The Gaming Den

That and the fact that some methods used to create monsters sucked.

For instance, a created zombie is about equal CR, unless it happens to be anything with spells, skills, real abilities, or anything magical (like flight). If creature in question has that ability, you have no idea what CR it is.

For example: you can easily have zombie people, kobolds, troglodytes, ogres, bugbears, horses, and minotaurs, while you cannot easily have zombie beholders, bodaks, and imps.

The sources primal, psionic, shadow, elemental and ki were confirmed: monk stays (yeah, when it could just've been psionic striker ...).

Harlune wrote:
I'd assume not ever Leader class is going to have healing so if you have a non healer leader you also might need a second leader class that can do it. That means five people instead of four if you still want to have all the roles filled.

Actually, its the opposite. You *should* assume that no leader will ever not heal, because thats really what the role is. Its a healer/buffer role that they actually renamed to make it more appealing to people. Seriously, they had actually discussions about how many people didn't like playing healers so they had to call it something else. Leader was the best they could do.

Or, since the wizard is no longer suppose to really fill the role of striker and controller like in 3ed, that means you'd need an extra caster to fill the magic based striker role.

Um, warlock? Thats pretty much the only point of the class.

What are the other classes going to be anyway?

Druid: I heard somewhere that Druid was going to have its spells removed and made into a shapeshifting striker.

They've talked about most of these at various points
Either striker or defender, last I heard, but probably striker. Based on the way they divided the class there will be the Str or Con based 'feral druid' and the wis based 'weather striker' druids. And, of course, you pick one and stick with it.

Bard: leader of course

An oddly flavored bard, with 'otherworldly patrons'

Sorcerer: not a clue, they might just ditch the entire class now that it doesn't really have a reason to exist

Barely controlled magic, with splash damage. The example mentioned was that if you cast a fire spell, you burn adjacent enemies with fire damage as your magic flares up around you.

Psion: controller, suposedly getting all the mind control/illusion stuff that was removed from the wizard.

Yep, mind control. Illusionists may be their own class again. Along with necromancers and conjurers. By PH IV or V, perhaps. Or 'Arcane Power' 7

Swordmage': is going to be a defender apparently, so expect an arcane version of a pally instead of a gish.

And don't forget you have to buy the FR campaign setting book to get it!

Barbarian: no idea, will probably be fill the str based physical striker role

More feral, with bite and claw attacks. Sigh. At least, as of last report.

Monk and Psychic Warrior: I fear these two will just be ditched completly.

Since Ki is definitely going to be a power source, probably not. Which kind of makes me sad, because neither class is really worth salvaging at this point.



I'm going to sit down and write up a review of 4e at some point. Probably post it over at ENworld for giggles and flames.

Basic summary (which admittedly has turned into 90% of my actual review)

4e is a huge success at its primary design goal. Sadly, that goal is Make Life Easy for the Designers. They can coast on half-assed stuff for the next 8 years, because it all explicitedly has to be the exact same shit, x[w] damage plus minor status effects: pile on the stun/blind/daze/immobilize effects until the monster dies. Everything else increments with level, at the same rate, so +5 to attack is utterly meaningless, because the target is getting +5 to defense.

The exception, of course, is damage and hit points, since damage is designed to fall behind for unexplained reason. Or they're just bad at math.

As a side effect of the primary design goal, life is also easy for DMs. Because the players literally can't do anything unexpected or complicated. Side-effect: D&D 4e is really, really boring for players. Limited powers that do the exact same fucking thing, in a way thats even less interesting than Weeaboo Fightin' Magik. Since players tend to make up 75-80% of any given gaming group, this is entirely a bad thing. Combat can be pretty interesting against normal enemies, which is the one positive thing. Its fairly balanced, and it flows well. However... you've got 20% of your power at first level, and 70% at level 7. That interesting combat? Yeah, sadly, the interesting part starts to fade rather quickly as you are forced to do the same thing over and over again, level after level. I can see why the only preview material that was shown was 1st level characters. You've got the whole game right there, and they didn't want to show how it stayed exactly the same.

