Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="andy3k" data-source="post: 5547824" data-attributes="member: 6674918">mneme, I agree that the shaman COULD be heavily altered to become a defender, but that breaks the generic D&D 4e rule of consistency. The Shaman class is labeled as a "leader" so any subclasses should also be a "leader" supported by purpose, power functionality, HP, defenses, etc. No where else in the RAW do you find a class of one role with a subclass that is a different role. Also, subclasses can utilize that RAW powers of the base class and we simply can't do that with strikers or leaders and still call it a defender.For example, why is the runepriest not just a cleric subclass? Because the designers probably decided that it would be overpowered for a cleric to access the entire range of cleric powers AND runepriest powers. There were probably combos that were downright nasty.The way the spirit works is not defender-like. A spirit that is hit disappears and that is not sticky and/or punishing. I don't want my punching bag to disappear when the first bad guy in line disappears him so that all other foes can attack with impunity that round. Also keep in mind that the ability for the spirit to fly/hover is very unbalancing when it becomes more offensive. You'd have to totally revamp the spirit.The ranger pet is more permanent and requires less revamping ... but the ranger is a striker and changing his damage, ability to mark, etc. would change his role and we go back to the consistency issue. Not only that but you'd still have to rewrite a great number of ranger powers to take away the striker aspect and create the defender aspect. If we're going to do all that work, we might as well create a new class with a new mechanic that makes our defender with a pet truly different and interesting to play.I'm not saying we can't steal pieces from this class and that class, which would save some time for sure, but we shouldn't try to paint a cat black and white, cover him in sewage, and call him a skunk. If a subclass is barely recognizable as its base class, I don't think it can rightly be a subclass.</blockquote>

Verification