Roles for exploration and interaction

Last night's game got me really thinking about exploration and interaction roles. I'm running Against the Cult of the Reptile God as my summer D&D fling game, and the party began infiltrating the church.

Now, I'm sure the player of the fighter was just tired, but the party didn't get to much fighting in general last night. So the fighter seemed bored as well as tired. The party's good planning reduced the need for combat dramatically, so people probably only took a swing or two each at enemies before they went down.

But the problem is that with the skill system, the fighter really doesn't have much that he can do outside of combat.

Martial Archetypes and Classes in D&D

Martial classes have never really been my favorite in D&D. If I'm playing a fantasy game, I'd prefer to be slightly more fantastic than a simple warrior. But that's just me. In recent memory, I've played a "lazy" warlord in a "hobbit" game (Frondo Maggins, a do-nothing hobbit with a heart of gold), and a half-orc assassin in service to the wizards' guild in a more serious game. I'm not sure why these classes, as a whole, don't appeal to me that much. I guess I just prefer casters.

I'm not sure how dull it was to play fighters in earlier editions. I understand the criticism that fighters just whump things, but in earlier editions there were still rules (and house rules) for disarming, overbearing, grappling, and other maneuvers. Once you hit Combat and Tactics in second edition there were plenty of martial options to use, and compared to wizards they were probably relatively balanced. Maybe I'll give it a try once I get back to civilization.

As I read over some old and new iterations of the game (just bought a copy of Adventurer Conqueror King recently, I'll review that later), I'm struck by the recent discussions of how difficult it is to make a fighter class. This is because the fighter is a really broad archetype. In a game with many different classes though (instead of just one customizeable Warrior class), I think we could use about four warriors and four(ish) experts. I've got a clearer picture of the martial warriors than the experts though.