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So where did these roles come from, anyway?

Started by Cramulus, November 28, 2010, 03:01:33 PM

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Cramulus

Quote from: Requia ☣ on November 29, 2010, 07:30:21 PM
Artillery is usually *very* squishy, that's what makes it artillery and not a tank.  Though just as often the 'squishy mage' role is filled by an actual squishy mage.

But that isn't what I'm talking about, I mean people had these games with knights and mages and archers, and then they went off and made a different game with knights and mages and archers.  The stuff you're talking about, DPS and aggro drawing and so forth, those didn't exist in D&D either.

what game, prior to Gygax, had knights and mages and archers engaged in team-based combat?  You assert that these roles have always been around - where? again, wargamers did not think of their pieces as falling into those roles, (there was certainly no "healer" in 1970s wargaming) and it doesn't seem to me like the healer/DPS/tank roles have clear analogues in wargaming. While he doesn't mention wargaming, Noonan makes a strong case that they evolved as a tactical answer to the simulationist vibe present in the first D&D editions.

D&D absolutely had DPS and aggro drawing and so forth -- it's described in detail in the above articles.

Bebek Sincap Ratatosk

I think its a legitimate origin story. Simply enough, if you're going to work with a 'Class' concept, then that kind of layout is to be expected. Magic users are unlikely to be fighters, fighters are unlikely to be healers etc.

However, I think that's a problem ONLY if you play D&D as read straight from the book.

In the current game I'm playing in, we have almost 0 'traditional roles'. Multiclassing, feat purchases, and our DM's "package" options tend to provide well rounded characters that fit as characters first rather than roles.

I'm a character who was being trained as a warrior, but sucked at it and found inborn magic which he would use to cheat in training combat, once he was caught he was moved to the military magic training. So that works out to be a Fighter and then a Warmage and eventually the Chaos Mage class... not because thats my 'class', but because those classes best represented the concept. Same for the rest of the party. We determined who our characters were, what they did, why they did it etc before we looked at classes. (we have no healers for example)

I think it depends on what kind of game you want to play. If you are into RPG as combat sim, then straight classes tank, DPS, healer make sense, because thats statistically the best combo to use in combat. If you are into RPG as story that also has combat, then it more likely that you'll spend points on skills that don't min/max or feats that help flavor over combat stats.

So I'd say that while this stuff is great reading and does a good job of laying out some potential issues... it also misses the control that games like D&D pass off to the DM and players.

Though to be honest, I feel that 4th ed tends to fit more with Noonan's assessment than 3.5 simply because the classes in 4th seem more directly tied to roles for combat, rather than types of characters.

And I am unaware of any games that provided the archer/wizard/fighter kind of system pre-D&D.
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Quote from: Ratatosk on November 29, 2010, 08:04:54 PM
However, I think that's a problem ONLY if you play D&D as read straight from the book.

:crankey:

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#18
Quote from: Cramulus on November 29, 2010, 07:51:20 PM
what game, prior to Gygax, had knights and mages and archers engaged in team-based combat?  You assert that these roles have always been around - where? again, wargamers did not think of their pieces as falling into those roles, (there was certainly no "healer" in 1970s wargaming) and it doesn't seem to me like the healer/DPS/tank roles have clear analogues in wargaming. While he doesn't mention wargaming, Noonan makes a strong case that they evolved as a tactical answer to the simulationist vibe present in the first D&D editions.

D&D absolutely had DPS and aggro drawing and so forth -- it's described in detail in the above articles.

You ever played original DnD?


To add some additional points.

If you as a magic-user/mage/wizard/dude-wit-a-pointy-hat-and-staff were getting killed off very early in a campaign you were a BAD mage or your DM was a BAD DM. You were either being stupid or your DM was playing the monsters a little too intelligently.

I hate that this concept of aggro or hate or threat is permeating table top games. The great thing is I can totally ignore games that acknowledge this meta-concept.

Cramulus


Jasper

But on the same level, it would not be excessively intelligent for some goblins or whatever to be like "Okay I want our fighters to keep their fighters busy, and our archers to go after the first guy to cast spells."

But that's not aggro, that's just elementary strategy.

Bebek Sincap Ratatosk

Quote from: Sir Coyote on November 29, 2010, 08:19:46 PM
You ever played original DnD?


To add some additional points.

