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PHB2 vs. Arcana Evolved
- Thread starter Ulric
- Start date
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
I do largely disagree with Psion about the PHBII classes being weak sauce. Though most new classes aren't stellar, the PHBII classes go a long way toward filling some archetypes that aren't extremely well-supported by the core rules. AE, instead, re-creates some archetypes...so it already has things that are fitting in the slot, and then it tries to cram more in the same slot.
My own gut reaction to the classes:
Akashic: "Delving Into Racial History" sounds kind of cool, but the mechanics aren't tied to the flavor, which I think is kind of tragic. Mechanics say "skill monkey," flavor says "semi-magical beings in touch with an unseen world of all experiences," I say ???
Beguiler: A charm/illusionist specialist without the baggage of the bard? Perfect! They're a great trixster archetype; making a favored class for gnomes pretty easy.
Champion: Hoorah! Variant Paladins! Nice, but kind of unnessecary, I've got no problems with normal paladins.
Knight: A "tanking" class if there ever was one, this fits a defensive warrior archetype quite well, in a way that acknowledges that successful defending involves more than just having a high AC.
Dragon Shaman: A nice little support class, and a good way to represent a "tribal shaman" that doesn't need the spirit/OA baggage, or the cleric baggage. It comes with different baggage (the dragons), but at least the existence of dragons is largely assumed to be a universal within D&D. It does some new stuff with auras and breath weapons, too.
Duskblade: Well....it's the elf-class. Fighter/Mage hybrid that doesn't have to overly sacrifice either...it's something that 3e has been waiting for since 2e, really. It's enough of an archetype that a prestige class shouldn't be nessecary, a base class works well.
Greenbond: Take a druid, add some hippie "living planet" stuff, and you've got the greenbond (kind of fills the healer role with druidic motifs). You could also go play a druid or a nature-cleric, though I think the greenbond fills a nice role without either class's baggage. Still, it doesn't do anything new, really.
Mageblade: The whole "weapon as the focus of your magic" thing seems a bit too...narrow....to be a base class in my mind. It's cool, but it doesn't give the class the archetypal status I think a good class really needs. The Duskblade avoids this by tying it to the elves, the mageblade stumbles here because its not tied down: "I'm a mage with a sword" doesn't hit me as a totally seperate class.
Magister: Meh. Variant wizard. We've got a wizard. Heck, we've got two in the core (wizard and sorcerer). Magister has some new mechanics, but in the end, he's a wizard with the serial numbers filed off.
Oathsworn: It's an interesting direction to take a monk, admittedly, and fills it with AE-specific flavor, but in the end, it's a variant monk.
Ritual Warrior: Generally beloved. It's a cool concept and a nice archetype. Unfortunately, it's still something RPGs have yet to get truly elegant about handling mechanically...not monte's fault he was one of the first, though.
Runethane: Again, an idea that I think is a bit too narrow to be its own class, with mechanics that are as wonky as any other rune mechanics out there. Runes are a cool idea, but they probably shouldn't be their own seperate bag of magic, andI don't think it justifies the space it takes up, since its not much of a sperate concept.
Totem Warrior: Pretty cool. Animals and martial arts have been together for long enough, and this melds them well within the d20 system. Though, ideally, this would have been a mechanic anyone can take advantage of, it works okay as a base class.
Unfettered: It's something that many have tried, and no one has gotten right yet, Monte included. Sneak Attack = Unsatisfying.
Warmain: Pretty sweet, actually. It's good that there's a fighter focused on WAILING ON STUFF, since that's enough of a sperate archetype to warrant a new class. And this handles it pretty nicely.
Witch: Can I say, for the record, how much I utterly loathe the fact that AE co-opted this word and then did *nothing* for the hag-style archetype? Instead you get something like crazy specialist-mages without a whole lot of justification. Mechanically, it's pretty cool, but there's little concept behind the mechanics, and none of it jives with what "witch" should be (in my mind) in a fantasy game.
