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<blockquote data-quote="paradox42" data-source="post: 3713105" data-attributes="member: 29746">Damn my not having Internet access at Gen Con! I had to wait until now to weigh in on all this.My reading of the 4E info suggests that &quot;templates&quot; as they exist in 3/3.5 are going the way of the dodo- monsters are going to be more similar to &quot;classes&quot; in that they'll get abilities with &quot;level-ups&quot; and such, and monster customizability is being &quot;built in&quot; to the system somehow. I suggest that this means they're doing something like Fantasy Flight's old Monsters Handbook did; literally deconstructing monsters by the abilities they had and showing how adding new ones changes the beast. In such a system, templates will be unnecessary- and let's face it, they do make the DM's job harder even when they're easy to add to a critter. After all, you need to go to the trouble of adding the template in the first place, right?Further support for this notion comes in the blurb they gave about how it will be &quot;obvious&quot; how to use a Goblin as a PC with just the Monster Manual and the PHB. If monsters have levels and classes right from the get-go, that would indeed make it pretty obvious, yes?This, in turn, suggests that the idea to go with &quot;divinity classes&quot; is a perfect mesh with 4E; I like the suggestion about 30-level &quot;Ascension&quot; classes followed by &quot;Divinity&quot; and then &quot;Dimensional&quot; and others. Assuming 4E allows multiclassing after 1st level, like 3E does (by getting levels in another class, that is), this is the perfect way to go. The info released so far suggests that classes are getting choices for abilities to take at various levels, which would mean that you can have a &quot;tank&quot; Fighter still be different from an &quot;archer&quot; Fighter.I myself saw a demo of D&amp;D at Gen Con which in hindsight must have been using mostly if not all 4th Edition rules, which provided further evidence of this. I saw no characters with listed multiclass levels, but the Fighter (for instance) had maneuvers straight out of the Book of Nine Swords- and the apparent healer character was a Favored Soul. The character sheets were greatly simplified and listed everything the character could do- with boxes to mark off for (for example) the maneuvers used in the Fighter's case, and the spell slots spent in the Favored Soul's.And FWIW, I would strongly urge a scheme for sharing your workload- up-front payment or wages/salaries are not the only way to structure a work agreement. I suspect many posters here would offer their services for something like, say, a small percentage of the revenue from sales? That's just one idea, but it shows there are possibilities here. Do we know how Dicefreaks does it? That's something worth exploring IMO.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="paradox42, post: 3713105, member: 29746"] Damn my not having Internet access at Gen Con! I had to wait until now to weigh in on all this. My reading of the 4E info suggests that "templates" as they exist in 3/3.5 are going the way of the dodo- monsters are going to be more similar to "classes" in that they'll get abilities with "level-ups" and such, and monster customizability is being "built in" to the system somehow. I suggest that this means they're doing something like Fantasy Flight's old [i]Monsters Handbook[/i] did; literally deconstructing monsters by the abilities they had and showing how adding new ones changes the beast. In such a system, templates will be unnecessary- and let's face it, they [b]do[/b] make the DM's job harder even when they're easy to add to a critter. After all, you need to go to the trouble of adding the template in the first place, right? Further support for this notion comes in the blurb they gave about how it will be "obvious" how to use a Goblin as a PC with just the Monster Manual and the PHB. If monsters have levels and classes right from the get-go, that would indeed make it pretty obvious, yes? This, in turn, suggests that the idea to go with "divinity classes" is a perfect mesh with 4E; I like the suggestion about 30-level "Ascension" classes followed by "Divinity" and then "Dimensional" and others. Assuming 4E allows multiclassing after 1st level, like 3E does (by getting levels in another class, that is), this is the perfect way to go. The info released so far suggests that classes are getting choices for abilities to take at various levels, which would mean that you can have a "tank" Fighter still be different from an "archer" Fighter. I myself saw a demo of D&D at Gen Con which in hindsight must have been using mostly if not all 4th Edition rules, which provided further evidence of this. I saw no characters with listed multiclass levels, but the Fighter (for instance) had maneuvers straight out of the Book of Nine Swords- and the apparent healer character was a Favored Soul. The character sheets were greatly simplified and listed everything the character could do- with boxes to mark off for (for example) the maneuvers used in the Fighter's case, and the spell slots spent in the Favored Soul's. And FWIW, I would strongly urge a scheme for sharing your workload- up-front payment or wages/salaries are not the only way to structure a work agreement. I suspect many posters here would offer their services for something like, say, a small percentage of the revenue from sales? That's just one idea, but it shows there are possibilities here. Do we know how Dicefreaks does it? That's something worth exploring IMO. [/QUOTE]

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