules, such as an item slot with properties like "you are always considered to be standing in water while this is equipped".)

[Valter]

Mages in heavy armor. I mean being able to use magic to either reduce the weight of equipment or raise the user's physical prowess.
The Arcane Warrior mage subclass in Dragon Age Origins was really cool with that.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Geomancers are heavily underutilized. Raise earth walls into intercept incoming projectiles or to wall off or trap enemies, or to raise your forces so they can reach an elevated position. Turn ground into mud to slow enemies. Blow the wind so that people can hop on banners across a hall way or the side of a castle like in Okami. Etc.

[Maledict]

Any weapons other than swords and shields are underutilized too.
Whips, flails and also spears.

[rusty_shackleford]

The Carry. Basically a character that is completely useless in combat that must be defended, but taking them along at the cost of combat effectiveness grants another bonus, such as increased treasure recovery.

This exists in darkest dungeon and it's a fun class, antiquarian
Lineage 2 the MMO had a similar role, the bounty hunter (actually mistranslated and got mixed up with treasure hunter...) whose entire role was unlocking a new loot table on mobs

Underrepresented tho, yes.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Scouts and portal mages. You typically don't need them in MMOs because mobs can be databased and will only wander within their predictable radius. But in PvP MMOs where death is nontrivial, you need them.

Air Rivals is about a faction war where there are two lanes of maps leading to the enemy city. Ordinarily, you get there by going through warp gates, which are usually hotly contested chokepoints with the defenders setting up a barricade there and dumping all of their firepower down the warp gate to instakill invaders coming through. The invading side would coordinate so that they all went through the gate at the same time, hoping to bodyblock some shots and that enough people would get through to make a breakthrough. Among there were the M-Gears, the support class, which can port people in. If they can get through, they try to find a hiding spot, and then begin porting in forces from the invader's capital city (the respawn point). For defenders, it is vital that they sweep the map and hunt down and kill these M-gears before they port in too many behind the frontlines. There was another class capable of long range radar and had a higher chance of detecting an M-gear trying to lay low. Sometimes M-Gears would try sneaking through the other lane if there was less activity there.

EVE Online has a similar world setup to Air Rivals in that to get from map/star system to map, you have to go through warp gates, which are chokepoints that can be camped. In EVE Online, if your spaceship blows up, it blows up and you will lose everything onboard/invested into it. So people tend to run around in cheap, easily replaceable ships. But any serious group will have people in scout ships, checking out the gates inside the star system to make sure that they are not camped, and in the surrounding star systems scanning for other groups, be it looking for victims or for stronger, larger enemy fleets to avoid. For large player made nations (called alliances) that are moving very expensive tonnage, it is too risky to go through all of these warp gate chokepoints (and outright impossible for capital ships), so they instead need a jumpship to open up wormholes for the fleet to go through. The jump ship has to consume a special type of fuel.

EVE alliances are also in need of logistics ships (not to be confused with the Logistics class of EVE Online ship, which is the healer that can repair other ships from afar). For big battles, there are huge carriers that bring along with them many spare ships for other players to take and pilot should theirs blow up. These ships can also serve as mobile respawn points.

[Norfleet]

[*]The Carry. Basically a character that is completely useless in combat that must be defended, but taking them along at the cost of combat effectiveness grants another bonus, such as increased treasure recovery.

I'm not sure this role is truly underrepresented in RPGs.

In the single player space, this is the character whose preset class and build are generally far less effective than the others, but you're obliged to drag them along anyway so you can finish their affinity quest and unlock whatever that gives you. There's at least one of these in most modern RPGs.

In the multiplayer space, it's every single PUGtard on the team and every guild noob you're carrying so that you can not have to PUG in the future.

Scouts and portal mages. You typically don't need them in MMOs because mobs can be databased and will only wander within their predictable radius. But in PvP MMOs where death is nontrivial, you need them.

I'm not sure these are "underrepresented". Like you said, in a game where they are needed, they're going to exist. But in a single player, small-scale party RPG, they obviously don't exist because you're not playing on that level. You don't see these kinds of roles at the tactical scale, they don't arise until you hit the operational and strategic scales.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I'm not sure these are "underrepresented". Like you said, in a game where they are needed, they're going to exist. But in a single player, small-scale party RPG, they obviously don't exist because you're not playing on that level. You don't see these kinds of roles at the tactical scale, they don't arise until you hit the operational and strategic scales.