My own gut reaction to the classes:
Akashic: "Delving Into Racial History" sounds kind of cool, but the mechanics aren't tied to the flavor, which I think is kind of tragic. Mechanics say "skill monkey," flavor says "semi-magical beings in touch with an unseen world of all experiences," I say ???
Beguiler: A charm/illusionist specialist without the baggage of the bard? Perfect! They're a great trixster archetype; making a favored class for gnomes pretty easy.
Champion: Hoorah! Variant Paladins! Nice, but kind of unnessecary, I've got no problems with normal paladins.
Knight: A "tanking" class if there ever was one, this fits a defensive warrior archetype quite well, in a way that acknowledges that successful defending involves more than just having a high AC.
Dragon Shaman: A nice little support class, and a good way to represent a "tribal shaman" that doesn't need the spirit/OA baggage, or the cleric baggage. It comes with different baggage (the dragons), but at least the existence of dragons is largely assumed to be a universal within D&D. It does some new stuff with auras and breath weapons, too.
Duskblade: Well....it's the elf-class. Fighter/Mage hybrid that doesn't have to overly sacrifice either...it's something that 3e has been waiting for since 2e, really. It's enough of an archetype that a prestige class shouldn't be nessecary, a base class works well.
Greenbond: Take a druid, add some hippie "living planet" stuff, and you've got the greenbond (kind of fills the healer role with druidic motifs). You could also go play a druid or a nature-cleric, though I think the greenbond fills a nice role without either class's baggage. Still, it doesn't do anything new, really.
Mageblade: The whole "weapon as the focus of your magic" thing seems a bit too...narrow....to be a base class in my mind. It's cool, but it doesn't give the class the archetypal status I think a good class really needs. The Duskblade avoids this by tying it to the elves, the mageblade stumbles here because its not tied down: "I'm a mage with a sword" doesn't hit me as a totally seperate class.
Magister: Meh. Variant wizard. We've got a wizard. Heck, we've got two in the core (wizard and sorcerer). Magister has some new mechanics, but in the end, he's a wizard with the serial numbers filed off.
Oathsworn: It's an interesting direction to take a monk, admittedly, and fills it with AE-specific flavor, but in the end, it's a variant monk.
Ritual Warrior: Generally beloved. It's a cool concept and a nice archetype. Unfortunately, it's still something RPGs have yet to get truly elegant about handling mechanically...not monte's fault he was one of the first, though.
Runethane: Again, an idea that I think is a bit too narrow to be its own class, with mechanics that are as wonky as any other rune mechanics out there. Runes are a cool idea, but they probably shouldn't be their own seperate bag of magic, andI don't think it justifies the space it takes up, since its not much of a sperate concept.
Totem Warrior: Pretty cool. Animals and martial arts have been together for long enough, and this melds them well within the d20 system. Though, ideally, this would have been a mechanic anyone can take advantage of, it works okay as a base class.
Unfettered: It's something that many have tried, and no one has gotten right yet, Monte included. Sneak Attack = Unsatisfying.
Warmain: Pretty sweet, actually. It's good that there's a fighter focused on WAILING ON STUFF, since that's enough of a sperate archetype to warrant a new class. And this handles it pretty nicely.
Witch: Can I say, for the record, how much I utterly loathe the fact that AE co-opted this word and then did *nothing* for the hag-style archetype? Instead you get something like crazy specialist-mages without a whole lot of justification. Mechanically, it's pretty cool, but there's little concept behind the mechanics, and none of it jives with what "witch" should be (in my mind) in a fantasy game.
Hjorimir
Adventurer
For base classes, I would agree that the PHB II is only so-so. Where it shines is with the feats (which really help the high level warriors) and the expanded classes. I love the PHB II and we use it frequently in our D&D games.
AE/AU never took off with us. Unto itself, it looks like a wonderful product. But if you want to use the stacks and stacks of the WotC books, it is going to create some work to bridge the gap if you plan on converting everything.
In the end, it didn't seem to justify inclusion into an existing D&D game. If you were starting from scracth, however, I'd give it a good look (and just ignore your other books).
