Yes, and "aggressive proselytizer for my god" is also, so what? I can run a wizard as a drooling idiot who likes to fight with daggers, but that doesn't invalidate the wizard class...
Very true, but wouldn’t advocate making a separate class based around the “aggressive proselytizer”
(as much as I love playing fire and brimstone preachers). Likewise the “drooling dagger mage” doesn’t need to be a class either. You could make it a class, but it’s not particularly broad.
Here’s the thing, you could easily make an awesome Proselytizer class that focused on damning individuals, inducing guilt-based penalties, and had an innate charm ability based on preaching as it sways people to their side. And it’s very different from the traditional portrayal of the martial warrior-cleric of earlier editions with scale armour and heavy mace. You could have a lot of fun with that.
But that’s not a class or even a build of the cleric so much as a character concept.
Really? They did? Where is it? lol. Were you a 4e closed playtester or something? No such class appears or was ever rumored to appear except in the wish fantasy of some crunch lovers. Notice that WotC paid them no mind at all and proceeded to make classes that were thematic, not 'filled that grid hole'.
Umm... I know because they told us on the WotC website.
I believe it was in one of the Design & Development articles for PHB3, likely the seeker. They took many of the ideas behind the theoretical martial controller and applied it to the seeker.
Reading between the lines, the seeker potentially evolved from the martial controller experiments. They couldn’t make it work as well as they wanted without magic so we got a more magical variant of the ranger.
Or they might be the Avenger class. This argument is becoming silly. In fact if you play 4e you will find that it can do a LOT of stuff that previous editions have real problems doing. Part of the reason is that they got rid of the idea of 'class as world building tool', it simply doesn't exist in 4e as it did in 3e (and to a lesser degree in AD&D). This frees up the notion of class greatly (though WotC hardly seems to have ever acknowledged the constraint you claim that is inherent in that). The other thing that 4e did was free up the concept of class from being a NARROW tool. In past editions if you used the Ranger class it meant you were a very specific type of character (albeit one which covers a lot of characters in fiction). 4e certainly built each class around an archetypal concept, but the system is broader and each class can be shaped a LOT by using common mechanics (IE taking feats, MCing, hybrid, or just taking PP/ED choices).
I did play 4e.
I ran 4e for over a year (until my game collapsed for entirely non-4e reasons) and played in two campaigns, one that lasted over a year and one that died a short death. I’ve even popped into Encounters a few times And I’ve done quite a bit of 4e writing and design for both my website and other sites.
But we’re not only talking about 4e, we’re talking about what comes next in 5e. And I don’t think we need to break-up classes into three or four subclasses based on combat role any more. Folding the concepts back into existing classes makes those more flexible, customizable, and grand. The cleric becomes more than just the healbot because, with the right build, she can also invoke the word of her god or serve as the assassin of her god.
I can make Van Helsing, Porfirio, Jackie Chan, Felsig, etc all in 4e with very little problem. 4e's rich array of classes really helps. Of course you can pick out a few experiments that didn't work out as well as others, but conceptually it was quite successful. I think 5e would do well to embrace that kind of design and perfect it. Perhaps that means making more things sub-classes, shifting some options around between being a class and being something else, but I don't think it means you should have far fewer classes. I also think that the whole concept of stacking together different classes ala AD&D MCing never worked well. I'd rather come at it from 4e's direction and just make classes with enough options to encompass what people want and enough customization to tweak it to your needs.
I’m curious how you’d make an intelligent investigator. I mean - of course- the Dracula van Helsing not the Hugh Jackman Van Helsing (who’d be a pretty straight ranger).
I think 5e would do well to embrace that kind of design and perfect it. Perhaps that means making more things sub-classes, shifting some options around between being a class and being something else, but I don't think it means you should have far fewer classes. I also think that the whole concept of stacking together different classes ala AD&D MCing never worked well. I'd rather come at it from 4e's direction and just make classes with enough options to encompass what people want and enough customization to tweak it to your needs.
