Securing pages

Hi,

Is there a plugin for securing pages? I see the default installation allows you to set a password on a page, but what I’m looking for is a way for a user to log in with his credentials and assign access to the page for that user, who has a certain role.

Which brings up another question. I don’t see anywhere in the default WP program where you can add new roles to user accounts. Is there a plugin for that, or do I need to go into the MySQL tables to do that?

Thanks,

John H. aka Broadlighter