Loss of Ki - More Harm Than Good?

[korjik]

For whatever reason, Western gamers do not, in general, play oriental settings. I don't know the exact reason, although I suspect that the culture is just too foreign. Everyone "gets" traditional swords and sorcery, even if you weren't raised on it. You have knights in shining armor, damsels in distress, gray castles, fire breathing dragons--we get that, and we can wrap our brains around it even if we don't know squat about European medieval history. But we don't get oriental mysticism, we don't get the whole Bushido code, and we just don't get a lot of what flavors a good oriental setting.

I played in an Oriental Adventures campaign once, and it was just effing painful. Everything became a terrible cliche, and those players who didn't have the OA book were even less prepared to deal with it. I think we managed about 3-5 sessions before we just couldn't do it anymore.

Now maybe that's changing, and maybe the anime/manga-inspired crowd will eventually start to influence what is produced, but as it stands now, anything overtly oriental flavored just isn't going to sell to Western gamers. I wasn't even aware that WotC had been planning some oriental themed materials, but from a business perspective I'd have to say they made the right call. I'm all about diversity in the game, but from a business perspective it would have been a disaster.

I am sure everyone who plays L5R will be suprised to hear that they dont play an oriental themed game.

 

[korjik]

Being empowered by your own mind is not external. Exactly the opposite, in fact.

I punch you in the head and it explodes = internal. The force was never outside a body

I use my mind to make your head explode = external. The force was applied from a distance

Using the power of your body to lift a rock and crush someone = internal

Using telekinesis to pick up the rock to crush someone = external

If you find the distinction to be fine, so what? Power sources are a rather arbitrary set of definitions anyway.

 

[The Little Raven]

If you find the distinction to be fine, so what? Power sources are a rather arbitrary set of definitions anyway.

I find the distinction to be meaningless, just like Wizards did when they axed Ki.

I also find your distinction to be inconsistent, as you cite Shugenja as a Ki class when its entire premise is dealing with elemental spirits that are certainly not internal to the caster, which is a dead ringer for the Primal power source.

 

[moxcamel]

I am sure everyone who plays L5R will be suprised to hear that they dont play an oriental themed game.

I am sure everyone who plays L5R will be surprised to hear that they are playing Oriental Adventures.

 

[DEFCON 1]

[MENTION=7006]DEFCON 1[/MENTION] : the monk doesn't have the same power structure of the psion, battlemind and ardent for the same reason the barbarian doesn't have the same mechanic of the druid or the shaman. Power sources don't dictate the power structure. The monk is an example of the "psionic-boosted self" aspect of the power source.

But there's a difference here. None of the Primal sources have a unifying mechanic, so there was nothing the Seeker needed to "fit into" per se (at least with regards to how their powers were designed.) Martial and Arcane are also like that. There's certainly a unifying story behind the power source, but those three sources don't have a game element that connects every class within the source together.

However, both Divine and Psionic have a very specific mechanic created for them that all classes fit into until they decided to put Monk and Runepriest into them after the fact. The Divine classes all used the Channel Divinity mechanic, the Psionic classes all used power points. To not have the Monk and Runepriest follow the thematic mechanics of their respective power sources makes it more difficult for me to accept them as actual classes of that source.

I really have no actual evidence as to whether what I mentioned did or did not have an effect on the excitement/interest level of the game... I'm just spitballing here on another possible reason why there might be less currently than there potentially could have been. For me personally... all I know is that as I look back on Player's Handbook 3... I know that it did very little for me. The Psionic power source was cool to a certain extent, but I don't like the Monk being a part of it. The Seeker seems a nice addition to the Primal source, but it was nothing that I feel I was missing from the source before that point. And I in no way accept the Runepriest as a Divine class... partly because of the lack of Channel Divinity, but also because the class itself gets it powers from runes and NOT the prayers that the player's god answers. So where's the divine in that?

I just wondered if I wasn't alone on these feelings towards the PH3 and what then turned into the lack of a PH4. Many folks don't care, which I fully expect, and many folks probably liked the direction that PH3 went into. But as I mentioned previously... it just makes me consider whether what we currently have (PH3 as is last March and Heroes of Shadow upcoming in April, with the 13 months of theoretical game interest between them) will turn out to have been better/more exciting than a PH3 last March that had (for example) four full Psionic classes, 2 Ki classes (Monk and something else) and 2 Shadow classes (like necromancer and something)... with the expectation that some time in the next month we would be getting PH4 with the remaining 2 Ki and Shadow classes, put a full slate of 4 Elemental (or whatever power source they decided made the most sense from a story perspective for the game)? And speaking personally... I think I would have been more excited during this past year for the PH3/PH4 combo than what we are getting. And I freely admit this is mainly just personal bias, but I wondered if many others felt the same way.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Do I think that what they did with Player's Handbook 3 was a mistake? Yes I do. Half the classes were fine... the three "real" psionic classes. (I would step in here and say I actually preferred the original class name 'Empath' rather than Ardent though, but that's just personal nitpicking on my part). However, the other three classes did very little in the long run.

