For a combat focused game; I think you can't do much better then the holy trinity. I don't honestly have a problem with it. Tabletop games have a slightly different, though similar approach to this, but we get more into the class fantasy stuff later. For multiplayer video games, the common sentiment is that this trinity can't be broken because it encompasses all the of the possible interactions in the game space; Dealing damage, surviving damage, and reversing damage are pretty much all of the direct interactions you can have with another team of players or NPC monsters in a standard game not related to game specific gimmicks or mechanics; which go outside the scope of this role breakdown.
Note: I also feel I should mention here that it's likely equally as viable (and perhaps more interesting) if these basic roles just do the same things as usual but in different ways. Like a burst healer vs a regeneration healer, or a tank who gains stacking defensive buffs to reduce their damage taken or regenerates a portion of damage dealt, or a "dodge tank", etc. The flavor of the exact mechanics can vary and make characters and roles feel unique even if they all eventually boil down to "do damage and don't die".
The most commonly put out 4th role to this system is a split of the support and healer role; usually with a debuff or crowd-control focus being on the 4th new role and a sole focus of healing and sustaining on the healer class. While I quite like this thematically; the issue is that very few games actually have such an important focus on crowdcontrol or buffs/debuffs that an entire role needs to be dedicated to it. Imagine a game where a person buffing your damage output was as necessary as a healer; you would have to do so little damage at baseline that the game would be extremely unfun. So to if you couldn't survive against a wave of enemies if you literally didn't have this 4th Mezzmer class to stun them; then trying to complete this content or dungeon or whatever would be extremely reliant on some kind of specific mechanic; more like a puzzle then a fair and creative combat arena. Many games instead split these abilities up and across the other roles; Tanks having the stuns or shields or slows that keep enemies from getting too aggressive, and Supports having escape abilities, shields, or buffs as part of their kit to improve teammate effectiveness when not directly dealing damage. Damage-Dealers tend to have the least of these moves but that's because they are also the most effective role at actually completing the objective (killing people) and are differentiated from tanks with having high mobility or range; so it's a fair trade off; but sometimes they get stuff like short term stuns or mobility-reducing tools to make it easier to finish off opponents.
The other issue with making the 4th role a Support/Buff/Debuff specialist is if the game also features solo play. Since your type of interaction is "support allies/reduce enemy effectiveness" you have the worst solo effectiveness right besides the healer, who at least gets to heal themselves. If anything you could break the class Trifecta down further into just two sides of a coin; Damage Dealers & Support. Because let's face it; in most games, tanks CAN also do damage. It's no fun if you literally can't hurt enemies, and in MMOs especially tanks need to be able to grab enemy aggro, so there is really a sliding scale between survival/offensive power between tanks & dps classes. This is even a common role in some games; something like a "Bruiser" or "Off-Tank" which has some of the properties of both these roles.
Another 4th possible role, and a personal favorite of mine is the "utility". This sounds similar to the above Support/Buff/Disabler role but instead more focuses on providing some kind of useful non-numerical combat advantage to their team, similar to an Engineer from TF2 with teleporters, some of the operatives in Rainbow Six Siege providing vision and information, the XP soak and map control of a Lost Vikings player in Heroes of the Storm, etc. The problem with this role is it isn't as universal across all games and game-modes, and is often too character specific. For example off the top of your head you could easily imagine five different DPS characters with different primary weapons; pistols, shotguns, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, flamethrower. Without even giving you any more information how these characters are or what skills or stats they may have; you can already imagine five different playstyles and unique ranges where these characters could be useful and fit the DPS role. The issue with a utility character is five different variation of "deployable teleporter that get your teammates back in the fight quicker" isn't nearly as interesting and doesn't conjure up ideas of different gameplay. It also has an issue with the game and map design.
For example, if the game has only one game mode, like a standard 5v5 MOBA, then a utility character fully focused on map control and pushing waves that doesn't interact as much with the enemy team is fine. But now if the developers wanted to add a 4v4 arena deathmatch mode; this character would be almost useless. Contrary, if they added a 3 to 5 player PvE cooperative mode where you defend a fortress from waves of enemies; this character could instead become extremely broken and stronger then all the others because it was designed with the mindset that it'd be weak in a straight up fight (outside the holy trinity) but strong in the macrogame sense. It can also be annoying from the "dps is fun and healing isn't" perspective. If your game featured a character that can give other characters flight for a limited time, that power would be extremely strong and a desirable character on your team. But why play the guy that gives other people flight when you could be the cool gun character that kills everyone now with wings? Healers are already a role developers have to coerce players into playing with bonus XP and strong mechanics because nobody wants to be the "support" that enables their teammates to do everything. There's also just less ideas that work to fully design a character's kit around that aren't tied to damage/combat in some way; partially because we've been acclimatized to games where combat is the main/only focus, so it's naturally much more deep and complex feeling then most other game systems out there.
