Berserker Mage/Lock/Sorcerer

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think you might be right about not needing every possibility

Well, you touched on the most obvious one, a defender/striker switcher. That sort of overlay wouldn't need to exist for every striker concept, a couple of them would be enough. So a fighter/archer would be a very immediately obvious choice, along with a fighter/rogue type. Leaders can of course also combo well, so a fighter/leader works, as do various striker/leaders that could mostly be covered by say 2 overlays (give up uses of striker bonus for uses of leader minor heal benefit, can almost be generically written for the core classes). some sort of weapon using overlay for the wizard would be another obvious one.

TBH these might have been better alternatives than some of the more niche class designs. While I think most of the 4e classes are nice, probably HALF could have been replaced with something like this (a controller overlay on cleric replaces invoker for instance, and a striker one could replace avenger). I like the classes, but they come at a high cost when they require 100's of unique powers each.

I guess the other alternative is to just decree these things to be subclasses/builds of existing classes.

 

[Garthanos]

Well, you touched on the most obvious one, a defender/striker switcher.

For other cases you would need other paradigms .... basically for the berserk you can go from defender to striker mid combat but calming down and restoring defender mindset requires respite.

One might have a case where a fighter in heavy armor does fighter archer and sword play... bu switching to light switches to ranger/rogue striker functionality. (A couple of armor magics just became very handy)

This of course brings up the idea of having maneuvers be equipment specific

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

For other cases you would need other paradigms .... basically for the berserk you can go from defender to striker mid combat but calming down and restoring defender mindset requires respite.

One might have a case where a fighter in heavy armor does fighter archer and sword play... bu switching to light switches to ranger/rogue striker functionality. (A couple of armor magics just became very handy)

This of course brings up the idea of having maneuvers be equipment specific

There are a lot of things it potentially brings up, yes. You could basically make entire lists of powers for these overlays. It could be somewhat of a re-imagining of the theme/pp/ed paradigm.

 

[Lance Dyas]

There are a lot of things it potentially brings up, yes. You could basically make entire lists of powers for these overlays. It could be somewhat of a re-imagining of the theme/pp/ed paradigm.

Yes I caught that the concept was unlike a theme multi-tier.

 

[Garthanos]

There are a lot of things it potentially brings up, yes. You could basically make entire lists of powers for these overlays. It could be somewhat of a re-imagining of the theme/pp/ed paradigm.

One thought i had was that a ritual shielding like swordmages but which is cast as well a literal ritual...and which might be visually like an armillary sphere of glowing runes which makes you buff and diffendery but restrains your magic and which can be dropped to open up to striker sorcery ... to restore it you have to cast the ritual again.

 

[Garthanos]

One thought i had was that a ritual shielding like swordmages but which is cast as well a literal ritual...and which might be visually like an armillary sphere of glowing runes which makes you buff and diffendery but restrains your magic and which can be dropped to open up to striker sorcery ... to restore it you have to cast the ritual again.

Heck it could require a defender mindset and be dropped by any controller or striker or leader powers.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Heck it could require a defender mindset and be dropped by any controller or striker or leader powers.

Well, assuming you can define what a 'controller/striker/leader power' IS, there's no keyword for that, nor any unequivocal mechanical signature for them. I guess you could mean 'any power of a class of this role', but its no longer actually clear what that means either! hehe. In early 4e you might have made this distinction pretty clearly, ANY wizard power is a 'controller power', and any rogue power is a 'striker power', but even back then you'd only be relying on a technicality to call every warlock power a 'striker power' as well... Nowadays you cannot even technically do so.

That doesn't stop it from being a cool idea. Just one that is going to require a different mechanical grounding. Certainly you could define a class that was half striker/half defender and used a ritual to transition to the defender mode and a reversion criteria to switch back, and that criteria could be 'uses any powers with keyword X from his class powers'. That might let you 'fudge' a little by MCing to a different striker class, but I doubt that would break stuff.

 

[Garthanos]

Well, assuming you can define what a 'controller/striker/leader power' IS, there's no keyword for that, nor any unequivocal mechanical signature for them. I guess you could mean 'any power of a class of this role', but its no longer actually clear what that means either!

Adding a tag of role to every power hmmm one of the challenges might even be what about the neutralish ones that are only a role because of class features?

The beserker not only changed class to be potentially both some of its powers are both depending on whether they are berserk.

hehe. In early 4e you might have made this distinction pretty clearly, ANY wizard power is a 'controller power', and any rogue power is a 'striker power', but even back then you'd only be relying on a technicality to call every warlock power a 'striker power' as well...

Do they really have enough control in comparison to a say a mages at-will control levels?

 

[Garthanos]

The more I dig into Heros of the Fey Wild the more impressed I am, the Skald reads pretty well too (even if he might have been redundant)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Do they really have enough control in comparison to a say a mages at-will control levels?

Feylocks? Uh huh! They're honestly almost more controller than striker, though given their striker dice they're FAIR at that too. Starlocks are pretty controllery as well. The one in my first campaign LOVED to spam out that spell, I forget the name of it, that is basically the 4e equivalent of 'Evard's Black Tentacles' Hunger of Hadar IIRC. Modestly good damage, but it really made a very good wall! There are plenty of others though, zones and nice single-target effect powers. Feylocks really barely count as strikers at low levels, though its quite easy to move into the role as you level into paragon. OTOH you can quite easily stay right in the 'lock that dude down hard' zone. The wizard can do it too, but you can do it with more style and a higher single-target damage output (at least until the great Mage giveaway, its hard to compete with post-Essentials wizards, they have it all).

HotFW is a truly awesome book. IMHO it may well be the best supplement ever produced for ANY edition of D&D (and I've got a lot of D&D stuff!).