So what does it mean to have roles that aren’t defined by the system? In 4th Edition, a fighter is a defender. Though you can build one with striking or controlling, it’s a rare fighter that doesn’t function at all as a defender. Rogues are always strikers and never defenders. Wizards are always controllers and very rarely strikers. None of these classes are ever leaders. 4th Edition is designed so that almost everybody of the same class serves the same role in slightly different ways, and everybody with the same role does similar things in similar ways (there’s a reason every leader gets two minor action bursts at first level that grant a healing surge).
3rd Edition and Pathfinder don’t have explicit roles assigned to classes, so what classes are good at what roles? This is where I really like the freedom of these systems, because just about any class can be just about any role. Some are certainly better than others, but any character can do almost anything (except healing). As an example, let’s look at the druid, one of the most versatile classes in the game, to see how well they work:
- Control — At 1st level, druids gain the spell entangle, which is probably the strongest low-level control effect in the game. As they level, they continue gaining area effects that change the battlefield, slowing or damaging enemies and keeping their allies safe. They can also convert their spells into summoning, to put large walls of meat anywhere on the field.
- Damage — A druid has no limit on the number of creatures it can summon or control, and five magical allies can do a startling amount of damage each turn. A druid can also transform into an animal and attack enemies directly, and they get the occasional spell like flame strike that rivals sorcerers for sheer damage.
- Defense — They have an armor restriction and no class bonuses, so the average druid isn’t fantastic at defense. They do, however, have a fantastic amount of buffing spells, probably second only to the cleric, and a prepared or smart druid can protect themselves perfectly in almost any situation. Then add the defense bonuses from wild shape.
- Diplomacy — Druids have some difficulty here, because they lack interaction skills as class skills and Charisma is not one of their primary ability scores. However, Pathfinder has no restriction on how players are allowed to spend their skills. A druid can put all of their skill points into Diplomacy, Sense Motive, and Bluff, and all they lose is the +3 class skill bonus, which they can counter with the feat Skill Focus. They also gain wild empathy, giving them the rare ability to engage in diplomacy with unintelligent beasts.
- Healing — Druids gain cure spells more slowly than a cleric, because they have cure moderate wounds as a 3rd-level spell rather than 2nd, and all later cures are similarly delayed. But this only sets them back about 4.5 hit points per cure, and a high-level druid isn’t all that harmed by this. They also have the effect-healing spells one would expect, like neutralize poison, remove disease, and restoration.
- Nature — Druids are nature specialists. Their class skills are based on nature, their spells manipulate nature, their class abilities make them better in nature, and their summons and wild shape simulate nature.
- Stealth — Druids have something like the same problem here as with Diplomacy, since stealth skills are not class skills for them. But their wild shape allows them to change into creatures better suited for stealth, including animals that can fly, and their spells are better suited to hiding than interaction. At 3rd level, a druid is even immune to being tracked in natural environments.
Notably, few of these roles are mutually exclusive. A druid can’t put all of their skills into diplomacy, nature, and stealth, but they can certainly put their skills into stealth, prepare spells for healing or control, and use wild shape to deal damage. Most characters can and should handle multiple roles.
This is all well and good for a versatile class, but what about others? Let’s look at the barbarian, the greatest one-trick pony in the cole rules:
- Control — There’s no reason a barbarian can’t wield a reach weapon, giving them better control over nearby enemies. Add the feat Combat Reflexes and proficiency with the spiked chain, and a barbarian can deal a terrifying amount of damage to anybody that walks nearby. Large barbarians, like ones under the effect of the spell enlarge person, are even scarier.
- Damage — Barbarians rage, which is second only to sneak attack for a class ability capable of dealing tons of damage. Most barbarians are perfectly happy taking a defense penalty to hit scary things hard with large weapons.
- Defense — It seems weird to play a barbarian that explicitly never uses their rage power, though in 3rd Edition that’s the best way to be a defender. Luckily, Pathfinder includes a number of rage abilities that make barbarians capable defenders, like beast totem, boasting taunt, and guarded stance. They also have a staggering number of hit points, letting them stay standing for far longer than they should be.
- Diplomacy — Playing a diplomat barbarian is hard, for largely the same reasons as druids. Barbarians are also likely to make Charisma and Intelligence their lowest scores, so they aren’t good at talking and don’t have many skill points to make up for it. But a sufficiently dedicated player can make a barbarian who can talk, even if their preferred method of talking is shouting intimidatingly.
- Healing — Barbarians can’t heal. Most classes, in fact, can’t. They can take ranks in Heal, carry potions, and keep magic items that allow limited healing, but they’ll never cast a healing spell. This is the only role that not every class can fill, and this is why.
- Nature — Barbarians are about as good at nature as any class can be without class abilities that focus on it. Though they often prefer to use their skill points on mobility and shouting, a barbarian with Int 6 can still have good Knowledge (nature), great Survival, and the Track feat at 1st level.
- Stealth — To be stealthy, barbarians have to spend skill points they rarely have on skills that don’t like them very much. Dexterity is also a non-primary ability score for barbarians, and they can’t transform like the druid. It is, however, possible, and there’s little more satisfying than seeing the seven-foot-tall musclebound berserker quietly sneaking his way into a hilarious location before starting to rage.
I’ll admit that this does make building a party a bit hard. In 4th Edition, you can say “we have two strikers, a controller, and a leader”, and everybody knew what was missing. In Pathfinder, saying “we have a druid, a fighter, and a monk” doesn’t tell the whole story. I’ve personally been burned on this, when I heard that a party had a druid and thus didn’t consider playing a healer. After the second time I died in three months, I switched to a real healer, letting the druid continue dealing damage and controlling.
Generally, I’ve been happiest letting players play whatever they want, pointing out at the end which roles were missing and seeing which characters could cover them best. I have no idea how this will work in a Delve Night setting. It’s probably best to bring whatever makes sense and just deal with missing a role or two in the first few weeks.