Of course, this entire Tank/Healer/DPS paradigm is related to combat focused competitive games. Games without combat or with a much different focus don't have the same goals and your characters will be different, and as such, players will instead have different roles.
Fighter, Rogue, Mage
The classic fantasy archetypes of Fighter, Rogue, and Mage are extremely common in fantasy fiction, and act as a sort of basis for character classes and choices. I personally really like this setup, even though I think it suffers from some very specific limitations. If you boiled down every class to its core elements, removing all the setting-specific fluff, it would come down to one of these three archetypes or a combination of them. But notice how these archetypes exist without a gameplay loop tied to them? It's less of an optimized combat trinity and more of a aesthetic and role-in-the-fiction.
Originally in D&D, the original trifecta was Fighter, Magic-User, and Cleric. I don't think this really works for our purpose because too many archetypal characters are cut out (Dashing rogues, archers, dick-ass thieves, etc.) and it's too specific to it's setting fiction. Plus having the axis be Fighter (no magic) to Wizard (all the magic) and Cleric (half magic but a little fighting too) feels wrong to me; makes Cleric feel less like a distinct class and more of a multiclass option. Having just one of the primary archetypes be magical feels "right".
Briefly I'd like to touch on the oldschool "square" of Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Magic-User. I think this one is a bit better then the above Fighter/Cleric/Wizard system, but I still don't like it. Having 50% of the class choices have a magic archetype, even if the magic is very different, feels negative to me. We also get into the above video-gamey problem of Wizard stepping on the toes of the other roles, but that's a much bigger topic talked about to death. I think for a dungeoneering squad it fits well, since the Cleric kinda has a role as a healer/support class that the Wizard doesn't, but it doesn't have that same distinctness that the Fighter/Rogue/Wizard trifecta does. It's also much easier to imagine more classes building off that base formula. Fighter + Mage makes a spellblade, or warlock, or paladin or whatever is easy to understand. Thief + Mage makes a Bard or Shadowblade. That's cool. But if you have four, how is that supposed to work? Fighter + Cleric makes... Paladin? What's a Mage + Cleric? How do you divine up between these roles for potential secondary archetypes? Or what if you want to include a setting whose fictional world doesn't have the cosmology that supports a Cleric? I'm not saying you can't do it, I just don't like it.
This fantasy trinity is useful to act as a baseline for creative work. But it's not based on direct gameplay like the combat triangle is in our above example; it's more based on aesthetics and the roles within the fiction. In D&D or generic fantasy TTRPG adventures; what sort of trifecta would we use instead?
Fighter, Rogue, Sage
My concept, which I have shilled endlessly on this blog, is basically to take the three core fictional archetypes above (Fighter, Rogue, and Mage) and twist them into roles fitting the core gameplay of a standard D&D-esque OSR dungeon-crawling adventure. Basically having each class specialize in one of the roles. I renamed the Magic-User to Sage, simply to denote the difference in their role, but aesthetically they are very similar (wise, read spellbooks, use a staff, limited armor and weapons, etc.). This keep most of the aesthetic of a Wizard but more as a support class. It's a concept I used to shill a lot over the years, but in recent times I have greatly softened on it. The main purpose of this though was to try and fit the Sage underneath one of the core pillars of OSR gameplay; which is Resource Management. Using this, each class has a role they specialize in doing to overcome the challenges of the game world.
Fighters specialize in combat and direct force.
Rogues specialize in (safely) exploring the dungeon environment & overcoming hazards.
Sages specialize in resource management.
These three obstacles; Combat, Exploration, and Resource management are the primary vectors of "gameplay" and the difficulty or challenges to overcome in the game world. I think these three classes fit onto these most neatly; the attempt to pair classes with their actual gameplay function similar to the Tank/DPS/Healer roles in a video game. But there's a small issue here. These three obstacles are not the same as the three pillars of D&D. They don't encompass the entire game. The (official?) Three pillars I am referring to are the pillars of Combat, Exploration, and Social Interaction. One issue I have with this definition is, while the pillar of Social Interaction is certainly huge in the TTRPG game space, it's usually the most "freeform" part of the entire game. It's certainly an important aspect, but it could be regulated to a background element, or even roped in to the "Exploration" part of the game. For example, the pillars don't dictate that worldbuilding, lore, or environmental interaction is its own pillar, but these are background elements that determine what is going on just as much as character interaction. I don't disagree with it, but i find it strange that Resource Management isn't included, when it's so core to even modern D&D's game design, much less OSR style stuff.
With that said, if you want to continue our above design of making classes specialize in one of the "pillars" of the game; how can you do that for Social Interaction? If you want to say the Fighter & Rogue specialize in the combat and exploration part of the game; who is the social interaction master? The wizard is one option, as Wizards often have the tools required to interact socially both with friendly NPCs and monsters (Charm, comprehend languages, etc.) but that's usually not their explicit role in a party AND it also flies against the fiction, where Wizards are often less Charismatic then other classes since Charisma isn't an important stat. So if not Wizards; or if we include Wizards in our above schema, what roles can we create that exemplify social interaction?
