D&D 4E Rich Baker on his 4e Warlord

[Kintara]

I think Int is about as important to a Warblade as Dex, but perhaps I like skills more than is normal. But it is worth noting that the Warblade's skill list is considerably better than the Fighter's.

 

[WhatGravitas]

No, precisely the opposite. If it's perfect then I'm wracked with indecision about the pros and cons of both. If it didn't matter either way, then that's boring. Not perfect.

For some reason, I consider that balance. If you have to decide between options, and the cons and pros are similar, then you have balanced options. If you have no-brainer choices (let's say like Natural Spell for druids), then you have something more powerful than the other options.

The same applies to classes: If you have a class, where you have a no-brainer choice which ability to get or use, that suggests that this ability more powerful than the others.

MAD is only BAD, if you have wizards, who HAVE a optimal choice. If you, on the other hand, have classes, that always have to decide... you have more variable classes with more distinctive characters.

This dependence on multiple abilities also helps with new character concepts - for a 3.5E wizard, it is a no-brainer choice to pour everything into Intelligence - if you do something else, you're crippling yourself.

If that dependence on ability scores is spread out, it means that each score is less important, allowing you put points in other abilities, without being self-crippling.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Gloombunny]

Khaalis, you're essentially saying "I need to put points into Int to be an effective warblade, but if I do that I'll end up less effective than if I kept them in Str!" Can you see why that is ridiculous?

Just because the Int-based benefits are there doesn't mean you have to make use of them to be good at the class. I think they're quite specifically designed so that you can ignore them and not miss anything. It's deliberate that, even with all the Int-based abilities, a point of Str still does everything that a point of Int does and more, as far as combat effectiveness is concerned. The abilities aren't there to increase combat effectiveness. They're there to make investing in Int for the skill points and for character reasons have a less crippling impact on your combat effectiveness.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

What bit about multi-classing?
the whole "I can't talk about it"?

No, the bit where he said that it wasn't like in 3e. And where he provided an example: the Warlord/Wizard character - which had been described in previous playtests as blasting enemy skirmishers with his Wizard powers - has no levels in Wizard at all.

 

[Khaalis]

Khaalis, you're essentially saying "I need to put points into Int to be an effective warblade, but if I do that I'll end up less effective than if I kept them in Str!" Can you see why that is ridiculous?

Just because the Int-based benefits are there doesn't mean you have to make use of them to be good at the class. I think they're quite specifically designed so that you can ignore them and not miss anything. It's deliberate that, even with all the Int-based abilities, a point of Str still does everything that a point of Int does and more, as far as combat effectiveness is concerned. The abilities aren't there to increase combat effectiveness. They're there to make investing in Int for the skill points and for character reasons have a less crippling impact on your combat effectiveness.

The only problem I have with this argument is this leads to saying things like "Well I am a Fighter but I feel like ignoring my Bonus Feats" or "I'm a druid but I feel like ignoring my Wild Shape". Very few people takes a class with the intent of ignoring half of their class's abilities and they are Never designed with such a thought in mind. No one designs a class for 3E and says - well they can just ignore these abilities if they don't like them. If they were added to the class it was because they were intended to be used.

This is part of the 4E design is that you shouldn't ever be giving up your class's shtick. Thus even the warlord who specializes in offensive abilities can still be competent at healing.

A Warblade is supposed to be a more tactical combatant than a Fighter. They are supposed to rely on their INT. Saying that the only reason they get the INT based abilities is to make using Skill Points less painful is, IMHO, the wrong way of looking at the class design. The designers didn't say, lets try to make an INT/skill based warrior and find a way to make spending pints in INT less painful. They designed a class meant to use INT as a decided advantage over other melee fighters.

 

[Khaalis]

the Warlord/Wizard character - which had been described in previous playtests as blasting enemy skirmishers with his Wizard powers - has no levels in Wizard at all.

Aye. This is very interesting. I am getting the impression, as many mentioned before, that the "multiclassing" options are going to be more along the line of Substitution Levels from 3E, where you can choose to take abilities from outside your class (likely after meeting prerequisites such as a faint INT or a wizard) at the cost of the abilities you would gain at that level for your "chosen" class. Thus (as a sheer example from thin air), the Warlord could sacrifice the ability to say gain a Party Buff power at X level to instead gain a ranged arcane attack from the Wizard list of abilities of equal power. This seems the most logical to me from what information we've seen so far.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

The single-classed Warlord with Wizard abilities reminds me of another quote reported from Gencon:

Personalizing and specializing your character is amped up, it’s one of the most powerful things about 4th edition. If you’re a barbarian, you’re not a frenzied berserker. If you’re a barbarian, you’re a barbarian for your entire career. The frenzied berserker and bear warrior will be at the very end.

