D&D 4E Looking for thoughts on my kitbashed 4E

[Tony Vargas]

I think the D&D community has long abandoned the idea of “everything oriental is better”.

The best spin I heard, at the time, was that folding ki into psionics meant that D&D was finally getting away from 'orientalism' - that idea that the exotic 'other' can be supernatural/superior because of that other-ness.

I'd've found it more compelling if ki had been folded into martial.

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I won’t say they aren’t related, but there are significant differences.
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The way I see it, the 'natural world' is made of elements, so the distinction doesn't apply. Though it's a fair distinction between D&D evocation vs conjuration, FWIW.

 

[Garthanos]

The best spin I heard, at the time, was that folding ki into psionics meant that D&D was finally getting away from 'orientalism' - that idea that the exotic 'other' can be supernatural/superior because of that other-ness.

I'd've found it more compelling if ki had been folded into martial.

Ofcourse then D&Ds martial artist class would have been well martial... and martial would have to be allowed to be even more awesome and by that time I think a systemic failure had begun... I mean phb3 had MM on the cover.

 

[Igwilly]

The best spin I heard, at the time, was that folding ki into psionics meant that D&D was finally getting away from 'orientalism' - that idea that the exotic 'other' can be supernatural/superior because of that other-ness.

Honestly, that’s garbage. A significant amount of people want Samurai/Bushi, Ninja/Shinobi, Wu Jen and such as proper classes and I cannot see a reason why we couldn’t work with an oriental concept such as Ki or the Kami.
I truly dislike the idea of folding many different, interesting classes into one uber-generic, bland and flavorless “big class”.
Now, I would say that, if psionics is treated in a much more mystical and occultist way, we could see affinity. With sci-fi psionics, however, they are pretty different.

I'd've found it more compelling if ki had been folded into martial.

The way I see it, Ki is to Martial as Primal is to Divine, and Shadow and Elemental are to Arcane. These are cases on what I would call… I don’t know… “Power Sub-Sources”? They are, basically, specializations inside a power source.

The way I see it, the 'natural world' is made of elements, so the distinction doesn't apply. Though it's a fair distinction between D&D evocation vs conjuration, FWIW.

Well, if you don’t care about the difference, there’s not much point in arguing, right?

 

[Tony Vargas]

The way I see it, Ki is to Martial as...Shadow and Elemental are to Arcane. These are cases on what I would call… I don’t know… “Power Sub-Sources”? They are, basically, specializations inside a power source.

That would be a cool & interesting take on it. A Ki-using character could take an appropriate Theme, the way elemental characters in HotEC did.
I like it.

Well, if you don’t care about the difference, there’s not much point in arguing, right?

It's not that I don't care about a difference, it's that I don't see the difference as valid. I see a fantasy world as being made of classical elements, not the periodic-table elements of science. Thus drawing a stark line between 'nature' and the 'elements' doesn't make sense. Also, I don't agree with Druid = Nature. Druids were essentially divine in all other editions, and animists in 4e. The Druids of myth/legend/Roman-history/later-century-revivals were not hippies. (OK, the Druids of the latest neo-Pagan revival, a lot of them, may have been hippies.)

 

[Cyvris]

phb3 had MM on the cover.

And it introduced some of my favorite races of 4e. It was great to see D&D embrace weird races again. Both the Wilden and Shardmind are fantastically off beat races that are just fun to roleplay as.

 

[Garthanos]

It was great to see D&D embrace weird races again. Both the Wilden and Shardmind are fantastically off beat races that are just fun to roleplay as.

And yet they werent even actually challenging game system wise... not even a centaur, I just wasn't impressed. I admit to liking a number of the experiments in Feywild so there is that.

 

[Tony Vargas]

And yet they werent even actually challenging game system wise...

You mean because they were size M and worked basically like every other race in broad strokes, in spite of being plants or swarms of psi crystals?

I think that was just the modestly-robust, highly-abstract nature of the system.