For one, I don't think social interaction can be gamified as easily as other systems. You could make it into a minigame where players can't choose directly what they say; in the same way you can't arbitrarily decide if your attack hits or misses; or the much discussed "social combat system". As such, you can't choose to say a smart thing in a situation when trying to convince something of something. This is often rolled into Speechchecks or the Charisma modifier, but I never liked this solution as similar to Perception rolls you take the control out of the hands of the player. It'd be like forcing players to make an Intelligence check or roll a "Tactics" skill to make a good battle plan before a fight; it's just not something that is done.
(However I do like thinking about it; like imaginable an alternate universe where D&D never had a dedicated combat system and so it's as freeform as Speechcraft is, but diplomacy is so important they focused the majority of the game's mechanics around it.)
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| Courtier class from Fantasycraft |
Secondly; any rule you add to restrict social interaction is another rule that restricts player creativity and the "gameplay" of the game. Even if you're "allowed" to technically bribe people, your social expert getting a +2 bonus or letting the money be treated as 50% higher in amount for the purposes of bribing officials equal to their yearly salaries for a small benefit or whatever will force players to use this to their advantage, because otherwise it would not be optimal play. (Side note: Reading the Courtier description back does give me an idea for its secondary usefulness as a healer/support role if you use a abstracted HP or grit system, like Goblin Punch's recent Spirit post. But is this just a reskinned Cleric for your city-crawling campaign? Yikes.) Being able to force people to be your friend or hear you out once per day or w/e is interesting but it's a daily power; a forced gamification of a system that should be a part of the main game. The exception of course being supernatural or mystic powers; but still this is less interesting then just having it be default. The other more obvious rule restriction on social interaction is languages and this, fair enough, would give the class a useful benefit and/or give a reason to bring multiple. So you could have one who speaks Bugbear and one who speaks Gnollish or whatever. The issue with this is it's a very binary, kinda boring system. You either know it or you don't, and shutting off social interaction entirely unless you bring the specific key skill needed is a type of encounter design that I don't think is very popular. If you have a hint that there could be Frost Giants in your adventure early on and people decide to learn Giantish then that's interesting enough; but it's more something a character would want to learn on their own and not as interesting as a class feature.
The third and final primary issue with the social-specialist class is a matter of theme. There are a lot of Charismatic characters in fantasy and fiction, but it isn't really an "archetype" the way a Fighter or Mage is. The charismatic, attractive lead is a narrative archetype, but isn't really their "class". Sometimes the pretty face of the party who talks everyone out of trouble is the dashing rogue, or the cunning Wizard, or the damsel in distress. Having a game world you're using in an attempt to emulate myth, legends, and fun fantasy adventures and 1/4th of all adventurers are some courtesan or merchant class would take me out of it a bit; even though I think these are the best examples of roles you could make into this social specialist class. Bards? Maybe, but specific. Merchants or Courtiers? Very tied to social class and often NPCs.
But what if I told you there already was a social specialist in D&D-esque adventure games? And I don't mean player role or the DM's favorite, I mean an actual mechanically backed class. This is probably of no surprise to you, but... it's just the Rogue.
Even if we ignore later D&D skill rank systems in which Rogues tend to get the most points, Rogues have a lot of benefits that give them a social advantage. Being able to hide away out of sight, they can kinda avoid monster encounters; which means they can avoid social interactions they aren't well-prepared for. Being able to climb and sneak around means they're more likely to be able to interact with people out of the way; like the rare friendly monster, a captured prisoner without the guards knowing, or first contact with talking magic items. AD&D also has thieves cant, which while a setting-specific inclusion, is something that would theoretically make a Rogues/Thief just so slightly better at social interaction then other classes; even the Name-Level benefit of a thief in getting to run a thieves guild or a gang of scoundrels is very a "urban" type of reward and likely is set up at an important town with lots of trade and important NPCs, as opposed to the more utilitarian Fighter fortress or Magic-User's reclusive wizard tower and laboratory.
I always wondered what Class benefited the most from Charisma. Obviously having more hirelings (and starting gold) is useful for everyone, but who actually benefits the most from it? I honestly still think it's the Rogue. You could think of Charisma as a sort of "Stealth Defense" score; since it's highly likely that if you get caught sneaking somewhere they'll be some explaining to do; this also allows me to pair off the base attributes to the three class archetypes in a way that tickles me. Fighters like Strength and Constitution, Wizards or Sages like Intelligence and Wisdom, and the Rogues like Dexterity and Charisma. That way, in the same way Fighters can be more hit-y or tank-y, and Wizards can be smart or wise, Rogues can kinda lean towards being dashing or sneaky. Instead of a 4th archetypal role, we expand one of the existing ones and fatten up our trifecta.