The boring factor is exacerbated by the fact that there are really only 5 monsters with different skins, and a few minor tweaks. You may care briefly that kobolds can shifty as a minor action, but after a while, you realize that you're always going to be fighting kobolds in different masks with bigger numbers, which are slight variations of your bigger numbers, so its essentially the same fight, forever. Elites and Solos are a dumbass idea, full stop. Multiplying hit points isn't the formula for an interesting fight, fuckwits. Its the formula for a *longer* fight, which isn't even vaguely the same thing. Pick up some basic math skills.

There are a few interesting ideas here and there, but its worth noting that most of them aren't original ideas. Rituals are kind of cool. However, I'm going to point you at Relics and Rituals for the fucking Scarred Lands setting (and diverse other books) and tell you to go fuck yourself. Opening them up so that the spellcasters aren't playing their own game by themselves is also a good idea. But at this point, its way too late.

I could run 4e. It would certainly be easier than running 3e, and I could fix some of the obvious glaring errors in the game (elites and solos, stupid, stupid econmy). I could also *play* in 3e. It would certainly be more interesting than playing 4e. However, to be really happy with running or playing either, I pretty much have to kludge something together from a half-dozen different sources. This makes me sad.

So, any bets on whether 5th edition will involve 'putting the complexity back into D&D?'
And if Hasbro will say 'fuck it, and you damn nerds', and sell off the license?

I have a different witting style, but the points would be the same. Go for it.

Voss wrote: Elites and Solos are a dumbass idea, full stop. Multiplying hit points isn't the formula for an interesting fight, fuckwits. Its the formula for a *longer* fight, which isn't even vaguely the same thing. Pick up some basic math skills.

I'd change that bold part for something that directs attention to that the fact that these designers don't think things thru to the end. I'd go with calling them lazy hacks, but not stupid.

Bigode wrote:The sources primal, psionic, shadow, elemental and ki were confirmed: monk stays (yeah, when it could just've been psionic striker ...).

Ah, I recall a post made by some dev guy about how there was going to be arcane/divine/martial/primal(nature)/psionic/shadow/tech as power sources and the plan was to have a defender/striker/controller/leader for each one but I thought that idea had been ditched.


So...
martial/Ki/fightan magic/what ever
Defender: Fighter,
Striker: Rogue and Ranger
Controller: Monk?
Leader: Warlord

Arcane/Elemental/that fancy booklern'n magic
Defender: Swordmage,
Striker: Warlock
Controller: Wizard
Leader: Bard?

Divine/holy/radiant/lazer
Defender: Paladin
Striker: Druid?
Controller:Druid?
Leader Cleric

Psionic/mind magic/'that stuff that doesn't belong in D&D because it's too damn sci fi sounding!'
Defender: Psychic Warrior?
Striker: Soul Knife or Lurk?
Controller: Psion
Leader: Wilder or Ardent?

that still leaves the sorcerer and barbarian

The thing you aren't getting (and I don't fault you, since it's stupid enough that it should be hard for someone to think it) is: arcane/primal/elemental are 3 different sources, just as martial and ki are not the same thing.

Primal and Elemental seem related.

And what does one use ki (chi) for, if not for martial arts or... lulz... recovering from martial arts injuries?

Needs less diversifying, more condensing.

Voss wrote: The boring factor is exacerbated by the fact that there are really only 5 monsters with different skins, and a few minor tweaks. You may care briefly that kobolds can shifty as a minor action, but after a while, you realize that you're always going to be fighting kobolds in different masks with bigger numbers, which are slight variations of your bigger numbers, so its essentially the same fight, forever.

I really felt this way with 3E too. Monster roles existed in 3E, it just wasn't explicit about it. They played pretty much the same way.

