New Design & Development: Paladin Smites!

[Counterspin]

Gearjammer - You're wrong. Paladins in WOW are one of only two classes that can fill any of the three main roles, and only one of those is healing. I'm afraid that conception of paladins is not the one in WOW. Try again.

 

[Skaven_13]

Not true. MMOs existed for a decade before WoW, yet they never reached mainstream popularity until one with the right mechanics and gameplay balance came along.

Actually, it took a graphical interface and the spread of internet access to really move the muds/mush style text based games into the everquest/wow games we have see. Everquest had mainstream popularity until WOW came along.

 

[broghammerj]

Two concerns

I have read through about 85% of this thread so I may have missed it, but I have two concerns regarding these smites.

1. Speed and complexity of game play. Doesn't boosting everyones AC add to the same confusion of multi buff spells that will be in effect such as bless, bard abilities, etc? Wasn't this a problem with 3E in remembering all these bonuses in combat.

2. I hope laying of hands is not sacrificed for the healing smite. I have used laying of hands to save a mayor from an assassination attempt by a band of rogues and to heal an NPC who's death would have really sabotaged a plotline. If I can heal these individuals by simply electively "missing" my smite attack then I will be really annoyed.

 

[Skaven_13]

Ok. So, from a purely mechanical PoV you consider a munchkin mechanic the paladin's ability to attack for double damage and heal a single ally, but you're ok with the ability to smite for double damage, heal all your allies in range and damage all your enemies, too? Maybe we just don't agree on what's "munchkin"

Actually, the damaging of my enemies is only going to happen when facing undead, and that is because of how healing is considered positive energy and the fact that undead take damage from positive energy. Turn the enemies into any living opponent, and now you are healing your enemies as well.

Did I say that this is the one I prefer? No. Did I say it was even a good mechanic? No. In fact, it's a bad mechanic, but I prefer it over single ally healing.

 

[Montague68]

Wait a minute.

Did you seriously just claim that character advancement, gameplay, and combat are NOT mechanical systems that are subject to balance?

I meant that class mechanics weren't a huge part of it. At release, many class mechanics didn't work very well either through bugs or design decisions. It took them the better part of a year to hammer those out.

 

[The Little Raven]

I meant that class mechanics weren't a huge part of it. At release, many class mechanics didn't work very well either through bugs or design decisions. It took them the better part of a year to hammer those out.

Yeah, that's called "balancing." Any person who claims they can perfectly balance something before it undergoes heavy use by a large group of people is simply deceiving themselves.

And yes, those class mechanics were a huge part of it. Broad classes that are able to fit multiple roles (most of them) were far more appealing to people than EQ and it's 20+ classes with limited viability and horrible overshadowing (no point being a warrior if there are knights around).

WoW is the most popular because it's the most fun to play, and the mechanics are what make it fun. The art style is great, but pretty graphics only take you so far if your gameplay sucks (Vanguard, for example, looks pretty but sucks to play).

 

[The Little Raven]

Everquest had mainstream popularity until WOW came along.

Wrong.

Everquest was, and still is, a niche game. At it's highest, it never featured more than 750k active users. It was never prominently featured in several TV shows, unlike WoW (in fact, the South Park episode won an Emmy). It hasn't featured several commercials played on prominent networks. It doesn't have a world tournament for it's PvP. It doesn't have dozens of spin-off products, including novels, board games, card games, roleplaying games (it had one, but that seems to be inactive right now), comic books, action figures, collectible dioramas. It was never optioned for a movie, nor does it come up in the blogs of tons of industry luminaries (both videogame and normal RPG). Based on it's popularity alone, Blizzard was able to hold a rather large convention (twice!) that was bigger than the Everquest meets that Sony held (I live in San Diego, I've seen them).

Hell, in one month's time, WoW had a higher user base than EQ did at it's peak, and this was after 5 years of EQ being dominant.

So, no, Everquest never ever made it to the mainstream.

 

[Montague68]

Gearjammer - You're wrong. Paladins in WOW are one of only two classes that can fill any of the three main roles, and only one of those is healing. I'm afraid that conception of paladins is not the one in WOW. Try again.

I don't want to derail this into a WoW thread, so I won't be discussing it anymore. But if you haven't played a paladin in WoW, the healing abilities were far, far stronger than the other abilities. Blizzard is supposedly taking steps to change that, after only three years.

My apologies again for the derail.

 

[Counterspin]

Regardless of what the paladin in WOW is like, you've got your causality inverted. The early version WOW paladin you had experience with is an explicit homage to the cleric in D&D. The data flows from D&D to WOW, not the other way around.

 

[Klaus]

I have read through about 85% of this thread so I may have missed it, but I have two concerns regarding these smites.

1. Speed and complexity of game play. Doesn't boosting everyones AC add to the same confusion of multi buff spells that will be in effect such as bless, bard abilities, etc? Wasn't this a problem with 3E in remembering all these bonuses in combat.

2. I hope laying of hands is not sacrificed for the healing smite. I have used laying of hands to save a mayor from an assassination attempt by a band of rogues and to heal an NPC who's death would have really sabotaged a plotline. If I can heal these individuals by simply electively "missing" my smite attack then I will be really annoyed.

I agree that the "boosting ally's AC" smite is kinda cumbersome. I'd rather have it impose a -2 to the enemy's attack. That's why I posted my variant smiles on page 11.