Jennifer Clarke Wilkes on Paragon level Playtesting

[hong]

What you don't like 1 hour 2 round fights where its assumed at least one PC will die every fight.

Bah. They could have skipped the bodak if they chose to!

 

[Ahglock]

Bah. They could have skipped the bodak if they chose to!

Not if I'm running the game. That is clearly encounter 4.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Bah. They could have skipped the bodak if they chose to!

They totally ignored the spooky well.

They totally shouldn't have.

 

[Wolfspider]

All of this talk of dragon-death depresses me.

 

[pawsplay]

The party consisted of five characters: a tiefling warlock (infernal, naturally), a halfling rogue, a dwarf fighter (polearm specialist and opportunity attack monster), a human cleric, and an eladrin wizard.

Wow that's playing to type.

I hope that is just because it was cool or it felt right and not because you are a gimp if you don't. Not that any edition has been great about this but I would really be disappointed if racial benefits are so large that its just a bad decision not to play to type.

I have already put forward the pawsplay proposition:

Because
... racial ability substitutions cannot be less powerful than normal ones or no one would take them, thus they must be equal or greater than,
... because the abilities must be desirable in order to make them actually a plus rather than one option among many,
... because not taking a power increase is the same as taking a power decrease,

THEN
... playing to type will always at least break even with other types, and
... within a role, the character playing to type will always have a numerical advantage.

So, while an elven longsword fighter and a dwarven axe fighter might be different but in some way comparable (assuming for the sake of this example a racial weapon style type of ability), an elven axe fighter will be inferior to both elven longsword fighters and dwarven axe fighters.

 

[ruleslawyer]

A dwarf polearm fighter doesn't strike me as "playing to type," really.

But yeah, anyone with any sense of optimization is going to probably "play to type" in any edition of D&D. Elven barbarian? No way. Dwarven sorcerer? Likewise.

On some level (and yes, this is a bit of an extreme statement), going with anything other than rogue or spellcaster for halflings, archer for elves, and fighter or barbarian for dwarves is a "self-gimp." The ability mods alone make it so.

 

[BASHMAN]

Dwarven opportunity attack monster screams to me "4th edition has plenty of broken cheese for munchkins." And also that "yes, in 4th edition, you can also slow combat to a crawl with attack of opp rules"

 

[med stud]

First of all, you can't blame a play testing group for playing with the assumed roles. Second, if I don't misremember, isn't Jennifer Clarke Wilkes pretty new to the game? In that case she haven't had the time to become jaded by the traditional roles, instead thinking "Nice! A demon tainted infernal warlock, I want to play this!" I think that's the standard reaction of seeing that combo if you haven't played D&D for the last X years, really. Same with dwarven fighter; the first time you play a fantasy RPG, a dwarf will likely jump up to you say: "Play Gimli!" and you won't feel stereotypical for it.

 

[med stud]

Dwarven opportunity attack monster screams to me "4th edition has plenty of broken cheese for munchkins." And also that "yes, in 4th edition, you can also slow combat to a crawl with attack of opp rules"

That's a bold proposition considering the amount of information that is given.

 

[Zamkaizer]

Dwarven opportunity attack monster screams to me "4th edition has plenty of broken cheese for munchkins." And also that "yes, in 4th edition, you can also slow combat to a crawl with attack of opp rules"

"Dwarven opportunity attack monster screams to me '4th edition has plenty of balanced options for character builds.' And also that 'no, in 4th edition, you won't slow combat to a crawl with attack of opp rules.'"