Pax Prime seminar 2012 juicy news!

[Neonchameleon]

I actually don't mind some of the ideas of 4e fighter (though I find the knight and slayer from essentials FAR superior than the PHB one). So far, I think CS is going to be a good addition to making the fighter interesting without giving him Fitan-Majik!

Believe it or not some of us don't see so-called Fitan-Majik as a problem - and indeed see it as a positive that the fighter gets complex options to do what he is best at. And further think that this better models fiction, whether anime, myth, classical story, or fantasy novel.

I can make a few cases. Clerics were very restricted (even moreso than 3e's domain clerics) so much than evil clerics in the PHB were pretty much a joke.

And here's where we really start to disagree. 3.X clerics were incredibly bland because they were so unrestricted. A 3.X cleric could pray one day and be an almost entirely combat focussed character able to outfight the fighter with Divine Power, Divine Might, etc. The next day he could be a diviner. No mechanical consistency at all. Not even necessarily on the domain spells. "Can do whatever he wants and be whoever he wants" is only flavourful if you are a rogue specialising in disguise. Otherwise it tastes of pure artificial sweetener.

It goes along with a couple of other "design" ideas that were supposed to give the classes "distinction" but made little sense (fighters can't wear plate? WTF?).

That was a stupid decision - but I see how it came about. It was both trying to give Paladins Plate Armour from level 1 (thus making it cheap) and making it rare and valuable for a fighter to get plate at the same time.

I still feel like the 4e PHB was half-a-book and the other half was sold to me later in Martial/Arcane/Divine Power and PHB2.

I didn't start playing until just before the PHB2 (my first ever character was a pre-release Bard). But going back to the PHB1, it appears to have enough to play most classic archetypes (shortbow rogue being a stupid omission) and be about as flexible as the 1e or 2e PHBs (illusionist wizards are the big thing I'll accept were missing). 3.0 and 3.5 tried to cram themselves with options and sometimes did well, but too often failed to the detriment of the game. But if 3.X levels of options were what you were expecting, it was possibly half a book .

 

[Prickly]

4e was edition that made me like paladins.

I always wanted to like the 3e paladin but never did. It always felt like a fighter with a few random abilities tacked on.

First 4e character? Halfling Paladin

 

[gweinel]

I think that most of the gamers miss what is most important here. In my humble opinion the question that must be answered is not why the sorceror/warlock/ranger/otherclass has that kind of background story or why is too specific/generic, but will Wizards provide us with the "secret" mechanism behind each class? Will Wizards give us the knowledge and the tools to refluff and fiddle with the classes? That will be a real innovation for the dnd. Wizards always seemed to be a bit cryptic in the mechanics behind the class. What make a specific class balanced? If I change the "favored enemy" from ranger what kind of power would be fitting in order to not unbalance the class?

And of course this could be expanded to other game features. For instance races. In my campaign the humans are the dominant race. I would love to put cultural/climatic variations.

Being more specific to the classes in the playtest and more particular to sorceror and warlock i have to say is that i like what i am seeing. I like the fluff and i like that is story driven. Having said that i would consider the class "completed" in the eyes of a gamer only if in DMG would be infos of how to make variables of that class. Wizards advertise modularity. Let implemented this modularity in the hard-coded game features like classes, races, backgrounds and specialties. Give us a guide to make the exactly the game we want.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

The Draconic Heritage for the sorcerer is a great example, The designers decided it should be a gish and built into it additional training in armor all weapons and an additional +1 weapon bonus. By doing so, they have cut off the option for those that might draw inspiration from other fantasy sources and find a non-gish draconic heritage sorcerer to be an interesting concept. Essentially, the designers gave a big screw you to that player and many DMs by not providing an option to compensate the non-gish with something else more "sorcery" rebalance the heritage.

1) I can see where the designers were going with draconic heritage. Even though dragons are many things, they can still slice through a normal man like butter. The heritage abilities make sense to me.

2) Solution: Take the heritage that fits your concept of what your draconic heritage provides and then say you have a draconic bloodline. Done. Easy. No rule changes, no major fluff changes. You can of course go further and make deeper fluff changes, add houserules, or even design your own heritages based on guidance of the officially published ones, but if you seek simple solutions they have always been there.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think that most of the gamers miss what is most important here. In my humble opinion the question that must be answered is not why the sorceror/warlock/ranger/otherclass has that kind of background story or why is too specific/generic, but will Wizards provide us with the "secret" mechanism behind each class? Will Wizards give us the knowledge and the tools to refluff and fiddle with the classes?

On the contrary... I wouldn't say we "miss it"... I think it's more that instinctually we have a pretty good idea already about what we can and can't give classes to keep them "balanced", based entirely on how the game is built. There's no "secret" mechanism to be shared.

If the math is pretty well worked out behind the entire system, and we can see what each of the classes get and their relative power to each other at each specific level... it's not that hard to just eyeball any change we might want to make and end up in a relatively good position. And then the change gets playtested during the game and the DM and player make any small tweaks as necessary.

A laundry list of all the abilities in the entire game with how much they are "worth" (in some mythical numerical system) is not something that exists, let alone would get printed in the DMG. At some point... the game has to ask us to do a bit of the legwork ourselves.

 

[Li Shenron]

They are considering having specialist wizards, rather than barring schools, be able to retain or regain spell slots devoted to their specialty. ie, an illusionist could cast Fireball, but he'd lose the slot; but if he cast an illusion, he could get it back after a short rest or something. In other words, more of a carrot than a stick.

I'm not sure I like this... I still have a hat for encounter-based abilities, but at least being only for specialists, I could just disallow them.

