The biggest positive from my perspective in the latest playtest packet is the range that Backgrounds and Specialties bring to character diversity. They help me build the characters I want to play (even if they aren’t especially optimized), giving the flavor of multiclassing from level 1, without imbalancing things.
Now anyone can be a Soldier, with a skill layout to cover basic training. You might not have been a good Soldier (and that makes a cool story too), but a Sorcerer with a Soldier background sounds really fun to me.
Priest and (specialties) Acolyte and Healer take away some of the niche of Clerics, but it’s a niche that haven’t been supported in ply much anyways. I LOVE the idea of a Rogue Priest – the fact that marriages or whatever are being conducted by a Rogue rather than a Cleric is really exciting.
I also love that High Elves are racially predisposed to be Necromancers.
The effect of these builds will be small – so what if a fighter can stabilize the dead with Death’s Door, or a cleric can cast magic missile? – but, as presented here, the rules help resolve the tyranny of the class system and give some great opportunities for building flavor.
Will any of these 5 builds break the game and need to be nerfed? Absolutely not. They provide options that (understandably) won’t appeal to everyone, but for me they are exactly what I am looking for: providing diversity to builds without power-creeping splatbooks, and I want to try each one.
Any thoughts?
.
Now anyone can be a Soldier, with a skill layout to cover basic training. You might not have been a good Soldier (and that makes a cool story too), but a Sorcerer with a Soldier background sounds really fun to me.
Priest and (specialties) Acolyte and Healer take away some of the niche of Clerics, but it’s a niche that haven’t been supported in ply much anyways. I LOVE the idea of a Rogue Priest – the fact that marriages or whatever are being conducted by a Rogue rather than a Cleric is really exciting.
I also love that High Elves are racially predisposed to be Necromancers.
The effect of these builds will be small – so what if a fighter can stabilize the dead with Death’s Door, or a cleric can cast magic missile? – but, as presented here, the rules help resolve the tyranny of the class system and give some great opportunities for building flavor.
Will any of these 5 builds break the game and need to be nerfed? Absolutely not. They provide options that (understandably) won’t appeal to everyone, but for me they are exactly what I am looking for: providing diversity to builds without power-creeping splatbooks, and I want to try each one.
Any thoughts?
.
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