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Mike Mearls on how 4E could have looked
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7526584" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>I know this is a rather long-delayed comment on this, but....</p><p></p><p>I tried this design approach in HoML (both the one Mearls is talking about AND the options that [MENTION=82504]Garthanos[/MENTION] mentions). This is REALLY REALLY HARD to make work, and there's a huge cost in terms of diluting the thematic coherence of the class' power list. You can't just 'add an overlay' and/or a class feature choice, or something similar and successfully transform one role to another. Roles are more deeply ingrained into the classes than that, and making 'role light' so you can simply swap them out is a poor substitute. This is basically why Strike! is uninteresting to me, the 'role matrix' approach it uses just doesn't really do justice to roles.</p><p></p><p>Now, I think its fine to do something akin to what the Berserker does in HotFW, make a 'switching' class that can toggle into a different role when it makes thematic/narrative sense. It is still hard to pull off well, and you won't suddenly stop being an X just because you are now in Y mode, but you can certainly go from 'high damage melee striker' to 'front line leader' or something like that and its workable.</p><p></p><p>One thing that was excellent about 4e was that the classes were almost inherently well-designed. Between power source and role and with the highly regularized structure of how you get powers through AEDU designers were hard-pressed to really screw it up (they did now and then but a solid 90% of all 4e classes are fine, and only maybe 2 out of almost 40 are really what I would call outright bad designs).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 7526584, member: 82106"] I know this is a rather long-delayed comment on this, but.... I tried this design approach in HoML (both the one Mearls is talking about AND the options that [MENTION=82504]Garthanos[/MENTION] mentions). This is REALLY REALLY HARD to make work, and there's a huge cost in terms of diluting the thematic coherence of the class' power list. You can't just 'add an overlay' and/or a class feature choice, or something similar and successfully transform one role to another. Roles are more deeply ingrained into the classes than that, and making 'role light' so you can simply swap them out is a poor substitute. This is basically why Strike! is uninteresting to me, the 'role matrix' approach it uses just doesn't really do justice to roles. Now, I think its fine to do something akin to what the Berserker does in HotFW, make a 'switching' class that can toggle into a different role when it makes thematic/narrative sense. It is still hard to pull off well, and you won't suddenly stop being an X just because you are now in Y mode, but you can certainly go from 'high damage melee striker' to 'front line leader' or something like that and its workable. One thing that was excellent about 4e was that the classes were almost inherently well-designed. Between power source and role and with the highly regularized structure of how you get powers through AEDU designers were hard-pressed to really screw it up (they did now and then but a solid 90% of all 4e classes are fine, and only maybe 2 out of almost 40 are really what I would call outright bad designs). [/QUOTE]
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