Heroes of Shadow Table of Contents

[Nemesis Destiny]

Hey, I stopped arguing before you.
We should all just wait until it is out. If I was wrong I will happily admit it then and be glad about it. And if not, I'm here to get apologies from various people win/win

You did indeed stop before I did, and good on you for it

I guess I'm easy to provoke.

If it turns out that I'm wrong, I'll own up to it, sure.

I do hope that I'm not, though, and in this case it has nothing to do with my pride. I actively want there to be options for non-Essentials, but right or wrong, I will get what I want from the product (more options).

 

[Klaus]

So yeah, I was joking about Klaus being/not being on that bandwagon. OTOH it would be interesting to hear his perspective on that subject since he has experience with developing PPs and EDs.

What about it Klaus? Got any insight on how that is working out from a dev perspective?

Not only from HoS, but also all the way back to the Arrow of the Moonbow PP for Dragon:

- Strong flavor first, rules afterwards.
- Try and make it unique, not "more of the same". If you find a unique mechanic for the powers, all the better.
- Broad availability is better.

 

[Estlor]

I'm not choosing sides or seeking to start any hat of essentalz here, but it Walking Dad left out the most likely to appear thing that's 100% incompatible with Essentials:

Warlock encounter attack powers.

 

[kaomera]

Which has already been established: Every time a game element comes out that has the name of your class of preference on it, you've added support to those classes. Even the essentials books themselves do this.

Classes, yes, but I think he was asking for support for the specific build mechanics (arcane implement mastery, etc.) that these classes used pre-essentials. Mind you, I think that there hasn't been (or really needed to be) a huge amount of support for some of this stuff even pre-essentials. At some point WotC seems to have come to the conclusion that it's not worth the extra effort needed to balance powers so that they are usable and not OP both with and without riders.

 

[xXElaDriNDrizZztXx]

I lol at this. I'm genuinely confused on what the hell is going on... It's funny because everyone's pretty much at each others throats. I hope this book doesn't suck. I really hope I get options that make me feel like something unique is brought to the table. Shadow has a lot of potential. I didn't necessarily like Psionic characters. I feel they kinda dropped the ball on them too. That's for a completely different (and done to death) discussion.

 

[AntlerDruid]

I lol at this. I'm genuinely confused on what the hell is going on... It's funny because everyone's pretty much at each others throats.

Yep the Shadow boards have been filled with lots of throat strangling for months now - the book isn't even out and already the riots have started long ago.

I don't even bother to read the rants anymore as on the WOTC boards there are 3 separate threads all saying the exact stuff over and over.

I am looking forward to HoS - I have been having a blast playing a Binder in my campaign.

 

[WalterKovacs]

The issue that I see with the Shade is:

(a) The free stealth skill (which is better than a background, since it doesn't count as your normal trained options) is wasted on the Rogue and Assassin.

But

(b) Being hidden is best used by those two classes. Only the Rogue is dependent on combat advantage for it's bonus damage, and the executioner assassin has a few powers that require he be hidden.

For characters outside those classes, combat advantage is nice, but not something that is necessarilly worth say giving up a standard action to do. The -5 to being hit is a powerful motivation if you can pull it off, but if you are not a rogue or assassin, it will often mean using up a standard action to do so ... thus not attacking an opponent to make it harder to hit you.

Of course, it's possible there are other things in the book that can work well with the shade. The old warlock could forgo their INT to pump up DEX and combine shadow walk with stealth, while the fey pact hexblade does use a light blade and DEX as a secondary stat, so light blade expertise would at least give a little bit of a bonus. I do remember someone mentioning that the Blackguard that was previewed did have some kind of combat advantage dependent striker damage, so they may end up being a good person to have as a shade. And, at the very least, the druid and ranger essential builds can take their stealth for free to use with their knack/stances and be able to grab an extra skill (like athletics which, while not fitting their primary stats, again ties into a knack).

It will be interesting to see the rest of it. Just seems a shame that shades are "too stealthy" to be Rogues or Assassins basically.

EDIT:

The only riot I've been involved with (and mostly at the table complaining instead of on the boards) was the last minute "by the way" where the Assassin was not just going into the book, but the at the time final version was labelled a playtest article for the book (or three playtest articles) so it wouldn't make it into the CB until HOS drops and gets it's content put in. Since our DM was allowing the rogue to become a thief next level, I had been looking forward to becoming an Executioner, but that all went out the window.

 

[Insight]

Like some others, I am very disappointed in the "Necromancer" they have decided to release. I was looking forward to a full class (and a leader at that) and it appears that the new "Necromancer" is just a Wizard option.

A while back, I started working on my own Necromancer as a shadow leader. It was kind of like a Shaman in that it used a pet for a lot of its powers. Its healing ability required the ally to hit a designated target and siphon the target's life force.

Maybe I'll revisit my design now that Wizards hasn't given me what I was hoping for.

 

[Nichwee]

Like some others, I am very disappointed in the "Necromancer" they have decided to release. I was looking forward to a full class (and a leader at that) and it appears that the new "Necromancer" is just a Wizard option.

A while back, I started working on my own Necromancer as a shadow leader. It was kind of like a Shaman in that it used a pet for a lot of its powers. Its healing ability required the ally to hit a designated target and siphon the target's life force.

Maybe I'll revisit my design now that Wizards hasn't given me what I was hoping for.

I find it odd that peeps are surprised tha a Necro is a Wizard. It always has been, and I expectted it to always remain so. Wizard is often where summoning goes, so the "army of undead" is a Wizzy thing imo. Otherwise a Necro is just a "cleric of death" (which was the best way to do the classic "army of undead" in 3.5 as it happens).

I do see you could have a strong Leader secondary role to Necros but they have a real issue as a Leader primary imo. I don't see a way, in their feel, to let them heal without hurting others first - unless they do just become "Cleric with necrotic powers" to keep Healing Word (or an equivalent).
This could be considered no biggie (Like the idea suggested by Insight) but then you have the problem that if a person is dying they can't hit anything to get healing, and if the Necro has a bad string of misses (or is debffed) the dying PC may not recieve healing in time.
One of the best things about 4E healing was they allowed a Leader to attack and heal such that they didn't interfere with each other - and I see no way to get this to work for a Necro Leader without sacrificing the feel of a Necro (I can't think of Necro Heals that aren't lifestealing in some way). I suppose they could have a self-sacrifice heal to cover these situations but that would just make them a poor healer, as they would need to then heal themselves straight afterwards.

You could treat a Necro heal as a "inspiring with fear" thing, but that just makes them a scary Warlord imo. So I say again, I don't see how to make a Necro Leader a pure class without it beign a currently existing Leader with minor refluffing - so imo it works better as a sub-class.

 

[gyor]

Something odd I noticed about the blackguard in the toc is that its the only "class" that has a full page devoted races. I wonder why.