Dragon 370 - Invoker Preview

[Savevsdeath]

He conspired to have Baldur murdered.

Correction: He succeeded at having balder murdered. He also directly and indirectly committed a number of evil acts, including fighting against the gods during ragnarok, giving birth to the midgar worm and the freakin' fenris wolf, and some more stuff i cant even recall off the top of my head. He was evil. Pure, Chaotic Evil by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Rechan]

Correction: He succeeded at having balder murdered. He also directly and indirectly committed a number of evil acts, including fighting against the gods during ragnarok, giving birth to the midgar worm and the freakin' fenris wolf, and some more stuff i cant even recall off the top of my head. He was evil. Pure, Chaotic Evil by any stretch of the imagination.

Then, if he was Evil, I am certain the other gods wouldn't let Loki in their clubhouse and be totally kosher with giving Divine Power to a guy who was then turn around and ask Loki for some power.

 

[RefinedBean]

Then, if he was Evil, I am certain the other gods wouldn't let Loki in their clubhouse and be totally kosher with giving Divine Power to a guy who was then turn around and ask Loki for some power.

If it served a greater purpose that only that God could see, then why not?

These are gods. They can be as petty or as open as you want 'em to be.

 

[Rechan]

If it served a greater purpose that only that God could see, then why not?

Eh?

 

[TwinBahamut]

Then, if he was Evil, I am certain the other gods wouldn't let Loki in their clubhouse and be totally kosher with giving Divine Power to a guy who was then turn around and ask Loki for some power.

Well, as punishment for the death of Baldur, the Aesir did imprison Loki in the underworld (I think) and bind him so that the poison of a terrible snake will drip in his eyes for all of eternity, so I wouldn't say that they would "let him in the clubhouse"...

That said, if Loki decided to use his powers to support someone who was doing great deeds in the name of the rest of the gods, I don't think they would mind. Ultimately, it just means that Loki is helping the other gods indirectly. Arguably, it should be Loki who might be the most ticked off about that (unless it served him too, of course). If we are talking about an evil Invoker calling upon the aid of the good gods, though, it is a different situation (and a fairly complex one).

Also, if it helps at all, try looking at the figure of Saturn/Cronus in myth, particularly in the way he is seen as both the enemy of the gods, the bringer of a golden age to mankind (as the Roman saturn), and as a complex trickster figure who often distorts the prayers of mankind in ways they were not intended (as in "The Knight's Tale" from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales). He wanders between patron to man and arguably evil tyrant of the gods in fairly complex ways.

Finally, I agree that Hades is not an example of an evil god at all. Other than the kidnapping Persephone/bringing winter to the world thing, he is pretty much the just judge of the dead. He gave a surprisingly fair deal to Orpheus (the lesson of that one was to trust the gods, not that Hades was a bad guy), and he helped fight against the Titans.

 

[mearls]

As a general rule of thumb, I would think and hope that a new class's powers would be created with an eye towards not completely overshadowing an existing class's powers.

Hey man,

I don't have time for an in-depth answer, but I can at least address the basics of your concerns.

Shoring up areas of the game while keeping everything usable is a very tricky process to manage. Since I'm now a designer rather than a developer, I'm not in charge of that any more, but here's how I think we'll approach it.

Scorching burst is a power that we'll leave alone, and going forward I'd be surprised if we just created a better version. Of the at-will wizard powers that I know of that are in the pipeline, none of them are simply scorching burst with more bells and whistles.

On one hand, within a class we don't want to invalidate a perfectly serviceable power. On the other, there is a lot of design space for different styles of at-will.

I'd expect that as we do more at-wills, we'd use the PH ones as a baseline and create an obviously better one only if a power was clearly to weak.

So, I wouldn't expect us to overwrite scorching burst any time soon.

 

[TwinBahamut]

[sblock]

My one problem with this is that what defines a "pantheon"? Does every god exist in the pantheon?

I think by the very definition of the word (the combination of the greek words for "all" and "gods"), I will say yes to that. Every god is part of the pantheon, or else it really isn't a pantheon. I mean, Greek myth makes some distinction between the Olympians (the gods of Mt. Olympus, primarily the famous ones) and the other gods, but every god would be part of the pantheon. The only place where a distinction between multiple "pantheons" is really made that I am aware of is Norse myth, with the split between the Aesir (who are worshipped) and the Vanir (who are not), but that is fairly complicated oddity in its own right (though one that has really helped my ideas for the gods in a setting with multiple inhabited planets).

There are a lot of things that the existing gods in The Pantheon don't have dominion over, that doesn't fit in their portfolio. So that means that either no one is responsible for this thing, a God in the pantheon control it and no one acknowledges it, or something else is responsible for it.

If Something Else is responsible for it, then you have to define it. Either as a God, or something Else, and you need to figure out what that Else is.

Suddenly, you have to mark everything down and make a bunch of more Gods. Or you need to give Pelor dominion over doors and cook fires, or wine, or any other minor things that people would want to pray about, so that everything under the sun has some reperesentation by the Gods.

Yeah, that is a problem. If you want the pantheon to be even reasonably complete, then you need something a lot more detailed than what the PHB gives you. Yet, if you make it that complete, you get a bloated mess that is practically unplayable. I suppose the only choice I think works well is to just pretend it is complete (and that there are a lot of minor gods filling the temples that you haven't named), and just work with a basic set of primary gods for playability's sake.

And then you have things like Demi-Gods, Demon Princes/Arch Angels/Archfey, Primoridals, Ancestors, Spirits... do they fit in the pantheon?

Well, this is fairly complicated...

