Bladesinger Preview!

[AbdulAlhazred]

Except that some of the new classes are very much like multiclassing, as they stand. I did some multiclassing gymnastics, to create my Feylock with a reasonably good melee strike. The Hexblade does it in one shot. A traditional Fighter/MU, from the old days, could take some real messing around to create. Suddenly, you have the Bladesinger.

They're almost pre-multiclassed. There are still some options available though, that don't involve power swap feats.

Yeah, I think in a sense that's true.

I sort of see the existing 4e situation as one where you have a group of highly generic super flexible base classes, which offer a lot of options and a lot of ways to pull in elements of other classes but require a lot of fiddling. They're great for building very specific options that are either not common enough or currently supported. Then you have your 'e-classes' which provide a specific focused build in an easy to implement package. They are just aimed at filling different needs.

I know it is fashionable to assume that the newer classes represent some kind of abandonment of the concepts embodied by the original generalized classes, but I don't think that's really a good way of looking at it. The Essentials style classes by themselves can't really provide a complete D&D, not in the post 3e multi-classing world at least. The 4e devs know that. They rely on the fact that the game already has these flexible generalized 'classic' classes. This allows them to be free to narrow their focus. It makes perfectly good logical sense that they now concentrate on these niches. After all, there are infinite little niches you can fit in the cracks between the classic classes broad concepts.

 

[Kinneus]

Yeah, I don't know how I feel about it. I love the Swordmage, and I just really like the flavor of an arcane guy with a sword, so that alone tempts me into taking this class.

A couple things are holding me back, though. Those melee basic-augmenting At-Wills are cool, and very controllery. Some, though, are -clearly- more powerful than the others (why on earth would you slow somebody when you could just as easily immobilize them?). This led me to the conclusion, on my first lazy read-through, that a Bladesinger got access to all of them. Now -that- would be interesting, and that would be new and bold design. It might even be worth giving up Dailies for. What it lacks in sheer, beat-you-over-the-head controlling power it makes up for with versatility!

I don't know why I thought the Bladesinger got access to every At-Will, but I have to say, I like my misreading better than reality. Poaching Wizard Encounters is all well and good, but I really can't expect them to work as Dailies without some sort of compensation.

I also can't help but feel like losing access to Dailies really cuts pretty deep into the controller role. When I think about controllers "doing what they do best," I think of damaging zones to break up enemy formations, conjurations and summons to block terrain, walls to change the battlefield, and powerful status effects like save-ends stun. Bladesinger can do exactly none of these, except for possibly an "end of next turn" version of the zones. Encounters-as-Dailies doesn't quite cut it.

Now, if it was just plain Wizard Encounters, then we might be in business. Dailies are the part of AEDU design I'm least attached to, so I really don't understand why WOTC seems so dead-set on taking away my precious Encounter powers with every new class! Serious question: have there been any Essentials-style classes that have no Dailies, but At-Wills and Encounters, with some measure of choice to the Encounters (so no, the Slayer's Power Strike doesn't count)? I ask because this is a sort of class I'd honestly be interested in playing.

My point is that the class right now feels like it's missing something. I'd prefer:
1) It gets access to all those pretty At-Wills, so it can use the perfect one in the perfect situation. This would be the main feature of the class, a huge and interesting break from current design, and really give it some "controller" street cred.
2) It should use Wizard Encounters as Wizard Encounters, and just plain not get Dailies. I'm not sure if this is a good change, but it's frankly the sort of class I'd like to play.
3) The designers need to get off their butts and give the class its own, actual, Daily-level Dailies. Sorry for being so cynical, but I can't get over how easy this class was to design. Just poop out a bunch of controllery At-Wills, add an Encounter power that has nothing to do with the class role, and say "use Wizard Encounters as Dailies and poach Wizard utilities," and done. Instant class! Pretty sure I could write something like that over my lunchbreak. The way those At-Wills are deployed is new and exciting, but I simply remain unconvinced that Encounters-as-Dailies is going to cut it, especially when it's role is supposed to be Controller, all about reshaping the battlefield. Honestly, what good is a slide 3 if you don't have a Fire Wall or damaging zone to slide him into? Or some way of easily applying Slow without the use of an Action Point? (I know I'm going to get a billion anecdotal examples of the time you used a slide 3 to throw Orcus off a mountain, or whatever, but you can't always depend on the battlefield terrain working to your advantage or on your allies having Agile Opportunist. My point is Bladeslingers have no way of capitalizing on a slide 3 themselves, short of putting an enemy into flanking).

So, I might give this class a try. It's probably the first Essentials-style class I'm actually interested in. Access to Wizard utilities might be its saving grace, but... anybody can get that with an Order Adept theme. So I dunno.

Everybody says that Essentials design is "pushing the boundaries," breaking the game down and building it back up again, trying new and exciting things... but I just don't see that. Every Essentials class I've ever looked at in-depth (with the exception of the Warpriest, Sentinel and the Mage, since they can poach older powers) seems to be about restricting options. Taking away either At-Wills, Encounters, and Dailies, giving fewer (or no) options when you level up, restricting the sort of powers you have to choose from. To use an earlier analogy, Essentials doesn't feel like WotC letting us grow up and make mistakes. That's what O4e feels like, to me at least. Essentials feels more like that leash you see toddlers wearing at the mall.