A guess: it sounds to me as though in 4e you never gain levels in another class - a character continues in their original class all the way to 30. There's no such thing as "class level" or "character level", just level. "Multi-classing" in 4e refers to taking abilities and powers from other classes instead of (or as well as?) your own. Obviously there would have to be a cost to the character for doing this.

Edit: Khallis, I was writing this while you were making a very similar point. Yes, substitution levels sound like a similar mechanic. I wonder, when did substitution levels first appear in 3e?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

3.5 assumes a 25 point buy as default (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) I've never seen anyone play the game with stats that low.

Well, our group did it a lot. We have started to loose this restriction in the past few campaigns. We started two Adventure Paths, for example, and from our experience a lot of the encounters in there are pretty tough. You need to min-max characters with a party of 4, and this means there are a lot less character builds that work. A higher point buy allowed us to experiment with non-standard (multi)classes and compensate temporary or persistent weaknesses of such characters.

More on topic:
Multiclassing: Maybe instead of gaining levels in other classes, you get the option to learn class abilities from the other class instead of your own class? And maybe Half-Elves have an easier time multiclassing because they can choose such abilities more freely?

Ah, probably not a good idea to use non-information as a base of specualation.
The rest sounded pretty interesting.

One caveat: I liked playing "Smart Fighters". But maybe these times are over and if I want to play a smart fighter, I need to play a Warlord?

 

[Gloombunny]

The only problem I have with this argument is this leads to saying things like "Well I am a Fighter but I feel like ignoring my Bonus Feats" or "I'm a druid but I feel like ignoring my Wild Shape".

It only leads to that if you oversimplify and overgeneralize. The Int-based benefits a warblade gets are fundamentally different from class features like bonus feats or wildshape, because to use them at all you have to give up something else important to your character. (Assuming you're point-buying attributes or otherwise having to decide which attributes should be higher and which lower.) Bonus feats and wildshape you get for free. Having the Int bonus you need to make use of these warblade features requires a tradeoff. A class feature that inherently requires you to make a tradeoff for it do anything is very unlike one that you automatically have no matter what.

Very few people takes a class with the intent of ignoring half of their class's abilities and they are Never designed with such a thought in mind. No one designs a class for 3E and says - well they can just ignore these abilities if they don't like them. If they were added to the class it was because they were intended to be used.

Can you quote the writers of the class saying that, or are you just assuming? Because it seems pretty plain to me that these particular class features were expressly designed to be optional.

This is part of the 4E design is that you shouldn't ever be giving up your class's shtick. Thus even the warlord who specializes in offensive abilities can still be competent at healing.

Um, no, the warlord healing thing is because 4e characters are supposed to fill their party role adequately no matter what choices they make. That has absolutely nothing to do with this.

A Warblade is supposed to be a more tactical combatant than a Fighter. They are supposed to rely on their INT. Saying that the only reason they get the INT based abilities is to make using Skill Points less painful is, IMHO, the wrong way of looking at the class design. The designers didn't say, lets try to make an INT/skill based warrior and find a way to make spending pints in INT less painful. They designed a class meant to use INT as a decided advantage over other melee fighters.

It doesn't give them a decided advantage at all. Again, any combat benefit a warblade can get from a point of Int he can get from a point of Str, and the Str point gives other major benefits as well.

Looking at the class design your way, it's absurdly poor design, because it completely fails to achieve those goals. Looking at it my way, it's fairly clever. Do you really think that the writers meant to do one thing with the class, completely botched it, and just by accident wound up with something really good in a different way?

*sigh* Whatever. Think what you want.

 

[jasin]

Seriously ? I have a 6-players table. Some of them are (were) using PHB only. Some were savy with things like spell-compendium and a bazillion other sourcebooks. Guess who was so powerfull as to overshadow the others ? It's not only classes (PHB2 vs PHB) who are more powerfull, but feats and spells too.

I don't know your players, there might be significant bias hidden in this observation. IME, folks who use PHB only are the kind of folks who don't enjoy the optimization minigame, and they get overshadowed because they're not good at it at least as much as because the PHB options are objectively weaker.

Do you think any book has a 4th-level spell more powerful than polymorph? A 6th-level spell more powerful than planar binding? A base class more powerful than the cleric?

Do you think the PHB has a class less powerful than the hexblade?

That said, additional options increase the power level ever so slightly even if they don't increase the upper bound. Sound lance (single target sonic damage evocation, Clr 4) isn't more powerful than divine power, but a cleric who prepares both and uses them as appropriate is more powerful than a cleric with just divine power.