Chaotek Thoughts

Whether you’ve ever played an MMORPG like World of Warcraft or not, there are lessons to be learned from them that can greatly improve your success in D&D and other pen and paper RPGs. Given the universal application of these roles in many computer games, it should be obvious that the lessons apply to pen and paper games as well. These roles have evolved over the years as they are very effective in reducing party death, party wipes, and speed of game play.

Party roles are basically to know how you best function in a group. MMOs give us 4 roles to focus on: tanks, strikers, blasters, and controllers. To be the most effective, pick one role and focus on it. This doesn’t mean you can’t change from a striker to a healer mid-battle if you need to save an ally from death, but it means you should focus on how you best help the group. Most classes fit into more than one of these roles, so you can work with your group to split up the roles between two similar characters. For example, you can have a wizard and a sorcerer in the same party. Both would generally be viewed as a blaster, but one could act more often as a controller with mind and terrain effecting magic while the other focuses on direct damage spells.

Tank

The tank is the front line warrior of the party. It is his job to stand in the front and take the brunt of the damage the enemy has to offer. Dressed in heavy armor and high hit points, the tank is the most capable of shrugging off attacks. The tank is in the best position to determine which enemy to attack, and once he does the rest of the party should target the same foe. Ideally the tank should focus on protective gear, including shields and magic items which enhance his AC. Leave it to your allies to deal the big damage while you deal consistent damage while absorbing maximum damage. If you are the tank, make sure to carry a 1H weapon and shield when tanking. You can have the dual weapons or 2H weapon on standby for when you are acting as a striker, but maximizing your AC will be a key to you and your party’s survival. Always protect your healer before anyone else, as you may be able to take a lot of damage, but it’s a finite pool. Keeping them alive is keeping you alive.

As the most seasoned warrior, it is RP appropriate for you to direct the battle. Feel free to direct allies where to stand and who to attack. This is standard practice in any real-world military, the most seasoned veteran is likely to be directing the course of battle. If there is more than one tanking class in the party, perhaps negotiate the roles with them. Either take turns as tank/striker, or focus entirely on one of the roles. In some battle situations, two tanks can be very effective, one to act as the standard tank while the other stands alone against the most dangerous foe until the rest of the party can mop up the henchmen. If you are not the tank, assist them by targeting their target, keep close to him/her, and try to keep the damage going to the tank rather than yourself. The most common tanks include fighters and paladins, though the knight class in the PHB2 is likely the most effective tank base class I’ve seen. Especially important is the class’ ability to take damage on behalf of an adjacent ally as well as the ability to force enemies to attack you rather than anyone else.

Striker

The striker offers the highest consistent damage in the party. They move around the battlefield, striking like special ops. Hey defining points of a striker include good attack bonus, light to medium armor, and high movement capability. These abilities allow the striker the ability to move around the battle and deal damage where it is most effective. Good strategies for a striker include attacking the tank’s target. This allows enemies to fall faster, improving the odds of success for your team. With your high movement, you should be able to move around very quickly to target threats and rescue allies. As you have lighter armor, try to avoid being the primary target for a foe. This is best accomplished by moving often, with tumble and mobility being an excellent to help you move around without impunity. Use your movement to your advantage, that’s why it’s a defining feature of your class.

When effective, strikers can sneak up on squishy enemies, taking out the foe’s back forces before they realize that you are there. Be careful about leaving the tank and the rest of the party behind, as you will be on your own. Don’t get stuck in a drawn out fight away from the group as you don’t have the resources to survive in the long run. Instead focus on acting like a guerilla warrior, strike with surprise then withdraw. Repeating this cycle keeps your enemy off guard without allowing them the chance to overwhelm you. The most common striker classes are barbarians, rangers, monks, and rogues. Each class deals high damage while allowing for high movement, use these to your advantage.

Blaster

Blasters are the artillery of the party, dealing the highest damage of the roles yet often doing so from afar. However the high damage is offset by the lowest HP and armor of all the roles. To be most effective the blaster needs to stay well away from hand to hand combat, keeping the tank between you and your enemies. This way you can lay down the destruction without fear. If an enemy slips by the tank to attack you, call for help and try to move towards the help. Don’t allow even a weak enemy to consistently beat on you as you don’t have the armor or HP to survive for long. Frequently your ability to deal the most damage is also reduced by having a foe adjacent to you, as they increase the chance of you losing your attack because of an unlucky roll.

General strategy for the blaster is to manage your abilities. As you likely don’t have the consistent damage of a striker or tank, you have to decide when to use certain abilities. Against bosses, use your most powerful abilities early and often. Don’t wait until the boss is almost dead to drop your most powerful spell/ability; you should use it at the start of the fight. Try to manage your abilities to make sure they last. Don’t use your most powerful ability on the first enemy you encounter, because in most situations the first encounter is often one of the weakest foes. Try to use lesser abilities against the minions, but don’t hesitate to lay down your wrath immediately when the boss shows his face. Finally, try to focus on the target of the tank in most situations. This allows the enemies to fall faster. Fewer enemies is always a boon for you as many enemies are more likely to be able to get around the tank and strike you directly. The most common blasters are archers and arcane spell casters.

Controller

From the outside, the controller is the least sexy of all of the roles. You’re not laying down the smack-down like the other roles, yet the controller is arguably the most interesting role. This is because this role is one of tactics, strategy, and finesse. Key defining aspects of the controller is the ability to affect the battlefield as a whole, changing the course of combat in your party’s favor. Common abilities include buffing allies, debuffing enemies, mind-control, and terrain control. The controller shapes the battlefield by altering it.

