Tactical Role Playing

With the arrival of D&D 4th edition we witness a new system that is a blend of video game action (primarily Massively Multiplayer Online games, hereafter MMO) and miniatures combat.
What D&D 4th edition does, it does well, as I've expressed previous. It handles combat in better fashion than ever. Maybe I should explain why:

All games give you the ability to make 'an attack'. Some games might even vary that up a little, as previous editions of D&D did. You might have a Bull's Rush (shoving your opponent), a Power Attack (less accuracy and increased damage) or a Trip attack. But often, these variations, which are meant to lead to more interesting combat, just add filler rather than anything interesting.
You bull rush your opponent...inflicting no damage but shoving them back a square. Unless they are next to a pit, there is little point to this maneuver.
You power attack, which is just an application of math. I remove 5 from my chance to hit for the chance of +5 damage. It's not very engaging.
You trip attack, which, without the correct Feat, allows your opponent to hit you first. If you trip them then they are on the butt. They can stand next round but you can make a free attack on them. What did this net you? You could have attacked them outright instead of caused the
slowdown. Now with the Feat, you can attack without fear of a counter-attack and can take a free shot on them if you succeed. You need a lot more rolls to pull this maneuver off (roll to hit, roll Strength check, roll to hit again). The net gain is okay.

Now the interesting thing about the last maneuver in D&D 3rd edition is that with the Feat and the right weapon, you can pull this Trip attack every round. Making it your standard form of attack, in which it now becomes a triffle boring. You just Trip over and over and over again,
having to make 3 rolls to pull it off. I've almost built a character like this but then you realize that there will be creatures immune to your trip. I didn't see the point.

So to fix all this, 4th edition gave a character a number of interesting attacks but with one bonus and one limit. The bonus is that, built right into a new attack are all the 'extras and effects'. Instead of being able to 'tack' a Trip onto your standard attack, you will now have an
exploit that is called "Spinning Sweep" which, if it hits, inflicts damage and knocks your target prone. One roll to determine all that. It's a simple system where you will have a power that will inflict a) scads of damage, b) moderate damage and a good 'extra effect' or c) light damage and
a powerful 'extra effect'. It's a simple but very good system.
Now there is a limit on these powers, but it's a good one from both a DM point of view and a game design point of view. Attacks are limited by how many times in a day they can be used. There are only three classifications: At-Will, Encounter and Daily. At-Will is just like it sounds. You can use this attack every round if you like. These are pretty basic and every character gets two. That's not a lot but it allows you to switch things up a bit. A Fighter could take Cleave and Tide of Iron. Cleave is great for fighting multiple foes. Tide of Iron allows you to shove your enemy around the battlefield. Again, this is in addition to inflicting damage.
Encounter powers are an excellent concept. You can use this attack once per encounter. So you have to rest and it resets, ready to go for the next fight that day. This was done because the previous edition of D&D had a lot of situations where you would blow all your cool powers in the first fight and be 'spent' (more often for your magical types than your fighter types). So...you had little other choice than to stop and go back to sleep. Which was kinda dumb and stagnanted the flow of a dungeon crawl. An Encounter power is better than your standard At-Will powers.
Daily powers are just that. They can be used once per day. They are, of course, the most powerful abilities that you will get. These are the times where you have to make an important choice. Will a fight require you to use your Daily power? Or will you save it in case there is another fight around that dark corner.

D&D 4th edition has improved combat. But it seems to have done so at the expense of role playing.

There is a fine argument to be made that there is nothing in a rules set alone, that limits me from role playing. If I want to play an axe wielding dwarf, a fighter is the best class for me. If I want to play a two weapon wielding Dragonborn, taking a Ranger is probably the right thing
to do. And if two players choose to be an axe wielding character, then it becomes more important to role play my dwarf different from your character. It was the same thing that might have happened had two players in 3rd edition played Fighters in the same campaign.
The problem occurs: what if I want to play a spy? What if I want to play a person who is a tracker and good in the outdoors but is more of a mystic who doesn't perform magic but speaks with spirits? What if I want to play a cleric who is all about healing and buffing the group?
In 3rd edition: For the spy, I could easily take a rogue and focus their skills and Feats to be all about manipulating people with my words and perception and stealth based. I couldn't entirely get away from the fact that rogues aren't that bad in combat but I could look for a feat to trade off my Sneak Attack for something more spy based. Eventually I could even work my way up to a Spy Prestige class.
For the outdoor mystic, I could probably take a Druid. Maybe I could focus it on summoning spirits. I could also take a look through the millions of books and find a class that gave me what I wanted.
For the cleric, I could easily pick the spells that focused me on healing and buffing.
The options are no longer there. D&D clearly defines the roles that all players MUST conform to (and I use the term players, not characters) and all characters must be good in combat. There isn't even an option to be less useful in combat. The Rogue is a combat monster now. He doesn't
even get much for 'thief' abilites until some paltry tricks at 2nd level (many of which are more useful during combat than out of combat).
The Druid is gone for a year, until then next book comes out, but we can already see what is in store. A combatant that uses the power source of Primal, rather than Exploits, Prayers or Magic. And you know what: Primal will result in the same type of powers that I've listed above. High damage and no effect, moderate damage and moderate effect, or low damage and high effect.
The healer/buffing cleric: gone. Clerics can heal but there is barely any reason to focus on it. All clerics are battle clerics. A number of their abilites boost others ONLY if they fight. You can build a cleric who uses melee weapons (to attack) or their holy implements (to attack) but gone are the days of giving Bull's Strength to the fighter or Cat's Grace to the Rogue. These spells no longer exist. It's all about inflicting damage.