Scouting does happen in RPGs, but it's typically not implemented well. Think about Shadowrun where you enter a corporate office, or in a fantasy RPG when you enter a place occupied by some faction, etc, and you are walking around talking to NPCs, looking in all of the rooms for what powerful NPCs to watch out for, etc, before you pull the trigger. That is in effect, scouting. The weird thing is that there is usually no difficulty to it, because you and your heavily armed posse can meander around asking all sorts of questions, walking into almost every room and then walking right out, etc, and nobody will grow suspicious about this. Realistically, you would need to pick which party member(s) who would go in to scout the situation, while everyone else waits outside. These party members would be the most appropriate for the setting, or have the highest charisma stat, etc, but even then that would not give them license to spend unlimited time entering every single room, talking to every person, etc. I'd imagine that the more time you spend in there, the more people you talk to, etc, the more of a "conspicuousness" meter you would fill, and at certain breakpoints the people would become increasingly suspicious/alarmed at you.

[Tweed]

Combat tactician that directs the other members of combat and everyone begins panicking if he goes down. Could even blow a whistle and have cool hand maneuvers.


Sometimes you see things like a 'leader' that gives small bonuses, but I want to see it turned into a real role. Closest is the one Rogue Trader class. Also, ATOM RPG lets you issue commands to allies on your turn.

Horizon's Gate has one of these, the tactician class mostly issues orders to other members in the party, making them move up or back, letting them act faster, or delay their actions with benefits, etc.

[rusty_shackleford]

Combat tactician that directs the other members of combat and everyone begins panicking if he goes down. Could even blow a whistle and have cool hand maneuvers.


Sometimes you see things like a 'leader' that gives small bonuses, but I want to see it turned into a real role. Closest is the one Rogue Trader class. Also, ATOM RPG lets you issue commands to allies on your turn.

Horizon's Gate has one of these, the tactician class mostly issues orders to other members in the party, making them move up or back, letting them act faster, or delay their actions with benefits, etc.

Does it have a whistle?

[Tweed]

Combat tactician that directs the other members of combat and everyone begins panicking if he goes down. Could even blow a whistle and have cool hand maneuvers.


Sometimes you see things like a 'leader' that gives small bonuses, but I want to see it turned into a real role. Closest is the one Rogue Trader class. Also, ATOM RPG lets you issue commands to allies on your turn.

Horizon's Gate has one of these, the tactician class mostly issues orders to other members in the party, making them move up or back, letting them act faster, or delay their actions with benefits, etc.

Does it have a whistle?

I don't know.

[rusty_shackleford]

Surprisingly, sci-fi RPGs tend to really lack gadgeteer roles. Which is a bit strange because they're basically an equivalent of an alchemist.

[rusty_shackleford]

Perhaps it's because it's difficult to translate to PC but illusionists don't really tend to exist.
EQ enchanter is quite good and unique and somewhat fits.

[TKVNC]

Combat tactician that directs the other members of combat and everyone begins panicking if he goes down. Could even blow a whistle and have cool hand maneuvers.


Sometimes you see things like a 'leader' that gives small bonuses, but I want to see it turned into a real role. Closest is the one Rogue Trader class. Also, ATOM RPG lets you issue commands to allies on your turn.

DA Origins sort of has this with the Champion Warrior subclass.

A good implementation, which is ironically not in an RPG, is DOW Dark Crusade's implementation of the T'au Ethereal. Huge bonuses while nearby, but immediate panic and negatives if he is to die.

[Norfleet]

Scouting does happen in RPGs, but it's typically not implemented well. Think about Shadowrun where you enter a corporate office, or in a fantasy RPG when you enter a place occupied by some faction, etc, and you are walking around talking to NPCs, looking in all of the rooms for what powerful NPCs to watch out for, etc, before you pull the trigger.

Assuming you pull the trigger. In most cases, places that let you wander about unopposed are not hostile and your decision to abruptly open fire on blue NPCs is outside of "standard" playflow. Also, an artifact of how little anyone cares about you going anywhere in the first place and how static the world is. That's why you can barge into and search every house in the game and you MIGHT get a substanceless complaint at most. In fact, the game sort of ENCOURAGES this kind of behavior, since you're expected and incentivized to explore every nook and cranny of every map. Thus I regard the behavior as less "Scouting" and more just "being in an RPG".