If you as a magic-user/mage/wizard/dude-wit-a-pointy-hat-and-staff were getting killed off very early in a campaign you were a BAD mage or your DM was a BAD DM. You were either being stupid or your DM was playing the monsters a little too intelligently.


I disagree. Well, lets say I tend to disagree, but it depends on how the character Ability stats were made.

However, simply put, CON isn't likely to be a major ability for a Wizard/Sorc/etc So lets say they're lucky and have a CON Mod of 1... That's 5 HP for first level. Even a 1/2 challenge rating goblin can luck out  and kill something with 5 HP.

IMO - The real issue is that a 1st level character straight out of the book should probably not be on quests or combat unless they're playing the part of Frodo or Bilbo types. Any archer, fighter, wizard etc that is qualified to be an adventurer should probably be 3rd level at least.

That said, our party ran from 1st to currently 3rd and so far survived with no healers. And we're talking about two d4 HD, 2 d6 HD and a Barbarian.
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Requia ☣

Quote from: Cramulus on November 29, 2010, 07:51:20 PM
what game, prior to Gygax, had knights and mages and archers engaged in team-based combat?  You assert that these roles have always been around - where? again, wargamers did not think of their pieces as falling into those roles, (there was certainly no "healer" in 1970s wargaming) and it doesn't seem to me like the healer/DPS/tank roles have clear analogues in wargaming. While he doesn't mention wargaming, Noonan makes a strong case that they evolved as a tactical answer to the simulationist vibe present in the first D&D editions.

D&D absolutely had DPS and aggro drawing and so forth -- it's described in detail in the above articles.

The guy is talking about 4th edition, but 4th is derived from MMOs, not the other way around.  DPS didn't exist in third edition, the concept wouldn't have worked, the offensive roles were broken down into 'very high damage for a short amount of time' and 'steady amount of damage, that never drops off.'  The idea of DPS character further breaks down since very few of the best ways to take out an enemy actually involve doing damage to it, save or dies are where powergaming was focused..  Tanks existed (though I never heard them called that till after MMOs hit), but tanks didn't draw aggro, a tank was just a guy with a lot of armor and hit points, and shield instead of a bigger sword.
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Cramulus

Quote from: Requia ☣ on November 29, 2010, 09:25:15 PM
The guy is talking about 4th edition, but 4th is derived from MMOs, not the other way around.  DPS didn't exist in third edition, the concept wouldn't have worked, the offensive roles were broken down into 'very high damage for a short amount of time' and 'steady amount of damage, that never drops off.'  The idea of DPS character further breaks down since very few of the best ways to take out an enemy actually involve doing damage to it, save or dies are where powergaming was focused..  Tanks existed (though I never heard them called that till after MMOs hit), but tanks didn't draw aggro, a tank was just a guy with a lot of armor and hit points, and shield instead of a bigger sword.

DPS-characters didn't exist in 3rd edition? ever play a rogue?

The author of the article is one of the designers for both 3rd and 4th edition, so I'm going to take his word that those roles exist in the games.  :p






Quote from: Sir Coyote on November 29, 2010, 08:19:46 PM
If you as a magic-user/mage/wizard/dude-wit-a-pointy-hat-and-staff were getting killed off very early in a campaign you were a BAD mage or your DM was a BAD DM. You were either being stupid or your DM was playing the monsters a little too intelligently.

nah, it was easy as hell to die in 1st edition. there was no "death's door" - at level 1, you can flat out die from a stray arrow. This isn't a matter of playing "stupidly", it's something inherent to the way the game was designed. If you were a level 1 magic user and you were ever targeted by an attack, there was a good chance you were about to roll up a new character.



Quote from: Ratatosk on November 29, 2010, 08:04:54 PM
I think it depends on what kind of game you want to play. If you are into RPG as combat sim, then straight classes tank, DPS, healer make sense, because thats statistically the best combo to use in combat. If you are into RPG as story that also has combat, then it more likely that you'll spend points on skills that don't min/max or feats that help flavor over combat stats.

So I'd say that while this stuff is great reading and does a good job of laying out some potential issues... it also misses the control that games like D&D pass off to the DM and players.

the article isn't about whether the roles are good or bad. It's an analysis of where they came from.


Triple Zero

It's interesting.

