Bloat already?

[Falling Icicle]

...minus all the options, which caused said broken-ness...

It remains to be seen if 4e avoids the pitfall of powercreep and overpowered splatbooks content, and we won't know if it does or not for a while yet.

I'm very optimistic about that. Because all classes and paragon paths share the same progression, it will be alot easier to make balanced classes and paths. Sure, you'll get a power or paragon path feature every now and then that are too good for their level, that's inevitable, but I don't think we'll see the extreme brokeness that plagued many prestige classes in 3e.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I hope your right I also think it will help that the starting power of classes and races is higher so you can tweak more without breaking the power level.

 

[BASHMAN]

Actually what we "didn't need" was levels 21-30 in the first PHB. If they cut out 1/3 of the levels (and thus 1/3 of the powerz, and half of the prestige thingies), there would have totally been enough room for Barbarians, Druids, bards, Sorcerers, & Monks. Also room for Half-Orc & Gnome in PHB this way.

This is the thing though-- it was a marketing decision.

A WotC marketing person may have seen some statistics that only 50% of the 4E gamers will buy a 4e equivalent of an Epic handbook. But 95% will buy the book w/ the missing classes.

Essentially shuffling around the information in a way that will (hopefully) guarantee more sales. the Only chance for it not to work is A. the game fails (which it won't) and B. it pisses off people like me who resent the marketing tactics of holding hostage certain races & classes for $40-- instead of just introducing genuinly new (and thus more optional) stuff in such a book.

But the folks boycotting like me are few & far between, and likely have no bearing on business decisions. The market will bear this, so they can get away with doing it.

 

[Ximenes088]

that you need possibly a whole other class to play a fighter who is an archer or one not wedded to heavy armor.

An archer is now a ranger, not a fighter. You want a heavily-armored archer? Buy armor proficiencies; none of the ranger powers shown so far require you be in light armor to use them. You want a fighter that's identical to the existing class, except unarmored? Take away their armor proficiencies and simply give them an armor bonus/movement penalty equal to plate and a shield, or plate alone if they're using a two-handed weapon. Call it "Iron Skin Meditation" or "Roll With It" or "Lucky Charms" or whatever other reason that compels you to have an unarmored fighter. Since even first level PCs are expected to be able to afford plate, it's not like you're doing anything but shuffling tokens around.

I just don't agree with the idea that 4e's encouraging a profusion of base classes because it can't handle multiple concepts within one class. How can it possibly handle fewer concepts than the 3.5e noncaster classes? All of them had the exact same abilities at the exact same progression within their class, varied only by feats and a tiny handful of options. The difference between a 3.5e elf fighter and a Moldvay Basic elf was that the 3.5e fighter could pick two feats and didn't get any spells. In 4e, every fighter has to choose at least four abilities, plus his feats. If you can't find four abilities off the list that cooperate with a given concept, where exactly are you finding better in 3.5e?

 

[neceros]

Right. Archers by definition are strikers, not defenders. Though that's an odd image when I think about it.

Anyhow, you could mod a ranger to be more tough, if that's your thing.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Actually what we "didn't need" was levels 21-30 in the first PHB. If they cut out 1/3 of the levels (and thus 1/3 of the powerz, and half of the prestige thingies), there would have totally been enough room for Barbarians, Druids, bards, Sorcerers, & Monks. Also room for Half-Orc & Gnome in PHB this way.

This is the thing though-- it was a marketing decision.

A WotC marketing person may have seen some statistics that only 50% of the 4E gamers will buy a 4e equivalent of an Epic handbook. But 95% will buy the book w/ the missing classes.

Essentially shuffling around the information in a way that will (hopefully) guarantee more sales. the Only chance for it not to work is A. the game fails (which it won't) and B. it pisses off people like me who resent the marketing tactics of holding hostage certain races & classes for $40-- instead of just introducing genuinly new (and thus more optional) stuff in such a book.

