I've been investigating avengers a lot lately and have even gone to a charop board to see what's out there for it. One thing that has, up until now, merely been an annoyance that I could ignore, is now becoming a thorn in my side.
I speak of domains and deity worship.
Deities are nothing but flavour-text. At the end of the day, they shouldn't dictate mechanical rules. There is no mechanical reason why I should be limited to one set of domains or feats just because of an arbitrary decision to include X and not Y for Z deity.
It is not a balance issue. The particular domains I want are allowed for an Eberron deity (Strength and Skill, Dol Dorn), so mechanically and balance-wise, there's no reason to prevent me from taking both. The only thing that stops me, is that there is no Forgotten Realms deity with both domains.
Technically, the Skill power domain feat is far better for my avenger than the Strength domain feat, but my character concept simply doesn't fit a god of knowledge or love. So why should I be restricted by such arbitrary associations?
If there was some mechanical balance reason that these two domains couldn't be taken together, then I wouldn't mind. But to be crippled by nothing more than someone's interpretation of a god is... vexing. I had thought that these types of rules were gone from 4e. Previous editions were rife with rules as justifications for thematic restrictions that had nothing to do with balance. Why are we going backwards with this edition?
I speak of domains and deity worship.
Deities are nothing but flavour-text. At the end of the day, they shouldn't dictate mechanical rules. There is no mechanical reason why I should be limited to one set of domains or feats just because of an arbitrary decision to include X and not Y for Z deity.
It is not a balance issue. The particular domains I want are allowed for an Eberron deity (Strength and Skill, Dol Dorn), so mechanically and balance-wise, there's no reason to prevent me from taking both. The only thing that stops me, is that there is no Forgotten Realms deity with both domains.
Technically, the Skill power domain feat is far better for my avenger than the Strength domain feat, but my character concept simply doesn't fit a god of knowledge or love. So why should I be restricted by such arbitrary associations?
If there was some mechanical balance reason that these two domains couldn't be taken together, then I wouldn't mind. But to be crippled by nothing more than someone's interpretation of a god is... vexing. I had thought that these types of rules were gone from 4e. Previous editions were rife with rules as justifications for thematic restrictions that had nothing to do with balance. Why are we going backwards with this edition?