Flavor Mish-mash and favored classes (what 4e got wrong)

[Inyssius]

... the reincarnating former angel-servants of the gods (devas, Int/Wis) make the best shamans.

Reincarnating former angel-servants of the gods who personally made pacts with the most powerful spirits of the world in order to assume mortal form here ... make good shamans.

* dwarves

You're mistaken, and the reasons why have already been explained.

* Similarly, drow now make poor wizards AND clerics. So much for them drow priestesses.

You have half of a point there. But only half. What kind of powers do you think a drow priestess should have? ...lots of poison and fear, right? Horrible dark webbing made of corrupted souls? Powers with names like "Spider Queen's Caress", "Passionate Betrayal", "Your Delectable Pain", "Dark Lady's Gift"?

Oh, hey, that's the Dark Pact Warlock. And, total coincidence here, drow make really good dark pact warlocks.

* And who would have though the savage longtooth shifters make great split-clerics?

Aside from Kord, Melora, Gruumsh, Sehanine, Tempus, Sune, Balinor, Dol Dorn, The Fury, The Devourer, Chislev, Sirrion, Zivilyn, Zeboim, and Sargonnas?

I haven't the foggiest idea.

 

[doctorhook]

You have half of a point there. But only half. What kind of powers do you think a drow priestess should have? ...lots of poison and fear, right? Horrible dark webbing made of corrupted souls? Powers with names like "Spider Queen's Caress", "Passionate Betrayal", "Your Delectable Pain", "Dark Lady's Gift"?

Oh, hey, that's the Dark Pact Warlock. And, total coincidence here, drow make really good dark pact warlocks.

FWIW, I agree with basically everything you said in your post; I just want to respond the the above bit.

IIRC, fluff used to say that Drow males often became Wizards. Does anyone else think that it's not a stretch to say that now, in 4E, most of those "wizards" (read: "arcanists" or "mages") might actually be Warlocks, especially Dark Pact Warlocks? Warlock and Wizard are both Arcane, and just because one's power comes from a pact doesn't preclude studiousness and book-learning in order to master those powers. In addition, trafficking and pacting oneself to the servants of Lolth fits pretty neatly with what Drow do.

That said, it's a shame that Drow don't make slightly better Clerics and Invokers.

 

[ppaladin123]

Did you just argue that eladrin make poor swordmages and dwarves make poor defenders? Seriously?

That said, there are some odd flavor mismatches (like tieflings not having the perfect stats for infernal warlocks, and dwarves being great druids). This is not enough to really bug me though.

 

[ppaladin123]

The stat bumps races get should be, ultimately, unrelated to their cultural traits and tendencies that favor one class over another. That was one thing well recognized by 3e's favored classes. When it comes to nature vs nurture, if you want to be reasonably realistic, nurture usually wins when dealing with intelligent species.

I tend to view the stat-boosts as population averages and (particularly the mental stats) as the outcome of a nurturing process, not a genetic process. Dwarves belong to a society that emphasizes patience, common sense, and spirituality. Thus they have and value enhanced wisdom. As a result they favor classes like cleric, which call for enhanced wisdom. Gnomes have built a society around clever cunning, trickery and intrigue. Thus they tend to be both charismatic and intelligent. They then naturally gravitate toward classes that reward those traits (bards, warlocks, illusionists).

It would be odd for me if a society that valued cunning and trickery and produced cunning tricksters would simultaneously prefer the barbarian class to the bard class. I agree with you that if statistics are set by nature then, even though nature is pushing in one direction, societies could emerge that pulled in another (the vulcans are genetically predisposed to violent fits of anger and passion and their society is an attempt to keep that tendency in check). However, as I said, I view the statistics themselves as outcomes in a nurturing process.

 

[Inyssius]

I think I agree with you.

