The Little Raven
First Post
Probably because of the centuries old classification of necromancy as a black art. That's a much stronger legacy than the modern thought of "it's just a tool like any other."
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- Thread starter Klaus
- Start date
Probably because of the centuries old classification of necromancy as a black art. That's a much stronger legacy than the modern thought of "it's just a tool like any other."
Nemesis Destiny
Adventurer
"Black Art," yes, I grant that, but black art doesn't necessarily mean fear and skeletons.
Things that grant THPs, conditions like weakened, dazed, stunned, penalties to attacks and/or defenses, draining life from enemies to grant it to allies, tearing things apart with crackling purple-black mojo, and, dare, I say it, healing.
Yes, healing, but from an Arcane perspective rather than divine, yet distinct from the inspiring power of the Bard, and different than the mage-punk potionry of the Artificer. Like an arcane physician (though I suppose you could flavour an Artificer like that).
I liked Kamikaze Midget's take on things, and would have XP'd that post if I hadn't done so recently.
Anyway, the question was mostly rhetorical. I'm not a complete idiot, and fairly aware of historical context.
Things that grant THPs, conditions like weakened, dazed, stunned, penalties to attacks and/or defenses, draining life from enemies to grant it to allies, tearing things apart with crackling purple-black mojo, and, dare, I say it, healing.
Yes, healing, but from an Arcane perspective rather than divine, yet distinct from the inspiring power of the Bard, and different than the mage-punk potionry of the Artificer. Like an arcane physician (though I suppose you could flavour an Artificer like that).
I liked Kamikaze Midget's take on things, and would have XP'd that post if I hadn't done so recently.
Anyway, the question was mostly rhetorical. I'm not a complete idiot, and fairly aware of historical context.
As do I. I hope they come up with something a little more creative than just allowing necromancers to bypass necrotic resist. Maybe something like:
"Necromantic Mastery: When you deal necrotic damage to a creature with necrotic resistance, the target is dazed until the end of your next turn."
That one might be a little too good, but something along those lines--necromancers control or slow undead rather than directly damaging them.
You know, I get tired of hearing this, so lets talk about it.
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. It's circumstantial evidence, not conclusive evidence, but it is evidence. It's more or less the entire idea behind Occam's Razor. Absence of evidence isn't proof of absence, but if you search far and wide and gather all the information you can and find no evidence of something, even in places where you would expect to find it, then yeah that's evidence that maybe what you're looking for isn't there after all. If this book had actual classes, you could reasonably expect that fact to be mentioned by developers when they discuss the book at conventions. You could reasonably expect the fact to be mentioned in the previews. You could reasonably expect the fact to be advertised on the cover. The fact that there's no evidence supporting the idea of full classes in this book in any of the places you would expect such evidence to appear is evidence, if not proof, that there probably aren't full classes in this book, and the fact that pretty much all of the iconic shadow magic concepts have already been shoe-horned into builds that we already know about only supports that conclusion.
As am I. Necrotic is bad by default - a disadvantage for any power that uses it. It'll be hard to fix it. More or less, every build that focuses on its use needs to ignore resistance by default, or the powers just need to be stronger then other powers because they come with the necrotic drawback, and then on top of that there need to be feats and items that make it better, equivalent to those supporting cold, psychic, and radiant.
What I expect is that there will be a feat to ignore resistance and for that to be the sum total of support for necrotic. Which will mean it's still terrible, and those builds that rely on it subpar, as they have to burn a feat just to remove the drawback, where as characters using any other element could have spent that feat making their powers even better.
But who knows. My faith in WotC right now is about nil. They've gotten progressively better at 4e monster design, but everything else, from their digital support to their class design philosophies to the new treasure paradigm all has me looking forward to new releases less and less with every new product and preview I see.
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Nemesis Destiny
Adventurer
This is a carefully controlled release from a company whose history of withholding information or giving misleading previews (deliberately or not) is legendary.
