pacifist clerics and gnomes

[Plane Sailing]

Following gathered from wotc_logans blog http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=13609040&postcount=8

One thing a player in Dave Noonan's game mentioned was that he wanted more non-violent options for his cleric. We'd gone pretty military for the cleric, but in the dev meeting, I made sure we put in some options for the other guy. "What would Steve Wolbrecht do" led us to some pretty cool powers that everybody—not just pacifists—will want.

Now I'm spending my days typing in monster numbers. I hadn't worked on monsters much, so it's cool to see what they're doing. I did wolves most recently, and gnomes are up next. (Gnomes rock, I don't care what anyone says.)

(my emphasis).

Still don't know whether Gnomes make the cut as PC races, but sounds like they are in the MM?!?

The idea of additional non-violent options for clerics (possibly other classes? who knows?) sounds interesting.

Cheers

 

[Szatany]

Still don't know whether Gnomes make the cut as PC races, but sounds like they are in the MM?!?

Why does that surprise you? It's a pretty standard procedure to put popular and possibly playable creatures in MM, even if they don't make it to PHB.

 

[amethal]

Eberron isn't losing a dragonmark, so that means gnomes in the MM even if they don't make it into the PHB.

Can't expect Gnome players to wait until the Eberron Setting comes out in 2009 for an update to their characters.

(Of course, if WotC designers were politicians we could argue that the Gnomes' dragonmark might be given to some other race instead, but I think that'd be far too cynical an interpretation)

Gnomes rock

I hope that wasn't intended as a pun!

 

[Jer]

The idea of additional non-violent options for clerics (possibly other classes? who knows?) sounds interesting.

Makes me wonder what they mean by "non-violent". Given the way they've been talking about other aspects of the game, my assumption would be "things a cleric can do that help a party out in combat that don't involve smacking enemies around". But I wouldn't call that "non-violent" myself. I'd like to believe that it means "abilities most useful in non-combat encounter situations", but I'm not sure how that works with the whole "everyone fills a combat role" design philosophy.

Maybe clerics get the ability to expound on the benefits of pacifism and can attempt to get both sides of a battle to see the ultimate futility of armed conflict, lay down arms and use pointed debate instead of pointy swords to settle their problems?

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Still don't know whether Gnomes make the cut as PC races, but sounds like they are in the MM?!?

Some of the races being lamented here will be in the 4e MM1. As far as I know at this point, that means they'll be playable—they might not get as much fluff and special treatment as a PH race out of the gate, but they'll be playable.

My hope is that the MMI will have a truncated "gnomes as PCs" write-up as a stop-gap measure and we get a full write-up in PHII, just in time for Eberron 4e.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Makes me wonder what they mean by "non-violent". Given the way they've been talking about other aspects of the game, my assumption would be "things a cleric can do that help a party out in combat that don't involve smacking enemies around".

Star Wars SAGA has some skill uses that can drive opponents down their condition track (representing sapping their will to fight in one way or another). Maybe it is something analogous to that?

I've not got many good ideas for what they might mean at the moment though!

Cheers