Hazing Ritual

[Wik]

I wonder if Complete Scoundrel will have options specifically for Spellthieves. . .

You know, if the book had even one or two spellthief feats or a PrC, I would pick it up. I'm such a spellthief addict, but the fact that there is *no* spellthief support ticks me off.

 

[Razz]

My point was exactly that; you have to buy the Complete Mage, PHB II, and a couple of other books to have really a complete building kit for the Hexblade. Whereas most of the core classes come with options, and if you buy the Complete Warrior, in which the Hexblade appears, you get basically the "base" material for the Hexblade, but you've got lots of material for rangers, fighters, paladins, and barbarians. Hence, the Hexblade is the frosh. But now Hexblade has been around a while, and if you own enough books, they have a fruitful supply of feats, spells, and options to dip into. Whereas the Spellthief is now the frosh.

The Hexblade is pretty popular; despite some downing on various boards, a lot of people play and enjoy it. I've had a Hexblade in my game, and I wouldn't hesitate to play one. They just seethe with a certain kind of nasty cool.

Wu Jen have a built in audience, with both classic Oriental Adventures fans and orientalists in general digging them. And their built in metamagics can be rather potent for the powergamer in the group.

Don't forget Dragon Magazine. Scouts, Ninjas, Hexblades, Truenamers, Meldshapers, Soulknives, and a few other non-core classes received some decent attention. Hexblade feats, Scout feats and alternate class features, new soulmelds, about 10 Soulknife feats, 10 Ninja feats, and 10 Truenamer feats.

I love Class Acts. And, yes, I like Spellthieves, too. I hope Complete Scoundrel and/or Dragon has some more features on them.

Warlock has become the most popular out of the non-core I've noticed, even Cityscape has 3 new invocations for them and FCII has a prestige class for them.

 

[Knight Otu]

My point was exactly that; you have to buy the Complete Mage, PHB II, and a couple of other books to have really a complete building kit for the Hexblade. Whereas most of the core classes come with options, and if you buy the Complete Warrior, in which the Hexblade appears, you get basically the "base" material for the Hexblade, but you've got lots of material for rangers, fighters, paladins, and barbarians. Hence, the Hexblade is the frosh. But now Hexblade has been around a while, and if you own enough books, they have a fruitful supply of feats, spells, and options to dip into. Whereas the Spellthief is now the frosh.

Of course, the problem is the following: When you introduce a new class in a book, you have only two real options. One, you can concentrate greatly on that/those new class(es), leaving the other classes behind. That makes the book less useful for campaigns where the characters don't have the class (which will be the great majority when the book is first released). Two, you can pay both new and old classes about the same attention (give ot take). For the new classes, just introducing them already takes away from their alloted space, making it harder to support them in the book. That makes the book more satisfying for the "general public", but less useful for using the introduced classes.
There are ways to deal with that, of course. One is to make sure that the new class can make good use of previous material (feats etc). Some classes have abilities that are treated as other abilities for prerequisites, for example. But in the end, no matter what you do, someone is going to feel left out.

 

[pawsplay]

Of course, the problem is the following: When you introduce a new class in a book, you have only two real options. One, you can concentrate greatly on that/those new class(es), leaving the other classes behind. That makes the book less useful for campaigns where the characters don't have the class (which will be the great majority when the book is first released). Two, you can pay both new and old classes about the same attention (give ot take). For the new classes, just introducing them already takes away from their alloted space, making it harder to support them in the book. That makes the book more satisfying for the "general public", but less useful for using the introduced classes.
There are ways to deal with that, of course. One is to make sure that the new class can make good use of previous material (feats etc). Some classes have abilities that are treated as other abilities for prerequisites, for example. But in the end, no matter what you do, someone is going to feel left out.

I don't know. If such a book just had approximately one page of feats mostly useful for a new class, wouldn't that be good value? One particularly egregious example is the XPH... the psion and psychic warrior have the whole suite of feats available, as they were designed with them mainly in mind, and the wilder can piggyback on them. But the re-imagined Soulknife ended up being the frosh. There's nothing in there for them, that is not as useful, or more useful, to a fighter or monk with Wild Talent.

 

[Aaron L]

I'm really really really hoping we start seeing some Duskblade support material before long.


And I mean really, really, really.


Like, a whole bunch.



(PS. ever notice how really weird the word 'really' really looks when you really stop and take take the time to really look at it?)