Legendary.
The back copy is not silent on the matter either, it's just not clear or explicit. That is not evidence one way or the other. Where you see evidence, I see incomplete or misleading information.
That information exists, it just isn't currently available to either of us, or most other users on this forum. Whichever one of us is proven right at this point doesn't matter. Personally, I'll be just as likely to be thrilled if you are, in fact, correct on this.
It's funny, because as an atheist I'm normally on the other side of this argument. There are a couple of ironic key differences though. First, I don't care which way it turns out. I'm clearly not personally invested in the final product, so unlike the typical "intelligent designer", I lack any kind of zeal whatsoever. Second, we both know that the proof that will validate one argument or the other currently exists, we just don't have access to it. We both know we will, and when. It's a waiting game.
fanboy2000
Adventurer
So, at the Winter Fantasy prior to the release of 3.5 there was a t-shirt with the 3.5 stats for the pit fiend. It didn't have a CR listed.
This prompted rampant speculation that challenge ratings had been dropped from 3.5.
In reality, they weren't yet sure what CR to assign the new pit fiend yet.
I'm not sure if this is relevant to anything. But there it is.
Actually I like the Seeker a lot. It's my favorite Controller class. The only thing it is lacking is a bit of support, i.e. a Primal Power 2 supplement.
Similarly, the Runepriest is a solid class - not a favorite of mine, but solid. Again the problem is simply lacking a Divine Power 2 supplement.
Unfortunately because of the Essentialization of the game, we'll never see any of these.
This is pure speculation on my part, but I think you have it backward.
I think we're seeing the new Essentials approach because the market was not bearing up the old model any longer. That's not to suggest 4E is not doing well (I don't know one way or the other), but rather that it's getting to the point where the audience is more or less stabilizing rather than growing at a rapid clip.
I suspect the vast majority of D&D players out there play one character at a time and only buy what they think they'll need to play that character. They don't need an endless stream of new classes. And the various Power books likely only sell to a fraction of the base audience because only people who play a character of that power source (and completionists) will buy them.
If each release only addresses a fraction of the audience, then your production costs remain level (or even rise because you lose out on volume printing discounts)--you still have to dedicate employees to producing quality content. But your revenues are declining because only a fraction of your audience is interested.
The old model also creates another problem. Here's a new customer who comes across the game on the shelf of his local Barnes & Noble. Does he buy Player's Handbook 1? Player's Handbook 2? 3? Does he need them all? What if the store only has Player's Handbook 3? Can he start with that? What about DMG 1 and 2 and Monster Manuals 1, 2, and 3? It's confusing and probably not worth his time to figure it out.
For the existing fan, or someone who's been around RPGs, it's not a big deal. But for a new customer thinking of taking the plunge, it can be a huge barrier to entry. That's not such a big problem when you're using game stores as your primary point of sale--we can presume the staff there have enough knowledge to explain it. But it's a big problem if you're looking to expand into big box stores like Target and Wal-Mart.
For the latter problem, there's Essentials. It's intended to help educate stores on what to stock and to make it easier for the new consumer to determine what to buy. Whether it actually succeeds at that is another story. I know a lot of people take issue with the names of the two player books. But whether that's a legitimate issue or an Internet tempest-in-a-tea-pot remains to be seen.
I suspect that a book like Heroes of Shadow is supposed to address the first problem. Instead of introducing yet another slew of classes and yet another power source to support, it's going to present options for existing classes, making it more broadly applicable to the characters of players in the existing base. Again, whether it succeeds at that remains to be seen.
WalterKovacs
First Post
On the other hand, it can just as easily go with ignoring necrotic resistance as one of it's class features by something along the lines of "their control of necrotic energy goes beyond simply being able to fling it at their foes, but to be able to pull it out of those that are powered by it".
Oh, it's easy enough to justify why necromancers can ignore necrotic resistance. It's just boring. Much more fun to give them a special ability tied to necrotic resist instead.
