Rule of Three: 05/16/2011

[Dice4Hire]

Races would have worked so much better as a theme (with only utilities, or whatever) than what they are now, to keep them relevant for more levels.

On one hand, I liked the racial feats as they keeps some powerful options from being taken by everyone, but they sure did clutter up the lists. Overall, I would like to see some racial feats, but fewer of them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I think races could have been a set of power swaps like a template. OTOH that runs the danger of pigeonholing races to specific roles. Still, it could work. The current implementation of races is not bad though.

Personally though I think the Vampire is good as a class. The problem with making it some kind of 'overlay' (theme or something similar) is that themes just don't give a lot of oomph. They don't define your character nearly to the degree that a class does. If you made Vampire a theme then what? "Oh, not only am I a human wizard, I can suck blood too!" Normal themes don't add MUCH to a character's power level. Even if you consider the new style themes to be a bit more addition than the pure power-swap ones from DS they don't do a LOT for you. So either Vampire is milquetoast or else it is a huge power boost to anyone that is a vampire. Neither is a very good solution. Hence it works as a class, at the cost of making you be purely a vampire if you pick the class.

Now, with the Werewolf it might work better. You still have SOME issue with added power, but if the player isn't entirely in control of how it works it could be OK. You do run the risk of players negating any disadvantages, but that isn't so easy when the mechanism is "oops! You just shifted uncontrollably to were-form..." Might be pretty tricky to pull off, but I could almost see it working.

Anyway, I guess they're considering doing something. It will be interesting to see if they can make it work.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Races would have worked so much better as a theme (with only utilities, or whatever) than what they are now, to keep them relevant for more levels.

On one hand, I liked the racial feats as they keeps some powerful options from being taken by everyone, but they sure did clutter up the lists. Overall, I would like to see some racial feats, but fewer of them.

Actually the shade and the vryloka resemble the themes a lot... with free power swaps and so on...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Actually the shade and the vryloka resemble the themes a lot... with free power swaps and so on...

I don't think the designers of the game think much in terms of classes, races, etc. They think in terms of features, feats, powers, archetypes, and only secondarily about the exact form to package the whole thing in. They want to express certain concepts, so they need certain things to go together and then they decide if it is a class or what it is, make it work, fill in around the main concept, etc.

 

[Camelot]

I think that they'll certainly make a werebeast class at some point, but I don't know why everyone speculated that it would be in Heroes of the Feywild. What does lycanthropy (or therianthropy) have to do with the Feywild?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think that they'll certainly make a werebeast class at some point, but I don't know why everyone speculated that it would be in Heroes of the Feywild. What does lycanthropy (or therianthropy) have to do with the Feywild?

Well, nothing really inherent, but the Feywild is a rather fantastical place. There's also a region of the Feywild that 4e lore designated as a 'nation' of shape shifters that exists there. I forget exactly where this was first mentioned, MotP maybe? I'd assume it would get mentioned again in the equivalent of Gloomwrought.

 

[Klaus]

I think that they'll certainly make a werebeast class at some point, but I don't know why everyone speculated that it would be in Heroes of the Feywild. What does lycanthropy (or therianthropy) have to do with the Feywild?

Well, there *is* the Brokenstone Vale (Manual of the Planes, Feywild chapter), ruled and inhabited by werebeasts and the focus of a rcent two-part adventure in Dungeon.

Not saying there is or isn't a were-class in HotFW, I haven't heard anything on that regard.

Personally, I'd make it a class with Str/Dex (choose at character creation) attack powers and Wis-based "heightened senses/animal instincts" powers.

As for werecreatures as a race, we are well-served by the shifters, IMHO.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, there *is* the Brokenstone Vale (Manual of the Planes, Feywild chapter), ruled and inhabited by werebeasts and the focus of a rcent two-part adventure in Dungeon.

Not saying there is or isn't a were-class in HotFW, I haven't heard anything on that regard.

Personally, I'd make it a class with Str/Dex (choose at character creation) attack powers and Wis-based "heightened senses/animal instincts" powers.

As for werecreatures as a race, we are well-served by the shifters, IMHO.

Yup. It would be cool to get a couple more variations too. Maybe an ursine type emphasizing toughness over mobility and offense. I could imagine other variations, but I'm not sure exactly how they would work. Maybe a highly sneaky Jackalwere type. A boar would fit with older legends and fluff too, but I'm not sure exactly what its shtick would be, wedged in somewhere between bear and wolf I guess.

 

[Klaus]

Yup. It would be cool to get a couple more variations too. Maybe an ursine type emphasizing toughness over mobility and offense. I could imagine other variations, but I'm not sure exactly how they would work. Maybe a highly sneaky Jackalwere type. A boar would fit with older legends and fluff too, but I'm not sure exactly what its shtick would be, wedged in somewhere between bear and wolf I guess.

I'd refrain from tying the powers too much on the beast type, and let the player decide his beast type. Wererats, werepanthers, werebats and wereweasels would choose Dex-based powers and werebears, weretigers, werewolves and werecrocs would choose Str-based, but I think the player could be free to make a quick werebear that is quicker than the average werebear.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'd refrain from tying the powers too much on the beast type, and let the player decide his beast type. Wererats, werepanthers, werebats and wereweasels would choose Dex-based powers and werebears, weretigers, werewolves and werecrocs would choose Str-based, but I think the player could be free to make a quick werebear that is quicker than the average werebear.

Yeah, well, you can create a few variations. The player can always refluff what the form looks like. Given them a few packages of features modeled on the existing ones. I'd make the racial feats unrestricted by type, that way people can mix and match stuff. Obviously you could make some oddball combinations, but I think players can be trusted to decide what exactly makes their specific beast type unique. That would require a small errata to remove the shifter type prereq from the shifter feats is all. Drop in a bit of fluff for each one that indicates what concept the feat is intended to support, but people can easily interpret those however they want if they seem appropriate to their concept. It actually brings the existing material more in line with newer less restrictive feat design and adds a bunch of fun options with only very minimal extra work.