Of course, the cultural/biological issue is seriously muddled by the heritable nature of most magic and by the deep Lamarckian vein generally underlying D&D evolution. A hypothetical: gnomes make good feylocks, so they make pacts with elder fey... which pushes their culture toward acceptance of fey pacts ... which pushes more of them to make fey pacts ... some of which subtly affect their bloodlines ... so the next generation of gnomes has a slight predilection for bargaining with the elder fey.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

From all the examples, the only thing that "bothers" me is the fact the Tiefling Warlock mismatch - the Tiefling were created by the fact that they were all dealing with devils, I would expect their stats to reflect that.

All the other races seem to be fine and their stat modifiers make sense, even though I'd prefer Devas with a Cha bonus and rather play a Wrathful Invoker (which would require CON, IIRC).

 

[AllisterH]

FR Mythals, anyone? Myth Drannor? Lost Elven cities?

Yep, despite their level limits, somehow, Elves managed to have some pretty awesome mojo.

That's the one thing I never really got back in 2E. Elves were supposedly these great wizards but unless you used the optional level adjustment by ability score table, an elf couldnt even cast 9th level magic.

Yet elves were supposedly responsible for teaching humans magic AND magic that goes beyond 9th level magic.....Something is not adding up here...

re: Racial adjustments

Are we talking 18 pre or post racial adjustment? If we're talking post, I don't see why a starting 16 is so out there...Hell back pre 3e, we always used to at least give a player a 16 if they didn't roll one or higher...

If we're talking 18 pre racial adjustment, actually this is seen by many on the Char-Op as weaker than having a prime score of 14 pre racial adjustment GENERALLY.

There are a couple of single stat builds that can work but with ironically more and more options, generally speaking, its better to have a 14 in your prime score than a 18 pre racial adjustment.

EDIT: And those level limits in 2e were majorly jacked up in 2e. In 1e, the level limit for elves in wizard was level 11 (dwarves were limited to level 9 as fighter). Yet the FR Gray Box had as fluff that it was elves that taught human all their magic but elves could only cast up level 6 spells...

 

[Aus_Snow]

Bwa ha ha ha ha!

. . . hehe.

Ahem. Thanks for the chuckles.

And yikes. Looking through some of the core rules redux, all that errata (even for the PHB alone!), and threads like this and the Arcane Power one. . . well, I'm even more glad I made the decision I did.

But anyway, I'd agree that previous editions have been pretty dodgy with race/class combos, if not in the same way. Or some, at least. Not to my taste, more to the point.

 

[Klaus]

1. Favored Class, in the 3e milieu, doesn't mean that this class makes teh roxxorz characters of that class. It means that this race has the easiest time *dabbling* in this class, or members of this class have an easier time *dabbling* in other classes.

2. To fix the Tiefling Infernal Warlock thing, I offer this solution:

Blood of the Turathi [Racial]
Requirements: tiefling, Cha 15, infernal pact.
Benefit: Whenever a warlock (infernal) power uses your Constitution score, you can instead use your Charisma score instead.

 

[ferratus]

I think we are all in agreement that the Tiefling's racial adjustments should be modified to +2 Dex/+2 Con immediately because a) we don't have a race with those adjustments now and b) if anyone should make great warlocks and rogues, it should be Tieflings. We have all the information digitized on the character builder, why not use it to our advantage for a revision like this?

As for drow making good dark pact warlocks and not good clerics, it all works out if Lolth is bumped down to being a demon lord again. Frankly, I'd be happy with that. Lolth should have never been made into a goddess in the first place.

Some of the stuff that was unexpected has been a joy. Dwarves being good infernal warlocks is probably the best example, which perfectly suited both Dragonlance and the new reflavoured Duegar. Half-orcs making good brutal rogues because of their unusual stats is also something I'm not going to complain about. Half-elves having a +2 con bonus is also fun merely for the flavour of "hybrid vigour".

Aside from tieflings, the biggest complaint seems to be that Dwarves and Devas don't make good enough paladins. I'm willing to wager the nose on my face that you are going to see weapon-based attacks that use wisdom or charisma (like the avenger) coming in Divine Power for clerics and paladins. I'm pretty sure, though not as confident, that holy symbol attacks that use strength (like the dragon sorcerer's implement attacks) will be in Divine Power as well.