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[slobster]

Let me be more clear. Player wants the ability to manifest the strength, scales and other things provided by Dragon heritage, but does not want the armor, weapons, or +1 bonus. They simply want the standard sorcerer's armor, weapons, and attack bonus. If armor, weapons and the +1 bonus are supposed to be balancing factors (in addition to reinforcing the gish concept), the player and I as a DM for the player want an option that replaces the additional armor, weapons and +1 while reinforcing this particular draconic heritage sorcerer is not a gish.
Given what I have described, if the arcane heritage (crunch) is anything like Pathfinder;s, the crunch will not provide the dragon heritage manifestations (strength, scales, etc) so that crunch supplied by Arcane would be wrong.

If you want to pick and choose pieces of established options while ignoring the rest, then of course you're going to have some extra work to do. But that isn't a problem with this version of the draconic sorcerer, specifically. Anything that they publish is going to cover a small subset of the total available options that could exist. If you want a slightly different option in your game, houserule it in. In this case you could replace the proficiencies and attack bonus with a boost to hp and resistance d8 to fire (for example).

If you find houseruling to be a great burden, well that's why they write the rulebooks in the first place. Make do with what they've written. Do what @Vyvyan Bastard said about refluffing to find the heritage that best fits your mental image of the draconic sorcerer. Or use the draconic heritage as-written but make the choice as a player not to use weapons in melee combat much, because it doesn't fit your character.

 

[Greg K]

I
If you find houseruling to be a great burden, well that's why they write the rulebooks in the first place. Make do with what they've written. Do what @Vyvyan Bastard said about refluffing to find the heritage that best fits your mental image of the draconic sorcerer. Or use the draconic heritage as-written but make the choice as a player not to use weapons in melee combat much, because it doesn't fit your character.

That I can house rule does not change that the issue exists. And, your last suggestion is a kludge that existed in 1e and 2e that many, including myself, found unacceptable.

If the designers were, actually, on the ball, they could have taken a clue from 3e and the Unearthed Arcana battle sorcerer. The battle sorcerer was a variant that exchanged certain standard abilities to be more martial.

With heritages, the designers could have built the draconic heritage balanced as a non gish and, then provided a "battle sorcerer" gish option that exchanged/ modified some standard draconic heritage features for the more martial features we have . This would have allowed for both a martial and non option. It would have also a) been much more friendly to new players, new DMs, inexperienced DMs and those that don't feel comfortable altering these things themselves (one complaint from many DMs in 3e was that, while the PHB discussed class customization, it did not provide enough examples for them to feel comfortable modifying the classes-especially, spellcasters and maintaining balance) b) been one example from the designers of how to modify classes and their features in a balanced way.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Let me be more clear. Player wants the ability to manifest the strength, scales and other things provided by Dragon heritage, but does not want the armor, weapons, or +1 bonus. They simply want the standard sorcerer's armor, weapons, and attack bonus. If armor, weapons and the +1 bonus are supposed to be balancing factors (in addition to reinforcing the gish concept), the player and I as a DM for the player want an option that replaces the additional armor, weapons and +1 while reinforcing this particular draconic heritage sorcerer is not a gish, because the character's background does not involve them going off in pursuit of martial training.

It strikes me that, while Dragon Heritage sorcs could get all these things by default, introducing a module that lets you swap around weapon and armor proficiencies should be one of the most basic modules in Next, even aside from various pre-packaged class abilities. Swapping around weapon and armor profs for things (like other "starting feat packages" or something) should be pretty basic.

I, personally, don't think these things should be locked in, and given 5e's modular nature, it's reasonable to believe they won't be, but if they are, it's not a great choice, specifically because of the reasons you mention. If I can't build a dragon sorc who doesn't use weapons and armor, that's a legit failure of modularity.

 

[slobster]

With heritages, the designers could have built the draconic heritage balanced as a non gish and, then provided a "battle sorcerer" gish option that exchanged/ modified some standard draconic heritage features for the more martial features we have . This would have allowed for both a martial and non option. It would have also a) been much more friendly to new players, new DMs, inexperienced DMs and those that don't feel comfortable altering these things themselves (one complaint from many DMs in 3e was that, while the PHB discussed class customization, it did not provide enough examples for them to feel comfortable modifying the classes-especially, spellcasters and maintaining balance) b) been one example from the designers of how to modify classes and their features in a balanced way.

That is a lot to ask from a playtest.

If it becomes something that a lot of people are asking for, then I predict that they will eventually publish a few more options in a future supplement for people who want more draconic sorcerer goodness. Why not? If a bunch of people are demanding it, that means a bunch of people will buy it, and that means more money for WotC.

But there simply isn't page space in a core rulebook to have the kind of substitution options you want for every single class feature and ability in the PHB. That means some options that could conceivably be offered will be left on the cutting room floor, maybe to be revisited at a later date if they judge there is enough interest.

But the question I am asking you is whether (assuming that a few more heritages are released) there is enough material there to make do. You have very specific desires from your draconic sorcerer, but knowing that others have equally specific but conflicting desires, one of you is going to be disappointed. So knowing that one of you is going to be disappointed, could you make do with what they are giving you?

With trivial refluffs and even a houserule or two if you are feeling ambitious, I think the answer is yes.

