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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5580778" data-attributes="member: 2067">I could see that, actually. Genies are largely indistinguishable in story material from &quot;spirits&quot; anyway. In D&amp;D legacy, they ain't the same thing at all, but not a bad speculation!Still, &quot;pact with extraplanar entities&quot; SCREAMS Warlock. There's some overlap with the shaman's spirits, though those are supposed to be of THIS plane. Though, the old Sha'ir's schtick was basically that it could poach some abilities from other classes (a few cleric spells, forex), and I don't see 4e being very faithful about recreating that, so maybe the new Sha'ir would be more comfortable as a subclass Leader rather than a subclass Striker (Gods and Genies know we have enough friggin' strikers around). Ye gods, why? At least in 4e, a class is not a complete character concept. You need &quot;support&quot; for it. Builds. Powers. Feats. Races. Items. All of those things become narrowly applicable, and apply quickly to a vanishingly small percentage of players, while dictating word count for support that could be better spent on GENERAL abilities. It's kind of the same problem with giving campaign settings a lot of detail. You publish Planescape, and a lot of people use it. You publish a boxed set on the Planes of Law, fewer people use it. You published a book about a particular town on a particular layer of Celestia, and even fewer people use it.In the same way, D&amp;D Players &gt; Leader Players &gt; Runepriest Players &gt; Runepriest players who would use a &quot;Rune of Awesome&quot; feat.The space spent on that feat becomes wasted space for 99% of D&amp;D players. The space spent on detailing any small, specific element of the game is a space that is rather ill-used (at least in published books -- DDI has slightly different economics in that they could take a &quot;Quantity over Quality&quot; approach). This might be why the &quot;race/class specific&quot; feats are being overlooked -- there is a vanishingly small number of, say, shifter clerics in the world. Asking for more classes is asking for less support for not only those classes, but also the old classes. &quot;More spells&quot; is a pretty great approach, as long as several classes can use those &quot;spells.&quot; Builds (or subclasses) are great because they can use many powers, many feats, many races, many items, and many mechanics of the parent class. Themes are even better because it's open to anyone who wants it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 5580778, member: 2067"] I could see that, actually. Genies are largely indistinguishable in story material from "spirits" anyway. In D&D legacy, they ain't the same thing at all, but not a bad speculation! Still, "pact with extraplanar entities" [I]SCREAMS[/I] Warlock. There's some overlap with the shaman's spirits, though those are supposed to be of THIS plane. Though, the old Sha'ir's schtick was basically that it could poach some abilities from other classes (a few cleric spells, forex), and I don't see 4e being very faithful about recreating that, so maybe the new Sha'ir would be more comfortable as a subclass Leader rather than a subclass Striker (Gods and Genies know we have enough friggin' strikers around). Ye gods, why? At least in 4e, a class is not a complete character concept. You need "support" for it. Builds. Powers. Feats. Races. Items. All of those things become narrowly applicable, and apply quickly to a vanishingly small percentage of players, while dictating word count for support that could be better spent on GENERAL abilities. It's kind of the same problem with giving campaign settings a lot of detail. You publish Planescape, and a lot of people use it. You publish a boxed set on the Planes of Law, fewer people use it. You published a book about a particular town on a particular layer of Celestia, and even fewer people use it. In the same way, D&D Players > Leader Players > Runepriest Players > Runepriest players who would use a "Rune of Awesome" feat. The space spent on that feat becomes wasted space for 99% of D&D players. The space spent on detailing any small, specific element of the game is a space that is rather ill-used (at least in published books -- DDI has slightly different economics in that they could take a "Quantity over Quality" approach). This might be why the "race/class specific" feats are being overlooked -- there is a vanishingly small number of, say, shifter clerics in the world. Asking for more classes is asking for less support for not only those classes, but also the old classes. "More spells" is a pretty great approach, as long as several classes can use those "spells." Builds (or subclasses) are great because they can use many powers, many feats, many races, many items, and many mechanics of the parent class. Themes are even better because it's open to anyone who wants it. [/QUOTE]

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