Editing Combat Roles (section)

===Traditional Dungeons & Dragons Roles===
Traditionally [[Dungeons & Dragons]] has had four primary roles for classes to fill
* The '''Martial''', who provides consistent damage and survivability.
* The '''Skill Monkey''', who uses skills to overcome non-combat obstacles such as locks.
* The '''Arcane Caster''', who uses magic to control the battlefield, buff and debuff and also solve non-combat problems.
* The '''Divine Caster''', who uses magic to buff, debuff and remove negative conditions<ref>And heal, but in multiple editions, most blatantly third, it's often noticeably less effective than using your spells and time to kill the enemy faster so they deal less damage overall and thus gets left out of the duty description</ref> and also solve non-combat problems.
These roles are typically filled by the [[Fighter]], [[Rogue]], [[Wizard]] and [[Cleric]]. This has even been enforced in a handful of instances, such as [[RPGA]] campaigns that lets a player use a pregen of one of those classes without penalty (applying all earnings to their “real” character) if no applicable class was present among the characters of the players that showed up for the game.

In practice, these four classes are [[Tier System|wildly imbalanced against each other]] (The Martial has no part in non-combat challenges, the Skill Monkey has only limited combat applicability, and the Casters both have a great deal of both.), the exact division of duties falls apart even with more typical classes (A Wizard and a [[Ranger]] together have the skill points to handle most mundane skills without sacrificing their ability as a caster or martial, many divine casters can smash heads as well as, if not better than, typical pure martials ect.,) and hybrid characters work weirdly in the doctrine. Still, despite the issues present, the four roles are considered reasonable as rough guidelines for party composition.

These roles would be referenced in [[Magic: The Gathering]] starting with ''[[Zendikar]] Rising'' in the Gather Your Party mechanic, presumably so it can be reused for ''Adventures in the [[Forgotten Realms]]''. With this mechanic, cards gain more power for every one of the classic roles (Soldier, Rogue, Wizard and Cleric) you have summoned. The cards with this mechanic shown in the previews are less than impressive, but maybe the full set will be less trash (or have some degenerate infinite loop).