One thing that really bugged me is that he explains nowhere what "DPS" means. Google says it may mean Damage Per Second, is that right?

I only have experience with tabletop D&D (2/3/3.5 ed.), and from that perspective, I have to say I get the impression the guy is speculating a lot and his view of things is heavily coloured by the current day existence of online MMORPGS.

We played D&D for over 5 years with pretty much the same party and never did I hear about this "holy trinity" of Healer/Tank/Striker tactic until one of the guys (my flatmate) in the party started playing WoW and I had to ask him what "Tank" meant in this context. It took me quite a while before I understood that this term was part of a gameplay tactic and not just a name for a general type of character (like fire-mage or acrobat-thief or whatever). It also seemed like it would make the computer game even less fun (I don't know why I don't seem to like most computer games, sorry--LOGD is really fun so far, heh).

(I never even considered the "Controller" role before, actually. He's the guy that casts Hold Person, I suppose? What if it's not a spellcaster casting delaying/holding/slowing spells? Does one of those newer classes that do "crippling pain strikes" or whatever count to this?)

Come to think of it, if I look at most D&D parties I played in (also with other groups of friends) they follow the action-hero roles of the "A-Team" example a LOT closer, than any sort of Tank/Striker/Healer combo (well except the game pretty much forces you to have *somebody* able to heal or indeed the plot grinds to a halt):
- one or two wanting to be the funny crazy guy (often it's me), usually spellcaster or rogue/thief
- someone keeping track of the plot a littlebit more than the others, or that happens to hold the plot device or MacGuffin, the lawful-good dude that was tasked with carrying the rune scrolls to the Elders of Whatchamacalia, doing his best to keep the party from saying "fuck it let's start another Inn fight" because of personal honour
- someone who enjoys combat, doing loads of damage with melee (and some ranged) weapons, but is also tough as a nut
- the face/charmer, this is a psychological role because you need the roleplaying and social skills to pull it off. in my first party it was every NPC because it was the DM that enjoyed playing this. but in other groups there were some guys that loved picking some crazy half-demon (or something) race with insane high charisma, maxing their Diplomacy skills and smoothtalking their way through the high officials of every settlement, city or crime syndicate. (for some reason I can't pull off this role, after a while party-resistance builds up and my character gets nothing done anymore--then I usually revert to the crazy and occasionally charm commoners in order to prank my partymembers)

So all in all, I understand that you need the healer because of game mechanics in D&D.

That's why you don't really have a healer role in V:tM. At least not when I played it. But it was boring so we probably did it wrong. (Basically it felt like every character needed to be both the Face and the Smart guy in addition to whatever role you wanted to play--fucking politics)

But to be fair, I get the impression that the Tank/DPS roles are only really important in the computer game variants of RPGs. Because (at least I get the impression) they are 90% combat oriented, so having a decent combat strategy and tactics sounds like a good plan.

Maybe also in LARPing, but I have never seen this in tabletop RPGs. I agree with the need for a healer, but as the author of the article says, one or two Cure Light Wounds spells per day is already enough to keep the plot from stagnating. And if a party for some reason lacks a real big bad damage dude (rarely, but I've seen it happen), that usually means they got loads of skills in other areas to find other ways around the challenge, right?

While in tabletop RPG roleplaying the combat scenes often take a lot of time, they are only moments for some characters to shine and show off. Often enough my first wizard character, especially in his lower levels, emptied his offensive spells in the first two rounds and then proceeded to hide in the bushes, smoking a cigarette until the fight was over. No problem, my fun was in other parts of the game.
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Bebek Sincap Ratatosk

Good points Trip :)

In V:tM you don't get healers unless you run across a Salubri... and then likely only in Dark Ages as most the remaining ones in the modern nights would probably just eat your soul. :)

But then in V:tM healing = "Pop the vein on that dude and chug"

Quote
the article isn't about whether the roles are good or bad. It's an analysis of where they came from.

Fair enough, it felt a bit negative toward the concept in the latter articles.

However, I think that maybe there's a bit of backwards viewing going on here... I keep coming back to DPS for example. Maybe some spells, but very very few... maybe some abilities like use poison or some weapon abilities (like the one that causes the opponent to bleed for several rounds can't remember the name now). But, there wasn't really a DPS class. Most magic offense tends to be one shot damage, or one shot negatives (curse song, some of the cleric spells that grant -x to enemy rolls)... but not really damage per second.