You had: the melee brute, the stunner, the SLA mage, the incorporeal and the grappler.

And most of the time, 3.5 monsters looked very much alike and cookie cutter. IN fact, monsters didn't really have a heck of a lot of unique abilities that made them interesting. They were either a basic flavorless brute, or they played like a mage, though usually with more hp. But seriously, for the most part, they were rather bland. Especially the melee types. I mean, you seen one giant in 3.5, you've seen em all, because all of them are just slightly different hit dice with differing strength scores, and that's it. Like literally no interesting attacks.

I have to say that as far as exception based design goes, I really like the effects on monsters, because it really has the potential to make different monsters feel different. 3.5 produced some very stock and ultimately uninteresting monsters.

Elites and Solos are a dumbass idea, full stop. Multiplying hit points isn't the formula for an interesting fight, fuckwits. Its the formula for a *longer* fight, which isn't even vaguely the same thing. Pick up some basic math skills.

Well the basic concept was that an elite replaced two monsters of the same level, thus if you add the hp of those monsters together, it should take the same amount to kill as two monsters. Which seems like pretty sound reasoning, except for two things.

-You can damage the individual monsters faster with area effects, which suck against a singular monster. Thus the PCs lose efficiency.
-They gave them a boost to defenses, which slowed down the fight.

Aside from that, the concept isn't that bad. The idea is that you're capable of creating monsters who can survive longer than a round or two, and that's relatively sound. It's just that in their math they forgot to do all the math.

But two monsters into one doesn't necessarily mean doubling the hp.

I could run 4e. It would certainly be easier than running 3e, and I could fix some of the obvious glaring errors in the game (elites and solos, stupid, stupid econmy). I could also *play* in 3e. It would certainly be more interesting than playing 4e. However, to be really happy with running or playing either, I pretty much have to kludge something together from a half-dozen different sources. This makes me sad.

Yeah, both editions are lacking something. 3.5 was way too complex. I hated the DM laundry list that you had to worry about before planning any adventure. Spellcasters just had too many options. And the majority of the monster manual creatures just weren't equipped to handle all that shit. Mainly because the high level game was built around bypassing mechanics. Freedom of movement bypassed grapple, Wraithstrke bypassed AC, Save or dies bypassed hp. Monsters had huge attack bonuses that also basically rendered AC obsolete. And it was pretty much impossible to keep up defensively. So the game just became a group that each did their own vastly different schtick and didn't use teamwork at all. Everyone else in your group was just a backup incase the monster happened to have the perfect counter for what you could do. So if it had too much HD for holy word, then the wizard comes in and throws out a shivering touch. If it's immune to touch, then the uber charger tries to kil it that way. But in no sense did you really work together or even need tactics. You couldn't defend your teammates and offensively they didn't need your help anyway.

In 4E, it's like you hardly have any real options. You're pretty much going to be stuck with very minimal ability to do much beyond what you could do in a video game. You've got basic attacks, minor status effects and the extent of your teamwork seems to be sliding shit into a group to hit with an AoE or stunning something and having the other guys beat on it. Which is slightly better, but still isn't exactly great. And the non-combat just blows.

Really, I find myself hating both systems.

No, no, no...that would mean less products sold to idiots.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Mainly because the high level game was built around bypassing mechanics. Freedom of movement bypassed grapple, Wraithstrke bypassed AC
...

So if it had too much HD for holy word, then the wizard comes in and throws out a shivering touch.

Those are the worst parts of 3.5. Andy Collins alterations to Freedom of Movement, Holy Word, Shapechange, etc were idiotic changes. I think it is possible that spells like Wraithstrike and Shivering Touch were intentionally broken, and were included to sell books.

It is not accurate to judge 3.x by examining its worst parts, while judging 4e at its best.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Monsters had huge attack bonuses that also basically rendered AC obsolete. And it was pretty much impossible to keep up defensively.