 

[Voadam]

I was dissapointed by the fact that Complete Warrior which introduced Hex blades had no feats to specifically help out hexes. Barbarians got extra rage, it would not have taken up much space to give hexblades extra hexes or some feats to let them do different things with their hexes. I've played one and had one in my games but they are pretty weak compared to duskblades, paladins, rangers, etc. who are full warrior caster 1/1 BAB classes to compare them with. They ooze cool but don't quite measure up mechanically IMO.

 

[Knight Otu]

I don't know. If such a book just had approximately one page of feats mostly useful for a new class, wouldn't that be good value?

It might be, depending on the class, and I'd consider that a nice "target number" for my own designs. For your specific examples, the Soulknife can somewhat benefit from the already-existing combat feats, and vaguely from the "newly"-introduced psionic feats, but not to a particularly good effect either way. Also, the class is generally considered underpowered. So, yes, in that case, the Soulknife should have gotten more attention, rather than being treated as a red-haired stepchild. But the Psion, Wilder, and Psychic Warrior introduced in the book do get the full attention and the big range of options. Obviously not as much as the core classes received in the meantime, but well enough to be considered to have "good support."

Also, for many classes, "one page of feats" would be inadequate. I realize your point is mostly aimed at classes from the Complete books, which usually don't need quite as much information or supplemental material, but even there, spellcasting classes tend to need new spells to bring across the flavor (Hexblade), or occasionally new mechanics (Warlock). Balancing the needs for each new class isn't easy, and sometimes the necessary inspiration hits you quite in time for the book. And then there's the dilemma of book size (about which other threads have talked at length). Sometimes you have to cut a Wow or a Cool to fit in a Necessary.

Just for the record, I'm sure there is some "if the class is popular, we can expand on it later" thinking, but likely more to the extent that they say "don't worry too much if you can't think of a Wow effect", rather than "save that for Complete Divine III/Faerie Magic/Tome of Stealth, if the class is popular enough, we can use that as a selling point." I'm sure that if the designers have a cool idea, that they want to show it off as soon as possible.

 

[Aaron L]

I was dissapointed by the fact that Complete Warrior which introduced Hex blades had no feats to specifically help out hexes. Barbarians got extra rage, it would not have taken up much space to give hexblades extra hexes....

Which is why I wish they would start classifying class abilities with power ratings. That way you wouldn't need a seperate feat for every possible class ability, you would just need "extra power level III class ability." Classify, say, Barbarian Rage as PL I, Smite Evil as PL II, and the Hexblades Hex as PL III (or whatever) and so on and so on.

Then we wouldn't have to wait for specific feats for new classes with new class abilities, and it would save a lot of feat redundancy. Every new class and new class ability would just be labelled accordingly, and you could use the existing feats for it instead of having to wait for a new splatbook for your generic "use your class ability 1 or 3 extra times per day, just like Extra Rage except this time it's Extra Hex or Extra Smiting or Extra Bardic Music."

Kind of like how a lot of people were calling for one generic "+2 to any two different skills" feat to replace all the "+2 to two specific skills" feats.

Plus, it would save space; instead of all the separate "+3 Rages per day" and "+3 Bard songs per day" we could just have "extra PL I ability use" and such.


By the way, would anyone be interested in helping me classify class abilities into such groups, and then we could just make the feats ourselves instead of waiting or WotC to do it for us? I'd do it all by myself except I'm afraid I don't have a very good head for rules balance and would put things at the wrong power level.

 

[Wik]

You know, I wish Wotc would allow third party companies to *reference* any wotc book, even if it were not OGL. For example, I could release a book about spellthieves (do you *know* how much I'd pay for one!?) that didn't reprint the spellthief rules or anything, but instead offered feats, skill uses, magical items, and all that other stuff that wotc is never going to release for a so-called "lame duck" base class.

I know it's never going to happen, but a guy can dream, eh?

 

[pawsplay]

You know, I wish Wotc would allow third party companies to *reference* any wotc book, even if it were not OGL. For example, I could release a book about spellthieves (do you *know* how much I'd pay for one!?) that didn't reprint the spellthief rules or anything, but instead offered feats, skill uses, magical items, and all that other stuff that wotc is never going to release for a so-called "lame duck" base class.

I know it's never going to happen, but a guy can dream, eh?

If the market's there, I'm sure a third party publisher could license the spellthief. Other PI material has been licensed before.