A decently built halfling scout with a sling might act like a DPS... but every round is a hit or miss, rather than a hit and damage continuing to roll over rounds.

As for tanks, sure we can call paladins and barbarians tanks, but  fighters specifically ought to be far better than just a tank. Hell, some of the best fighters I've seen are dex monsters that run around lightly armored using weapon finesse.

4th ed, on the other hand feels much more like WoW. Which is fine for people that want to play that kind of game :) its a hell of a lot faster for combat ;-)

So again, for 3.5 and before, his comments make sense for someone working straight from the book with no thoughts about how to tweak or build something different... but I disagree that the system forced these roles, PER SE.
                                                     \

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Triple Zero

Quote from: Requia ☣ on November 29, 2010, 09:25:15 PM
The guy is talking about 4th edition, but 4th is derived from MMOs, not the other way around.  DPS didn't exist in third edition, the concept wouldn't have worked, the offensive roles were broken down into 'very high damage for a short amount of time' and 'steady amount of damage, that never drops off.'  The idea of DPS character further breaks down since very few of the best ways to take out an enemy actually involve doing damage to it, save or dies are where powergaming was focused..

Quote from: Cramulus on November 29, 2010, 09:40:12 PM
DPS-characters didn't exist in 3rd edition? ever play a rogue?

Okay I think I'm going to need some extra background on the term "DPS" now.

Obviously it means Damage Per Second, this is something different than the fighter that chops with his +2 longsword? Does a DPS deal as much Damage Per Second for the entire fight, or just the first few rounds (like a fireball shooting mage) ? I never heard about DPS before this thread, so explain the tactic to me, please?

Quote from: reqTanks existed (though I never heard them called that till after MMOs hit)

This is my experience too.

Quote from: reqbut tanks didn't draw aggro, a tank was just a guy with a lot of armor and hit points, and shield instead of a bigger sword.

Quote from: cramthe article isn't about whether the roles are good or bad. It's an analysis of where they came from.

Yeah. Actually when my flatmate explained that (IIRC) in WoW the enemies have a kind of "aggro" meter, meaning if you do them a certain amount of damage they come after you (or something?) And you could actually see this aggro meter :)

It seemed highly artificial to me, and if anything, to me it seems that is where these roles came from. At least, the roles in the sense of a viable tactic, a tactic that you need to play or else you're going to be way down in performance compared to other players.

So in MMORPGs these roles are necessary as a tactic, while in tabletop RPGs, sure you can draw up characters that function in these roles, and you might get a very WoWesque game, but you can draw up any kind of characters, or use the A-Team, and usually your party will get by anyway, although it probably means that your party will lead different adventures than otherwise. But that's no problem, because you got a Real Live DM at the table, that knows the party never does what he expects them to. So he files away the sheets for the Big Bad Red Dragon because it'll be another 20 sessions, if ever, before they fight that, and draws up a bunch of different specific challenges more suited for the party, for next week.

It'd be easy now to say a MMORPG could never do that, but then I never played those, and personally I think the comparison between the two games is crooked. Even if the mechanics (numbers/ability scores/etc) are exactly the same, it's a completely different game. One is led by your buddy the DM and the other by a Big Game Corporation that requires you to voluntarily install a rootkit on your PC (eh, I digress), one is rendered on your screen and interacted with via your keyboard and mouse, and the other is represented by pieces of paper, miniatures, props, beer bottle caps and interacted with via your voice and a bunch of dice. To me it feels like a world of difference like comparing Super Mario Bros to Zork.
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Telarus

Ok, time to jump in.

Trip, these roles existed, but were "unNamed" and not supported by overt rules/mechanics that cater to the roles (the porting of D&D roles to MMO allowed the MMO designers to finally Name, and clarify the roles in their own game, and yes, this has spilled back into the development of D&D4e). "Tanks" were just the player at the table who decided to "keep the caster alive", etc, etc.

Tosk, I totally understand that you're drifting the base 3.5 system a bit, but the system still informs your choices. SYSTEM DOES MATTER. It's the overarching framework that you've made these multi-class decisions in. Now, granted, you're making them based on character "development" in the narrative sense, and not the purely combat optimized sense. But, you still have to deal with "externalized magical healing", and "protecting/drawing fire from the vulnerable one". Both roles may be NPCs or whatnot. Or as you've done, you've blended roles in your character. He doesn't "need a tank" as much because he's carrying around a low level "tank" all the time.

