This One Goes to . . . Ten [Merged four Oct 29 Playtest Package announcement threads]

Li Shenron said:

Once again, there will be less and less reasons to play a Fighter.

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How so? Just because the Fighter and Rogue share some combat maneuvers does not mean that there are less reasons to play a Fighter. Do shared spells give less reason to play the various types of spellcasters?

Ultimatecalibur said:

Do shared spells give less reason to play the various types of spellcasters?

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Yes, at least sometimes.

But it's more about each class having something unique.

Ultimatecalibur said:

How so? Just because the Fighter and Rogue share some combat maneuvers does not mean that there are less reasons to play a Fighter. Do shared spells give less reason to play the various types of spellcasters?

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In 3.x everybody had feats, and the fighter "schtick" was having more feats, which again made them feel a bit generic. Regarding spells - not all classes had access to spells and quite a lot of them were unique to a class.

And not every class has access to expertise dice, and I'll wager that some maneuvers are unique to each class.

Blackbrrd said:

Regarding spells - not all classes had access to spells and quite a lot of them were unique to a class.

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But all the spellcasting classes had spells. And a good number of the them did double up over multiple classes, especially the lower level ones. But very few people ever complained the cleric was less unique just because the druid and bard could also heal. And every single wizard spell was doubled up because the sorcerer's spell list matched it.

At the end of the day... it really comes down to half the people thinking its the crunch that makes classes unique, while the other half think it's the fluff that makes a class unique. Half the people thought the sorcerer was a unique class in 3E because they cast their spells differently than the wizard... while half the people saw barely any differentiation between the two because they shared a spell list and there was barely any fluff on the sorcerer whatsoever.

So what will end up happening is that half the people will see weapon-using classes using expertise dice and say they are now all pretty much the same and there's no reason to play one over another... while the other half will see the distinct separation of the fighting styles that one class gets that another won't, and add that to the story of the class of why, where, and when he does what he does... and find them each unique.

But let's also not forget here... this is just a trial. There's no guarantee that it's a definite that expertise dice will be used for more than one class. There's always a good chance that this change will get rolled back if enough people do not think it works or muddies the waters. So the best thing you can do is playtest several adventures with a fighter and a rogue and really find out if the fighter is now "not worth playing" because the rogue shares ED.

You know what I think the real Fighter/Rogue issue might end up being, and the one I think many people should playtest? It's the DEX-based Fighter alongside the Rogue. That might be the one place where both classes having EDice might make the DEX-fighter feel a bit also-ran. Does a dual-wielding Fighter with a Dualist fighting style end up losing ground to the Rogue now that they both power their abilities with EDice? That might be the place where something different might need to be added to the Fighter to make sure it doesn't get overshadowed. Because otherwise we'll end up with a pseudo-4E situation where Fighters end up defaulting to the heavy-armor tanking spec while the Rogue becomes the light armor, weapon finessed swashbuckler spec. Which I don't think is what anyone really wants to see. The Dex-based Fighter should remain a viable option.

The way I saw it Rogues probably did have to get something like Expertise Dice otherwise they'd be very boring against the other classes.

I'm curious about what they have for Wizard traditions, will it follow the traditional 8 schools and add couple other specializations that have cropped up alongside them (such as the elements)?

One thing that more classes using expertise dice might lead to along with multiclassing, is there might be a class that has some expertise dice and some spellcasting.

Do you really think the majority of players minmax? I would bet the majority of groups have fighters in every version of the game. And generic clerics and wizards too.

Has anyone actually got the new packet yet? The OP indicates that it is available, but the download appears to still be the October 8 packet (at least the name does--haven't actually bothered downloading, yet).

There is no indication of when it will be released today.

Interesting. I kind of like the way Core seems to be shaping up with regards to categories. The Rogue and Fighter are Martial Classes and use Maneuvers while the Wizard and Cleric are Magic-Using Classes and use Spells.

Curbing the number of daily spells-per-day to 2 per tier may wind up being a little over-restrictive for prepared casters. Maybe Ritual Casting options will help bridge the gap for some of the more situational, non-combat applications of magic.

It'll be interesting to see how the Rogue and the Fighter Expertise systems diverge in terms of application. They'll be fighting over the same design space, so clear thematic demarcations will be needed to prevent excessive bleeding through. However, now I'm really uncertain where the Swashbuckler / Duelist archetype is going to go. The Rogue is definitely more inclined to use Finesse Weapons and Light or no Armor as a general rule, but the "Best Fencer in all the Land" is supposed to be a fighter, so how does that work?

I'm very interested to get my hands on the new playtest packet today.

- Marty Lund