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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4212471" data-attributes="member: 4937">Hmmmm... some good, some bad.  1) I like the new racial templates.  Very flavorful and makes combat more interesting with low level critters.2) I love the new emphasis on gamist design in terms of what it means in play.  These are fun monsters, and I'm starting to lean toward buying the 4e MM just to mine ideas from it.3) I have mixed feelings about the whole idea of the general population being high level minions.  I see the point, and you can find similar ideas in 1st edition (Hickman does this in I3: Pyramid, for example).   But I presume that average human townguards/elf warriors/drawf warriors are now level 7-10 minions as well?  Are the days of hiring men-at-arms to adventure with you at low levels back?  Sure, they are 'red shirts' but they are red-shirts that have very high 'to hit' scores.  I wouldn't mind having a half dozen level 9 human minion archers at my back, especially when it came to killing (1 hp) orc soldiers.4) I think if I were to do 4e, one of my first house rules would be along the lines of 'Minions get 1 hp per level'.  It won't matter too much in terms of ability to survive attacks from PC's of comparable level (who will still probably be dropping minions in one hit most of the time), but it does reduce some of the glass jaw silliness of having 1 hp and might reduce the temptation to metagame that knowledge.  6) Never before in the games history have 1st level characters been so far beneath the assumed average power level of other beings in the world.  Alot of people touted 4e as making the players heroes from 1st level.  Quite the contrary, we see that 1st level PC's are extremely subpar individuals in terms of just about everything.  There are whole armies of 9th level characters out there with base to hit scores well above 1st level PC levels.  Heroic tier, despite its name and high amount of flash, is really mundane tier in disguise.  That's not all bad but it is wierd.  Not only are PC's not nearly as skilled in a fight as your average orc minion, but their ability scores are far below those of say average orc chieftains (who look like they start with 3 18's plus several other good scores), and the will never ever be 'elite' in the same fashion that an 'elite' NPC will be.  That 8th level Chieftain for example has hp comparable to a 20th level PC.  A party of 5 elite NPC's - and it seems the world will never lack for these - is pretty much always going to be more capable in a fight than the PC party is.  Never before in the games history has there been quite the oppurtunity for PC's to actually let the cool uber-NPC do the heavy lifting, nor has the game quite as endorsed the concept of uber-PC since the days of the 2nd edition rules for 'Chosen of Mystra'.</blockquote>

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