 

[Li Shenron]

Second, A player may want to play a non martial draconic heritage sorcerer without the armor and weapons, because the basic concept of the sorcerer being simply innate magic caster without martial training appeals to them as does the manifestations of the draconic heritage. Rather than supporting this option as well, the designers have, at this point, essentially, said, "No, you play they gish we have built the heritage around. If you don't and ignore the gish features we have used to balance this heritage, tough luck you get nothing to compensate"

There is no neat solution to the problem, because if the designers go the route of a set of predermined packages (i.e. heritages), there are always players who like part of the package but not all of it, while if the designers give you a toolset to create your own packages there is always more room for exploits and then you'll hear people complain that we're given too much freedom...

I wouldn't be too pessimistic however. At the moment the Sorcerer heritage we have seen modifies the following:

- hit points and HD
- armor proficiencies
- weapon proficiencies
- melee attacks damage (with transformation)
- resistances (with transformation)

and there is no reason to believe that there cannot also be effects on magic attacks bonus, spells DC, willpower, spells known etc. So there is a lot of room to create a lot of new heritages or variants of existing ones.

Personally the only feature which makes me skeptic is the transformation itself. I'm not sure it is good that every sorcerer "transforms" although obviously the mechanic doesn't necessarily imply a visible transformation but only the insurgence of additional powers. This progressive mechanic is probably going to be present in all heritages.

 

[gyor]

4e was edition that made me like paladins.

I always wanted to like the 3e paladin but never did. It always felt like a fighter with a few random abilities tacked on.

First 4e character? Halfling Paladin

Agreed, I never liked Paladin's before because of the crazy alignment restrictions and weak flavour. The OPaladin, Cavalier, and Blackguard were my favourite divine classes in 4e.

 

[nightwalker450]

I don't suppose anyone put a thought to this (too busy arguing about story)...

But they are effectively writing the rules for pre-adventurer characters. With writing multi-class rules as a separate progression (to avoid front loaded problems with multi-classing), you can instead start characters at level 1 Multiclass characters.

Of course we'll have to see exactly how this pans out, but I could see minimal house ruling (don't gain an additional hit dice until after you become fully level 1) being necessary to use these as peasant characters.

On the negative side (not story)... I don't like the only difference in armor being "that's what you can afford" I'd like my character to wear chain or scale, because it's best for his concept, not because he's too poor for plate (or I'm self-inflicting a handicap). Because IMO what you can afford shouldn't matter past level 3, only what you can find (in regards to magic items), and what you're capable of using. I'd rather see classes get additional armor proficiency as they level, instead of putting cash requirements.

 

[Saagael]

I've only skimmed the last few pages of conversation so pardon me if everyone is past this point, but I find one thing in particular highly amusing:

During the last few years I've heard more complaints than I can count about how classes, and class features/mechanics, were not based on any sort of story or narrative, and were just mechanics thrown into a class to make it work.

The Barbarian wasn't a barbarian, he was just a pile of rages with a big weapon. The Paladin wasn't required to have specific alignments or order. The ranger didn't have enough features to play up his "naturey" affiliations.

Now people are complaining that they need their classes completely fluff-free. 4e approached classes as an end. They are what you do. The player then decides on the means to that end. Now WotC try to offer classes as the means, while the end is the player's final character concept, and people still complain!

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Here's a question: why would a NON-gish sorcerer even want bonuses to melee damage or damage reduction?

The draconic heritage powers are specifically built to complement a gish character while also feeling dragon-y. If you still want those powers, you're probably going to want the extra HP and melee hit bonus so they're usable. If you just don't want to wear heavy armor, then you're basically in the same situation as a leather-clad war cleric of Corellon or a dex-based fighter; just because you have a proficiency doesn't mean you have to use it.

It strikes me that they're doing new players a favor by keeping armor and melee bonuses tied to those draconic spells and effects. I know I'd be pissed if I wanted a pure-caster sorcerer, picked the "draconic" one because dragons are cool, and only noticed after 5 or 6 levels that all of my spells were designed to enhance melee combat while I had 10hp, 12AC, and +2 to hit with my dagger.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

So why should the Ranger class have all these "story elements" like Code of Conduct and Ranger Organizations built in? For my money... it's specifically BECAUSE you can build a "generic ranger" using the Fighter and the right Background and Specialty. There NEEDS to be a differentiation between them. Otherwise, there's no reason for both to exist. And if the Fighter with specific B/S is the "generic" version... then the Ranger should be the one that is not generic. And adding all of these story elements that focus the class into something unique and different from your run-of-the-mill "DEX fighter with a map"... is a good thing.

I'm of two minds on this. In theory, I can see that kind of design working well. In practice, though, more often it has been something like, "Well, we've got this very particular concept of a druid in mind. So we'll have this unique thing they can do. Then we'll put a bunch of mostly arbitrary restrictions on it to enforce that flavor, but make it largely useless for anything else." Granted, there's a fine line in there somewhere, but history doesn't make me sanguine on this question.

If OTOH, the flavor/concept is a spur to develop a great mechanic, but then they pull back from that a bit to see how that mechanic as expressed in that class can cover a wider range or characters, then they might avoid this problem. Obviously, specialties and backgrounds give them some leeway here that they didn't have in a mere class/race system. Maybe that's enough new room to avoid arbitrary restriction trap. I don't know.