But the folks boycotting like me are few & far between, and likely have no bearing on business decisions. The market will bear this, so they can get away with doing it.

You know, business reasons don't tell automatically if a decision is good or bad for the game as a game. Therefor, I tend to ignore any reasoning like "they are just doing it for the money", and try to discern th merits for the game as a game, not as a product.

Epic Tier vs More Classes effectively means depth vs. breadth. With the epic tier, people will be able to play longer campaigns with the same characters. If you're into that, the epic tier in the core books is a very good idea. They don't need more classes, since they can't even cover all of the existing ones.
There are also people that run only short campaigns. For them, more classes is usually better, since they will want to try out new things often.

Ultimately, I think the reason for going with Epic Tier instead of more classes can also be traced back to the fact that you'll never have enough classes. People will always be glad to try something new, and there's always one archetype around that could be implemented a little better with a new class instead of an existing class. But do people really want even more tiers/levels?
This way, we're guaranteed that every class will be useable in every tier. Even the new ones. If they instead put planned an Epic Level handbook at a later time, only classes covered by that book could be used in epic levels, and the rest had tto sit out or hope for a online version.

 

[hong]

I kind of agree that epic is something that could have been left for the next PHB: ie, instead of splitting the total volume of release material vertically, you split horizontally. It would make the release strategy something like the BECMI way of doing things, or (more recently) White Wolf's Scion books: Hero/Demigod/God. It would also give them more time to make sure the crunch at that tier is more balanced.

 

[neceros]

Understandable, hong.

In the same light, releasing more classes at once grants more chances for errors of a worse kind: unbalance.

While yes, it the higher levels may feel the same, or they may not work as well, we already know that the math eventually fizzles out. It's the way it works. I'd much rather have a longer life span for my character and epic rules in the core book so it can't be refuted by some uninspired DM down the line, then to have to wait a year to get more classes.

It's all the same, anyhow, since it's all said and done. No use clawing at a fleeting train.

 

[MortalPlague]

I may be a bit unique on this, but my main concern is the race creep. I'm a big fan of human-dominated parties, or at least parties that consist of mainly traditional fantasy races (elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, etc). I don't mind having tiefling or dragonborn in the mix (it's nice to have an exotic race in the party every now and then), but they've already announced another five races in the next PHB.

With a choice from 13 races with only the first additional book, how often do you think the group will contain traditional fantasy races in any great number? I think we're more likely to see groups that consist of a gnoll, a pixie, a treant, a ghoul, and a minotaur (or some equally fantastic and weird combination).

I know the argument, "Only allow PHB races!", but I'm loath to be the sort of DM to constantly limit players options just because of the flavour of game I enjoy. I can even appreciate a monstrous game once in a while. It just frustrates me that the planned expansions involve more and more races even before the game is launched.

 

[ShockMeSane]

I kind of agree that epic is something that could have been left for the next PHB: ie, instead of splitting the total volume of release material vertically, you split horizontally. It would make the release strategy something like the BECMI way of doing things, or (more recently) White Wolf's Scion books: Hero/Demigod/God. It would also give them more time to make sure the crunch at that tier is more balanced.

I think this is the first time that I've strongly disagreed with one your statements Hong. I know they are usually controversial, and I may not agree 100%, but here I just beg to differ.

Including higher level base rules makes everything else easier to balance out. If we were to mirror the 3e development cycle and release the epic handbook after how many classes had been developed.... in 4e can you even imagine the nightmare? New powers for every class added up to that point, every class you want to release post that updated to X level, etc etc. I have to agree that creating a higher base level makes the game substantially easier to expand in the future. Even the Epic handbook1 would be pretty well stocked with pages simply including level 21-30 powers for all 13 base 3E classes, Epic Destinies, etc.

But perhaps Im just coming from a place of bitterness, as someone who though the Epic Levels book in 3.x was worthless beyond comprehension. Because when Wizards aren't overpowered enough, let them design their own no-save spells.....