Excerpt: Paragon paths (merged)

[TPK]

TPK- Don't worry. A priest who wears heavy armor and smacks people with a mace is quite possible from level 1 onwards.

The specifically defender-like feature is the ability at 16th to mark and lock down enemies. Whether something like that can be multiclassed in earlier is current unknown, I believe.

And I won't worry much until a week or so for now...

 

[RefinedBean]

Yeah, and any one houserule is pretty simple to implement, too. The question is how many of these "translations" and re-flavorings will be necessary.

My guess would be: however many it takes for everyone to have fun.

If they called it Weaponmaster instead, someone who wanted a Kensai would have to do the exact same "translation."

You can't please all the people all the time.

 

[Kishin]

And when it does, I will concede the point. Till then, it's Japanese. And I don't see it achieving "common usage" status any time soon.



So we're supposed to have pages and pages of reflavoring text that we pass out to our players? How is this any better than pages and pages of house rules?

Did the name of a prestige class matter in your campaign world? Did people actually refer to themselves as reaping maulers, highland stalkers, etc. al? Are people going to be referring to each other as Iron Vanguards and Spellstorm Mages in your 4E world?

I don't see why you would need to make 'reflavoring text' for this. What, 'the kensei paragon path is now referred to as the swordmaster'. How is that necessary? Its just a name for a background mechanic encompassing character traits.

No offense, but this is some serious nitpicking over something that makes very little gameplay OR flavor difference.

 

[Khaim]

Isolated? New game term? What could that mean/reference? My guess... A target that doesn't have anyone adjacent to it?

Or it could be a common English word used in a summary statement to convey the essence of a feat without the five sentences that feat requires to fully explain.

Just a guess.

 

[Wormwood]

No offense, but this is some serious nitpicking over something that makes very little gameplay OR flavor difference.

<placeholder for 'welcome to 4e boards' comment>

 

[Cadfan]

I'd like to toss in my vote for just never referring to characters in-game by their character class.

PC1: I'm Joe. I'm a Ranger.
PC2: Oh, so you patrol a wilderness region as member of law enforcement?
PC1: Uh, no...
PC2: Do you, per chance, rove between isolated communities and trade furs?
PC1: No, I don't do that either.
PC2: Why are you a ranger then?
PC1: Because I fight with two weapons?
PC3: I'm a Fighter! I fight!
PC2: Do you now.
PC3: Well... not right now. Guess I'm a Talker right now.
PC2: Ok then. So, Joe, what is it that you do?
PC1: I guard caravans.
PC2: So you're a guard.
PC1: I can't be a Guardian of the Northern Wastes until I level up a bit.
PC2: What?
PC3: Look! Now I'm a Walker!

 

[Engilbrand]

I like that there are more than 30 Paragon Paths in the PHB. That means that there are probably also quite a few Epic Destinies. Huzzah! It's also pretty cool that a class training feat can qualify you for a PP. It opens up the possibility for a TWF Ranger with Rogue training going into the Stormcaller and tearing things up. What about a Warlord/Rogue who can suddenly gain some Combat Advantage. Nice.


This is where I feel the need to weigh in on the ridiculous grammar argument:
Dictionaries are dumb. They give you a definition if you come across a word that you don't know, but they can't do that with ALL words. They can't do it with new words or newer meanings for words. "Mouse" was only recently added to the dictionary to mean "that crazy little thing that controls the arrow on your monitor". Before that point, though, it was still a mouse. I become annoyed when my students or fellow teachers try to tell me that something isn't "correct". Words change over time. Especially English. I teach English and German in an American high school. I'm also 25. I can guarantee that I don't have the same view on language that the other English teachers have. As far as I'm concerned, "they" and "their" can be used as 3rd person singular pronouns. "One" is stupid. I prefer "If a student doesn't have anything to do during seminar, they will have to go get a book from my bookcase." to "If one does not have a book, then one must retrieve one from the bookcase." Blah.
I like the Kensei. It has cool powers. "But what about the name?!" So? It's not a big deal. I try to take very little seriously. Especially in reference to a game where you pretend to be a super-intelligent dragon-thing with the power to fly. Why, with everything else that you could get uptight about, would a strange name become an issue? Is there an issue with Stormcaller because you've never used it before? If not, just pretend that you don't know that Kensei is from a different language.
I've seen games talk about using "Brands", "Zweihanders" and other stuff like that. The rest of the game is in English, but they throw out some of these other words. Where's the problem? Nowhere.
Ridiculous.

 

[ShockMeSane]

This thread has gone so far off the deep end of any kind of relevance that I don't even know what to say.

A WotC employee lets us know there are 30+ paragon paths and the argument over paragon class names continue as if nothing happened.

Excuse me if I don't care what the Paragon Paths are called. It isn't like the Prestige classes in 3.x were called anything even remotely sane. WEARER OF PURPLE HOOOOOOO!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

None of which demonstrates that "kensai" is in common usage in English--as far as I know, it isn't. The Hubble telescope describes distant galaxies, it doesn't define them... but if the Hubble telescope says a particular galaxy is redshifted, I'm inclined to believe it. And if a variety of dictionaries say a word isn't an English word (meaning, it isn't in common usage), I'm inclined to believe them, too.

But a dictionary doesn't contain words that are not used and therefor not English. It contains words that are English, yes (but some of them are archaic and no longer in practical use), but that doesn't mean that the word it does not contain don't exist or don't have a place in the English Language.

A galaxy for some reason unobserved by the Hubble telescope could still be considerably red-shifted. Th inhabitants of the galaxy in question (if there were any) for example would probably be able to ascertain that, from our position, their galaxy would look red-shifted.

The implication is: English Dictionary (Word) => English Word (Word).

Okay, enough of this nit-picking from me.

 

[Fifth Element]

Why, with everything else that you could get uptight about, would a strange name become an issue?

New to the 4E forum, eh?

I agree with your post pretty much in its entirety. Considering the terms we gamers throw around that non-gamers would not recognize, I don't see why we should be upset by using a name that's not a part of standard English, whatever that is.