AE/AU never took off with us. Unto itself, it looks like a wonderful product. But if you want to use the stacks and stacks of the WotC books, it is going to create some work to bridge the gap if you plan on converting everything.
In the end, it didn't seem to justify inclusion into an existing D&D game. If you were starting from scracth, however, I'd give it a good look (and just ignore your other books).
Varianor Abroad
Explorer
Greenbond does one thing really well. It lets you play a healer without spending all your spell slots on healing. So it appeals to the player who likes a cleric with a bit more to do.
Ritual Warrior? Very easy to use and ridiculously flexible. Great class.
Don't have PHII, so no comment there.
Ritual Warrior? Very easy to use and ridiculously flexible. Great class.
Don't have PHII, so no comment there.
Nightfall
Sage of the Scarred Lands
Pants,
Yeah well unless you can find another way for a "swashbuckler" to do more damage than a pure fighter, I think sneak attack is about the best way to go.
KM,
See the blade wasn't the thing for me for Mageblade. It was the fact he had access to all levels of spells (well not all but more than Duskblade) that made it stand apart for me. Tying it to a race doesn't need to be a reason for a class to exist, in my mind. Blade and magic is what the Mageblade is about, I feel. Duskblade is a little weaker in that respect. I mean if they had up to 9th level spells, even just a short list of spells, would have been better for it.
Yeah well unless you can find another way for a "swashbuckler" to do more damage than a pure fighter, I think sneak attack is about the best way to go.
KM,
See the blade wasn't the thing for me for Mageblade. It was the fact he had access to all levels of spells (well not all but more than Duskblade) that made it stand apart for me. Tying it to a race doesn't need to be a reason for a class to exist, in my mind. Blade and magic is what the Mageblade is about, I feel. Duskblade is a little weaker in that respect. I mean if they had up to 9th level spells, even just a short list of spells, would have been better for it.
Acid_crash
First Post
For those who think that the AE classes are too specific in some ways to be core classes, why would somebody write an Alternate Player's Handbook but keep the same classes as in the core d20 fantasy game???
Each class in AE fills a niche, IMHO, that the main game doesn't fill as well. But each class is also tied to the AE world, and I think trying to mesh AE with core D&D is more of a headache than its worth.
The Champion is a much better take on the Paladin than the Paladin could hope to achieve. Plus, it's not just a Champion of Good, but I can be a Champion of Death. Can't do that in D&D without some major overhaul to the rules.
I can play a warrior mage right out the box without multiclassing.
I have a wizard class that actually feels like a wizard to me.
I have stopped comparing the Oathsworn to the Monk, although this is one comparison where I do think the Monk is better than the Oathsworn.
I have a runecaster who gains runic abilities.
I do agree that the Witch name doesn't really mesh with the usual sense of what a witch is, and in my mind it's more like a Elementalist mage...so that name doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but the class rocks.
Each class in AE fills a niche, IMHO, that the main game doesn't fill as well. But each class is also tied to the AE world, and I think trying to mesh AE with core D&D is more of a headache than its worth.
The Champion is a much better take on the Paladin than the Paladin could hope to achieve. Plus, it's not just a Champion of Good, but I can be a Champion of Death. Can't do that in D&D without some major overhaul to the rules.
I can play a warrior mage right out the box without multiclassing.
I have a wizard class that actually feels like a wizard to me.
I have stopped comparing the Oathsworn to the Monk, although this is one comparison where I do think the Monk is better than the Oathsworn.
I have a runecaster who gains runic abilities.
I do agree that the Witch name doesn't really mesh with the usual sense of what a witch is, and in my mind it's more like a Elementalist mage...so that name doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but the class rocks.
Psion
Adventurer
Pants
First Post
I don't think it is, because sneak attack is very dependent on setting up flanking and or catching someone off guard. Besides it doesn't fit the archetype much at all.Nightfall said:
For an actual swashbuckler, I maintain that using either a highly modified scout (skirmish == mobile fighter == swashbuckler more than sneak attack). Give the scout some Int bonus to damage ability, drop some of its Wilderness abilities, give it a bonus to AC, better BAB, and swap its skills around.
