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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 4535174" data-attributes="member: 19675">Maybe in your games, not in ours.  There is no real difference between the overarching class system from 1Ed to 3Ed.  Each class is a bundle of abilities- whether the PC is bound by them is a matter of RP.  Sure it is- playing non-PHB races is purely a matter of DM's option.  There isn't a standard rule to allow it.Core to Core, there is no gnome barbarian in the PHB.  End of story.  That someone H-Red 4Ed to allow a gnome barbarian is just that- a house rule.Furthermore, as we start seeing articles and previews coming down the Dragon pipeline, they're even changing the rules as to how (at least some) MM races can be played from the initial Core release- see the new rules about playing a Minotaur.  If they'd gotten it right the first time, they wouldn't be revising it within the first year of play.   The rules for playing races from the MM were apparently just an under-playtested afterthought. To look at the PCs where I massively multiclass, not a one is about being über.  I know you have only my word for it, but anyone who has seen any of my long list of posts Re character development will back me up when I say this: I'm 100% about the RP, about using the game mechanics to make a given RPG character as close to the idealized version floating in my head.  If that means the character is suboptimal, so be it.  If it means he's "superman," so be it.And that goes back to 1Ed.From 1985 on, I've played a Drow Rgr/Dr/MU- admittedly, not a core build (it used optional rules from Dragon), but it fit the PC concept, so bear with me while I make my point.  The original PC was primarily a shapechanging spellcaster (mostly transmutation spells) with a host of wilderness skills.  Due to campaign level limits (it was a high-level campaign), when he was translated into 3.X, I had to drop the Ranger bit, making him a Druid/SpecWiz Transmuter.  The 3.X Druid class gave him ample fighting and nature skills to keep him analogous to the original incarnation.In 4Ed?  With no Transmuter specialization and no Druid class with all of its inherent wilderness flavor- oh yeah, and no shapechanging- this PC would have to have been so radically altered as to be unrecognizable.So why did I bring up a non-core 1Ed PC build?  Well (but for the Drow part), he became core in 3Ed, yet 2/3 rds of his original core classes (present in each previous edition of the game) don't even appear in 4Ed...namely the 2 classes that remained from the original PC concept.  The shapechanging non-blaster mage- an idea at least as old as Merlin (the PC's original inspiration)- is just an odd corner case that nobody would want to play on rollout day as far as 4Ed is concerned.And as for PCs created new for 3.X?  If you sat at our game table watching our group go through RttToEE, you'd have seen my 4-classed PC not doing all that much until 8th level; generally a joke at the table.  It wasn't until late in the campaign that he gained any real respect.IOW, hardly über.But since his base class was SpecWiz Diviner...hardly extant in 4Ed.We're not talking reflavoring, not H-Ring.  We're talking RAW, out of the box comparisons of Core to Core.The differences are THE reason why a 20+ year campaign cannot be converted to 4Ed.  Its not just my PCs, its the majority of them- every single player in the campaign has made the same complaint.  Its why we're not moving on.Its not D&D to us because to "upgrade" to it would kill a campaign older than someone who just had his first legal swig of Johnny Walker Red.The system shouldn't hack off the legs of a PC concept.  Core 4Ed doesn't really support the nature-themed PC- that's why they're putting them in a supplement.</blockquote>

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