Subclasses akin to the Pathfiner archetypes would be good, because they’re very space efficient. Sub-classes like the Essentials “subclasses” not so much, as those were pretty much different classes with very few shared mechanics. Space is finite in the books and full classes take-up a LOT of space. Every class you add devours enough space for two or three rules modules or a six or eight specialities.
There’s a number of side reason for fewer classes.
First, is the aforementioned space. Second is that subclasses and new classes support new characters. This hurt 4e as almost every book supported new characters and had lesser support for existing characters. Focusing on feats and powers that build on existing classes benefit existing characters, which make the books and content more appealing to people already playing.
Third is the narrative element, which is actually two reasons in one. Classes do have a role in the world. Every new class - just like every monster or race - has a role in the world. (Or should.) Adding a new option makes work for the DM who suddenly has to fit avengers or seekers or runepriests into the paradigm of their world, but without making them seem tacked-on or superfluous. But there’s also the narrative as seen by the players. When a DM introduces a monster, it’s easy to picture it being a wizard or fighter or barbarian. Those are bigger than D&D and carry weight, which makes it easier to picture a “gnoll barbarian” than a “gnoll avenger”, especially if you haven’t read all the books.
It’s also slightly easier for new players. Everyone knows what a “wizard” and a “fighter” are, and with Warcraft and Diablo everyone knows what a druid, rogue, and paladin are. But a seeker or battlemind requires some explanation. They’re harder to gronk when you’re just trying to understand the game.
Now, none of these reasons are particularly solid in and of themselves. But together it’s a lot. This isn’t to say there should be no new classes ever, but I don’t think we need two or three every book. You can get away with a couple unique-to-D&D classes (especially if they’re world-specific) but of the 23 pre-Essentials classes 12 were unique to D&D. That’s half the classed in the game. And 3e was sooooo much worse.
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.
I’ll concede to your expertise as my Vance is rusty.
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.
They come from the Design & Development articles on the website or designer blogs.
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.
The mechanics suggest mind-over-matter while the fluff pains the idea of characters fueled by ego, but there’s a heck of a lot of powers that fit neither theme and there are a heck of a lot of interrupts.
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.
If you
need to play a class for its uniqueness to be apparent it’s likely too tied to its mechanics.
Both the mechanics and the story need to be strong. Mechanics are great for any other game but RPGS are story-based games. Story matters. Story is what makes the games unique and different.
I can appreciate great mechanics, but if I just want solid mechanics I can play a euro-game. I buy RPGS for the story and inspiration for stories. I have spent so much money on RPGs I will never, ever use (sometimes because the mechanics are crap) because the story and world and flavour hooked me. I spent weeks reading the
Eclipse Phase and am still fascinated by the world but when I get to the mechanics I feel like I've been hit in the head by a brick. I'd
like to play but just cannot devote the time to reading through that much crunch.
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.
That was just a quick example. There are also things like fear, horror, curses, and madness. I think they did some in
Dragon well after I stopped playing 4e.
But optional rules are pretty vital. Nobody plays the game the same way and not everyone feels comfortable making heavy house rules. But 4e has almost no optional rules and they tend to be very small.
Okay, I lied up above. While I buy side RPGS books for story and inspiration and hooks, I buy books for games I do plan on running for mechanics. While I feel comfortable kitbashing the living f___ out of a game system to make it fit my style, I'd rather a professional do much of that work for me.
Optional rules and variable play often mean the difference between me playing the game or just using the books for inspiration (and if the books don't even offer inspiration, then I just won't buy).
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.
The DMG2 rules were nice, if they weren't buried in some forgotten section in the back of the book. I always had to hunt for those rules and they're never where I think they'll be. Not that it did me any good, because my group relied on the character builder like a crutch and by the time the inherent bonuses were implemented I'd already given out more treasure than I had in my previous three campaigns combined.
I'm glad you've managed to have fun playing 4e and not stumbled into the troubles that made my game a morass of pain or derailed so many other people's games. It took me far, far too long to "get" 4e and start writing adventures that complimented the edition.
While I'm sure that with enough time I could have eventually figured out how to use 4e to tell the stories I wanted to tell, there were no shortage of games that did it without heavy modification.