For example, creating a wall (real or illusionary) to split the enemy’s forces is a great tactic. Turning the enemies against one another with mind affecting abilities allows the enemies to kill one another at little to no risk for your group. While buffing and debuffing isn’t as sexy as dealing damage, it can completely alter combat by increasing your team’s effectiveness while reducing the enemy’s effectiveness. It may not seem sexy, but the other roles recognize the impact that these abilities have on their own success. I categorize healers in this role as well as the healing ability definitely changes the battlefield as well as healers tend to have other abilities which fit this role. Common classes in this role include bards, some arcane spell casters, and divine spell casters.

Mixed roles

There are many classes which can occupy more than one role. The druid for example can be effective as any of the 4 roles, even changing roles during the course of battle. All classes can fit into almost any role, so don’t feel hamstrung or pigeon-holed into one style of play. Generally speaking, you should pick one role to focus on. Most of your abilities and equipment should be targeted to this role. However there are no hard rules, and the nature of combat demands adaptability. The key is to evaluate how your character contributes to the overall success of the team. While mixed roles may seem appealing, you will never be great at any one of them. Focusing on a single role makes your character dependable and effective while ensuring the success of the party as a whole.

Whether you’ve every played an MMORPG like World of Warcraft or not, there are lessons to be learned from them that can greatly improve your success in D&D and other pen and paper RPGs. Many of these same lessons also come from multi-player first person shooters (FPS). Given the universal application of these strategies in computer games, it should be obvious that the lessons apply to pen and paper games as well. These tactics have evolved over the years as they are very effective in reducing party death, party wipes, and speed of game play.

Reduction in Forces

This strategy is to reduce the number of opponents as fast as possible. This is generally accomplished by attacking the minions first, then finish the boss(es). At all levels, there are limits to how many actions can be done in a single turn. More opponents means more actions to be used against you. Blindly ignoring the minions to attack the boss can leave a lot of extra attacks against your group. In many cases, the minions are very underpowered compared to the boss, and can be killed very quickly—leaving a single boss to face many opponents. This turns the number of actions advantage in your favor instead of your opponents.

Concentrated Fire

This is perhaps one of the most effective strategies I’ve seen in both gaming genres. The idea is for all allies to attack a single opponent, kill/disable them, then everyone moves on to attack the next opponent and so on. This is the most effective way to accomplish the Reduction in Forces strategy as you will eliminate your opponents faster, and reduce the number of actions they can use against you.

Know Your Role

I’ll talk about this more in Part 2 of this article, but this concept is basically to know how you best function in a group. MMOs give us 4 roles to focus on: tanks, strikers, blasters, and controllers. To be the most effective, pick one role and focus on it. This doesn’t mean you can’t change from a striker to a healer mid-battle if you need to save an ally from death, but it means you should focus on how you best help the group. Most classes fit into more than one of these roles, so you can work with your group to split up the roles between two similar characters. For example, you can have a wizard and a sorcerer in the same party. Both would generally be viewed as a blaster, but one could act more often as a controller with mind and terrain effecting magic while the other focuses on direct damage spells.

Stay Together

There is no way this can be said too much. Staying together is always the key to surviving a tough adventure. Unless the adventure forces a split, like a random teleporter, you should always stay together. Wandering off alone will likely get you killed, or at least leave the group vulnerable. In MMOs and D&D, many encounters are scaled to a certain challenge level. Splitting the group allows for running into an encounter scaled for 4 people with fewer people there to handle it. Even if you are all in the same room, moving away from the group is very dangerous. For one, you are now open to attack from all sides, whereas you might only be open to attack from a limited direction if you are standing together. Also it limits the ability to assist or be assisted. If you are off on your own, there may not be a healer or tank nearby to help you. Also if you are away from the group and they get into trouble, it will take much longer for you to get back to them.

Manage the Enemy Casters

While reading the reduction of forces and concentrated fire tactics, you may have thought—why attack the minions, shouldn’t I attack the mage first? Perhaps yes. You should always go for the easiest kills first, and in many cases that will be the squishy mage (or other lightly armored, low HP enemy). If an enemy caster is not your group’s current target, then you will still benefit greatly be managing their ability to cast spells, etc. Keeping a spellcaster from casting spells greatly reduces the challenge while offering the same reward. They best mechanism to accomplish this in D&D is the readied action. Pick a blaster (strikers work, but are less desirable because it might split your group up) and let them know their job is to keep the caster busy until the rest of the group cleans up the rest of the encounter. That person now focuses on keep them from casting spells. It doesn’t matter if they cast defensively if you readied an action—you can still interrupt their spell. Once your readied action has occurred, you now benefit from sharing initiative with that person—once again you can interrupt them every round because your actions occur simultaneously. You’ll almost always disrupt a few spells, or at least deal significant damage to them while you wait for your party to catch up to you.

Protect your Healer (and squishy mages)

Above all else, do not let the healer die. If they healer dies, you are looking at a party wipe, or at least you’re done adventuring for the (in-game) day. While the healer comes first, protecting the light armored casters comes in at a close second. Keeping them alive will keep the party alive.

Conclusion

It may seem like these strategies may contradict, but they are complementary. Concentrate fire to reduce the enemy forces. Manage the enemy casters while the rest concentrate fire. Stay together to protect your allies (healer). Know your role so that you know where you should be and what you should be doing to help the party be successful.
Beware though; intelligent foes may use these strategies as well.