Races & Classes details from the WotC boards

[Howndawg]

@grimslade: Thank you!

I'll have to set aside a few minutes today to pout about my beloved Orcs being displaced by these newfangled dragon-thingies.

It looks like both of the new races are on the cover of the PHB: Tiefling Fighter and Dragonborn Wizard perhaps.

Get sucked away from the boards by Mass Effect for a week and look what happens. Dragonborn Wizard? Howndawg nailed it first, thank you very much. Okay, I thought it was a half-dragon. But that's still pretty damn close.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Yes, I am. But I've also never seen it spawn "WotC is pushing their setting on my game".

Barbarians are setting-independent. They're crazy guys that hit things. That's hardly genre-specific. The problem is that they were saddled with some unfortunate baggage. The notion that you need to have an uncivilized culture somewhere on your map in order to spawn barbarians was not well-received. But it wasn't a particular culture, just a generic "barbarians are here" sign.

You never heard "WotC is pushing their setting on my game," but you did hear "Barbarians? More like berzerkers, and why do they have to be illiterate, anyway?"

At least they no longer had to eschew magic and magic-users.

 

[Cadfan]

I always thought that druid magic had a delicious flavor all its own. And do players really choose druid for the wildshape? It's a cool ability, but honestly I wouldn't miss it. It's just as cool to see the druid summon a giant eagle and ride it over the chasm, or summon the wolves to defend her home.

Yes.

There are basically three ways to go with a druid.

1) Shapeshifter. Ideally this would be a character who mostly attacks in melee, meaning they should probably look a bit like the shapeshifting druid variant from the PHBII so that their ability scores remain relevant while they're shifted, since that's the time their ability scores are most important.
2) Natural spellcaster. This is the old guy with a staff who calls down lightning and storms on his foes. Ideally he'd look a bit like a wizard.
3) Natural cleric style spellcaster. This is the younger guy (or girl) with the sickle, the armor, the shield, and some animal allies. This person casts support spells on their allies and their animals, then chops you up with a farming implement.

Each one of these is basically a different style of play, and should probably be separated out by class. Each one's method of attacking is different. Each one has different armor expectations. Each one has different abilities they'd want to choose to support their primary means of engaging the enemy.

It seems awkward to split the druid up into three pieces, because historically it has been one. But mechanically, this seems like the best choice. In 4e speak, you've got a Defender, a Controller, and a Leader up there, and they're all going to want different powers, with very little overlap.

This is why I'm hoping for a Book of the Wild or something.

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

I don't think barbarian rage is enough to build a class around. It could easily be a (small) talent tree available to fighters or rangers.

I disagree... you just need to do interesting things with it.

 

[fuindordm]

Yes.

2) Natural spellcaster. This is the old guy with a staff who calls down lightning and storms on his foes. Ideally he'd look a bit like a wizard.

Except that he could cast some healing spells, summon animals to do his bidding, change the weather, and alter the terrain over wide areas--none of which are usually done by wizards. I'm not saying they *can't*, but most wizards do go the flash-bang route and ignore these areas.

I come from the perspective that a distinctive spell list makes for a distinctive class. I'm quite happy that they appear to be making room for psionics by limiting the mental magic available to wizards. D&D has so many spells, there is easily enough room for the druid.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Barbarians are setting-independent. They're crazy guys that hit things. That's hardly genre-specific. The problem is that they were saddled with some unfortunate baggage. The notion that you need to have an uncivilized culture somewhere on your map in order to spawn barbarians was not well-received. But it wasn't a particular culture, just a generic "barbarians are here" sign.

I've always had the idea for Urban Barbarians, tough street kids who grew up in ghettos and learned to rage through street fighting and gang warfare.

 

[Bishmon]

I don't. A melee combatant who turns into animals and mauls people, and a spellcaster who summons other creatures and elements to fight for him, are different enough mechanically that they need separate classes to do them justice.

Ok. That would fine, I suppose.

Unfortunately, I'm thinking the odds of a spellcasting druid being its own class, with a well-designed and mostly unique spell list, are pretty low. I don't think 3E druids' spells got the proper attention, and if they're talking about taking the druid in 4E and trimming down his spellcasting to focus on wildshaping, I'm thinking it's looking like druidic spellcasting will be taking even more of a backseat, which would be a shame.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Except that he could cast some healing spells, summon animals to do his bidding, change the weather, and alter the terrain over wide areas--none of which are usually done by wizards. I'm not saying they *can't*, but most wizards do go the flash-bang route and ignore these areas.

These are the things the wizard can't do in 3E D&D. In the much wider scope of myth, folktale, and fantasy, those things are pretty much the sole domain of wizards.

Even shapechanging into animals is a common power given to wizards. Merlin from Disney's The Sword in the Stone and the wizards from the classic folktale The School of Salamanca are good examples.

As a whole, the 3E Druid is pretty much a class caught right in the middle of being the wise old hermit (the classic wizard), and the religious leader of the community (the classic cleric). Pretty much everything the Druid is can be replicated with just some flavor elements and the Wizard or Cleric classes.

 

[Bishmon]

I really like the look of the 4e druid because it focuses more on what is unique to the class - wildshape - rather than the spellcasting which currently has a lot of overlap with wizards and clerics.

Why not make a druid's spellcasting more unique then?

-They could be the only spellcasters that can magically affect animals in any way, whether charming, communicating, summoning, etc.

-They could also be the sole users of spells that deal with weather like controlling weather, summoning violent storms, manipulating the winds, etc. The wizard could create a highly damaging cone of cold, but the druid is the one that could summon a violent snowstorm in a medium-sized area that would slightly hurt enemies, slow their movement, and obscure their vision.

-The druid could also be the only class with access to spells regarding fey and the Feywild. It seems like a natural fit.

-Spells involving trees and plants could be expanded on. Entangle is a nice unique spell early on for a druid, but maybe later on he gets access to greater versions that cover a larger area, affect more creatures, cause damage due to strangulation, or inflict poison effects from poisonous barbs. If there's a half-dozen different wizard spells dealing with an invisible hand, there certainly can be a half-dozen druid spells that involve effective use of plants to entangle enemies.

-And then there's a ton of unexplored area regarding nature spirits and the effects a druid could cause using them. They could be used as various unique buffs/debuffs for friends/enemies.

Combine all of this together, and a spellcasting druid has incredible potential to be an awesome controller, and the class would be very iconic, very flavorful, and it would clearly have its own niche without really taking anything important from anyone else's niche.

 

[Abstraction]

Sounds like you'll then have the problem that the Druid had in 2E, namely that he had nothing he could contribute while in the dungeon.