This is anecdotal. 3.x is so divergent that some groups experience this problem, and some don't.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:So the game just became a group that each did their own vastly different schtick and didn't use teamwork at all.

...

But in no sense did you really work together or even need tactics. You couldn't defend your teammates and offensively they didn't need your help anyway.

Are you just making this stuff up? What about Wall spells? What about Illusions? What about Reach Fighters? What about Summons? What about force multipliers?

RandomCasualty2 wrote:In 4E, it's like you hardly have any real options. You're pretty much going to be stuck with very minimal ability to do much beyond what you could do in a video game. You've got basic attacks, minor status effects and the extent of your teamwork seems to be sliding shit into a group to hit with an AoE or stunning something and having the other guys beat on it. Which is slightly better, but still isn't exactly great. And the non-combat just blows.

Right.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Really, I find myself hating both systems.

I hate certain aspects of 3.x, but I enjoy most of it. I hate most aspects of 4e, and have seen little redeeming value.

+1 to SphereOfFeetMan.

In particular, I play 3.5 quite frequently, and my group is heavily into tactics. We win fights with tactics and non-uber characters. It is very much a team game, in the sense that the team is stronger than the sum of its parts, and "if you ain't with us, you's ag'in' us."

...

And I agree that the concept of solo/elite monsters is a sound one...any GM whose lost a boss monster in a round and a half to the PC wolfpack knows what I'm talking about. Higher AC/saves and more hp are, in fact, a good thing...but they're not, by themselves, the solution.

And x5 hp is simply insane.

...

Regarding classes, let me suggest this: they'll ALL be around in 4e, eventually. 4e exist, in large part, to sell more books and make more money for WotC. I personally have over 40 base classes in various 3.x WotC books. If 4e's purpose is to make money by selling books, it stands to reason that, eventually, ALL 3.x classes will be around as 4e classes, even the Truenamer and the Wearers of Magic Hats Made of Souls (aka incarnum users).

Though I do wonder how in hell the Artificer will fit in, given 4e's "interesting" magic item economy.

sigma999 wrote:Primal and Elemental seem related.

And of course, to make it worse, people are already throwing fire and cold and lightning around with the 'arcane' source, so... really, what the hell? I get that barbarians and druids are going to be 'primal' as in feral and animalistic, but... um. Yeah. That doesn't do it for me for either class. It isn't anything resembling an actual druid in any way at all, and its a very small sliver of the berserker concept.

And what does one use ki (chi) for, if not for martial arts or... lulz... recovering from martial arts injuries?

Needs less diversifying, more condensing.

Asian things are special. No, really. Thats it. But of course, they'll likely go the CW samurai route and suck all the flavor out. And make it suck to boot.


@Random- yeah. I'm very much dissatisfied with both systems, and all the 3rd edition derivatives. It doesn't help that I know I won't have time to run anything in the near future and if I want to play, I'm pretty much stuck with what I can find in a new area. At the moment, that thought fills me with dread- what sort of garbage will I have to put up with just to game at all?


Oh, I forgot one last bit of the review. Making your party awesome:
5 rangers. The only class with real ranges, and the movement to keep it at range. Going into a dungeon pretty much kills you, however.
Or.
5 beater (human or dragonborn only) clerics. Max strength, a bit of wis, the leftover point in charisma. Every takes the buffing at will power, which gives + str mod to someone else's attacks. The top people in init order hand out the buff to those lower in the init order, who drop their stun effect of choice on the enemy. Cycle through, so that whenever someone doesn't have a bonus, they do the buff. You crank your collective attack bonuses so high, you're raping the math in the ass like that fucking bog monster in Naked Lunch. Take durable and toughness and kiss Con goodbye (because anything less than 9 points in Con at character creation has less effect on your character than these two feats), wp: bastard sword and the first multiclassing feat (fighter, paladin or warlord) so you can take a paragon path that actually supports your character. Go demigod at 21, because hey, stat bonuses are the only permanent boost to your attack rolls that you can actually get. And you have infinite encounter powers forever at 30th level, if you can stomach the damn game that long. For the record, thats somewhere between 240-300 encounters of doing the Exact. Same. Shit.

