Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
ack.... what a thing to lay on a class
Introducing New Player to Epic Campaign
ack.... what a thing to lay on a class
darkbard
Legend
I've never looked much at the class beyond a few poachable powers. Why do you say this (even, I assume, at least partly in jest)?
There's a metric ton of complexity in Runepriest, but the complexity doesn't actually lead to more interesting play. "In addition, whenever an enemy deals damage to you with an attack, you gain a bonus to damage rolls against that enemy until the end of your next turn. The bonus equals your Constitution modifier, regardless of the number of times the enemy damages you in a round."
Now you have to keep track of which enemies damaged you for a small amount of bonus damage. Ugh.
Also, not especially clear why Runepriest isn't just a sub-build of Str-Cleric where Runepriest is a substitute for Healer's Lore or Battle Cleric's Lore.
Anyway, the point was - they were doing stupid stuff for complexity's sake. That's usually a sign that there's some creative unhappiness.
Anyway, the point was - they were doing stupid stuff for complexity's sake. That's usually a sign that there's some creative unhappiness.
nogray
Adventurer
Thanks to everyone for the feedback, though the thread has drifted a bit far afield.
It's not too different than my initial idea, then, so it seems I might be on the right track; I just subbed 3rd for 1st in my list. I thought the initial simplicity and occasional frailty of first-level characters might be lead to a less-engaging experience. 3rd gives a player a second encounter power and a utility power for increased options.
This will be the new player's first experience with actual D&D. The only other system played is Dungeon World, and not that many sessions of it. The new player has a little gaming experience with some certain computer games, but not that much that is cooperative, team-based play. I am uncertain as to how well 4e's complexity and demand on attention will be handled.
The other players seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the idea, too, as they will get to relearn some of their own character moves. As to the role and class, while I am inclined to agree, my first priority is to match what the new player's concept for the character happens to be. I will be mindful of the mechanical complexities and thank you for the specific suggestions.
Highest regards,
nogray
It's not too different than my initial idea, then, so it seems I might be on the right track; I just subbed 3rd for 1st in my list. I thought the initial simplicity and occasional frailty of first-level characters might be lead to a less-engaging experience. 3rd gives a player a second encounter power and a utility power for increased options.
This will be the new player's first experience with actual D&D. The only other system played is Dungeon World, and not that many sessions of it. The new player has a little gaming experience with some certain computer games, but not that much that is cooperative, team-based play. I am uncertain as to how well 4e's complexity and demand on attention will be handled.
The other players seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the idea, too, as they will get to relearn some of their own character moves. As to the role and class, while I am inclined to agree, my first priority is to match what the new player's concept for the character happens to be. I will be mindful of the mechanical complexities and thank you for the specific suggestions.
Highest regards,
nogray
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
One of my players tried to play one. After the 3rd week he reached 2nd level and by then he was muttering, drawing strange figures on all the character sheets and books. Week four they hit 3rd level. He called me the day before we were supposed to game again. His demeanor bothered me, and I should have gone out to check on him, but foolishly I just posted some cheerful message to Facebook and left it at that. Three weeks later I finally made it out to his place. His father had already gone through his things, but it was clear he must have been in a terrible state of mind. There were runes drawn everywhere on the walls of his apartment, but it was what I found in back closet that I will never forget...
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I think it is more fair to say that PHB3 is why there was Essentials. It is really mostly a heap of crap and adds little to 4e IMHO, though the hybrid rules are an exception (and there are some perfectly decent feats and various other individual elements). About the only GOOD thing it has is the Monk. Psionics could have just been left on the roadside dead for all it did for 4e, the implementation was sub-par, none of the psionic classes was memorable or much of a success.
The rest was equally meh. The Runepriest is a mass of highly trivial modifiers that are all gated by various obscure modal switches that don't exist for any clear thematic reason. Then its coupled with an almost-mandatory feat chain that actually manages to deprive you almost all feat choice, something even most of the highly feat-starved builds of other classes didn't manage to do.
The Seeker is abysmal. Filled with weak powers and based on a sort of forced concept that doesn't thematically gel. It COULD have been a decent class despite some thematic questionability, but they managed to totally botch it.