[J1M]

[*]The Carry. Basically a character that is completely useless in combat that must be defended, but taking them along at the cost of combat effectiveness grants another bonus, such as increased treasure recovery.

I'm not sure this role is truly underrepresented in RPGs.

In the single player space, this is the character whose preset class and build are generally far less effective than the others, but you're obliged to drag them along anyway so you can finish their affinity quest and unlock whatever that gives you. There's at least one of these in most modern RPGs.

That may have been true last century, but anything somewhat recent has the thief dealing more damage with his shiv than the raging barbarian is capable of with a giant axe.

[TKVNC]

[*]The Carry. Basically a character that is completely useless in combat that must be defended, but taking them along at the cost of combat effectiveness grants another bonus, such as increased treasure recovery.

I'm not sure this role is truly underrepresented in RPGs.

In the single player space, this is the character whose preset class and build are generally far less effective than the others, but you're obliged to drag them along anyway so you can finish their affinity quest and unlock whatever that gives you. There's at least one of these in most modern RPGs.

That may have been true last century, but anything somewhat recent has the thief dealing more damage with his shiv than the raging barbarian is capable of with a giant axe.

I hate stealth where you just crouch and magically deal 300% damage.

At least an ambush makes sense, and there's no reason you can't ambush someone with a two handed sword.

[Norfleet]

That may have been true last century, but anything somewhat recent has the thief dealing more damage with his shiv than the raging barbarian is capable of with a giant axe.

I didn't say anything about the thief, though: There's ALWAYS a build underperformer in a preset party.

[rusty_shackleford]

thief has been one of the core topics of OSR discussion for ages

[Tangerine]

Thieves should be ****** in combat compared to any dedicated warrior class.

[rusty_shackleford]

Thieves should be ****** in combat compared to any dedicated warrior class.

Yes, that's the topic. They suck at the main thing D&D is about.

Having someone play a thief means you're designing a game differently just for the thief player

[WaterMage]

Physical caster :

[Norfleet]

Yes, that's the topic. They suck at the main thing D&D is about.

I mean, that is only true of nuD&D. In the older D&Ds up to 1E AD&D, D&D was about LOOT. LOOT = XP. The thief represented the pure approach to loot: You just bypassed all the obstacles and just ******* stole it. Being a combat wombat didn't grant you anything in and of itself, except when you could kill the enemies and TAKE THEIR STUFF.

[Lhynn]

Combat tactician that directs the other members of combat and everyone begins panicking if he goes down

You mean like heroes of might and magic?

[Tweed]

Thieves should be ****** in combat compared to any dedicated warrior class.

Yes, that's the topic. They suck at the main thing D&D is about.

Having someone play a thief means you're designing a game differently just for the thief player

That's why they added all those feats, because losers can't play their classes to their strengths unless it's clearly marked out in the rules.

[Norfleet]

Thieves should be ****** in combat compared to any dedicated warrior class.

Yes, that's the topic. They suck at the main thing D&D is about.

Having someone play a thief means you're designing a game differently just for the thief player

That's why they added all those feats, because losers can't play their classes to their strengths unless it's clearly marked out in the rules.

To be fair, if the game is designed in a way which explicitly punishes playing as a thief instead of a combat wombat, it's not about whether it's marked out in the rules. There's no amount of "playing to your class's strengths" when you are simply losing out on all combat XP for any act of avoiding combat (and often avoiding combat encounters is just not even an option) and thus using your skills directly punishes you. This is why every thief build in such a game ends up being a ninja assassin instead, where you MIGHT possibly claw back utility in the actual game as designed.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I think murderhoboness becomes much more incentivized in any closed economy game where you cannot farm indefinitely. Ie, games where the are only a set number of encounters or exp to get, period. So this leads to paranoia "oh, I am not going to be strong enough to beat the final boss, I need to mine everything!". Whereas if there is some ability to leisurely juice up your character, like being able to farm respawning enemies, then there is less pressure to do so. Fire Emblem 4 (strong incentive to kill every enemy unit before the mission ends) vs Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright (the mission ended before we killed everybody? No biggie. We can make it up later).