D&D 4E Arcane Power II - ideascape

[Garthanos]

One of th

e books really expected before 4e development took a side shoot.... I am am wondering what people might have wanted to see in APII

I think I would have liked a ritual cost revision so Rituals were not quite so free at high level nor quite so expensive at low levels

I would have also wanted so see some ritual summoning and other effects of that ilk

Perhaps the Witch might have been a Warlock type... I mean the flavor text really really did have that so but the Wizard of essentials had to eat everything

Speaking of which maybe the Wizards essentials types would have been presented with a better eye towards the core balance

 

[Garthanos]

Not sure how to properly flag posts in this forum iteration

 

[Larrin]

Just going to throw a few things that come to mind in terms of class options and powers:

Bard, swordmage, artificer: No desires whatsoever.

Warlock:
-New Pact: Celestial (standard and hex blade)
-Hexblades: Summer Fey version of fey pact, Star pact , vestige? (I think some of these may have been done in Class act on-line...?) Find ways for hexblades to benefit from standard warlock encounters [like they could take a warlock encounter instead of their weapon encounter].
-Binder: Rework the binder so it can piggy back off existing warlock spells while still being a controller. Fix some of the problems it had (like how their pact boon triggers when they kill [which is rare] or something next to the is killed [something they should avoid], make it key off something that a controller should be doing with their action) then make versions of it for the main warlock pacts. [OR just forget the binder and spend precious time and energy and pages on good versions of the warlock]

Sorcerer:
-New bloodlines/spells: shadow, aberration, Law (in opposition to the chaos sorcerer...)
-A written apology to the elementalist sorcerer. Not for him, to him. He was done a great wrong, Rules-as-written, and this is an important step to take before the healing can begin.

Wizard:
-Mage: mage class abilities for abjuration, divination, conjuration, transmutation, etc.
-Add abjuration, divination type spells (or the keyword to applicable existing spells), including at-wills and cantrips. I always wanted abjuration/divination at-will attacks (and encounter/daily I guess) because I think they could make for an interesting style of play.
-make fireball a spell people will use
-some method by which learing one spell gives you an at-will, encounter, and daily version in your spell book. Like if lightning bolt gave you a single target at-will, and multi-target encounter, and a daily that used the wall template. And have that count as learning one daily spell. I'm not sure if that's balanced, or balanceable, but I feel like lots of people would like having a thematic spell progression.
-classic/signature spells that scale with level, so you don't have to forget your favorite 3rd level encounter at level 17 or whatever it was, you can just do more damage, more aoe, better control, etc. [probably would be combined with the above idea]

Rituals: Yeah, figuring out rituals would be a good thing. They're just kinda tacked on and were either forgettable or problematically priced. They don't fit within the system as written with any sense of cohesion, and maybe that's just the way it needs to be, but it needs to be better at its job if it's going to be such an eyesore while doing it.

 

[Garthanos]

Bard, swordmage, artificer: No desires whatsoever.

I would like to see the Swordmage "striker" option work better.

 

[Garthanos]

-make fireball a spell people will use

I have been working on making Both fireball and Lightning bolt have controller options ... which one might trade out for blaster mages (perhaps with a feat - the feat cause your fireball to burn cleaner not leaving bat quano odors - yes I just went there )

 

[Garthanos]

-some method by which learing one spell gives you an at-will, encounter, and daily version in your spell book. Like if lightning bolt gave you a single target at-will, and multi-target encounter, and a daily that used the wall template.

I have ideas for a multi-action well casting and maneuvers system - with disabling aftermaths and similar things. Not specific to spells. But the spell stuff is easiest to visualize anyway so it might be the coolest intro.
One feature is things like your "sandmans sleep magic" makes you sluggish during the round after casting it.

 

[Garthanos]

Ritual : Zombie Horde Summoning

 

[Garthanos]

There is a spell in Harry Potter flicks (and featured in the recent offshoot) where those subject to it get somewhat selective amnesia - It is often used by Comic book mages as well. We could call it Blessed Forgetfulness. This is probably too vague but its a first flash of idea.

Blessed Forgetfulness: Subject loses memories of recent negative experiences this effect is typically "permanent" the memories are actually buried and it should be considered a mental affliction (and thus can be affected by both the psychotherapy practice and the remove affliction ritual).
The subject will generally lose recently acquired negative reaction modifiers. They also will tend to fill in the blanks with normal everyday stuff for example instead of their aunt being ripped to pieces by the monster your character failed to defeat they might remember her dying of some common illness. Attitudes toward the party will generally now reset to a neutral state.

 

[Garthanos]

Rituals already interact with afflictions but this one creates an affliction.

 

[Garthanos]

i wonder what it would take to make the Witch build be a Warlock and match the flavor text because it really reads like it was intended to be one