 

[FireLance]

Everybody says that Essentials design is "pushing the boundaries," breaking the game down and building it back up again, trying new and exciting things... but I just don't see that. Every Essentials class I've ever looked at in-depth (with the exception of the Warpriest, Sentinel and the Mage, since they can poach older powers) seems to be about restricting options. Taking away either At-Wills, Encounters, and Dailies, giving fewer (or no) options when you level up, restricting the sort of powers you have to choose from. To use an earlier analogy, Essentials doesn't feel like WotC letting us grow up and make mistakes. That's what O4e feels like, to me at least. Essentials feels more like that leash you see toddlers wearing at the mall.

Well yes, the Essentials classes have fewer choices, even though on the whole they add to the choices available to the players. Where I see the experimentation is in trying to find a reasonably balanced trade-off between constant, at-will, encounter and daily abilities. The slayer, for example, seemed to me to be trading off daily attacks for a constant bonus to damage. The bladesinger seems to me to be trading off less powerful dailies for more powerful at-wills.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Mike Mearls has been talking about a "complexity dial" recently. This is just speculation on my part, but it may be leading up to "unified" classes where the player's choice options are expanded from simply selecting between powers with the same frequency to powers with varying frequencies (so a "unified" fighter could choose between a constant damage bonus and a daily power, for example). In a way, we already see this with the utility power choices for some classes.

 

[Shroomy]

I would be a lot happier if the new design philosophy were not pushing people into playing a single class with no hybrid or multiclassing going on. Or at least a lot less of it.

About the only multiclassing possible with HoS and the Bladesinger is take a multi feat, and an off-class PP. I see no or little way to switch encounters, dailies or the like.

Of course, maybe they are moving multi-classing, or that basic concept tothe themes and such. That might work, but I do not think it will work well.

Maybe the designers consider multiclassing a failed experiment? I do not think it was ever good, but it was possible, for a great cost. I could live with that.

Last month there was a large playtest article in Dragon that provided multi-class and hybrid options for many of the classes from HotFK and HoS.

 

[Klaus]

I also can't help but feel like losing access to Dailies really cuts pretty deep into the controller role. When I think about controllers "doing what they do best," I think of damaging zones to break up enemy formations, conjurations and summons to block terrain, walls to change the battlefield, and powerful status effects like save-ends stun. Bladesinger can do exactly none of these, except for possibly an "end of next turn" version of the zones. Encounters-as-Dailies doesn't quite cut it.

That's where the Utilities earn their pay. The bulk of this class control will come from stuff like Mystical Debris, Phantasmal Terrain, Wall of Fog, etc.

I think the Bladesinger will be on par with the Hunter as a controller.

 

[Ryujin]

Last month there was a large playtest article in Dragon that provided multi-class and hybrid options for many of the classes from HotFK and HoS.

What he's talking about is that the new class structures tend to not have the old at-will/encounter/daily mechanic, so there's nothing that you can swap out with a power swap feat. Without that there can be no Paragon Multiclassing, for example.

 

[Kinneus]

That's where the Utilities earn their pay. The bulk of this class control will come from stuff like Mystical Debris, Phantasmal Terrain, Wall of Fog, etc.

So anybody who takes Order Adept is a fully-functioning Controller, eh?

 

[Klaus]

So anybody who takes Order Adept is a fully-functioning Controller, eh?

"Bulk", not totality. The bladespells contribute to the control (or can be focused for striker-level damage), and we still have to see the rest of the class.

 

[Ajar]

I can't XP [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] again -- could someone do it for me?

Great post.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Everybody says that Essentials design is "pushing the boundaries," breaking the game down and building it back up again, trying new and exciting things... but I just don't see that. Every Essentials class I've ever looked at in-depth (with the exception of the Warpriest, Sentinel and the Mage, since they can poach older powers) seems to be about restricting options. Taking away either At-Wills, Encounters, and Dailies, giving fewer (or no) options when you level up, restricting the sort of powers you have to choose from. To use an earlier analogy, Essentials doesn't feel like WotC letting us grow up and make mistakes. That's what O4e feels like, to me at least. Essentials feels more like that leash you see toddlers wearing at the mall.

I think the more accurate way of looking at it is 'packaging'. If you were going to build a two-weapon strikerish fighter then you can instead of pouring through lists of feats and powers simply build a Slayer. You get basically the same thing, except it is a lot easier to do it. The fact that you don't get a whole lot of different options at higher levels is not important to you, you already KNEW what you wanted. You don't need those options. They are just a burdensome chore to go through to figure out what you already know you want, and there's always the risk you'll have misunderstood something to start with and find your character unable to match your concept 20 levels later. The Slayer is guaranteed to work. In practice if you are going to play this sort of character to start with you haven't LOST anything you wanted anyway.

Essentials classes really aren't any kind of a replacement for anything that came before. They aren't a reimagining of existing classes, they are just simple bundles of powers and features designed from the ground up to give you what you want. Higher level E-class features aren't selectable because there's no real reason to do that, it would defeat the whole point. You know what you want. The things you get will work with that. You don't need choices of higher level daily powers for your Slayer because he's a SLAYER, of course he is going to do X, Y, and Z.

And note that this isn't necessarily a matter of 'easy mode' or simplification. It is more a matter of just streamlining the game experience. I can be the greatest living charops expert and there's no reason why I shouldn't just play a Slayer if that's the kind of character I want and it does what I want.