I was hoping for a more free-form treatment of wizard's specialization, like the way initiated by 3ed Unearthed Arcana, but perhaps it's a bit too demanding design job since each specialist needs to be designed separately.

Epic play is going to be treated less as an extension of levels 1-10 and more like a transformation of the game. In fact, though they didn't say so, it sounds a lot like 'name level' - they did explictly mention founding kingdoms as a possibility.

Sounds great, will probably go to a supplementary book.

Only the basic races (elf, dwarf, halfling, human) and the core 4 classes are presumed to exist in D&D worlds. Everything else is a setting option - whether a published setting or a DM's homebrew world.

I wonder (but I doubt) if this means however that only the current 4 races will be in the PHB (not only 4 classes tho, this is sure!). I usually dislike half-breeds and I'm not a fan of gnomes either, thus I would not be against limiting the PHB to the 4 most iconic races.

They intend to support a number of different past settings even in the core books - they gave the example of the minotaur entry in the Monster Manual having a sidebar mentioning that they are a playable race in Dragonlance, and giving stats for how to play them. (Which, of course, any DM could use in their own world if desired.)

Sounds great: multiple (slight) support = no default, which IMHO is best for everyone.

One benefit of the way they're going to do multiclassing just occurred to me:

If a given DM wants the paladin (for example) to be a 'prestige class' in his campaign, it's as simple as using the paladin's 'multiclass table' and forbidding people to take it at 1st.

Excellent point!

 

[Greg K]

1) I can see where the designers were going with draconic heritage. Even though dragons are many things, they can still slice through a normal man like butter. The heritage abilities make sense to me.

No, it does not make sense for all draconic heritage sorcerers. The concept of the sorcerer is that heritage gives them innate spellcasting and manifestation of their heritage unlike other classes that result from at least some training.
If the basic concept of the sorcerer is that they are not the product of training, but are the product of innate magic , there should be an option for draconic heritage sorcerers that can manifest the heritage, but are not gishes, because it makes sense that not all would go seek martial training unless forced into a specific world view on players and DMs.

2) Solution: Take the heritage that fits your concept of what your draconic heritage provides and then say you have a draconic bloodline. Done. Easy. No rule changes, no major fluff changes. You can of course go further and make deeper fluff changes, add houserules, or even design your own heritages based on guidance of the officially published ones, but if you seek simple solutions they have always been there.

No, it not a solution.
First, That I can house rule something does not mean there is not an issue with the rules. Do you remember that mantra from various quarters regarding 3e? It also leaves the burden on new or inexperienced DMs to make the change. Second, even many experienced DMs don't feel comfortable house ruling.

Second, A player may want to play a non martial draconic heritage sorcerer without the armor and weapons, because the basic concept of the sorcerer being simply innate magic caster without martial training appeals to them as does the manifestations of the draconic heritage. Rather than supporting this option as well, the designers have, at this point, essentially, said, "No, you play they gish we have built the heritage around. If you don't and ignore the gish features we have used to balance this heritage, tough luck you get nothing to compensate"

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

No, it does not make sense for all draconic heritage sorcerers.

I said "to me." I don't require that it make sense to you and I alluded to the fact that it might not.

The concept of the sorcerer is that heritage gives them innate spellcasting and manifestation of their heritage unlike other classes that result from at least some training.
If the basic concept of the sorcerer is that they are not the product of training, but are the product of innate magic , there should be an option for draconic heritage sorcerers that can manifest the heritage, but are not gishes, because it makes sense that not all would go seek martial training unless forced into a specific world view on players and DMs.

Second, A player may want to play a non martial draconic heritage sorcerer without the armor and weapons, because the basic concept of the sorcerer being simply innate magic caster without martial training appeals to them as does the manifestations of the draconic heritage. Rather than supporting this option as well, the designers have, at this point, essentially, said, "No, you play they gish we have built the heritage around. If you don't and ignore the gish features we have used to balance this heritage, tough luck you get nothing to compensate"

Let me try to be more clear. 1) Choose Arcane Heritage [Crunch] (for example). 2) Say "My character has a draconic hertiage!" [Fluff]. 3) Done. Easy. There are further more involved steps you can choose to take, but they are unnecessary.

 

[Greg K]

I said "to me." I don't require that it make sense to you and I alluded to the fact that it might not.



Let me try to be more clear. 1) Choose Arcane Heritage [Crunch] (for example). 2) Say "My character has a draconic hertiage!" [Fluff]. 3) Done. Easy. There are further more involved steps you can choose to take, but they are unnecessary.

Let me be more clear. Player wants the ability to manifest the strength, scales and other things provided by Dragon heritage, but does not want the armor, weapons, or +1 bonus. They simply want the standard sorcerer's armor, weapons, and attack bonus. If armor, weapons and the +1 bonus are supposed to be balancing factors (in addition to reinforcing the gish concept), the player and I as a DM for the player want an option that replaces the additional armor, weapons and +1 while reinforcing this particular draconic heritage sorcerer is not a gish, because the character's background does not involve them going off in pursuit of martial training.
Given what I have described, if the arcane heritage (crunch) is anything like Pathfinder;s, the crunch will not provide the dragon heritage manifestations (strength, scales, etc) so that crunch supplied by Arcane would be wrong.

 

[Cybit]

There should be rules on how to create such a template in the core books. But one of the things 5E is moving away from is "crunch for every little variant created for you." That led to the glut of prestige classes / base classes / feats / etc. They'd rather teach DMs how to make balanced custom mechanics (themes, feats, etc), rather than have to create everything themselves. The "Teach a man to fish" methodology rather than the "give a man a fish".

From a narrative perspective, it's hard to turn yourself into a dragon without gaining those abilities.