I disagree. When I look at a new character class, my question is always the same. "What does this allow me to play that would previously not have been easy (or even possible)? Power source is ... secondary to expanding what I can do.

With that said, I consider that in the PHB3, one of the classes kicks ass and takes names (the Monk - who expands the game by doing things that no one else does in a way that no one else does), two of the classes shouldn't exist because the concepts fit too neatly into existing classes (the Seeker should be a Ranger (possibly an Essentials Hunter) and the Ardent/Empath should be a Bard). The other three are interesting but deeply flawed - I don't get the use of the Battlemind and how it differs conceptually from a fighter or warden, runepriests seem cool but alas are fiddly, and have a problem that it's rune of destruction, all the way, and psions who can do just a few things but do them very well differ from other controllers but alas are extremely broken.

This means that entirely independently of the Ki source, the PHB 3 had for me one hit, three that range from partial hits to near misses, and two wide misses in terms of new classes. And Hybrids are also partial hits. I'm not buying a PHB for one good class. Compare this to the PHB2. Invoker. Bard. Shaman. Druid. Barbarian. Avenger. Warden. Sorceror. There is not one single class in that book that I wouldn't be more than happy to play for a little while (I'd get bored with the sorceror after a handful of sessions, but that's not because it's a bad class) and not a single class I haven't seen played at least once - by comparison the only PHB3 class I've seen played was the Monk. There are arguments for saying that Sorcerors, Barbarians, and Wardens lack distinctiveness from Wizards, Fighters, and Fighters respectively - and had we had slayers, knights, and invokers from the start this might have had a stronger case.

In short the class that is to me the best class in the PHB3 would only be a contender in the PHB2, and any of the other five would be a challenger for worst PHB2 class (although the ardent wouldn't be such a problem if it was new with the bard rather than having the bard already claiming much of that conceptual territory).

I wouldn't care if you called the monk, seeker, runepriest, and [whatever] the ki power source or even the awesome power source. They still wouldn't give me what I want to see. Which is expanding what can be done with the game.

 

[Mapache]

I just wondered if I wasn't alone on these feelings towards the PH3 and what then turned into the lack of a PH4. Many folks don't care, which I fully expect, and many folks probably liked the direction that PH3 went into. But as I mentioned previously... it just makes me consider whether what we currently have (PH3 as is last March and Heroes of Shadow upcoming in April, with the 13 months of theoretical game interest between them) will turn out to have been better/more exciting than a PH3 last March that had (for example) four full Psionic classes, 2 Ki classes (Monk and something else) and 2 Shadow classes (like necromancer and something)... with the expectation that some time in the next month we would be getting PH4 with the remaining 2 Ki and Shadow classes, put a full slate of 4 Elemental (or whatever power source they decided made the most sense from a story perspective for the game)? And speaking personally... I think I would have been more excited during this past year for the PH3/PH4 combo than what we are getting. And I freely admit this is mainly just personal bias, but I wondered if many others felt the same way.

The thing is, stuff that could have existed but didn't is always more exciting than stuff which does exist because the imaginary always lives up to your expectations and never disappoints you. As far as PH3 having had two more classes and PH4 adding yet eight more classes, Wizards kind of realized that they had too many classes already. There's certainly more than I have time to play, and as this thread and others show, there's many people that feel that some existing classes are treading too close to each other already. The majority of new classes they put out would by necessity wind up being orphaned, as there just isn't time to keep cranking out material for an ever-expanding list of classes. Personally, I find the Hybrid rules that take up a big chunk of PH3 to be far more exciting than any handful of classes could ever be (plus they let me play two classes per character, so I can sample more of the overstuffed menu).

 

[TikkchikFenTikktikk]

Detailed analysis, but you don't go deep enough.

Why were the first two books well organized and true to a vision, while later releases lost the thread?

My hypothesis:

They laid off too many people.

Not enough human resources resulted in a loss of vision and failure of execution.

I think this was tacitly acknowledge by the gutting of the 2011 product schedule and statements made at DDXP.

Essentials strips back the game to a point where the much smaller D&D RPG team (relative to 4Es launch three years ago) can actually re-envision the game and execute it to the quality and fun standards we customers expect.

 

[TerraDave]

If, if they were looking for a thematicly unified book of player crunch, then the Ki (or Qi), or oriental adventures, could be that book. If they were looking for a couple of strongly flavoured books, you could of course do both psi and ki, and make them quite distinctive. Now, if sales data says that book won't do well, then I guess you don't release it. Or don't release both.

Psi=Ki? Ki is its own thing, with its own definition and lore:

Qi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is distinct from the "paranormal" sci-fi flavoured mental powers (with a touch of Dr. Strange) that inspired D&D psionics in the first place. But sure, they could turn out to be the same thing.

Then again, you could argue that Ki=Primal or that Ki=Martial or that Ki=Elemental=Arcane. Whatever.

You could also argue that the power source approach doesn't actually give that much value added, in that it has just about no mechanical relevance (in constrast to the arcane and divine split in 3E), and that it would be better to just drop it and do the "fluff" for classes on a case by case basis.