For When D&D Isn’t Deadly Enough

Taking a much-needed break from Triune, we’re working on a mish-mash of D&D 4E and Paranoia RPG. The untitled game will playtest at ENWorld GameDay Chicago 25 in a few weeks, so we thought we’d post a little bit about our unholy merger.

D&D 4E introduced the concept of roles during combat, such as Controller or Striker. (By introduce, we mean bring into D&D for the first time officially.) They’re all well and good, but they are … nice. They allow characters to help one another. That’s not exactly in the spirit of Paranoia, so we created our own roles to help us design new classes and powers. The new roles are:

  • Uncontroller: Focused on affecting multiple people at once, allies and enemies alike. Uncontrollers hurt their allies by causing indiscriminate debuffs or damage, especially when altering the terrain. “Hey, it’s not my fault you were in the area of effect!”
  • Manipulator: Focused on debuffing and controlling allies against their will. Manipulators hurt their allies by causing them to lose bonuses or make bad moves. As a whole, this role is not focused towards melee or ranged combat. “Friend Paladin! Stand here and … oh, that’s gotta hurt.”
  • Betrayer: Focused on exposing individual allies to heavy damage, sapping their mobility, and avoiding their attacks. Betrayers hurt their allies by exposing weak spots, tripping them up, and dancing away from retaliatory strikes. “I didn’t mean to trip you, allowing the enemy to strike your vulnerable, prone body. Honest.”

That should rack up the body count, eh?

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