Class Acts: Hierophant Druids and a surprise

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree with this. Option overload is a huge factor in 4e, especially if you don't use the Character Builder. Making the runepriest a 2-in-1 is bad enough; making a 4-in-1 elementalist would be horrendous.

The way I have considered designing an elementalist class (which has a long tradition in my campaign) would be to have each build focus on one element, have two 'secondary' and one 'opposed'. Each element would have an associated at will and you could choose the other from the rest of the list of elementalist at wills; however, you couldn't choose a power of the opposed element.

Then, for encounter, daily and utilities, each power would have an associated element. Each level would have at least one power associated with each element. Again, you could take one from any non-opposed element, but you would have to have at least as many powers of a given type from your element as from any other given element (so a fire elementalist would have to have 2 fire encounter attack powers before getting a second air or earth one, and wouldn't be able to take water at all).

Of course, that's for one overall elementalist class in the model of the one I've used for years in 2e and later; it would probably be either a defender or a striker, and there is certainly room to fill out the roles with this power source.

Yeah, with 4 roles you could in principle give each element a role. That would mean you'd have a primary role based on your element, and you could dabble in 2 others. Probably not a bad way to go. I'm still not convinced there's a convincing distinction between elemental and arcane at this point, but that's really a different discussion.

Really, every discussion of the elemental power source in 4e brings me back to the conclusion that 'arcane' wasn't a good idea as a power source in and of itself. It seems more like an approach to gaining power. If it didn't mean rewriting all the classes I'd totally restructure the whole approach for my own setting, but it is just waaaayyyyy too much work. lol.

 

[Incenjucar]

It's important to keep in mind that, while the Primordials are not the bestest best friends with the World anymore, they are not strictly evil, and the Elemental Chaos is naturally unaligned. While they will most likely come into conflict with many groups in the World, especially those who wish to impose absolute, unchanging order, the World is still the big special project that the Primordials poured so much effort into, and their agents my well have deep affection for it despite not liking what the gods and primal spirits have done with the place. Moreover, the Elemental Chaos has the Abyss to deal with. The Abyss is a horrible infection created by beings from another universe and a rogue deity, and the elemental natives are probably far more concerned with cleansing the Chaos of the the Abyss than in destroying the World. Agents of the elemental chaos are also unlikely to be very happy about the intrusion of the Far Realm. There are at least as many good reasons for a lawful good PC to tap into the elemental chaos as to become an infernal pact warlock.

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I feel that Arcane would best represent more abstract and bizarre sorts of magic, like anything involving names, runes, secrets, plane-shifting, teleporting, size-changing, raw force, divination, magical beast summons, charms, and so forth.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's important to keep in mind that, while the Primordials are not the bestest best friends with the World anymore, they are not strictly evil, and the Elemental Chaos is naturally unaligned. While they will most likely come into conflict with many groups in the World, especially those who wish to impose absolute, unchanging order, the World is still the big special project that the Primordials poured so much effort into, and their agents my well have deep affection for it despite not liking what the gods and primal spirits have done with the place. Moreover, the Elemental Chaos has the Abyss to deal with. The Abyss is a horrible infection created by beings from another universe and a rogue deity, and the elemental natives are probably far more concerned with cleansing the Chaos of the the Abyss than in destroying the World. Agents of the elemental chaos are also unlikely to be very happy about the intrusion of the Far Realm. There are at least as many good reasons for a lawful good PC to tap into the elemental chaos as to become an infernal pact warlock.

Well, I look at it as somewhat similar to the situation with the Cthulhu Mythos 'deities'. They may not be evil, but their agenda is simply vastly different from that of most sentient humanoid beings. Their value systems are so different, they have vastly different goals and perspectives. Dealing with a Primordial is like dealing with a volcano. Sooner or later it will erupt and just obliterate you, and not even notice. The Primordials are a little less strange and remote than say Far Realm entities, and you MIGHT form some common ground with them, but in essence they're engines of change, fundamentally chaotic in a sense. The Hierophant article was pretty good on that point, sooner or later elemental power will just consume you. It may not be 'evil' but it is very dangerous.

I feel that Arcane would best represent more abstract and bizarre sorts of magic, like anything involving names, runes, secrets, plane-shifting, teleporting, size-changing, raw force, divination, magical beast summons, charms, and so forth.

Eh, I think of it more like there are 2 conflated concepts going on with 'power source'. First there are MEANS, like obscure knowledge (arcana), or prayer (Divine), or discipline (Martial) and then there are SOURCES, the gods, the primordials, etc. The two are disjoint. An Invoker may be getting his power from the gods, but he's NOT praying for it, he's really using knowledge (arcana) to direct divine power. It really isn't a coherent system, so things have been assigned here and there, mostly to satisfy legacy expectations. That isn't really all that bad, but it isn't conducive to putting together settings with any kind of deep systematic theory of how things work. It also leads to things like 'elemental' and 'arcane' overlapping to the point of being impossible to tell apart.

 

[Incenjucar]

Another way to look at it is to make Arcane the "white" to the rainbow of power sources, much like the mage is to the specialist wizard.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I always felt that 4e's backstory always unfairly painted Primordials in a bad light. Out of one of the mythological sources of the Primordials, the Titans of Greek Mythology, there were a number of them like Gaia and Rhea who were more sympathetic than the generally bad ones such as Chronus and Uranus.

I could see a group out there using Elemental Powers for the purpose of restoring balance to a cosmology that's been unbalanced by the Gods and other forces.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Maybe they should have an "Under" power source for powers like that 22nd level daily. It's objectivly worse than feywild sojurn for crying out loud, it's a 22nd level daily standard while sojurn is a 10th level encounter move! I mean, who thought that power was viable?

Perhaps the problem here is that there is no clear, discernable way of deciding what level a particular power should be. PHB1 was full of outliers, and I don't see it getting any better as time goes past.

I would like to think that they set out with a plan to objectively rate amounts of damage, degrees of bad effect, length of duration and such, but I think they eyeballed it then and eyeball it now - leading to issues such as that.

Cheers

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Perhaps the problem here is that there is no clear, discernable way of deciding what level a particular power should be. PHB1 was full of outliers, and I don't see it getting any better as time goes past.

I would like to think that they set out with a plan to objectively rate amounts of damage, degrees of bad effect, length of duration and such, but I think they eyeballed it then and eyeball it now - leading to issues such as that.

Cheers

Well....

Think of it this way PP and ED powers don't actually HAVE to be all entirely balanced with class powers. You don't have a choice to pick something else. The powers fit a theme and are designed to reinforce that theme, not to balance exactly with some other random power of some class. As long as each ED is balanced against the others overall at various levels that's what matters.

Even between classes you don't have to have all powers be close to the same strength. Some classes have stronger powers, some have stronger features, different powers at different levels are better or worse, etc.

 

[Knightfall]

Personally, I think the Elemental power source would be a perfect addition to Dark Sun. Elemental priests were a big deal in the 2e version, and I'm not sure that the Primal options for DS go far enough.

 

[Flobby]

Personally, I think the Elemental power source would be a perfect addition to Dark Sun. Elemental priests were a big deal in the 2e version, and I'm not sure that the Primal options for DS go far enough.

Totally agree. I hope they put in an elemental themed cleric like class in one of these days.

 

[the Jester]

Personally, I think the Elemental power source would be a perfect addition to Dark Sun. Elemental priests were a big deal in the 2e version, and I'm not sure that the Primal options for DS go far enough.

Yeah, I'd kinda expected the elemental power source to be alongside psionics in PH3 because of Dark Sun, but no such luck.