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I like how you're clearly on a computer that has the Internet and you couldn't pause posting for ten second to Wiki "Dying Earth".
The first two collections or stories were published in the 1950s and 1960s respectively. And were stories Gygax knew of and enjoyed.
Lol, I have several complete collections of Vance's work. In fact Vance is one of the very few people I would say I am an actual FAN of. Clearly Gary took that commonality and ran with it, even naming a couple of spells after ones that Vance invented, but don't overdo it. Chainmail (which I have actually played many times) has a very rudimentary magic system in which wizards of different levels have fireballs and some other spells which IIRC are divided into 4 levels of potency and there are from 1-5 spells at each level, ALL of which are D&D classics. This game had NOTHING to do with RPG, and even if Gary thought of Vance at all, which I think is not that likely, in respect to the Chainmail wizard (or priest, which is similar) the design was PURELY gamist and so simple it didn't require Vance to inspire it. Besides NOTHING in Vance corresponds to spell level. In fact if you were trying to emulate Vance you would probably assign a 'level' to each spell and the character would just have a total pool of 'magic slots' where each spell took up N of them equal to its level.
This is irrelevant.
Yes it was balanced for play with the other two classes. Of course it was designed and fine-tuned for gaming. But the inspiration and basis for a religious warrior was there first.
Sure, just like the inspiration for the Avenger was there first! lol
This contradicts several design statements.
They played around with mechanics for a potential martial controller specifically because the game lacked one. They created the battlemind quickly because their original (more story based) psionic defender didn't work out and they still wanted a psionic defender. There were many grid filler classes that existed because there was a game gap. The invoked doesn't add much in terms of story either.
I have no idea where you got those statements from though it would surely be impossible to refute them. You're the first person I recall ever saying anyone at WotC worked on a martial controller. OTOH I don't see a huge reason not to think it is a natural question to ask "Is there a class concept here?" but note that the answer was, "no", even though plenty of people have dreamed up mechanics that would work in a purely gamist sense (a martial seeker-like class for instance). Note that Essentials DOES have a Scout which works a lot like this, but it isn't entirely martial.
I don't know anything about some other alternative Battlemind. The one they have clearly has a story, mind over matter, very succinct. I'm a little divided on how well it fills that concept, but then I'm not really a fan of psionics in D&D. I know the mechanics provoked lots of complaints until it was revised.
I disagree, while the Invoker is a little more niche than things like Cleric and Wizard if you were to PLAY it or see character concepts built on it, you'd see quickly that it is a pretty fun and useful class that can feel quite distinct. In fact it evokes more of the wonder-worker concept that the cleric oddly has been missing for decades. You could argue for moving cleric healing over to this guy and ditching the cleric (leave the paladin as the armored holy man), but the Invoker itself, much more than a grid filler.
Classes like the invoker and avenger and warden exist because they hadn't yet made the leap of classes with multiple roles. We would have just seen a controller build of the cleric.
Ehhhhhh, I don't really agree. I think its possible that you could create an Invoker that is basically a merge with the Laser Cleric, but it would require a much greater splitting than just builds ala PHB1 to do it justice. I think 4e in general SHOULD have more classes that are integrated together more closely, but I think it might be better to do it at the power source level, not the class level. Leave the classes to map out the concepts, and the source to hold common mechanics.
This is the crux here. 5e is neither 3e nor 4e. It can fold those classes back into the fold but do so without making the class overpowered.
The sorcerer should go away too.
I would disagree for 3.0 but agree for 3.5, which was so much worse for needless classes than 4e.
I think both editions have taught us class bloat is bad. And that the designers should work hard to make each class that does need to exist mechanically interesting and worthy of taking at all levels. Quality not quantity.
I think you get into a semantic argument at a certain point. While I think that there should be somewhat less classes than in 4e, mostly I think they should share more with each other. As many classes as are needed to articulate distinct ways for a character to do its main shtick is fine. Its also fine if some of those are close enough to others that they can be sub-classes. This is just normal system design where you do re-use when possible. It is even better in a game where things are not so rigid as with software.
