Heroes of Shadow: Assassins, Hexblades, and Necromancers!

[UngeheuerLich]

Although a true necromancer leader class would have been really nice (with skeletal minion and healing word equivalent) a nercromancy school does not sound wrong at all.

 

[Klaus]

The necromancer and nethermancer have been revealed by Wizards already in their 2011 product preview on the main D&D site. Both are wizard builds and they seem to be Essentiallized. The blackguard is a paladin build.

To clarify:

Necromancy and Nethermancy are schools of wizard spells, which any wizard can take.

Mages (the Essentials build of the wizard) have Necromancy/Nethermancy-specific benefits for their "apprentice/Expert/etc" class features, as seen in the December and Beyond article.

 

[TikkchikFenTikktikk]

How I hate necro'd threads.

If a thread hasn't had comments in more than a couple weeks, start a new conversation with a link back to the old thread.

I wish the board admins would enforce this through software settings.

 

[Camelot]

How I hate necro'd threads.

If a thread hasn't had comments in more than a couple weeks, start a new conversation with a link back to the old thread.

I wish the board admins would enforce this through software settings.

But how could anyone resist necroing a thread about necromancy?

 

[GameDoc]

How I hate necro'd threads.

If a thread hasn't had comments in more than a couple weeks, start a new conversation with a link back to the old thread.

I wish the board admins would enforce this through software settings.

And this, my fellow gamers, is why I'm not a more frequent commenter or contributor to this forum. If my netiquette isn't up to snuff, fine - let me know. But lose the smug.

Good night, Vienna. I'm out!

 

[Plane Sailing]

Only a few months so it's not really necromancy - more like revivification!

 

[Umbran]

How I hate necro'd threads.

If a thread hasn't had comments in more than a couple weeks, start a new conversation with a link back to the old thread.

I wish the board admins would enforce this through software settings.

Folks,

Tikkchik here has just demonstrated how to fail to deal well with your own dislikes.

If you dislike a type of thread so badly that you are somehow compelled to threadcrap and try to tell others how to post, then you'll quickly find that you no longer have a choice in the matter. Save us all the trouble and walk away from threads you don't like.

 

[Bartoneus]

I'm actually a bit disappointed that the preview material is giving the impression there won't be a couple of new Shadow classes. At the moment the Assassin is the only class for the power source, and even the Blackguard is still just a Divine Striker.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with the idea of NOT adding a slew of new classes just to fill a power source out, but with the way things are now I would rather have seen the Assassin as a Rogue build than a whole new class. It seems the design philosophy behind 4E has changed over the last few years, possibly for the better, but I can't help but wonder what kinds of Shadow/Elemental/Ki based classes/mechanics could be created that would change some people's games as much as Psionics do.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It is actually much more elegant to add more subclasses.

This would have saved us a lot of trouble going through many powers which are just useless on most of the different builds of those classes.

 

[WalterKovacs]

I'm actually a bit disappointed that the preview material is giving the impression there won't be a couple of new Shadow classes. At the moment the Assassin is the only class for the power source, and even the Blackguard is still just a Divine Striker.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with the idea of NOT adding a slew of new classes just to fill a power source out, but with the way things are now I would rather have seen the Assassin as a Rogue build than a whole new class. It seems the design philosophy behind 4E has changed over the last few years, possibly for the better, but I can't help but wonder what kinds of Shadow/Elemental/Ki based classes/mechanics could be created that would change some people's games as much as Psionics do.

Considering that the Essential assassin is martial/shadow, and the ranger is martial/primal, it's quite possible that some of the new builds (like blackguard) will be hybrid classes as well (divine/shadow) while the new schools, being "inside" the Mage build would likely just be shadow flavored instead of shadow 'powered'. Then again, a pyromancer isn't elemental powered.

In terms of power sources, most have a clear 'source' of where the power comes from.

Martial is basically the "Batman" power source of no 'magical' power source. Divine comes from the astral sea. Primal comes from spirits on the default plane. Psionics technically is attached to the far realm, coming from within but not the same way as martial. With Shadow and Elemental, they do similarly have locations for the power to come from (the shadowfell and elemental chaos respectively). The problem comes with arcane. It sort of ties all over. Heck, just look at the warlock. You have ties to the far realm (star pact and vestige pact), ties to the elemental chaos (hellfire pact), the feywild (fey pact), the shadowfell (dark pact). With arcane being such a catchall ... stuff like shadow and elemental find it a bit harder to carve out a niche. You would basically have "a wizard/sorceror that only uses certain types of powers" ... basically a specialized build that focusses on one type of power.

Considering what we've seen from stuff like the runepriest and essentials, etc, a new power source isn't necessary for adding new mechanics. And many concepts can still fit into existing classes. A ninja could be a new build for the monk (or rogue, or assassin). The Essential builds for druid and cleric, like the wizard, could easily get at a new domain/season tied to shadow and death/undeath.