Class Design Concepts

[Klaus]

XD always looks like a smiley face to me..

And it's awesome!

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I feel a little better for the first time since this playtest came out. I just hope we get some sorta bladesinger, swordmage, spellsword out of the box

 

[Bluenose]

Looking at the monk, that class gains access to unique maneuvers that have overtly magical effects, such as walking across water, running up walls, and plucking arrows out of the air. The monk can also channel ki to produce magical effects, with options for stunning a creature or healing presented as a default (we can expand the class later to give options you can take in place of those two). Finally, the monk is an expert in unarmed combat and defense, drawing on ki to dodge attacks and inflict deadly blows.

Parkour involves some amount of running up walls, so I'd like some signs that this will also be possible without automatically being defined as Magic. Snatching arrows out of the air actually has an entry in Guinness World Records. I see stunning someone is magic, which would be surprise to a few boxers I know. We can assume that the Warlord will either be magical or unable to heal, since healing uses Ki and is a magical effect. And I assume it will be possible to "dodge attacks and inflict deadly blows" without using ki, so why bother mentioning that?

Yes Mike, we get it. Magic does the difficult stuff, Mundane skill is for easy things. And people should fail at doing mundane things else there's no tension, but magic is immensely reliable.

 

[Kinak]

This makes me feel a little better. There's been so much "Generify everything! Classes can't be associated with mechanics!" that I was despairing for classes that tie the flavor and the rules together.

The paladin sounds interesting. I'm curious to see what they do with that. I'd prefer a virtue/vice system, but if they're going to have alignment, the paladin is the place to show it off.

The rogue changes are hard to judge. It sounds like "we're taking the XD label off the rogue, but keeping their mechanic working like XD." Which seems a little weird, but I might just be misunderstanding them.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Parkour involves some amount of running up walls, so I'd like some signs that this will also be possible without automatically being defined as Magic.

Yes, and do you really care if that counts as natural or super natural

 

[TerraDave]

Oh, and is it me, or has there been a trend from columns that spell things out very clearly - design goals, here, what do you think of this mechanic type stuff - to completely vague generalities - we're tidying this bit up, and changing this bit, and let's mention everything in the game at some point?

There were plenty of vague and general legends and lore columns early on.

I remember a lot that seemed to amount to "the new game will have modules".

 

[Bluenose]

Yes, and do you really care if that counts as natural or super natural

Do you want the Fighter to get supernatural abilities? Some people certainly don't. So I'd rather prefer if we didn't get classes that lack supernatural abilities being restricted to doing less than is possible in reality, let along fiction/myth, while classes that do get supernatural abilities get to run around with "I Can Do Anything" signs over their heads.

 

[Zaukrie]

Giant thumbs up for lots of different types of paladins. Change the name to holy warrior, and make paladin the name for the LG type.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Article sounds good - how it will look in the end is another thing, of course, but I like that they're a) recognising that there's still a bit of work to be done, b) that they realise that they have the luxury of experimenting right now and c) that they're listening to feedback regarding expertise dice, maneuvers and skills.

You know what's the most painful part? The fact that it wasn't them that needed to recognize these three points... but that it's us the player-base that has to be reminded that this is the case.

WotC has known these three points all along. And they've been doing these three points all along. It's only us morons on the message boards who keep thinking they don't know what they're doing. How WotC's "lost their way", or how "the first packet was a great start but it's gone in a direction I don't like since then" or any other number of stupid statements on our part that seem to have no forward thinking or higher-cognitive assessment of the reason for what has occurred. Clearly indicating we have no idea what is actually going on.

And the fact that WotC has to basically state outright "Here's what we're doing!" in order for us to actually get it through our thick heads that this in fact *is* what they are doing... makes me just shake my head.

I really wish we were smarter than we seem to be.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Do you want the Fighter to get supernatural abilities?

Yes I do, or atleast options for them.

Some people certainly don't. So I'd rather prefer if we didn't get classes that lack supernatural abilities being restricted to doing less than is possible in reality, let along fiction/myth, while classes that do get supernatural abilities get to run around with "I Can Do Anything" signs over their heads.

I think we could be on the same page, I just don't care about the label.

I want to to be able to do anything batman, robin, john carter, Conan, the steam, the leverage team, or any cop/military guy can do but I am fine with some of it being "cool story point" powers