I just went and looked at "Chainmail" on wikipedia, found some interesting stuff relevant to the discussion:

QuoteThe use of 40 mm Elastolin miniatures for medieval wargaming was promoted by Siege of Bodenburg[3] which appeared in Strategy & Tactics magazine in 1967. This motivated Jeff Perren to develop a few pages of his own rules for these miniatures. He introduced the rules to Gary Gygax and the LGTSA. Gygax expanded the rules to 16 pages[4] and published them in the newsletter of the Castle & Crusade Society.[5]

Pretty direct lineage recorded there. Let's check out how the original Chainail rules were set up:

QuoteIn the core rules, each figure represents 20 men. Troops are divided into six basic types: light foot, heavy foot, armored foot, light horse, medium horse, and heavy horse. Melee is resolved by rolling six-sided dice: for example, when heavy horse is attacking light foot, the attacker is allowed to roll 4 dice per figure, with each 5 or 6 denoting a kill. On the other hand, when light foot is attacking heavy horse, the attacker is allowed only 1 die per 4 figures, with a 6 denoting a kill.

Additional rules govern missile and artillery fire, movement and terrain, charging, fatigue, morale, and the taking of prisoners.

No Mages there.

Then, in 1971, Gary introduced "The Fantasy Supplement":

Quote..as the members began to get tired of medieval games, and I wasn't, I decided to add fantasy elements to the mix, such as a dragon that had a fire-breath weapon, a hero that was worth four normal warriors, a wizard who could cast fireballs, [which had] the range and hit diameter of a large catapult, and lightning bolts, [which had] the range and hit area of a cannon, and so forth. I converted a plastic stegosaurus into a pretty fair dragon, as there were no models of them around in those days. A 70 mm Elastolin Viking figure, with doll's hair glued to its head, and a club made from a kitchen match and auto body putty, and painted in shades of blue for skin color made a fearsome giant figure. I haunted the dime stores looking for potential additions and eventually found figures to represent ogres, elementals, etc. The players loved the new game, and soon we had twenty or more players showing up for every session.

There we go, WIZARDS. They're super-modible war-machine replacements, and were originally modeled directly after catapults and cannons. Now, Gary set it up so that "Each of the fantasy creatures are treated as one of the six basic troop types." The wiki doesn't mention which "troop type" the Mages got assigned, but all these Fantasy Rules where then bundled into the "1st Edition Chainmail" in late 1971. Here's a section from a Review on RPG.net:

QuoteThe big draw to the old Chainmail rules for the history buff, of course, is the fantasy supplement. This section bears the closest resemblance to the D&D rules to come. There are just over eight pages of monsters and other fantastic beings drawn from folklore, J.R.R. Tolkein, Poul Anderson (specifically cited for his trolls), and...well, no one is really sure where the wizards came from. They seem to exist to be useful to wargame scenarios as opposed to resembling any wizards of folklore or literature. Indeed, none of the Jack Vance-inspired mechanics of spell-casting found in D&D can be found here. Although not refered to yet as Alignment, the monsters are divided into law, neutral, and chaos, reflecting the law vs. chaos theme prevalent in the works of Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock. Perhaps most important in the fantasy supplement, however, is the hero (and superhero). Although just a man, the hero has the "fighting ability of four figures" -- anticipating both the level and hit point system of D&D.

(Another interesting note, the "HERO" was worth EIGHTY footmen, or 4 firgures.)

Now, checking the rules to chainmail (I have access to a 3rd edition booklet), we find that Wizards are totally bad-ASS, but they're only "Worth 2 Armored Foot, or 2 Medium Horse, if mounted", and that they can "become invisible and remain so until they attack, see in darkness, affect enemy and friendly morale as a Super Hero, throw deadly missiles and cast terrible spells." They also "are impervious to normal missile fire (OOOH HERE'S SOMETHING INTERESTING), and must make a 7+ on 2d6 to survive the missile attack of another Wizard". Their "missile attacks" were Fireball and Lightning, choose 1 before play (as mentioned, modeled on the Catapult and the Cannon), and their spells were the basis of many 'in trope' D&D spells like Haste, Polymorph, Cloudkill, Protection from Evil, etc, etc.

