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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6104289" data-attributes="member: 82106">Lol, I have several complete collections of Vance's work. In fact Vance is one of the very few people I would say I am an actual FAN of. Clearly Gary took that commonality and ran with it, even naming a couple of spells after ones that Vance invented, but don't overdo it. Chainmail (which I have actually played many times) has a very rudimentary magic system in which wizards of different levels have fireballs and some other spells which IIRC are divided into 4 levels of potency and there are from 1-5 spells at each level, ALL of which are D&D classics. This game had NOTHING to do with RPG, and even if Gary thought of Vance at all, which I think is not that likely, in respect to the Chainmail wizard (or priest, which is similar) the design was PURELY gamist and so simple it didn't require Vance to inspire it. Besides NOTHING in Vance corresponds to spell level. In fact if you were trying to emulate Vance you would probably assign a 'level' to each spell and the character would just have a total pool of 'magic slots' where each spell took up N of them equal to its level.Sure, just like the inspiration for the Avenger was there first! lolI have no idea where you got those statements from though it would surely be impossible to refute them. You're the first person I recall ever saying anyone at WotC worked on a martial controller. OTOH I don't see a huge reason not to think it is a natural question to ask "Is there a class concept here?" but note that the answer was, "no", even though plenty of people have dreamed up mechanics that would work in a purely gamist sense (a martial seeker-like class for instance). Note that Essentials DOES have a Scout which works a lot like this, but it isn't entirely martial.I don't know anything about some other alternative Battlemind. The one they have clearly has a story, mind over matter, very succinct. I'm a little divided on how well it fills that concept, but then I'm not really a fan of psionics in D&D.  I know the mechanics provoked lots of complaints until it was revised.I disagree, while the Invoker is a little more niche than things like Cleric and Wizard if you were to PLAY it or see character concepts built on it, you'd see quickly that it is a pretty fun and useful class that can feel quite distinct. In fact it evokes more of the wonder-worker concept that the cleric oddly has been missing for decades. You could argue for moving cleric healing over to this guy and ditching the cleric (leave the paladin as the armored holy man), but the Invoker itself, much more than a grid filler.Ehhhhhh, I don't really agree. I think its possible that you could create an Invoker that is basically a merge with the Laser Cleric, but it would require a much greater splitting than just builds ala PHB1 to do it justice. I think 4e in general SHOULD have more classes that are integrated together more closely, but I think it might be better to do it at the power source level, not the class level. Leave the classes to map out the concepts, and the source to hold common mechanics.I think you get into a semantic argument at a certain point. While I think that there should be somewhat less classes than in 4e, mostly I think they should share more with each other. As many classes as are needed to articulate distinct ways for a character to do its main shtick is fine. Its also fine if some of those are close enough to others that they can be sub-classes. This is just normal system design where you do re-use when possible. It is even better in a game where things are not so rigid as with software.Eh, it isn't that much different. You could use magic weapons or ANY spell against a lycanthrope with full effectiveness. Sure it was nice to have silver, just like it is now. 4e has plenty of buffs too. I note that people often ignore them, but that's not because they don't exist. It is just that they seem to desire some sort of 'arena' like play (or the DM can't seem to get out of that mode). In my games the PCs prepare all the time, and if they don't they are sorry. There are all sorts of things like potions of resistance (generally a lot of protective potions). There are several quite handy rituals too. I think this would be a good area for a rewrite of 4e to emphasize more though. Still, there is plenty of room in 4e for the sort of tactics and strategy people use in other editions. I've leaned on that a good bit in my games.No, I don't agree. I had a whole adventure that was exactly this, the PCs finding the ghost of an NPC's mother and fixing up various things. It was quite fun and challenging without any combat at all. I think the ghost made a few attacks that did psychic damage but that was all just color. The party wasn't supposed to, and didn't, try to defeat the thing by combat.It was just a suggestion. There are no doubt other similar possibilities. You could have things like secret doors that split the party up, etc. I can think of a bunch. Just think back to various scary movies. It isn't about 'designed to weaken', it is about ratcheting up the tension. A horror story with nothing but one big fight doesn't seem like a well-designed horror story to me. 1e AD&D had some conversion rules, they were pretty strange... The two games are VERY different.I know nothing about guns in Ravenloft. The Ravenloft I have is the original module, it has no hint of guns that I recall, though I suppose I could be forgetting something. The thing is WHAT DO YOU NEED for optional rules? Everything 'just works'. Guns are trivial. Pistol -> treat this as a hand crossbow, musket -> treat this as a heavy crossbow. There, I'm done <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> That will do fine for casual use. I know of NO official gun rules in any previous edition, but I'm not an expert on 3.x, they could exist. I never heard of any for AD&D personally, though if you say the Ravenloft SETTING had them, I believe you.No, it just reinforced the bad choice of class that he made...No, I disagree. Low magic 4e is trivial (either just don't worry about the missing attack bonus and tweak encounter difficulty as needed, same as you did in 1e) or use inherent bonus (which was so blindingly obvious an option it barely needed to be spelled out in DMG2). Low combat games work PERFECTLY WELL in 4e. In previous editions you had as many or few problems with them too (mostly wizard novas, much worse than full-party 4e nova). I've had games go weeks without a fight, no problem.I think you have some preconceived notions about what you can and can't do.</blockquote>

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