You can take a mix of cleric, fighter, warlord, beater paladin or ranger and multiclass into cleric at 11th to take that particular cleric at-will and do the same thing, but you have to wait until 11th level to be awesome.

SphereOfFeetMan wrote: Those are the worst parts of 3.5. Andy Collins alterations to Freedom of Movement, Holy Word, Shapechange, etc were idiotic changes. I think it is possible that spells like Wraithstrike and Shivering Touch were intentionally broken, and were included to sell books.

Well, the freedom of movement change was kind of necessary, because otherwise high level monsters that grappled you were simply impossible to beat, unless you were a wizard and dimension doored away. And really, the game didn't need yet another fighter hoser monster.

What sucked about 3.5 monster design was everything was designed to fuck fighters, but very little did anything against spellcasters, or even rogues. There were so many monsters that you could pretty much just use hide in plain sight against and be completely invisible.

Are you just making this stuff up? What about Wall spells? What about Illusions? What about Reach Fighters? What about Summons? What about force multipliers?

Well this shit is all low level things. I'm talking high levels, where monsters that you cared about were pretty much all tossing spells (thus reach was pretty useless) and they could just fly around you anyway. As far as the other stuff, why bother with an illusion when you could just kill the monsters? That was the fundamental problem with 3.5 high level. You could do all kinds of interesting stuff, but the combats were so fast, you really had no reason to.

Even when you get gate, which is crazy awesome, there's very little incentive to actually use it, since there are frankly better ways of killing stuff.

I mean why dick around with summoning shit or creating walls when I can just forcecage something, maze it, or cast wail of the banshee and completely remove it from battle. Most of the time, all that interesting stuff you could just wasn't worth the time in combat, and you resorted to a few staple tactics. At low levels it was worth debuffing stuff, though really, even then most of the debuffs were combat enders. A glitterdust was as good as a save or die at that level.

Offense just beat out defense so much that summoning or trying to protect your allies wasn't even worth it. It was simply easier to just kill or neutralize whatever it was that you were fighting.

I hate certain aspects of 3.x, but I enjoy most of it. I hate most aspects of 4e, and have seen little redeeming value.

I have to run 3.5 with literally pages and pages of houserules, just to get it anywhere near playable.

As far as 4E goes, I'll probably have to rewrite the entire ritual section, and likely mod solos and elites by scaling back their hp.

Overall, I'm not really sure what will be more work when it's all said and done. In 4E, everyone is balanced, but incredibly bland, so you're constantly adding things that are interesting. In 3.5, spellcasters have a huge amount of interesting options, but everyone else is completely bland, and it has a balance problem the size of China.

Right now I'm kind of leaning toward fixing up 4E simply because the monster system makes a bit more sense and it's just plain easier to DM a 4E game on the fly, something that you'll pretty much never be able to do with 3.5 no matter how much you house rule it.

It's really the only thing in my mind that puts it on top. 4E gives players tons of options, but cripples the DM's ability to play on the fly, which is very damaging to running a game, since it pretty much means that once the PCs go in a direction you haven't imagined, you either have to railroad 'em or toss the rules out the window and just make up random numbers. I've done both of those, and I have to say I don't like either.

Voss wrote:

sigma999 wrote:Primal and Elemental seem related.

And of course, to make it worse, people are already throwing fire and cold and lightning around with the 'arcane' source, so... really, what the hell? I get that barbarians and druids are going to be 'primal' as in feral and animalistic, but... um. Yeah. That doesn't do it for me for either class. It isn't anything resembling an actual druid in any way at all, and its a very small sliver of the berserker concept.

Bullshit, I say. Barbarian -> martial and druid -> divine. Away with this "primal" and "elemental" crap.

