A friend of mine is interested in game design, and he's turned his attentions to Pen(cil) & Paper RPGs. He's interested in building a D&D 3.5-like game from the ground up and wants to know about roles of characters in the game. He wants a slightly modular system, where you can mix and match abilities (somewhat like the Hero System, only not nearly as insanely complicated). The way he does this is basically going to be partly determined by what I cook up, so I figured I'd ask for a little assistance from you guys.
Remember, these are not classes. They're areas of specialization that players can choose for their characters. There will be a lot of overlap, since characters should be able to choose several roles to fill at once. Likewise, all characters will be able to do some of these things (such as sneak), but these are things characters can become really good at for their main schticks.
Here's what I've got so far. It's not complete, but just what I thought up this morning.
-Direct Damage: Directly damages opponents and objects (whether treasure chests, doors, vehicles, or equipment) to destroy them.
-Damage Over Time: Causes small amounts of damage over a large period of time.
-Ranged: Deals with opponents from as far away as possible to wear them down before they can close in, and snipes at opponents while they're busy dealing with other threats.
-Melee: Deals with opponents using close-quarters combat, grappling, tripping, trampling, and hitting things with hand-to-hand weaponry, spells, etc.
-Skirmisher: Specializes in guerilla hit-and-run tactics; weakens opponents with as little direct confrontation as possible.
-Tank: Acts as a wall that stands between enemies and allies; must have abilities that actively draw fire (as in, there are potentially dire consequences if opponents ignore him, or he has ways of actively interrupting enemy actions) and soaks up attacks, including ways to minimize and heal damage and minimize the consequences of status effects.
-Battlefield Controller: Alters terrain (directly or indirectly) to maximize situational advantages while minimizing situational disadvantages, and restricts enemy movement while providing bottlenecks, cover, etc for allies.
-Debuffer: Grants numerical penalties and other negative status effects on opponents.
-Buffer: Grants numerical bonuses and other positive status effects on allies (can overlap with healer, to the point where combining them into one role makes a lot of sense), and provides a bulwark against debuffers.
-Healer: Negates damage taken and negative status effects after the fact (which overlaps with buffer considerably, to the point where they could (and probably should) easily be combined into one role).
-Trapsmith: Specializes in dealing with traps of various kinds, both in setting and disarming them; these include mechanical traps, magical traps, pits, snares, and any number of other things.
-Lackey Specialist: Any character with one or more companions of any notoriety. Includes pets, mounts, cohorts, summoned creatures, familiars, and so on. Lackeys should grow in strength as the character grows. Lackey specialists and their minions should have abilities they can use to protect and boost each other above and beyond other characters, but at the expense of becoming more powerful as individual characters.
-Stealth/Scout: Specializes in sneaking around undetected, whether through disguises or by staying in the shadows. This is more a sub-class of character than anything, as it can be appended to any other character archetype. This is either for personal protection, sneaking into fortified areas, gathering information on enemy positions and movement, setting ambushes, laying traps, etc.
-Burglar: Any character whose purpose is the procurement of property or information from another character. Can overlap considerably with stealth/scout and party face/diplomancer.
-Wilderness and/or Urban Survival: Specializes in getting from place to place alive and unharmed.
-Party Face/Diplomancer: Deals directly with Non-Player Characters (including animals and monsters) using social skills. Mostly for out of combat, but can be used directly in combat (a la bard).
-Crafter: Creates specialized equipment and tools for later use; overlaps considerably with a number of other roles, such as alchemist and trapsmith, and augments virtually every other role (weapons and armor for martial characters, magic items for mages, and so on).
-Acrobat/Gymnast: Specializes in overcoming difficult physical obstacles (ie, getting from point A to point B) using physical skills, such as jumping, climbing, balancing, tumbling, and squeezing through too-small spaces. Also includes magical versions of the same skills.
-Transmuter: Turns Thing A into Thing B (human to hydra, for instance), usually using magic. Overlap considerably with buffer, debuffer, and crafter, possibly to the point where this is more flavor than an actual role.
-Knowledge Monkey: Knows lots of things about just about everything, and can use this to his advantage.
Any other potential roles that you can think of that a D&D-like character can fill?
