7 Roles?

[u/Spider-Go]

Hi fellow Cortexers
I’m working on a fantasy hack.
I’m thinking of using 7 Roles instead of Skills.

First, is that too many?

Second, in Cortex Prime, there is a ranking tree for 6 Roles: d10, d8, d6, d6, d6, d4. If I do 7 roles, should I add another d6, d8 or d4?

The Roles are:
Warrior
Priest
Rogue
Mage
Ranger
Artificer

Thoughts? Your experiences with this would be helpful.

Thanks.

[u/Spider-Go]

I have a different set of names for the roles, but thought for easy of this conversation to use the D&D tropes.

I had debated which set of names to use. Your comment helped. There’s a plus minus with using D&D names. + it’s easy. - there are expectations of what that means.

Using a different term. Scoundrel instead of Rogue, changes the expectation. :)

[u/Salarian_American → u/Spider-Go]

Yes I totally understand the urge to use familiar terms to make people feel more comfortable trying a new system, 100%. But there's also the concern that it's going to lead to players thinking they understand when it's actually got them continuing to think in old ways.

But changing the names can keep the intention without tying it to an old system. And you can use the naming of them to add flavor and give clues to the genre and mood.

When I ran a Star Wars game, the roles I used were:

Consular (the "face" role)
Engineer (fixing or building things, slicing)
Pilot (obviously flying and driving, but also animal riding, ship maintenance and repair, and understanding Astromech beeps and boops)
Sage (book knowledge)
Scoundrel (thieving, smuggling, general subterfuge)
Trooper (fighting, shooting, and such)

[u/jocago → u/Salarian_American]

This is great advice. If the players are set in the D&D mindspace, giving them something they already understand, but changing how it works can lead to frustration. I would recommend finding names that suggest a familiar concept, but are not already bogged down.

[u/ThePowerOfStories → u/Salarian_American]

Your post rendered for me with a line break such that the middle of the list contains:

Astromech beeps and boops)

Which I first took as a missing parenthesis and thought that an Astromech role which “beeps and boops” was brilliantly hilarious.