Tactics yes, preparation no. Earlier editions were much more strategic and less tactical in than you can buff before a fight and mitigate much through careful forethought. And the edition is much more forgiving for being unprepared for certain monsters as powers and spells and abilities are always useful. Silver might help you speed up killing a werewolf but it's not ignoring 5 damage every attack but regaining 5hp every round so it's possible to just skip silver and hit harder.
Eh, it isn't that much different. You could use magic weapons or ANY spell against a lycanthrope with full effectiveness. Sure it was nice to have silver, just like it is now. 4e has plenty of buffs too. I note that people often ignore them, but that's not because they don't exist. It is just that they seem to desire some sort of 'arena' like play (or the DM can't seem to get out of that mode). In my games the PCs prepare all the time, and if they don't they are sorry. There are all sorts of things like potions of resistance (generally a lot of protective potions). There are several quite handy rituals too. I think this would be a good area for a rewrite of 4e to emphasize more though. Still, there is plenty of room in 4e for the sort of tactics and strategy people use in other editions. I've leaned on that a good bit in my games.
Which is getting me to change my game to fit the edition and not playing the game I want. Suddenly the quaint English fishing villiage haunted by a single ghost suddenly has zombies, lesser ghosts, and traps because of the needs of the game.
And solos were very poorly designed back when I was playing 4e (I stopped just after MM3 came out) so I have horrible memories of trying to use boss monsters.
No, I don't agree. I had a whole adventure that was exactly this, the PCs finding the ghost of an NPC's mother and fixing up various things. It was quite fun and challenging without any combat at all. I think the ghost made a few attacks that did psychic damage but that was all just color. The party wasn't supposed to, and didn't, try to defeat the thing by combat.
Dungeons. Ugh.
Again, the game is change my campaign rather than letting me do what I want. And I don't want tacked on encounters designed just to weaken. Nothing derails a story faster.
It was just a suggestion. There are no doubt other similar possibilities. You could have things like secret doors that split the party up, etc. I can think of a bunch. Just think back to various scary movies. It isn't about 'designed to weaken', it is about ratcheting up the tension. A horror story with nothing but one big fight doesn't seem like a well-designed horror story to me.
Was it OD&D that had conversion rules for Boot Hill?
Plus Ravenloft had guns back in 2e and the rules were also in the 3e DMG.
4e could do them quite easily. But the designers never did. How many optional rules are there for 4e? Alternate play styles just weren't considered.
1e AD&D had some conversion rules, they were pretty strange... The two games are VERY different.
I know nothing about guns in Ravenloft. The Ravenloft I have is the original module, it has no hint of guns that I recall, though I suppose I could be forgetting something. The thing is WHAT DO YOU NEED for optional rules? Everything 'just works'. Guns are trivial. Pistol -> treat this as a hand crossbow, musket -> treat this as a heavy crossbow. There, I'm done
That will do fine for casual use. I know of NO official gun rules in any previous edition, but I'm not an expert on 3.x, they could exist. I never heard of any for AD&D personally, though if you say the Ravenloft SETTING had them, I believe you.
Your make my point for me. Because the 9the level fighter was unprepared, they have squat. That's a feature not a bug.
No, it just reinforced the bad choice of class that he made...
4e struggles over low magic games. You get four +1 items at first level (never a level 1 though. You will never see the most common magic item on previous editions: a straight +1 long sword) and get a +2 item at second level. And it struggles over low combat games or even non-dungeon crawls with encounters every few days (such as travel or exploratory games). Low combat games can be troublesome as almost every power, feat, and option grants combat bonuses. So the player is looking at their suite and combat powers that are taunting them, screaming to be used.
No, I disagree. Low magic 4e is trivial (either just don't worry about the missing attack bonus and tweak encounter difficulty as needed, same as you did in 1e) or use inherent bonus (which was so blindingly obvious an option it barely needed to be spelled out in DMG2). Low combat games work PERFECTLY WELL in 4e. In previous editions you had as many or few problems with them too (mostly wizard novas, much worse than full-party 4e nova). I've had games go weeks without a fight, no problem.
I think you have some preconceived notions about what you can and can't do.