Consider wildshape. Even through several revisions it was problematic in 3.x, in 4e it was trivial, the potential spread out over powers.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Maybe they had trouble padding out ki? I'd think they'd've just plugged in all the 1e OA classes. Bushi, like fighter but better. Wu-Jen, like wizard, but better. Etc...
...so maybe not such a bad thing.

I don't recall the exact words that were used, but one or more of the WotC devs basically said "We eliminated Ki because it was just 'the power of being Asian' and we didn't want that in the game."

Its exactly like you say, there'd be an insurmountable urge to make 'Asian classes' that use Ki but are effectively just thematic variations of existing classes that would better be served being in their proper power sources. Also, such a Ki source would be a thematic nightmare. If it could thematically contain a Samurai, a Wu-Jen, and a Sohei then it is another 'power of everything' and we already HAD Arcane which is bad enough!

Eliminating Ki wasn't really an option. Its inclusion in the original PHB1 list was probably a bit of a throwaway. In fact, at the time, I didn't take any of that list too seriously. Some of the sources on it are fairly obvious ones that certainly were going to be in the game, like Primal, but others weren't so obvious, psionic is purely an option they could have ignored, and I could see 'Elemental' simply having been left off as redundant with Arcane (Honestly it might have been cool if 4e had cast Arcane more as "Lost forbidden knowledge of the Primordials which maybe isn't always good to mess with" anyway. That would have neatly explained why wizards and sorcerers are so good at conjuring up fires and such.)

 

[Garthanos]

You mean because they were size M and worked basically like every other race in broad strokes, in spite of being plants or swarms of psi crystals?

Yeh that would be it...

I think that was just the modestly-robust, highly-abstract nature of the system.

Nods - RuneQuest yeh that old game had distinctive support for differing forms because of a wierd non-abstraction ie located hit points and a random location chart.

What if a winged character had a chance of having their flight lost when they were hit and similar things a scorpion tailed hero might lose a power associated with that tail if hit just right/wrong and similar things.

Consider wildshape. Even through several revisions it was problematic in 3.x, in 4e it was trivial, the potential spread out over powers.

Sure in so doing it becomes the overwhelming element of a character... is that avoidable? hmmmmm

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Honestly, that’s garbage. A significant amount of people want Samurai/Bushi, Ninja/Shinobi, Wu Jen and such as proper classes and I cannot see a reason why we couldn’t work with an oriental concept such as Ki or the Kami.

I just don't see where "the power of yourself" which is Ki is different from Martial, which likewise arises out of skill, training, and discipline. There's a FLAVOR difference in the sense that Chinese/Japanese legends attribute a bit different effects to evoking this power.

The problem with Ki specifically as a power source though is, its just a place to dump a bunch of classes because they're Asian versions of archetypes. I don't think that's a good reason to do so. I think we can argue about if Samurai should be a class or a theme, but that's a different argument. It should be a martial character. Sure, he may yell "KIYA!" when making a nasty sword chop, and maybe that's a manifestation of his use of some sort of class feature (or whatever the mechanic is), and that's fine. I mean its not like the existing martial classes don't do similar things perhaps. I mean, really, you could just pick up the properly styled arms and armor, fight in the right style, and act appropriately, you're a Samurai, class hardly matters there (though presumably fighter is probably what you'd pick for that in most cases).

Truly, if Ki WAS going to be a power source, then it shouldn't be called that, it should have some other name that indicates internal power. That way it could have a normal array of classes of whatever sort and wouldn't be a magnet for every class that happens to be themed Japanese.

I don't even think that a lot of what is depicted in Asian legends/stories/movies/etc all necessarily appropriate to be called 'Ki' or any one other thing anyway. Clearly some characters are channeling spirits, others are simply expert warriors, and others have arcane knowledge, pacts, etc etc etc. Its just as wide a range as you'd get from European legends and such. It would be a shame if it all got folded into a single power source.