D&D 4E 4e With No Casters?

[Lizard]

I think this won't hurt too much. If everyone has a level based bonus to skills, you can do rooftop fights without worrying that no one has ranks of balance, and a trip to the sewers without worrying about swim, and everyone can sneak if they have too, and if someone gets caught they can try to BS their way out.

IMX city adventures need every PC to have some of every skill. From what I see, 4e should cover that.

PS

See, this is one of the things I disliked about SWSE and got me started on the path of 4e-uncertainty. I don't like "everyone does everything at least marginally well". I like "You lummoxes stay here while I scout ahead" or "No one can swim down to that sunken wreck but me". One of the weakness of 3x and earlier D&D, for example, was how quickly magic made the skill monkey useless. "Climb +15? I have Spider Climb. Hide +20? I have Invisibility. Bluff +15? I have Dominate Person. Heal +12? The Cleric has Heal. The spell. Cures everything. Sucks to be you."

A lot depends on how important "Trained only" uses are. And how easily I can add *rules* for Profession/Craft/Perform beyond the dismissive and condescending "Write it on your character sheet" system.

 

[Imban]

(...)or start everyone with access to all heroic abilities and grant access to divine and arcane via feats. (...) You could run Conan with just the heroic classes for PCs and NPC spellcasters as villains and allies.

Thinko for "martial" or what? I'm thinking so, since martial was used earlier in the post.

 

[AZRogue]

This is the best thing I have read in weeks. It makes me happy. I have underlined what to me are a few key points:
1. Martial Rangers.
2. Mix & Match Classes.

Wow, that makes me very, very happy. It's probably some of the best news I've seen yet. Why isn't it an article instead of just a message board post? This is the kind of thing people want to see, I think.

Many, many options are running through my mind. If the system is that modular, you can have some exciting campaigns that would have been too difficult to run before without so much customizing you might as well be using another system.

I see a lot of implications that I like here. The big negative was the comment on heavy armor. Yeah, it's always been like that, but I was hoping for a Power/Feat combo or something that would use the mechanic (1/2 level + dex) to AC for fighters without any armor. Depending on how AC looks at higher level. Still, a flat bonus is workable, too. Maybe in the Martial book if it's too late to work on this now? I can hope.

 

[Imban]

Wow, that makes me very, very happy. It's probably some of the best news I've seen yet. Why isn't it an article instead of just a message board post? This is the kind of thing people want to see, I think.

It's not Mike Mearls's fault that he's better at PR than WotC's actual PR people.

 

[AZRogue]

See, this is one of the things I disliked about SWSE and got me started on the path of 4e-uncertainty. I don't like "everyone does everything at least marginally well". I like "You lummoxes stay here while I scout ahead" or "No one can swim down to that sunken wreck but me". One of the weakness of 3x and earlier D&D, for example, was how quickly magic made the skill monkey useless. "Climb +15? I have Spider Climb. Hide +20? I have Invisibility. Bluff +15? I have Dominate Person. Heal +12? The Cleric has Heal. The spell. Cures everything. Sucks to be you."

A lot depends on how important "Trained only" uses are. And how easily I can add *rules* for Profession/Craft/Perform beyond the dismissive and condescending "Write it on your character sheet" system.

I see where you're coming from. Still, at 20th level the level bonus would just be +10, which isn't that bad. I see your point, though.

 

[AZRogue]

It's not Mike Mearls's fault that he's better at PR than WotC's actual PR people.

More's the pity.

 

[Sitara]

See, this is one of the things I disliked about SWSE and got me started on the path of 4e-uncertainty. I don't like "everyone does everything at least marginally well". I like "You lummoxes stay here while I scout ahead" or "No one can swim down to that sunken wreck but me". One of the weakness of 3x and earlier D&D, for example, was how quickly magic made the skill monkey useless. "Climb +15? I have Spider Climb. Hide +20? I have Invisibility. Bluff +15? I have Dominate Person. Heal +12? The Cleric has Heal. The spell. Cures everything. Sucks to be you."

A lot depends on how important "Trained only" uses are. And how easily I can add *rules* for Profession/Craft/Perform beyond the dismissive and condescending "Write it on your character sheet" system.

Well all those spells are limited, even in 3e,by wizard spell slots. THough I personally ban invisibility or severly nerf it, as well as fly. cause too many problems and are too high magicky. As for the skills, well your examples are sound, but consider the entire party including the full armor plated fighter and the full plated paladin having to quickjly cross a rickety bridge over a churbning river thousands of feet below, while being chased by a hydra! Yeah, time for balance checks!

Not only will the fighter and pally probably not have pumped points into balance (because face it, they hardly get any skillpts as is ANDmost are spent on essentials like ride, diplomacy, intimidate, etc) And plate basically screws any chance they have even if they rolled a nat 20

 

[Mercule]

I guess I lose on this question. I wonder how Mearls envisions a martial controller. Quasi-magical ki user? Or something more mundane, like a reach weapon specialist.

He's the guy with the trebuchet that only tosses cubic boulders.

 

[HeinorNY]

One of the nice things about the roles is that they let you play around with power sources without messing up the basic structure of the game. You can totally do a no magic game with the PH by sticking to the fighter, rogue, warlord, and ranger. You wouldn't have a controller, but it is possible to create a martial one.

You can also roll things back another step and do some crazy stuff with the structure of the classes. Since many of the elements of character progression are unified, you could run classless D&D by allowing players to select maneuvers and spells from any class they want, mingling the two together, or start everyone with access to all heroic abilities and grant access to divine and arcane via feats.

The really nice thing is that this structure allows you to better depict many classic D&D settings and fantasy worlds. You can run pre-War of the Lance adventures in Dragonlance without clerics. You could run Conan with just the heroic classes for PCs and NPC spellcasters as villains and allies.

The one stumbling block is that the game expects fighters to wear heavy armor, but you could get around that by building a simple house rule (a fighter in light armor gets a flat bonus to AC to make up the gap).

That's what we wanna hear!
So much better than the halfling article.
Why can't we have articles like this?

IMHO Mike Mearls has been the best 4E marketeer so far, at least everything his says is exciting and sells me completelly.

 

[pukunui]

That's what we wanna hear!
So much better than the halfling article.
Why can't we have articles like this?

Cos it's easier to write stream-of-consciousness posts on a message board than it is to write a proper article with formal language and get it oked by your bosses/editors/etc and have it posted on the website, etc etc?

I agree, though ... they should be putting stuff like this up as articles.