David Noonens blog and D&D 4e's roles.

[ferratus]

In 4e, there's no "skill monkey." There's no real division of skill labor. Everyone is expected to fight, and mostly fight, to distinguish themselves.

It is one of the issues with the edition, in my mind, though the roles do a great job of distinguishing combat abilities.

I won't deny that 4e D&D is going to be primarily about dungeon crawling combat (it is D&D after all) but I would say that the classes are expected to distinguish themselves through skills as well. That is, there are lots of overlapping skills but each class brings approximately the same amount of skill proficiency to the table, just as they bring the same amount of combat proficiency.

So do you find it a problem if there isn't a skill-focused character who cannot fight as well? After all, more rules for encouraging roleplaying can always be added to the system, but having specialization in subsystems would be radically different to 4e's "never split up the party" philosophy. Character roles concentrating on subsystems means that you take turns at the table playing to your character's strengths, whereas 4e expects both combat and skills to be something that all members of the party participate in cooperatively.

 

[diaglo]

I think you made a fundamental misreading of David's point. He's not talking about the existence of the Cleric as a class, but the idea of a "healer". The idea of a cleric would have been a lightly armored mace swinging religious warrior. A religious worshiper and "guardian of alignment" actually has nothing to do with a "cure light wounds" spell.

well then you should also know clerics don't get spells until lvl 2 in real D&D.

 

[filthgrinder]

well then you should also know clerics don't get spells until lvl 2 in real D&D.

Helpful.

 

[ppaladin123]

Warning: a little off-topic.

Aion client is said to pack Nprotect's Gameguard, one of the most invasive, badly written, system unfriendly anti-bot applications ever.

Suffice to say that your system or peripherals does not meet certain criteria's, you may expect stuff like blue screens, random hangups/slowdowns, memroy leaks, USB devices losing functionality and so on.
Oh, and earlier versions of Gameguard opened your system for hackers.

You were warned.

Regards,
Ruemere

Eek. That is a real shame.

Ok I'm curious... other games don't hire professionals? Or they're not real professionals?

You are right. I came off like a jerk with that statement. I apologize and revise my statement: I like David Noonan's style and I am excited to know that he is working on Aion.

 

[diaglo]

Helpful.

thanks. i am always around whenever you want to know about the origins of the classes and their roles in the game.

 

[LostSoul]

I think that the idea that the Cleric is there to keep the plot on track is kind of... strange.

The fact that you have to rest up for a long time means that you have to make a choice between pushing deeper into the dungeon/taking more time to search and maybe dying (each time you search triggers a wandering moster roll, as far as I can recall), or going back up to the surface and having to fight through whatever's occupied those "cleared" dungeon rooms. Maybe those guys stole the treasure that you missed, too. Maybe the bad guys have prepared defenses.

The long rest time is about strategic play.