D&D is truly just a tactical combat game with some role playing elements. You no longer have the option to play a character who isn't a combatant. You have to be an combatant and on top of that you can do your best to inject some character and give yourself a reason to role play.
Is it possible to have a game that can blend tactical combat and role playing? Actually, yes. I have a game called Cadwallen. It is produced by a company that is better known for their miniatures game: Confrontation (and AT-43 if you care). Cadwallen touts itself as a tactical role playing game and was released about a year before D&D 4th edition. And it gives you all the options and a lot of flavor while primarily being a game about combat.
Cadwallen is a game about combat. You are supposed to buy a miniature and the DM uses a map. But there is a lot more meat there. It's combat system isn't quite on the same level as 4th edition is, but it's actually quite good. And it already differentiated the fighters through it's skill system. Combat in Cadwallen is skill based. So you have Bash as a skill. You also have Slice as a skill. You might have Trick as a skill. Bash might use your Pugnacity stat (it means how aggressive your character is). Slice might use the Sleight stat. Trick would use the Opportunity stat.
It was quite easy to build a character who fit your view. In D&D 3rd edition, I am currently playing along side with a Paladin who is very un-Paladin. He has trades his spells and his mount for other features. He has taken feats that allow him to be adept in acrobatics and he wears light armour. It's an interesting character and the system fought the player every step of the way but he manage to pull it off and make it work. He even uses only a dagger in combat.
In 3rd edition, if you wanted to play a Rogue you were still stuck with the concept that Strength was the defining stat for hitting and damaging. You could take a Feat to allow you to switch to Dexterity for hitting but nothing that would help your damage. It was still strength based. 4th Edition fixes that.
In the only edition of Cadwallen, if you wanted to play a Wolfen warrior you can focus on your Pugnacity stat and the Bash and Pummel (and other type of attack skills) skills. If you wanted to play a Goblin warrior, you were in luck. You could effectively rely on your Pugnacity but instead could focus on the Opportunity stat and the Trick and Back Stab skills. The Wolfen might be a more effecient killer but the Goblin could get the job done and allowed for an interesting diversion.
If you wanted to play a human explorer, that option was there as well. Not a great fighter at all but you could notice all the hidden treasure when it came time for it. And of course, you could mix and match professions quite easily.
Every character started with three 'tours of duty'. Want to play the best warrior: start with three combat 'tours'. Want to play a rogue who can fight and explore? Take one fighter tour, one rogue tour and one explorer tour.
With Cadwallen's system you could make nearly anything you could imagine. The combat ended up a bit dry as your Wolfen had no reason to ever change things up and not rely on Pugnacity and Bash (same with your Goblin trickster fighter). But it was a step in the right direction, and really, it was only as 'dry' as 3rd edition combat, which really isn't that bad. The important thing is that the system barely limited the character concept. You can do what you want and how you want it.
This simply isn't true with 4th edition. You are stuck in a role. This role limits a character more than it helps. Two fighters will look awfully the same and I can have an elborate backstory, hunting down my father because he was murdered by a demon, and you can be Ted the fighter.
My backstory will amount for nothing. Our powers may be different, our skills may be different but we will have the same number of attacks in a fight and the same number of skills. There isn't any real variation. Two fighters will function in the same role and there isn't anything that helps support my background.
And my concept could have been grander. I might have really wanted to have some good exploration skills, be a real outdoors type. But I like the idea that my character is a defender of others. The former part would insist that I'm a Ranger. The later part would put me in the role of a Fighter. Without some (very weak) multiclass feats, I can't really pull off this concept. I have to make my concept fit into the roles the game has given me. And it really shouldn't be that way.

I still like D&D 4th edition, despite what I say. But it has really relegated itself into a tactical combat game with some role playing. Combat will always be the most important and overwhelming part of D&D now. Where in my current game that I play in, my character worries about when the Rogue and the Druid wander off because they aren't quite as capable in
combat as my character might be (both a rule and a role playing thing), this wouldn't be true in 4th edition. Both would kick ass without exception and both would have a large number of hit points so I wouldn't have to fret about them in combat.
Thus D&D truly has become a game about kicking open the door, killing the monsters and looting them for treasure. Nobody is saying that's a bad thing. It fact, it's a hell of a lot of fun. But that's all D&D 4th edition promotes now. It does not promote diverse characters and you can't make your concept always fit.
I guess that the sad part is, given how the classes and powers are laid out, there isn't much hope that expansion books will do anything different. The Martial Exploits book will be coming out in a few months. Now instead of 12 pages of Fighter attack powers...I might have 30.
Weee....
The best thing that this new book could do is showcase Exploits that any Martial character can take (possibly allowing your Fighter to do more than just hit things with Strength) and if they had a ton of Utility (non combat) Exploits, that would be great as well. Again, if they didn't force them to be of a certain class that would be great. Thus your Fighter could take a Martial Utility Exploit that made him more useful outside of combat. Now you could build the diversity that we saw in D&D 3rd edition. They could fix it, but sadly all signs point do not point to yes.

Ah to have the power to blend gaming systems. The character building options and stats/skills of Cadwallen and the combat powers from D&D. Maybe that would too good of a combination and thus limit any future Tactical Role playing games from hitting the market? Well, I can dream, can't I? =)