So, if I want to play a barb I have to play "Thog smash!" (or, more accurately, "Thog bite!")? Vonderful. I've been pondering how the 3.x rage mechanic can be reflavored..."Battle Focus," or possession by ancestral spirits, or whatever. Doesn't have to be literal anger. But of course, in 4e there's only One Way to Play!
...
Hey, maybe that should be 4e's catchphrase.
"D&D 4e: There's Only One Way to Play!"

And what does one use ki (chi) for, if not for martial arts or... lulz... recovering from martial arts injuries?

Needs less diversifying, more condensing.

Asian things are special. No, really. Thats it. But of course, they'll likely go the CW samurai route and suck all the flavor out. And make it suck to boot.

IMO, ki/chi should = psionic. Monks and other oriental mystical types have much of a psionic flavor. Monks should have either martial or psionic as a power source, or (gasp!) even both.

Talisman wrote:
Though I do wonder how in hell the Artificer will fit in, given 4e's "interesting" magic item economy.

Since anyone can handwave anything to existence with a large enough pile of gold (or rather, a pile of components of a certain gp value, and handwavium automatically counts anyway) and an hour, they seem kind of redundant. I mean, really. 4th level, 0-2 feats, and X gold, and you can have anything of your level or less in an hour. You seriously might as well be carrying an invisible weightless vending machine. The DM can't deny you anything without coming across as a completely arbitrary dick, because its written into the basic player rules.

To make it even worse, its so badly worded, as long as you are high enough level, 'the item' you turn into godplate of godfucking +6 can literally be a stick. Your party should seriously get to town and exchange all of their gold for components and/or handwavium. There is nothing on the list of equipment that you could possibly want instead. Once again, as a party, you neither need nor want a pirate ship. You want gold to turn into something else to turn into something else that you can laughably call character power.


On the truenamer- to be fair, this class can't possibly be redone to be worse than it already is. Unless, of course, you think a truenamer should be more than mangling the truenames of opponents to injure them and cause minor status effects.

Damn. That makes me sad.

Talisman wrote:

Voss wrote:

sigma999 wrote:Primal and Elemental seem related.

And of course, to make it worse, people are already throwing fire and cold and lightning around with the 'arcane' source, so... really, what the hell? I get that barbarians and druids are going to be 'primal' as in feral and animalistic, but... um. Yeah. That doesn't do it for me for either class. It isn't anything resembling an actual druid in any way at all, and its a very small sliver of the berserker concept.

Bullshit, I say. Barbarian -> martial and druid -> divine. Away with this "primal" and "elemental" crap.

So, if I want to play a barb I have to play "Thog smash!" (or, more accurately, "Thog bite!")? Vonderful. I've been pondering how the 3.x rage mechanic can be reflavored..."Battle Focus," or possession by ancestral spirits, or whatever. Doesn't have to be literal anger. But of course, in 4e there's only One Way to Play!
...
Hey, maybe that should be 4e's catchphrase.
"D&D 4e: There's Only One Way to Play!"

And what does one use ki (chi) for, if not for martial arts or... lulz... recovering from martial arts injuries?

Needs less diversifying, more condensing.

Asian things are special. No, really. Thats it. But of course, they'll likely go the CW samurai route and suck all the flavor out. And make it suck to boot.

IMO, ki/chi should = psionic. Monks and other oriental mystical types have much of a psionic flavor. Monks should have either martial or psionic as a power source, or (gasp!) even both.

It is weird that they're inventing so many different power sources when power sources are nothing but flavor text. Unless they're going to go the M&M route and have anti-[insert power source here] fields.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Well, the freedom of movement change was kind of necessary, because otherwise high level monsters that grappled you were simply impossible to beat, unless you were a wizard and dimension doored away.

