Am I the Only One Totally Apathetic About Power Sources?

[Jack Colby]

"Power Source" is even more useless as a game term than Alignment. I'd rather not see them at all, or like the OP said: magic/not magic. All the classes/roles have basically got the exact same type of power effects, and Power Source seems to be merely an ineffective way to ad a dash of flavor or differentiation to the characters in 4E where none exists mechanically. I also prefer a less defined system, letting DMs and players define exactly where their abilities are coming from, but fortunately it's very easy to houserule that kind of thing, if everyone is willing to ignore what's in the books.

 

[webrunner]

There are traits each power source has:

Martial: Everything's based on the weapons: there's no implements and damage is rolled by [W] pretty much all the time.
Divine: Channel Divinity, and deity choice mattering.
Arcane: A wide variety of damage types and effects, and usually with some ranged capability.
Primal: Primal classes have abilities based on form: transformation or in the shaman's case, having a character split into two squares. Additionally, there's always some melee effect available, and other effects mitigate range. Primal classes are either ranged that don't mind being adjacent, melee that don't mind being at ranged, or melee/ranged hybrids.

 

[Derren]

"Power Source" is even more useless as a game term than Alignment. I'd rather not see them at all, or like the OP said: magic/not magic.

When people can be shouted back to life I don't think even a magic/not magic distinction is neccessary, or even possible.

 

[ExploderWizard]

No, you are not alone. There is no more real magic, just different sources of mutant-like power to fuel the superheroes. Everyone just does X damage + effect, the description of how that happens exactly is of no real consequence. What used to be confined to "magic" is so widespread that it has become mundane. All superpowers are more or less the same and so commonplace that magic isn't really that special.

There was a time when magic, and the differences about types of magic had some meaning. Different magical schools governed what types of effects one could expect to see from a specific application. Transmutations, conjurations, illusions, ect. were actually different in how they worked. Illusion was a magical way to alter perdeptions of reality rather than just a keyword to indicate that your power does XdY+Z psychic damage.

 

[Klaus]

Arcane, divine, shadow, martial, ki, psionic, blahblahblah...anyone else feel the same way? We finally have an edition where every third spell doesn't interact differently with other spells and creatures depending on its source, and yet WotC insists on defining a new power source every third Tuesday.

I'm going to keep calling things "magic" or "not magic", and ignoring power source-related rules, how about you?

Power Sources and Combat Roles serve their function as shorthands. You can tell at a glance what are the design characteristics behind a "Martial Striker", a "Divine Defender" or a "Primal Leader".

This has always been the case in D&D (look at the different spell lists of clerics, magic-users/mages/wizards and druids since 1e; look at the HD, weapon and armor proficiency and attacks/round of all classes).

The only difference between earlier editions and 4e is that now those characteristics have been codified and are thought of when designing a class.

 

[Starbuck_II]

Arcane, divine, shadow, martial, ki, psionic, blahblahblah...anyone else feel the same way? We finally have an edition where every third spell doesn't interact differently with other spells and creatures depending on its source, and yet WotC insists on defining a new power source every third Tuesday.

I'm going to keep calling things "magic" or "not magic", and ignoring power source-related rules, how about you?

We've had power sources for years: at least since 2nd edition D&D (never played earlier).

3.5: We had arcane prepared, arcane spontanous, divine prepared, divine spontanous, Musical arcane spontanous (yet no musical arcane prepared), infusions, asian arcane prepared, asian arcane spontanous, divine nature prepared, divine nature spontanous, Ki Monk, Not Monk Ki, psionic, shadow, primal, martial, etc.

4th has a lot more power sources to go to catch up to 3.5.

 

[Umbran]

one of several reasons i have dumped 4e.

Must have been a ugly break up - you may have dumped it, but you seem to be following around behind it, saying nasty things to its friends.

Folks, if you have no actual interest in 4e, except for the desire to come in and say bad things about it... please just avoid 4e-related threads. This kind of input is what maintains bad feelings and edition wars.

 

[Zaukrie]

My issue with them is that they aren't distinct and flavorful enough. They just seem like add ons the way they are now, w/o much real flavor. I'd like them a lot more if there was more to them.

edit: removed comment on edition wars as moderator beat me to it while posting....thanks.

 

[Panzeh]

When people can be shouted back to life I don't think even a magic/not magic distinction is neccessary, or even possible.

Heh, DnD was better when 'magic' meant you could do practically anything you wanted except what the game specifically said you couldn't, while 'not magic' meant you couldn't really do anything except what the game said you could.

Yeah buddy, let's have wizards be creative and able to pretty much do anything while the players of non-casters can go home. I guess giving casters a specific mandate was too much for 'creative' players to handle.

 

[Umbran]

I guess giving casters a specific mandate was too much for 'creative' players to handle.

So, apparently the warning above was too subtle. Some folks still have the feeling that being snarky is a good idea. Please allow me to disabuse you all of this notion.

Next time we feel someone in the thread is being rude, insulting, a jerk or the like - expect a thread-ban or worse without warning.

I'm pretty sure that's unsubtle enough. Play nice, people.