Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 2615558" data-attributes="member: 697">That's a completely valid approach, but it runs into a few logistical problems.First, there's the the Spell Compendium. We didn't want to try and cover spells because of that book. Spellcasting classes were an issue for this book because there was a good chance that if we picked up or did a spell, it might show up in the Compendium.Second, there isn't much design wiggle room between what you outlined and what's already in the books. The wizard gets spells and bonus item creation feats. There's already a sample witch class in the DMG.Finally, is there room there to do something interesting? It was really interesting to look at how a lot of classics have now been absorbed into core D&D. The witch is a great example of this. The class's main schtick (making items) is now a core part of the game. That was probably the must frustrating part of the project. It came up a lot. In the witch's case, we'd likely end up wandering far from the original concept.Making some of these classes into prcs is a good idea, but it runs into another issue. Is the archer inspired prc called the archer? Is an archer prestige class really interesting? I suspect that if the prc list had things like "archer" people would have a hard time understanding why it's a prestige class. It just doesn't sound like one.(Aside: I think that the assassin is a terrible prestige class because it encourages the prc as bundle of special abilities mentality. I have a theory that if the ninja class had kept all its mechancis but been named the assassin, a lot more people would be using it. At the very least, there wouldn't be a knee jerk "Ninjas in Greyhawk?!?!" reaction, something I'm definitely guilty of.)The big issue with something like the witch is that there's a line between building a whole new class with the same name as an old class, and trying to update something.In this case, I erred on the side of building new classes out of material that was, at most, skeletal (the mountebank, savant, and other proto-2e classes that EGG wrote about), rather than gutting a fleshed out concept and building a new engine under its skin. That process didn't work out perfectly (I think the battledancer ended up further away from its original mechanics as it went through development), but I think the book is better for it.</blockquote>

Verification