The PHB3 races aren't much better. Minotaurs are OK, but highly niche and mechanically highly channeled towards certain specific builds. Shardminds are maybe in some sense a cool idea, but at best they didn't follow up on it and at worst its just a very weird race with no real reason to exist. Which brings us to the Wilden, which is just kinda meh. Not quite picking up on the myths of the 'green man', and again hard pressed to justify itself. Githzerai is just more weirdness. It goes with the theme of the book at least, which is something. Its still a bit 'out there' as something to actually play in most campaigns.
The entire book felt a lot like the leftover dregs of stuff that wasn't really up to snuff but was needed for page filler to ballast the psionics stuff that was only justified by the fact that most earlier editions eventually tacked it on somewhere, so 4e was obliged to do likewise.
PHB3 really shouldn't ever have been published. Instead they should have come out with basically versions of HotFW, HotEC, and maybe done a niche book purely on psionics (with better classes), and then perhaps a Heroes of the Orient with monks and some fleshed out versions of the OA stuff they did in Dragon (which was pretty good, as was the Monk of course).
I'm not sure I'd go that far. I think the issue was twofold. There's two good options(Monk, Hybrid) and two decent options(Battlemind, Psion), but they each have their issues due to R&D not really understanding the balance of 4e. Namely:
Battlemind's a Defender who can shift when their mark shifts. They need a mechanic that lets them punish a marked target who decides to charge. Aka melee basic. Easily fixed with Melee Training for free or give a feat such as Intelligent Blademaster that functions on Constitution if you don't want to go that far.
Hybrid has a couple of wacky areas due to how sometimes armor and skills fall out. Again, not a hard fix - anyone proficient with any light armor in either class gets Leather. Anyone proficient in any heavy armor in either class gets Chain. If a class feature grants armor proficiency of some kind, you only get the armor part if you spend your hybrid talent on said armor proficiency. If you gain a bonus skill in a specific skill and so does the other side, then you get to pick a bonus skill from those two choices. So a Cleric/Warlock would be proficient in Chain armor and would get to pick from Religion or Arcana as a skill choice. Nothing particularly broken there, but now said Cleric/Warlock who has Con/Wis as primary stats and Leather Armor is functional at 1st level without needing to spend hybrid talent feat on AC.
Psion: They really don't understand that +/- stat is a really bad idea. All +/- stats should change to +3 if option gained in Heroic, +4 if gained in Paragon, +5 if gained in Epic. So when you augment Dishearten by 2, if your Charisma is at least 16, then you penalize by 3. This will let people realize that the really fun options of Psion such as Dishearten, Thunder Tether, Kinetic Burst, etc...are really a lot of fun.
Monk works mostly as is. Just needs to beef up that Monk Unarmed Strike with - get inherent bonuses to hit with it, use Dexterity as a melee basic attack, and if one hits with it off-turn, gets to use Flurry of Blows with it even if it already worked that round. That gives Monks reasons to not have a weapon in one hand, which is the opposite of what is true now - you want two weapons to be optimized.
But yeah, the rest is mostly a waste - and clearly skimped on playtesting. I like the Githzerai as that's a classic AD&D battle between them and the Githyanki, but kind of limited for such as a specific book and everything else is too.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Right, mostly it just felt like they didn't really seriously playtest the material. Most of it isn't bad bad bad, its just not quite thought out well enough, kind of bothersome in various ways, and just not quite compelling. They even fixed some of the issues later in PP and whatnot. It just mostly doesn't seem like a compelling addition to 4e. Instead of introducing a whole new and slightly problematic type of MCing, why not just spend the page count on some additional interesting MC feats? Maybe even some interesting stuff like some PP/ED that you can only access via certain MC combos? Hybrids are basically a hack, not something that seems worthy of a core book. I just don't think they had a compelling argument beyond promises made in 2008 for putting out the book. I guess some sort of 'grid filling' as certainly MM3 was worthy, and I think a DMG3 would have been interesting (and could have contained things like hybrids perhaps as more of a "here's a nonstandard optional thing you can play with" if they had the page count). PHB3 might even have simply packaged what became the post-Essentials player-facing books.
Really, I think 4e just got mired in the idea of constantly publishing too much stuff. It worked earlier on, but they should have cut back sooner. Anyway, I think we've kinda gotten FAR off the topic here... I don't have a lot to add on the subject of epic PC intros at this point.
I do like the idea of running a series of 'flashbacks' though. If I ever (highly doubtful) get to restart one of my dormant campaigns I think I'd be pretty tempted to borrow that concept.
Similar Threads
