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[Muz]

I've been on a tactical RPG binge lately. I start a game looking up the ideal party builds to win combat. I'm noticing a certain pattern among the better tactical RPGs.

When we talk about adventurer roles, the first thing that comes to mind is:
Tank - Someone who is up front to absorb all damage.
DPS - Dishes out damage quickly. Often fragile and needs to be protected by the tank.
Nuker - Dishes out damage the fastest. But often has limited charges and needs to be selective where they want the damage to go.
Support - They often buff or debuff other characters.

There's a few problems here.

First, they don't have fair roles. Most of thr time, the baddies get around the tank to go for the fragile DPS/nukers. And everyone ignores the support because they're just buffing the DPS. Why not straightaway kill the DPS?

Second, there's not a lot of room for creativity. You end up trying to build the toughest tanks, the nukers with the most damage, or the supports with the biggest damage multipliers.

More advanced games mix around the archetypes around a bit. This adds:

Tank/disabler - Their role is to disable enemies so that the high damage guys can slaughter them. This may include stun, grapples, webs, sleep, disarm, and so on.

Tank/buff - The D&D cleric is a classic example of this. They're far more threatening and tougher than a 'pure' support char. They can often self-buff themselves into being a threat.

Tank/healer - These are tricky to use in design, because they can simply keep the combat prolonged. They're usually there to restore resources. Their existence by default means that their party wins, and this makes them high priority early on.

Tank/zone control - Very interesting role in advanced battlefields. The idea is to have them 'suppress' a large zone. It could be a soldier with a pike or polearm. It could be a tank who creates walls and obstacles.

Shock Trooper - Your typical barbarians or orc beserkers. The middle line between HP and damage. They're a serious enough threat to be focused on, but enough HP to to not be easy to take down

Pure DPS - Assassins and backstab rogues. And those invoker mages. They're extremely powerful when combined with the Tank/disabler, but usually die quickly, even if buffed.

Skirmisher - Their role is often to get past the tank and strike at the weaknesses. May teleport or sneak. Usually an antimage.

Ranged DPS - Usually does moderate damage, but with the flexibility to direct that damage to anyone they want.

Crowd control - Usually someone with good AoE effect but weak one-on-one. D&D has their cleric undead powers and mages with fireballs.

Summoner - They punish enemies not designed to deal with mobs. Often has a support role too. May also utilize decoys and illusions. They can often tank fairly well too.

Superweapons - Your one shot archmage. They'll typically have enough resources (mana/time) to take down one priority target among the opponent. Or they'll use that ability to suppress. For example, someone might be able to attack the team sniper, but in doing so, they'd take enough damage to be one hit killed by the wizard.

Battlefield controller - They block areas, create damage zones (acid fog), force characters to disengage, or split up a party. Usually good for isolating someone to kill another.

Anyone identify any other good archetypes for combat roles?

[starsrift]

Not sure where the Dancers or Geomancers in FFT would fit in your categorizations.

[Muz]

Not sure where the Dancers or Geomancers in FFT would fit in your categorizations.

Not familiar with FFT though. I looked mostly at DoTA, D&D, and Battle for Wesnoth.

[starsrift]

If you're fiending hard into tactical RPG's, Final Fantasy Tactics may be worth picking up and studying. It's available nowadays on the PSN, or the enhanced version, War of the Lions, is available on PSP, iOS, and Android. It's not received a PC port unlike most of the Final Fantasy titles, for whatever reason. Yet.

I suppose FFT Geomancers could be considered a nuker, though half the time they were performing control/debuff effects. You got a choice of spells to cast based on, IIRC, the terrain they were standing on. A lot of players believed they were garbage, but I think that's because they only looked at their initial cast options, some of their later spells were terrifying.
Dancers basically entered a 'dance' mode that they performed for several turns, and dealt effects or damage to all enemies. Generally not a lot of damage in the damage mode, but the advantage was that it hit all enemies with no range penalties. FFT had bards that did positive effects for your party as a counterpart, but buffs are buffs.