The big problem is that things like angels, spirits, fey, demigods, saints, ancestors, and such are all pretty much just different names for the same concepts as far as the real world goes. Actually, the term "god" is almost indistinguishable from all of the above as far as real world polytheism goes. The line between spirit or demi-god and actual "gods" is pretty vague and fuzzy, after all. However, D&D doesn't really assume this is true, which leads to a bit of schizophrenia (in much the same way that the distinction between the Druid and Cleric leads to a lot of flavor schizophrenia). I suppose you could distinguish Fey as separate (being more alien than divine), and you could put possibly put Ancestors, Saints, and weaker Angels or Spirits as a tier below actual divine beings in the pantheon, but gods, demi-gods, angels, and spirits are all part of the broader pantheon.

Primordials, Demons, and Devils makes this a lot trickier, really. I would happily exclude Primordials and Demons from being in the pantheon, particularly since they are described as directly opposing the gods and fill a certain mythological niche, but I can't as easily dismiss the Devils from the pantheon thanks to that accursed Asmodeus... I wish I could, but I can't.

This is why I always use custom cosmologies whenever I really get into worldbuilding. Default cosmologies make my head hurt...

Or, what if Culture A thinks that God 1 is responsible for Portfolio X, but Culture B and C have God 1 (by another name) who is not responsible for X (they don't even HAVE X.) Is God 1 now responsible for X, and Culture B and C don't know it? Or is something Else responsible?

Or what happens when you have a situation where Pelor is the God of the Sun, and he's a good god. But this culture over here, they think the God of the Sun is evil and he does terrible things; is Pelor really a bad guy to some people and a good guy to others? Or if it's just an Evil god being re-interpreted, then how come Pelor is letting him represent the Sun?

Yeah, this would be a headache. I actually built a cosmology around a conflict between two gods, with one culture holding one up as good and the other culture holding up its rival god as good (and I am very proud of that cosmology), but I only did so by making the conflict between the gods a battle of ideals rather than morals and keeping the history and role of the gods the same for both cultures. Anything more complex than that is probably too much to bother with in a game...

Now your pantheon is really freaking bloated. Sure, it may be on par with historical real world religions, but it's really not neat or tidy or easy to work with.

It comes off as a big muddled mess.

Yep, it would be a mess. This is why I believe that, while things in a game should not contradict the important things of the real world, and should draw inspiration from the real world, direct emulation of every aspect of the real world down to the last detail is far more trouble than it is worth.[/sblock]

 

[Dionysos]

Hey man,

I don't have time for an in-depth answer, but I can at least address the basics of your concerns.

Shoring up areas of the game while keeping everything usable is a very tricky process to manage. Since I'm now a designer rather than a developer, I'm not in charge of that any more, but here's how I think we'll approach it.

Scorching burst is a power that we'll leave alone, and going forward I'd be surprised if we just created a better version. Of the at-will wizard powers that I know of that are in the pipeline, none of them are simply scorching burst with more bells and whistles.

On one hand, within a class we don't want to invalidate a perfectly serviceable power. On the other, there is a lot of design space for different styles of at-will.

I'd expect that as we do more at-wills, we'd use the PH ones as a baseline and create an obviously better one only if a power was clearly to weak.

So, I wouldn't expect us to overwrite scorching burst any time soon.

Hi Mr. Mearls,

How do you feel about EasyT's idea to lower the damage or range of the Invoker's Lightning Vanguard power (even if only slightly) just so that Scorching Burst is not overshadowed by it completely, then just introducing more control-oriented at-wills for the Wizard in Arcane Power? It seems like a great solution to the problem, as it does not leave behind any completely obsolete powers. I would love to hear what you think of that.

 

[Obryn]

It is not 8 damage it is 1 damage to 8 opponents, and yes that is still negligible. There is a big, huge, whopping difference between 8 damage and 1 damage to 8. 8 damage has a decent shot of meaning something, I think it is fairly rare for 1 point of damage to actually pan out as making a difference. How often are foes dropped by knocking them to exactly 0? How often are they knocked to just 1 HP, that is how often 1 HP to 8 dudes matters, like on the fist of almost never.

Speaking only for my campaign, I'd say it happens somewhere around once per session, or every other session. You're artificially limiting it, though; over the course of multiple spells, those single points add up.

Basically, I think the dual-element feats are very comparable to Weapon Focus. Yes, Weapon Focus increases damage by +1 per tier, but as I mentioned before, there are more element-based Close and Area attacks than there are Weapon-based Close and Area attacks.

-O

 

[Felon]

Hey man,

I don't have time for an in-depth answer, but I can at least address the basics of your concerns.

Shoring up areas of the game while keeping everything usable is a very tricky process to manage. Since I'm now a designer rather than a developer, I'm not in charge of that any more, but here's how I think we'll approach it.

Scorching burst is a power that we'll leave alone, and going forward I'd be surprised if we just created a better version. Of the at-will wizard powers that I know of that are in the pipeline, none of them are simply scorching burst with more bells and whistles.

On one hand, within a class we don't want to invalidate a perfectly serviceable power. On the other, there is a lot of design space for different styles of at-will.

I'd expect that as we do more at-wills, we'd use the PH ones as a baseline and create an obviously better one only if a power was clearly to weak.

So, I wouldn't expect us to overwrite scorching burst any time soon.

IMO, it seems that 4e's annual PHB strategy seems the perfect place to distribute revisions (like, say, the revisions to using stealth). If you're willing to say "hey, here's a new wizard at-will that's different from the old ones, and likely much more appetizing" you might as well be willing to say "hey, here's a new version of that old at-will that's much more appetizing". Either way, an issue's being addressed by releasing a book.