So in a lot of RPG-inspired fantasy, you’ll see this idea that squads of adventurers will have their members specialize into combat roles with one person being good at defending against hits hit and one person who attacks a lot and one person who hangs back at range etc. Is this totally made up for RPGs? Or is there a historical basis for small-unit tactics with specialization before the modern era?
No.
Specialized combat roles existed, in full battlefield combat. Groups like line infantry, skirmishers, archers, and artillery all existed. The thing is, those were entire units of troops, not individual roles, and combat doesn't really scale down to individual characters.
The tank/DPS/healer trinity is entirely an RPG construct. This actually makes some sense when you consider that the first RPGs grew out of tabletop wargaming. So, seeing battalion level combat reduced to individual characters isn't quite as weird as it first appears. Since then, games have adapted to better fit those roles.
So, the end result is that, the combat roles you see in modern RPGs came out of an abstraction of an abstraction of battalion level combat, and then it started evolving into even more specialized roles. Beyond that, concepts like taunts and crowd control only really make sense within the power fantasies of those games.
In a modern context, mixed combat units with a few specialists mixed in do make sense, though, again, it's not the tank/DPS/healer structure of games, because that is still completely artificial.
So, if it's so utterly divorced from reality, why does this model survive? Because it does accurately replicate how fantasy stories frequently fit together. You get a reasonably distinct mix of character archetypes who can work together, with each contributing something unique to the effort as a whole. And, while you're not going to find an example of the Tank/DPS/Healer squad out there in the wandering in the world, you don't have to look too hard to find stories with a warrior who's able to bare almost any punishment, a sage who advises and assists, and a hero who has a nasty habit of striking the killing blow, and, really, doing the bulk of the punishment.
Accidentally or intentionally, the trinity nails how stories are often told.
Distinct roles in a tabletop RPG also, arguably, provide more range for a group of players to have roles that appeal to them, without requiring them all to conform to a single character type. Not everyone is going to want to be a hulking brute with anger management issues, just like not everyone is going to want to play a character who's instantly deleted half a second after an enemy spots them. The trinity gives both of those players a way to participate in the same adventure without making either of them useless.
The roles have become even more entrenched in MMOs because it provides a shorthand for players to organize themselves for group content. At that point, roles like Tank/Healer/DPS become very useful shorthand for knowing what a random stranger will bring to the group, and a way to quickly assess what you still need before the group is ready to go.
So, does this have any historical basis? Yes, sort of, but in a literary context, not from martial combat.
-Starke
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