Bladesinger Preview!

[DracoSuave]

4) Regardless of how they want to much with attacks working and the formatting, would it kill them to make a class with At-Wills, Encounters, and Dailies that you can choose from? Is that somehow now bad game design? I guess in Essentials you have to choose from two of those for some reason.

The Mage.


And besides, the game has 18 of those pre-essentials. 19 now. Does the game really need another right now, or can we let them explore some design space they've openned up?

 

[BobTheNob]

3) Man, I hate Essentials so much. Where O4E was exception-based game design, I think the newer Essentials classes are more along the lines of "random-ass" game design. It shares few design or play elements with other classes save for the way it's printed in the book.

Man, I love essentials so much. I am personally SO bored with the same-sameness of AEDU design, and so glad that some people agreed with how I was feeling.

Where some hate where 4e is going, some love it.

Why do you assume 5e will go the way you want?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I wonder what the level 3 arcane strike is like...

is it the ability to cast your encounter/daily wizard spells through a strike, or is it a just a damage buff???

 

[FireLance]

1) Agree with the OP that this class is a mess. Not much of a controller, and wizard encounters as dailies seems like an absolutely horrible idea. For that to be ok, their at-wills better be ridiculously OP compared to other at-wills, and that doesn't appear to be the case.

Their at-wills are certainly better, but probably not ridiculously so. If they were ridiculously overpowered, we would be left wondering why they would ever use encounters or dailies.

Melee basic attack plus secondary ability score damage already puts it on par with many at-will abilities. It is effectively the same as the fighter's cleave, except that the enemy that takes the automatic extra damage can be anywhere within 10 squares, or the rogue's sly flourish, except that the bladesinger is not restricted to dealing the extra damage to the same target. All that plus he can apply a control effect in addition to the extra damage.

Frankly, I see this as similar to the fighter vs. the paladin. They are both defenders, but fighter is better at managing crowds, but the paladin is better at locking down a single target. Similarly, all the wizards we have seen so far are controllers. However, the arcanist and mage are better at multiple-target control, while the bladesinger is better at single-target control.

 

[FireLance]

I'll let someone play a human dwarven defender if they can sell me on a reskin of the mechanics or a good backstory about how a human came to be that trusted in dwarven society. The amount of stupid and/or 80's I associate with the idea of racial restrictions has nothing to do with it.

That jogged my memory. There was actually a prestige class in Races of Stone that allowed a PC to count as a dwarf, gnome or goliath (pick one) for most game purposes. Hence, in 3e, you could have a rules-legal human dwarven defender.

 

[Neonchameleon]

And, sorcerers would rather have sorcerer dailies as dailies than a wizard encounter power.

Yes. But throw in the Bladesinger's encounter power - +2 to hit and +5 damage until EoNT. Once you've added that in, if you build for damage your dailies are outdamaging the sorceror's. And if you aren't exploiting that encounter to get off your dailies, you've ed up.

Tha said, the daily power swap feat is a good investment for a bladesinger IMO.

 

[BobTheNob]

Yes. But throw in the Bladesinger's encounter power - +2 to hit and +5 damage until EoNT. Once you've added that in, if you build for damage your dailies are outdamaging the sorceror's. And if you aren't exploiting that encounter to get off your dailies, you've ed up.

Tha said, the daily power swap feat is a good investment for a bladesinger IMO.

This is something I have found very funny in this whole discussion. So much focus, yet so little of it on the encounter power...and its a KILLER. +2 to hit and defences and +5 damage till end next turn, activate as a minor?

Go combine that the dailies (/wizard encounters) you have, attack multiple targets with a +2/+5...why not spend an action point and do it again? You could crank out some serious damage in a round

 

[Osgood]

I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem to me like the modest at-will powers will cover the power gap of having encounters as daily powers. I have yet to see one of these new essentials style subclasses that I actually like as well as one of the classic characters.

 

[Zaran]

Does anyone else feel like that they have created these repeatable encounter powers and are using the Wizard power list so that they do not have to do any more development on additional support afterwards? They basically designed 5 powers for the Bladesinger and have to not add another power.

It feels kind of lazy to me.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Which from my experience tells me that, almost without exception, the first Bladesinger in my campaign will be anything BUT an Elf or Eladrin

How often in D&D history have 4 of the 7 archmages in the entire world all been in the same adventuring party?

Gary was the first to be guilty of that!!!!!