Complete Arcane: Too Much Wu-Jen?!?

[Trainz]

If the ranger and druid were supposed to be full-casting classes, then yes. But they're not.

I guess I don't agree that the Druid isn't a full-casting class.

He has as many spells and as many spell levels as a cleric.

 

[hong]

I dunno about that. I haven't seen much hue and cry for the wu-jen in 3E. But giving a class its due is not the same thing as devoting more material to it than anything else.

I was really looking forward to CA, but now it's sorta fallen to the bottom of my list in terms of the Complete books. It's not horrible and it's salvageable, but it was a real turnoff reading "Wu Jen" over and over and over again. :\

Meh. If I can go through Complete Divine and flip through pages and pages of druid spells which are of no use to me because I banned druids, then you can go through Complete Arcane and flip through pages and pages of wu jen spells which are of no use to you because you banned wu jen. Symmetry!

 

[hong]

FWIW, Oriental Adventures includes Wu Jen to the exclusion of Wizards (in the same way it includes a very nifty Shaman class to the exclusion of Clerics and Druids) which is why they're awfully similar. Personally, I don't think that lifting themed material at dropping it in splatbooks is a good practice as it strikes me as destructive to the cohesiveness of the storytelling,

There was a story in OA? Could have fooled me.

Anyway, the problem is that basically there's no real difference between wizards and wu jen, in terms of their niche within a party. Both are generic arcane spellcasters with extremely wide scope, even if their flavour text is different. This is backed up by the substantial overlap in the spell lists for the two classes (albeit counting only spells that were extant when OA was published, and the wu jen also lacks some of the wizard's more notoriously broken spells). Therefore, the solution is obvious: ban wizards, and give all their spells to wu jen. Hey presto, no more problems with schtick-stealing or redundant spells. Me == genuis.

 

[Craque]

I don't think the problem with complete arcane is too much wu jen. In general, Complete Arcane deals pretty well with the material it presents. It's the material that didn't make it into the book that's the problem.

The focus of the book, first and foremost, should be to expand upon the flavor, mechanics, and play methods of the core classes. If it doesn't do that, it doesn't deserve to be called Complete Arcane.

In this respect Complete Arcane fails pretty miserably. There's pretty much nothing for familiars, and what it has are watered down reprints (fortify familiar, enhance familiar). It only has one page dedicated to spellbooks despite their importance to wizards, a good portion of it is flavor text, and the rest is either too expensive or ineffective. Sorcerers get some cool feats, but those are the only things it gets and those feats alone cannot make up the gap between the sorcerer and the other full casting classes.

Wu jen is fine as it stands, we shouldn't be blaming the wu jen for Complete Arcane's other shortcomings.

 

[Malic]

Is that right, Craque? As I feared. I've been pretty disappointed in the 'Complete' books so far. Buying new 3.5 rulebooks wasn't too bad, but splatbooks that have out of context/genericized reprints of stuff I already own, and not much else, are really starting to grate. Especially as a OA fan.

On topic - I would not have thought that would be a problem, as the wu jen is designed to be used instead of a wizard and to have a significantly different spell list for campaign/class thematic reasons. If you don't have wu jen, just allow other arcane classes to take the spells if you really like them. They are designed for a very different 'flavour' so I'd expect that the GM would want to check if they wanted to use them in their game or not. Surely it's not too hard to decide what the appropriate class is if you are only using core rules - you only have a choice of three, and sor/wiz usually get nearly everything, don't they?

Lack of other stuff for existing classes - that's bad, what can I say

Oh the agony. Do I save some money, and put up with owning an incomplete series? Or buy something I'm pretty sure will frustrate me? :\

 

[Ranger REG]

Coming Soon in 2005, Complete Generic, where everybody is the same, and individuality is taboo. Joe Nakayama meet Joe O'Grady.

LOL!

I knew there were going to be problems when they use the adjective "Complete."

 

[Kae'Yoss]

If you're going to have class-specific spells outside of core, how about specialist-restricted spells? There's an idea.

I thought of something like that myself. My idea was to make the specialist wizards like the psion disciplines. There are a lot of "sor/wiz" spells, and then, there's a small list of spells per school that's only for specialist wizards. Create undead and the like is for necromancers only, charm and dominate monster is for enchanters, evokers are the only ones who get chain lightning and delayed blast fireball, and so on. Of course, this would make it necessary to change the sorcerer as well, but that's the case, anyway. Maybe some of the spells would be "evoker/sorcerer" or something, or the sorcerer would get his very own spell list (IMO the warmage is a good specialist sorcerer).

Does make me wonder what WotC is going to do with the last Complete book -- I don't think they've got any more base classes to rip off from Oriental Adventures

I have the feeling that they will make a ninja core class after all. Maybe they will be allowed to use the rokugan ninja, or they do something else, like they did a cw version of the samurai (and lets hope that the Complete Adventurer ninja won't suck)

The wu jen needs it's own spell list with its own flavor. If not, there's very little point in having the class at all.

He doesn't lose flavour all of a sudden just because those spells are available to other classes. And I'm not saying that all those wu jen spells should be on the sor/wiz list. Some are sor/wiz spells, others are for druids. And then there are a couple that are for clerics, paladins, rangers.

The wu jen would keep his flavour: The peculiar selection of elements he has, the mix of wizard and druid spells, the secrets/taboos.

OK, some of the spells don't really fit the PHB classes, but a lot of them do. Giant Size for example would make a fitting Cleric spell (what with righteous might) and wizards will like the spell, too.

But they should still be statted out like all other parts of d20. Demons, angels, Gods, elementals etc get stats and are slayable in d20, and so should animistic spirits. Incoporeal Fey with cold iron DR should be about right,or "dryad" like Kami that are linked to thier place of potency, rather than just an oak tree.

As has been said, the spirit subtype is explained in OA. But I'm not sure whether I want them statted out. IMO their status is somewhere between outsiders and deities, as they grant spells to those characters who deal with them (bargain, appease, worship etc depending on the spirit and the character)

 

[Saeviomagy]

I guess I don't agree that the Druid isn't a full-casting class.

He has as many spells and as many spell levels as a cleric.

He's got 169 spells, compared with 231. additionally, around about half of his higher level spells are available to either the cleric or wizard at a lower level. After all, he's got to give up SOMETHING for those non casting abilities that he gets.

Out of core, I consider the wizard,sorceror and cleric to be full-casters. If the wizard/sorceror had access to the majority of the cleric's list, the cleric would fall down a level and bump everyone further - he only gets first tier status because of the exclusivity of large sections of his spell list. The druid stands alone on the second tier. The bard is third. Paladins and rangers are barely casters at all, coming in a distant fourth.

 

[MerricB]

Just incidentally, there are 147 spells in CA, of which 48 are solely for Wujen.

Cheers!

 

[Trainz]

He's got 169 spells, compared with 231. additionally, around about half of his higher level spells are available to either the cleric or wizard at a lower level. After all, he's got to give up SOMETHING for those non casting abilities that he gets.

Out of core, I consider the wizard,sorceror and cleric to be full-casters. If the wizard/sorceror had access to the majority of the cleric's list, the cleric would fall down a level and bump everyone further - he only gets first tier status because of the exclusivity of large sections of his spell list. The druid stands alone on the second tier. The bard is third. Paladins and rangers are barely casters at all, coming in a distant fourth.

What I meant is that he casts as many and as high-level spells as a cleric. Which makes him a full caster.

What you might feel he lacks in spell diversity, he makes up with other abilities.

You might not like the druid, but it is still a full casting class.