That specific change was shit however. It removed grappling from the game. A better change would have been something like "You gain a +1 bonus (or whatever) per caster level to resist grapple checks." The best change would be to give fighters nice things and get everyone on the RNG. As it is now, it makes combat less interesting and it removes fun character and monster archetypes.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:And really, the game didn't need yet another fighter hoser monster.

This is false. The problem is the disparity of power between casters and noncasters. Not between monsters and "fighter hoser monsters."

RandomCasualty2 wrote:That was the fundamental problem with 3.5 high level. You could do all kinds of interesting stuff, but the combats were so fast, you really had no reason to.

Only if that was your groups playstyle. If every combat was solvable by a save or die, and if the monsters always failed their saves, then yes, combats would be uninteresting.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:I mean why dick around with summoning shit or creating walls when I can just forcecage something, maze it, or cast wail of the banshee and completely remove it from battle.

When you have encounters with multiple monsters. When you have multiple encounters in a day. If your viable single target SoD's outnumber your opponents, then yes, your combats will become derivative.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Offense just beat out defense so much that summoning or trying to protect your allies wasn't even worth it.

For your group maybe. For others it is laughably untrue. Protecting allies can be a large, and viable, part of the game. That is what battlefield control is all about.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:It was simply easier to just kill or neutralize whatever it was that you were fighting.

Yes. The point is that in some situations, you are unable to kill the enemies fast enough, and you must use battlefield control spells and abilities to neutralize the enemy's offense.

RandomCasualty2 wrote: I have to run 3.5 with literally pages and pages of houserules, just to get it anywhere near playable.
...
Overall, I'm not really sure what will be more work when it's all said and done. In 4E, everyone is balanced, but incredibly bland, so you're constantly adding things that are interesting. In 3.5, spellcasters have a huge amount of interesting options, but everyone else is completely bland, and it has a balance problem the size of China.

I agree with this.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Right now I'm kind of leaning toward fixing up 4E simply because the monster system makes a bit more sense and it's just plain easier to DM a 4E game on the fly, something that you'll pretty much never be able to do with 3.5 no matter how much you house rule it.

I don't think this is true. If you have a foundation of houserules at the start of a campaign, it is possible to have encounters and adventures on the fly.

Talisman wrote: Regarding classes, let me suggest this: they'll ALL be around in 4e, eventually. 4e exist, in large part, to sell more books and make more money for WotC. I personally have over 40 base classes in various 3.x WotC books. If 4e's purpose is to make money by selling books, it stands to reason that, eventually, ALL 3.x classes will be around as 4e classes, even the Truenamer and the Wearers of Magic Hats Made of Souls (aka incarnum users).

Though I do wonder how in hell the Artificer will fit in, given 4e's "interesting" magic item economy.

Awesome name.



And yet again, we need consolidated classes, not more of them.
Large lists of modular with class templates or tracks to help players slap predefined archetypes together and GOGOGO.
But that might just be my classless d20 agenda squawkin again.

3.x does disappoint me with the schizophrenic assortment of spells and classes, but 4e does not remedy the problem by taking it all away.
Rather than stating (in 3.x) that A > B > C, and nothing beats A (spellcasting, for instance), it could have been A > B > C > A, or A = B = C (as with 4e).

But the designers took the easy way out, and reduced everything to the level of a bunch of Fighters with crossbows. And agreed, I don't like that either.

sigma999 wrote:Awesome name.

All the smart-aleckery of this forum is rubbing off on me. :twisted:


[quote="sigma999]And yet again, we need consolidated classes, not more of them.
Large lists of modular with class templates or tracks to help players slap predefined archetypes together and GOGOGO.
But that might just be my classless d20 agenda squawkin again.[/quote]

Now that looks cool. Take an archetype, slap on a template. Say, warrior archetype + divine servant template = paladin. Heck, you could even use 4e's roles as the archetypes, and it could lead to such awesomeness as holy strikers and arcane knights.

I don't want to disrupt this thread, but...are you up for something like this after Project Feybook is done?

So. Races, and a couple random thoughts.

