In my desperate struggle to find something to get excited about in 4e, I've been pondering if maybe I've been looking at the "Everyone gets k3w1 p0w3rz!" thing all wrong. Such a "feature" might just make it easier, not harder, to run city-based/sword&sorcery/low fantasy style games. In such tales, fighter-types and rogue-types have an endless array of tricks, stunts, and nifty features which classic D&D emulates fairly poorly, requiring things like Shadowdancers or spell-casting Assassins to pull off. Simply eliminating casters from D&D 3x and below leaves the party seriously underpowered and underhealed. (I know; I've been in campaigns where the only Arcane caster was a Warlock and we had NO HEALER AT ALL.) However, the 4e philosophy of "Everyone gets magic -- even if we don't CALL it that!" seems to solve this. Healing is the province of any "Leader", divine or not, and all of the stabbity/whackity classes get, it seems, a variety of chambara/anime-style manuevers to help define themselves in action. The reduced dependence on magic items helps keep the "feel" of a low-magic campaign without reducing the in-play options of the players. (One can probably give the requisite expected bonuses without calling them 'magic'..."Ah, you are wearing Andallian Chainmail, armor from the finest smiths of that ancient kingdom...we call it +2 chain 'round these parts, buddy.")
The main weakness here is the blandness of the SWSE skill system (seemingly imported whole-hog into 4e) and the lack of any non-adventuring skills, but that can probably be houseruled once the actual game is in print.
Thoughts?
The main weakness here is the blandness of the SWSE skill system (seemingly imported whole-hog into 4e) and the lack of any non-adventuring skills, but that can probably be houseruled once the actual game is in print.
Thoughts?