Excited About Race / Class / Theme

[Yora]

The big problem with themes (to put cold water on the excitement) that I see is that it will have all the same problems as prestige classes, kits, and paragon paths had before it. Someone will design an underpowered, overpowered, badly explained, or outright broken theme, and people will end up disrupting things by taking it. Like kits and prestige classes before them, some DM's will end up banning the whole system to keep things in check. Neither kits or prestige classes were supposed to unbalance the applecart, but certain ones certainly did.

But you got that problem any time you add anything to the game later on. And to make things worse, the highest concentration of the most unbalancing things in 3rd Edition is in the Player's Handbook.

 

[ferratus]

Others think of a paladin of a virtuous knight. To me, that's just a fighter class, maybe with a knight theme (say, free plate armor, shield, and sword), and a code of conduct that can be roleplayed without need for supporting mechanics.

See, but themes have work across all classes. They do in 4e (though some theme/class combinations are better than others). If you make a knight theme complete with armour, weapons and a horse, you've either shut out wizards, or you've used it for multi-classing. In other words, a wizard with the knight theme would be just as much a fighter as he is a wizard.

Now that's not to say that a theme can't give someone a taste of another class. The seer theme is like playing a low-level wizard of the divination school, without actually the baggage of gaining a spellbook or all the other wizard baggage.

If I wanted to have a wizard that had the feeling of being a knight of the realm using a theme, I might give him a noble title (like the noble theme) or able to command men (the warlord theme) or some other specific attribute "knightliness" that you want to invoke. A peice of the pizza that is the paladin class, rather than the whole (or half) the pie.

If the knight is fighting equally well with sword or spell, at home in either cloister or conjuration chamber, and can ride into the thick of battle or stay back and launch artillery.... that's for multi-classing, like a paladin-wizard or fighter-wizard.

 

[grimslade]

Here are my worries of the Race/Class/Theme triune.
-Race will be the low impact slot and cease to matter other than a stat bonus
-The kit/prestige class/background problem of overpowered combinations
-Classification of what is best expressed by multiclassing vs. theme
-Feats. If we have many feat options, themes and race become simply access categories.

I think the model works well if all parts are equal. The other sub-systems have me more concerned. Feats, BAB, spell slot gain, and multi-classing rules will be what make or break the system.

 

[Yora]

There already are themes in 4th Edition? I never heard of that. Can you tell me some more about it?

 

[Hassassin]

If we have multi-classing, can we have multi-theming?

Can I play a half-elf/half-orc fighter/cleric knight/apostate?

I want a commoner/noble who married into royalty.

 

[CM]

Another theme idea: Two-weapon Master

That way, the ranger doesn't get forced into being the default two-weapon specialist.

Plus, archer.

Ranger-archer; fighter-archer; rogue-archer; cleric-archer. Etc.

Or, with multiclassing...

Ranger/rogue-archer

It seemed to me that themes were a bit more specific than your fighting style. Those look more like feats to me.

 

[LurkAway]

See, but themes have work across all classes.

Why? Some themes might be better with some classes than others. The DDXP seminar did suggest "knight" after all.

They do in 4e (though some theme/class combinations are better than others). If you make a knight theme complete with armour, weapons and a horse, you've either shut out wizards, or you've used it for multi-classing. In other words, a wizard with the knight theme would be just as much a fighter as he is a wizard.

No, I mean the knight theme might (just speculating) could include free armor and weapons but not the ability to use it (that's class specific), and the wizard can't actually use armor, so the theme doesn't stack well. What can I say but tough luck unless the wizard multiclasses with a fighter.

 

[Jack7]

Thanks for your opinions/explanations guys. Sounds like an interesting concept.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Not that I think they are going to do this (for a variety of reasons and intuitions), but this kind of theme would really smooth out the rough edges in one of my ideas for a fixed set of classes. One of the problems that never seems to quite get addressed with class/multi-class is certain intersections that aren't truly represented well by multiclass. For example, if you have fighter as a good single class and wizard as a good single class, then fighter/wizard seems to either be over-powered, radically gimped, or dependent upon something that you'd really rather not be--i.e. being an elf in Basic. Wizard/Cleric is even worse.

So my thought on that was to make the core classes as:


Fighter (martial), Wizard (arcane), Cleric (divine), Rogue (skirmish)--plus these synergistic, complete mixes (pick stuff from each side that works well as a single package, names could obviously use some work):

• Paladin - martial/divine
• Gish * (Need a better, but still one word name) - martial/arcane
• Ranger - martial/skirmish
• Priest - arcane/divine
• Bard - arcane/skirmish
• Druid - divine/skirmish

Now, multiclassing between, say, Cleric/Paladin or Cleric/Priest gives a very definite slant to the character, but probably doesn't run into any kind of stacking over/under powered issues, because those are nuances on what is already there.

Then you handle things like shapeshifting, bardic music, etc. either as what makes those particular classes stand out or push off to another part of the system (feats, spells, etc). The main problem with that solution is that some of those things don't really fit anywhere. So you end up shoehorning them into the class. Now all your divine skirmishers turn into bears and all your arcane skirmishers play music.

Themes nicely solves that problem by providing another place to hang that stuff, while still limited it to a niche. That is, one of the best limits of the class is the opportunity cost--pick class X, you don't get A, B, and C. Themes provide a separate silo that thus doesn't impose this opportunity cost on your class selection(s), but does impose it on your potential other theme selection(s).

 

[Frostmarrow]

I imagine themes will add a few skills to the character. The class might give you weapon and armor feats as well as a single class defining skill; such as Open Locks for rogues. The race adds an ability score bonus and a race feat or skill; such as Low-light Vision for dwarves.

Since most checks will be against ability scores anyway some of the theme skills can be flavorful rather than useful; such as Consume Alcohol for the pubcrawler.

I don't think we need to worry about theme and class colliding. The "useful" must have skills pertaining to adventuring will be attached to class anyway. Also important skills will be part of several different themes, maybe with different names! A pubcrawler can have a skill called Fellowship and a knight can have Etiquette and yet they both function as a Charisma reaction check.