I like the concept of an athame. A weapon that grows with your character (like in Weapons of Legacy) and that you develop an inner bond with and can summon at will? I think that's a rather strong concept for a class, even if a bit narrow.
And I think elven-trained battle-mage hero is a bit broader and more satisfying, personally. Which is part of why, if you want good classes, I'd recommend the PHBII over AE.
I think it's here where our opinions fundamentally differ. The charm of the Champion class is that you can take nearly all fundamental ideas that evoke strong emotions and adapt the class to it. You don't need a special class for every tiny variation.
My first view is that evoking strong emotions is not nessecarily enough to center a class around. Any character can have strong emotions where they're dedicated -- any cleric can be the defender of a land, any dwarf can be the champion of his kingdom, any bard can be a champion of song itself...simply having a great passion for something is more of a character choice for me, not a hook I'd hinge an entire class on. The Champion of the Orcs is obviously a barbarian, maybe one who has taken spear-fighting feats and put an eye out, perhaps using a PrC, perhaps just using some focused feats. The Champion of Good may be a cleric who focuses on healing and protection, and the occasional smite of evil. The Champion of Magic is probably a wizard, maybe even a Mystic Theurge, who resembles nothing of the Champion of Something Else.
My second view is that if a nation, a people, or a concept is strong enough to have some sort of archetypal icon, those icons should be dramatically different depending on what the concept is. The cultural hero of the kobolds and the cultural hero of the dwarves should be different in more than a few abilities...they should have fundamentally diverging skill sets, something like the racial paragon classes (kobolds gaining huge skill points, skill with traps, crazy speed and Dex-based abilities, dwarves becoming tougher and tougher, becoming unstoppable tanks of destructive force...different skill points, different BABs, different HDs, different *classes*).
This is done in my own games by having kobolds take levels of Rogue, and having dwarves take levels of Fighter (and maybe Barbarian or Dwarven Defender). Viola! Champions that reflect their race's peculiarities!
It's my own view that Paladins of Slaughter shouldn't have abilities that reflect Paladins of Justice....they should be entirely different, structurally (perhaps barbarians instead of Paladins). They should have their own distinctness, seperate from other champions.
It's a completely different mechanic. There are definitely other valid concepts of rune mages (if you want to combine the concepts of "rune" and "mage" at all), but this specific concept doesn't really fit in a mage's repertoire. Actually, a runethane is much more similar to other classes than to mages. Incidentally, the word "thane" means "servant", which is vague enough.
I know it's a different mechanic. That's a *problem,* for me. Runes don't need much of a seperate mechanic in my view.
I find the concept of a "Winter Witch" or a "Mind Witch" strong enough to evoke a fitting picture. And what is so intriguing about a "Duskblade" that doesn't have anything to do with "dusk", or a "Knight" that has some silly core mechanic that doesn't remind much of an archetypical knight?
The line between day and night (dusk) is like the line between combat and magic -- a transition from one to the other, a place between the two, where they become each other. It is a period of liminality, a period that the elves (and the duskblade) live in at all times, between this world and the next, between the light of day and the cold of night.
Archetypal knights are defenders and protectors, and the enemies listen to what they have to say. The core mechanic for the class enforces that by forcing enemies to preferentially attack the knight, and to respond to their challenges. By attracting the ire of opponents, the knight defends the weaker and more vulnerable members of the party, something very knightly to do.
A "winter witch" in my mind is some crone who lives in a snow-ridden forest, taking the form of maidens and animals and luring young warriors to their untimely, frost-bitten demise. You could be a druid and accomplish that (though not in the best way, admittedly...not that making swords of ice makes a whole lot more sense...). A "Mind Witch" makes no sense in my head.
I mean, much of what I'm saying is entirely my own judgement call, I'm just providing it as a counterpoint to the arguments that say the AE classes are better. I disagree, because the PHBII classes have stronger justification for existing, possessing more in the way of archetypal significance. It's not that the AE classes are bad, they just generally fall into one of two categories: re-treads of concepts the PHB already did perfectly fine for me, or needless new mechanics that were given base classes without much context other than "here's some neat new stuff you can do!"
Psion said:
No, it's not. In the SRD. Just because d20srd.org has deigned to put UA content on their website doesn't mean it's in the SRD.
Well, they ain't the only ones, but you're basically right...I semantically misspoke.
Myself, I find creating a new class for every different concept a dubious practice, and the more classes that can be made to realize multiple concepts by flexible design, the better.
As far as I'm concerned, WotC gave us that when they gave us the Generic Classes in UA. But, as usual, I prefer it when they do the work of giving me a good mechanic instead of making me do it myself....classes included. My imagination is broad enough to accept hundreds of possible different classes, and my DMing is, too. I see no reason to artificially limit it. I'd rather, for instance, see an "Elementalist" base class that takes full advantage of the concept of channeling an elemental energy, than have the system give me a "spellcaster" class and have me kludge together my own elementalist out of disparate components that don't nessecarily work well together.
I'd rather have a knight than have them say "with a little work, you can turn the fighter into a knight!" because I don't buy their books so that they can tell me to do my own work.
I'm always free to *not* use the classes, so I definately prefer to have the options than to have some vague possibility. I'd even use the greenbond or the champion or the mageblade if a player felt that those classes best reflected the concept and abilities they're looking for. But I would ask them "why not be a druid and use these regeneration spells?" and "why not just use this feat for something that fits better?" and "why doesn't the duskblade work for you?"
