Heroes of Virtue article

[Peraion Graufalke]

That seems to be the case, near as I can tell. The Essentials books say nothing about the Mounted Combat feat, either in the Monster Vault or in the glossary or in the Rules Compendium.

Which is strange because without Mounted Combat your mount used to have -2 to attack rolls. As per the RC, your mount has the -2 to attacks, period.
At the very least, Mounted Combat should let your mount attack without that penalty.

The glossary entry for mounts doesn't explicitly state that a rider gains access to a mount's traits or powers, though I agree that's how it's intended. (For the record, there seems to be no mention of mount traits anywhere else in the RC. )
Incomplete rules FTW! /snark

 

[TerraDave]

They are good. But they would be better with attack powers.

 

[Colmarr]

Emphasis mine. By RAW, you can, but it appears as though it is preferred if it's chose at level 1. If a DM wants to house-rule this preference into a requirement in their campaign, I see no problem with that.

The text you quoted doesn't support retraining at all. It supports going without a theme for one or more levels and then choosing one at a level higher than 1. Not the same thing.

Interesting if WotC have reversed that particular rule from Dark Sun.


I personally would approve, but I can already hear faint cries of 'stealth errata!'

 

[Aegeri]

You can retrain themes, it's explained 100% clearly that you can in the beginning of the first of the theme articles:

If you have no powers or feats that use your theme as a prerequisite, you can retrain your theme choice when you gain a level. If you have a feat or a power that requires your existing theme, you must first retrain those to choices that don’t have your theme as a prerequisite. Then you can change your theme by retraining at the next opportunity.

So there you go. Dark Sun also specifies you can retrain your theme with the exact same sort of wording. So long as you don't have any powers from the theme (beyond the first) you can swap a theme out like anything else when you level up.

 

[Colmarr]

Ah, thanks for the clarification.

 

[Aegeri]

The real question is, can you get your free Wizard Apprentice or Noble item and then retrain it? It is not a power or feat, so it doesn't seem covered under the retraining rules. Can you sell the item for gold and then retrain the theme? Especially because these are otherwise poorly scaling benefits that won't be applicable for very long (let alone if the DM even regards them as bonuses and doesn't just insert them into the treasure table as the regular parcel).

 

[DNH]

What about acquiring themes part-way into a game? Anyone have any thoughts on that? I mean, my group's characters are all now 5th-level and I think at least some of them would consider picking a theme, but do you think that can work at this point, ie *after* character creation?

Also, anyone have any thoughts on what happens if only some of the group applies a theme? Does this cause imbalance? Or is it not worth bothering about?

 

[Kinneus]

What about acquiring themes part-way into a game? Anyone have any thoughts on that? I mean, my group's characters are all now 5th-level and I think at least some of them would consider picking a theme, but do you think that can work at this point, ie *after* character creation?

Well... seeing as how it's a new mechanic being introduced into core 4e, I think the folks over at WotC kind of expect us to incorporate it into ongoing campaigns. It'd seem silly to introduce this new content and then disallow all ongoing campaigns from using it. Obviously they're intended to be selected at level 1, but since they didn't exist at level 1, then obviously players couldn't have. Basically, it comes down to what the DM wants. Either they're going to tell the players to each pick a theme (that preferably ties into their background in some way) or ignore themes and continue playing as they did before. It's a total non-issue.
I'd recommend against giving some players themes and not others, though. I guess if a player HATED themes and refused to pick one, that'd be fine. Their prerogative. But yeah, it would be a balance issue, simply because "Something > Nothing."

 

[IanB]

Well I guess I have my first theme-related house rule.

I think adding them in to an ongoing game is fine, although I would stare balefully at my players if they picked something that didn't fit their character as it had been played so far.

 

[Ryujin]

My players, in my loosely FR themed campaign, asked if they could use themes a while back when they became available for Dark Sun. I said no, because they just didn't seem to be a good mesh for the type of campaign. It was obvious, to me, that they were going for power creep.

Since these new ones have started to come out, I've allowed them to take these more generalized themes.

The party has no regular defender characters but is rather built around a ubiquitous Pacifist Cleric, three mostly melee Strikers (Charging Barbarian, Two-Blade Ranger, and Pursuing Avenger), with an occasional controller (Staff Wizard). The Ranger and Barbarian tend to work quite well together and both took the Guardian Theme. They try to use the swap-out interrupt to get additional MBAs, like a couple of wire-fighting martial artists swinging each other back and forth. So far their success has with that has been minimal, due to status effects and forced movements on the triggering attacks, but it adds a certain flavour to the battles.