The back of the MM monster races make me sad. The intent seems to be, 'here are some alternate races, but they just can't be as good as the PH races, so we're going to leave out a couple traits'. I can vaguely understand not wanting to take the space for racial feats, but they shorted all these races by 2-3 traits when compared to the PH races. That sucks, especially since quite a few are more interesting than the PH races. Which is a shame, since they fill some holes (strength based races to go with all the damn strength based classes in the book).

On the Ph races themselves. Favored classes are gone, but it seems really strange that most of the races are a perfect fit for exactly one class. To the point there isn't much point in playing that class if you aren't playing that race, or playing that race without that class.
Dragonborn = charisma warlord. The charisma bonus isn't useful for anyone else. And strength doesn't help a warlock.

Dwarf = laser cleric.
Elf = ranger. And the racial powers make this better (shift over difficult terrain and rerolls? Perfect fucking ranger. (exception: they are also good laser clerics).
halfling = rogue.
tiefling = fey warlock. The fact that tieflings don't make good infernal warlock makes me want to kick someone in the nuts. No, really, how stupid is this? Thats their whole race in a nutshell, and they suck at it.

half-elf= another exception. those two stats, in combination, aren't good for shit. Passable warlock, except the charisma bonus doesn't really help. You want int to go with either of those stats. Plus, they're fucking half-elves. The con bonus makes no sense, no matter how many times the fanboyz fanwank 'hybrid vigor' or some such shit.

humans are decent, especially at the classes no one else cares about, and classes that don't really have to care about a secondary stat. Wizards, laser clerics, etc.

eladrins just suck. Doubling up on a single defense is just subpar, no matter how you slice it. A wizard doesn't have to care, but its still a waste.

Why can't we all just agree to kill the damn half-elves already? Look, I know Tolkien used 'em, and I'm a huge Tolkien fan. But there were a grand total of THREE half-elves in all of Tolkien's thousands of years of history. Three, and they *all* got absorbed back into the race of Man (Elrond was a second-generation anomaly).

If you want a half-elf, play a pointy-eared human or a bulky elf and angst about it a lot.

...

Oh, and you're right Voss: half-elf racial bonuses make no frikking sense. Love how they don't share any stat bonuses with EITHER parent race.

...

Half-elves grant a bonus to Diplomacy to allies within 10 squares (My friends and I rationalize this that no one likes half-elves, so the presence of one encourages others to team up...and beat the snot out of the half-elf). Is there any reason you couldn't, say, hire a small army of half-elves to follow you around and grant an insane Diplomacy mod? The bonus appears to be unnamed, meaning (unless 4e has changed this) that it stacks with itself.

Actually, nothing I see indicates that the half-elves have to DO anything, or even be conscious, to grant the bonus. Could I have a cart filled with 20 unconscious, bound, gagged half-elves covered with a pile of straw, and gain a +20 Diplomacy bonus as long as I'm within 50' of it?

Talisman wrote: I don't want to disrupt this thread, but...are you up for something like this after Project Feybook is done?

I do plan to chop up, digest, and regurgitate all the old d20 classless stuff I've struggled with after Feybook, whenever that is.

So, yeah. Absofuckinglutely.
A post-4e 3.x-classless adaptation is a damned nice thing to look forward to, although I do plan to begin a music programming project with an old friend this summer, take up painting/The Classics again to finish a design degree (at some point in my life, before 30), and learn electric guitar.
I'll work it in. -_-;

Half-elf bonuses to Diplomacy are named racial bonuses, so there isn't any stacking going on.

virgileso wrote:Half-elf bonuses to Diplomacy are named racial bonuses, so there isn't any stacking going on.

That's good.

That means that diplomats will only carry one half-elf in a sack wherever they go.

Except that half-elves remain the superior diplomats because they have a +2 bonus to the skill, making them a single point ahead of any other +Cha race (and two points ahead for the races without +Cha).