Psion class (Mearls, Happy Fun Hour)

[gyor]

I don't know that I would put too much faith in Dark Sun coming based on MM's twitter. After all, he has also tweeted a lot about PoL/Nerath Valle, and the closest that came to coming to fruition is that the drow arachnomancer in MToF is based on his NV Lolth-patron warlock (which makes it at least the third NPC warlock with a pact that isn't officially available for PC's [also the fathomer in PotA and the princess in ToA]).

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Mwaxanaré

 

[MechaTarrasque]

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Mwaxanaré

Thanks. My odds of spelling her name without the book in front me were nonexistent.

Mwaxanare is a low level elemental pact warlock and, based on the spells used, the fathomer is also a warlock. The fathomer and the arachnomancer (and Lolth-pact warlocks) have very specific shape changer abilities (the fathomer into a serpent made of water and the arachnomancer/Lolthloc into a giant spider), which are my main interests as this opens up a lot of interesting options, but may be why we haven't gotten them as PC classes (step on druids' toes too much, and celestial/fiend/fey kind of step on paladins' keystone abilities). Maybe they are moving some the playtest sorcerer idea to the warlock.....


It occurs to me that elemental bladelocks (assuming they have these shape changer abilities) would be good proxies for the pre-4e types of celestial eladrin (and if there was a variant celestial warlock patron that let you turn into a ball of energy, that covers most of the rest). If there was a variant fey patron that gave you the ability to turn into a sprite, it wouldn't exactly be a coure, but it would be close enough for me.

 

[Jester David]

I'm surprised how little he knows of the spells in the PHB. I also was not a fan of his design ideas as they unfolded for the nomad.

Keep in mind he has the spells in the book in his mind, the spells cut from the book, and two or three prior iterations. When he thinks of a spell, he might be unsure what version he’s thinking of.

Plus, not everyone has an encyclopedic memory for rules. Good design skills require a good imagination, not a good memory.

 

[Jester David]

Do you guys think we'll get the finished UA before the end of the year?

I'm hopeful we at least get the psion ua to test/play around with, I wouldn't be surprised if Dark Sun got released next year, since mearls has mentioned working of it on twitter. Apparently we are getting a setting release this year as well supposed to be announced in July.

The giant soul sorcerer was released as a UA in June, and written at the end of February and start of March. So it could be as soon as four months after the subclassses are finished.
But given the number of options required (i.e. new spells) it will likely be longer still.

 

[Yaarel]

Keep in mind he has the spells in the book in his mind, the spells cut from the book, and two or three prior iterations. When he thinks of a spell, he might be unsure what version he’s thinking of.

Plus, not everyone has an encyclopedic memory for rules. Good design skills require a good imagination, not a good memory.

Also, people who are talented in many different areas often need some moments to switch their modes of cognition, from one category of information to refresh the new category of information.



Good design skills require someone who is good at navigating information, as opposed to reciting information.

 

[Jester David]

Also, people who are talented in many different areas often need some moments to switch their modes of cognition, from one category of information to refresh the new category of information.



Good design skills require someone who is good at navigating information, as opposed to reciting information.

As someone who writes a lot of homebrew content, every time I make a horrible option that does not work, it’s because I assumed I remembered how the rules worked and did not check.

 

[jgsugden]

Putting aside my great appreciation for all the hard work that has been put into 5E: His design job requires him to know the existing mechanics and options in order to design new elements that do not interact inappropriately with existing materials. Whether it is hard or not - and why it might be hard or not - is a bit irrelevant. It surprised me that he was unaware of the contents of several key spells.

 

[SuperTD]

Putting aside my great appreciation for all the hard work that has been put into 5E: His design job requires him to know the existing mechanics and options in order to design new elements that do not interact inappropriately with existing materials. Whether it is hard or not - and why it might be hard or not - is a bit irrelevant. It surprised me that he was unaware of the contents of several key spells.

As I understand the dynamic on the design team, that's what Jeremy Crawford is for. In the Dragon+ streams Jeremy is on, as well as on MMHFH, they both talk about how Mike tends to concept ideas then passes them to Jeremy to look at how they will interact and refine them so they actually work.

Also, he doesn't need to have them all in his head - that's what the books are for. He's often looking spells up on his stream for that very reason.

 

[jgsugden]

As I understand the dynamic on the design team, that's what Jeremy Crawford is for. In the Dragon+ streams Jeremy is on, as well as on MMHFH, they both talk about how Mike tends to concept ideas then passes them to Jeremy to look at how they will interact and refine them so they actually work.

No offense to you or him, but that does not work. You need to understand your framework to build something that interacts with it.

Also, he doesn't need to have them all in his head - that's what the books are for. He's often looking spells up on his stream for that very reason.

To paraphrase an idiot that made one good point: There is the stuff you know you know, the stuff you know you don't know, the stuff you don't know you know, and the stuff you don't know you don't know.

The last part is the rub here. If you don't know something exists, you don't know to look it up to account for it. This is the problem with game design in general: The larger the game grows, the more you need to consider. This plagues M:tG and is the reason they really only balance for the most recent expansions - although they consider the older stuff as much as they can.

Clearly, they have something in place that works as I have been pleased with recent releases, but this is enough to make me wonder if the quality is there in spite of something.

 

[SuperTD]

No offense to you or him, but that does not work. You need to understand your framework to build something that interacts with it.

Fair enough. However I'd also argue that it's hardly fair to judge his design process on a stream where he's constantly interacting with a chat filled with hundreds of people yelling different suggestions. Part of your focus is bound to be shifted from thinking about how a new feature interacts with existing ones over to explaining your thoughts as they come and, sometimes, getting carried away with a cool idea that might not actually work because a lot of the audience will yell approval for ANYTHING that sounds vaguely cool. (The "Disaster Barbarian" springs to mind, though perhaps I'm the odd one out in thinking that was a terrible concept.)