Now, to compare, the catapult and cannon both require 4 "Crew" figurines to be considered "fully crewed". So a wizard is a unit worth half as many "hits" as a cannon or catapult, but more maneuverable and has tricks up his sleeve. These are "fully upgraded" wizards, not apprentices or anything.

Now, when we compare to OD&D, we immediately notice that Wizards are VERY susceptible to "normal Missile Fire" (and Gary bundled that ability into a higher level spell, Protection from Normal Missiles - MU lvl3). That _seriously_ changes the tactics around spellcasters, and pretty much requires a "meat shield" to be there to take up that role. "Draw Agro" was an in-caracter shouting and insulting the monsters to draw their attention away from the un-armored caster (notice that the Armor of casters changes from Chainmail to oD&D as well). This was not supported by rules until 3.5+ because Gary preferred social conflicts to be "him vs the player, roleplay it out" and not "character vs character, roll dice".

Great conversation!
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Cramulus

:mittens: for that research, Telarus!


Quote from: Triple Zero on November 29, 2010, 10:11:18 PM
Okay I think I'm going to need some extra background on the term "DPS" now.

Obviously it means Damage Per Second, this is something different than the fighter that chops with his +2 longsword? Does a DPS deal as much Damage Per Second for the entire fight, or just the first few rounds (like a fireball shooting mage) ? I never heard about DPS before this thread, so explain the tactic to me, please?

the term came from MMOs, but it is also known as a "striker" in 4th edition

but the idea is way older than MMOs

basically, it refers to combat roles that do a lot of damage in a short amount of time. Usually this is balanced by making them squishy, or only situationally useful.

For example the fighter does basically the same damage every round, unless he crits. He wears heavy armor and has good weapon selection. The rogue does the same basic job as the fighter (get up close to somebody and kill 'em with a weapon), but does it better... but rogues have to rely on stealth or flanking, and wear lighter armor, so they don't get the opportunity to do mega damage all the time.


Noonan was basically wondering how we arrived at these tropes - why doesn't conan backstab people? why does the party mage always need to stand next to the tough guy? Why do D&D parties have healers, even though there was no healer character in Tolkein or the other "appendix N" novels? If you look at the characters in the novels that gygax and arneson read, none of them act that way in the literature... Noonan thinks that there's nothing inherent about fantasy games that produces the tank/dps/healer trinity, it's something that evolved over time. He posits that if D&D 1st edition wasn't written the way it was (ie with such a high emphasis on simulation), we wouldn't have ended up with a healer role. And if we hadn't been sending mages into dungeons with 3 hp and AC 10 (another product of simulation, not solid game design), we probably wouldn't have ended up with the "tank" role that appears in so many games today.

Telarus

#29
One of my favorite reasons for playing Earthdawn. Even the 1st ed people @ FASA saw that Gary had included idiosyncratic rules that he and his gaming group had agreed upon, as well as "stock rules" from miniature war-gaming all through the rules he made.

They decided to change things, getting rid of the dedicated "healer" role by introducing "Recovery Tests", a burnable resource which is pretty much the pre-cursor to 4e's "Healing Surges". Casters all got minor spells that granted bonuses when characters spent recovery tests, or they could make Potions and other healing aids that granted a recovery test to some-one who was out. But the really cool powers, like in-Combat Healing went to the fighter classes (Warrior, Sky Raider, etc) because "players are all Adepts who can channel magic".

You really don't see the Healer/Tank/DPS trinity in Earthdawn as clearly cut as other games, and sometimes Players will just run with those roles because that's what they're used to. There are viable alternate classes/roles that can still hold their own and assist in combat, like the Troubador (social attacks at low Circles, at high Circles - Blade Juggle, FUCK YEAH), and the Weaponsmith (doesn't get crazy good in combat until Spot Armor Flaw, but +2-5 to all the parties weapon damage is nothing to shake a stick at in low Circles/Levels).

This is exactly why I want to run old oD&D scenarios with Earthdawn 3rd Edition, because in 3rd they've done more purging of unexamined D&D sacred cows. I want to see how differently a scenario might play out if the players have the option of playing a 2ft tall  Windling Scout or a Rock-man Elementalist who can use shields and swords.  :evil:
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